The ontological problem of autogenesis in Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis clos
by
Vincent L. Schonberger
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ont.

Jean-Paul Sartre is primarily known as a philosopher. And yet, when we examine his literary works, it is difficult to distinguish Sartre the philosopher from Sartre the artist for his literary writings are centered around existential problems. Both his fiction and his theater are anchored to the all-important metaphysical question: What is man? Sartre's existentialist answer to this fundamental ontological question is that a man is what he does and how he "looks," nothing more. The life of an individual is the sum of his deeds performed in the presence of others. For Sartre, man's existence precedes his essence. As he underlines in his Cahiers pour une morale : "le seul projet avalable et celui de faire et non d'être" (CPM, 475, 491).

In order to explore the ontological problem of human existence, Sartre imagines in his melodramatic play, Huis clos , a hell-after-life. Into a shabby room of bourgeois elegance of the Second Empire, he encloses three "dead" characters: Garcin, a coward, Inès, a fiend, and Estelle, a monster of selfishness and a child murderer. Having moved to the other side of the wall, the three dead characters are forced to look their human hell squarely in the face. Unable to escape from their past, they are no longer free to be different, for they have left their previous existence behind them. Stripped of their defenses, they have become "Nus comme des vers," ( Huis clos , 1982: 52), "naked as worms," and they realize that their identity had become fixed forever. Even though their character is once and for all determined, Sartre's inauthentic characters resort to a kind of play-acting, an act of self-deception which undermines even their most serious intentions for self-unification and self-knowledge. They try to identify themselves with their public persona, with their "être-pour-autrui." Garcin, for example, refuses his freedom of choice and prefers to lie to himself, to live a life of "mauvaise foi," even though he can see through his own lies. In order to avoid being discovered, he constructs a highly expurgated version of himself, a respectable and courageous public image that he wants the others to believe in. When he is asked who he is, he prefers to give his name and the title of his role": "Je suis Joseph Garcin, publiciste et homme de lettres" ( Huis clos , 1987: 24). By unquestionably identifying himself with his professional journalistic role, Garcin retreats into a form of negative existence-or non existence. Through an act of pseudo-self-disclosure, he creates a discrepancy between his censored public self and his estranged real self, between what he does and what he is. Unfortunately, the roles that a person plays do not do justice to all of his self. The role playing person has also a self or we should say, he is a self. What we often forget is that it is a person who is playing the role and that role playing creates a form of behavioral duplicity which seldom allows the individual to be his real self, to be what he does or, to be just himself. The person, whatever it be, can only be manifested by expressing itself: and self-expression means a personage, a public manifestation of the self. As a result, our knowledge and definition of the other are forever incomplete for they are based on a partial and visible manifestation of the self. Any dissonance between the person and the personage arouses conflict and uneasiness. However, it is not the mask, for it actually displays with greater truth of the hidden facets of a person, it is not the personage itself, but its artificial character, the discordance between the outer facade and the inner self, that give us this uneasy feeling of inner tension and anxiety.

Sartre's Huis clos is an excellent example of "being-for-others" for the masters of hell have seen to it that there are no mirrors. The three "inmates" are truly dependent on each other and their only source of self-definition is through their appearance to the others. Of course, this dependence on the other gives each one of them a formidable power over the other two for each one of them is free to give the other any appearance that he or she desires the other to be. Inès demonstrates this power when she acts as Estelle's mirror. Estelle, who is the epitome of vanity and of selfishness, has no mirror to help her put her makeup on. She must rely on Inès to tell her if it is on properly. As long as Estelle pays attention to her, Inès is content to tell her that she is beautiful. As soon as Estelle displeases her, Inès makes Estelle believe that her beauty is in some way imperfect:

Inès: [ . . .] Hullo, what's that-nasty red spot at the bottom of your cheek? A pimple?

Estelle: A pimple? Oh, how simply foul! Where!

Inès: There . . . You know the way they catch larks-with a mirror?

