Jean-Paul Sartre

AKA:

le Castor

Birth Name:

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre

Birth Date:

June 21, 1905

Birth Place:

Paris, France

Death Date:

April 15, 1980

Place of Death:

42 Rue Bonaparte, Paris, France

Age:

Cause of Death:

Pulmonary edema

Cemetery Name:

Cimetière du Montparnasse

Claim to Fame:

Writers and Poets

Associates:

Simone de Beauvoir

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, sexual predator and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology). His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it. Major philosophical works include Being and Nothingness (1943) where he explored human consciousness, freedom, and "bad faith" and Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), a public lecture defending existentialism. Sartre's best known literary works include Nausea (1938), a novel expressing existential dread and No Exit (1944), famous for the line "Hell is other people."

Not-So-Fun Fact

In 1993, French author Bianca Lamblin wrote in her book Mémoires d’une jeune fille dérangée (Memoirs of a deranged young girl, published in English under the title A Disgraceful Affair) of her sexual exploitation by Sartre and Beauvoir. Lamblin claims that while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who introduced her to Sartre a year later. Sartre and Beauvoir frequently followed this pattern, in which Beauvoir would seduce female students and then pass them on to Sartre.

As more women came forward, the appalling truth about Beauvoir is she was a sexual predator of the worst kind, grooming some of her female high school students in Rennes for threesomes with her and Sartre, as documented in her own letters to Sartre and in the book Tête à Tête by Hazel Rowley.

There have been 3 headstones for the graves of Simon de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 2010 the marble plaque that had been placed on his grave when he was buried in 1980 and that had been stolen shortly thereafter. It turned up in, of all places, Columbia. The plaque was stolen by the Colombian poet Arnulfo Valencia. Columbian author William Ospina apparently was told at some point by Valencia that he had stolen it and was still in possession of the plaque, but at the time Ospina didn’t believe him. When Valencia died recently, he told his daughter on his deathbed that he still had the plaque, which he said had been broken into four pieces.

Cemetery Information:

Final Resting Place:

Cimetière du Montparnasse

3 Bd Edgar Quinet

Paris, , 75014

France

Europe

Map:

Map of Cimetière Montparnasse in Paris, France

Grave Location:

Division 20

Grave Location Description

As you enter through the main entrance, at the intersection of Avenue Principale and Avenue du Boulevart, turn right on Avenue du Boulevart and count 8 spaces on your right and you will find the final resting place of Jean-Paul Sartre and his companion Simone de Beauvoir.