PHI309 -- Sartrean Existentialism
19. The Look (part one).
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
At the end of Sartre’s short play Huis Clos (No Exit or In Camera),
Garçin, one of the three main characters, exclaims:
‘Hell is … other people!’
This is probably Sartre’s most famous slogan …
… what does it mean?
Garçin is expressing Sartre’s theory of ‘The Look’ (le regard;
occasionally translated as ‘the gaze’) …
… which Sartre claims to be, in some sense, the basis of
interpersonal relations …
… commentators disagree over whether Sartre thinks it
necessary or merely a contingent product of Bad Faith …
… but before we look at that dispute, we need to know
more about the look itself.
BEING FOR-ITSELF
And we saw last week that Sartre thinks that we prefer not to face up
to the freedom and therefore RESPONSIBILITY that this entails …
… we prefer to think of ourselves as having fixed characters
(natures) that determine our behaviour …
… in the same way as ordinary objects have natures that
determine their behaviour …
… and that ‘Bad Faith’ either always or sometimes
(depending on which commentator you believe) is the
deliberate attempt to deceive ourselves into believing that
we have fixed, deterministic natures …
… in order to avoid the recognition of our
responsibility that Sartre calls: ANGUISH.
Sartre’s theory of The Look is also concerned with this difference
between being for-itself and being in-itself …
… but has its focus on interpersonal relations.
SHAME
‘But all of a sudden I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone is looking
at me! What does this mean? … First of all, I now exist as myself for
my unreflective consciousness. It is this iruption of the self which
has been most often described: I see myself because somebody
sees me – as it usually expressed. This way of putting it is not
wholly exact … I apprehend it as not being for me, since on principle
it exists for the Other … I discover it in shame and, in other
instances, in pride. It is shame or pride which reveals to me the
Other’s look and myself at the end of that look … Shame reveals to
me that I am this being, not in the mode of “was” or “having to be”
but in-itself … For the Other I am seated as this inkwell is on the
table; for the Other, I am leaning over the keyhole as this tree is bent
by the wind … Shame - like pride - is the apprehension of myself as
a nature although that very nature escapes me and is unknowable
as such.’
– B&N: 284-6 / 260-3
j.m.webber@sheffield.ac.uk
Autumn Semester 2005
BEING FOR-ITSELF
To see the basic point Sartre is getting at, consider again his famous
definition of a human being as something …
‘which is what it is not and which is not what it is’
– B&N: 81 / 58
As we have seen earlier in the course, this means that:
* the individual cannot be identified with their facticity;
* the essence or character involved in facticity is therefore
not deterministic (is not a nature);
* the ways in which we transcend (go beyond) our situations
are always free (not determined);
Humans are therefore contrasted with the being in-itself that makes
up their material surroundings (and bodies), and which …
‘is what it is’
– B&N: 21 / xli
SHAME
As is his way in Being and Nothingness, Sartre presents this theory
through a series of vivid examples. Here is the central one:
‘Let us imagine that moved by jealousy, curiosity, or vice I have just
glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole. I am alone
and on the level of non-thetic self-consciousness. This means first
of all that there is no self to inhabit my consciousness, nothing
therefore to which I can refer my acts in order to qualify them …
[and] behind the door, a spectacle is presented as “to be seen”, a
conversation as “to be heard”. The door, the keyhole are at once
both instruments and obstacles … there is a spectacle to be seen
behind the door only because I am jealous, but my jealousy is
nothing except the simple fact that there is a sight to be seen behind
the door … and since I am what I am not and since I am not what I
am – I cannot even define myself as truly being in the process of
listening at the door. I escape this provisional definition of myself’.
– B&N: 282-3 / 259-60
SHAME
The basic idea here seems to be this:
* in becoming aware that somebody else is looking at me, I
become aware of myself as an object for someone else;
* and in so doing, I become aware of being judged on the basis
of my actions as having certain character traits;
* whether this judgement is positive or negative is unimportant:
pride is the recognition of a positive evaluation, shame of a
negative one;
* but I am also aware that, unlike in the case of Bad Faith, I am
not in control of which character traits are ascribed to me.
