The Fall of Man serves as Sartre’s biblical image for original shame: Adam and Eve’s recognition of their nakedness symbolizes the exposure of human beings as objects in the presence of another subject. The episode gives a concrete form to a general condition, rather than explaining shame as the consequence of a particular wrongdoing.

The Symbol of Nakedness

Sartre treats modesty, especially the fear of being discovered naked, as a symbolic specification of original shame. The body stands for a defenseless state in which a person is apprehended as an object. In this reading, the Fall’s decisive image is not a detailed account of the biblical event but the moment when Adam and Eve know they are naked.

Clothing becomes the countergesture to this exposure: to dress is to conceal one’s object-state and claim the position of a subject who can see without being seen. The contrast clarifies why nakedness matters in Sartre’s argument. It makes visible the tension between being a free subject and finding oneself fixed as an object for another.

Shame and the Other

The Fall’s symbolic force lies in its connection to the Other’s gaze. Shame is not, in this account, simply guilt over a specific fault. It is the recognition of oneself as an object whose being is exposed, fixed, and dependent on another’s apprehension. The biblical image condenses that broader condition into the discovery of nakedness.

The response to shame is to apprehend as an object the one who has apprehended oneself in that way. Thus the symbol also points toward a reversal: the exposed person attempts to recover subjectivity by objectifying the Other. The Fall of Man figures the vulnerability that initiates this conflict, not a final resolution of it.