The existential dread of separation drives the wish to sink back into the Whole

Evidence

In an immediate way the newborn lives the primeval drama of every existent—that is, the drama of one’s relation to the Other. Man experiences his abandonment in anguish. Fleeing his freedom and subjectivity, he would like to lose himself within the Whole: here is the origin of his cosmic and pantheistic reveries, of his desire for oblivion, sleep, ecstasy, and death. He never manages to abolish his separated self: at the least he wishes to achieve the solidity of the in-itself, to be petrified in thing; it is uniquely when he is fixed by the gaze of others that he appears to himself as a being. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 677

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the ‘Other’, the ‘in-itself’, and ‘transcendence’ in their concrete existential meaning — core analytical apparatus for the whole book.
• XREF: Directly extends Sartre’s being-for-itself/being-in-itself and the look of the Other from Being and Nothingness. — connects to: Trust in another’s return brackets absence and blocks existential anxiety. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237

Broader Connections

• Trust in another’s return brackets absence and blocks existential anxiety. #complicates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 237