Sartre and the Other

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Sartre and the OtherAuthor(s): Marjorie GreneSource: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 45 (1971 -1972), pp. 22-41Published by: American Philosophical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3129746 .

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Sartre and the Other*MARJORIE GRENE

With some misgivings, I propose to share with you a fragmen-tary speculation about Sartre and what he has called the prob-lem of the Other, in particular as expounded in Being and Noth-ingness in the two chapters on the Other and the Body. My mis-givings have two sources. For one thing, it's obscure even to my-self in what sense what I am going to say-and to report Sartreas saying-counts as philosophy. Is it "philosophical psychol-ogy' or "philosophy of mind"? Since I find both these terms be-wildering, I can't tell. It is certainly not phenomenology in anypure Husserlian sense. Insofar as it interprets a Sartrean text,perhaps it's "hermeneutics", but as my own speculation at thehand of Being and Nothingness it could only count as herme-neutics in the quaint seventeenth century sense in which oneread-and interpreted-the book of nature, in this case thebook of human nature. My second reason for self-doubt: Beingand Nothingness presents a view of man and the world which is,I believe, almost entirely mistaken. Why worry about it? Be-cause this is a fascinating, indeed, I believe a great work in thetradition of western thought. How can one find philosophicalgreatness in a text whose premises, and the conclusions theyentail, are false? One might put this question also about otherphilosophical classics; I shall certainly not try to answer it now.Instead let me leave both my meta-questions aside and plungeinto my discourse-in the middle, as Plato in the Phaedrus haswarned us not to do.In the chapter on the Other Sartre is trying, as he puts it, to"overcome the reef of solipsism". The Other must be ap-proached, however, he tells us, not by any abstract argument(all these have failed), but by a second cogito. And this move,from the original cogito to the cogito by which I apprehend theOther, he likens to Descartes's move in the Third Meditationfrom himself to God. This is where I want to start.

' Presidential address delivered before the Forty-sixthAnnual Pacificmeeting of theAmerican PhilosophicalAssociation in San Francisco, March24, 1972.22


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SARTRE AND THE OTHERIt must be kept in mind of course, however, that the firstcogito for Sartre is pre-reflective. It is solipsistic, like the Carte-

sian: Sartre's whole analysis of the for-itself so far has dealt withthe single consciousness. But he had accepted from Husserl thethesis that all (thetic) consciousness is of-an object (in histerms, of the in-itself), consciousness or the for-itself has beenemptied, and the cogito on which it rests is a non-thetic, lessthan self-conscious consciousness (of) self, with the'of' in paren-theses to indicate that it's not properly intentional, or at leastnon-thetic. Sartre's example of the pre-reflective cogito, manyof you will recall, is related to the activity of counting his ciga-rettes; it's the cigarettes he's thinking about: "elles sont douze"-but if you ask him what he's doing he at once replies: "count-ing my cigarettes". Sideways, so to speak, he was aware of him-self as counting. It is this non-thetic awareness (of) self, not thepure Cartesian intuition, that forms for him the unique startingpoint of philosophy.To reach the Other, then, Sartreclaims, he now needs a sec-ond cogito, in the move to which he finds a parallel to the move-ment of Descartes's argument in the Third Meditation. Whatarewe to make of this?Without disrespect to those who have developed, and are de-veloping, the subtle scholarly debate on the Cartesian circle, Ithink we may safely set that aside here, and concentrate on onevery simple point. All we need for our present purpose is to rec-ognize that Descartes's argument is indeed a peculiar one, pre-cisely because it is not so much an argument, in the logician'ssense, as it is the strategy of a discoverer. The philosopher inhis meditation must direct his attention from his first, self-con-tained, self-conscious intuition to another intuition equally evi-dent. Once the thinker has taken that step from intuition I (thecogito) to intuition II (God), once he has looked with total at-tention at the idea of God that his own mind innately contains,he will have what he needs to go on again: the guarantor of hisclear and distinct ideas, the shield against error, the patron of aunified knowledge of nature and of man. But in itself the stepfrom the cogito to God is simply the turning of attention fromone direct presentation to another just as direct.What of Sartre? The external world is already with him in thein-itself whose negation the for-itself has been found to be. AndSartreis certainly not moving from his (pre-reflective) cogito toGod; for him God is not only non-existent but impossible. Thatsolution to solipsism, which he has rightly recognized as typical

