Write a two-page (600 word+/-) paper on one (or if you want, both) of the Hitchcock movies the Hitchcock movies are: 1- The Birds (1963) 2- Read Window (1

Write a two-page (600 word+/-) paper on one (or if you want, both) of the Hitchcock movies the Hitchcock movies are: 1- The Birds (1963) 2- Read Window (1954)showing what you think is the key issue of the movie(s), based on readings, class discussions, or your own intuitions. The reading are attached below. Try to show how that issue is a dilemma or problem, not easily solved or even solved at all. Use Freud, Sartre, or Kierkegaard to flesh out your thinking. Please add the references. II
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a long time now it must have been obvious that what is called an object
is said to be probable. If the Other is an object for me, he refers me to
probability. But probability is founded solely on the infinite congruity
of our representations. Since the Other is neither a representation nor a
system of representations nor a necessary unity of our representations,
he can not be probable: he can not at first be an object. Therefore if he
is for us, this can be neither as a constitutive factor of our knowledge of
the world nor as a constitutive factor of our knowledge of the self, but
as one who “interests” our being, and that not as he contributes a priori
to constitute our being but as he interests it concretely and “ontically” in
the empirical circumstances of our facticity.
(4) If we attempt somehow regarding the Other what Descartes attempted to do for God with that extraordinary “proof by the idea of
perfection” which is wholly animated by the intuition of transcendence,
then for our apprehension of the Other qua Other we are compelled to
reject a certain type of negation which we have called an external negation. The Other must appear to the cogito as not being ‘me. This negation can be conceived in two ways: either it is a pure, external negation,
and it will separate the Other from myself as one substance from another
substance-and in this case all apprehension ofthe Other is by definition
impossible; or else it will be an internal negation, which means a synthetic,
active connection of the two terms, each one of which constitutes itself
by denying that it is the other. This negative relation will therefore be
reciprocal and will possess a two fold interiority: This means first that the
multiplicity of “Others” will not be a collection but a totality (in this
sense we admit that Hegel is right) since each Other finds his being in
the Other. 1G It also means that this Totality is such that it is on principle
impossible for us to adopt “the point of view of the whole.” In fact we
have seen that no abstract concept of consciousness can result from the
comparison of my being-for-myself with my object-state for the Other.
Furthermore this totality-like that of the For-itself-is a detotalized
totality; for since existence-for-others is a radical refusal of the Other, no
totalitarian and unifying synthesis of “Others” is possible.
It is in the light of these few observations that we in turn shall now
attack the question of The Other.
IV. THE LOOK
THIS woman whom I see coming toward me, this man who is passing by
in the street, this beggar whom I hear calling before my window, all are for
me objects-of that there is no doubt. Thus it is true that at least one
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Chaque autrui trouve son
en I’autre.
THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
253
of the modalities of the Other’s presence to me is object-ness. But we
have seen that if this relation of object-ness is the fundamental relation
between the Other and myself, then the Other’s existence remains purely
conjectural. Now it is not only conjectural but probable that this voice
which I hear is that of a man and not a song on a phonograph; it is infinitely probable that the passerby whom I see is a man and not a perfected
robot. This means that without going beyond the limits of probability
and indeed because of this very probability, my apprehension of the
Other as an object essentially refers me to a fundamental apprehension
of the Other in which he will not be revealed to me as an object but as a
“presence in person.” In short, if the Other is to be a probable object
and not a dream of an object, then his object-ness must of necessity refer
not to an original solitude beyond my reach, but to a fundamental connection in which the Other is manifested in some way other than through
the knowledge which I have of him. The classical theories are right
in considering that every perceived human organism refers to something
and that this to which it refers is the foundation and guarantee of its
probability. Their mistake lies in believing that this reference indicates a
separate existence, a consciousness which would be behind its perceptible
manifestations as the noumenon is behind the Kantian Empfindung.
