“Hell is other people” is perhaps one of Sartre’s most famous maxims, which is frequently quoted and repeated, yet often misunderstood.
Sartre’s statement that “hell is other people” carries within itself or resembles Sartre’s view, in Being and Nothingness, that “conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others”, a view whose significance and implications are debatable.
There are views arguing that both statements should be interpreted as saying and acknowledging that interpersonal relations are conflictual and full of misunderstandings, struggles, and attempts at controlling the Other. Such views take Sartre’s account of the look as the ground in which they ground their arguments.
Some other views argue that Sartre’s attempt is not to insert an unbearable pessimism into the heart of human relations, but rather to show how bad faith, which occurs when consciousness lies to and deceives itself, can negatively affect our interpersonal and social relations. Such views argue that any turning toward authenticity could render less problematic the conflicts whose concealed origin is our attempt at escaping or negating our radical freedom. Such views take Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” and his notions of freedom, condemnation, and the situation as the ground from which any attempt at escaping bad faith should arise.
No Exit: “Hell Is Other People”
“Hell is other people” appears in Sartre’s play, No Exit, in which three complete strangers, who have died, find themselves brought with each other into the same room, which is hell, with no possibility of ever leaving or escaping.
In this room, distractions are impossible because the three strangers cannot blink, sleep, or dream and because there are no windows, books, or mirrors.
Since there are no mirrors in this room, the three strangers cannot see either themselves or how each one is seen by the Others.
In this room, there are no devils or other beings torturing the three strangers. They torture and torment each other by criticizing and reproaching one another whilst attempting to justify and explain their actions and deeds in the lives they have lived. That is, they carry out and suffer from the torturing happening in this room.
Their torturing of each other is constant and becomes even more tormenting and critical when they start to know each other’s secrets and faults in their past lives. The longer they stay with each other in hell, the more secrets they know about each other. The longer they stay with each other, the harsher the criticisms they direct toward each other.
They suffer from their being-for-others, from their being for each other, in their unsuccessful attempts to control or change their opinions of each other.
Shortly before the end of the play, one of the three strangers puts into words that toward which the whole play is turning from its beginning when he says that: “There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people.”
“Hell is other people” means thus that it is hell and unbearable to exist subject to, awaiting, controlled by, and turned toward the Other’s approval, judgements, and opinions.
“Hell is other people” describes an existence existing at the mercy of the Other, the Other’s judgements, and the Other’s accusing gaze. It is hell, tormenting, and unbearable to be unable to escape the Other’s look that objectifies and, in its objectifying, tortures.
Camus and Life
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus speaks of two kinds of suicide. The first one is the event of killing oneself; the second one is faith as a philosophical suicide.
In the writings and works of Camus, two forms of hope are placed over against each other: infinite hope and finite hope.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus thinks from out the question of suicide, toward and into happiness, whose dwelling place is the heart of Sisyphus. But how could that whose origin is the meaninglessness of existence and the possibility of rendering oneself forever absent encounter itself eventually as happiness and joy?