How did Jean-Paul Sartre's postwar writings connect freedom with social responsibility?

Following World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre shifted his focus from a philosophy of radical individual freedom to one that emphasized social responsibility. While his earlier work, such as Being and Nothingness, centered on the individual's inescapable freedom and the tendency to flee from it through "bad faith," he later concluded that this perspective had naively ignored history and social justice.123

Sartre began to articulate that freedom was not merely a private, gratuitous activity but a tool for human struggle. This evolution led to the concept of littérature engagée, or "engaged literature," which posited that writers and individuals have a serious responsibility to society. He argued that a person defines themselves by consciously engaging in willed action, and that this freedom must be adapted to socially useful ends.14

In his later work, particularly the Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre sought to reconcile his existentialist doctrine of individual freedom with Marxism, insisting that any philosophy must respect individual freedom while recognizing the concrete historical and social circumstances of the collective.352