Jean Sartre
Jean SartreJEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Jean-Paul Sartre is a French philosopher, novelist, play-write, and journalist. He is mostly recognized for his leadership in French Existentialism. After questioning his own ideas he gave up his own ideas, and started to support Marxism. Existentialism was the ideology that he is mostly known and supported for.
Jean Paul was born on June 21, 1905 and was schooled at Evole Normale Superieure in Paris, University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and the French Institute in Berlin. From 1929 he taught philosophy at some secondary schools. Resulting in the start of World War II, he was drafted into the military. Sometime during 1940-1941 he was captured by the Germans, and was later released. After his return to France he taught in Neuilly, and Paris. He became fond of and later joined the French Resistance. There he developed his major philosophic work " Being and Nothingness (1943)" In 1945 he gave up teaching and founded the political and literary magazine Les Temps Modernes. He was very profound in his struggle against Socialism. Later he supported Soviet positions but criticized their policies. In the 1950�s he wrote many pieces of literature on political problems. In 1964 Sartre won the Nobel Prize in literature, saying that he refuses to compromise his integrity as a writer, he refuses to accept the prize. He then becomes an outcast in society, for having turned on Existentialism and lives out his life in poor health and a few radical followers.
In the dictionary the translation of Existentialism is a branch of philosophy based on the concept of an absurd universe where humans have free will, and that humans are responsible for and the sole judge of their actions as they affect others. This philosophy proposes that there is no g-d, and no ethics. Man replaces g-d, and ethics are replaced persons personal morals. This kind of society states that man alone effects all things around him, and there is no outside force that effects objects in any kind of manner. Also in this kind of society the decisions of men are dependent on the individuals good faith, and freedom is an act of man not G-d. Sartre himself found Existentialism to inconclusive and later chose Marxism over his prior beliefs.
"Being and Nothingness" was one of Sartre early works on Existentialism. In this book he wrote that humans are the beings who create their own world by rebelling against authority and by accepting personal responsibility for their actions. I find that this belief shows that rules are not given by a Supreme Being but by the authoritarian in charge. When a person breaks one of the laws or rules the authority punishes them, by serving out the punishment the person is accepting responsibility. This I think is a very contemporary way of thinking, but I think he is correct. A Supreme Being does not give laws to us. When I think of it all governments set up their laws as they see fit, in some countries people...
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