Sartre Jean-Paul

Sartre Jean-Paul

(1905-80) French existentialist philosopher and novelist, whose work blends EXISTENTIALISM with MARXISM. Sartre's method was influenced by HUSSERL'S PHENOMENOLOGY, but the central notion of his philosophy derives from HEIDEGGER. This is that although we cannot escape the ‘givens’ of our initial situation (its ‘facticity’) we are free to act to change it. Sartre draws a distinction between ‘being-in-itself’ (unconscious, ‘thingness’) and ‘being-for-itself’ (conscious, ‘no-thingness’ and action). Politicized by World War II and his association with the French Communist Party, his aim of overcoming the economic and social 'structures of choice’ which restrict options, linked existentialism with Marxism. His magnum opus is Being and Nothingness (1956) and his main contribution to Marxism is Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960).