Shortly before the end of [No Exit], one of the three strangers puts into words that toward which the whole play is turning from its beginning when he says that: “There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people.”
“Hell is other people” means thus that it is hell and unbearable to exist subject to, awaiting, controlled by, and turned toward the Other’s approval, judgements, and opinions.
“Hell is other people” describes an existence existing at the mercy of the Other, the Other’s judgements, and the Other’s accusing gaze. It is hell, tormenting, and unbearable to be unable to escape the Other’s look that objectifies and, in its objectifying, tortures.
Explaining Sartre’s “Hell Is Other People”
Category: Philosophy
objective?
… observer’s paradox is a situation in which the phenomenon being observed is unwittingly influenced by the presence of the observer/investigator.
aims?
What should also become clear in this study are the ways in which Kierkegaard confronts some of the key errors that arise in overly systematic and reductive accounts of Christian conversion:
Torrance, Andrew B.. The Freedom to Become a Christian, pp. 2-3.
- The inherent weakness of approaches that assume we can dichotomise, and then quantify, the respective contributions of divine and human agency;
- The inclination to objectify human beings in ways that neglect their subjective existence as living persons who require to be conceived diachronically – persons who are called to take up a life-long vocation of becoming Christian;
- The tendency to reduce God to an amorphous concept, postulate or figment of the human imagination, thereby neglecting God’s active involvement in the process of becoming a Christian;
- The attendant impulse to allow a body of Christian teaching or dogma to displace the actuality of God’s personal agency;
- The overemphasis on conversion as a solipsistic event of individual transformation rather than a process of becoming reconciled with God;
- The tendency to prioritise epistemology over ontology (that is, over our relationship with God) in discussions of what is involved in becoming a Christian – to focus on the question of ‘What I come to know as a Christian’ rather than ‘Who I come to be as a Christian’; and
- The propensity to lose sight of God’s loving purpose to draw all human beings into the one true form of existence for which they were created.
fact?
The word fact derives from the Latin factum. It was first used in English with the same meaning: “a thing done or performed” – a meaning now obsolete outside the law. The common usage of “something that has really occurred or is the case” dates from the mid-16th century.
Wikipedia: Fact
Fact, truth, real, information, evidence are not synonyms.
just what if?
… the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error–namely, Plato’s invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. … But the struggle against Plato, or–to speak plainer, and for the “people”–the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of Christianity (FOR CHRISTIANITY IS PLATONISM FOR THE “PEOPLE”)
Nietschze
What if, just what if, there is truth in the above? Has the Christian tradition baptised Plato’s world view? Where is the encounter with Jesus? Where is contemporaneity/presence?
absolute nothingness
Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history, greater than the fall of empires, I am aware of my total insignificance. I am totally convinced that I count for nothing in this universe, yet I feel that mine is the only real existence. If forced to choose between the world and myself, I would reject the world, its light and laws, unafraid to glide alone in absolute nothingness. Although my life is a torture, I cannot renounce it because I do not believe in any absolute values for which I could sacrifice myself’
On the Heights of Despair,, Cioran
memories …
Where are my memories when I am not using them?
And how do I know what to remember when?
… but is often forgotten
… what cannot be forgotten is that truth for Christians is not just another object but a concrete person, Jesus of Nazareth. …
Skepticism, Relativism, and Religious Knowledge:
Skepticism arises from our desire to know without the self being transformed. Ironically skepticism is but the result of our anxious desire to secure certainty by being “at home in the world.”
A Kierkegaardian Perspective Informed by Wittgenstein’s Philosophy
waiting
In a world of action, what does the call of Jesus to “follow me” mean? In the world of instant, what does it mean that everything belongs to God?
I like Weil – a rebel. She did not join the Church but confessed Jesus as Lord. Do moderns need to learn, from her, that waiting in hope is something to be desired?
philosophy
Oh, that is not right ….
Me:
this solitary life 