Jens Bonnemann

Sartre and the Role of Imagination in Mutual Understanding

In this chapter I will discuss the role of imagination in shaping intersubjective relations in the
work of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre develops his theory of intersubjectivity first and foremost in
his main philosophical work Being and Nothingness, published in 1943. I will argue that the
imaginary plays a fundamental role in Sartre’s understanding of intersubjectivity, even though
this role might not, at a first glance, so evidently appear to the reader of the relevant passages
in Being and Nothingness. Most importantly, this role is not limited to my experience of the
other; rather, it also extends to the function the other play in altering my own self-experience.
Besides reframing the discourse on our experience of others, this also has relevant
implications concerning sociality.
A side glance at Sartre’s theory of literary engagement in What is Literature? (1947) helps
introducing the main question I wish to discuss in this essay, Sartre claims that the author
composes the text; yet, as long as s/he doesn’t have any readers, as long as no other subject
joins in, the phantasies s/he expresses in the literary word cannot become ‘objective’ (Sartre
1950, 38). Thus, it is only through the Other, who reads the text, that the artwork is
completed. We can say that our own imagination becomes objective only when another
subject shares this imagination. These remarks on how imagination, as an apparently purely
subjective accomplishment, becomes objective through some form of intersubjective sharing
can be further extended. Indeed, they raise the question as to whether the participation of the
Other also produces the same effect on myself and my own self-conception: Does Sartre help
us demonstrating that our self-conception also become ‘objective’ when the level of
intersubjectivity is reached?
In order to answer this question, in the first section I will begin by explainingdiscuss Sartre’s Commented [m1]: Just a matter of consistency with
the way you introduce the following sections
idea of Being-for-Others by concentrating on his famous theory of the Look in Being and
Nothingness. In the second section, I will examine the meaning of the imaginary that
implicitly comes into play here, particularly drawing from Sartre’s literary work. I will
conclude with a third section devoted to the comparison between Sartre’s approach and the
social theories developed by George Herbert Mead and others. This comparison will allow me
to show how some fundamental insights in these latter approaches to the social sciences can
be fruitfully grounded in Sartre’s philosophy.

(1) To be for the Other

Sartre’s concept of the Look can be largely be understood as an alternative to Edmund
Husserl’s concept of the constitution of the alter ego. In contrast to Husserl’s explanation of
this constitution Sartre insists: “We encounter the Other; we do not constitute him” (Sartre
1984, 336). What Sartre primarily objects to Husserl is the following implication of the idea
of constitution: if the Other is primarily understood as the object of my perception, which
only becomes an alter ego due to its similarity with my own body, then the Other is initially
something that I constitute, and not someone that constitutes her- or himself.
I do, of course, see the other persons in the street, but this kind of perceptual awareness of the
Other is not the primary and fundamental encounter with the Other. It is not that which
teaches me that others exist. My awareness of the other in the original encounter is
fundamentally different from the awareness I have of a mere object of perception. Thus, the
perceived objective Other, whom I see from my window, is not only an object within the
world that appears to the left of a park bench and behind an apple tree; it becomes itself a
centre of orientation that appoints and focuses things onto itself:

The Other is first the permanent flight of things toward a goal which I
apprehend as an object at a certain distance from me but which escapes me
inasmuch as it unfolds about itself its own distances [...]; there is a total
space which is grouped around the Other, and this space is made with my
space; there is a regrouping in which I take part but which escapes me, a
regrouping of all the objects which people my universe” (Sartre 1984, 343).

In order to develop such an effect that I experience another word-organizing-center, the

