Jean-Paul Sartre

Born in 1945 in Paris and died in the same city in 1980. Philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer and French literary critic. It has been one of the key figures in existential philosophy and phenomenology and one of the leading figures of the French and Marxist philosophy in the twentieth century. His philosophy postulates the contingency of being. Things and men exist in fact and not of law. The world exists without "foundation" and the man opens to the world, defined by its own consciousness (the per-se that opposes the in-itself). Consciousness is something that never coincides with itself, it is the power of denial thanks to the imagination, as it that can be thought of as something that is not, making a project to be possible. Man is therefore a project resulting from what he does in his life. Unlike Hegel, he thinks that the man has no fixed essence since the existence precedes essence and is freely chosen by the existing. Thus Sartre gives man a radically free character and condemned to said freedom, being responsible for his decisions, as even not committing to something is also a form of commitment.