The look
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| This transformation is most clear when one sees a [[mannequin]] that one confuses for a real person for a moment. | This transformation is most clear when one sees a [[mannequin]] that one confuses for a real person for a moment. | ||
| - | *:While they are believing it is a person, their world is transformed, and everything exists as an object that partially escapes them. During this time the world comes on to you differently, and you can no longer have a total subjectivity. The world is now his world, a foreign world that no longer comes from you, but from him. The other person is a "threat to the order and arrangement of your whole world…Your world is suddenly haunted by the Other's values, over which you have no control."<ref name="earthlink">{{cite web| url=http://home.earthlink.net/~mazz747/id12.html| title=An analysis of "The look"| first= Paul Vincent| last= Spade| accessdate=2006-07-02}}</ref> | + | *:While they are believing it is a person, their world is transformed, and everything exists as an object that partially escapes them. During this time the world comes on to you differently, and you can no longer have a total subjectivity. The world is now his world, a foreign world that no longer comes from you, but from him. The other person is a "threat to the order and arrangement of your whole world…Your world is suddenly haunted by the Other's values, over which you have no control." |
| *:When they realise it is a mannequin, and is not subjective, the world seems to transfer back, and they are again in the center. | *:When they realise it is a mannequin, and is not subjective, the world seems to transfer back, and they are again in the center. | ||
| - | :This is back to the '''pre-reflective''' [[mode of being]], it is "the eye of the camera that is always present but is never seen".<ref name="earthlink" /> The person is occupied, and too busy for self-reflection.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/503/sartre_links.htm| title=Jean-Paul Sartre - Being and Nothingness | accessdate=2006-07-02}}</ref> | + | :This is back to the '''pre-reflective''' [[mode of being]], it is "the eye of the camera that is always present but is never seen". The person is occupied, and too busy for self-reflection. |
| - | This process is continual and unavoidable. Subjectivity is competitive. This explains why it can be difficult to look someone in the eye.<ref name="earthlink" /> Sartre does mention another man in the park who is reading a newspaper. This man is different because he is so engaged in a [[project]], that he allows himself to be completely the object- "a man reading". | + | This process is continual and unavoidable. Subjectivity is competitive. This explains why it can be difficult to look someone in the eye. Sartre does mention another man in the park who is reading a newspaper. This man is different because he is so engaged in a [[project]], that he allows himself to be completely the object- "a man reading". |
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| - | ===Being for Others (Love/Masochism - Hate/Sadism)=== | + | |
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| - | Sartre states that many relationships are created by people's attraction not to another person but rather how that person makes them feel about themselves by how they look at them. This is a state of emotional alienation whereby a person avoids experiencing their subjectivity by identifying themselves with "the look" of the other. "The look" of the other found the person's own being. The consequence is conflict. In order to keep the persons own being the person must control the other but must control the freedom of the other "as freedom". These relationships are a profound manifestation of "[[Bad faith]]" as the for-itself is replaced with the others freedom. The purpose of the participants is not to exist but to keep the other participant looking at them. This system is often mistakenly called love but is in fact nothing more than emotional alienation and a denial of freedom through conflict with the other. Sartre believes that it is often created as a means of making the unbearable anguish of a person's relationship to their "[[Facticity]]" (all of the concrete details against the background of which human freedom exists and is limited, such as birthplace and time) bearable. At its extreme the alienation can become so intense that due to the guilt of being so radically enslaved by "the look" and therefore radically missing their own freedoms the participants can enter into masochistic and sadistic attitudes. This happens when the participants even cause pain to each other to try to prove their control over the other's look which they cannot escape because they believe themselves so enslaved to the look that experiencing their own subjectivity would be equally unbearable. | + | |
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| - | ===Sex=== | + | |
| - | {{expert-subject|philosophy|date=July 2007}} | + | |
| - | "The look", Sartre explains, is the basis for [[sexual desire]]; Sartre declares that there isn't a biological motivation for [[sex]]. Instead, "double reciprocal incarnation," is a form of mutual awareness which Sartre takes to be at the heart of the sexual experience. This involves the mutual recognition of subjectivity of some sort, as Sartre describes: "I make myself flesh in order to impel the Other to realize for herself and for me her own flesh. My caress causes my flesh to be | + | |
| - | born for me insofar as it is for the Other flesh causing her to be born as flesh."[http://www.comm287.com/handouts/16.pleasure.pdf] | + | |
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| - | Even in sex (perhaps especially in sex), men and women are haunted by a state in which consciousness and bodily being would be in perfect harmony, with desire satisfied. Such a state, however, can never be. We try to bring the beloved's consciousness to the surface of her/his body by use of magical acts performed, gestures (kisses, desires). But at the moment of [[orgasm]] the illusion is ended and we return to ourselves, just as it is ended when the skier comes to the foot of the mountain or when the commodity that once we desired loses its glow upon our purchase of it. There will be, for Sartre, no such moment of completion because "man is a useless passion" to be the ''ens causa sui,'' the God of the [[ontological proof]]. | + | |
