In Sartrean parlance, he is “objectifying” the pair, turning them into
being-in-itself and thus “stealing” their freedom-possibility. Like the
deceased characters we shall encounter inNo Exit, their “meanings” are
being imposed on them from outside. Without appeal, they stand under
his interpretive gaze. He is the sovereign subject; they are objectified or,
as Sartre will often say, “alienated” by his look.^13
But suddenly the voyeur hears what he takes to be footsteps behind
him. Immediately, “essential modifications appear in his structure.”
He experiencesshame. Simultaneously, in one and the same nonthetic
consciousness, he is aware of himself as objectified by an Other. To
telescope Sartre’s careful analysis, the voyeur is seen, that is, he experi-
ences a relation of objectification for another consciousness and of
himself as visible, that is, as embodied. This is not the conclusion
of an argument; it’s an immediate bodily realization, an emotion realized
in his blushing face and cringing body. Sartre proceeds to unpack this
rich, immediate experience that occurs at the prereflective level.
First, “I now exist as myself for my unreflective consciousness”
(BN 260 ). Up to this stage, recall, the “self ” was the ideal term of my
circle of selfness, and the ego/me were objects of reflective consciousness.
But Sartre cautions, “Only the reflective consciousness has the self dir-
ectly for an object. The unreflective consciousness does not apprehend the
persondirectly or as its object; the person is presented to consciousness
in so far as the person is an object for the Other”(BN 260 ). This immediately
makes me nonreflectively aware of myself “as escaping myself...”asa
“pure reference to the Other” (BN 260 ). Though we can “know” the
Other-as-object, Sartre insists that “the Other-as-subject can in no way be
known nor even conceived as such” (BN 293 ). This is the ontological basis
of theinterpersonal,Ishallargue,butnotofthesocial, as Merleau-Ponty
will correctly point out and as Sartre will later admit.^14
But my self-for-another, so to speak, on principle flees from me. I can
never recuperate it, except by “staring down” the Other, which there-
upon makes my self-for-another vanish even as his emerges. This is “a
(^13) Marx criticized Hegel for equating “objectification,” which was necessary and insuperable,
with “alienation,” which was contingent and, in principle, capable of being overcome.
Though Sartre sometimes makes the Hegelian mistake, he will at other times acknowledge
the distinction. For the gamut of opinions regarding Sartre’s position, seeSME 242 ,n. 8 and
14 the index, svv “alienation” and “objectification.”
AD 143 – 147.
208 Bad faith in human life:Being and Nothingness