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERwhich by its very being threatens me with degradation to ob-jectivity.Now again, as I have already emphasized, this is a move frombeing to being. It is not a question of knowledge. Sartre starts insection 4 (the Look) and returns to questions: on the Ex-istence of the Other, and on my relation to it, but both as ques-tions of being. In other words, the problem is not, as analyticalphilosophers usually put it, how I know other minds. On thelevel of probability I could manage that as I can the inferentialknowledge of any other object. But the scandal is this: the worldis organized around me, while the Other as Other claims to or-ganize the world around him. Yet if, as it is, the world is myworld, made the world it is by my self-projection, how can suchan Other be? And how, in my being, do I relate to him? Theseare the questions Sartre has to ask.With these questions before us, then, let us look at the Look,the jealous watcher at the keyhole (let's call him Pierre), whollyengaged in spying out those within. This is the paradigm of the"situation" as Sartre here defines it. Pierre's jealousy is his ab-sorption in the conjecture that Therese may be in there inbed with Paul. That is Pierre'sworld; the fact that he is the loverof Therese who is having an affair with Paul is what makeshim jealous, and thus makes his jealousy, makes him as a jeal-ous man. But these "facts" are facts of a human situation onlythrough his jealousy. Were he wholly indifferent to Thereseand indeed away making love to Annette, they would not be thefacts they are. Situation always has this dual character. I live theworld in and through my (non-thetic) consciousness (of) self, inthis case, for Pierre, through being jealous; but on the otherhand my consciousness (of) self, in this case Pierre'sjealousy, isprojected, through the keyhole, into the room where Thereseand Paul may be in bed together.This duality of non-thetic consciousness, the way I am in theworld through my emotion, so that my emotion is just my way ofbeing-in-the-world and yet at the same time makes the worldwhat it is, makes the grapes sour or my mistress unfaithful: thisduality of situation is universal. But there are certain emotions-fear, shame, and pride-which uniquely reveal the Other, re-veal him not as a probable object in my world, but as lived byme in his very being. In the keyhole case of course the revealingemotion is shame. Pierre has been looking through the keyhole;suddenly he feels himself looked at; some one is coming; hefreezes; instead of the impassioned mediator of an all-absorbing

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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONsituation, he becomes-a spy. Suddenly he is degraded to an ob-ject, a puppet with a role, the nasty role of sneak. He acquires a"character":a man who doesn't trust his mistress. And that deg-radationhappens, not just through a change of mood, from jeal-ousy to shame, but through the upsurge of the Other whom hisshame reveals. Shame is shame of myself before the Other;through it the Other is there as He Who Makes Me Ashamed.Of course jealousy, too, it may be objected, is jealousy of An-other. But, Sartrewould insist, it is not other-related in the sameway as shame. In jealousy I am conjuring away through myemotion the escape of one of my possessions-wife or mistress.For in Being and Nothingness, at least, a loved object is justthat: an object, little more. Jealousy, therefore, is my magicalway of keeping what is mine. But shame takes me from myself-and my possessions-and drops me, dizzyingly, into a place inthe Other's world: he sees before him-a jealous lover. Thus Ibecome a characterin his drama,an object in his world.Fear, too, reveals the Other directly and inimediately as there.It transformsthe world I was engaged in into the Other's world,in which I may be a victim. A soldier reconnoitering in a val-ley feels himself looked at from a farmhouse on the hill, and isafraid. He is afraid because somebody may be looking; andsomebody's being there-eyes looking-is what is revealedthrough his fear. Before that, he was curious, on the lookout.Suddenly he is instead a possible target for a sniper's bullet.That is what it is to be afraid. In other words, the Other, seeingme, also sights me; I am no longer myself, but the target in hissight. As the Other looms up as He Who May Shoot Me, so I be-come, in fear, He Who May Get Shot. And with this revelationI lose my freedom. For it is the predator who freely stalks hisprey; the prey, on the contrary, however fast he runs, is prey,not out of his own free choice, but because the Other makes himso. Thus the Other reveals himself by robbing me of my freedom:it is, suddenly, his freedom I have to live, not mine. That is why,Sartrefollows Gide in saying, the Other plays the Devil's part.The revelation of the Other is the loss of freedom, the fall of theself into the Other's world. This is the second cogito Sartrewasseeking. He writes:Just as my consciousness apprehended by the cogito bears indubitable

witness of itself and of its own existence, so certain particularconscious-nesses-for example, "shame-consciousness"-bear indubitable witnessto the cogito both of themselves and of the existence of the Other.'' J.P.Sartre,Beingand Nothingness,rl. Hazel E. Barnes NewYork:Philosophical

