Who Was Jean Paul Sartre?

Jean Paul Sartre was an eminent French philosopher and writer of the 20th century. Born in Paris on 21 June, 1905, he was an empowering existentialist- a branch of philosophy which showed that the essence of existence was rooted in human experience and consciousness.

He studied philosophy in the 1920s and taught in places like Paris, Lyon, Le Havre and Berlin during the 30s.  He got himself enlisted with the French army in the year 1941 during the World War II. He was arrested and then released where he stayed in occupied Paris. It was against tyranny and resistance that he wrote his most famous novel Being and Nothingness (L être et le neant, 1943). He followed it up with philosophical and thought provoking essays and plays "The Flies" (Les mouches, 1943) and "No Exit" (Huis Clos, 1944). During the last few years of his life, he popularized Marxism and Existentialism. He was conferred with a Nobel Prize for literature in the year 1964, which he declined to accept. He breathed his last on 13 April, 1980.