I'm your lark-mirror, my dear, and you can't escape me . . . there isn't any pimple, not a trace of one. So what about it? Suppose the mirror started telling lies? ( No Exit , 1982:27).

As a living mirror, Inès is empowered to give Estelle any appearance she sees fit: ugly, beautiful, smart, stupid or jealous, imperfect, etc. Estelle may not appear this way at all, but she can never be sure. Hence, Inès plays the role of a mediator as she forces Estelle to appear to herself as she appears to Inès or as Inès wants her to be. The aim of Inès is to overcome her anxiety and self-doubt by having a complete mastery and control over Estelle, whom she continually tries to seduce, by making her a helpless object of her will. Through a symbiotic relationship with Estelle, Inès tries to enslave her and humiliate her. By controlling her integrity, Inès tries to enlarge herself in order to make up for the strength that her individual self is lacking. She tells her companions that she has a rotten unchangeable character, that she could not be otherwise, that sadism and lesbianism are part of her given nature. Describing her lesbian relationship with Florence, she not only admits her brutality but confesses that she used her power over Florence in order to drive her husband to death. As a sadist, Inès is conscious of her hostility and directly expresses it through the torturing of others. Her desire for power is a desperate attempt to regain her loss of individuality and lack of freedom by the possession of power over others, by the ability to dominate and torture them, in order to force them to submission.

On one hand, Inès guarantees the objectivity of Estelle's universe, on the other, she limits her autonomy by making her an object of her stare. As Sartre states: "Autrui . . . se présente . . . comme la négation radicale de mon expérience, puisqu'il est pour qui je suis non sujet mais objet: (EN, 283). According to Sartre, whenever the other looks at me, he changes my relation to the universe. I become self-conscious rather than conscious of the outside universe. At the same time, by alienating my subjectivity, the other simultaneously guarantees my objectivity. Since my Ego is transcendent ( La Transcendance de l'Ego ), I know it primarily through the reaction of others. It is through the reactions of others that I learn that I am "jaloux," "méchant," "lâche," or, "sympathique" (EN, 329). It is through the objectifying "look" of the other that I gain an illusion of my identity, that I become aware of my facticity, of my body as an object. In Sartre's perspective, the body is part of the "pour soi." Sartre argues that: "En tant que tel, le corps ne se distingue pas de la situation du pour-soi" (EN, 372). It is important to note that even though Sartre identifies the body with "la facticité du pour-soi" (EN, 371) and equates it with birth, race, class, nationality, character, physiology and past (EN, 393), he considers it a subject rather than an object. "I am a body," he writes in L'Être et le Néant (322), a part of the "pour-soi" through which I am conscious (EN, 366). Subject to me, my body is object for the others, part of the "en-soi insaisissable et aliéné" (EN, 421). Instead of seeing through it, I can only see myself from the outside, in forms of shyness vanity, beauty, ugliness, shame or cowardice. It is through the body that I become conscious: "ce par quoi les choses se découvrent à moi" (EN, 366). An object for others, the body is a necessary condition of one's existence in the world: "Tout cela, en tant que je le dépasse dans l'unité synthétique de mon être dans le monde, c'est mon corps comme condition nécessaire de l'existence d'un monde et comme réalisation contingent de cette condition" (EN, 393). Our existential situation in the world is neither subjective nor objective: "c'est une relation d'être un pour-soi et en-soi qu'il néantise" (EN, 634).

It is characterized by the facts of our existence and the attitude we adopt towards them: "Nous choisissons le monde-non dans sa contexture en-soi mais dans sa signification-en nous choisissant (EN, 541). In the first chapter of L'Être et le Néant : "La condition première de l'action," Sartre underlines that consciousness is freedom. Freedom is always considered by Sartre, as an active choice, as a personal response to constraining circumstances: "Il ne peut y avoir de pour-soi libre que comme engagé dans un monde résistant" (EN 563). "Ainsi ne suis-je libre qu'en situation" (EN 591). He stresses the fact that each person makes an original choice which in turn determines the manner in which the universe reveals itself. At the same time, Sartre concedes that we can not choose whether to exist nor when to exist. As he writes in L'Être et le Néant , our dialectical, contradictory and problematic situation is the world is determined by our fundamental relation to others: "ma place, mon corps, mon passé, ma position en tant qu'elle est déjà déterminée par les indications des Autres, enfin ma relation fondamentale à autrui" (EN, 570).

