Philosophers

Could someone explain to me like I am five, why Sartre believed that the shame was the inevitable and basic (authentic) existential response to the gaze of the other? I can understand somewhat when he says "that no once can be vulgar alone" but I don't understand how he can say that the other in some basic existential way can produce shame.

Comments

My initial mode of consciousness ispure and unreflective. I am nothing but an outward directednesstowards the world. Others, however, do not just gaze at the worldalongside me, they gaze at me. By way of the other, then, Ibecome aware of myself as also being the type of thing that can begazed upon, and that I am responsible for how I look to the other.Accordingly, I can then feel shame or pride. You are right to ask,though, why this possibility of shame then is said to beessential. Well, first ofall, to feel pride would be accept the judgement of the other that Iam nothing but the thing upon which they gaze. Specifically, I wouldbe accepting that I am not free – a classic case of inauthenticity.Shame, on the other hand, includes the consciousness of freedom; thatis, the conscousness that I could and should have been somethingelse. Shame, in short, is authentic because it recognisesresponsibility while at the same time recognising freedom.

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