The notion
that “hell is other people” raises the question of my relationship to the
“other,” a person similar to myself; another "me" but who is not me.
By asserting that hell is the other, hell enters our world, the world of the
living. The abyss comes up to the earth's surface and hell is lived here and
now; it is no longer what might await us after death…
The other’s
presence in Sartre’s world is a forced, almost inevitable, cohabitation with
him, a horrid promiscuity, but are human relations inevitably suffocating?
We all judge
each other most of the time, mostly negatively. Even friends judge each other and
it is difficult to accept criticism. In Huis Clos, the characters find it difficult
to admit that the others are right in their judgments; we hide our failings,
like being a coward, to ourselves.
Children are
cruel judges of each other, especially to those who are different. What they
say to each other can sometimes be traumatizing and some children develop inferiority
complexes or psychoses during adolescence.
The need to
judge others comes essentially from our aggressive nature. Whether it is
consciously or unconsciously we seem to need to make others suffer, to make their
lives a living hell.
The presence
of others and being permanently subject to their judgments is hell because we find
it difficult to accept criticism. If we do accept it, we think we are the way
others see us and we in a sense lose our real identity. It is necessary to free
oneself from the objectifying gaze of others, to escape from them.
But the gaze
of others is indispensable to build oneself. We see it in the distress of the
marginalized, rejected by society and ignored; they would prefer to be hated
rather than just ignored. The gaze of others is indeed indispensable, both for
self-consciousness and self-knowledge. As Sartre wrote in Existentialism
is a humanism (1945): "To get closer to the truth about myself, I have
to go through the other" (« Pour obtenir une vérité quelconque sur moi, il faut
que je passe par l'autre »).
Nota bene: this is an edited and abridged version of Lyvan's speech for the "JBM" public speaking competition.
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