ABSTRACT
In the English-speaking countries, existentialism has yet to win anything like full recognition in academic circles, though on the Continent it has long since established itself. The novels of M. Jean-Paul Sartre are read by many who do not grasp the moral purpose behind the deliberately nauseating account he gives of human life in our great cities. His plays delight a few, intrigue more, and, one may suspect, puzzle most of those who go to see them. The existential thinker is the actual, living, striving person whose thought is embedded in his life, is indeed part of the process of living. The existential thinker makes no pretence to disinterested knowledge. The most important of Sartre’s philosophical writings has as its sub-title: ‘an essay in phenomenological ontology’. It thereby proclaims its derivation from the school of Husserl and at the same time its breach with this.
