The Other’s body is given as his facticity regardless of presence or absence.

Evidence

Now we have seen that absence is a structure of being-there. To be absent is to-be-elsewhere-in-my-world; it is to be already given for me. As soon as I receive a letter from my cousin in Africa, his being-elsewhere is concretely given to me by the very indications of this letter, and this being-elsewhere is a being-somewhere; it is already his body. We can in no other way explain why a mere letter from a beloved woman sensually affects her lover; all the body of the beloved is present as an absence in these lines and on this paper. But since the being-elsewhere is a being-there in relation to a concrete ensemble of instrumental-things in a concrete situation, it is already facticity and contingency. It is not only the encounter which I had yesterday with Pierre which defines his contingency and mine; his absence yesterday similarly defined our contingencies and our facticities. And this facticity of the absent is implicitly given in these instrumental-things which indicate it; his abrupt appearance does not add anything. Thus the Other’s body is his facticity as an instrument and as a synthesis of sense organs as it is revealed to my facticity. It is given to me as soon as the Other exists for me in the world; the presence or absence of the Other changes nothing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 894

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the ontological status of the Other’s body as facticity-as-instrument, independent of the Other’s actual presence.
• XREF: The claim that the beloved’s body is present as an absence in a letter connects to the earlier letter-analysis in Proust (who inspired this very example) and to the general Sartrean structure of absence as a being-there structure. — connects to: Neither my own existence nor the Other’s can be proved, only factually necessitated.; The Other’s essential character is objectivity, not embodied life.; The Other’s contingent accessories define him without functioning as signs of inner subjectivity (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The other’s body is originally given as being-in-situation #expands (0.85)
• The Other’s character is his facticity, given only to be surpassed #expands (0.80)
• The Other’s body is ontologically identical to the Other-for-me #expands (0.78)
• The body seen from another’s viewpoint is a thing, not lived #qualifies (0.72) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 923