Nietzsche and Sartre 103Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris, France on June 21,1905.
His father died when Jean-Paul was two years old and he and his
mother moved in with his maternal grandparents who were
closely related to Albert Schweitzer, the famous physician and
African missionary. In his youth he was plagued by feelings of
bitterness because of his lack of monetary and social status, his
concern with his physical unattractiveness, and his general
attitude toward what he considered to be a hostile society. At an
early age he became a “loner” and decided to become a writer.
Also, he was dominated by two strong religionists, his Roman
Catholic grandmother and his Calvinist grandfather, so that at
the age of twelve he made his final religious decision. He not
only rejected their sectarian views, he rejected religion entirely
and became a lifelong atheist.
He studied at the Lycee Henri IV in Paris and received his
degree in philosophy from the Ecole Normale Superieure. While
studying for his degree in philosophy he met Simone de Beauvoir,
who became his lifelong companion and collaborator. In 1933 he
was awarded a fellowship at the Institut Francais in Berlin. There
he was introduced to the existential philosophy of Martin
Heidegger and the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund
Husserl. The basis of his own philosophy was thus formed, and
he expanded and developed an existential view of the world from
that point on.
World War II had a profound effect on his thinking also. When
the Germans occupied France and he was taken prisoner for a
year, he changed from an iconoclastic viewer of the world into
a politically active mover in the world. His anti-Fascist philoso
phy coupled with his earlier view of society, moved him to the
left, where he moved in and out of socialist and communist
political causes. He generally supported the “working class,”
cooperative economic systems, the leveling of the classes, and
the political positions that advanced that point of view.
He was a prolific writer of novels, plays, and philosophical
treatises. Nausea, The Wall, and The Age o f Reason are three of
his most important novels. His most famous play, No Exit,
appeared in 1945 and was an important dramatic existential