self which I am without knowing it; for 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. It is the shame or pride
which makes melive, notknowthe situation of being looked at” (BN
261 ). Sartre calls myself-as-object “an uneasiness, a lived wrenching
away from the ekstatic unity of the for-itself, a limit which I can not
reach and which yet I am” (BN 275 ). Again, we should retain this
analysis when we discuss the futility experienced by the dead inNo Exit
as they try to counter the judgments leveled on their past by the living.
My status as objectified is that of an in-itself, the possibilities of which
are in the hands of the Other – my transcendence transcended, as Sartre
says. Among the essential modifications of my being effected by the
encounter by the Other are a universal space and time, the experience
(Erlebnis) of simultaneity (important for his subsequent reflections on
history),^15 my liability to the Other’s appraisals and so forth.^16 In sum,
the Other’s look transforms my world as looked-at.
Sartre’s point is that this experience of the Other as subject is as
certain as my experience of shame, of which it is an ingredient.^17 What is
merely probable, and subject to empirical verification, is the contingent
event that, at this moment, there is someone actually looking at me. As
he says, in the example just cited, it may simply have been a mistaken
interpretation of the rustle of the curtains at the open window. Again,
we are distinguishing the certain from the probable. What is phenom-
enologically certain is the analysis of the experience. What is probable
is its instantiation in the present event.
“The Body”
Sartre is now able to return to earlier concepts, especially the body, in
terms of the ontology of for-itself and for-others that is now at his
command. Considering the body as for-itself, he argues that it is “the
total contingency of my consciousness” (BN 334 ). Indeed, we can say
(^15) SeeSFHRii, index, sv “simultaneity.” AlsoBN 282 , “prehistoric historization. It is a
16 prehistoric temporalization of simultaneity.”
17 Shame (and arrogance) are authentic whereas Pride, Sartre affirms, is in bad faith (BN^290 ).
“In short: The Other can exist for us in two forms: if I experience him with evidence, I fail to
know him; if I know him, if I act upon him, I only reach his being-as-object and his probable
existence in the midst of the world. No synthesis of these two forms is possible” (BN 302 ).
“The Body” 209