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERAnd thissecondcogito, it mustbe emphasizedoncemore, sstill-or again-on the level of being,not knowing.Thoughadmit-tedly, the characterhe Othergives me, the objectI becomeinhisworld, s known, t isprimarily omethinghe knows. mayin-deed knowit too, and even acceptit as"my"character.Yet it isnot I. It is separatedfrom me by an infinitegap: the gap be-tween my projectionof my possibilitiesand the Other'sprojec-tion of his possibilities,including this strangedouble that is"me". Thusas being-for-Others am radically, nalienablyali-enatedfrommyself.Overagainstthe Other,in the light of thesecondcogito,thatis how I am. Moreover,he wholeof Sartreansocialityconsists n attemptsto evadethis fate: in rusesto makethe Otherkeep his objectivity n the world of my freedom,andso to preventmy relapseinto objectivity n the worldthat hefreelyconstitutes.Oneor otherof two I-Otherrelations:he sad-ism that objectifies he Otheror the masochism hat perverselyaccepts my own reduction o an objectthroughthe Other'sBe-ing:one or the other,from nstant o instantof the for-itself's x-istence is boundto prevail.All this is crystalclearfromSartre's xamples, hame andfear,aswell as fromhisexpositionof the beingof the Otherandfromhis crypticmetaphysical emarks t the conclusionof the chap-ter. But he has listed three basic passionsthroughwhich theOther is revealed.The third, pride, he expoundsbriefly,butdoes not illustrate.Perhapsbefore we go furtherwe should askabout its nature oo. Shame,we haveseen, is my being as I liveit in the Other'slook, which degradesme to an object in hisworld.Fear, too, is my being as I live it in the Other's ook,asthe lookexposesme to his power.He has not yet torn me frommyself, but on principlehe can, throughhumiliationor evendeath. Thusin eithershameor fearthe Otheris the permanentpossibilityof my destruction.But in pride, on the contrary,Iseem to assertmyself.I riseup overagainstOthersandgloryinmy Being.This too may come as a suddenupsurge;out of ab-sorption n the world,accompaniedby non-theticawarenessofmyself, suddenly I become aware of the Others as spectators,not of my humiliation,but of my prowess,of my success. Therunnerrunninga mile is (thetically)intent on getting to thegoal; non-theticallyhe is living his own effort,he is that effort;nothingelse in all the world is there. He wins-and the com-Library,1956), p. 273. All quotations are from this translation.

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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONmending, acclaiming Others appear. He graspsthe coveted cup,holds it aloft, is himself held aloft on Others' shoulders; proudlyhe acknowledges his own being as Winner before the gratefulcrowd. This sounds straightforward; but is it? If our Winnerreally objectifies the Others, they have lost their Otherness andbecome merely objects in his world; so they have not revealedthemselves as Others acclaiming him, but as the tools of his ownaggrandizement. This is surely not pride, but vanity. And in fact,in Sartre'sown terms, vanity is the use of my objectivity for thispurpose: my beauty or prowess, what the Other finds objectivelyin me, I use to objectify him. But where in all this is pride?Let us reflect again. I fear the Other's look, on principle, asthe possibility of my fall. When the Other, this one Other, doesin fact look at me, I fall into shame. But pride, it seems, arisesasthe converse of shame: it is my superior look against the fallingOther, my self-assertion which responds to his by threateninghim. And Sartredoes indeed insist that pride arises on the foun-dation of "fundamental shame". It is the attempted reaction toit, turning the force of my free existence against the Other'sfreedom. But it is also transitional and unstable, for in fact Imust either defeat the Other and so become wholly my ownfreedom, or succumb to shame and alienation before him, aban-doning freedom for thing-hood. Moreover, for Sartre,pride, likevanity, is necessarily in bad faith.2 It is in bad faith because ithas allowed the illusion of objectification to creep into my self-consciousness. My consciousness, formerlyabsorbed in the effortto reach the goal, is now somehow made focal, taken as a beingI can put before Others and "be proud of". But that is to makemy freedom thing-like, to flee the dreadful self-making, the ni-hilation of the in-itself that is the for-itself. The runner runninghas winning-the-race before him as a not-yet-being whose non-being he has to nihilate. Winning, he becomes the one who haswon. The others acclaim him, in his pride he seems to lift him-self above them; but this thing-like being-the-winner is never-theless a betrayal of his pure freedom.Moreover, pride is a relation to anonymous Others, to thecrowd, not to the Other. Only a non-denumerable, generalizedOther can be before me in this fashion. To one Other I can beonly victim or destroyer. Pride, in short, is the fleeting resur-gence of the For-Itself against the Other-in-general, unstable,and, in its delusive use of self-objectification for self-assertion,

2 Ibid., pp. 292-3.28


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SARTRE AND THE OTHERnecessarily in bad faith. In its revelation of the Other, therefore,it seems to be secondary to the basic emotions of shame and fear.But this is not so much the "refutation of solipsism" as it is thediscovery that though I have to be myself alone, there is, againstme, an Other who will not let me be-because he would be, in-stead. Such, for the Sartre of Being and Nothingness, is theground of all community: language becomes a form of seduc-tion, love becomes an alternation between sadism and masoch-ism, solidarity becomes class struggle. Although much in his ac-count is subtly and convincingly observed, and although his ar-gument, on his own premises-on the foundation, as he proudlyacclaims, of the cogito alone-is irresistible, one wants never-theless to question it.What grounds have we for doing so? We may of course simplyinvoke the testimony of experience: the rare but still indubitableexperience of mutual understanding, of the reciprocal look ofpeers; or the look of mother and infant, where the one protectsand the other is protected. In its immediate appearance thereseems no internecine warfarehere. Or we may rely on an empir-ical generalization as counterexample: the fact that human in-fants deprived of a family setting develop more slowly, and de-prived of some simulation at least of an affectionate initiation byOthers into the human world, become retarded perhaps beyondrecall. But counterexamples, though useful, are not sufficient toanswer philosophical questions. We may still ask, in general,what philosophical objections we can raise to Sartre's positionand to what alternative they lead us. There are, I believe, threejunctures in his argument, all interrelated, at which he clearlygoes astray, and his phenomenological or empirical narrowness,his failure to see the counterexamples that invalidate his "solu-tion", stem, philosophically, from the wrong turnings he hastaken along the way.The first and most fundamental error, which had been laiddown already in the Introduction to Being and Nothingness, isthe confinement of the pre-reflectivecogito to consciousness (of)self. I have recalled the example of the cigarettes. Sartrefollowsit by referring to Piaget's discovery that children who can doarithmetic can't say how they do it. Just this example, however,illustrates, not in fact Sartre'sconsciousness (of) self, but its con-trary:a non-thetic consciousness that carries us away from self tothe world. Indeed, one can say in general-and Piaget's exam-ple can be supported by a thousand others-that the usualthrust of non-thetic (or as Polanyi calls it, subsidiary) awareness

