Sartre - Human Existence, the Other, and Hell

Jean-Paul Sartre on Human Existence, the Other, and Hell

Being-for-itself vs. Being-in-itself

  • Being-for-itself:
    • Sartre's term for human consciousness.
    • Characterized by lack, incompleteness, and freedom.
    • Humans are not bound to a fixed identity; they can constantly reshape themselves.
    • Examples: A student can quit studying, a worker can quit their job.
  • Being-in-itself:
    • Sartre's term for inanimate objects.
    • Fixed, full, and unchanging.
    • Objects simply are what they are without reflection or desire for change.
    • Examples: Rocks, trees, desks.

The Burden of Freedom and the Impossible Dream of Completion

  • Radical freedom leads to anxiety due to the responsibility of choosing who we are.
  • Humans yearn to escape this burden and desire a fixed identity.
  • People want to be free things, which is a contradiction.
  • The Wish to Become a Being-in-itself/Being-for-itself:
    • The desire to be complete and self-creating.
    • Equivalent to wanting to be God, both full and free.
    • This desire is irrational and cannot be fulfilled.
    • If consciousness became fixed, it would cease to be consciousness.

Being-for-Others: The Gaze of the Other

  • Being-for-others:
    • Sartre's term for social existence.
    • Transforms how we perceive ourselves and the world.

The Isolated Consciousness

  • Imagine being alone in a room, aware of objects but not experiencing yourself as an object.
  • This state is pure, un-self-conscious subjectivity.

The Transformative Power of the Other's Gaze

  • When someone enters the room and looks at you, you become an object in their eyes.
  • This moment marks the birth of self-consciousness.
  • You perceive yourself as having a body, a face, and a position in space.
  • You experience yourself as something the Other can judge.
  • Sartre replaces Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” with “I am seen, therefore I am.”
  • Awareness of being “pretty,” “funny,” or “awkward” arises from how we imagine others see us.
  • The Other is a mirror through which we become selves.

Two Different Worlds: The Park Example

  • Alone in a park, the world is organized around you.
  • Seeing another person shatters this illusion as they become another center of meaning.
  • The park reorganizes around the Other, displacing your own perspective.
  • Sartre: “An object has appeared which has stolen the world from me.”
  • You become one thing among many in someone else’s world.
  • Your experience of freedom dissolves into opacity, uncertainty, and shame.

The Look and the Voyeur

  • A man spies through a keyhole, absorbed and self-forgetful.
  • Hearing footsteps makes him realize he is being watched.
  • This realization snaps him into self-awareness.
  • He sees himself as the Other sees him—a peeping tom.
  • His pure subjectivity collapses into objecthood, and he feels shame.
  • Shame arises from the loss of autonomy, from being made into an object.
  • Sartre: “Shame… is the recognition of the fact that I am indeed that object which the Other is looking at and judging.”
  • Even positive judgments lead to shame, as we are reduced to a fixed identity.
  • Pride is an acceptance of our objectification and a form of bad faith.

The Struggle with the Other: Conflict is Inevitable

  • Being seen by the Other results in a loss of sovereignty.
  • We may try to objectify the Other to reclaim our world and freedom.
  • This leads to a struggle for domination.
  • Each person seeks to be the subject and reduce the Other to an object.
  • Sartre: “While I seek to enslave the Other, the Other seeks to enslave me.”
  • This conflict is unresolvable.
  • We cannot possess the Other’s freedom without destroying their autonomy.
  • Killing or silencing the Other eliminates the mirror through which we know ourselves.
  • If we let them be, they might define us in ways we reject.
  • Sartre: “Hell is other people.”
  • Our freedom clashes with theirs, limiting possibilities.

Clothing, Modesty, and the Symbolism of Shame

  • Nakedness is vulnerability—being seen as a body, a thing.
  • Modesty is existential, not just moral.
  • Clothes hide our object-status.
  • In Genesis, Adam and Eve cover themselves because they see themselves as objects and are ashamed.

Summary: The Phenomenology of Social Existence

  • Selfhood arises in relation to others, not in isolation.
  • The Other’s gaze makes us aware of ourselves as objects, disrupting pure subjectivity.
  • Shame is the emotional recognition of being objectified by another's freedom.
  • All relationships contain conflict as we seek to dominate or be recognized.
  • No resolution is possible; human relations are unstable, built on mutual threat and dependence.