objective Other has to be more than a simple object of perception (such as, for example, the
park bench behind the apple tree). Yet, the Other, as Sartre continues, is even more: s/he is
not originally the person I see, but the person who sees me: “‘Being-seen-by-the-Other’ is the
truth of ‘seeing-the-Other’” (Sartre 1984, 345). To realize that I am being seen does not mean
to perceive an object but to become aware of being an object myself. In short, “[i]f someone
looks at me, I am conscious of being an object” (Sartre 1984, 363).
Phenomenologically, this can be observed if we consider how the eyes become ‘hidden’ by
the Look. As long as I feel looked at, I cannot make the eyes of the Other the object of my
perception. I can neither find them appealing, nor can I determine the color or size of their
pupil. Of course, the eyes remain in my field of perception, but solely as a presentation; I
don’t use them, they are neutralized: “It is never when eyes are looking at you that you can
find them beautiful or ugly, that you can remark on their color. The Other’s Look hides his
eyes; he seems to go in front of them” (Sartre, 1984, 346).
Thus, the original Other is not an object. Rather, we should describe the situation the other
way around: s/he makes me into an object; s/he is the subject for whom I become the object.
This subjective Other, the one who looks at me, is not an object and, therefore, my experience
of him/her is neither a kind of knowledge nor of perception, since both always designate a
relation to objects. The moment I experience myself as an object for others is not a moment of
knowledge but a moment of shame, whereby shame should be understood here as an
ontological term, and, therefore, not be identified with the common concept of shame. Sartre
writes: “Shame is the feeling of an orginal fall, not because of the fact that I may have
committed this or that particular fault but simply that I have fallen into the world, in the midst
of the things” (Sartre, 1984 384).
Shame reveals to me that I am this being. If I consider my self-experience independently of
the look of the Other I am only a being-for-itself, which means that I am engaged in my
possibilities without recognizing them as such. Taking into consideration the Look, the
description of my self-experience fundamentally changes. Being-for-Others imposes an
identity on me:

Shame – like pride – is the apprehension of myself as a nature although that very
nature escapes me and is unknowable as such [...]; now I am somebody! And the
one who I am – and who on principle escapes me – I am he in the midst of the
world in so far as he escapes me” (Sartre 1984, 352f).

Because the Other’s consciousness is unrecognizable for me “I know neither what I am nor
what is my place in the world, nor what face this world in which I am turn toward the Other”
(Sartre 1984, 359).1.
This also has an impact on subjective freedom. For Sartre, freedom exists as a never-ending
self-choice. I choose to be something, and yet cannot be identical to the chosen being, because
freedom exists only in a constant distance from itself. I am not identical to what I choose to
be, but in the moment I am looked at by the Other I get an identity. The Other who looks at
me makes me into an object that has specific features, characteristics, a social status, etc. It is
almost within reach to become what I choose to be: “It appears to us then that the Other
accomplishes for us a function of which we are incapable and which nevertheless is

1
For further discussion, see Theunissen (1977, 225-230) and Bonnemann (2007, 251-259).
incumbent on us: to see ourselves as we are” (Sartre 1984, 463). Yet, here two problems arise.
First of all, I am now someone, I have an identity – but not for myself; indeed I only have my
identity for the Other. Secondly, the identity the other Other ascribes me can be something I Commented [m2]: Or is there a reason why you
sometimes capitalize and sometimes not?
do not agree with at all. In short: looked at by the otherOther, I may feel I have an identity –
and this is shame –, but I may not recognize my identity. The other human being is not merely
an aid or an obstacle for a use-oriented and instrumental pursuit; furthermore, without the
Other, I wouldn’t know who I am, even if I can’´t see myself with the Other´’s eyes. Sartre´’s
solution of for this contradiction will be elucidated below. For myself it wouldn’t be a
question whether I find myself sympathetic or not, whether I am entertaining or boring, ugly
or beautiful, slim or fat. As soon as I begin to ask myself what kind of person I am, I already
presuppose the Other’s existence and try to see myself the way the Other would see me.
Certain experiences such as hunger or pain, joy or grief, can be disclosed by means of
reflection and introspection: should the Other disagree and tell me that I do not feel any pain
in my stomach, I would still be in a privileged position to respond that s/he is wrong. Yet, I
am not at all in a privileged position when I ask myself whether I am good or bad, stingy or
generous or boring. For these character traits, which express themselves in the public sphere, I
can only rely on the Other’s Look, or on respectively his/her judgment.
I know that I am an object for the Other, that s/he judges me, pegs me. I am something for the
Other, all this is something I experience through shame. However, I never know with
certainty what I am for the Other, whether s/he likes me or is just polite, or if a long-time
friend secretly deems me a fool. While the moon is theoretically recognizable to me, the
person sitting next to me is farther away from me than the moon:

The Other is not a for-it-self as he appears to me; I do not appear to myself as I am

for-the-other: I am incapable of apprehending for myself the self which I am for
the Other; just as I am incapable of apprehending on the basis of the Other-as-
object which appears to me what the Other is for himself” (Sartre, 1984 327).

