Being seen alienates my flight into an object I cannot escape
Evidence
Nevertheless the Other’s existence brings a factual limit to my freedom. This is because of the fact that by means of the upsurge of the Other there appear certain determinations which I am without having chosen them. Here I am—Jew, or Aryan, handsome or ugly, one-armed, etc. All this I am for the Other with no hope of apprehending this meaning which I have outside and, still more important, with no hope of changing it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1229 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
These have a particular Being which Heidegger calls Zuhandenheit: ‘readiness-to-hand’ or ‘handiness’. While I am hammering, the hammer has that kind of Being for me. If, for some reason, I lay down the hammer and gawp at it as a Hammerding, then it has a different kind: Vorhandenheit or ‘presence-at-hand’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Being seen enslaves me to a freedom that is not my own — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 741; Being seen by the Other freezes my lived situation into a fixed in-itself form; Being seen is first felt as bodily vulnerability and non-escape — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 723 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- The Other’s objective body cannot itself produce my objectification under his gaze
#expands(0.85) - The Other’s gaze imposes unchosen determinations on my being
#corroborates(0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1229 - An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation.
#expands(0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215