The futureTime, insofar as it is revealed in an ekstatic temporality which
temporalizes itself (that is, original temporality), “is everywhere a
self-transcendence and a referring of the before to the after and of
the after to the before” (BN 215 ). But “our first apprehension
of objective time ispractical”(BN 215 ). It reveals itself concretely
and nonthematically across a series of dependent possibles given
in the nonpositional revelation of the major possible toward which
I project myself – my ultimate value. In effect, time appears through
trajectories. And “just as spatial trajectories decompose and collapse
into pure static spatiality, so the temporal trajectory collapses as soon as
it is not simply lived as that which objectively implies our expectations
of ourselves” (BN 216 ).
“Partiii: Being-for-Others”
It seems inevitable that a philosopher who claims that one must begin
with theCogito(I think) of Descartes will face the problems both of
establishing a “bridge” to the “external” world and, more problematic
still, of gaining access to the “minds” of others – what he calls the
“Other.” We have observed his enthusiastic and continued embrace of
Husserlian “intentionality” to circumvent the problem of the external
world to the point of accusing Husserl himself of having abandoned the
concept in his treatment of mental images. The For-itself is by definition
“in the world” initially by its practical concerns (thanks to Heidegger’s
improvement on Husserl), as we have just observed. But the pesky
matter of justifying our confidence in the existence of other conscious
subjects, “Others,” which continued to plague Husserl, now challenges
Sartre. He devotes the longest section ofBNto the topic. The result is
an especially graphic portrait of our experience of our “objectification”
by the “look” or “gaze” (le regard) of the Other. What we shall call the
“looking/looked-at” model of interpersonal relations, emblematic of
Sartrean existentialism, offers an especially concrete (phenomenological)
“argument” for the existence of other minds even as it thereafter hobbles
his project of formulating a positive social theory. This last is graphically
captured in the penultimate remark of a character in his popular play
written the yearBNwas published,No Exit, “Hell is other people”
“Partiii: Being-for-Others” 205