In turn, I can also try to objectify the Other. According to Sartre, while doing so, I evade
being an object and regain my subjective state. Of course, I do not have to deny the Other’s
consciousness for this, but I can modify it by saying, for instance, that s/he is naive. His/her
own potentially negative opinions about me thus become an expression of his/her own
deficiencies and are of no concern to me. They only say something about him/her, not about
me. Nevertheless, the apparently Object-Other remains an explosive instrument, as in any
moment s/he can gain back his/her subjective state by objectifying me (see Sartre 1984, 394).
In Sartre’s theory of intersubjectivity only two possibilities exist.: On the one hand, I can
accept my objective status and try to appeal to the subjective Other. This means provoking a
favorable judgement about me from the Other; that is, I am trying to become an object of
admiration or love. On the other hand, I can also try to claim the status of the subjective Other
by objectifying the other person, by controlling the Other and by making him/her useful for
my purposes. Just like the master, according to Hegel, is acknowledged without
acknowledging himself, the Other for Sartre is the one who looks at another without wanting
to be looked at himself/herself. Yet, the being-for-itself becomes an identity only when it
accepts its objectivity. We are, however, talking here about a process of seduction: I am
aiming for a charming identity and want to seduce my opponent to accept this identity. For
example, I want to be accepted as a respectable person: As I cannot, in principle, be such a
person just for myself, I have to get the Other see this in me. According to Sartre, I thereby
see myself from the Other’s point of view, and I play the game that is necessary to get a
desired identity for the Other.
Sartre’s example is the bustling coffee house waiter, who eagerly takes care of guests, takes
orders carefully, balances the tray etc.: “He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he
playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a
café” (Sartre 1984, 102). According to Sartre I could never be a waiter in the same way as the
tray in my hand is a tray: “I can not be he, I can only play at being him; that is imagine to
myself that I am he” (Sartre 1984, 103). If I want to consider myself as a waiter, I have to
exist as a waiter for others, which means, I have to to play the role of a waiter. In sum, for
Sartre, you have to convince others, in order to be convinced of your own identity.
The fact that I act or play a role – at least in the social context – distinguishes the ‘drama of
realization’ from ‘drama pure’: “This is the result of the fact that while I must play at being a
café waiter in order to be one, still it would be in vain for me to play at being a diplomat or a
sailor” (Sartre 1984, 131). Whenever I dress up as a soldier, what we have is ‘drama pure’ –
or, as we can also say, a pure comedy: Yet, the person yelling orders across the barrack yard
acts in order to be the officer. The success of this enactment lies in the fact that I am not
contingent anymore, but rather justified through my function in the view of the Other. It is
good for me to be there, because I am the right person at the right time and place. I am a good
waiter, a good officer, a good family man and so forth. Thus, I may certainly be all that, but
not for me because I have no access to the other person’s consciousness: my being lies in the
hands of the Other – concerning my identity I am at the Other’s mercy.
Such as I act to be a good waiter, I also have to act to be a good and respectable person: only
for the Other, who objectifies me, I am kind, choleric, brave, or conniving. Given that ‘being
seen by the other’ is the truth about ‘seeing the other’, it becomes clear why my evaluation of
the Other is dependent on how I imagine that the Other evaluates me. If we wish a positive
evaluation of our person, a flattering objectification through the Other, we will behave
differently, depending on the Other and on whether (we believe) s/he appreciates good
manners or finds such conversation rather annoying and finical, that is if s/he favors correct
behavior or is rather easy-going. Ironically, this is even true when we try to demonstrate our
independence of the Other’s opinion. Of course, the demonstration of independence of the
Other’s opinion is also based and depends on the Other’s opinion. I am, so to speak, chasing
the Other in order to convey my declaration of independence.
For Sartre, the situation of being for the Other resembles a fight between two subjects, a fight
that reminds us of the fight between master and servant in Hegel 1976, chapter IV). The
master is acknowledged, whereas the servant is acknowledging without being acknowledged.
Yet, for Sartre, in contrast to Hegel, there are two forms of acknowledgement: First, I can
approve the other person as a subject, as a ‘Look-Other’. In this case, I am approving that I
have become the object for this person and that s/he judges me. Secondly, I can also approve
him/her as an object, and in this case I am approving him/her as an object with distinctive
features, I admire, for example, his/her intelligence or his/her character.
The objective Other is indeed the one who approves the Other as a subject that looks at
him/her and judges him/her. But in extreme cases this subject-Other can also be degraded into
being nothing but an audience. The objective Other can be someone who wants to fascinate
others, e.g., the one who upstages everyone else. Let me now clarify these two different kinds
of being-for-Other by using Sartre’s book on the scandalous homosexual author Jean Genet as
an example.

