The Age of Reason (novel)

Not to be confused with “The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology” by Thomas Paine.

The Age of Reason
Cover of the first edition
Author	Jean-Paul Sartre
Original title	L'âge de raison
Translator	Eric Sutton
Country	France
Language	French
Series	The Roads to Freedom
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Gallimard, Knopf, Vintage
Publication date	1945
Published in English	1947
Pages	416
ISBN	0-679-73895-9
OCLC	25048232
Dewey Decimal	843/.914 20
LC Class	PQ2637.A82 A713 1992
Followed by	The Reprieve

The Age of Reason^[1](French: L'âge de raison) is a 1945 novel by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is the first part of the trilogy The Roads to Freedom. The novel, set in the bohemian Paris of the late 1930s, focuses on three days in the life of a philosophy teacher named Mathieu who is seeking money to pay for an abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Sartre analyses the motives of various characters and their actions and takes into account the perceptions of others to give the reader a comprehensive picture of the main character.

The Age of Reason is concerned with Sartre's conception of freedom as the ultimate aim of human existence. This work seeks to illustrate the existentialist notion of ultimate freedom through presenting a detailed account of the characters' psychologies as they are forced to make significant decisions in their lives. As the novel progresses, character narratives espouse Sartre's view of what it means to be free and how one operates within the framework of society with this philosophy. This novel is a fictional reprise of some of the main themes in his major philosophical study Being and Nothingness. One of the notions is that ultimately a person's freedom is unassailable as it is fundamentally part of the nothingness that is the imagination and so cannot be taken away or destroyed.

Works by Jean-Paul Sartre

Novels and short stories	Nausea (1938) The Wall (1939) The Roads to Freedom The Age of Reason (1945) The Reprieve (1945) Troubled Sleep (1949) In the Mesh (1948) Intimacy (1949) Hurricane over Cuba (1961)

Plays and screenplays	Bariona (1940) The Flies (1943) No Exit (1944) Morts sans sépulture (1945) The Respectful Prostitute (1946) The Chips Are Down (1947) Dirty Hands (1948) The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) Kean (1953) Nekrassov (1955) The Condemned of Altona (1959) The Trojan Woman (1965) The Freud Scenario (1984)

Philosophical essays	"Imagination: A Psychological Critique" (1936) "The Transcendence of the Ego" (1936) "Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions" (1939) "The Imaginary" (1940) Being and Nothingness (1943) Existentialism and Humanism (1946) "Search for a Method" (1957) "Critique of Dialectical Reason" (1960, 1985) "Notebooks for an Ethics" (1983) "Truth and Existence" (1989)

Critical essays	"Anti-Semite and Jew" (1946) "Situations I - X (1947–1976) "Black Orpheus" (1948) "Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr" (1952) "The Henri Martin Affair" (1953) "The Family Idiot" (1971–2)

Autobiographical	Sartre by Himself (1959) The Words (1964) Witness to My Life & Quiet Moments in a War (1983) War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phony War (1984)

Related topics	Authenticity Bad faith (mauvaise foi) Existence precedes essence

References

↑ Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1947. “The age of reason; a novel” (Translated to English by Eric Sutton) Vintage Books. New York. 397 pages. ISBN 0-394-71838-0 (paperback).

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