The ideal of loving unity with the Other is structurally unrealizable and breeds conflict

Evidence

Thus as a reaction to the failure of the third ekstasis, the for-itself wishes to be identified with the Other’s freedom as founding its own being-in-itself. To be other to oneself—the ideal always aimed at concretely in the form of being this Other to oneself—is the primary value of my relations with the Other. This means that my being-for-others is haunted by the indication of an absolute-being which would be itself as other and other as itself and which by freely giving to itself its being-itself as other and its being-other as itself, would be the very being of the ontological proof—that is, God. This ideal can not be realized without my surmounting the original contingency of my relations to the Other; that is, by overcoming the fact that there is no relation of internal negativity between the negation by which the Other is made other than I and the negation by which I am made other than the Other. We have seen that this contingency is insurmountable; it is the fact of my relations with the Other, just as my body is the fact of my being-in-the-world. Unity with the Other is therefore in fact unrealizable. It is also unrealizable in theory, for the assimilation of the for-itself and the Other in a single transcendence would necessarily involve the disappearance of the characteristic of otherness in the Other. Thus the condition on which I project the identification of myself with the Other is that I persist in denying that I am the Other. Finally this project of unification is the source of conflict since while I experience myself as an object for the Other and while I project assimilating him in and by means of this experience, the Other apprehends me as an object in the midst of the world and does not project identifying me with himself. It would therefore be necessary—since being-for-others includes a double internal negation—to act upon the internal negation by which the Other transcends my transcendence and makes me exist for the Other; that is, to act upon the Other’s freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 941

Categorization

• XREF: This is the ontological groundwork for Beauvoir’s account of concrete relations — reciprocity vs. mutual objectification — and connects to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic via the double negation. — connects to: Love fails because both parties cannot escape objectifying each other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 93; Love is constitutively unstable across three distinct dimensions — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 960; To love is essentially to project being loved by the Other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 956 (+12 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that unity with the Other is unrealizable both in fact and in theory — because assimilation would erase otherness itself — is a dense, generative core of Sartre’s whole account of love and conflict.

Broader Connections

• Love is the enterprise of pursuing an unrealizable unity with the Other #corroborates (0.95)
• A unified human We-subject is impossible; conflict grounds being-for-others #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1041
• Universal love structurally requires a designated object of hate #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 871
• Being-for-others generates perpetual conflict as each self objectifies the other #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1462
• Sharing a beloved superordinate turns co-subjects into intensified mutual enemies via jealousy #exemplifies (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 337
• Every attitude toward the Other fails and collapses into its opposite #expands (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1006
• The self forms only through engagement with that which denies its unity #complicates (0.72)
• Dialogue requires love, which is impossible under domination #expands (0.72) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 263