i remember being 7 or 8, riding in the backseat of my mother's car. a stranger on the street locked eyes with me as we rode by. at that instant, i felt that we could exchange souls or bodies.... now, in my 70s, the boundaries between me and other people, dog, spiders, blocks of wood are all fading away. and, soon, i will fade away as well.

I personally get really uncomfortable when people look at me. So I can relate to his idea that we are masters of our own world when we are alone as the subjects of our reality. But as soon as another person steps in we become objects and it's fundamentally threatening to our freedom. Especially because we can get into power struggles over 'what we are'. If someone defines us as a bad person and we define ourselves as a good person there is an automatic battle over who's view is more correct. Who has the greater authority of judgement. I think it explains why sensitive people prefer to be alone. Because when your alone you are free to define yourself and to live freely in that definition.

This explanation made me think of our current technology, wherein virtual spaces like Facebook, Instagram, KZfaq, etc. are having the effect of transforming young people into 'objects' for others' gaze, as if their very personhood (or subjectivity) is on view as a 'brand,' a commercial entity, a consumer commodity. And then, the negative emotional effects of constantly 'needing' that attention, that outside validation of their inherent worth as a person. It's as if they've lost their subjectivity in the electronic morass of object-hood presence. They've become dehumanized by an addictive technology, which cares not for the soul of man, but for its own proliferation which is monetized for profit.

This helps me considerably to understand my social anxiety. It's very situational and I've never been able to quit put into words what triggers it. Oddly, it's not when people perceive me as an object. Contrary to the "shame" that Sartre talks about, I am comfortable with that. I am comfortable blending into the background as if I'm just part of the scenery. Or, to use an analogy of the gaming world, being a "non-player character". Like in the movie "Free Guy". It's when they elevate me to being a subject that I have difficulty, when they elevate me to player status. There is a different sort of expectation or judgment that goes with that.

I get so excited when a theory I have on something is actually a real thing that somebody else thought too. It makes me know that I'm not alone in my deep introspection on the psyche. Very cool explanation of this theory I otherwise wouldn't know about.

This video showed up in my KZfaq recommended page. I decided to give it a try and... I've binged watch all your videos on continental philosophy! You really have a gift of explaining complex ideas in a simple and clear way. It's also nice to see a fellow woman in mostly men dominated field. Great job and keep it up :)

Man I’m glad that this stuff has been written about and articulated, because I’ve felt this and thought about this a lot, without ever feeling like anybody else was realising the same thing

This was great, glad I found this channel! Looking forward to watching more of your stuff!

So clearly explained. Sartre’s being-for-others is, I think, a key insight to understanding our contemporary world in which we are understood and understand ourselves primarily in terms of how others see us.

I'm so glad I found your channel. You have such calmness and deep wisdom in your field of study. You are a great professor and I appreciate your message 🙏❤ . Thank you for your service to the awaking humanity.

I love your videos Professor Anderson! You're really good at explaining concepts. Looking forward to reading your paper 💜

Excellent, very well displayed concept of the Look by Sartre: clear, precise, and just fun to watch, thanks!!

I enjoyed this ! Thank you ,Professor Anderson ,for making these videos available !

Thank you for this video. I'm a nonnative speaker but my love for philosophy is beyond any language💖💖

This is so engaging and well presented! So glad I found this channel! Thank you

What a great delivery and such clarity. I hope to listen to many more of Prof. Anderson's lessons.

Sartre's view on shame is pretty mind blowing, glad I stumbled upon this video and channel 👍

He's talking about going from a playable character to a non-playing character in the simulation, which changes with being observed versus observing, Observing is active, playable. Being observed is passive, non-playable. It's that helplessness in suspense stories when the viewpoint character feels watched, stalked. Power drains, fear builds.

Thank you ..clear and crisp, handling complexity with grace.

I am learning about Sartre, and this lecture helps me immensely in understanding the subject! Thank you so much!

