Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 - 1980) was one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century and a renowned novelist, dramatist, and political activist. As a teenager Sartre was drawn to philosophy after reading Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will. He passed the agré gation in philosophy at the É cole Normale Supé rieure in Paris in 1929. His first novel La Nausé e, which Sartre considered one of his best works, was published in 1938. Sartre served as a meteorologist in the French army before being captured by German troops in 1940, spending nine months as a prisoner of war. He continued to write during his captivity and, after his release, he published his great trilogy of novels, Les Chemins de la Liberté . In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but declined it. During the events of 1968 he was arrested for civil disobedience but swiftly released by President Charles de Gaulle, who allegedly said "one does not arrest Voltaire". He died on 15 April 1980 in Paris, his funeral attracting an enormous crowd of up to 50, 000 mourners. He is buried in the Cimetiè re du Montparnasse in Paris.