This is one of the more famous and misinterpreted quotations from Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist philosopher, playwright and novelist from his play 'No Exit' (1944). I haven't yet read this play but it is in my plans for the new future and as I was reading up on it beforehand, this quote stuck out to me.
This quote is a reference to Sartre's ideas about the Look (Being and Nothingness, Part 3, Chapter 1), and the constant ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object in the world of another consciousness. This is about how the presence of another can cause someone to look at themselves as an object and to see their world in that other person's eyes. The other person is a threat to the order and arrangement of the person' whole world, suddenly haunted by the other's values, over which they have no control. When that other person is absent, the person's world is self-centred again and they have no time to self-reflect as the process repeats, continual and unavoidable.
I believe this quote means that it is not that people cause hell in our lives or vice versa, but it is the struggle and hardships that come with trying to 'fit in'. For Sartre, 'hell' is the feeling that we must constantly please the people around us and be the kind of person that other people and society expect us to be. Hell is the feeling of inauthenticity we feel when we conform to societal expectations that prevents us from being the kind of person we choose to be.
Now, I will take off my philosophical hat and return to...
You people don't know how much that GIF sums me up as a person.
On that note, this is the end of today's broadcast by ConsultingHobbit.
xoR
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