Happy Birthday, Sartre!

Today, join us in celebrating the birthday of Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, French existentialist and one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. He heavily influenced authors, artists, and political thinkers worldwide.

Not only was Sartre a famous philosopher, he was also a novelist, playwright, political activist, and more. His areas of study were diverse and included phenomenology, ontology, ethics, Marxism, and anarchism. Sartre frequently associated with other well-known writers and artists, such as Albert Camus, Pablo Picasso, and Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he maintained a lifelong relationship. He wrote a wide variety of plays, screenplays, stories, and novels (for example, Nausea), philosophic essays (Being and Nothingness, Critique of Dialectical Reason), and critical essays (Saint Genet).

Sartre coined the term “existentialism” to describe ideas based on the work of philosophers Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the previous century. Part of this philosophy was the belief that “existence precedes essence.” Sartre argued that it is our freedom, not human nature, that determines our actions. He also explored the idea of “bad faith,” his term for self-deception, and nothingness, or non-being, which he believed was a way to gain freedom.

To learn more about Sartre and his philosophies in a fun way, check out Sartre For Beginners. For even more information, you can also read Existentialism or Philosophy For Beginners or some of our other comic book-style volumes on well-known philosophers.