“It
is shame or pride which reveals to me the Other’s look and myself at the end of
that look. It is the shame or pride
which makes me live, not know, the situation of being looked at”[1]. This passage by Sartre is the inner monologue
narrative of a person, the eavesdropper, who is trying to understand themself from
the viewpoint of the Other, and at the same time trying to reconcile that
viewpoint with their own differing, and suddenly altered, self-view. The perceptions that are made by the Other
and consequently interpreted by the self create a paradoxical duality situation
in which the self is both existent and non-existent, perceived and not
perceived, shamed and proud[2].
The
duality state of multiple contradictory possibilities co-existing at the same
time for the same object or person has existed as a philosophical concept since
the time of the Pythagorean philosophers.
Indeed, Plato talked about these ideas when he said “…and the ancients,
who were superior to us and dwelt nearer to the Gods, have handed down a
tradition that all things that are said to exist consist of a One and a Many
and contain in themselves the connate principles of Limit and Unlimitedness.”[3] Further to this, the philosophers who
believed that there are things that are both observable and unobservable, or
independent of the observer (or Other), lend credence to the thoughts and ideas
portrayed by Sartre. It does stand to
reason that Sartre’s inspiration for this may have come from those early
philosophers.
These ideas of duality have even gone beyond
just the philosophical world and found themselves being used and applied in
modern science. Erwin Schrodinger is a
modern physicist who explored a similar concept to that in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in relation to
quantum physics and temporal mechanics.
From the point of view that there are different realities for any given
object that are dependant upon the observed or unobserved state of that object,
Schrodinger theorised an experiment.
Schrodinger postulated that if a cat were locked in a box with a
decaying isotope which was to release a poison upon its decay, the cat at the
instant of the poison being released, would both be dead and alive whilst it
was unobserved; yet the moment that something observed the cat, it would be the
influence of that observation that would dictate the fortune or demise of the
cat[4]. Thus, it is the external factor of the
observer, or the Other, that dictates the cats’ actuality.
Levinas
touched on the subject of the observer, or Other, being the one that defines
the reality of a person’s being. When
asked about the face, Levinas said that he wondered if a person can talk about
a look turned toward the face because the look is knowledge and perception[5]. He continued to say that the best way to
understand the face of another is by not focusing on the face. Levinas qualifies this statement by explaining
that when we pay attention to the face, we see the shape of the face, the eyes,
their colour, the hair and all the details so that we can describe the facial
features. However, if we do not pay
attention to these details and observe the face as a portrayal of the person’s
self, we then can understand the person as themself and come to know them, and
not their contextual selves, such as a professor, or a son, or a Justice[6].
This
notion of perception being knowledge, both of self and of Other, fits with the
passage about the eavesdropper and the Other by Sartre. While the eavesdropper was aware of themself before
the arrival of the Other, it was a non-existential consciousness of self that
they had. The world consisted of the
door and the keyhole and what was able to be observed through it. There was, for the eavesdropper, no need to
define themself as anything other than what they were; trying to see what lay
beyond. There was no sense of
self-loathing, no judgement, not even any observance of self while the
eavesdropper was alone.
With
the arrival of the Other, the eavesdropper had a shift in perceived reality of
themself and went from being an observer to being the observed. This change, by merit of interaction with the
Other itself, resulted in the eavesdropper being forced to see themselves from
what the Other might potentially be seeing.
Given the circumstances of eavesdropping that the eavesdropper was found
in, while possibly completely innocent, has the ramifications of being socially
construed badly, and thus enters the possible shame for the eavesdropper which
was nonexistent until forced to perceive themself from the viewpoint of the
Other.
This
entire exchange between the eavesdropper and the Other is at the heart of the
passage written by Sartre. It is the
turning point in the recognition of both the eavesdropper and the Other of whom
the eavesdropper is. Sartre is using
this as an example of how people are defined by their experiences and
interactions with each other. When the
eavesdropper states that the look is triggering either shame or pride, and that
it is that shame or pride that makes them live rather than know the situation,
this is key to understanding the base theory and ideas of the phenomenological
method to which Sartre subscribed. This
method is the attempt to view and describe life and being as the experience
that is being had at the time it is happening, rather than analysing it as a
reflective exercise after the fact.
The
fundamental background of this idea can be explained by stating that there are
two levels of consciousness or awareness that people have; self awareness that
focuses on the self and self awareness that focuses on others, and these two
awareness’s are in a constant state of fluxuation between the observed and the
observer, as discussed in Danto[7].
This
is the crux of the difference between living and knowing. The state of being, whether being for-itself
of being for-others is what will effect self knowledge. As in the example of Schrodinger’s cat, once
the observed is observed, its state of being is a fact and decided. There is no reflection needed to come to the
realisation or conclusion of ones self-identity. When the change is made in the eavesdropper
by the look from the Other, the eavesdropper at once knows who they are and are
painfully aware of their identity and role; thus the “shame makes me live, not
know, the situation of being looked at”.
Until
the event of the Other looking at the eavesdropper and bringing the eavesdropper
outside of themself to observe themself, the eavesdropper only had an awareness
of themself inasmuch as they were affecting the keyhole. Once the look from the Other forced the event
of the outside perception on the eavesdropper, the eavesdropper then went to a
state of cogito ergo cum, and was
taken to the state of living in that moment for that experience and was defined
by it through the look. This concept of
the difference between living and knowing is important in the understanding of
the relationships with other people. To
draw on Levinas, an extreme case for the relationships between people and how
perceived identity and meaning shapes us is through the possibility and act of
murder when looking at a person. Levinas
said that “Murder is a banal fact: one can kill the Other; the ethical exigency
is not an ontological necessity. The
prohibition against killing does not render murder impossible… The face is
exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time, the face is what forbids us
to kill”[8].
It
is through the look of the Other that one is able to gauge, judge, and define
both their own reality and their own identity.
Sartre is demonstrating that through these reciprocal interactions of
sadism and masochism, observing and being observed, being objectified and
objectifying, that people are able to experience life, gain knowledge, and thus
develop a true understanding of themself, both from self and from the
Other. The pride or shame that comes
from as result of the look from the Other is dependant upon the perceived
context that the look is initiated in, as well as interpreted by the
observed. Ultimately, what the observed
chooses to react with when observed by the Other will determine the self-view
that is developed in that instant, be it positive or negative, shame or
pride.
Bibliography
Danto, A. (1991).
‘Shame, Or the Problem of Other Minds’ (extracts) Sartre. Fontana Press.
Fidler, D., Guthrie, K.,
Taylor, T., & Fairbanks,
A. (1987). The
Pythagorean Sourcebook An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to
Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy.
Phanes Press.
Levinas,
E. (1985). ‘The Face’ (extracts). Ethics
and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Duquesne
University Press, Pittsburgh.
Physicsworld. (2000).
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2815 Accessed 20 Sept, 2011.
Sartre,
J. (1956). ‘The Existance of Others: The Look’
(extract). Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Philosophical Library, New York.
[1]
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 261
[2]
Ibid, p. 260
[3]
Plato, Philebus quoted in Fidler p 20
[4]
Physicsworld http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2815
[5]
Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 85
[6]
Ibid, p. 85-87
[7]
Danto, Shame
[8]
Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p.
86-87
No comments:
Post a Comment