Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80)

This entry provides an overview of Sartre’s developing and ongoing relationship with Marxism throughout his career. In particular, it highlights the fact that numerous areas of overlap can be clearly identified with Marxism in Sartre’s work much earlier than has often been argued. The presence of Marxist concepts can be traced back to at least 1940 in Sartre’s writings and his subsequent preoccupation with ethics throughout that decade also bears the influence of Marx and in particular Trotsky. Sartre’s existentialist Marxist magnum opus The Critique of Dialectical Reason offered a conceptually innovative reformulation of many central Marxist theses and was, it is argued, the logical outcome and flowering of many of the arguments advanced and developed by Sartre over the preceding two decades.