Jean-Paul Sartre

French writer, existentialist philosopher, novelist, essayist and playwright. His philosophy of existentialism stated that the world had no meaning for mankind, but instead proposed that the individual is responsible for his or her own purpose. After 1939, Sartre served as the leader of the French intelligensia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1964 but declined on political grounds.

An only child of a distinguished family, he was a handsome, active baby, pampered by his mother after his father's death when he was just a year old. When his hair was long it was curly, but when cut, people realized how ugly he was. His full height was less than 5 ft. With a vindictive and angry personality, he was self-confident, knowing he was smarter than other children. Feeling a sense of power and control while writing, in October 1914 he wrote a short story about a French private who captures the Kaiser. Growing close to his mother he rebelled when she re-married April 1917.

In 1920 he was sent to boarding school in Paris. With an excellent mind but lacking discipline, he raced from topic to topic, never refining a thought, substituting eloquence for any depth of knowledge. His personal habits were abominable. In August 1924 Sartre placed seventh on entrance exams for Ecole Normale Superieure, a distinguished philosophy campus. In 1928 he placed last, fiftieth, in his exit exam, placing first on a re-exam in 1929. He was in the military for 18 months beginning in 1929 and took a teaching position thereafter, with a hiatus for study in Berlin in 1933.

Sartre's novel "Nausea" was published in 1938. He was conscripted at the start of WW II and captured 21 June 1940. Escaping in March 1941, he joined the resistance movement. One of his most famous essays, "Being and Nothingness" was published 1943. By 1945 Sartre was famous, rejecting God and external values, touting existentialism as the philosophy to study. He became co-editor of the magazine "Les Temps Modernes.