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"l'enfer, c'est les autres"

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"l'enfer, c'est les autres"

Lodestone
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Posted 08/01/05 - 10:25 PM:	#11
L'enfer c'est les autres; mais les autres sont le ciel aussi.
Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone, In aid of others let me shine; And when, alas! our brains are gone, What nobler substitute than wine?

Seneca
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Posted 08/14/05 - 08:50 AM:	#12
Hell is other people, because people can hurt you and torture you, and often do. But the truth is one can live alone and have interaction IMO. For example one can be surounded by animals, that's interaction because he'll be busy interacting with them. Or one can interact with the computer(let's assume he doesn't have internet) and still not feel isolated. Isolation is created by idleness.

Alinilini
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Posted 12/01/08 - 10:43 AM:	#13
Okay I actually only wanted to read some of people`s opinions about that phrase of Sartre and what I found out is that everyone got it wrong here, what you are saying is what Sartre did NOT want us to think. "L'enfer, c'est les autres" does NOT mean that human relations are always poisoned and that it is impossible to live one withe another. This has nothing to do with isolation or anything like this. The others are in a way your mirror. You can never know yourself as a whole because you only see yourself from the INSIDE, you see your intentions and thoughts etc. But the others see you from the OUTSIDE, which means as a "thing" which acts. Sartre also said "l'homme se fait par ses actes" (people create themselves through their deeds)which is very important to understand "l'enfer, c'est les autres". By acting in every situation one creates a picture of himself for the others so they can judge whether they like someone's way of acting and reacting. So... "L'enfer, c'est les autres" means that if you absolutely depend on what others think about you, if you forget your interior knowledge on yourself, if the picture you have of yourself does not match with that others have of you (which means you live a life "de mauvaise foi" which could be translated as hypocrite) and if YOU YOURSELF are "bad", the others will show you. This is the point in Sartres Existentialism, it always has a reason if relations are bad. It's too funny that even in a philosophy forum people understand it wrong. But that what Sartre expresses : people want everything to be predestinated if its bad. If you failed in your life you were BORN as a loser. If you are weak and stupid it's not your own fault. If others don't like you it's because they are bad and you are not. But if you are a hero, oh, then you made it all on your own! I hope you do not get me wrong and think I'm calling you all stupid, I just wanted to explain it in a proper way (although my English might be too bad, but hey, at least my French is better!) because I think if you Do understand Sartre you will never dare to critize him because he is so absolutely right in everything he says. Mhhh... This really came from the bottom of my heart

makerowner
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Posted 12/01/08 - 08:33 PM:	#14
Lodestone wrote: L'enfer c'est les autres; mais les autres sont le ciel aussi. Yes I remember him saying that somewhere; was it in L'espoir maintenant? In any case just because les autres are hell, doesn't mean being by yourself is better. This is something that Heidegger pointed out and that Sartre took over: even when you're by yourself you're still "being-with"; others show up for you as absent. But the reason that others are hell isn't just because the Look turns me into an object (in fact Sartre says that wanting to be an object is one of the main ways we act towards our being-for-others: masochism) it's the fact that others see in me only what I am, not what I am to be. All my projects and plans fall away, and all that's left in the presence of the other is my facticity; Garcin's cowardice is revealed to him only when the others arrive. Others are hell because what I am (or rather what I have been) depends on them, and I can't control how they see me. because I think if you Do understand Sartre you will never dare to critize him because he is so absolutely right in everything he says. I'm a big Sartre fan, but he definitely wasn't right about everything he said. (He supported the USSR for years, for one thing.) In fact, I think the only way to approach Sartre is to basically tear him apart and try to salvage the good parts. That said, I don't think Sartre and existentialism have really been given a fair evaluation, and I think there are a lot of good parts to salvage.
For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.

IamGloverJ
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Posted 12/04/08 - 06:00 PM:	#15
Is Hell Other People? I really like this statement, it definitely opens up numerous grounds for discussion. Can hell be our interactions with other people? I think human interaction is the closest explanation for hell that we have. Ok, so obviously it is a necessity for a human to interact with other people. If you wish to learn and grow as an individual, much of this is a result of your environment and experiences with siblings, friends and people in general (this has already been established by philosophers and psychologists for generations). Let's look at the concept of heaven and hell. If you want to go to heaven, you have to be a "good" human being. If you want to go to hell, you have to be a "bad" human being. What decides whether you're good or bad? Usually, how you respond to a given situation with any human being. (Do I rob this old lady, or do I help her up the stairs?) You have the power to respond to a human being in a positive or negative way. So yes, if you choose the negative route frequently, well then apparently you're going to hell. If you choose the positive route frequently, then apparently you're going to to go to heaven. Based on that, how can humans be just hell? If the power to go to hell lies within the human, then does not heaven lie within that same concept? If you were on an island by yourself, having no interaction with anyone, would you go crazy? Probably yes (it depends on your will power). But would you go crazy because of the lack of interaction with another being, or because you're being deprived of the heaven or hell option? And if you went crazy on an island because of lack of interaction with another being, then wouldn't humans be heaven? Edited by Postmodern Beatnik on 12/06/08 - 02:27 PM. Reason: capitalization.

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