Editing Existentialism (section)

=== The Other and the Look ===
{{main|Other (philosophy)}}
The Other (written with a capital "O") is a concept more properly belonging to [[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]] and its account of [[intersubjectivity]]. However, it has seen widespread use in existentialist writings, and the conclusions drawn differ slightly from the phenomenological accounts. The Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as a person does. In its most basic form, it is this experience of the Other that constitutes intersubjectivity and objectivity. To clarify, when one experiences someone else, and this Other person experiences the world (the same world that a person experiences)—only from "over there"—the world is constituted as objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing the same things. This experience of the Other's look is what is termed the Look (sometimes the [[Gaze]]).{{sfn|Crowell|2020|loc=2.2 Alienation}}

While this experience, in its basic phenomenological sense, constitutes the world as objective and oneself as objectively existing subjectivity (one experiences oneself as seen in the Other's Look in precisely the same way that one experiences the Other as seen by him, as subjectivity), in existentialism, it also acts as a kind of limitation of freedom. This is because the Look tends to objectify what it sees. When one experiences oneself in the Look, one does not experience oneself as nothing (no thing), but as something (some thing). In Sartre's example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole, the man is entirely caught up in the situation he is in. He is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what goes on in the room. Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other. He is then filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing—as a [[Peeping Tom]]. For Sartre, this phenomenological experience of shame establishes proof for the existence of other minds and defeats the problem of [[solipsism]]. For the conscious state of shame to be experienced, one has to become aware of oneself as an object of another look, proving a priori, that other minds exist.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sartre |first=Jean Paul |title=Being and Nothingness |date=1992 |publisher=Washington Square Press |isbn=978-0-230-00673-7 |location=New York |translator-first=Hazel E. |translator-last=Barnes |chapter=Chapter 1 |author-link=Jean-Paul Sartre}}</ref> The Look is then co-constitutive of one's facticity.

Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is possible that the creaking floorboard was simply the movement of an old house; the Look is not some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the Other sees one (there may have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that person). It is only one's perception of the way another might perceive him.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Sartre, Jean Paul: Existentialism {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/sartre-ex/ |access-date=2024-06-14 |language=en-US}}</ref>