Thank you so much Professor ! ! I am really grateful for the subtitles since English is not my first language. Your channel is so underrated~💙

thank you for this excellent video, on the technical side: there are hardly any cuts, you go through it so easily, you seem so much inside your field, that it leaves me speechless

Thanks especially for the link to the article, expanding on this. I really look forward to reading it.

An excellent explanation of this concept. Thank you.

The explanation given is extremely simple. Extremely enriching !

Wonderful! Thank you for explaining the look.

Ellie Anderson is brilliant. She never wastes a word, making the complex concise and understandable, even for laymen like me.

Thank you for providing a crystal clear explanation.

I find it so compelling and vital to delving into this type of introspection

this was so well put together, amazing video

This is brilliant - thank you for posting it.

Wow. Quite a bit to think about tonight before bed. Thank you for spreading the opportunity for personal insight and a different perspective on others.

Very interesting concept to know about. Thank you for making this video.

This is the clearest explanation of Sartre I've heard, thanks!

You explain a very complex subject in such a clear way. It reminds me of my philosophy teacher, she was one of the best teachers i've ever had. thankfully in my school we had a k-12 program that included philosophy and music since kindegarten. i arrived at seventh grade but i'm still thankful for all the skill it has given me in my life, now that i'm "transitioning" to adulthood. i'm glad that this video randomly played while i was doing my chores, this seems like a great podcast. :)

I appreciate that there was no nonesense up top. She got straight into it and didnt waste my time.

I remember being a kid in my yard at home and seeing a girl from elementary school down the street walking with her family and not expecting to see her there. I was existing in the bubble of being at home, and at ease. When I saw her, I instantly felt like I was at school, and under the gaze of the entire classroom and no longer at ease. Basically, I was transported in spirit to my sort of habitual emotional alignment at school, which was different than my at home at rest state. I understood it because there was only one factor that made that happen, the act of seeing her and no longer feeling alone because of the potential of being seen back by her.

Thank you for a lucid and engaging talk. Tank you for the link to your Philosophy Today paper.

EXCELLENT OBSERVATION AND EXPLANATION OF SARTRE'S THEORY OF THE LOOK! I love your being! Looking forward to more! Subscribed!

great video, glad to see more inspection of B&N other than bad faith. It’s also interesting how much solipsism lingers in Sartres ideas even despite his attacking it quite heavily in the text.

This was a very positive video and I enjoyed the insight it provided! I also thoroughly appreciated Dr. Anderson's reading of Sartre's interpretation of 'the look' and adding her understanding of it. This is a great video and I can't wait to see more :)

Agree with Sappho and others. These are exceptionally well-organized and intelligently presented talks. Good work Ellie. I always enjoy seeing someone who's good at what they do.

Amazing idea for a series. Can't wait to delve into this.

Thanks for the article.

These are really difficult concepts to understand. Your videos make the really hard a bit easier. Thank you.

Such a brilliant insight!! You explained it very simply as well :)

great stuff, thanks! I could only imagine that endless feedback loop he must have felt when you have one of those very deep, heart to heart conversations that always seem to go into the wee hours of the morning because they're so enjoyably intense! For me, when I get into this situation, I start feeling; WOW, this person is me and I am them, or we are one! No shame, no intimidation, no guilt, just pure mind boggling amazement that we almost feel inseparable when engaging in such a deep, intimate way. Both subject and object. both observer and the observed without the sense of being either one or the other, for just a magical moment in time!

That's a great explanation for what I (we) have perceived, but never consciously thought out. Thank you.

Very now nice. Great job! Thank you

Very nice and interesting lesson, thank you!

Clear, concise, instructive, excellent 😘

health and wellness to you Prof. Anderson. decades ago I was in the milieu of Logic and Philosophy and Greek mythology... fascinating disciplines!

Oh, this is so interesting! I have that experience hearing my upstairs neighbors. And this dovetails with a few things in my therapy. Thank you for this!

