Renowned as a philosopher, literary figure, and social critic, Jean Paul Sartre, b. Paris, June 21, 1905, d. Apr. 15, 1980, was probably most famous as a representative of Existentialism, a philosophical approach that emphasizes, among other things, the ultimacy of human freedom. In his later writings, however, Sartre attempted to combine the individualism of his existentialist work with a form of Marxism, which stresses the collective aspects of human existence.As Sartre explained in his autobiography, The Words (1963; Eng. trans., 1964), his career as an author was a response to his childhood experiences of rejection. He graduated from the Ecole Normal Superieure, Paris, in 1929, by which time he had met Simone de Beauvoir, who became his lifelong companion as well as his intellectual associate. Sartre taught in various lycees, or secondary schools, until 1945, after which time he devoted himself exclusively to writing and editing the journal Les Temps Modernes (Modern Times). He spent a year as a prisoner of war during World War II and was a key figure among the French intellectuals who resisted the Nazi occupation.
