The philosophy of existentialism emphasizes individual consciousness and freedom. This notion of autonomy has given rise to an unseemly caricature of existentialism where the free agent is satirized as nothing more than an individual nomad; an island separated from other free agents, essentially doomed to a life of isolation and loneliness. Sartre's famous quotation1, "l'enfer c'est l'autres" or "hell is other people", is often cited to justify the claim that the free agent's relation with other free agents is difficult, to say the least. She is "condemned to freedom" and must therefore make a choice either relieve herself of her freedom in order to relate to other people or instead forgo her relations to others and live a hermetic existence on her own. This picture of existentialism is an unusual contortion of Sartre's notions of individual autonomy. In his book, Being and Nothingness, Sartre emphasizes the role the Other2 plays in forming the basis of how we as individual free agents come to regard ourselves. Using this as the basis for my paper, I shall argue that mutual love is possible without the individual having to compromise his autonomy. The structure of the paper is as follows: The first section, Contingency vs. Autonomy deals with fundamental questions about why we need other people, whether or not it is desirable to be completely independent and how might we achieve this goal. The next section, Paradoxes and Conflicts: the Project of Love, deals with the two inherent paradoxes, according to Sartre, in attempting to achieve the “ideal of love”, a concept which will be elaborated upon in the section itself. Finally, the last section, To Love is to Laugh, tries to resolve some of these paradoxes using Professor Richard Moran’s analogy of the lover and the comedian.
Contingency vs. Autonomy
Sartre highlights how our relations to other people are crucial in order to better understand ourselves. There are certain things that I can only attain from the Other, for example love, respect or admiration. However, there are certain things that the Other cannot do for me, things I must do myself, such as making up my own mind, forming my own beliefs and intentions and coming to a decision on how I should act3. When the Other looks at me, she makes me a point of reference. I find myself subject to the gaze of this Other when I can see her and she can see me. However, and this is the crucial point for Sartre, I can't see how I appear to her. By looking at me, the Other has taken possession of me from the outside. Her gaze is another point of view of who I am and I cannot see myself as the Other sees me because this freedom is lodged outside of me, something that I cannot control. As Sartre notes, "the Other founds my being in so far as this being is in the form of the ‘there is’. But he is not responsible for my being although he founds it in complete freedom" (BN, 386). The Other is someone who causes me to be by virtue of her consciousness of me when she looks at me. But along with this knowledge of my being for the Other, I discover that I am no longer the foundation of my own being, I discover that I am somehow dependent on this Other for my own self-conception. This condition has the potential to become intolerable for me since "I am possessed by the Other; the Other's look fashions my body in its nakedness, causes it to be born, sculptures it, produces it as it is; sees it as I shall never see it" (p. 386). The Other's gaze becomes a preoccupation for me since there is an aspect of my own self that is completely hidden from me. "For in one sense my being is an unbearable contingency and the pure ’possession’ of myself by another" (386). Sartre's concept about contingency can be summarized in a simple way. The way I judge myself, the way I see the world is invariably influenced by other people. If I wanted to commit a crime, I would be more likely to do it if no one were around watching me. The idea here is that the Other's gaze influences my judgments, it affects the way I evaluate my actions and motives. However, this Other must be someone whose opinion I respect, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for me to reevaluate the perception I have of myself. If I found this other person contemptible, I wouldn’t necessarily value their opinion. Instead I’d be more inclined to avoid them completely. So, I am only concerned about this other person's opinion about me if I respect them, or seek their approval in some way. Therefore, I am dependent on the Other and this contingency is what has the potential to threaten my autonomy. If I regard myself as being an individual, autonomous being who has the capacity to form his own beliefs and intentions, the this Other’s influence on me, on my judgments makes me question my autonomy. Thus, I both depend on the Other as an unbiased and valuable source for my self-conception and I am intimidated by this Other, since she is poses a threat to my autonomy. Then wouldn’t it be wiser for me to reclaim my autonomy? Wouldn’t it be better for me to be completely secure in my freedom? "But precisely because I exist by means of the Other's freedom, I have no security; I am in danger in this freedom. It molds my being and makes me be, it confers values upon me and removes them from me; and my being receives from it a perpetual passive escape from self" 388). My self-conception is in the hands of another freedom that is not under my control, it is a freedom which is inaccessible to me. I become vulnerable and it is this vulnerability that I wish to overcome. So I can say that my relations to the Other are fundamentally driven by my goal to reclaim something the Other has that I feel essentially belongs to me. According to Sartre, if indeed I do intend to become independent of the Other, thereby eliminating contingency completely, I can resort to either one of the two following options:
1. I can attempt to become completely independent of the Other by taking on the position of the narcissist (a concept I shall elaborate in the next section) or;
2. I can assimilate the Other into my own being, thereby making her a part of me. If the Other is no longer free but rather derived by me, subject to my will, then it's obvious that I become the basis for my own being. (This last point is essential is understand the paradoxes of love, explained in the following sections).
