JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

226Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsof it as an existent which would be provided with tendencies as this glass is providedwith certain particular qualities. This pursuing flight is not given which is added on tothe being of the for-itself. The for-itself is this very flight. The flight is not to bedistinguished from the original nihilation. To say that the for-itself is a pursuedpursuing,or that it is in the mode of having to be its being, or that it is not what it isand is what it is not—each of these statements is saying the same thing. The for-itselfis not the in-itself and can not be it. But it is a relation to the in-itself. It is even the solerelation possible to the in-itself. Cut off on every side by the in-itself, the for-itself cannot escape it because the for-itself is nothing and it is separated from the in-itself bynothing. The for-itself is the foundation of all negativity and of all relation. The foritselfis relation.Such being the case, the upsurge of the Other touches the for-itself in its very heart.By the Other and for the Other the pursuing flight is fixed in in-itself. Already the initselfwas progressively recapturing it; already it was at once a radical negation of fact,an absolute positing of value and yet wholly paralyzed with facticity. But at least itwas escaping by temporalization; at least its character as a totality detotalized conferredon it a perpetual “elsewhere.” Now it is this very totality which the Other makesappear before him and which he transcends toward his own “elsewhere.” It is thistotality which is totalized. For the Other I am irremediably what I am, and my veryfreedom is a given characteristic of my being. Thus the in-self recaptures me at thethreshold of the future and fixes me wholly in my very flight, which becomes a flightforeseen and contemplated, a given flight. But this fixed flight is never the flight whichI am for myself; it is fixed outside. The objectivity of my flight I experience as analienation which I can neither transcend nor know. Yet by the sole fact that I experienceit and that it confers on my flight that in-itself which it flees, I must turn back towardit and assume attitudes with respect to it.Such is the origin of my concrete relations with the Other; they are wholly governedby my attitudes with respect to the object which I am for the Other. And as theOther’s existence reveals to me the being which I am without my being able either toappropriate that being or even to conceive it, this existence will motivate two opposedattitudes: First— The Other looks at me and as such he holds the secret of my being,he knows what I am. Thus the profound meaning of my being is outside of me,imprisoned in an absence. The Other has the advantage over me. Therefore in so far asI am fleeing the in-itself which I am without founding it, I can attempt to deny thatbeing which is conferred on me from outside; that is, I can turn back upon the Other soas to make an object out of him in turn since the Other’s object-ness destroys myobject-ness for him. But on the other hand, in so far as the Other as freedom is the