As a result, my eternal dependence on the alienating look of the Other is inescapable: "Autrui me regarde, et, comme tel, il détient le secret de mon être, il sait ce que je suis" (EN, 430). Whether I try to be as the other sees me, or to be different, his alienation and mine are interdependent and inevitable. Since my freedom to be and the being of the other are mutually incompatible, I am bound to seek the destruction of the other for he poses a limit to my freedom to be: Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. ( . . . ): l'enfer c'est les Autres. ( Huis clos , 1987: 93). A classic example of such an act is Estelle's attempt to kill Inès with a paper-knife in order to remove the main obstacle of her freedom to be, in order to put an end to her being-as-an-object-for-the-Other, a baby killer. In order to overcome the awareness of her unbearable feeling of guilt of murdering her child, Estelle tries to escape from her untenable existential situation by losing herself in the arms of a he-man, Garcin. Her attempt to escape from the burden of her individual freedom through a symbiotic relationship of love, is an irrational and futile act for her masochistic dependency on Garcin annihilates her freedom and independence. Her desperate attempt to submerge herself in another and to attribute personal shortcomings and unchangeable circumstances to others in order to escape from the anguish of choice prevent her from assuming her personal freedom and responsibility, a sine qua non for undertaking positive action.

Sartre's position seems to be that there is no way of respecting the liberty of the other: "le respect de la liberté d'autrui est un vain mot" (EN, 480). One's very existence imposes a limitation on the existence of the Other: "Dès lors que j'existe, j'établis une limite de fait à la liberté d'Autrui . . ." (EN, 480). A very good example of the limiting presence of the Other can be found in the amorous scene of Garcin and Estelle. No sooner does Garcin learn that he is at the mercy of Inès than he realizes that Inès is in turn at his mercy. By attracting the affection of Estelle, Garcin tries to hurt Inès. Estelle, in turn, desperately desires Garcin's love to prop up her vanity. Therefore, the two decide to enter into a sexual relationship in order to realize their common goal of isolating Inès. Just as they are about to kiss, Garcin finds that he is unable to kiss Estelle because Inès is watching.

Estelle: Don't listen to her. Press your lips to my mouth. Oh, I'm yours, yours, yours.

Inès: Well, what are you waiting for? Do as you're told. What a lovely scene: coward Garcin holding baby-killer Estelle in his manly arms! Make your stakes, everyone. Will coward Garcin kiss the lady, or won't he dare? What's the betting? I'm watching you, everybody's watching. I'm a crowd all by myself. Do you hear the crowd? Do you hear them muttering, Garcin? Mumbling and muttering "Coward! Coward! Coward!"-that's what they're saying . . . It's no use trying to escape, I'll never let you go. What do you hope to get from her silly lips? Forgetfulness? But I shan't forget you, not I! "It's I you must convince," ( No Exit , 1982:60)

Inès' paralyzing and objectifying gaze poses a threat to Garcin's freedom to act. Although he attempts to free himself from his label of cowardice, he is unable to do so for it is not up to him to decide whether or not he is a coward. As long as the others will consider him to be a coward, Garcin will continue to feel the shame of his cowardice. Unable to live with the shame of his past, Garcin pounds on the door and attempts to escape from Inès' alienating and accusing look. When the door opens, Inès encourages Garcin to leave. Garcin refuses to leave and closes the door. He tries to convince the others and himself that he is not a coward, that he died before he had a chance to prove his true character, but Inès will not go along with him:

Garcin: ( . . .) Listen! Each man has an aim in life, a leading motive; that's so isn't? Well, I didn't give a damn for wealth, or for love. I aimed at being a real man ( . . .). When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.

