This short course will examine views on philosophy by Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, all three of whom responded to World War 2 by emphasising the importance of freedom for the individual by taking personal responsibility for their attitudes and actions during this turbulent period in a time of oppression and danger in France. Sartre who fought as a soldier for France at the beginning of the war, spent time in prison for his war effort and then became an activist with his plays about the lack of freedom and the need for decisive personal choices made at speed, about the nature of life and death. The meaninglessness of life at this time with the constant threat of death demanded personal responses made at speed about how to live and die. Albert Camus, then a friend of Sartre’s and who was later awarded the Nobel prize for literature, emphasised the dark side and flawed character of human life while seeking ways of being heroic in a world without meaning. Sartre’s life-long partner, Simone de Beauvoir, notably addressed the importance of women and wrote personally about their status to great effect, including about her own  life in a three volume work that makes for challenging reading even today.