Daily Almanac for Friday, October 22, 2021; Day 295 of the Year

On this date in 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre, French Writer and Philospher, shocked the World by rejecting the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here he is in Venice in 1967. By User T1980 – English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https commons.wikimedia.org

FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (/ˈsɑːrtrə/, US also /ˈsɑːrt/French: [saʁtʁ]; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopherplaywrightnovelistscreenwriterpolitical activistbiographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociologycritical theorypost-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines.

Sartre was also noted for his open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyles and thought. The conflict between oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, ‘bad faith‘) and an “authentic” way of “being” became the dominant theme of Sartre’s early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le Néant, 1943). Sartre’s introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism Is a Humanism (L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.

He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution.”

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