Inès: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of" (.)

Garcin: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to-to do my deeds.

Inès: One always dies too soon-or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You're your life, and nothing else. ( No Exit , 1982:55-56).

Sartre's tragic characters try to disown certain unacceptable aspects of their self by falsifying it. Searching for self-affirmation through others, Garcin tries to remake his past in bad faith by claiming that his intentions should not be measured by what he has done. Tortured by self-doubt, he wants the other two dead characters to reflect to him what he desires to believe; that his act of flight at the beginning of the war was an act of pacifism rather than an act of cowardice. Garcin's denial of his true self (a coward and a torturer of women) only produces defensiveness, nervous tension, and self-contempt. Ultimately, he is unmasked and realizes that the despised and disowned aspects of his character are nothing but unrealized aspects of his potentialities. He discovers that he is nothing more than the complete antithesis of what he always wanted to be, a hero. The loss of his real self and its substitution by a pseudo self leaves Garcin in an intense state of fear and insecurity for the others only confirm his cowardice, insecurity and self-doubt. His deceitful and misdirected attempt to manipulate the perception of others fails and he is forced to admit his lack of courage and action. His distorted self and his past defects and failures with women, negative aspects of his self that he is struggling to conceal, become magnified by the distorting mirrors of his companions. As Garcin is trying to argue that he really is not a coward because he had the possibility to perform courageous acts, Inès counters by pointing out that he no longer has any possibilities and therefore can only be judged based on what he has done in the past. When he tries to explain who he is, his companions reply by saying what he was. At death, the only point at which his "for-itself" becomes "in-itself," his identity is fixed in eternity. The others see his acts as accomplished events for they are not aware of his freedom to become. After his death, Garcin can exist only as an object for others to define. When they define him as a coward, the meaning of his life becomes cowardice.

Garcin: There they are, slumped in their chairs, sucking at their cigars. Bored they look. Half-asleep. They're thinking: "Garcin's a coward." But only vaguely, dreamily. One's got to think of something. "That's what they've decided, those dear friends of mine. In six months' time they'll be saying: "Cowardly as that skunk Garcin." You're lucky you two no one on earth is giving you another thought. But I-I'm long in dying ( No Exit , 1982:51).

As Sartre would argue, the self is an imaginary and not an innate construct, an object rather than a subject of consciousness, a continuous creation of our belief. It is a reflexive act which brings the ego into being: "Il n'y a pas de Je sur le plan irréfléchi" (TE, 132). Since the self is external to consciousness, the ego is not in consciousness, one cannot discover it by looking inwards. Introspection and meditation only create frustration, opacity and emptiness: "L'Ego n'apparaît jamais que lorsqu'on ne le regarde pas . . . par nature l'Ego est fuyant" (TE, 70). This would mean that one can never know oneself (TE, 69). To try to believe in a self which one has created is an act of self-deception: "aussi l'intuition de l'Ego est-elle un mirage perpétuellement décevant" (TE, 69).

What makes self-deception possible for Sartre, is that the "pour-soi" (for-itself), that being which is aware of itself (man) differs from the "en-soi" (in-itself), the being which rests in itself, the being of such static things as tables and chairs. Because of its changing structure and difference in nature, the "pour-soi" can only be described by the concepts of possibility, of choice and of personal decision. It is the forever changing nature of the "pour-soi" that makes the phenomenon of self-deception possible; that makes it possible for a man to deceive himself and believe that he has done some great thing which in fact he has not done, or to persuade himself that he has not done a deed which in fact he has done. As Sartre posits, to believe in a self that one has created is a false concept. One's self-image can never be established once and for all. It must always relfect the self in the hic et nunc , for the concept of a fixed, objective self would entail the rejection of one's responsibility for self-discovery and self-actualization.

