Hegel makes being-for-others a necessary condition of being-for-itself

Evidence

Thus Hegel’s brilliant intuition is to make me depend on the Other in my being. I am, he said, a being for-itself which is for-itself only through another. Therefore the Other penetrates me to the heart. I can not doubt him without doubting myself since “self-consciousness is real only in so far as it recognizes its echo (and its reflection) in another.” Since the very doubt implies a consciousness which exists for itself, the Other’s existence conditions my attempt to doubt it just as in the work of Descartes my existence conditions systematic doubt. Thus solipsism seems to be put out of the picture once and for all. By proceeding from Husserl to Hegel, we have realized immense progress: first the negation which constitutes the Other is direct, internal, and reciprocal; second, it calls each consciousness to account and pierces it to the deepest part of its being; the problem is posited on the level of inner being, of the universal and transcendental “I;” finally in my essential being I depend on the essential being of the Other, and instead of holding that my being-for-myself is opposed to my being-for-others, I find that being-for-others appears as a necessary condition for my being-for-myself. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 686

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the key ontological move Sartre is working through: being-for-others as constitutive of being-for-itself, not opposed to it.
• XREF: The systematic backdrop reading goal — this is exactly the ontological architecture Beauvoir inherits and reframes in The Second Sex. — connects to: The for-itself becomes itself only by assuming its alienated being-for-others — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 777; The Other’s mutual negation is required for being-for-others, not merely my own; Levinas made the ethical relation to the Other foundational to existence itself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 628 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The for-itself becomes itself only by assuming its alienated being-for-others #corroborates (0.95) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 777
• The Other’s mutual negation is required for being-for-others, not merely my own #expands (0.88)