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| - | ===Nothingness=== | + | |
| - | {{Confusing|date=December 2006}} | + | |
| - | Sartre contends that human existence is a conundrum whereby each of us exists, for as long as we live, within an overall condition of nothingness (''no thing-ness'') — that ultimately allows for free consciousness. But simultaneously, within our (physical world) ''being'', we are constrained to make continuous, conscious choices. | + | |
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| - | It is this dichotomy that causes anguish, because choice (subjectivity) represents a limit on freedom within an otherwise unbridled range of thoughts. Subsequently, humans seek to flee our anguish through action-oriented constructs such as escapes, visualizations or visions (dreams) designed to lead us toward some meaningful end, such as necessity, destiny, determinism (God), etc. | + | |
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| - | Thus, in living our lives, we often become unconscious ''actors'' — Bourgeois, Feminist, Worker, Party Member, Frenchman, Canadian or American — each doing as we must to fulfill our chosen characters' destinies. | + | |
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| - | But again, Sartre contends, our conscious choices, leading to often unconscious actions, run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned, physical world — in which some form of action is always required. This leads to ''failed dreams of completion'', as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the ''being'' and the ''nothingness'' that inherently coreside in our ''self''. | + | |
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| - | Yet Sartre's recipe for ''fulfillment'' is to escape all quests by ''completing'' them, by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, using terms such as the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "[[Sartre and bad faith|bad faith]]" and "[[false consciousness]]." | + | |
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| - | Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being pales before nothingness, since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is ''obligated'' to continuous struggle between: | + | |
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| - | a) the conscious desire for peaceful self-fulfillment through physical actions and social roles — as if living within a portrait that one actively paints of oneself (see the gallery of Bouville's notables in [[Nausea (book)|Nausea]]), and | + | |
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| - | b) the more pure and raging spontaneity of ''no thing'' consciousness, of being instantaneously free to overturn one's roles, pull up stakes, and strike out new paths. | + | |
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| - | ===Phenomenological ontology=== | + | |
| - | In Sartre's opinion, [[consciousness]] does not make sense by itself: It arises by the awareness of objects. So ''consciousness of'' is the proper way to qualify consciousness. One is always aware ''of an object''. The latter being ''something'' or ''someone'', it accounts to the same. | + | |
| - | This non-positional quality of consciousness is what makes it an [[ontology]]. And the fact that third parties are the [[tangible]] foundation for the intangible self is what truly makes it a [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] ontology. | + | |
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The look is the description of interpersonal discomfort by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness.
The mere appearance of another person causes one to look at him/herself as an object, and see his/her world as it appears to the other. This is not done from a specific location outside oneself, it is non-positional. This is a recognition of the subjectivity in others. Sartre describes being alone in a park, at this time, all relations in the park (e.g. the bench is between two trees) are available, accessible and occurring-for him. When another person arrives in the park, there is now a relation between that person and the bench, and this is not entirely available to him. The relation is presented as an object (e.g. man glances at watch), but is really not an object, it cannot be known. It flees from him. The other person is a "drainhole" in the world, they disintegrate the relations of which Sartre was earlier the absolute centre.
This transformation is most clear when one sees a mannequin that one confuses for a real person for a moment.
- While they are believing it is a person, their world is transformed, and everything exists as an object that partially escapes them. During this time the world comes on to you differently, and you can no longer have a total subjectivity. The world is now his world, a foreign world that no longer comes from you, but from him. The other person is a "threat to the order and arrangement of your whole world…Your world is suddenly haunted by the Other's values, over which you have no control."
- When they realise it is a mannequin, and is not subjective, the world seems to transfer back, and they are again in the center.
- This is back to the pre-reflective mode of being, it is "the eye of the camera that is always present but is never seen". The person is occupied, and too busy for self-reflection.
This process is continual and unavoidable. Subjectivity is competitive. This explains why it can be difficult to look someone in the eye. Sartre does mention another man in the park who is reading a newspaper. This man is different because he is so engaged in a project, that he allows himself to be completely the object- "a man reading".
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