Les Mouches: situated freedom and reflexivity in Jean-Paul Sartre

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss some of the theoretical-methodological foundations used by Jean-Paul Sartre as a playwright - more precisely, in his play Les Mouches (1943), in which Orestes is the main character. From Orestes´s journey throughout the plot, Sartre exposes the anguish experienced by the character as he exercises the secret of his onto-phenomenological condition of knowing he is free. Sartre then advocates, in this play, in favour (or against) Orestes, as the character needs, through his reflective consciousness of freedom, to pave his own way in order to break with a socially imposed logic, even though this rupture process is posed as an obligation. This leads to the continuous structural maintenance of Orestes as freedom and being freedom, the character cannot accept Jupiter's superior plans, and therefore, breaks free from him. This paper analyses specific situations experienced by Orestes, as well as some possibilities that could have been listed by him and those which were in fact deliberated. With each of Orestes´s decisions, a new background is structured, creating new possibilities and future projections. Also, it is noted that not only is Orestes the icon of the manifestation of freedom, but he, as well as all the others that constituted his reality, could make choices, and were, therefore, free. What sets Orestes apart from the others? There is, in fact, an existential distance, because the former knows his condition of freedom in the world, whereas the latter are free, however unknowingly. Finally, the analysis reveals that all of Orestes´s actions meet the structural principle of any and every action that has dialectics and nothingness at its core.