8 Wild Facts about Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre was the man who’s famously known for (arguably) founding Existentialism — and to be honest, I’ve found that his life was as odd as he looks.

So, for what it’s worth, here are the top 8 wildest facts about Jean-Paul Sartre:

Fact #8: Sartre Turned Down the Nobel Prize

In 1964, Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize in Literature, saying that he didn’t want to compromise his independence, and that he despised the committee’s habit of only offering the prize to Western writers or, more specifically, to the anti-Communist folk, rather than to the revolutionary writers from the developing world.

Fact #7: Jean-Paul Sartre Supported Communism

As you may have gathered from #8, Sartre was a Marxist. Which is to say he subscribed to the philosophy of Karl Marx. Which is basically Communism.

But despite being a big admirer of the Soviet Union, he never joined France’s Communist Party. Instead, his main contributions on the political front would be by the pen — in publishing articles that argued for a socialist revolution.

However, when the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956, Sartre’s high hopes for a form of Communism that worked came crashing down. And he was absolutely devastated.