The Other’s objective body cannot itself produce my objectification under his gaze

Evidence

Nevertheless the Other’s existence brings a factual limit to my freedom. This is because of the fact that by means of the upsurge of the Other there appear certain determinations which I am without having chosen them. Here I am—Jew, or Aryan, handsome or ugly, one-armed, etc. All this I am for the Other with no hope of apprehending this meaning which I have outside and, still more important, with no hope of changing it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1229 (#complicates, via linked claim)

With the appearance of the Other’s look I experience the revelation of my being-as-object; that is, of my transcendence as transcended. A me-as-object is revealed to me as an unknowable being, as the flight into an Other which I am with full responsibility. But while I can not know nor even conceive of this “Me” in its reality, at least I am not without apprehending certain of its formal structures. In particular I feel myself touched by the Other in my factual existence; it is my being-there-for-others for which I am responsible. This being-there is precisely the body. Thus the encounter with the Other does not only touch me in my transcendence: in and through the transcendence which the Other surpasses, the facticity which my transcendence nihilates and transcends exists for the Other; and to the extent that I am conscious of existing for the Other I apprehend my own facticity, not only in its non-thetic nihilation, not only in the existent, but in its flight towards a being-in-the-midst-of-the-world. The shock of the encounter with the Other is for me a revelation in emptiness of the existence of my body outside as an in-itself for the Other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 913 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

So long as we considered the for-itself in its isolation, we were able to maintain that the unreflective consciousness can not be inhabited by a self; the self was given in the form of an object and only for the reflective consciousness. But here the self comes to haunt the unreflective consciousness. Now the unreflective consciousness is a consciousness of the world. Therefore for the unreflective consciousness the self exists on the level of objects in the world; this role which devolved only on the reflective consciousness—the making-present of the self—belongs now to the unreflective consciousness. Only the reflective consciousness has the self directly for an object. The unreflective consciousness does not apprehend the person directly or as its object; the person is presented to consciousness in so far as the person is an object for the Other. This means that all of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself, not in that I am the foundation of my own nothingness but in that I have my foundation outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 727 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Being objectified by another’s look constitutes an inescapable existential guilt — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 72; The Other cannot coherently organize my experience given the structure of experience itself; A look already captured by the Other cannot objectify what he already fixes (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• The Other’s gaze imposes unchosen determinations on my being #complicates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1229
• The Other’s look reveals my body as an object-for-others #contradicts (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 913
• The Other’s look makes the self haunt an unreflective consciousness #expands (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 727
• The Other’s perspective reveals my own body as merely worldly #complicates (0.75)