Wes Cecil's lecture on Jean-Paul Sartre isn't a biography — it's an attempt to explain what existentialism actually means by telling the story of one man's life. And what makes this piece compelling is how it frames philosophy as something born from experience rather than abstract thinking. "One of the key components of existentialism is you are free," Cecil writes, "you make your life the way you want it." This isn't academic — it's practical advice for living that emerges from Sartre's actual failures and relationships.
The Bourgeois Family and Education
Cecil opens with what he considers crucial context: Sartre was born into a family that valued education not as a means to wealth, but as an achievement in itself. "Receiving the education itself was deemed to be good," he notes. This matters because it explains why Sartre would later reject marriage — he'd seen what bourgeois convention meant in his own family, and he wanted something different.
The French school system Cecil describes is striking: students lived in dorms with "children of many classes not quite the upper nobility and certainly not sort of the peasant rabble but anything just below that and anything just above that." This mixing was intentional — it created bonds across social lines. The schools were "unbelievably rigorous," producing a generation that would reshape European thought.
The Failure That Changed Everything
The pivotal moment comes when Sartre fails his philosophy exams. Everyone expected him to pass — he was one of the smartest in class. But he failed, and this failure led directly to meeting Simone de Beauvoir. "He gives an original answer in a traditional form," Cecil explains about what the examiners wanted. "What you want to do is give a traditional answer in a real original form."
This failure became the beginning of their intellectual partnership. They worked together daily, and when they finally passed their exams, the instructors asked who was first and second. Simone was four years younger with less preparation — and yet she passed too. "They're both uh became brilliant philosophers in their own right," Cecil observes.
The Arrangement That Started Existentialism
What follows is perhaps the most interesting part of Sartre's life story: he and de Beauvoir decided not to marry. "He does not want to be married," Cecil writes, "he thinks his married Mar being married to sort of an intellectual death and sort of caving into the bourgeoisie." They would instead work out what Cecil calls "an Arrangement" — they would be the most important people in each other's lives but live separately, have other relationships, but be totally honest about everything.
They pull this off for their entire lives. And what's key is this is the beginning of sartre's ideal of existentialism.
This wasn't just personal preference — it was philosophical practice. "We make our own lives," Cecil paraphrases as their thinking. "We don't have to live the way our parents have lived we don't have to live the way Society has said we've had to live we can do things not rebel against them so much although there was an element of that but just say what do we actually want."
The Anti-Establishment Professor
When Sartre gets his teaching job, he's described as becoming "sort of an anti-establishment Professor" — giving the first lecture at graduation and telling students to watch films because "films are great I love film it's the new medium it's the art form for the 20th century." The parents were "a little dicey" about this. He lives in the poorest section of the city, in a hotel room with windows open so he could hear "the workers from the docks would come through all the Immigrant Sailors would come through the prostitutes would come through the business people the merchants the Traders."
The Rejection and The War
Writing his first novel Nausea was repeatedly rejected. "This totally crushes him," Cecil notes — because until this point, he had always been successful. But when it finally came out, it became controversial: "people either like it or they're opposed to it but it's an event." Then the war breaks out and he's drafted into the military — "which is another hilarious idea start in the military."
His time in the prisoner of war camp becomes intellectual gold. He argues with Jesuit priests for hours, reads smuggled books, stages plays, and spends time with people he would never have encountered otherwise. "He really thinks this one of the best things that ever happened to him intellectually," Cecil writes. "You're stripped of so much" — this becomes his breakthrough about what it means to be human.
Bottom Line
Cecil's strongest move is connecting existentialism to lived experience rather than abstract theory. The story of failing exams, rejecting marriage, and surviving a prisoner camp isn't just biography — it's the actual practice of "making your own life." His vulnerability is in oversimplifying the philosophical content — the lecture doesn't deeply engage with what existentialism actually argues. But his framing works: philosophy as survival strategy for people who refuse conventional rules.