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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONis from clues within myself to something out there, for the un-derstanding or performance of which I am relying on those in-ner clues. For Sartre, on the other hand, the for-itself developsas the negation of the in-itself, and this uncompromising nega-tivity has obscured for him the positive relation that binds meto the world. In fact, however, all that I appropriate from theworld, all that becomes partof me-like the child's skill in arith-metic-becomes at the same time a repertoireof attitudes, of in-cipient actions, through which I attend to my present concernsout there in the hope of achieving my future goals. There is aflowing reciprocity here of inner and outer, non-thetic andthetic, past and future. If Polanyi, with his distinction betweenfocal and subsidiary awareness, has best described the episte-mological core of this situation, Heidegger in Being and Timehas best described the fundamental character of human beingwhich makes this relation possible. Being-in-the-world is priorto "consciousness" and shapes it. Human being from the first isout there with things, just as the things are from the first "there"as stuff (Zeug) of interest or of use to human being. There is nocut between a consciousness (of) self and an external worldwhich it denies and by whose denial it is. On the contrary, thereis a primaryand pervasive tension from "self" to world and backagain, a tension through which, and through which alone, "con-sciousness" develops. Husserl in Inner Time-Consciousness haschristened "protension" and "retention" the forward and back-ward aspects of temporal consciousness. I suggest that the term"tension" with its connotation of tautness, of a stretch from-to-, would best characterize in general the concern-for, thebeing-out-there-with-, that founds the relation of man toworld, and so the being of man himself.

Now if, as Heidegger and Polanyi have jointly shown, we are,in all the varieties of from-to awareness, out there with things,we are also always-perhaps firstof all-(and this is a transitionto my second point) already out there with other people. Being-with-others is an essential aspect of being oneself. Sartre, ofcourse, resists this insight, which does, indeed, "beg the ques-tion" of solipsism. But it begs the question precisely because atlong last we are not starting from the cogito but from a very dif-ferent beginning: the everyday existence of human being beforemethodological doubt. And when we look carefully, withoutCartesian prejudice, at the structuresof this everyday existence,at the way in which human being is in the world, with thingsand other human beings, we find no reef of solipsism. We find

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERon the contrary structures which eliminate the very question ofsolipsism. To put the question at all in those circumstances is tojoin Mrs. Ladd-Franklin, who wrote to Russell "I am a solipsist;why isn't everybody?". In a refined and reflective intellectualposture, one can indeed wonder about our "knowledge of otherminds". But in its fundamental way of being, human being be-comes what it is in and out of its being-with-others; it is being-with that is primary, being-alone, being against the world andothers, that is a negation, through philosophical contrivance, ofthat primarybeing.One passage in the chapter on the Other shows clearly how,at this juncture too, Sartrehas taken a fatal misstep-a step nec-essitated, indeed, by his initial misreading of non-thetic con-sciousness. Specifying a number of ontological theses suggestedby the phenomenology of the Look, he declares:

. .being-for-Others is not an ontological structure of the For-itself. Wecan not think of deriving being-for-others from a being-for-itself as onewould derive a consequence from a principle, norconversely can we thinkof deriving being-for-itself from being-for-others.3Now of course it is true that the for-others cannot be deducedfrom the for-itself northe for-itself from the for-others.But whatSartre fails to see, and, given his Cartesian starting point, couldnot see, is that both the for-itself and the for-others depend fortheir very possibility on what we may call (to adopt for the mo-ment Sartre's Hegelian style) the among-others. The for-itselfand the for-others are both expressions, and developments, ofthe fundamental structureof being-with-others-in-the world. Toput it in ordinary-or less extraordinary-language, the humanindividual is, in his humanity and in his individuality, necessar-ily and essentially an expression of a social world. Were he notamong-others, in a world made by others, he could not become,and so could not be, himself. A human individual acquires hu-manity, not just by being born a member of homo sapiens, butby learning to participate in a given social world, which in turn,however he may rebel against it, he expresses in his very exist-ence. Without being-among-others there is no human reality ofany kind at all.To admit this, however, would be to adandon, not only theprimacy of the cogito, with its threat of solipsism or alternativelyof annihilation by the Other, but also its corollaries, the ideal of

