Jean-paul Sartre – the objectifying look

Sartre describes the appearance of the Other in his book _Being and Nothingness_:

"I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and along the edge of that lawn there are benches."

And suddenly a man appears. "What do I mean when I assert that this object is A MAN?" What is the difference between seeing a bench and seeing a person?

As opposed to a bench, the man over there can see, hear, touch. He has a perspective. The world is seen from his eyes. The world is organized around him. Indeed, the same objects which I see – the tree, the bench, the lawn – are no longer organized only around me. They are no longer MY world. They are HIS world too.

This means that once the other man appears, the coordinates of my world disintegrate. The other man steals the world from me, so to speak. My world flees towards him.

Furthermore, imagine that the man now looks at me. I am seen by him. I am an object of his look. If I was doing a vulgar gesture, I now try to cover it up. If I was talking to myself, I now quickly close my mouth so that he wouldn’t catch me in the act. Because I am the object of his look.

The Other raises a new threat: that I would become an object in his world; that I would no longer be a free subject who constitutes a world, but an object in somebody else's world. And of course, he is similarly threatened by my look.

Donna can borrow from Sartre an interesting insight: that the appearance of the Other means the appearance of a different perspective, and therefore that it means a conflict.

But she has no reason to accept the rest of Sartre's theory. First, many aspects of his theory are different from hers. Unlike him, she is not afraid that others would objectify her, or would rob her of her world. The idea of the objectifying look is not part of the 'map' of her world. And unlike him, she seems to believe that a real togetherness is possible.

Second, adopting Sartre's theory would mean forcing upon herself another limited perspective. It would mean changing her cave for another cave, another theory, another prison. But she has no need in another cave. She wants to use philosophical insight to free herself, not to limit herself.