Sartre transformed phenomenology into an existential analysis of freedom, bad faith, others, social conflict, and political commitment.
Intellectual setting
Sartre's writing moved through interwar French philosophy, the Nazi occupation, postwar cultural politics, and anticolonial activism, crossing novels, plays, journalism, and theory.
Key ideas
Existence and freedom
Human beings are not fixed by a pre-given essence but must take responsibility for projects formed within contingent situations.
Bad faith
People evade freedom by treating themselves as fixed objects or by denying the factical constraints through which freedom is exercised.
Legacy
He made existentialism globally influential and remains central to arguments about agency, the look of others, commitment, Marxism, anticolonialism, and the limits of humanism.