No consciousness can be directly known by another consciousness

Evidence

The Other’s consciousness is what I can simply contemplate and what because of this fact appears to me as being a pure given instead of being what has to be me. It is what is released to me in universal time (i.e. in the original dispersion of moments) instead of appearing to me within the unity of its own temporalization. For the only consciousness which can appear to me in its own temporalization is mine, and it can do so only by renouncing all objectivity. In short the for-itself as for-itself can not be known by the Other. The object which I apprehend under the name of the Other appears to me in a radically other form. The Other is not a for-itself as he appears to me; I do not appear to myself as I am for-the-Other. I am incapable of apprehending for myself the self which I am for the Other, just as I am incapable of apprehending on the basis of the Other-as-object which appears to me, what the Other is for himself. How then could we establish a universal concept subsuming under the name of self-consciousness, my consciousness for myself and (of) myself and my knowledge of the Other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 694

Categorization

• XREF: Roots Beauvoir’s account of intersubjectivity and the impossibility of full mutual transparency between selves. — connects to: Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 151; Self-consciousness depends on being recognized by another consciousness; The Other-as-subject can in no way be known or conceived as such

Broader Connections

• Consciousness is necessarily directed at a being other than itself #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 151
• Self-consciousness depends on being recognized by another consciousness #complicates (0.75)