(2) The rejection of a superior point of view

The decent bourgeois reader of the Forties and Fifties might have accepted that a homosexual
is presented to him/her as the theme of a novel – just like watching a documentary about a
strange life form. But Genet’s provocation lies in the fact that he precisely described
bourgeois life from a homosexual perspective. It is not the homosexual who is the object for
the bourgeois subject but the other way around: it is the bourgeois that is being looked at; the
bourgeois becomes the object for a homosexual subject, who claims the status of the subject-
Other. Thus, the bourgeois reads a novel that confronts him/her with the view of the
homosexual disregarded misfit of the bourgeois her/himself:

Genet refuses to be a pebble; he never sides with the public prosecutor; he never
speaks to us about the homosexual, about the thief, but always as a thief and as a
homosexual [...]. A child who had seen Fernandel on the screen a dozen times
once met him in the street. ‘What,’ he asked, frightened, ‘he exists?’ When
reading Genet, we are similarly tempted to ask ourselves: ‘Does a homosexual
exist? Does he think? Does he judge, does he judge us, does he see us?’” (Sartre
1963, 587f)

In general, the view of the Other always features a certain kind of weirdness: Because I can’t
see myself the way the Other sees me, I cannot recognize what I am approving. In this
respect, as long as I claim myself to be kind or dumb, respectful or clumsy, I have already
assumed the Other’ view, because I can only judge myself in relation to the Other: The Other
is the condition of every thought I have about myself. Here, the following problem occurs: I
only become an object with certain characteristics through the Other. But I don’t know how
the Other sees me, and thus I cannot recognize the object that I have become. Thus, Sartre
rejects a superior point of view that, as Hegel would have assumed, postulates the assimilation
and integration of the consciousness of another person:

For Hegel indeed truth is truth of the Whole. And he places himself at the vantage
point of truth – i. e. of the whole – to consider the problem of the Other. Thus
when Hegelian monism considers the relation of consciousness, it does not put
itself in any particular consciousness.” (Sartre 1984, 328)

On the other hand, it should be possible to see myself through the Other’s eyes on the basis of
the experience of being seen. But how can this be possible, if I can obtain neither the Other’s
point of view nor my objective self, since the Other only sees it for her/himself? Assuming
that I do not have access to the Other’s point of view, and yet that his/her Look on me is
necessary to shape my own identity and constitute me as object, how can I become for myself
an object that I can think about and that I can characterize? In sum: how can I see myself with
the eyes of the Other, if the Other is a different consciousness? As we have seen, Sartre (1984,
329) rejects any presupposition of an absolute point of view from which not only my own
consciousness but also the Other’s one is recognizable. It is right here that imagination comes
into play: As I have already mentioned, the single human being wants to be what s/he chooses Commented [m3]: Singular?

to be. If I chose to be the waiter, or everybody’s darling, or the an interesting and

extraordinary personality, I have to try to see myself from the perspective of the Other, that is,
since I do not have other access to that perspective, I have to imagine how the Other sees me.
Being seen by the Other gives me an identity, but an identity in the eyes of another. I cannot
really see myself from the Other’s perspective, because I would first have to overcome the my
first-person- perspective in order to take up the absolute point of view that Hegel talked about.
Such an attempt would fail according to Sartre: The otherness of the Other is insuperable, and
here imagination comes into play: I can’t recognize what the Other sees, but I can imagine it.
The perceptible qualities of the objective Other become the basis for imagining his/her
inaccessible view. Although such attempts are highly risky, they are not out of reach, nor are
they avoidable. Distinctive features for the judgement of my personality could be what Axel
Honneth (2003) calls the embodied and expressive body language, gestures, facial
expressions, speech, tone, etc., and all moments that qualify the interacting relationships.
For Sartre the absolute point of view – be that of God, or of the Absolute in Hegel’s sense –,
in which I “transcend my being toward a reciprocal and universal relation in which I could see
my being and that of others as equivalent” (Sartre 1984, 329), is excluded. Yet, since the first-
personal perspective cannot in principle be overcome, what remains is imagination: I can
imagine what the Other sees in me. Here, we can distinguish three steps: First, in order to get
an identity, I need the objectifying view of the Other. Secondly, this implies that I have to act
as a comedian: I play the person I want to be – and it is here that imagination for the first time
comes into play. Thirdly, in order to capture this identity for myself, I have to try to see
myself from the Other’s perspective. Because the Other is the Other and thus his/her
perspective of on me is unrecognizable, I have to imagine how the Other sees me – and here
imagination once more comes into play.

