- Lived:
- 1889–1973 · Paris
- Tradition:
- French existential philosophy; Christian — though he came to refuse the label "Christian existentialist"
- The Big Idea:
- The deepest questions of life — love, evil, hope, your own body — are not problems to be solved by technique but mysteries you are inside of, and the modern world sickens when it forgets the difference.
- In their words:
- "Thou, thou shalt not die."
- If you remember one thing:
- A person is a presence, not a set of functions — and treating people as functions is the quiet catastrophe of modern life.