Sartre_ A Philosophical Biography

On the evening of October 29, 1945, Jean-Paul Sartre delivered a much- anticipated lecture, advertised as “Existentialism is a Humanism,” to an overflow crowd in the Salle des Centraux on the Parisian Right Bank. As he was already well known for his novels Nausea and the recently published The Age of Reason and The Reprieve, his plays, The Flies and No Exit, and his philosophical essays, especially the daunting master- piece Being and Nothingness, his talk was seen as the manifesto for this rapidly spreading style of thought. It is still the philosophical essay that people read when they seek an introduction to his work and to this movement in general. Yet it is the only piece that he openly regretted having published.