This is such an interesting topic, loved how such a complex philosophical idea was articulated perfectly! This has literally allowed me to understand how I feel around others vs being alone, thank you!x

I like that idea of possibilities vs probablities. I think this is why it’s so satisfying to prove people wrong when they underestimate you. Your possibilities have trumped their probabilities. It’s honestly one of the best feelings in the world.

Thanks for doing this! Awesome delivery of really interesting material. Easy like and sub.

Whoa.. fascinating. And perfect clarification of the idea.

This is so intuitive! Because when I look through the screen into your eyes, you become the centre of my universe…

Thank you for such an elucidating video

Wow, I love this, thank you!

Wow I switched these without even knowing, now I look rather than feeling of being looked at and I tell you it's Soo relaxing, even wen I feel like the object of the look, am still able to at from my subject point and what a wonder to behold. Namastê

So glad I stumbled upon your channel!

KZfaq’s algorithm can’t be all evil if it recommended your channel. Subscribed!

Good job. Thank you 🙏

Great content and delivery! Cool stuff!

As an autistic person I did and still do see myself as equal to everyone else, as people. It still gets me in trouble when meeting people with more education and anyone in authority. If I am interested in a subject I will explore it and have read new things that educated people in a particular subject have not learned, which instead of exciting them, actually irritates them. When someone in authority tells me to do something, they can see me pondering it, which also irritates them. I don't follow laws or rules because I have to. I do so out of kindness, orderliness, or love. Like many autistic people, I created my own social contract with society. I was just blessed to not have created a sociopathic contract which makes everyone else something to be used, as many scientists and business people have done. I can feel shame, but I try to remember that others do too, so I try to be a gentleman and not make them uncomfortable. I used to hate my autism and naivety, but it has made me a more caring person to others and myself.

My Dad often said to me, ‘hey man, don’t overthink it’. So it made me smile when I saw the name of this channel.

Im studying english and her tongue and speaking is very good to understand and practice my listening! And i like so much philosophie, specially ancient greeks, and medieval Fathers... Perfect! Lets start! Hard working! 😎👍

This is so great--thanks

This feels strangely like a missing scene from Annie Hall. Joking aside, I can relate to this in part when I travel on the bus and you sit looking forward and are not sure if the person in the opposite row of seats are looking at you or not. In some ways this reminds me a lot of RD Laings The Politics of Experience where he explores how we cannot see ourselves through the eyes of another, how we cannot know their experience of us.

I feel that there are many leaps of thought in this reasoning. The thinking goes linearly, and no alternatives seem to be explored. "I am an object of a gaze and my sense of self completely collapses. (....) my subjectivity vanishes. (...) Feeling of being an object circles shame". How are these things supposed to follow from one another? To me it could be quite the contrary. For example: "I am an object of a gaze and my sense of self completely collapses." - the sense of self is, on the contrary, built and strengthened through the eyes of the beholder(s). We get to, moreover, know ourselves and our place and agency in the world more readily through the eyes of others.

No shade, This is one of the coolest channels I've found in years. New, but immediate big fan. I'm surprised the professor didn't draw a parallel to how Sartre's concept of The Gaze relates to existing within a State. You *are* an object, now and forever. If that guy over there isn't looking at you that way, it's only because he feels an appointee is handling the responsibility. "Hey, I'm no cop. We got cameras."

This is all over my head but you are captivating

Excellent exposition of Sartre’s ideas. It’s interesting to note that the feeling of shame as described is a product of subjective error in that the subjective position is identified with the body-mind complex and its thoughts and feelings. This complex is itself objective to the subjective position. I “have” a body and mind with their perceptions, sensations, conceptions and emotions. I am aware of them as objects. Shame arises through a misapprehension of my actual subjective position by which an erroneous identification is made with what is objective. The “look” of the perceived “other” accentuates this error in that it highlights my own misidentify. This amounts to a diminution of subjectivity which is, in my point-of-view universe, that which is not an object, but rather A field of receptivity in which all objects arise.