‘Thus I, who in so far as I am my possibles, am what I am not and
am not what I am – behold now I am somebody!’
– B&N: 287 / 263
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19. The Look (part one).
BEING FOR-OTHERS
Although Sartre emphasises vision in his initial characterisation of
our being for-others – and in his continuing talk of ‘The Look’ – he is
keen to point out that vision is by no means necessary:
‘what most often manifests a look is the convergence of two
eyeballs in my direction. But the look will be given just as well on
occasion when there is a rustling of branches, or the sound of a
footstep followed by silence, or the slight opening of a shutter, or a
light movement of a curtain. During an attack men who are crawling
through the brush apprehend as a look to be avoided, not two eyes,
but a white farm-house which is outlined against the sky at the top
of a little hill.’
– B&N: 281 / 257-8
So we can be aware of what Sartre calls our BEING FOR-OTHERS
even when there are no particular others we are aware of as looking
at us …
… because we are always the POTENTIAL object of The Look.
EVADING ALIENATION
Thus it is that …
‘My defensive reaction to my object-state will cause the Other to
appear before me in the capacity of this or that object.’
– B&N: 319 / 296
‘my constant concern is to contain the Other within his objectivity,
and my relations with the Other-as-object are essentially made up of
ruses designed to make himq remain an object. But one look on the
part of the Other is sufficient to make all these schemes collapse
and to make me experience once more the transfiguration of the
Other. Thus I am referred from transfiguration to degradation and
from degradation to transfiguration without ever being able either to
get a total view … or to hold firmly to either of them’
– B&N: 320-1 / 297
CONFLICT
This much all the commentators agree upon.
But there are two ways of understanding it:
* Sartre thinks of this conflict as in some way necessary or
inescapable (‘the original meaning of being-for-others’)
* Sartre thinks of it as a result of the wrong attitude towards
our lives.
In the second lecture, I will argue that the second of these readings
is right …
… and that, more specifically, we should read his discussion of
The Look in the light of the social aspects of Bad Faith we
looked at last week …
… and conclude that The Look is simply part of Bad Faith.
j.m.webber@sheffield.ac.uk
PHI309 -- Sartrean Existentialism
Autumn Semester 2005
EVADING ALIENATION
Sartre describes The Look as involving ‘alienation’ …
… and, as such, as uncomfortable and something
that we want to escape.
We can escape it only by denying that there genuinely is an Other
there aware of us and capable of ascribing an essence to us …
… and for this reason, Sartre thinks that we respond to our
awareness of The Look by objectifying the Other …
… as having a fixed nature determining the way he thinks of
us, and so denying their judgement any validity:
‘In view of this presence of the Other-as-subject to me in and
through my assumed object-ness, we can see that my making an
Object out of the Other must be the second moment in my relation
to him.’
– B&N: 310 / 287
CONFLICT
Here we have Sartre’s famously pessimistic view of the relations
between individuals:
* I find the Other’s objectification of myself as alienating in
some way;
* I attempt to evade this alienation by objectifying the Other;
* this objectification denies the Other’s ability to categorise
me as having this or that nature as a result of my behaviour;
* but the Other in turn becomes alienated by my attitude,
and so seeks to regain the upper hand by categorising me in
one way or another;
* and so on.
‘Everything which may be said of me in my relations with the Other
applies to him as well. While I attempt to free myself from the hold of
the Other, the Other is trying to free himself from mine; while I seek
to enslave the Other, the Other seeks to enslave me. … Conflict is
the original meaning of being-for-others.’
– B&N: 386 / 364
CONFLICT
In so doing, I will also need to show that commentators generally
misunderstand the notion of alienation in Sartre’s work.
The conflict of Looks is generally understood as generated by a
desire to reaffirm one’s own freedom and subjectivity in the face of
the Other’s denial of this.
But this does not seem consistent with Sartre’s claim that the
recognition of freedom is ANGUISH …
… and hence is the source of our attempts in Bad Faith to
deny our freedom.
We will see how Sartre’s discussion of alienation can instead be
understood as a reaction to the loss of power over one’s image
involved in The Look …
… and hence the loss of the ability to ascribe oneself the
nature that one would prefer to believe that one has.
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20. The Look (part two).