According to Sartre, our being is never stable; it can never be identified with its past, present or future (EN, 97, 69). Consciousness can only be defined as a radical opposition to the "being" of things which is solid, static, self-identical. The being of things is "en soi" (EN, 33), that is to say, pure positivity, plenitude, objectivity. Consciousness on the other hand, is "pour soi," it is not "soi," yet it always tries to be "soi." Such a struggle for self-identification is a futile attempt, "une passion inutile," for 'self-coincidence" is possible only after death, only in a state of a static totalized form which constitutes a definitive form of alienation to others. The freedom of the "pour soi" that is a free, fluid, conscious forever changing state, and the identity of the "en soi" are mutually exclusive (EN, 133). A synthesized union of an "en soi pour soi" of an objective static self and that of an ever becoming, freely changing self is incompatible. One may be an object for others, but one can never be an object for oneself, for the concept of a fixed, objective, petrified self would entail "la mort de la conscience" (TE, 23). The permanent structures of an objectified and consolidated personality would prevent one from the realization of any freedom of choice, from any spontaneous action, from any potential change or becoming. The desire for a psychological homeostatic, unchanging character would lead to the refusal of one's self-constitution. Unfortunately, many people spend their lives in a futile attempt to flee their existential freedom and to achieve a form of static existence, an impossible state of self-coincidence.

It is true that the problem of self-deception and of self-analysis have appeared long before Sartre's philosophical writings of the 1940's. Contrastive analyses of man's facticity and transcendence are encountered in a number of writings of Jaspers, Kierkegaard, Nietsche and Heidegger. However, a closer comparison, reveals that Sartre's examination of the problem of self-reflection and of human integrity is more concrete and more experiential than the more abstract, academic and moralizing formulations of his philosophical forefathers. Unlike other Marxist philosophers, Sartre is not satisfied to define man as matter that happens to be conscious. For Sartre, man is different from the objective universe. He is matter that chooses to exist. A stone is, but man exists only insofar as he declares himself responsible for his actions. The difference is that a man is responsible for what he does and for the image that his acts reveal. This responsibility is painful for the freedom of selecting a course of action creates anguish and anxiety.

The dilemma of existing and self-creation forces Sartre to examine the relationship between freedom and facticity, between the "in-itself" and the "for-itself" and to explore the limiting "social" factors of our human condition and the development of one's consciousness. The restrictive forces that our consciousness has not created, namely: race, nationality, physical appearance, language, social systems, that Sartre calls: "techniques d'élaboration ou d'appropriation du monde" (EN, 596), do not constitute an external limit upon our freedom, even though these objective meanings do create a world in which we exercise our free choice. It is worth noting that Sartre does not include sex and gender in the list of "social" determinants. He makes no reference to the division of the human race into men and women. He simply accepts that sexual difference belongs to the domain of facticity: "Que la différence sexuelle soit du domaine de la facticité, nous l'accepterons à la rigueur" (EN, 452). Sartre rejects all determinist arguments and states that "the coefficient of adversity of things," "Le coefficient de l'adversité des choses" (EN, 562), does not constitute an excuse against freedom for it is we ourselves who bring these factors into being by choosing a particular aim or action (EN, 562). Even though the existence of others poses a factual limit to our freedom, Sartre argues that it is our own freedom of choice that creates the limits that it later encounters in the world. Even though others pose a limit to our freedom for they see us as objects, their limiting force is outside our "situation." Even though the freedom of others confers a limit on our situation, the "for-itself" can never be anything at all. We can not interiorise or subjectivise the meanings of our social roles or characterizations for such unrealizables or "irréalisables" only exist if we freely choose to realize them by assuming our "being-for-others." The term "being-for-others," covers a number of different categories: among others, profession, social position, race, nationality, physique, character, etc. In spite of the fact that Sartre underlines the fact that we are born into a world shaped by others, he maintains, in "Le Regard," that the only way to affirm that we are not the other is to assume our "being-for-others." In order to be, we have to choose to be what we are for others (EN, 612): "je ne choisis pas d'être pour l'autre ce que je suis mais je ne puis tenter d'être pour moi ce que je suis pour l'autre qu'en me choisissant tel que j'apparais à l'autre, c'est-à-dire par une assomption élective" (EN, 612). According to Sartre, we do not have access to the Other's consciousness. Therefore, we cannot actually know what the Other is thinking of us. Instead, the Other forces us to pass judgement on ourselves in terms of what we think the Other thinks of us. He argues that conflict is the very basis of all human relations with Others (EN, 479). Conflict is the inescapable dilemma of all human beings: "transcender l'autre ou se laisser transcender par lui" (EN, 502). In order to transcend the Other, we have no alternative but to assume our "being-for-others." Thus, the Other acts as an objectifying mediator of our self. We are as we appear to Others. But the effort to see others as subjects forever is unsustainable. As soon as we look at the Other our relationship with other changes as we try to contain the Other within our own world. By assuming this second attitude, we do not recognize the Other as subject. Seeing the Other as object clearly implies a refusal of our "being-for-others." We constantly revert from one attitude to the other and the Other has only to look at us in order to reverse our position, in order to force us to see the Other as subject. We may not recognize ourselves in the world and in our actions for we are eternally at the mercy of Others. We may try to rid ourselves of a situation by assuming the situation rather than assuming our "being-for-others." And yet, since we construct our own situation, we have to assume the responsibility for the consequences of our actions which we did not strive for.

