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First English edition, translated by Eric Sutton. Hard cover, 8vo, 359 [1] pp. In publisher's red cloth binding with gold lettering to spine, in pictorial dust jacket illustrated by Michael Ayrton. ** CONDITION: Near Fine, bright covers and bright gold lettering. Dust jacket not price-clipped, showing price of 10s. Small closed tear to bottom of rear panel. Some foxing evident to folds of flaps, and less so elsewhere. ** French writer, philosopher and activist, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (1905-1980), wrestled with the philosophical abstraction of the authentic life, and at the same time had to deal with the practicalities and real dangers of occupied France during WWII. He teased this out in the influential "The Roads to Freedom" trilogy, in which the protagonist, Mathieu, a young philosophy teacher, develops from a self-centered "intellectual" to a more fully developed human who is prepared to sacrifice his life for his countrymen, and his values. THE AGE OF REASON starts this transformational journey with Mathieu finding out that his lover is pregnant. This puts him in a state of anxiety, as it seems to him to threaten both his independence and his freedom. He determines that she should terminate the pregnancy, and criss-crosses his bohemian Paris to find both the medical professional who will undertake the procedure, and the funding with which it can take place. Nothing happens the way Mathieu wants it to, but he ends up in a place where he believes he has "attained the age of reason". This sets him up for the next leg of his journey, in the The Reprieve (1945). ** REF: Contat & Rybalka, "The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre"(1974) 45/60 (t1). (AJ)
Ref: FICT20 9840
$295.00