It
was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Sartre accepted an
invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The
unstated objective of his lecture ("Existentialism Is a Humanism") was to
expound his philosophy as a form of "existentialism," a term much bandied about at the time.
Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for
philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a
general audience.