Whether or not this consciousness exists in a separate state, the face
which I see does not refer to it; it is not this consciousness which is the
truth of the probable object which I perceive. In actual fact the reference
to a twin upsurge in which the Other is presence for me is to a “being-in-apair-with-the-Other,” and this is given outside of knowledge proper even
if the latter be conceived as an obscure and unexpressible form on the
order of intuition. In other words, the problem of Others has generally
been treated as if the primary relation by which the Other is discovered is
object-ness; that is, as if the Other were first
or in”directly-to our perception. But since this perception by its very nature
refers to something other than to itself and since it can refer neither to an
infinite series of appearances of the same type-as in idealism the perception of the table or of the chair does-nor to an isolated entity located
on principle outside my reach, its essence must be to refer to a primary
relation between my consciousness and the Other’s. This relation, in
which the Other must be given to me directly as a subject although in
connection with me, is the fundamental relation, the very type of my
being-for-others.
Nevertheless the reference here cannot be to any mystic or ineffable experience. It is in the reality of everyday life that the Other appears to us,
and his probability refers to everyday reality. The problem is precisely
this: there is in everyday reality an original relation to the Other which
can be constantly pointed to and which consequently can be revealed
to me outside all reference to a religious or mystic unknowable. In order
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BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
to understand it I must question more exactly this ordinary appearance
of the Other in the field of my perception; since this appearance refers
to that fundamental relation, the appearance must be capable of revealing
to us, at least as a reality aimed at, the relation to which it refers.
I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and along the edge
of that lawn there are benches. A man passes by those benches. I see
this man; I apprehend him as an object and at the same time as a man.
What does this signify? What do I mean when I assert that this object
is a man?
If I were to think of him as being only a puppet, I should apply to
him the categories which I ordinarily use to group temporal-spatial
“things.” That is, I should apprehend him as being “beside” the benches,
two yards and twenty inches from the lawn, as exercising a certain pressure on the ground, etc. His relation with other objects would be of the
purely additive type; this means that I could have him disappear without
the relations of the other objects around him being perceptibly changed.
In short, no new relation would appear through him ‘between those
things in my universe: grouped and synthesized from my point of view
into instrumental complexes, they would from his disintegrate into mul·
tiplicities of indifferent relations. Perceiving him as a man, on the other
hand, is not to apprehend an additive relation between the chair and
him; it is to register an organization without distance of the things in
my universe around that privileged object. To be sure, the lawn remains
two yards and twenty inches away from him, but it is also as a lawn bound
to him in a relation which at once both transcends distance and contains
it. Instead of the two terms of the distance being indifferent, interchangeable, and in a reciprocal relation, the distance is unfolded starting from
the man whom I see and extending up to the lawn as the synthetic upsurge of a univocal relation. We are dealing with a relation which is without parts, given at one stroke, inside of which there unfolds a spatiality ,
which is not my spatiality; for instead of a grouping toward me of the objects, there is now an orientation which flees from me.
,
Of course this relation without distance and without parts is in no way
that original relation of the Other to me which I am seeking. In the first
place, it concerns only the man and the things in the world. In addition it
is still an object of knowledge; I shall express it, for example, by saying
that this man sees the lawn, or that in spite of the prohibiting sign
he is preparing to walk on the grass, etc. Finally it still retains a pure
character of probability: First, it is probable that this object is a man.