Paradoxes and Conflicts: the Project of Love
The ideal of absolute self-sufficiency is described as the desire for recognition from others, without any form of reciprocity. Mutual love, respect and admiration are seen as a costly investment because my own self-conception becomes contingent upon others. When I genuinely respect someone then I as an individual free agent become vulnerable to harm. The other can nurture or protect my recognition of them or abuse it. It would appear to be better for me to become self-sufficient. This is the position the narcissist assumes in her relations to others. However, the narcissist's attempts at achieving her goal of absolute self-sufficiency are in fact self-defeating. If the narcissist doesn't respect the others from whom she attempts to gain, then why would she find it satisfying to be admired by them? If the narcissist finds other people ridiculous or contemptible, then why would she want their love or respect? If she did, however, respect this other person and sought to gain his lover or respect, then she is longer a narcissist.. Now it appears that the very value then in being admired by others looses all merit for the narcissist since it is self-defeating to take pride in being respected by people she finds contemptible.
Love and respect are two responses that we seek from other people. These responses must be given freely, that is, they must not be induced by me in any way. We have seen how manipulation or control of the Other in order to manifest love and respect brings me no satisfaction since I require that these responses be given to me from a person and not an automaton. By controlling the Other's freedom, I am essentially employing self-defeating strategies since I invalidate the initial requirement I had set for myself. The Other must retain her freedom for me to even want her respect and love. Without her freedom, I get no satisfaction in her responses since they appear mechanical and contrived. According to Sartre, possessing the Other's freedom in order to induce a response is not only a self-defeating strategy but also unrealizable in theory since bypassing the freedom of the Other "would necessarily involve the disappearance of the characteristic of otherness in the Other" (388). This leads us to the first paradox of love, which I refer to as the Tristan and Isolde paradox: "I am the project of the recovery of my being. I want to reach out my hand and grab hold of this being which is presented to me as my being at a distance...I want to found it by my very freedom" (p. 386). I as an autonomous individual am insecure when the Other, by casting her gaze upon me, "causes me to be by virtue of [her] consciousness of me" (p.386). However, if I were indeed to usurp the Other's freedom, to "reach out my hand and grab hold of this being which is presented to me", as Sartre puts it, I would indeed assimilate the Other into myself and erase her otherness. My project to recover my own being, "to found my [being] by my very freedom" is thus unrealizable.
This Tristan and Isolde paradox of love applies well to the lover's dilemma. According to Sartre, "If Tristan and Isolde were to fall in love because of a love potion, they are less interesting. The total enslavement of the beloved kills the love of the lover. The end is surpassed; if the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone. Thus the lover does not desire to possess the beloved as one possesses a thing; he demands a special type of appropriation. He wants to possess a freedom as freedom" (389). To possess the Other's freedom as freedom is paradoxical to say the least. The lover finds himself in a peculiarly difficult situation when his beloved refuses to give him the response of love he so desperately desires. If he were to manipulate her freedom to induce this response in some way, then he would not get her love freely. Instead, by possessing his beloved's freedom, the lover erases it completely. The beloved transforms into an object, lacking freedom and autonomy. When I'm dependent on someone for their recognition it is not a contingent kind of dependence since I cannot capture their freedom, or control their respect. If I were indeed to contain, possess or fool the other person into respecting me then that other person would not necessarily be respecting me but rather the person I fool them into believing I am. These self-defeating strategies are of no use if I want the other as an independent freedom to respect me. They are self-defeating because they involve possessing the other's freedom, controlling or manipulating it in some way such that the Other is no longer a freedom but more like an automaton. Inducing the Other to respond to me, to give me respect, love or admiration in such a mechanical way cannot be satisfying for me if my initial project was to receive this respect, love or admiration from another freedom. If I want something from someone freely, for example their love or respect, then seeking to compel it in a way that bypasses their freedom is self-defeating. Thus the lover cannot, therefore, hope to possess a freedom as a freedom.
