The Other is an invisible presence that supports shame without being an object

Evidence

At the origin of the problem of the existence of others, there is a fundamental presupposition: others are the Other, that is the self which is not myself. Therefore we grasp here a negation as the constitutive structure of the being-of-others. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675 (#expands, 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: Shame is fundamentally experienced in the presence of another person — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 659; Shame is the recognition of being as the Other sees one — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 660; Shame precedes reflection and arises from an opaque self-relation (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Being perceived as an object by another creates communal shame and alienation #expands (0.85)
• The Other is constituted by negation as the self which is not myself #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 675
• The Other’s look makes the self haunt an unreflective consciousness #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 727
• The other’s love reveals the self by exposing its own otherness #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1884