Second, even granted that he is a man, it remains only probable that
he sees the lawn at the moment that I perceive him; it is possible that
he is. dreaming of some project without exactly being aware of what is
around him, or that he is blind, etc., etc. Nevertheless this new relation
of the object-man to the object-lawn has a particular character; it is simul·
THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
255
taneouslygiven to me as a whole, since it is there in the world as an
object which I can know (it is, in fact, an objective relation which I express by saying: Pierre has glanced at this watch, Jean has looked out
the window, etc.), and at the same time it entirely escapes me. To the
eXtent that the man-as-object is the fundamental term of this relation, to
the extent that the relation reaches toward him, it escapes me, I can not
put myself at the center of it. The distance which unfolds between the
lawn and the man across the synthetic upsurge of this primary relation
is a negation of the distance which I establish-as a pure type of external
negation-between these two objects. The distance appears as a pure
disintegration of the relations which I apprehend between the objects
of my universe. It is not I who realize this disintegration; it appears to
me as a relation which I aim at emptily across the distances which I originally established between things. It stands as a background of things, a
background which on principle escapes me and which is conferred on
them from without. Thus the appcarance among the objects of my uni.versc of an element 6f disintegration in that universe is what I mean by
the appearance of a man in my universe.
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. Moreover this
disintegration grows by degrees; if there exists between the lawn and the
Othcr a relation which is without distance and which creates distance,
then there exists necessarily a relation bctween the Other and the statue
which stands on a pedestal in the middle of the lawn, and a relation
between the Other and the big chestnut trees which border the walk;
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. nlis regrouping does not,stop there. The grass is something qualified; it is this green grass which exists for the Other; in this sense the very
quality ofthe object, its deep, raw green is in direct relation to this man.
This green turns toward the Othcr a face which escapes me. I apprehend
the relation of the grecn to the Other as an objective relation, but I can
not apprehend the green as it appears to the Other. Thus suddenly an object has appeared which has stolen the world from me. Everything is in
placc; everything still exists for me; but everything is traversed by an invisible flight and fixed in the direction of a new object. The appearance of
. the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of the
whole univcrse, to a decentralization of the world which undermines
the centralization which I am simultaneously effecting.
But the Other is still an object tor me. He belongs to my distances;
the man is there, twenty paces from· me, he is turning his back on me.
As such he is again two yards, twenty inches from the lawn, six yards
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BEING AND NOTIIINGNESS
from the statue; hence the disintegration of my universe is contained within the limits of this same universe;. we are not dealing here with a flight
of the world toward nothingness or outside itself. Rather it appears that
the world has a kind of drain hole in the middle of its being and that it is
perpetually flowing off through this hole. The
the flow, and the
drain hole are all once again recovered, reapprehended, and fixed as an
object. All this is there tor me as a partial structure of the world, even
though the total disintegration of the universe is involved. Moreover these
disintegrations may often be contained within more narrow limits. There,
for example, is a man who is reading while he walks. The disintegration of
the universe which he represents is purely virtual; he has ears which do
not hear, eyes which see nothing except his book. Between his book and
him I apprehend an undeniable relation without distance of the same
type as that which earlier connected the walker with the grass. But this
time the form has closed in on itself. There is a full object for me to
grasp. In the midst of the world I can say “man-reading” as I could say
“cold stone,” “fine rain.” I apprehend a closed “Gestalt”· in which the
reading forms the essential quality; for the rest, it remains blind and
mute, lets itself be known and perceived as a pure and simple temporalspatial thing, and seemS to be related to the rest of the world by a purely
indifferent externality. The quality “man-reading” as the relation of the
man to the book is simply a little particular crack in my universe. At the
heart of this solid, visible form he makes himself a particular emptying.
The form is massive only in appearance; its peculiar meaning is to bein the midst of my universe, at ten paces from me, at the heart of that
massivity-a closely consolidated and localized flight.