This First Paradox of Love is easy enough to understand. If I seek love4 from another person5 then it is necessary for that love to come from another person. Any strategy that I employ either to control the person's freedom or to manipulate a response compromises that person's freedom and reduces her to a mere object. I cannot be satisfied with a love that is not freely given to me. Thus, the Other's freedom is a necessary precondition to the response that I seek and must not be violated in any way. Having noted this first paradox and the necessity for preserving the Other's freedom, the obvious resolution to the first paradox would appear to be that the Other (the beloved in this case) would give her love freely, without being coerced in any way. "On the other hand, the lover cannot be satisfied with that superior form of freedom which is a free and voluntary engagement" (389). Sartre is quick to point out that even though the lover may be successful in getting his beloved to respond freely to him, if this response is not for the right reasons, it is not satisfying for the lover. This is Sartre's second paradox of love, respect and admiration, wherein I will not be happy when the other gives me the response that I'm looking for in the form of an oath. He refers to this as the paradox6 of free and voluntary engagement: when the beloved takes an oath freely as a favor upon the lovers' insistence. Note that this second paradox7 of free and voluntary engagement is distinctly different from the Tristan and Isolde paradox. I no longer attempt to control the freedom of the Other in order to manifest the response that I'm looking for. Instead, the Other freely engages me of her own accord by pledging her love for me. Thus, I no longer find it necessary to assimilate her freedom, or to capture her consciousness. By making an oath, she has pledged her love for me upon my insistence, perhaps, or rather as a favor to me. However, "who would be content with a love given as pure loyalty to a sworn oath? Who would be satisfied with the words, 'I love you because I have freely engaged myself to love you and because I do not wish to go back on my word" (389). Love that is given as a promise becomes contingent on that promise, it becomes dependent on simply fulfilling the necessity that the promise entails and nothing more. Sartre's rhetorical question makes the beloved's pledge sound absurd, almost farcical. Even though the response I was looking for is now being offered freely and without any form of manipulation on my part I am still unsatisfied because this response is not being given for the right reasons. It is only because I have asked the Other to make a pledge, to take an oath for me as a favor that she decides to give me the response I desire from her. "Thus the lover demands a pledge, yet is irritated by a pledge. He wants to be loved by a freedom but demands that this freedom as freedom should no longer be free" (389). The pledge here is an attempt to attain love, but in asking his beloved to take an oath the lover is essentially denying her freedom. The oath is regarded as something that compromises the beloved's freedom. If she does indeed take the oath and pledges to love the lover, then even though her response is given freely, it is not given for the right reasons. The lover finds no satisfaction in this free and voluntary engagement since he feels knows that his beloved's love is essentially contingent upon the oath and nothing more.
Sartre's paradoxes prove that the "ideal of love"8 is unrealizable because "it would be necessary to act upon the Other's freedom" in order to get the desired response of love. However, the only way that I can retrieve this freedom is by usurping the Other's agency, the Other's freedom. This process of assimilation of the Other's freedom makes her an object, nothing more than an automaton. My strategy is to attain the desired response I am looking for is self-defeating. By acting on the Other's freedom, I erase her otherness and consequently her conception of me. Thus my project of recovering my freedom from the Other remains unrealized despite my best efforts. The paradoxes arise because the lover doesn't get the response freely and for the right reasons. He remains unsatisfied since his beloved does not reciprocate the feelings he has for her. "When then will the beloved become in turn the lover? The answer is easy: when the beloved projects being loved…Each one wants the other to love him but does not take into account the fact that to love is to want to be loved and that by wanting the other to love him, he only wants the other to want to be loved in turn" (398). The lover's goal is to get love but in wanting to do so he also wants his beloved to desire him as he desires her. If his beloved resists in any sort of way, then the lover resorts to his self-defeating strategies. Thus, the question still remains: How can the lover inspire his beloved to want to be loved by him?
To Love is to Laugh
The response that I seek from my beloved is comparable to the kind of response that a comedian seeks from his audience. The case of love is analogous to the case of laughter9. Laughter is a kind of response that the comedian would want to get from people on certain occasions. It is not something that he can necessarily reason his way into, just like the lover cannot reason his way into love. Even though laughter is different from, say, a hiccup, which is not really in response to anything at all, they both are spontaneous and involuntary. If I do laugh, it expresses something about me since it is response to something that I saw, something that I perceive to be funny. A hiccup, on the other hand, is not an expression of me; it does not tell you anything about me. When we speak of laughter the other person cannot provide an argument or reasons why they found something funny but rather an acknowledgment that there are some things that are genuinely funny. Even though there is no argument there is a sense that laughter is a reaction to some quality that actually exists, unlike hiccups. There are certain things that deserve, or rather, merit laughter and certain things that don't. If the audience finds the comedian genuinely funny then their response is gratifying to the comedian because he wanted them to find him funny. This of course is different from how the comedian could stimulate a response from them by pressing a button. It would be self-defeating, just like the lover's attempt at getting the response that he wants by acting on his beloved's freedom.
