Jean-Paul Sartre, born on this day in 1905, was the first person to voluntarily decline the Nobel Prize.
In 1964, Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but made it known that he did not wish to accept the prize as he had always declined official honours. This was quite unusual in the history of the Nobel Prizes - only once before had a literature laureate declined the Nobel Prize. In 1958, Boris Pasternak first accepted the prize, but was later instructed by the authorities of his country (Soviet Union) to decline it.
Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age."
My first exposure to existentialism was through Sartre's essay 'Existentialism is a Humanism'. Through him, I discovered Heidegger and Jaspers, and rediscovered Dostoevsky. Sartre rejected the Nobel Prize. He believed that awards limit human freedom, which, according to him, is the very essence of being human and the mother of all values
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?”Among his objective reasons, Mr. Sartre listed his belief that interchange between East and West must take place between men and between cultures without the intervention of institutions.”?
It was a great honor, and I think he was just showing off with the sanctimonious justifications. Too good for this world. I never cared for his writing anyway.
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