3Ibid., p. 282.31


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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONthe instant as the one temporal reality and the conception offreedom as pure activity. But Sartre adheres throughout to boththese Cartesian principles. Let me consider here, very briefly,how his account of situation is affected-and distorted-bythese preconceptions.A situation, Sartresays, is wholly out there in the world and isthe situation it is in view of my way of being in it. The watcherat the keyhole is "beside himself" in the scene he is watchingand yet the scene is the scene it is because he casts himself intoit. I throw myself into a situation, and so make it one. Looked atthis way, the situation has two contradictory aspects: it is all inthe world and at the same time all in my (non-reflective) con-sciousness. How can this to-and-fro be stabilized? Only by theappearanceof the Other, who objectifies it. Only the Other, andmy relation to the Other, Sartre recognizes, creates a publicworld of objective space and time. Yet in terms of the for-itself,which is primary,the giving of myself to these organized totali-ties is always flight from myself. To act now, in here, this instant,would be freedom. To move out there, by means of the "charac-ter" I have "for others", from the situation into which I havebeen cast towardthe future situation I envisage: all this can hap-pen only in bad faith, as the flight of consciousness from itself.Only the present could be authentic, and thus free, if anythingcould. Thus Sartre's account is grounded in the concept of apresent instant of pure freedom.Yet Pierre has not been dropped from heaven to watch andlisten at the keyhole. His past, Therese's past, indeed the pastof Gallic sexuality, combine to constitute his present preoccupa-tion and reverberatein it. Besides, to watch or listen is to antici-pate what may be happening the other side of the door. The pastinto which I have been cast, the future possibilities to which Iam attending, these make my present, make the spatiality thatsurroundsme. Moreover, the past is social. True, it is my past,as the future is my future. But it is "mine" in a perspectivalsense: as the narrowingto one sector of a constant stream of in-teractions. And the future too will be not only mine but ours andtheirs: the stream that founds the past of future projects, bothmy own and others'. Only out of this interplay of future andpast, temporality and spatialization, can the present situation ofthis individual emerge as such. Social time and social space arealready presupposed as necessary conditions for the existence ofthe for-itself. Thus the concept of a pure detached instant as themodel for the existence of consciousness is illusory. On the con-

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERtrary,humanbeing is social preciselybecauseit is historical.have come"to myself"in and out of the traditionof somepar-ticularsocial worldintowhich I happento have been born.Hu-man time is built out of historical tretches,not instantsof pureconsciousness.

If the moment is illusory,however, he moment of purefree-dom,afortiori, s illusoryalso.Human freedom s neverinstan-taneousandcomplete.It entailsthe interiorization f standards,themselvessocially,thatis, historically,developed,standardsnfree submissionto which I have learnedto act responsibly-even if I often fail to do so. Indeed,the veryconceptsof "suc-cess" or "failure" imply submissionto standardsby whichachievementor its denial can be judged. And again, howeveridiosyncratic ne's standardsmay become, they must be com-munal,and thushistorical,n threesenses.First,theymusthavegrownout of a social world.Secondly,as standards hey mustclaimuniversality: hey entailwhatPolanyicalls"universal n-tent". They express,not just my "subjective"preferences,butrulesby which I judgemy ownperformance ndjudgethatanyother personin my circumstances houldjudge his. Thus thevery conceptof free actiondemandsa relation o others;I as afree agent am this uniquecenterof action and choice that hasdevelopedthroughparticipationn, andexpresses,hestandardsof this culture,accepted(or, indeed, rejected)by me with uni-versal ntent.Actingas freeagent,in otherwords,I act notonlyas myself,but as he-who-would-do-so-and-so-in-such-and-such-circumstances. t is thispossibilityof detachment hatmakesanactionfree. For it ischaracteristic f a humanperson,asPlessnerhasemphasized, o be able to puthimself n another'splaceandanother n his.Thus the humanpresent,too, the momentof ac-tion itself, has a socialextensiveness. n this sense role-playingis not as sucha betrayalof freedom-as it is forSartre-but theinstantiation f it.Finally, f freedomarisesout ofa socialpastandexiststhroughgeneralization,which is also spatialization,of the present,itsprimary hrust s to the future,but a futurewhichreverberatesbeyondmyownpossibilities;t willbe thestuffof others'actionsaswell as of myown.Nowadmittedly,Sartrehimself, ikeHeid-egger, stresses he futurityof humanexistence:I am my possi-bilities.But his all-or-nonedialectic,combinedwith his Carte-sianism, eadshim to interpret hisbeing as a non-being:a pos-sibility s whatis not (yet),andso to be a possibilitys to be whatis not-and thusto not-be,to be onlyin the modeof nihilation.

