another. Its “quality” is a function of the depth of my desire to overcome
it. “Thus, the world of coefficients of adversity reveals to me the way in
which I stand in relation to the ends which I assign myself, so that I can
never know if it is giving me information about myself or about it.”^19
Sartre calls this the “paradox of freedom: There is freedom only in a
situation, and there is a situation only through freedom” (BN 489 ).
Turning to the body-for-others, he elaborates additional features
of my being-for-others revealed by shame consciousness. Sartre can
now draw a parallel between my body for the Other and the Other’s
body for me and proceed to compare and contrast these views. First of
all, I can assume a point of view on the Other’s body which is impossible
for me on my own. And while my body, though not related to me as
an instrument except in the special sense that it enables me to employ
instruments such as glasses, pens and telephones, I can utilize another’s
body as I can any other thing. Of course, the Other’s body, as
“transcendence transcended” tempts me to use it as a “mere instru-
ment,” as Kant warned. But so long as it is a living body, that is, so long
as it is the Other’s body, that “hole” which it leaves in my field of
consciousness, precisely because it too is for-itself, can “drain away”
my sovereign command of the field of meaning and can even turn the
tables on me in the game of stare-down that Sartre’s model of the
looking/looked-at invites. In effect, the Other perceived first as object
is now perceived as a threat. We are at the threshold of a Hobbesian
world from which we will not escape until Sartre introduces an ontology
of positive reciprocity within group praxis in theCritique.
In addition to the body as for-itself and as for-others, Sartre distin-
guished a third ontological dimension of the body, “I exist my body as
known by the Other” (BN 351 ). He appeals to affective structures such
as shyness (la timidite ́) as an example of a lively and constant awareness
of my bodyasit is for the Other and not for me. Sartre explains such
affective states as embarrassment or shyness as features of the third
(^19) BN 488 – 489. Gaston Bachelard ( 1884 – 1962 ) introduced the expression “coefficient of
adversity” that Sartre will occasionally mention as countering our projects (seeBN 324 ).
But he is adamant that “The given in no way enters into the constitution of freedom since
freedom is interiorized as the internal negation of the given” (BN 486 ). What he is
describing inBNis “abstract” freedom, “freedom as the definition of man,” in contrast
with “concrete” freedom, as described in the lecture “Existentialism is a Humanism” (see
the following chapter).
“The Body” 211