Jean-Paul Sartre was undoubtedly one of the greatest and most popular philosophers of the 20th Century. Also a prominent novelist, playwright and biographer, Sartre was, above all, the embodiment of the engag intellectual, active in a variety of political causes, as well as an individual who attempted to live his life in accordance with the philosophy he professed. It was this that gave his lifelong preoccupation with freedom, choice and what he came to refer to as social conditioning, its cutting edge. Sartre's life was in many ways an illustration of his brand of existentialism in action. These three interviews, including one with Simone de Beauvoir, take Sartre on a wide-ranging tour of his philosophy and politics. Topics discussed include "freedom of choice," his uneasy relationship with Freudian concepts, his debates with Marx, and his acute observations on drama, the Cultural Revolution, Stalinism, women's rights, the May "Events" and of course, the Vietnam War. Their breadth remains a testimony to one man's attempt to make philosophical sense of the tumultuous world around him.

Publicado, em 1943, O Ser e o Nada dá continuidade a uma reflexão que já se iniciara no princípio do século com pensadores como Kierkegaard, Jaspers e Heidegger, exercendo uma incontornável influência sobre as cinco últimas décadas. Sartre desenvolveu um prodigioso e completo sistema de 'explicação total do mundo' através de um exame detalhado da realidade humana como ela se manifesta, estudando o abstrato concretamente. Ao ser publicado, O Ser e o Nada causou espanto, polêmica, protestos, admiração. Com sua originalidade transgressora e contestações às verdades eternas da tradição filosófica, constitui o apogeu da primeira fase da filosofia sartriana.

The Age of Reason is set in 1938 and tells of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy who is obsessed with the idea of freedom. As the shadows of the Second World War draw closer -- even as his personal life is complicated by his mistress's pregnancy -- his search for a way to remain free becomes more and more intense.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time--the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."