Abstract
In Being and Nothingness, as well as many of his literary works, Sartre discusses our relationship with others primarily through what he calls ‘the look’. In simple terms, the ‘look’ concerns the ways in which we are seen by others, and how this in turn relates to how we see ourselves. In education, this point is particularly reminiscent of the experiences of teaching, where one is inevitably exposed towards others in the classroom. Sartre sees our relationship with others in mainly conflictual terms, however – a perpetual struggle to assert one’s subjectivity by denying the objectification that comes from others. And yet, our relationship with others need not only be defined along those lines. Towards the end of the chapter, I will discuss this in terms of the educational context, including the necessary and mutual vulnerability that is very much part of the lived experiences of teaching.
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Notes
- 1.
For Sartre, questions about generally reside on one of two poles – namely, the ‘realist’ and the ‘idealist’ positions. If one were to take the ‘realist’ perspective, then the existence of the Other relates to their bodily presence before me. What this then implies is that, by analysing the other’s bodily behaviour, we can assume that this ‘other’ is conscious like me. But ironically, this account resorts to a kind of idealism in inferring the existence of the Other. For Sartre, the ‘idealist’ position fares no better – e.g. Kant posits a universal ‘subjectivity’ that essentially differentiates humans from other animals, insofar as I encounter others as ‘the presence of structured forms – such as facial and other expressions, actions and ways of behaving’ (Sartre, 2018, p. 313), which allows me to recognise them as ‘humans like me’. But even though I realise that there are certain commonalities between us, I must assume this without knowing it for a fact. In both the realist and the idealist position, then, we are always in danger of entering into a kind of ‘solipsism’.
- 2.
A popular play written by Sartre is 1944, sometimes translated as either ‘No Exit’ or ‘In Camera’. Interestingly, ‘In Camera’ is a legal term, coming from the Latin for ‘in chambers’, and refers to a hearing or discussions with the judge in the privacy of his chambers, or where spectators and/or jurors have been excluded from the courtroom.
- 3.
In the Ethics of Ambiguity, de Beauvoir (2018) rather scathingly compares some women to children in the sense that children are not ‘responsible’ for who they are. Children are ‘happily irresponsible’ in the sense that they do not suffer from the anguish of freedom since they are only defined by others. For some women, they are also ‘happily irresponsible’ in the sense that they accept the definition of ‘who they are’ that comes from the men in their lives, or from patriarchal society. In opposition to this, there are women who struggle to define themselves on their own terms, in part by disrupting the (social) expectations that being a woman so often involves.
- 4.
Saying that one is engaged to a person is different than how we might use the term in relation to objects (e.g. I am engaged to Pierre vs. the knife is engaged in the wound). In one instance, the object is a passive instrument, but in the other sense, I am expressing and performing a certain commitment to a person that I know to be a subject.
- 5.
This again relates to Sartre’s attempts to overcome Cartesian dualism. He provides a lengthy description of the senses in order to show that the relations of our different bodies to brute existence yield different experiences. A blind person’s entire world appears in a completely different way than those who experience it as sighted, for example.
- 6.
As opposed to the ‘us-relation’ proposed by Heidegger’s Mitsein, which Sartre argues is a is a reflected idea produced after our more fundamental, pre-reflective encounters with others. In rather obscure terms, Sartre talks about how we experience the ‘us’ as a ‘detotalised totality’ – a totality that can never be fully experienced once I am a conscious being that is embedded within that totality itself. In other words, the ‘us’ comes about via an abstraction of our relationship with others – a ‘third person’ who can view this relation from the outside. If I am in conflict with a person, a third person who acts as a witness to that conflict would, in fact, be able to ‘objectify’ it – to study and analyse it in less involved way. Sartre considers class consciousness here as an example of such a conflict, where the third person might be a Marxist analyst, or a governmental official who ‘assigns’ individuals to two different class categories, something one is unable to do if they are embedded in the relationship that defines these categories in the first place.
- 7.
An experimental piece composed by Cage in 1952 for any instrument, with a score that instructs players to not play their instruments for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
- 8.
Of course, the unorthodoxy of the piece can only be understood in relation to the orthodoxy of music more broadly, hence it still does not escape the ‘we-relation’.
- 9.
Or at least, potentially so – I’m sure there were a number of students who did not find it so absorbing!
- 10.
I am thinking here of the scene in which Matthieu in the Age of Reason thrusts a knife into his hand in order to demonstrate that he can act in spite of circumstances that appear to limit him, and that acting in this way is somehow an example of living authentically (Sartre, 2001). And yet, there seems to be something curiously inauthentic about this example – a sort of forced sincerity that is very much the epitome of bad faith.
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Brady, A.M. (2022). The Look of the Other and the Experience of Teaching: The Failure of Solipsism and the Pursuit of Vulnerability. In: Being a Teacher. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 19. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7323-9_7
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