Facts about Jean-Paul Sartre
- 12
Sartre's 1938 screenplay for the film The Chips Are Down was adapted into a 1947 movie directed by Jean Delannoy, marking his sole completed work for cinema.
- 11
Sartre's 1945 play No Exit, featuring the famous line Hell is other people, premiered at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier during the Nazi occupation's final year.
- 10
Sartre's massive unfinished Critique of Dialectical Reason manuscript, begun in 1956, grew to over 750 pages but he abandoned completion due to health complications and shifting philosophical interests.
- 09
Sartre's 1952 philosophical treatise Critique of Dialectical Reason attempted to reconcile existentialism with Marxism, stretching over 750 pages and remaining incomplete at his death in 1980.
- 08
During the Algerian War of Independence, Sartre publicly supported the FLN rebellion against French colonial rule, earning him death threats and having his apartment firebombed by right-wing extremists in 1961.
- 07
Sartre's tumultuous 52-year relationship with philosopher Simone de Beauvoir never involved marriage, despite their intellectual partnership profoundly shaping each other's existentialist thought and literary works.
- 06
Sartre's 1960 autobiographical work Words won the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he had already rejected the prize four years earlier on philosophical grounds.
- 05
Sartre's monumental philosophical work Being and Nothingness, published in 1943, spans over 700 pages and took him approximately four years to complete during Nazi-occupied France.
- 04
The Nobel Prize in Literature eluded Sartre despite his monumental influence; he rejected the 1964 award, viewing it as incompatible with his commitment to political engagement and intellectual freedom.
- 03
Sartre's 1938 novel Nausea was rejected by multiple publishers before Gallimard finally accepted it, initially selling fewer than 500 copies in its first year.
- 02
Sartre's daily consumption of tobacco, amphetamines, and other substances during the 1940s and 1950s contributed to multiple health problems including high blood pressure and vision deterioration.
- 01
In 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre's lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism drew over 300 people to a Parisian venue, causing a crush that required police intervention.