Voluntary laughter, like love under oath, is not of any use for the comedian either. If the audience were to do it as a favor for the comedian, if they were to promise him that they would laugh at his jokes during his performance, then this kind of response would be as useless as if it were mechanically produced. The comedian is in pursuit of a certain kind of response like the lover, a response from his audience that is neither mechanical, generated at the push of a button, nor voluntary, under oath or some promise. What is missing from the mechanical and voluntary is that even though in both cases the audience will laugh, they are laughing for all the wrong reasons. Whatever is gratifying will be valuable for the right reasons. Responding for the right reasons, a genuine response of laughter, like love, is the only way to satisfy comedian, or in the latter case, the lover. So, it is essential to preserve the freedom of the Other, whether the beloved or the audience, in order to get a genuine response that is not in any way coerced. A mechanical response wouldn't do because the comedian needs a response from a freedom not an automaton, an object. The Other would love, respect or laugh for the reasons that she finds worthy of love, respect or laughter10. If the comedian or the lover were to reproduce them, they would simply be causal reactions and without any value. If I want a response of a particular kind from someone I respect then I would need to merit or be worthy of that response.
Merit and worth are words of evaluation and thus highly complex and normative. However, responses such as laughter, love and respect have internal normative standards assigned by us. When I laugh at something, it is because I find it genuinely funny; when I respect someone, it is because I find them admirable. The same is true for love. A mechanical response is not what the comedian or the lover is looking for since they wouldn't necessarily be responses to something that inspires them. The audience is not laughing at anything funny, they laugh because they are either being controlled or induced to laugh. If, for example, they make a promise to laugh at the comedian's performance and then do indeed laugh, their laughter is not for the right reasons and thus provides the comedian with no satisfaction. The audience doesn't find him truly funny and yet they laugh at his performance. This is because there are external reasons motivating their laughter. The comedian seeks a response from the audience that is an actual expression for what they feel about him on that occasion. He wants them to laugh at something that strikes them as being funny and has internal normative standards, that is, things they judge to be genuinely funny according to their own standards. So, the only way in which the lover or the comedian can ever hope to get the response that he wants freely and for the right reasons is to make himself worthy of that response. The comedian has to be genuinely funny to get the laugh that he desires from his audience just as the lover must make himself worthy and appealing to merit the response that he wants from his beloved.
This paper investigates Sartre’s claim that the pursuit of ideal love is futile since to love is ‘to act on another’s freedom’. I started by highlighting why our relations to the Other are necessary and cannot be avoided since we depend on the Other for a conception of ourselves that is not readily available to us. Then I went on to delineate how different paradoxes arise when we attempt to get a response from someone either by compulsion or by asking them to take an oath to give us the response we desire. I concluded in support of Prof. Moran’s argument that in order to get the response that I might want from another person, I need to make myself worthy of that response or, to put it differently, I must merit it. This is the only way in which the Other will freely, that is without any form of coercion or pledge, give me the response I seek (whether that be love, respect or admiration). It would however be interesting to note here that when I do indeed make myself worthy of love, for example, would the Other love me or rather the person that I have become? That is to say, the necessity to change myself for the Other, to make myself worthy and merit the love that I seek, may lead me to compromise my agency and subject myself to the whims of my beloved.
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"'Hell is other people' has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us". (Jean Paul Sartre, Imago playbill) http://www.lclark.edu/~clayton/commentaries/hell.html
The Other is defined as an individual consciousness or freedom distinct from me; one who forms her own beliefs and intentions independently, of her own accord, without being forced or coerced.
Lecture Notes.
I define person as an individual autonomous freedom. The Other and I are both described as persons and contrasted to an object or automaton (things which lack individual consciousness or freedom and are easily manipulated).
Sartre does not explicitly state this problem as "the paradox of free and voluntary engagement". This is my own appellation.
Sartre does not explicitly state this problem as "the paradox of free and voluntary engagement". This is my own appellation.
Alienated freedom:"it is the [lover] who by the mere fact of wanting someone to love him alienates his freedom" (397)
ix Lecture notes
x Lecture Notes
Works Cited
Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness; translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Professor Moran Lecture Notes
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