SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL

born June 21, 1905, Paris, France died April 15, 1980, Paris Sartre, photograph by Gisle Freund, 1968 French novelist, playwright, and exponent of Existentialisma philosophy acclaiming the freedom of the individual human being. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but he declined it. Additional reading Biographies include Kenneth Thompson and Margaret Thompson, Sartre: Life and Works (1984); Ronald Hayman, Sartre (1987, reissued 1992); John Gerassi, Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of His Century (1989 ); and Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend (1993).Among numerous critical works on Sartre's writings and thought are Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953, reissued 1989); Maurice William Cranston, Sartre (1962, reissued 1970); Norman N. Greene, Jean-Paul Sartre: The Existentialist Ethic (1960, reprinted 1980); R.D. Laing and D.G. Cooper, Reason & Violence: A Decade of Sartre's Philosophy, 19501960 (1964, reissued 1983); Philip Thody, Jean-Paul Sartre: A Literary and Political Study (1960), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1992), on his novels; Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (compilers), The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, 2 vol. (1974; originally published in French, 1970); Joseph H. McMahon, Humans Being: The World of Jean-Paul Sartre (1971); Dominick La Capra, A Preface to Sartre (1978); Thomas C. Anderson, The Foundation and Structure of Sartrean Ethics (1979), and Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity (1993); Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston (eds.), Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy (1980); Michael Scriven, Sartre's Existential Biographies (1984); and David Detmer, Freedom as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre (1988). Christina Howells (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sartre (1992), covers his work chronologically.