the age of reason

Sarte talked about there being an age of reason; an age you reach where you start living with reason, rather than intuition. Its when you become more conscious and use ideas in your head as a way to process the world around you, instead of using the information granted by taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight. They show you how your experiencing the world in its immediate state. In his book The Age Of Reason, the main character Mathieu realises that a world of responsibility is bearing down on him when his mistress Marcel falls pregnant. He seeks out money from his friends for an abortion and by doing this begins to feel an accountability to other people’s standards, rather than his own feelings. He becomes trapped between responsibility and freedom, that is, between what society deems right and mature, such as careers and family, and what he believes is real and free, such as Philosophy and Art. His successful and stable brother rejects his request and instead offers him double the money to marry Marcel, as if to propel Mathieu back into what he believes is the real world, one with structure and routine. Mathieu replies ‘your age of reason is the age of resignation, and I’ve no use for it’. Thus Sarte implies that conscious reasoning is what takes you from your freedom, and that your freedom lies in the notions of your intuition. Its an expression highlighting how to lead a soulful life and find a path that is not pre-planned in your mind. Freedom is thus an abstract idea that we use to avoid Reason. And Reason is thus an abstract idea that we use to avoid Freedom. Reason prompts us to rationalise the way we feel about our choices, and how a choice might affect where we fit into the world. Reasoning gives you a sense of control over choices that will impact your future. It lets you deal with the anxiety of having so many paths available and the uncertainty of how they might pan out. The fact we have choice says that we are free in the first place. And by reasoning, you resign from the natural state of life as ambiguous and undefined by conceptualising an idea of yourself affected in your future. The age of reason is a period in which you lose control of this freedom, when the choices you have to make in response to the events around you are persuaded by a sense of reason, when you try to rationalise the choices in relation to the rest of your life, instead of reacting to the world of your own volition. You can find your course by going with how you feel, instead of trying to control your own destiny with whats standard. There are people who use reason as a way to progress through life, as if thinking about a decision means its more likely to work out in their favour, as if it’ll quell the anxiety one feels with all their choices. And there are people who use their freedom as a way to progress through life, as if the notion of letting things happen around them creates a path in itself, as if being lost in the absurd world is the freedom they’ve been searching for. Mathieu has reached the age of reason because his entire world is changing due to a choice he tries to rationalise but deep down does not want to make, as it is defined by structures such as money and time, instead of something more real and vulnerable like love. If he loved Marcel, he’d allow for the child’s birth through his own free will, and he’d still feel unbound even if it changed the framework of his world, as it’d be a product of the free notions in his heart. He’d feel the event was natural to his course because being in love conjures more emotions than it does reasons, and that is how he exists in the world. The fact that he doesn’t want the child and seeks out money to abort it suggests that living a free life entails acting with intuition, with what you feel is true, not necessarily what the rest of society reasons is true. Mathieu does not love Marcel because he is drawn to his friend’s sister Ivich, who embodies the idea of freeliving. Yet factors around him such as the war and his dilemma distract him from these feelings. The irony is that the problem came from his bohemian lifestyle, as his nature as a freethinker meant that he was open to sexual escapades, even with a mistress, which people could reason as out of line. Through Mathieu’s storyline, Sarte highlights that we are free to pursue our own sense of happiness, and that the framework of society is what imparts a sense of reason within one, especially as one grows up, because our choices become more limited and vulnerable to concepts like careers and time and money, rather than love and art and expression. Street spirit