The lover’s self-presentation demands the Other’s free recognition to succeed

Evidence

But this choice must not be relative and contingent. The lover is irritated and feels himself cheapened when he thinks that the beloved has chosen him from among others. “Then if I had not come into a certain city, if I had not visited the home of so and so, you would never have known me, you wouldn’t have loved me?” This thought grieves the lover; his love becomes one love among others and is limited by the beloved’s facticity and by his own facticity as well as by the contingency of encounters. It becomes love in the world, an object which presupposes the world and which in turn can exist for others. … Actually what the lover demands is that the beloved should make of him an absolute choice. This means that the beloved’s being-in-the-world must be a being-as-loving. The upsurge of the beloved must be the beloved’s free choice of the lover. And since the Other is the foundation of my being-as-object, I demand of him that the free upsurge of his being should have his choice of me as his unique and absolute end; that is, that he should choose to be for the sake of founding my object-state and my facticity. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 948 (#expands, via linked claim)

People and social systems strive, in their self-presentation, as we have already shown, to draw a consistent picture of themselves and make it socially accepted. Since other people and social systems also have an interest in building up reliable expectations with regard to the people around them, in seeing them as enduring identities, there develops in social intercourse a type of expressive language which enables actions to be attributed to people or social systems, and not only causally but, indeed, also symbolically, as expressing their essence, their self. The systems concerned move about in this medium of symbolic representations with more or less great assurance, an assurance which is often misleadingly called ‘self-confidence’. For self-presentation is difficult, threatened by inner contradictions, mistakes, facts and information which cannot be presented. So, on the one hand, it requires considerable expressive prudence and, on the other hand, the tactful co-operation of spectators. There often arise delicate or indeed embarrassing situations where the fact that the presented self is not the true self threatens to become obvious. Someone who then loses his self-control is lost. His self-presentation collapses – at least in relation to the spectators then present. A person who, on the contrary, retains his composure can save himself in various ways, for example, by giving the situation a humorous twist, by open admission, reinterpreting retrospectively his past self-presentation, playing the matter down, ignoring it with the help of co-operating spectators who see through his self-presentation but refrain from acting on it, by explaining the incident as an event of no importance, for example as a ‘disturbance’ brought about by something external. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 292 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Self-consciousness only becomes truth through the Other’s recognition — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 683; Authentic love requires reciprocal recognition of both partners’ freedoms — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883; Self-presentation is fragile and depends on spectators’ tactful cooperation — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 292 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• The lover demands to be chosen absolutely, not as one among others #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 948
• Self-presentation is fragile and depends on spectators’ tactful cooperation #qualifies (0.82) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 292
• Self-certainty requires recognition from the other #expands (0.78)
• Authentic love requires reciprocal recognition of both partners’ freedoms #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1883