None of this enables us to leave the level on which the Other is an
object. At most we are dealing with a particular type of objectivity akin
to that which Husserl designated by the term absence without, however,
his noting that the Other is defined not as the absence of a consciousness
in relation to the body which I see but by the absence of the world which
I perceive, an absence discovered at the very heart of my perception of
this world. On this level the Other is an object in the world, an object
which can be defined by the world. But this relation of flight and of
absence on the part of the world in relation to me is only probable. If
it is this which defines the objectivity of the Other, then to what original
presence of the Other does it refer? At present we can give this answer:
if the Other-as-object is defined in connection with the world, as the
object which sees what I see, then my fundamental connection with the
Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back to my permanent possibility of being seen by the Other. It is in and through the revelation of
my being-as-object for the Other that I must be able to apprehend the
presence of his being-as-subject. For just as the Other is a probable object for me-as-subject, so I can discover myself in the process of becoming
THE EXISTENCE OF OTHERS
257
a probable object for only a certain subject. This revelation can not derive
from the fact that my universe is an object for tIle Other-as-object, as if
the Other’s look after having wandered over the lawn and the surrounding
objects came following a definite path to place itself on me. I have observed that I can not be an object for an object. A radical conversion of
the Other is necessary if he is to escape objectivity. Therefore I can not
consider the look which the Other directs on me as one of the possible
manifestations of his objective being; the Other can not look at me as
he looks at the grass. Furthermore my objectivity can not itself derive
for me from the objectivity of the world since I am precisely the one
by whom there is a world; that is, the one who on principle can not be
an object for himself.
Thus this relation which I call “being-seen-by-another,” far from being
merely one of the relations signified by the word man, represents an
irreducible fact which can not be deduced either from the essence of the
Other-as-object, or from my being-as-subject. On the contrary, if the concept of the Other-as-object is to have any meaning, this can be only as the
result of the conversion and the degradation of that original relation. In
a word, my apprehension of the Other in the world as probably being a
man refers to my permanent possibility of being-seen-by-him; that is,
to the permanent possibility that a subject who sees me may be substituted for the object seen by me. “Being-seen-by-the-Other” is the
truth of “seeing-the-Other.” Thus the notion of the Other can not under
any circumstances aim at a solitary, extra-mundane consciousness which
I can not even think. The man is defined by his relation to the world and
by his relation to myself. He is that object in the world which determines
an internal flow of the universe, an intcrnal hemorrhage. He is the subject
who is revealed to me in that flight of myself toward objectivation. But
the original relation of myself to the Other is not only an absent truth
aimed at across the concrete presence of an object in my universe; it
is also a concrete, daily relation which at each instant I experience. At
each instant the Other is looking at me. It is easy therefore for us to
attempt with concrete examples to describe this fundamental connection
which must form the basis of any theory concerning the Other. If the
Other is on principle the one WllO looks at me, then we must be able
to explain the meaning of the Other’s look.
Every look directed toward me is manifested in connection with the
appearance of a sensible form in our perceptive field, but contrary to what
might be expected, it is not connected with any determined form. Of
course what most·often manifests a look is the convergence of two ocular
globes in my direction. But the look will be given just as well on occasion
when there is a rustling of branches, or the sound of a footstep followed
by silence, or the slight opening of a slmtter, or a light movement of a
curtain. During an attack men who are crawling through the brush appre-
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BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
hend as a look to be avoided, not two eyes, but a white farm-house which
is outlined against the sky at’t:he top of a little hill. It is obvious that
the object thus constituted still manifests the look as being probable. It
is only probable that behind the bush which has just moved there is someone hiding who is watching me. But this probability need not detain us
for the moment; we shall return to this point later. What is important
first is to define the look in itself. Now the bush, the farmhouse are not
the look; they only represent the eye, for the eye is not at first apprehended
as a sensible organ of vision but as the support for the look. They never
refer therefore to the actual eye ofthe watcher hidden behind the curtain,
behind a window in the farmhouse. In themselves they are already eyes.
On the other hand neither is the look one quality among others of the object which functions as an eye, nor is it the total form of that object, nor
a “worldly” relation which is established between that object and me.
On the contrary, far from perceiving the look on the objects which manifest it, my apprehension of a look turned toward me appears on the ground
of .the destruction of the eyes which “look at me.” If I apprehend the
look, I cease to perceive. the eyes; they are there, they remain in the
field of my perception as pure presentations, but I do not make any us…
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