The relationship between freedom and responsibility constitutes the very core of Sartre's existential dilemma: "L'idée que je n'ai jamais cessé de développer, c'est que, en fin de compte, chacun est toujours responsable de ce qu'on a fait de lui-même s'il ne peut rien faire de plus que d'assumer cette responsabilité" ( Sit IX, 102). What Sartre attempts to explore in Huis clos is the paradoxical, dialectic and somewhat pessimistic (TS, 238) nature of our phenomenological ontology: that is, the inescapable nature of our freedom of choice and our passionate and relentless search for self-identity. He is trying to demonstrate through his dramatis personae that Garcin, Inès and Estelle are not a coward, a lesbian or a nymphomaniac the same way as they are male or female, blond, brunette, or redhead. They chose to be the way they are, because they were afraid of their freedom of choice and of change, because they longed to be as solid as a thing in their socially acceptable petrified images. Yearning to escape from liberty and responsibility, Sartre's inauthentic characters abdicated their freedom of choice and ascribed the responsibility of self-creation to others. Like Inès, they assumed that they could not change what they were born to be, or what they were conditioned to be, or they claimed that their heredity, parents and society were responsible for their self-creation. In their struggle for a static identity, they were striving to be something, an "en-soi," in the manner in which a table or a rock are something. They tried to find their "pour-soi" by becoming "en-soi" while remaining "pour-soi" and thereby to attain the justification of their being. Escapism and self-deception had become their second nature. In their relentless struggle to be something solid, something static, they have abdicated their freedom to become. By living a life of self-deception, they have each surrendered their freedom of choosing life. Inès has accepted the fact that she was born with a certain nature, a perverse woman, "une femme condamnée," that all was arranged for her in advance, without any of her doing. Estelle had accepted and played the role of the vain, sensitive, selfish, self-sacrificing victim who gave up her own happiness and married a rich old man in order to save the life of a sick brother. The most tragic of the three is Garcin, an idealist and a coward, who uses his intellect to reason away his responsibilities in order to rationalize his actions or inactions. But as Sartre postulates in Huis clos , there are no acceptable excuses, no universal types no general categories, no universal human nature. Man is condemned to be free and is therefore responsible for his self-creation. There is no determinism and our actions cannot be justified by our environment, nor by our past. It is not self-justification, not reasoning, not play-acting, for they dehumanize the individual by blinding him to his own freedom, but personally chosen action and metaphysical responsibility that make man the creator of his essence.