The chapter proceeds in three parts: Love, Language, Masochism; Indifference, Desire, Hate, Sadism; and \u201cBeing-With\u201d (Mitsein<\/span>) and the \u201cWe\u201d. We\u2019ll look now at the first two of these. An important thing to note to begin with is that Sartre takes our relations with others (he uses the Hegelian notion of \u2018Others\u2019) are fundamental to our very being. To call them \u2018others\u2019 would suggest that they are incidental \u2013 \u2018Other\u2019 expresses that they are essential. We are who we are only when we have interacted and because of our interactions with Others.<\/p>\n The first section describes our basic relationship of attraction. We are attracted to an Other because we are fundamentally a \u2018lack\u2019 and need to be made whole, to be grounded. Love is the first, and perhaps most natural, way we seek to ground ourselves. However, we want this grounding to be a certainty, we fear grounding ourselves, our lives, in anything that could at any moment wrench away and leave us to fall apart. So we implicitly want to objectify <\/span>our lover, to limit his\/her freedom. But if we\u2019re successful, we have simply won obedience or compliance, we don\u2019t have the love of a free being.<\/p>\n This moves us to language, whereby we seek to fascinate the Other, to make his\/her freedom express itself upon our<\/span> facticity, our history and life. We tell stories, show our wit, speak lovingly, and so on in order to make ourselves the center of the Other\u2019s universe. This is a mutual activity, I want the Other to see the world through my eyes (my history, my way of thinking), but she wants the same of me.<\/p>\n Each of us will win\/give victories to the Other, hopefull that the Other will reciprocate. If the Other does not reciprocate, but ignores my story, refuses to take my perspective, he\/she will have expressed his\/her power over me. As this happens, I am likely to move to masochism, which is not necessarily a sexual term here. It refers simply to one\u2019s attempt to make him\/herself an object for the Other, to throw oneself fully to the feet of the Other, with the hope that they will use you. When the Other complies, I have won a small victory, I have imposed myrself upon the freedom of the Other. By throwing my whole body at the Other, I may win where language had failed me.<\/p>\n Conversely, at any moment, a second way of relating to others may take over. This is the way of aversion, and begins with simple indifference. Indifference is our attempt to cut off the power of the Other at the very first look. We give a cold, unconcerned look at the Other and casually look away, as if we had seen nothing at all. We attempt here to objectify the Other, to deny that we are looking at a free being; but in the process we objectify ourselves, we deny our own freedom from interacting with the other, we turn ourselves into a body with eyes, with no subject <\/span>behind them. But in objectifying ourselves in front of the Other, we implicitly recognize his\/her freedom, and likewise, our self-objectification is only a free choice we make and moments later our freedom, the very fact that we are not a mere object, reasserts itself.<\/p>\n Thus we move to desire, since we cannot deny the freedom of the other, we attempt to possess the Other\u2019s freedom by possessing his\/her body (or objectivity). This is an important stage for Sartre; he feels that desire is an ontological, fundamental, aspect of life. It is an immediate response to the first Others we recognize in life, our parents. Youth and maturity is a process of losing that possession and trying to replace it with Others. Sexual relations here represent the culmination of our attempt to possess the Other, but even in friendships and\/or work relationships we can see subtle grabs for possession, power-plays, etc. But, though we may succeed in possessing the body of the Other, we cannot possess his\/her freedom. Our desire is thwarted.<\/p>\n To deal with this we move to sadism, the attempt to feel nothing, to deny one\u2019s own freedom in an attempt to deny the freedom of the Other. This seems to be an almost exclusively sexual category, one obscenely attempts to deny the freedom of the other by withdrawing, becoming mechanical, unresponsive. I think in modern parlance this is refered to as \u2018angry sex\u2019. But, as with indifference, our freedom inevitably exerts itself again \u2013 we look into the eyes of the Other and realize his\/her freedom and immediately realize our own freedom. The more we can avoid our freedom, the more \u2018angry sex\u2019 works to distract us from the reality of our relationship, but it cannot succeed indefinitely.<\/p>\n If this is not dealt with, it inevitably leads to hate, open hostility toward the Other. How many relationships go this route? This building upward of intensity, of denial of one another\u2019s freedom, and the culminating hatred when the denial inevitably fails.<\/p>\n Sartre suggests that we are trapped in these motions, though not necessarily rising up to the levels of sadism, masochism, or hate. It is simply inevitable because our basic nature is one of uncertainty that we can\u2019t help but want to overcome. The upshot seems to be that when we accept this and learn to recognize our own moments of trying to deny the freedom of the Other, we can keep our relationships on acceptable levels, and perhaps (though Sartre doesn\u2019t say it) cultivate an attitude of acceptance <\/span>of the Other\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n
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