of nonhumans. The Sorbonne Many philosophers and historians of philosophy were teachers at the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, including Léon Brunschvicg (1869–1944), co-founder of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale with Xavier Léon and Elie Halévy, Martial Guéroult (1891–1976) and successor of Étienne Gilson at the Collège de France in 1951, Ferdinand Alquié, Paul Ricœur, etc. Jean Wahl taught between 1936 and 1967 and helped introduce the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard to French thinkers. Personalism Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) was a guiding spirit in the French personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne. In 1929, when he was only twenty-four, he came under the influence of the French writer, Charles Péguy, to whom he ascribed the inspiration of the personalist movement. Gabriel Honoré Marcel (1889–1973) was a leading Catholic existentialist and the author of about 30 plays. He shared a great deal in common with Mounier's ideas. They both show Bergson's influence in their assessment of 'being', specifically the Mystery of Being. Interest of Mounier and Marcel in the problems of technology moved French philosophy forward. Jean-Paul Sartre and Existentialism Sartre (1905–1980) was, if only by birth, the first truly 20th-century French philosopher. He was also well-known as a dramatist, screenwriter, novelist and critic. Sartre popularized (and named) existentialism, making it better known to the lay-person than, for instance, deconstruction. Phenomenology and Marxism were two other key concerns of his. A leading figure of the French Left, Sartre was opposed on his right by Raymond Aron. Merleau-Ponty Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was a French phenomenologist philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl. Merleau-Ponty is classified as an existentialist thinker because of his close association with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and his distinctly Heideggerian conception of Being. Marxist philosophers It is important to realise that, as well as holding many varying degrees and interpretations of Marxism, many French Philosophers' views on it shifted substantially during their lifetime. Sartre, for instance, became more influenced by Marx during the course of his life. Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968) was a Marxist and Hegelian political philosopher, who had a substantial influence on intellectual life in France in the 1930s and on the reading of Hegel in France. Louis Althusser (1918–1990) was a key Marxist philosopher, sometimes considered to be the structuralist