François Châtelet (27 April 1925 – 26 December 1985) was a french philosopher, historian of philosophy, political philosophy and professor in the socratic tradition. He was the husband of philosopher Noëlle Châtelet, the sister of Lionel Jospin. Along with Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, he is at the origin of the department of philosophy at the University of Vincennes, and co-founded the Collège international de philosophie (International College of Philosophy). In 1971 he was professor at the University of São Paulo. This was an act of protest that he made with Jean-Pierre Vernant against the Brazilian military dictatorship. Châtelet has always been concerned with linking thought and action, engaging in a restless combat with his contemporaries. His conception of philosophy makes him more of a historian of philosophy than a philosopher. In his work Une histoire de la raison (A History of Reason), he shows the role of philosophy in the constitution of modern Western rationality. His work Platon (Plato) is a formidable invitation-initiation to the thought of the ancient Greek philosopher.

[مؤلف دیگری با همین نام در گودریدز ثبت شده است.} مصطفی رحیمی (زادهٔ ۱۳۰۵ هـ.ش در نائین، اصفهان ـ درگذشتهٔ ۹ مرداد ۱۳۸۱ در تهران) روشنفکر غیر دینی ، حقوقدان ، استاد دانشگاه، نویسنده و مترجم ایرانی است. رحیمی در دهه چهل شمسی با ترجمه‌هایی از سارتر، دوبوار، کامو، برشت و ... در شناسایی مکاتب فلسفی و هنر و ادبیات غرب در فضای روشنفکری آن زمان کوشید. او دارای تألیفات متعددی، خصوصاً دربارهٔ جایگاه و نقش روشنفکر در اجتماع است.

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy. He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age." In the years around the time of his death, however, existentialism declined in French philosophy and was overtaken by structuralism, represented by Levi-Strauss and, one of Sartre's detractors, Michel Foucault.

Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations. As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world." Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886). From 1877 with the publication of L'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy, he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author. The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.