Sartre’s famous student dilemma echoed a real 1937 moment with Bost.

Evidence

Student story: Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, 39–43. There are similarities with the situation of his friend and former pupil, Jacques-Laurent Bost, who sought Sartre’s opinion in 1937 about going to fight in the Spanish Civil War: see Thompson, Sartre, 36. In his novel The Reprieve, Sartre lent a similar dilemma to his character Boris, based on Bost. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1135

Categorization

• SEED: The famous trolley-adjacent ‘student dilemma’ is grounded in Sartre’s actual life; an essay tracing the lived-to-literary-to-philosophy path of this example could be compelling.