A fresh translation of two seminal works of existentialism""To understand Jean-Paul Sartre is to understand something important about the present time."", Iris Murdoch ""Sartre matters because so many fundamental points of his analysis of the human reality are right and true, and because their accuracy and veracity entail real consequences for our lives as individuals and in social groups."", Benedict O'Donohoe, Philosophy Now It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War Ii decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture ( Existentialism Is a Humanism ) was to expound his philosophy as a form of existentialism, a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre's doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence, his self, his being, through the choices he freely.