Birth of Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris. A French philosopher, playwright and novelist, Sartre was the leading figure of existentialism in the twentieth century. In his major work Being and Nothingness of 1943 he argued that humans have no fixed nature and are condemned to be free, and so must take responsibility for their choices. He explored these ideas in the novel Nausea and in plays such as No Exit. He was a public intellectual who supported left-wing and anti-colonial causes, and he had a lifelong partnership with Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 but declined it.

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