The Roads to Freedom of Contract
Abstract
John Paul Sartre’s philosophical novels that make up the trilogy of “the Roads to Freedom”, first screened by the BBC in the 1970’s, were given a complete re-run recently, all 13 episodes of them. In the opening scenes in one of the novels, “The Age of Reason”, the torment of Mathieu, a down at heel bohemian University professor, is captured as he moves from one acquaintance to another to beg for enough money to pay for a back street abortion for his pregnant mistress. Mathieu is depicted as the embodiment of the existentialist quest for personal freedom from the bondage of marriage and the constraints of bourgeois life at the time impending Nazi occupation of Paris during the second world war. Albert Camus’s existential novel “the Plague” became famous once again as it sold at a rapid rate during height of the Covid 19 pandemic. It too can be seen as the quest for personal freedom in the “plague” that descends on the inhabitants of a French town, again analogous to oppression during Nazi occupation.
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