Amazingly explained.

This video couldn't have popped up in my reccomended tab at a better time. Just a few days ago while I was at work, for seemingly no reason I look up from what I'm doing to see one of my coworkers looking at me. And for whatever reason I was filled with this incredible flash of fear. It was bizarre.

thanks for your great content

I love listening to you!

This is great. Perfect driving home stuff!!

Self conscious vs. Confidence is what you just described from my perspective.

So good. Thanks.

Great video, thank you. Exceptionally clear! I don't recall many of my professors making difficult ideas this approachable. I can't help but wonder if Sartre kept all his food clearly separated on his plate. Seems easy to agree with critiques that the world is a constant jumble of many little messy states at once and not big simple on/off moments.

Thank you🙏🏼

This was so helpful!

Tuned in for some overthinking - wasn't disappointed. I'm generally oblivious to other humans but I manage to bumble through life with a pleasant demeanor.

This was super interesting, it gave me a lot to think about. I'm in my last undergraduate year at uni, and I just started writing for a research proposal that compares different ontologies, which I think relates to Sarte. Initially, I started with a tension that exists between Husserl and Frege, which basically begins with Frege's review of Husserl's 'Philosophy of Arithmetic', (his work that came prior to 'logical investigations'). In Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl's position is to try and define what a totality is as it relates to our conception of number. His argument is that a totality is a multiplicity of particulars which has a unique identity with its own unique content, and in this unique content we find a unity. A unity is a continuum which we may represent numerically: two apples, three apples, etc. We are able to do this because of their unity of multiplicity, that is, because we quantify a particular identity again and again. I.e, the numbers 'two' and 'three' are the multiplicity of the unity of particulars that consists of the unique content of 'apples'. Frege's position in regards to Husserl, is basically that as we further expand on a given thing external to ourselves, it becomes increasingly more abstract and subjective as opposed to objective, (Frege thinks the original conception of a thing is objective because it is the starting point upon which prior 'determinations' led to that conception), (this is sought of how sense-datum became a hot topic I think). An example he gives is where he asks us to imagine two cats sitting in a room, one cat is white, the other is black. Imagine those cats are colorless, what do they look like in the room? Can they still be imagined? Now continue this process of removing more qualities. Imagine that they have no bodies, and that there is no room, and try and see if there are still two cats. Frege says it is still possible to imagine that there are two cats, despite the fact that we have removed many of their qualities. The reason for this is because we have obtained the general concept of the cat, by continuously representing them, which leads to abstraction and hence more subjectivity. Frege thinks that our ability to represent things numerically then, has nothing to do with the unique particular content of our numerical representations as such. So on one end we have Husserl who thinks that we can begin from this particular subjective position that can be objectively represented whereas Frege thinks this is the wrong way to think about it, rather, the 'object' in the case of numerical representation is actually prior to the subject. So who is correct, Husserl or Frege? Also, I think this tension is relevant to Sartre, because if Frege is correct, then this flips the script about how objectivity is viewed, but if Husserl is correct, Sartre makes way more sense to me, and I think Sartre's description of objective and subjective is quite humanistic and sincere. But I can't say I'm ontologically certain about any of these concepts a priori. I probably just need to read more... Sorry for the messy explanation.

I loved Being and Nothingness, was the first philosophy text I ever read cover to cover some years ago, got a copy on my dresser as we speak.

great video, thanks for reminding me of this passage from being and nothingness. it also reminds me of two song lyrics: i am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together - j. lennon strangers passing on the street by chance two separate glances meet and i am you and what i see is me - r. waters

Thank you. Wonderful way of explaining concepts. I'm Italian but I can understand your American English with no effort. 👏👏👏

So fantastic to finally put terminology to this phenomenon of the gaze or being' looked' at, the switch between being the looker and being looked at. Also the last idea about black in a 'white space'.. simply fascinating. I wonder if this also explains the psychology of imposter syndrome? Really insightful stuff, thank you!