THE LOOK
In the last lecture, we saw that Sartre claims that:
‘Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others’
– B&N: 386 / 364
And we saw that this means that:
* one dimension of human existence is the individual’s
awareness of being the object of The Look of another individual;
* The Look is objectifying: it involves taking its object to have
certain fixed characteristics, a deterministic nature;
* recognising that The Look is directed towards oneself – in
shame or in pride, for example – is alienating;
* the strategy for evading this alienation is to direct The Look at
that Other, thereby thinking of that Other as having a fixed,
deterministic nature, and hence neutralising their judgement;
* the Other will thereby feel alienated, and will respond in kind.
FREEDOM AND CONTROL
To take the second dispute first: were Sartre to be claiming that we
are alienated by the failure of Others to recognise our freedom …
… this would be very difficult to reconcile with his claim that our
recognition of our own freedom takes the form of ANGUISH in the
face of the past and in the face of the future …
… and that this anguish is the recognition of the burden of
responsibility that comes with our freedom.
As we saw last week, Sartre’s four people in bad faith …
… the waiter, the woman on a date, the unhappy homosexual,
and the champion of sincerity …
… can all be understood as denying their own freedom and
ascribing a fixed, deterministic nature to themselves …
… and perhaps we should aim to reconcile this with the
discussion of The Look.
FREEDOM AND CONTROL
It seems to make more coherent sense of Sartre’s philosophy,
therefore, to understand both Bad Faith and The Look as …
… ways in which freedom is denied.
This would also bring into the picture the social dimensions of his
discussion of Bad Faith usually ignored by commentators:
* the waiter wants to convince not just himself but also his
customers that he has a fixed nature, and wants this because
they demand it of him;
* the champion of sincerity ascribes a deterministic character
trait to his friend because he ‘wants to reassure himself, while
pretending to judge’;
* the woman on a date ascribes a fixed nature to her companion
as part of her project of ascribing the fixed nature of a
sentimental intellectual to herself.
j.m.webber@sheffield.ac.uk
PHI309 -- Sartrean Existentialism
Autumn Semester 2005
THE LOOK
And we saw that there are two kinds of disagreement that occur
among commentators over how to interpret this:
* the first is between these two readings:
– Sartre thinks of The Look as necessary or inevitable
(known as: Sartrean Pessimism);
– Sartre thinks The Look results from the wrong attitude
towards human existence, perhaps Bad Faith;
* the second is over exactly what is alienating about The Look:
– that the Other fails to recognise my freedom;
– that I have no control over which character traits the Other
ascribes to me on the basis of the part of my behaviour they
have observed.
I am going to argue for the second side of each disagreement.
FREEDOM AND CONTROL
It might be objected that this is not the only way to read these
examples of Bad Faith …
… and that we could instead follow Greg McCulloch’s reading in
the chapter of his book we discussed in the seminar …
… and say that while the waiter and the champion of
sincerity are denying freedom in favour of determinism …
… the woman on a date and the unhappy homosexual
are denying their facticity and affirming that very
freedom that the others deny.
But this would not make life any easier:
* one problem for this reading is to explain why the latter two either
do not feel anguish or are happy to do so when the waiter is not;
* another is to explain how it is that the waiter and the champion of
sincerity want to affirm deterministic natures when the theory of The
Look claims that this is alienating and we generally want to evade it.
FREEDOM AND CONTROL
What is alienating about The Look on this picture is not therefore
the denial of freedom, which itself is comforting …
… but rather the loss of control over which traits are ascribed, a
control had by all four of Sartre’s examples of Bad Faith.
During the discussion of Bad Faith, as we saw, Sartre writes:
‘Who cannot see how offensive to the Other and how reassuring
for me is a statement such as “He’s just a paederast”, which
removes a disturbing freedom from a trait and which aims at
henceforth constituting all the acts of the Other as
consequences following strictly from his essence?’
– B&N: 88 / 64-5
The Other finds it disturbing, as we saw, because he wants to
ascribe to himself a different deterministic character.
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20. The Look (part two).
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE
And this interpretation of The Look makes sense of its place in the
play, Huis Clos (translated as In Camera or No Exit) – published the
same year as Being and Nothingness.
