Albert Camus vs. Jean-Paul Sartre
Their Friendship and the Bitter Feud That Ended It
In the wake of the Second World War, it was not only the urban landscape of Europe that was in ruins but the intellectual landscape. In this intellectual crater, several great thinkers debated the blueprint for the future — ‘We were,’ as philosopher Simone de Beauvoir put it ‘to provide the postwar era with its ideology’.
In this postwar landscape, two giants towered above all others: Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The two men had met in Nazi-Occupied Paris in 1943 and become fast friends. Despite it being their first meeting, they were deeply acquainted with one another — each having reviewed the other’s writings in their journalistic role.
They were the intellectual superstars of their time. Both men went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and were cornerstones of French popular culture. Moreover, they were celebrities whose daily movements were considered newsworthy by the papers. And so it is no surprise that after a decade of friendship, the public breakdown of this relationship would be a major cultural event.
This wasn’t just a petty squabble between friends but a philosophical dispute over the course of Europe and the world’s future. Sartre believed that violence was a justifiable means to the great end of…
