The impact of people who look at us on our identity

“Hell is other people”

Among Sartre’s quotes, this is perhaps his most famous line. It is also one of the most misunderstood.

It may seem like a simple (possibly even banal) phrase that describes something that each of us has inevitably felt more than once; one may interpret it as another way of saying something along the lines of: “people suck” or “I hate everyone”. But misanthropy is far from its true meaning (though this doesn’t necessarily absolve people from this accusation).

Sartre’s intention is not to say that people are the root of all our problems – though it often feels like other people do make our lives hell. It is not to provide yet another pessimistic view of humankind as vile and selfish. It is not about exploring the ways in which humans make each other miserable. In fact, the reasoning behind such a statement has nothing to do with other people’s actions, and all to do with perception.

The quote comes from Sartre’s play “No Exit” (1944), in which the three characters have died and find themselves in hell; though his concept of hell is not what we’d expect. Instead of torture chambers and whatever else your mind can conjure up at the thought of the word, hell is (you’ve guessed it) other people: Garcin, Estelle and Inez quickly realize that they are each other’s torturers.

Sartre believes in the inherent freedom which characterizes people: we are completely free to create our own essence through our choices and actions. We all are active subjects in our own lives. In other words, each of us is the protagonist of the story we tell ourselves: we are aware of our own selves in a way no one else can be.

The problem arises when other people come into play.

At the same time as being conscious of ourselves, we often become the object which is seen and perceived from the outside, from others (a perspective we can never obtain).

Picture yourself going about your day. You’re walking in the street, sitting in the metro, or pushing a cart at the grocery store, and you look up to meet the gaze of a stranger who, for some reason, was looking at you. This person watching you has, in a way, broken the story you were telling yourself until that brief moment in which your eyes met. Now you start to wonder why this person was looking at you, why they noticed you, what they thought of you.

The moment you notice someone watching you, you become aware of yourself in an entirely new manner. Instead of being simply yourself, you suddenly become something that is perceived, and judged. It is as though The Look (“Le Regard”) limits our freedom: this person who looks at you is judging you and attempting to define you. They are imposing their definition on you, and you start to feel as though you were not in control of your identity.

In the play, Garcin becomes worried about how others view him: he believes he is brave – he desperately wants others to think that he is – but others consider him a coward:

[Garcin]: “They’re passing judgment on my life without troubling about me, and they’re right, because I’m dead. […]
If there’s someone, just one person, to say quite positively that I did not run away, that I’m not the sort who runs away, that I’m brave and decent and the rest of it – well, that one person’s faith would save me.”

Our freedom – our identity – comes into contrast and clashes with other’s gaze and judgment. We have no way of knowing (nor deciding) how this other person interprets us and defines us. Sartre’s hell is the realization that we are trapped in other people’s perception. When you notice that stranger watching you, even if it’s just a quick glance, do you not become worried about what they might be thinking?

What matters to Garcin is that the person in front of him doesn’t think he is a coward. We may worry about what the stranger who glanced in our direction thought of us in that instant, but as soon as they’re away from sight, it doesn’t matter anymore: if we are not perceived, we cease to exist.
And if we do not exist in other people’s minds, we are free. So long as we are within someone’s perception, we are trapped in what they choose, a part of us is defined by them, just like Garcin is defined and trapped by the perception of Inez:

[Inez]: “You’re a coward, Garcin, because I wish it! I wish it – do you hear? – I wish it. And yet, just look at me, see how weak I am, a mere breath on the air, a gaze observing you, a formless thought that think you. […] But what can you hope to do? You can’t throttle thoughts with hands. So you’ve no choice, you must convince me, and you’re at my mercy.”

The question, at this point, becomes whether or not we can rid ourselves of this feeling. Can we remain free to create our own meaning in spite of others’ perception?

Think about that same moment, when you met that stranger’s eyes in the grocery store or in the metro or in the street.
What do you think of that person? Surely the answer varies according to many factors, though I would argue that we become so focused, so preoccupied, about thinking What does this person think of me? that we seldom have much time left to give that person any actual thought. And this is probably the exact same thing the other person is going through.

“l’enfer, c’est les autres”

But if hell is other people, then we are part of that hell just as much as they are: we may feel like the protagonists of our own story, but that is all. If we are so focused on how we are being perceived, then no one is actually fixated on defining others.
The challenge is not to learn how to exist beyond other people’s definitions of us. It is not a struggle to exist among people without surrendering who we are.

Hell seems to be more a self-imposed anxiety rather than an actual external force. We fear ‘The Look ‘ of others, fear what they might think, when they are just as absorbed in their own self consciousness as we are.

The challenge is to realize that people don’t have the time to think about others. They’re busy going through the same hell as you are. We are not prisoners of others’ judgments, we might just be prisoners of our own assumptions about their judgments.

True freedom is not escaping the gaze of others, but realizing it was never as powerful as we thought.

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