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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONTo be in the mode of possibility, however, is also to be: to be as aprotension, a stretch to the future; to follow Merleau-Ponty'smetaphor, a "fold in being" rather than a "hole". The presentsituation, once more, becomes what it is through the prospectingof possibilities founded on, and limited by, the development of aretrospected past. The introspection of a for-itself is the conden-sation into a relatively instantaneous stretch of consciousness ofthese primary temporal relations. But these relations too, as Ihave been trying to suggest, also entail sociality. The historyoutof which I act is the history of a culture; the future into which Iact is social both as the stuffof historyfor future actions,whetherof myself or others, and as demanding, in its characterof respon-sible action, reference to standardsthat are socially derived, anduniversal in their intent; applicable to myself at other times andto othersas well as to myself.In all this "beating about the neighboring fields" I have beencommenting on Sartre'sstatement that the for-Others is not anontological structure of the for-itself. I have been arguing that,on the contrary,the for-itself (and afortiori the for-others) is anexpression of the among-others, the primary relation whichSartre,in his commitment to the cogito and associated concepts,fails to see. This was the second misstep I wanted to point out.The third, equally apparent in a number of passages in the samechapter, is equally fundamental, perhaps even the most funda-mental of all. For it concerns that most basic Cartesianerror:thedivision of consciousness from the body.

Admittedly, in the Third Meditation-which corresponds,aswe have seen, to the place Sartrehas reached in his argument inthe chapter on the Other-Descartes is still operating whollywithin the sphere of consciousness; the body in its real existenceonly reappears in the last Meditation, while Sartre has alreadyadmitted the in-itself as the target of intentionality, that pleni-tude from which the for-itself rises up as nihilation. The Other,however, we have seen, far from being the passive exteriorityofthe in-itself, is, menacingly and paradoxically, an-other con-sciousness. It is not, Sartre insists, the Other's eyes that look atme, but the gaze "behind" them, the consciousness that threat-ens to organize me into its world. So, through an-other con-sciousness, I fall from being for-myself toward the inertia ofmere corporeality; thus it is that through the Other's look I dis-cover my body. That discovery, however, is founded, Sartrein-sists, on the for-Othersas an upsurge in consciousness. Even myrelation to the Other is a relation between consciousnesses, in

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERwhichthe objectivefact of his lookingat me is "a puremoni-tion",4 he occasionof myfeeling of being looked-at.Indeed,Ican be awareof the Othereven when "in fact" he is not there.Thus, n thekeyholescene,Pierremaysuspectsomeone s watch-inghimwatchingandexperience hatwatchingas(orin)shame,and even thoughhe findshimselfmistaken-it wasonly someone leavingby the streetdoor,there is no one thereat all-hisshamemaylinger.Now of course it is indeed true that I may be awareof mypresence o otherseven when in fact no Otheris at hand. But isthisexperience hereforedisembodied? s it pureconsciousness-of-peril-as-for-itself-before-the-Other's-possible-gaze?artre'sowndescriptionbetrays heuntenabilityof thisview.Myshame,he says,"is my red face as I bend over the keyhole".5 n otherwords, the emotion throughwhich I find myself before theOtheris at the same time a state of bodilybeing. Myshame ismy red face. . . . Similarly,Sartrehas describedearlier thefear that reveals he Otherto a reconnoiteringoldier.He hearscracklingover there in the undergrowth-and becomesvulner-able,a bodythat couldbecome another's arget.Whathappenshere?In Sartre's erms,I fall from thetic consciousnessof thesurroundingerritory,ustainedby non-theticconsciousnessof)self (I am curious,interested,alert),to thetic consciousnessofmy body as an objectin another'sworld,carriedby the specialnon-theticconsciousnessof)self that is called fear.Now whatiscorrect n this account,it seemsto me, is that I do, in shameorin some kindsof fear,become awareof my bodyin a newway.But thatis not to saythatI wasnotinanywayawareof it before.My shameis my red face as I bend over the keyhole.But myjealousy, too, my intentness in watching,was, not just non-thetic consciousnessof)selfassuch;it wasnon-theticconscious-nessof my embodiedself, it wasthe stealthinessof my posture,the quiet with whichI breathed, he way I strained o see whatwasgoing on on the otherside of the door. I exist as embodiedbeing-in-the-world,nd in nootherway.OfcourseSartreknowsthis;he is no believer n a Cartesian escogitansordisembodiedsoul.Thenhow, on the one hand,doeshe see my relation o mybody priorto the Other'sdegradationof me to an objectin hisworld,and, on the otherhand,what reallyis the bodily aspectof mybeingthatthe Otherreveals o me?

