JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Politics313other and, in general, they do not look at one another; they exist side by side alongsidea bus stop. At this level, it is worth noting that their isolation is not an inert statute (orthe simple reciprocal exteriority of organisms); rather, it is actually lived in everyone’sproject as its negative structure. In other words, the isolation of the organism, as theimpossibility of uniting with Others in an organic totality, is revealed through theisolation which everyone lives as the provisional negation of their reciprocal relationswith Others. This man is isolated not only by his body as such, but also by the factthat he turns his back on his neighbour—who, moreover, has not even noticed him (orhas encountered him in his practical field as a general individual defined by waiting forthe bus). The practical conditions of this attitude of semi-unawareness are, first, hisreal membership of other groups (it is morning, he has just got up and left his home; heis still thinking of his children, who are ill, etc.; furthermore, he is going to his office;he has an oral report to make to his superior; he is worrying about its phrasing,rehearsing it under his breath, etc.); and secondly, his being-in-the-inert (that is to say,his interest). This plurality of separations can, therefore, in a way, be expressed as thenegative side of individual integration into separate groups (or into groups that areseparate at this time and at this level); and, through this, as the negative side ofeveryone’s projects in so far as they determine the social field on the basis of givenconditions. On the other hand, if the question is examined from the point of view ofgroups, interests, etc.—in short, of social structures in so far as they express thefundamental social order (mode of production, relations of production, etc.)—thenone can define each isolation in terms of the forces of disintegration which the socialgroup exerts on individuals. (These forces, of course, are correlatives of forces ofintegration, which we shall discuss soon.)In other words, the intensity of isolation, as a relation of exteriority between themembers of a temporary and contingent gathering, expresses the degree of massificationof the social ensemble, in so far as it is produced on the basis of given conditions. 6At this level, reciprocal isolations, as the negation of reciprocity, signify theintegration of individuals into one society and, in this sense, can be defined as aparticular way of living (conditioned by the developing totalisation), in interiority andas reciprocity within the social, the exteriorised negation of all interiority (“No onehelps anyone, it’s everyone for himself”) or, on the other hand, in sympathy (as inProust’s “Every person is very much alone”). Finally, in our example, isolation becomes,for and through everyone, for him and for others, the real, social product of cities. Foreach member of the group waiting for the bus, the city is in fact present (as I haveshown in The Problem of Method) as the practico-inert ensemble within which thereis a movement towards the interchangeability of men and of the instrumental ensemble;