This channel is well named. Overthink indeed. Sartre was no great philosopher, but an archetype of French intellectualism spun out of control. He was dangerous. His work could be a guidebook on how to achieve mental illness. He will mess with your head if you allow it. Georges Simenon had great contempt for Sartre’s ideas. Simenon was a great artist. When I was much younger, for years I regularly tied myself in emotional knots, obsessing about how people looked at me or what they might say about me. I really suffered from that! But eventually I matured, got stronger, and grew a thicker skin. This video has taught me one thing. Now I know where the millennial/Gen Z notions of micro-aggressions, being triggered, and feeling threatened by a word, an idea, or even someone’s name comes from. The children of Sartre and the Existentialists. What a legacy!

great work - accessible interpretation

The subject/object feeling is artificially created by thought. Douglas Harding in his book "On having No Head" says: we see our image in a mirror 3 feet away, turn it around, place it on our shoulders and take it to be ourselves. Further, our parents give us a name and our personality coalesces around it. In a Zen kensho experience, the subject object dichotomy disappears. In neuroscience, it is the left hemisphere that thinks and the right hemisphere is the holistic. I realize that this is an over simplification. But when we live from our senses more than from our thoughts, we enter this holistic way of being in the world.

This is an excellent method of learning about the subject-object frame of reference, the simultaneity or lack there of of the phenomena, and its extension into other reference frames that are delineated with significance by a dominant function of power.

One gaze from the other can make one feel wholly devoured, extinguished, owned, possessed, transformed, displaced. It's all in the look.

Sarte is so deep. I like how you broke down this theory. I wonder if you wouldn't mind tackling his theory of hate in the same book. I'm having a hard wrapping my mind around it.

I Iove your lectures.

I do landscaping and some of my customers (mostly the elderly ones) watch me work. One guy even hides behind bushes or curtains and thinks I can’t see him. Being watched drives me nuts and takes my mind off of my work. Inevitably I’ll make a mistake because I’m not focusing on my work. They of course see this and complain and watch me even closer from then on. A few customers I’ve never actually seen. We communicate by text. They are the best customers.

Fascinating. I am going to get Being and Nothingness right away.

This was extremely interesting. Thank you for sharing. I wanted to touch on my experience of this to shed some light on at least my subjective interpretation of the Gaze. For me, when I'm walking around the world, I don't particularly experience this ontological implosion when someone else comes into my state of awareness. Rather, I am more fixated on how to avoid inconveniencing them or being inconvenienced by them. For example, when I'm walking my dog in the neighborhood and another dog-walker appears and is heading towards me, my first thought is not, oh my gosh they are a subject which converts me from subject to object and therefore threatens my very sense of being, but rather, okay I need to move over so that our dogs don't assault each other when they come in close proximity. Therefore, I believe I am more inclined to view other people as objects rather than subjects. They only become subjects in a dialogue where I can experience their subjectivity. Otherwise they are objects to be avoided or maneuvered around. In addition, when I am walking around in the world I tend not to be thinking about my metaphysical relationship to the universe. Unless I am tripping hard on lsd I am more likely to be thinking about practical things like my schedule for the day and what I need to do to be able to do what I need to do next, etc. So when someone else comes into view, it doesn't threaten me ontologically whatsoever. I am also a white male so I'm sure that has something to do with my propensity to view others as objects and rarely subjects. Would love to hear other's thoughts on this. I just think that Sartre's assumption that everyone is constantly thinking about their metaphysical existence every waking moment that they're alone, and therefore will experience this subject/object implosion upon the apparition of another, is not realistic at all. Or maybe I do experience it, but just on a much subtler level than is being described here. Certainly there is always some sort of noticeable shift in my whole experience of everything when I'm not alone. It just doesn't necessarily go to these metaphysical depths as described here.