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Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said "hell is other people"
Posted by elitethinker • 5/17/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: hell, people
How would you apply this to yourself in relation to others ?
As for JP Sartre this is what he meant:
www.lclark.edu/~clayton/commentaries/hell.html
…“hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, … we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. … But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us.
User Comments
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Other people's judgments affect us only if we let them. There is no cause and effect relation there. Personally, I don't care how other people see me. It's irrelevant to how I see myself.-
Maybe you don't care how they see you, but imagine you are alone on earth would you miss them ?
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Now you're talking about companionship, which is an altogether different thing. I don't care what people think of me, but I certainly enjoy company.
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When someone comes to a level in philosophy or in science, that's exactly the thing they live: "Hell is other people"
I think J.P.Satre was a kind of man. It's not easy to express himself and his ideas to the society. -
Not a fan of Sartré. I think he's a quack.-
Neither am I in truth, but his idea is just Universal. I never found the reason why he committed suicide: was it because of that very idea or just a woman who let him down
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He was a genius!
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Jean-Paul Sartre led several generations to a suicide of their intelligence. What falls first in intelligence is being, not nothingness!
In fact, a good number of his disciples committed suicide, but, curiously, not him! -
I believe one has to look at it in the context of No Exit itself, the scene and then again in context of the play as a whole - it can be interpreted dually from the scene of the play. That is not one of the better interpretations I have read.
I find him rather a genius myself though the line between genius and quack is often indistinguishable, and most public intellectuals operate on a higher plane of existence than I do, a plane it's hard to reach in my activities of daily living. -
Sartré would have us run around in someone’s yard purely because there is a sign that says ‘Beware of the Dog’, then act surprised when a dog bites us.
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Like most philosophers, Sartre's general philosophy and ideas are open to attack and contradiction. But he made many particular assertions, in the form of quotes and aphorisms, which are very interesting and ring true.
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