Encountering another person makes one an object in their world

Evidence

In his first example, Sartre asks us to imagine walking in a park. If I’m alone, the park arranges itself comfortably around my point of view: everything I see presents itself to me. But then I notice a man crossing the lawn towards me. This causes a sudden cosmic shift. I become conscious that the man is also arranging his own universe around himself. As Sartre puts it, the green of the grass turns itself towards the other man as well as towards me, and some of my universe drains off in his direction. Some of me drains off too, for I am an object in his world as he is in mine. I am no longer a pure perceiving nothingness; I have a visible outside, which I know he can see. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 676

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre’s hallmark example of being-for-others and the alienated gaze — the clearest concrete illustration of the concept in the chapter, ideal for orientation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The park example is one of philosophy’s most analyzable thought experiments about intersubjectivity and selfhood — the ‘draining off’ of self into the other’s perceptual field is an insight with endless re-readings.
• XREF: connects to: Encountering the Other reveals the for-itself having an outside and being embedded in being; The Other’s look proves a beyond-the-world realm irreducible to spatial relations; An absorbed person appears as a closed Gestalt, a thinglike object for me. (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity gets constituted when the Other’s gaze names it #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 207
• The Other-as-object reinforces the world’s objectivity while the Other-as-look dissolves it #expands (0.80)
• Another person’s perception of objects disintegrates the spatial relations I establish between things #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 718
• Human worth depends on recognition by another person #expands (0.75)
• Acquaintance reveals only the other’s outward-facing self, not their essence #qualifies (0.72) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 7794