In his homeland, the centennial of the French existentialist philosopher's birth is being met with a certain amount of sangfroid.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

"France hated him when he was alive and shuns him in death," French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy said.

But in his heyday, his radical ideas earned him a following that has been compared to that of a pop star.

The was a time when Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) could not move without being mobbed in the street.

His existentialist ideas made him an icon for a whole generation of intellectuals.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does Sartre's Being and Nothingness

According to the British philosopher Julian Baggini, Sartre's "point is that freedom is something we're kind of afraid of, and we always want to deny we have, so we always try and make excuses for our behaviour, and say it's not our responsibility".

"And his real point was, no, we do have to choose. And not just about what we do, but what we believe, and the values we hold."

Apparently a National Library exhibit isn't exactly packing them in.