Garcin delivers his famous line ‘l’enfer – c’est les autres!’ (‘Hell is
other people’) in response to …
… his inability to convince himself that he is a courageous
hero …
… while in the presence of Inez, who knows that he ran
away from a crucial confrontation …
… and so categorises him as a coward.
(And, since they are both dead and in hell together, he will never
escape Inez and will never get the chance to perform courageous
acts to redeem himself … there are no devils with red-hot pokers in
Sartre’s hell, just other people classifying you.)
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
Why has the description of authenticity no place here?
– because Being and Nothingness aims to describe the nature of
human existence as it is, not as it should be, and Sartre thinks
that we are generally in Bad Faith.
Even so, authenticity must involve affirming the kind of existence
we have, and Sartre has already given us some description of it:
‘He would be right actually if he understood the phrase “I am not
a paederast” in the sense of “I am not what I am”. That is, if he
declared to himself, “To the extent that a pattern of conduct is
defined as the conduct of a paederast and to the extent that I
have adopted this conduct, I am a paederast. But to the extent
that human reality cannot be finally defined by patterns of
conduct, I am not one”. But instead he slides surreptitiously
towards a different connotation of the word “being”. He
understands “not being” as “not-being-in-itself”. ’
– B&N: 87 / 64
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
This helps us to see how The Look is related to Bad Faith …
… and helps us to see why Sartre’s discussion of The Look
might seem to have an air of necessity about it.
As we saw in lecture 14, Sartre explains behaviour as responding to
the values, demands, and obstacles that we find ourselves
confronted with in the world …
… and it is only on reflection that we discover that these are
what he terms ‘nothingnesses’, which simply reflect our own
projects.
Understanding Bad Faith as a project, therefore, means taking it to
be part of what structures the world as we find it …
… so the behaviour of others would just seem to us to flow from
deterministic character traits, because our project of Bad Faith
introduces the nothingnesses of deterministic traits into the
world.
j.m.webber@sheffield.ac.uk
PHI309 -- Sartrean Existentialism
Autumn Semester 2005
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
Aligning The Look with Bad Faith in this way presents it as being a
contingent attitude, one that we need not enter into.
Although Sartre presents Being and Nothingness as an essay in
ONTOLOGY (e.g. the subtitle) and claims that ‘ontology itself cannot
formulate ethical precepts’ (B&N: 645 / 625) …
… it is clear from his language that he considers Bad Faith to be a
wrong attitude, and one that can be replaced with a better attitude.
This is also clear from this footnote which appears at the very end
of the discussion of Bad Faith:
‘that does not mean that we cannot radically escape bad faith.
But this supposes a self-recovery of being which was previously
corrupted. This self-recovery we shall call authenticity, the
description of which has no place here’
– B&N: 94 / 70
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
More to the point, he adds a footnote at the end of the discussion of
interpersonal relations based on The Look that echoes the one at
the end of the discussion of Bad Faith:
‘These considerations do not exclude the possibility of an ethics
of deliverance and salvation. But this can be achieved only after
a radical conversion which we cannot discuss here.’
– B&N: 434 / 412
Why can’t the ‘radical conversion’ be discussed here?
– partly ethical prescriptions have no place in ontology;
– but also because it requires a more detailed understanding of
the nature of projects and how they influence behaviour, which
comes later in the book;
– this is because the conversion will be one from one kind of
project to a new one (see B&N: 497-8 / 475-6);
– it seems that we should think of Bad Faith as a PROJECT
rather than an attitude or just a pattern of behaviour.
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
And of course we are motivated not to reflect on our consciousness
in any way that would reveal that this determinism is fictional …
… for the very same reason that we are motivated to engage in
Bad Faith in the first place …
… which is that the recognition of the falsehood of
psychological determinism is the recognition of our extreme
responsibility …
… and this we would rather not admit, so any experience
coming close to revealing it is one of anguish.
Sartre is not, therefore, the pessimist he is often taken to be …
… he thinks that happier human relations are possible, and we
can avoid alienation, but only after we abandon Bad Faith …
… and take up instead an Authentic attitude (i.e., one that
acknowledges the truth about human existence) towards
both ourselves and Others.
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