The Spirit of Sartre

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Taken as a whole, the work of Jean Paul Sartre is that of a sensitive man with a good heart gradually coming to understand the distinctly social aspect of human reality- that while we appear to ourselves as alone and struggling to make sense of things from within our own isolation, we are actually always powerfully connected in our very being to each other and, through the networks of reciprocity that enable our material and spiritual survival, to everyone on the planet.

Sartre's early work for which he is best remembered in mainstream liberal culture- the period in his thirties and forties that produced the novel Nausea, the philosophical work Being and Nothingness, and the plays …