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Existentialism, Being and Nothingness, "existence precedes essence"
Sartre held that, unlike a manufactured object whose purpose precedes its existence, a human being simply exists first and must define their own purpose afterward — "existence precedes essence". Because there is no God or fixed human nature to dictate meaning or values in advance, individuals are "condemned to be free" and fully responsible for the choices that make them who they are, a responsibility he argued most people flee through self-deceiving "bad faith".
French philosopher, playwright and novelist who declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, and was a leading public intellectual of postwar France.