Being objectified by another’s look constitutes an inescapable existential guilt
Evidence
But rather surprisingly in a non-theistic philosophy we find also a concept of existential guilt, an inescapable guilt, a species of Original Sin. “My original Fall is the existence of the Other.” (p. 263) Both my shame and my pride stem from the fact that I have an “outside” or “nature,” a self which exists for the Other and which I am unable to determine or even to know. Thus although I can never, even if I try, be an object to myself, I am made an object for others. “It is before the Other that I am guilty. I am guilty first when beneath the Other’s look I experience my alienation and my nakedness as a fall from grace which I must assume. This is the meaning of the famous line from Scripture: They knew that they were naked.” (p. 410) Thus the For-itself, which is to itself wholly subjectivity, feels itself to be guilty because it is made an object by another. It is guilty because it consents to this alienation and again guilty in that it will inevitably cause the Other to experience this same alienation. We can not live without making objects and means of the Other, thus transcending his transcendence, and this is to do violence to his subjectivity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 72
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the For-itself’s ‘original Fall’ — the ontological guilt that stems from having an outside, an object-self for others.
- XREF: Directly sets up Beauvoir’s treatment of the Other’s look and the ethics that emerges from this guilt in The Second Sex and Ethics of Ambiguity. — connects to: Being perceived as an object by another creates communal shame and alienation; The Other’s look makes the self haunt an unreflective consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 727; Shame is the recognition of being as the Other sees one — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 660 (+11 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: Sartre reframes the Eden fall as an ontological, not moral, event: to be seen is to fall from pure subjectivity into objecthood, making guilt inescapable and structural rather than contingent.
Broader Connections
- The Other’s look reveals my body as an object-for-others
#expands(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 913 - Being perceived as an object by another creates communal shame and alienation
#expands(0.82) - Shame is the recognition of being as the Other sees one
#expands(0.78) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 660 - Shame first reveals one’s factical body because the Other’s look falls on embodiment
#expands(0.76) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 97 - The Other’s look makes the self haunt an unreflective consciousness
#expands(0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 727 - Shame precedes reflection and arises from an opaque self-relation
#expands(0.74) - The Other’s objective body cannot itself produce my objectification under his gaze
#qualifies(0.72) - Shame is fundamentally experienced in the presence of another person
#expands(0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 659 - Shame at nakedness symbolizes the human condition of being seen as an object.
#exemplifies(0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 784