For Sartre, the Other is encountered as contingent fact, never constituted

Evidence

Consequently it would be in vain to look in Sein und Zeit for a simultaneous surpassing of all idealism and of all realism. Heidegger’s attempt to bring human-reality out of its solitude raises those same difficulties which idealism generally encounters when it tries to found the existence of concrete beings which are similar to us and which as such escape our experience, which even as they are being constituted do not arise from our a priori. He seems to escape isolation because he takes the “outside of self” sometimes as being “outside-of-self-toward-self” and sometimes as “outside-self-in-others.” But the second interpretation of “outside-of-self,” which Heidegger surreptitiously slides in through his devious reasoning, is strictly incompatible with the first. Human-reality at the very heart of its ekstases remains alone. It is here that we can derive a new and valid insight as the result of our critical examination of Heidegger’s teaching: Human-reality remains alone because the Other’s existence has the nature of a contingent and irreducible fact. We encounter the Other; we do not constitute him. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 707

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the crucial distinction between encountering the Other as contingent fact versus constituting them through a priori categories — the pivot of Sartre’s break with both Heidegger and idealism.
• XREF: This is the precise ontological move that Beauvoir builds her situated freedom on — the Other and myself as contingent, encountered facts rather than constituted. — connects to: The Other is aimed at as phenomenon, never as noumenal reality
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘contingent necessity’ of the Other — factual yet indubitable like the cogito — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting formulation that resists quick summary.

Broader Connections

• The Other is aimed at as phenomenon, never as noumenal reality #expands (0.85)