Abstract

Date: 3rd October 2pm

Venue: Alliance Française, 60 Hills Road CB2 1AL

> Booking required, limited number of seats <

The talk is based on Patrick Baert’s book The Existentialist Moment; The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual (Polity Press 2015).

Patrick Baert is Professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Until 1944 Jean-Paul Sartre was only known to a small group of French intellectuals. Within less than two years this would change dramatically: by 1946 Sartre had become a celebrity in France and existentialism had gained a large following. In this talk Patrick Baert explains Sartre’s sudden rise in the context of the immediate post-war era in France. The talk also accounts for Sartre’s demise, the emergence of rival philosophies and the continuing fascination with this iconic figure, not just in France but also worldwide.