JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

316 Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writingsitself as identity. There is identity when the common interest (as the determination ofgenerality by the unity of an object in the context of particular practices) is mademanifest, and when the plurality is defined just in relation to this interest. In thatmoment, in fact, it matters little if the commuters are biologically or sociallydifferentiated; in so far as they are united by an abstract generality, they are identicalas separate individuals. Their identity is their future practico-inert unity, in so far asit determines itself at the present time as meaningless separation. And, since all thelived characteristics which might allow some interior differentiation lie outside thisdetermination, everyone’s identity with every Other is their unity elsewhere, asother-being; here and now, it is their common alterity. Everyone is the same as theOthers in so far as he is Other than himself. And identity as alterity is exteriorseparation; in other words, it is the impossibility of realising, through the body, thetranscendent unity to come, in so far as this unity is experienced as an irrationalnecessity. 7It is at precisely this level that material objects will be found to determine the serialorder as the social reason for the separation of individuals. The practico-inert exigency,here, derives from scarcity: there are not enough places for everyone. But, apart fromscarcity as the contingent but fundamental relation of man to Nature, which remainsthe context of the whole investigation, this particular scarcity is an aspect of materialinertia. Whatever the demands, the object remains passively what it is: there is noreason to believe that material exigency must be a special, directly experienced scarcity:we shall find different practicoinert structures of the object as an individuated being ofgenerality conditioning different serial relations. I take this example for its simplicity.Thus the specific scarcity—the number of people in relation to the number of places—in the absence of any particular practice, would designate every individual as dispensable;the Other would be the rival of the Other because of their identity; separation wouldturn into contradiction. But, except in cases of panic—where, in effect, everyonefights himself in the Other, in the whirling madness of an abstract unity and a concretebut unthinkable individuality—the relation of reciprocity, emerging or re-emerging inthe exteriority of identity, establishes interchangeability as the impossibility of deciding,a priori, which individuals are dispensable; and it occasions some practice whose solepurpose is to avoid conflicts and arbitrariness by creating an order.The travellers waiting for the bus take tickets indicating the order of their arrival.This means that they accept the impossibility of deciding which individuals aredispensable in terms of the intrinsic qualities of the individual; in other words, thatthey remain on the terrain of common interest, and of the identity of separation asmeaningless negation; positively, this means that they try to differentiate every Other