TO O CLO S E TO GETH ER, TO O FA R A PA RT
Is Hell Other People Or Is There Some Way Out? BY IMRAN HAQUE ILLUSTRATED BY MARIUS MATULEVICIUS
O
ne of the concerns of existentialists is whether existence precedes essence or whether essence precedes existence. This concern establishes that there are two types of being. Being-in-itself is that being which is an object such as a table, while being-for-itself is human beings. One human being’s essence comes from the gaze of the other, as it is impossible to access one’s-self through introspection which establishes that we are being-for-others. The epistemology of accessing ourselves through the view of the other is problematic, as it causes conflict, when the other tries to objectify my autonomous nature, by looking at me, which urges one to engage in mechanisms to control the other’s freedom. Sartre’s play, No Exit shows us the human condition of being, in which he portrays the experience of other people being hell. He illustrates this through the trickery of love in objectifying a being-for-itself, and with sadism objectifying autonomous beings. However Sartre’s main purpose, drawing his ideas most closely from Heidegger, in the wake of fascism’s defeat, is to free people from the experience of other people being hell, by ridding them of bad faith and advocating ethical responsibility. Does existence precede essence or does essence precede existence? Talking about the disparity within existentialists Sartre says regarding people “what they [existentialists] have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence,” (Existentialism & Humanism, 1946, p26). This means, as Spade said in short “when the creator of a letter opener makes the letter opener, he already knows
151
