JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

Politics321connection between collective unity as a transcendence which is given to the gatheringby the future (and the past), and seriality as everyone’s practico-inert actualisation ofa relation with Others in so far as this relation determines him in his being and alreadyawaits him. The thing as common being produces seriality as its own practico-inertbeing-outside-itself in the plurality of practical organisms; everyone realises himselfoutside himself in the objective unity of interpenetration in so far as he constituteshimself in the gathering as an objective element of a series. Or again, as we shall seemore clearly later, whatever it may be, and whatever the circumstances, the seriesconstitutes itself on the basis of the unity-object and, conversely, it is in the serialmilieu and through serial behaviour that the individual achieves practical and theoreticalparticipation in common being.There are serial behaviour, serial feelings and serial thoughts; in other words aseries is a mode of being for individuals both in relation to one another and in relationto their common being and this mode of being transforms all their structures. In thisway, it is useful to distinguish serial praxis (as the praxis of the individual in so far ashe is a member of the series and as the praxis of the whole series, or of the seriestotalised through individuals) both from common praxis (group action) and fromindividual, constituent praxis. Conversely, in every non-serial praxis, a serial praxiswill be found, as the practico-inert structure of the praxis in so far as it is social. And,just as there is a logic of the practico-inert layer, there are also structures proper to thethought which is produced at this social level of activity; in other words, there is arationality of the theoretical and practical behaviour of an agent as a member of aseries. Lastly, to the extent that the series represents the use of alterity as a bondbetween men under the passive action of an object, and as this passive action definesthe general type of alterity which serves as a bond, alterity is, ultimately, the practicoinertobject itself in so far as it produces itself in the milieu of multiplicity with its ownparticular exigencies. Indeed, every Other is both Other than himself and Other thanOthers, in so far as their relations constitute both him and Others in accordance withan objective, practical, inert rule of alterity (in the formal particularisation of thisalterity).Thus this rule—the formula of the series—is common to all precisely to the extentthat they differentiate themselves. I say common, but not identical: for identity isseparation, whereas the formula of the series is a dynamic scheme which determineseach through all and all through each. The Other, as formula of the series and as a factorin every particular case of alterity, therefore becomes, beyond its structure of identityand its structure of alterity, a being common to all (as negated and preservedinterchangeability). At this level, beyond the concept and the rule, the Other is me in