Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, political activist and writer, a key figure of existentialism and a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His principal philosophical work, Being and Nothingness (1943), centred on the conflict between bad faith and an authentic way of being, and his lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) introduced his thought. Drafted and captured during World War II, he co-founded the resistance group Socialisme et Liberté and, after the war, the journal Les Temps modernes. He supported anti-colonial movements and condemned French policies in Algeria, and in 1964 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he tried to refuse.