4 Ibid., p. 277.5 Loc. cit.35


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SARTRE AND THE OTHERstrument that I am.".6 This summarizing statement, he holds,lays to rest once and for all any problems that the body, appear-ing to the for-itself, might have evoked.Yet it also summarizes, in my opinion, both the impasse towhich Sartre's approach to the body has brought him and theway out that he is, thanks to his own premises, unable to take.What is it to be an instrument? It is to be a means-to whatend? The end is the for-itself's project, the nihilation of what isin favor of what is not, the nihilation that I am. But how can I beat the same time my possibility and the means to that possibil-ity?And how can I know that I am so?The answer to both questions is a single one. Sartrehas beenoperating all along, we have seen, in terms of a strict dichotomybetween knowing and being, or knowing and living. Knowingfor him is a thetic confrontation with the object of thought;contrasted with it is the non-thetic awareness of the fashion inwhich, the passion by which, I relate myself to myself as know-ing that object. The Other looms up not as the object of knowl-edge, but as lived by me as threat to my own being. Similarly,the body, for myself, is lived and not known. Sartremakes thiscrystal clear in a brilliant analysis of the traditional philosophyof sensation, in which he moves from the will-of-the-wisp "sen-sation" (or sense-data), to sense and sensible objects, and thento action as the necessary correlateof sense. His argument leadshim to the insight that our sense-mediated interaction with theworld, and therefore all our informationabout the world, is nec-essarily tied to its point of origin, the point of view that is mybodily being. The cup is not just on the table, it is to my right,from where I am sitting, beyond the pencil, and so on. If I re-move from such relations all perspectival reference, I removetheir content. Thus my body is the instrument that I am, the in-strument of instruments, because it is my point of view. Thebody, Sartre says again, is the neglected, the surpassed. Pre-cisely. It is the surpassedbecause in and through it I act out ontothe world and am acted on by things (and people) in the world.It is also, and for that reason, the indispensable ground of knowl-edge and of action. Without it knowledge would vanish intocontentless relations. For suppose the body, instead of being anon-thetic ground of action, were itself known. Such knowledgewould be empty. Sartrewrites:In this case . . . the fundamental tool becomes a relative center of refer-

6 Ibid., p. 359.37


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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONence which itself supposes other tools to utilize it. By the same stroke theinstrumentality of the world disappears, for in order to be revealed itneeds a reference to an absolute center of instrumentality; the world ofaction becomes the world acted upon of classical science; consciousnesssurveys a universe of exteriority and can no longer in any way enter intothe world.

Alternatively, therefore, for Sartre,the body must be lived andnot known. Thus, secondly, he continues:. . .the body is given concretely and fully as the very arrangement ofthings in so far as the For-itself surpasses it towards a new arrangement.In this case the body is present in every action although invisible, for theact reveals the hammer and the nails, the brake and the change of speed,not the foot which brakes or the hand which hammers. The body is livedand not known.8

And these two possibilities, he insists, are wholly disparate andmutually exclusive. Living is never and cannot be knowing;knowing is never lived.Yet if the first alternative is empty and for us impossible ofachievement, and the second full of all the concrete content ofexperience and, for us, necessary,why must we keep up the pre-tence that there is a dichotomy here? In fact, there is none-orrather, there is the duality of subsidiary and focal awareness, aduality inherent in all knowing and all action. But this is not theirreconcilable duality of living against knowing. It is the unity-in-pluralityof lived bodily being as it bearson knowing and, in-deed, on all rational action. Thus the body is present though in-visible in the hammer and the nails just because it is through mysubsidiaryawareness of hammer, nails, hand, arm, that I am fo-cally aware of placing the picture the way I want it on the wall.All reasonable action on the world, all knowledge of the world,from perception to the graspof the most abstracttheories, sharesthis same structure. Read in terms of the concepts of focal andsubsidiary awareness, then, Sartre'sdicta on the body take on adifferentmeaning. Thus, for example, he writes:

My body is everywhere: the bomb which destroys my house also damagesmy body in so far as the house was already an indication of my body. Thisis why my body always extends acrossthe tool which it utilizes: it is at theend of the cane on which I lean and against the earth; it is at the end of

Ibid.,p. 324.8 Loc. cit.

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SARTRE AND THE OTHERthe telescope which shows me the stars; it is on the chair, in the wholehouse; for it is my adaptation to these tools.9

This is true. But it is not a description of living as against know-ing; it is a description of the structure of knowledge itself.Once more, however, this simple move is one Sartre cannotmake. The pure act of consciousness and the tension of livingmust be for him wholly and ineradicably opposed. He declaresearly in the chapter on the body, for example, that touching andbeing touched, the one purely active and the other purely pas-sive and external, are entirely opposed to one another. At theclose of the chapter he insists again: my hand as touched is amere external object, my hand as touching is my consciousnessin act. Two hands, both mine, belong to two worlds, foreverseparated by the total gap that isolates for-itself from in-itself,nihilation from reality, consciousness from the external world.It is, I believe, with the exposition of this chapter in particularthat Merleau-Ponty was wrestling from The Phenomenology ofPerception-which begins with a theory of the body-to TheVisible and the Invisible, where he was still struggling with themystery of the touching-touched, the seer-seen. And it is, in myview, Polanyi's distinction between focal and subsidiary aware-ness, and the theory of tacit knowing elaborated on the basis ofthat distinction, that provides the solution for the problem.Merleau-Ponty comes very close to it in The Phenomenology ofPerception and, as we have seen, even Sartre himself comesclose to it in many passages, especially in this chapter. But, as al-ways, at least till very recently, his Cartesianism has held him inthrall. The step to enfranchisement of lived bodily existence asthe vehicle of knowledge and of rationalaction he has been un-able to take.But the crucial question for my present discussion still re-mains. I have been considering the account of the body as, inmy view, the third place where Sartre goes astray in his ap-proach to the Other. It seems clear to the point of truism thathistory and with it sociality are prerequisites to an understand-ing of our being with others, as distinct from Cartesian instan-taneity and the isolation of the single for-itself. What has bodilybeing to do with this?

