Hello forthebirds,
Long time,no see.I hope you are well.
‘No Exit’ ,a play,relates the arrival of three characters in hell. Two women and a man trying to understand what might lead them to hell and what is their punishment. They quickly understand that there is no executioner because each of the other two is the hangman for the third. The full version of the quote :
“Ha, you’re only two? I thought you were much more numerous. So that’s hell. … I never thought You remember: the sulphur, the stake, the grill .. Oh What a joke. No need to grill: hell is other people”
Others in Sartre occupies a special place. Indeed, consciousness is not alone in the world. It must arrange with other minds, fighting to exist. The For-Itself (= man) is also a for-others.
Other is a scandal because I do not exist while he has the power to freeze me into a being (vulgar, proud, shy, …) that I am not. The gaze of others exposes me, makes me weak and fragile, turns me into object for him.
“If there is an Other, whatever, wherever, whatever its relationship with me … then I have an outside, a nature, my original sin is the existence of the other“(Being and Nothingness, p. 321)
The only defence that man has at his disposal is to transform others, to turn into an object. We must get rid of others, to escape, to reclaim yourself and the world .Consciousness invents this subterfuge to continue to exist as a subject.
The No Exit play by Sartre perfectly illustrates the difficult coexistence of people: other people is what alienates me.