"Do not trap yourself in the eyes of others. Hell is other people."
Today's Question
To you, is the 'gaze of others' an objective mirror that reflects your reality, or is it merely a shadow cast by your own internal anxiety?
The Prison of the 'Gaze of Others'
Jean-Paul Sartre believed that the moment another person looks at us, we are defined as an 'object' rather than a free subject. He called this the violence of the gaze.
In his play 'No Exit,' three deceased characters are locked in a room. There are no torture devices or demons, yet they torment each other simply by observing and judging. Sartre wrote the famous line, 'Hell is other people' here.