The answer is given, by implication, in Sartre's own argu-ment. The Other for me, he makes it clear, is in fact the Other9Ibid.,p.325.

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AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONas embodied. Consider my perception of the Other. Suppose Isee Pierre raise his arm. This is not, Sartresays, the perceptionof an arm raised beside a motionless body; what I see is Pierre-raising-his-arm.Thus, he concludes, Pierre's body is in no wiseto be distinguished from Pierre-for-me.He writes:

. The Other's body with its various meanings exists only for me: to bean object-for-othersor to-be-a-body are two ontological modalities whichare strictly equivalent expressions of the being-for-others on the part ofthe for-itself.'1Yet if this is correct, what has happened to the Other as Con-sciousness?Other as body, Sartre has insisted, is posteriorto thatfirst,hemorrhagic starting into being of the Other which threat-ens to organize the world around him and so drains me awayfrom myself. The Other as body is secondary to this experience,just as my own living of my body for me is secondary to my be-ing, the same being, but in a wholly other ontological dimen-sion, as nihilating for-itself. But isn't Pierre-for-mePierre in hisoriginal way of being in my world? Is it not bodily being-withthat comes first,ontologically as well as empirically?Sartre comes very close here to saying this himself, for in-

stance, in his discussion of expression. In those phenomena mis-takenly called "expressive", he insists, there is no hidden spir-itual something behind what appears. The expressions are thephenomena:. . .These frowns, this redness, this stammering, this slight trembling ofthe hands, these downcast looks which seem at once timid and threaten-ing-these do not expressanger; they are the anger."

Yet this is not behaviorism. The Other's expression and in ithis very being are not given me as the inkwell is, as an inertpiece of matter. What I see is an angry man; his mood is in hislooks as their meaning. It is Pierre acting on the world throughanger that is before me, directly and all at once. But this is justthe bodily being of others through which, and in interactionwithwhich, the for-itself develops. In the family, in social groups, inthe workadayworld, it is the bodily being-there-with-me of theothers that enables me to become, among them, the person Iam. Now for Sartre, of course, this being with others is alwaysbeing against others. To perceive the Other in his bodily being

,oIbid., p. 346." Loc. cit.40


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SARTRE AND THE OTHERis to perceive him as a transcendence to be transcended, as acenter of meanings which I try to apprehend, and overcome,out of my own for-itself. It is to see his bodily presence as de-rived from that first clash of consciousnesses which is the orig-inal emergence of the Other. I make him a body in order to de-feat him, to put him out of action. Yet if we take the phenomenaof expression as primary, and forget the compulsion of the cogi-to, the story is very different. For the Other's expression, andmine, may embody solidarity as well as conflict. Even in Sartre'sexample of anger, there may be mutuality, if for instance, Ishare Pierre's indignation. And there are expressions which bytheir very nature exemplify, not transcendence transcended, butencounter. Buytendijk has analyzed in this sense, for example,the child's first smile, and Plessner the expression of the smileas such. Starting from the for-itself as solipsistic consciousness(of) self, such expressionscan appear only as strategies in the in-ternecine war of each against each. If, on the contrary,we startfrom bodily human being in the child's firstyear of life, we findthe human person emerging in and through, not conflict, butlove. It is affection, as the ground of encounter, and encounteritself, that shape the space in which the for-itself can grow, inwhich it can develop its own consciousness and its own freedom.But affection as much as anger is the bodily being-there of an-other with me. Thus if Pierre as body and Pierre for me are cor-relative ontological indices of the same reality, I being-with-Pierre am also equally myself as body and myself for Pierre-and I myself-for-myself, in turn, am the inward resonance ofthose outward relations. I argued earlier that both the for-itselfand the for-Others are expressions, and developments, of theamong-others. We can now add the further thesis: that theamong-others, like the for-itself and the for-others, is indistin-guishable, in its root nature, from the bodily being-in this casethe being together-of persons. The space I live in is the spacecreated, however indirectly, by such bodily being-with. It iscreated in the firstinstance by maternalaffection; it is developedand deepened, cramped or cut off, by the human presences,whether directly given, or mediated by cultural artifacts, thatmark each personal history. The Other is there, as Sartre, too,notes, even in solitude. It is only with the others that I can havethe breathing space to be myself. Thus however inward and im-mediate its feelings, the for-itself is not a pure, self-dependentnegation of an alien in-itself, but a bodily sedimentation, sub-jectively experienced, of the among-others.

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Sartre and the Other

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