Start with the lecture
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946) is 70 pages, was delivered as a talk to a packed Paris hall, and contains the famous formulations: existence precedes essence, condemned to be free, no excuses.
Sartre later regretted publishing it, thinking it oversimplified him. He was right, and it's still the correct first book. Get the shape of the argument from the version he was embarrassed by, then decide whether you want the rigorous one.
| Book | Year | Form | Read it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Existentialism Is a Humanism | 1946 | Lecture | First. 70 pages, and the whole position in outline. |
| Nausea | 1938 | Novel | First, alternatively. Existentialism as physical sensation rather than argument. |
| No Exit | 1944 | Play | Any time. One act, and the source of 'hell is other people'. |
| Being and Nothingness | 1943 | Philosophy | Only if you're committed. 800 pages of dense phenomenology. |
| The Words | 1964 | Memoir | His best prose. On the childhood that made him a writer, and unsparing about it. |
| Critique of Dialectical Reason | 1960 | Philosophy | The Marxist turn. For specialists. |
What he actually argued
Existence precedes essence. There's no human nature installed in advance, no design you're failing to live up to, and therefore nothing outside your choices that determines what you are.
Sartre treats that as a burden rather than a liberation. If nothing is given, everything is on you, and there's no authority to appeal to when you get it wrong. He calls the evasion of this bad faith: the waiter who plays at being a waiter, the person who says they had no choice.
The famous line about hell being other people is routinely misread as misanthropy. In No Exit it's a claim about being seen: other people fix you in their judgement, and you can't get behind their view of you.
He refused the Nobel Prize
In 1964, on the grounds that a writer accepting an institutional honour becomes an institution. He'd turned down the Légion d'honneur too. Later he asked whether the money could be sent anyway; it could not.
Consistency aside, it tells you something about the man that his objection to the highest honour in literature was that accepting it would compromise his freedom.
Around him
Simone de Beauvoir was his lifelong partner and, on most current readings, the better philosopher of the two. Camus was his friend until The Rebel ended it in 1952. Our existentialism guide is the ten-minute overview.
365 Days of Philosophy covers Sartre inside a year that runs from Thales to Žižek, one page each morning.
Common questions
Which Sartre book should I read first?
Existentialism Is a Humanism, a 70-page lecture containing his whole position in outline. Nausea is the alternative if you'd rather have a novel. Being and Nothingness is 800 pages and the wrong starting point.
What does 'existence precedes essence' mean?
That there's no human nature given in advance. You aren't built to a design, so what you are is settled by what you do, with no external standard to appeal to.
Did Sartre really say 'hell is other people'?
Yes, in the play No Exit (1944). It isn't misanthropy: it's about being fixed by other people's judgement, unable to get behind their view of you.
Why did Sartre refuse the Nobel Prize?
He said a writer who accepts institutional honours becomes an institution. He'd previously refused the Légion d'honneur on similar grounds.
Was Sartre a Marxist?
Increasingly, from the 1950s on. Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) is the attempt to reconcile existentialism with Marxism, and it's his most difficult book.