(3) To see me with the eyes of the Other

The previous discussion of Sartre’s understanding of the role of imagination and the Look of
the Other is not only relevant to the inquiry into how I shape an ‘objective’ self-conception;
rather, it also impinges on Sartre’s account of sociality and social experience. Sartre’s view,
in this respect, significantly converges with that of classical authors in sociology, such as
George Herbert Mead, and Erving Goffman, as well as of Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann. Concerning the social constitution of the self Mead explicates: “Since it is a social
self, it is a self that is realized in its relationship to others. It must be recognized by others to
have the very values which we want to have belong to it” (Mead 1992, 204). Moreover, in his
sociology of images, Goffman argues that what a human protects and defends and where s/he
invests feelings is an idea of himself/herself – and such ideas are shaped through
communication:

As status, a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed, and the
displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well
articulated. Performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good
faith, it is none the less something that must be enacted and portrayed, something
that must be realized” (Goffman 1959, 75).

Luckmann and Berger, substantially agreeing with this account, also make a concrete
example: “Wife, children and secretary solemnly reaffirm each day that one is a man of
importance, or a hopeless failure; maiden aunts, cooks and elevator operators lend varying
degrees of support to this” (Berger and Luckmann 1991, 170). In total agreement with
Sartre,they add: “We not only live in the same world, we participate in each other’s being”
(Berger and Luckmann 1991, 150). Yet, the sociologists mentioned above take into account
the level of institutions and practices, codices and conventions that the early Sartre almost
completely neglected. His early contribution can rather be seen in the phenomenological
description of what underlies those conventions, namely the description of how the
unrecognizable other subject, our own being committed to the judgement of the Other, and the
fight for acceptation or rejection of a certain identity are disclosed from the first-person
perspective. This approach complements the sociologist’s third-person perspective, not only
in that it allows us to reassess the function of the phenomenon of ‘being looked at’, but also in
that it provides an important answer to the question as to what a human has to be when
interaction takes place.
The following is of great importance: my objective self-conception, shaped through what I
imagine to be the way the Other sees me, is not a kind of deception as it would be if the
being-for-itself pretends to be something while being something else in reality – moreover,
the being-for-itself is not any identity at all. The imagined identity is instead the goal of the
social action. Accordingly, playing a role is not a form of deception, ,but rather a honest and
sometimes even desperate attempt to realize something that is, according to Sartre, namely the
identity is impossible to realize due to the ontological condition of the human being. Thus,
Mathieu, the main character in Sartre’s novel The Age of Reason ponders: “’Perhaps it’s
inevitable; perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all, or impersonating what one
Commented [m4]: I think there is something missing
or grammatically incorrect in this sentence, but I cannot
say what (either something missing after “that is”; or
something odd in the sentence beginning with
“namely”. Could you rephrase?

is. That would be terrible’, he said to himself: ‘it would mean that we were duped by nature.’”
(Sartre 2001, 173). We also find in this book an example on how human existence tries to
grasp its being by trying to capture itself in the imaginary point of view of the Other:
“Mathieu saw himself with Ivich’s eyes, and was filled with self-contempt” (Sartre 2001, 80).
Consistently, thus, it is not introspection but rather interaction that eventually shows me who I
am. This also becomes clear to Lucien, the power-obsessed main character of Sartre’s novella
“Childhood of a Leader”:

’First maxim,’ Lucien said, ‘not to try and see inside yourself; there is no mistake
more dangerous.’ The real Luien – he knew now – had to be sought in the eyes of
others, in the frightened obedience of Pierrette and Guigard, the hopeful waiting
of all those beings who grew and ripened for him, these young apprentice girls
who would become his workers, people of Férolles, great and small, of whom he
would one day be the master. Lucien was almost afraid, he felt almost too great
for himself. So many people were waiting for him, at attention: and he was and
always would be this immense waiting of others. ‘That’s a leader,’ he thought
(Sartre 1975, 142f).

