The concepts of intersubjectivity and the other are key to Continental philosophy. We have already seen how the other is treated by Levinas (see the post Ethics as First Philosophy); here the focus will be on French existentialism, specifically Sartre and De Beauvoir. Inextricably linked in both philosophy and their personal lives (they were life partners for 51 years until Sartre’s death), both intersubjectivity and the other are integral to their thoughts and ideas. First Sartre, and in next post De Beauvoir.
Sarte’s most famous work, Being and Nothingness, is filled with his interpretations of the other. It all begins with his conception of being, which has three parts: being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and being-for-others. None of the three have primacy over the other two. The being-in-itself of a phenomenon is its being that lies in the background, unseen; it is the “more than meets the eye” of the phenomenon. This idea he calls the “transphenomenality of being.”
The being-for-itself is the counter position to the in-itself, and is refers to a negativity or a lack. The very title of Being and Nothingness refers to this duality. While the former refers to phenomena and their thingness, the latter is spontaneous and is not connected to any specific phenomena. Rather, it refers more to human reality and the human being in general; consciousness as opposed to being. As being-for-itself, this consciousness projects otherness into the world.
This being-for-itself is temporal in nature, and causes the lived time of personal experience. It is within this lives experience that the other is truly felt. In Being and Nothingness Sartre proffers the following example as to how the feeling of shame shows us the way to the other and to intersubjectivity. As person A watches couple B interact through a keyhole. This voyeuristic action allows A to transcend B, while qualifying B’s freedom through the interpretation A ascribes to B in viewing B. A then hears footsteps approaching from behind, and feels shame in being discovered spying. A’s shame is a direct result of being objectified in the gaze of another person, C. In this one action A experiences the other as subject—in viewing B—and feels objectified. What emerges is an immediate awareness of another subjectivity.
This interaction with the other and what these interactions produce makes possible the entirety of human relationships. Sartre says, however, “the essence of the relations between consciousnesses…is conflict.” This is in a similar vein to the concept of the other of Levinas, discussed in the post mentioned above. The being-for-others, the third type of being for Sartre, and the one that deals with the public realm, is the mode of being that comes from presence of other objects, humans included.
As in the voyeur example above, we are exposed to the meanings that others would ascribe to us; we are defenseless against these assignations. These are most felt through feelings of shame, as A felt upon discovery. These situations that we are in throughout daily everyday life is our facticity. This is anything from the past right up to, but halting just before, the present, that contributes to our situation. The present, and how we deal with it, is referred to by Sartre as our transcendence.
The problem that Sartre sees among us as humans is the futile desire to combine our facticity and our transcendence. This is an impossible task due to the temporal nature of our lived experience. We are unable to fully realize our facticity and transcendence in a single moment, thereby collapsing our temporal nature; it is a contradiction. Both our facticity and our transcendence are ever evolving, just as we move forward temporally.
The other, then, plays a key role for Sartre. Our existence is temporal, as we experience lived time. In this lived time we are exposed to the other and feel their existence through their judgments made upon us, judgments that are beyond our control. This is the conflict that Sartre says is at the center of interacting consciousnesses. The presence of the other is an empirical fact, only able to be understood through experience. It is not an a priori concept.
Source: Flynn, Thomas R. “Sartre,” A Companion to Continental Philosophy. Ed. Simon Critchley and William R. Schroeder. Blackwell Publishing, 1999.
