DE Weekly: The Look, the Self, & the Other
Below is an archived email originally sent on March 10, 2025.
The Look, the Self, & the Other
In existentialism, consciousness is the key to understanding human existence. When discussing conscious beings––namely, humans––it helps to distinguish between two types of conscious beings: the Self and the Other.
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “Being-for-others”, and how this can open us up to accept that we need to include others in our search for meaning. In short, a meaningful life must consider and include other people. It can’t be egocentric.
Why is this?
Let’s delve more deeply into the concept of “the Self” and “the Other” to understand.
For Sartre and in existentialism more broadly, the Self is both a subject and an object; as humans, we have agency in the choices we make, but we can also be acted upon by others. Further, we are always acting at becoming rather than existing as a fixed entity (like a rock or a cup or a table, say).
When I come across another human being, something interesting happens. From the eye of the Self, I am encountering “the Other”––but what’s really happening is two selves are meeting. To that person, I am the Other.
For Sartre, this can throw things into flux.
Although I am free and responsible for myself as I operate in the world, I do not and cannot construct the world or myself as the Other sees me.
When the Other sees me, I am no longer subject––I am object, at the whim of his thoughts and his desired ends and his subjectivity.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre says that, due to my inability to access the inner subjectivity of this person, he “holds a secret – the secret of what I am.”
What Sartre means by this, and what he ultimately concludes, is that it’s not enough that we are conscious beings who make our own choices. That couldn’t be (and isn’t) enough to act as the foundation of our existence.
Instead, our being is grounded and reinforced by the subjectivity of the Other and his freedom. In other words, the fact that we cannot live in any head but our own and can never know the world or ourselves as seen through the eyes of another person actually works to cement the fact that we exist.
In Sartre’s view, the Other gives us a sense of being something. Because they are conscious of us, because we are an object to them, our freedom is determined through something other than ourselves. And that counts for something.
That being said, this doesn’t all sit well with Sartre. He continues to say that through this mode of being, the Other “freezes” my freedom. He makes me into something which I do not see myself as.
Sartre calls this “the look”.
“The look” explains how the way that someone else sees us and experiences us in the world can have an effect on the way we see ourselves and how we experience ourselves. As I see it, this is the source of feelings such as anxiety, shame, guilt, and inferiority.
Through the look, the Other determines me in a way that is out of reach and inaccessible to me.
Through the look, the Other exercises their radical freedom in a way that fixes me in their mind and takes away my becoming.
Through the look, Sartre says, the Other ““[steals] the world,” and “causes ‘there to be’ a being which is my being.”
The ultimate conclusion Sartre makes of this is that the Other creates an image of us and the world foreign to ours, one that we have no access to.
So how do we respond to this? Do we let ourselves be overcome by anxiety and relinquish the freedom we do have?
No.
Authenticity––authenticity is the key. Authenticity is the way to combat this constriction of our freedom.
As agents of our own existence, as subjects, we have the freedom to live an authentic life. To make choices toward becoming an authentic self. If we live so radically authentically, the Other must, on some level, recognize us as such.
That we are not the Other and the Other is not our Self is of little import to our own radical freedom. I cannot absorb the Other’s freedom as he cannot absorb mine.
So I am both an agent and an object. Simultaneously the Self and the Other. Through the look, I am both becoming and a fixed entity.
I say, so what? Let me be both. This has no effect on my freedom as it exists within my individual consciousness.
In the struggle between freedom and unfreedom, between meaning and meaninglessness, we must accept our role as both at once.
In so doing, we accept ourselves as the Other to the Other, and in this––is liberation. Total, radical freedom. Authenticity, identity, and meaning follow. Our meaning as constituted by the Other and including the Other can be and is real meaning in our own lives.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Happy Lenten season. A great opportunity to reflect on the Self and the Other as beings-in-the-world and beings-for-others.
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