Philosopher, playwright, activist, political journalist, writer? Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most prominent representatives of existentialism and humanist Marxism, his work containing the essence of contemporary thought and valuable reflections on the complex relationship between oneself and society, his ideas and legacy were fundamental to psychology.
Influenced by other great German thinkers, such as Husser and Heidegger, Sartre was the man capable of winning the Nobel Prize and rejecting it, all because the company must be consistent with its ideological principles, and was also the figure capable of taking up arms to fight for the liberation of an African people and show us that freedom, as such, requires genuine commitment.
- Similarly.
- In addition to his role as a philosopher.
- Activist and writer.
- It is interesting to highlight the impact of his work on the psychological context.
- Jean-Paul Sartre laid the foundations for a new current.
- The humanist-existent.
- About man’s responsibility for his actions.
- Self-knowledge and his well-known premise of “I think.
- That’s who I am.
- ” they marked a before and after.
“Happiness is not about doing what you want, it’s about wanting what you do” – Jean-Paul Sartre-
Sartre was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, the son of a Navy soldier, however, his father’s early loss made his education different and decisive, was raised by his mother and grandfather, and Anne Marie Schweitzer died. her passion for literature, while Albert Schweitzer introduced her to philosophy.
That is why he did not hesitate to follow this intellectual current. Thus, in 1929, he received his doctorate in philosophy at an elite center, the École Normale Supérieure, and it was precisely at this time, as a student, that he met Simone de Beauvoir, who would be his life partner and indispensable intellectual ally in his life. daily.
Everything was going to change a lot with the outbreak of World War II, in fact, he became a prisoner of the Germans, an episode that marked his later work, once his freedom was regained in 1941. Work with Albert Camus again on Combat, the Resistance newspaper.
In 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir launched a joint project of great social inspiration: the political and literary magazine “Modern Times”. His socialist ideals and contacts with communism have already marked this decisive stage of his biography.
He was a fierce critic of the Vietnam War, defining it as a goal of showing the world the crimes and injustices committed by the United States. Later, in 1964, Sartre received the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of thought. However, as we have already pointed out, he rejected it.
According to Sartre, accepting the Nobel Prize meant losing this critical vision as a philosopher, as a spirit committed to social activism and intellectual independence, he has spent his whole life in solidarity with countless causes and has lived with humility.
He died on 15 April 1980, was 74 years old and thousands of people attended his funeral, resting in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
To understand Jean-Paul Sartre’s legacy and his contribution to humanist existentialism, you have to approach his masterpiece: nausea. This book, in addition to its undisputed literary quality, urged the society of the time to understand the world differently, through a more awake, critical and profound vision.
Sartre wrote this work when he was just over 26 years old when he was in Berlin, coinciding with Hitler’s coming to power, at that time he only read his two theoretical references: Husserl and Heidegger, I felt an absolute fascination with the concept of phenomenology and how to describe events through perception, the impressions that the outside leaves in our minds.
Thus, Sartre’s best-known book is a phenomenological exercise in which he describes his own experience as a teacher at an institute in Le Havre, in this context, all he felt and perceived was darkness, emptiness, meaningless in front of him. of everything that was going on around him.
The protagonist of Nauseas is Antoine Roquentin, Sartre’s alter ego, we find ourselves before a young man who comes from Indochina to settle in an imaginary city with a very specific purpose: to make the biography of an 18th century aristocrat. What he does is write, communicate with the hotel owner, listen to jazz, and speak to the Autodidact, a knowledge-hungry creature who consumes book after book.
In this unique scenario, the plot of A Nausea takes place, a work where the reader is also page after page, the deep apathy of the protagonist, his disgust, his misunderstanding for everything around him, everything is subject to chance, everything gravitates by itself. rhythm to the point where everyday life takes on terrible tones.
“To exist is just to be there. Existing beings appear, let themselves be found, but it is never possible to deduce them. No need can explain existence, contingency is not a mask, it is absolute. -Roquentino, nausea-
One thing we must take into account in this work to understand this is this, what Sartre describes developed between 1936 and 1938, at that time there was not only the rise of Nazism in Germany, but also a profound moral crisis of French society, of which he witnessed and reflected masterfully in La Nausée.
This work has left us messages that can (and should) apply to any historical moment:
Man can rebel against tyranny and choose his own path, once he accepts the unrecoverable fact that nothing makes sense.
Let us think about it and do not hesitate to return, from time to time, to this exceptional heritage of a great existentialist philosopher: Jean-Paul Sartre.