Abstract: Putting legends aside, this article recreates the intellectual context in which Sartre formulates in 1926 his aim to become a philosopher. A symbolic reading of the Empédocle manuscript allows us to consider Sartre’s philosophy before it became itself, before he discovered Heidegger or met de Beauvoir. His relations with Robert Minder and Bernard Groethuysen illuminate the connections that Existentialism forges with literature, philosophy, and history.
