This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warton.

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Jean Paul Sartre, the 20th century French novelist and philosopher, was one of the founders of existentialism.

He rejected God and the Nobel Prize for literature.

He opposed the Vietnam War and French involvement in Algeria. He embraced

Marxist ideas but later changed his mind. Perhaps his longest commitment was his lifelong

companion, Simone de Beauvoir.

His relationship to her is usually described as unconventional.

Mary Warnock is a philosopher who now sits in the House of Lords.

She's also the author of a book on Sartre.

Mary Warnock, welcome to Philosophy Bides.

Well, it's a great pleasure to be here, and I'm longing to know what's going to ask me.

Well, the topic I want to focus on is Jean-Poul Sartre's existentialism.

Obviously Sartre is one of the best known philosophers of the 20th century,

not least because of his novels and plays.

But he's also the quintessential existentialist. I want to start by just asking you what you understand by existentialism.

Well I understand by existentialism is sort of totally forgotten little sub-branch philosophy that I think nobody thinks about at all anymore.

It was very much an outcome of the war, the Second World War, and the immediate aftermath of that, largely in Paris I think I mean it was very interesting

as a phenomenon but I think it's gone away.

Sartre described existentialism as the idea that for human beings existence precedes essence.

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