I and the Look of the Other: An Existential Critique

Sigmund Freud in one of his most influential books Civilization and its Discontents points out that the individual must face three types of dangers: disease of the body, natural calamities from the external physical environment and the hostility of persons. Through the advanced medical science and the development of modern technology, the first two dangers have lost much of their terror. But dangers from the hostility of other persons have not decreased. The question then becomes: has this danger not decreased because men are yet unsuccessful in finding a way of reducing it or because the nature of man is such that the danger cannot conceivably be reduced? Jean Paul Sartre an existentialist sees the harmonious interpersonal relationships are impossible because of the very nature of the human condition. This work therefore is geared towards expounding the absurdity of inter-subjectivity in the philosophy of this French atheistic existentialist. The main discourse is on the alienation of the self. As to what alienates the self, Sartre would readily say the look of the Other. The discussion therefore centers on how the look of the other influences the self as Sartre conceived it. He had asserted that human communion of any sort is an illusion. The work will expound his attempt to explain love as one of the modes of human relation through a critical existential method.