Jean-Paul Sartre

Born in Paris in 1905, Sartre lost his father at two and grew up steeped in books, guided by a grandfather who treated literature like oxygen. He studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, drawn to Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger — thinkers mapping consciousness and dread. The war interrupted: drafted, captured, released, he co-founded the resistance group Socialisme et Liberté, and when it dissolved he wrote for the underground and staged plays like No Exit in occupied France. His 1943 work Being and Nothingness laid out the central problem — the clash between self-deception and an authe…