In the eyes of others

He continues: "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 a probable object for only a certain subject", for "I cannot be an object for an object."

But here is the Other, looking at me, or shall we say, "casting his look upon me", and everything changes. It is not his eye, the sensible organ of vision, that the look hides; rather, the look itself appears to me abruptly and threatens my world.

"My apprehension of a look turned toward me appears on the ground of the destruction of the eyes which look at me. Whereas the look is upon me without distance, while at the same time it holds me at a distance, I am now conscious of being looked at. It is a relationship that is hostile at its core between me and the Other," says Sartre. I suddenly feel "vulnerable."

'Hell is other people'

In this sense, Sartre claims in his play that "Hell is other people." When the other looks at me, he makes me conscious that I am being looked at, and "the Other's freedom is revealed to me across the uneasy determination of the being which I am for him."

And since my freedom stops when the Other looks at me, there is a dimension of being from which I am separated by a radical nothingness. Thus, I am being looked at and, therefore, am in the hands of the Other's freedom.

The distinctively aggressive relationship that Sartre highlights here cannot be characterised as quests for recognition, admiration, infatuation, or nostalgia. However, in addition to Kundera's neglect of this relationship that is generated by the self being placed under the other's look, his above classification seems to lack accuracy.

The set of profiles he lists under the first category seems to us to have undergone a historical shift to now include multiple, if not different, profiles. Among those are the seekers of looks not for the sake of fame, but for a guarantee of existence, so to speak.

French historian Jean-Pierre Vernant has already shown that in Ancient Greek society, one's actions had value only in the eyes of those who "saw them". The individual lived under the gaze of others and existed in terms of what others saw in him, what they said about him, and the appreciation they felt for him.

Vernant says what a person is, his value, and his identity must all be recognised by the community of his peers. If an individual is expelled from his city, banished and desecrated by exile, he becomes nothing. He ceases to exist.

The Greek polis community was a "face-to-face" community, not in the sense of confrontation and conflict, but perhaps in the exact opposite sense. It was, at least outwardly, a harmonious community where every individual lived in plain sight and "under the looks" of everyone, behaving as pleases them and according to what they "see".

Identity linked to peer recognition

The value and identity of man were derived from the recognition of his peers in the polis. When he misbehaved, he would not feel a "crisis of conscience"; rather, he would feel the pressing need to "hide his face" from others and vanish out of their sight – in other words, to leave the polis.

Perhaps for this reason, emigration and exile held great moral and political, or rather ontological and existential, significance for the Ancient Greeks. Exile was a negation of an individual's humanness, a non-recognition of his value, and an obliteration of his identity. To be alienated and put out of sight was truly tantamount to execution.

Was this exclusive to the Ancient Greeks, though? Who amongst us does not crave the looks of others? We all live, or like to live, under everyone's gaze.

Surely, the scope of vision has widened, and the "polis" is now a wide world, albeit one so connected it became a small town. Yet the media drives every last one of us to throw ourselves, willingly or reluctantly, under the gaze of an ever-widening audience.

Vernant wondered whether comparing the Ancient Greeks to our modern world would be possible, be it in the desire to succeed at all costs, or the pursuit of fame that places man under the gaze of the general public through the media.

A spectator society

"Perhaps the opposite is true," says Vernant. Today, we do not live in a "face-to-face" society, but rather in a "spectator society."

What each of us reveals in newspapers and on television screens is not the version of himself that he knows in the depths of his conscience, but an artificial, fabricated, affected image that befits the dictates of our modern times — a deceptive image reminiscent of advertisements.

This image, precisely, is fleeting. Its attractiveness swiftly fading away to make room for a replacement that satisfies viewers and spectators' need for change and renewal. The polis society is in stark contrast with contemporary society in that the individual puts on a show through the means of communication under the eyes of an ever-expanding audience.

It is a contrast between a culture of shame and honour and a culture of sin and duty. When an Ancient Greek did a hideous act, he did not feel that he committed a sin, as if it were an illness of sorts; instead, he was overwhelmed with a sense of failure to measure up to his true self and the others' expectations of him. He would, in other words, "lose face."

Conversely, when he exhibited good manners and behaviours, it was not with the aim of fulfilling a duty or abiding by a rule. Rather, good behaviours stemmed from an attraction to moral and aesthetic values alike: the values of good and bad.

Morals were not subject to coercion; they rather sought to accomplish an inner harmony between the individual and the world's order and aesthetics. A moral act was aligned with the polis and the cosmos, the city and the universe.

The idea of success for citizens of a Greek polis was not fame and reputation. An individual's image in the eyes of others in a face-to-face community was part of his identity, a dimension of his inner and external being. This was how an individual achieved heroism and memorability.

As for spectator societies, the images that make the rounds of media outlets are a work of theatrical production. No sooner are they published than they are replaced with newer replicas in a never-ending cycle.

Nowadays, our sole occupation has become to seek the spotlight in hopes of attracting looks, infinitely replicating images the media tirelessly makes for us. Could we, then, conclude that the difference between us and ancient peoples is a quantitative difference; that the audience whose gaze we crave may have exponentially grown in size but has not differed much at its core?

That seems unlikely — the difference stretches beyond numbers and figures to encompass the mechanism itself.

Pose culture

This is evidenced by the so-called "pose culture", where individuals seek the highest possible levels of "pose" to leave the world of the unknown and nameless and set foot in the world of the known and famous, to leave nonexistence and head toward existence.

The pose culture does not content itself with restricting the recipient to consuming information; it pushes him to also promote and disseminate it.

In the pose culture, the means of communication are no longer a mere instrument, but an objective and target. The recipient of the information is its promoter and marketer, thus maximising the spread of information.

No longer satisfied with producing information, the pose culture wants to produce the individuals themselves who, in turn, will produce the information.

French sociologist Jean Baudrillard concludes: "The individual himself becomes a form of production for an increasingly greedy society."

But perhaps more importantly, with this overwhelming desire to attract and draw looks, the self no longer exists in terms of what it thinks or does not think, but in terms of what draws looks onto it.