From these examples, we can now also critically reassess some crucial aspects in Charles
Taylor’s social philosophy. Taylor criticizes the one-sidedness of the liberalistic idea of man
when he emphasizes that the other human not only has an instrumental meaning for us, but is
rather essential for my own identity. I am acting instrumentally when my action is aimed at a
certain advantage, but as soon as my aim is about my own self-perception, as soon as strong
evaluations come into play, instrumental acting is abandoned according to Taylor: “In weak
evaluation, for something to be judged good it is sufficient that it be desired, whereas in
strong evaluation there is also a use of ‘good’ or some other evaluative term for which being
desired is not sufficient” (Taylor 1985, 18). And he continues:

I mentioned [...] that strong evaluators can be called deep because what weights
with them are not only the consummations desired but also what kind of life, what
quality of agent they are to be. This is closely connected with the notion of
 identity [...]. By ‘identity’ I mean that use of the term where we talk about
‘finding one’s identity’, or going through an ‘identity crisis’. Now our identity is
defined by our fundamental evaluations [...]. If my being of a certain lineage is to
me of central importance, if I am proud of it, and see it as conferring on me
membership in a certain class of people whom I see as marked off by certain
qualities which I value in myself as an agent and which come to me from this
background, then it will be part of my identity. (Taylor 1985, 34)2;

Yet, according to Sartre, instrumental acting and gaining of identity do not exclude each other
as strictly as Taylor presumes. In the passage of the narration “Childhood of a Leader”
mentioned above, indeed, Lucien considers the people around him as manipulatively
controlled instruments of his own self-affirmation. He knows for example how to act towards
his girlfriend in order to make her see him as an impressive and unquestionable authority: on
the one hand, he depends on her for his self-affirmation; yet, on the other hand, he also
controls her entirely in several ways.
This is a good example of a working construction of an identity that is primarily based on
instrumental, even violent acting. Of course, it doesn’t have to be like that, but it can be like
that. And, in any case, this is not something to be excluded as Taylor contends. Lucien
realizes his identity in the silent and intimidated speech of his girlfriend, in her frightened
facial expression and in the uncontradicted docility that she does not show towards other
people. In contrast to Taylor’s illustrations, communities of values and cultural ways of life
are not at all in contradiction to strategic acting. If Lucien wants to believe that he is living a
life the society he lives in considers as valuable, this does indeed include such a strategic
relationship to certain people.

(4) Conclusions

The previous discussion shows how, according to Sartre, certain claim concerning the
truthfulness of introspective self-experience should be rejected: I cannot introspectively
realize how I am on my own. Nor can I, of course, try to determine how the Other is by means
of introspection. At best, truthfulness here can mean no more than: I really want to be what I
am enacting and playing, i.e., I really want to be the way I imagine the Other sees me. This

2
See also Taylor (1991), chapter 5 and Taylor (1992).
game can, of course, be played both candidly and somewhat cynically. In this latter case, I
want you to see me in a certain way, not because I candidly want to realize this specific
identity, but rather because it turns out to be useful for my own goals: I present myself, for
example, as a clueless naïf person in order to pick my rival’s pockets during a poker game. In
this or similar cases, the way I behave trying to conform a certain image is not about the real
constitution of an identity, but only about some pragmatic goals and a pragmatic calculation
of consequences, risks, costs and advantages. A genuinely considered identity appears when I
tell a third person about my tricks in order to be considered one hell of a guy because I really
want to be what this third person sees in me.
Accordingly, the process through which an identity is about to be generated can be considered
to be a ‘strong evaluation’ in Taylor’s sense , that is, not only an instrument for my goals but
a very important element in my concept of what a good life is. Yet, the question of whether I
really managed to gain this identity cannot be answered with certainty once and for all. If I
want to be a scientist, a sympathetic man respected by everyone; if I wish to be an interesting
and extraordinary personality, or if I want to include all such things in the script of my life – ,
then I have to try to see myself from the Other’s point of perspectiveview, that is I have to
imagine what the Other sees in me. And such imagining provides me with no certainty.
I cannot experience the Other’s consciousness as s/he does, for it is precisely a different and
separated consciousness. Thus, I cannot know what kind of object I am for the Other either; I
can only imagine it and this imagination is based on the perceived characteristics of the Other:
his/her facial expression and gestures, on the words s/he uses etc. According to Sartre’s
philosophy, being a performer and an actor is characteristic of the human nature as such: if I
want to implement an identity, I will only succeed through interaction; and this identity is
only imaginary. I have to act to be the scientist, I have to act to be a good person – if I want to
be convinced of this play, then I have to convince the other person to begin with. When the
other person looks at me, imagination comes into play, because I stage myself in front of the
Other. When I think about myself, imagination comes into play as well, because I try to
imaginarily see myself with the eyes of another. The otherness of the other person, as well as
the inescapability of the first-person perspective, is the basis for the constitutive correlation of
interaction and imagination.
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Jens Bonnemann
Lehrstuhl für Bildtheorie und Phänomenologie
Institut für Philosophie
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Ernst-Ebbe-Platz 8
07743 Jena