The Look and the Alienated Body
Being and NothingnessThis thread traces how being seen transforms lived embodiment into an exterior identity that consciousness cannot fully recover.
increasing
Bearing strength in each event
decreasing
The Body Lived

The Body Lived
A Point of View
The body is the contingent center through which things appear and actions become possible. It is not first an object known from outside.
Inapprehensibility
The body is present in action but cannot itself be made a complete object for the consciousness that lives it.
The Other's Body

The Other's Body
Meaningful Form
The Other's body is encountered as an organized totality of action and situation. Gestures are perceived as meaningful rather than inferred from anatomy.
Facticity
Its flesh marks a contingent presence within the world, while its actions exceed that presence toward ends.
Being-For-Others

Being-For-Others
A New Dimension
The self exists as a body known by another. This exterior dimension is experienced but cannot be seen from the self's own point of view.
Alienation
The body's meaning escapes the person who lives it and is available to another freedom's interpretation.
Shyness and Appearance

Shyness and Appearance
The Body Seen
Shyness arises when a person experiences the body as it may appear to another, not as it is lived from within.
Failed Control
Attempts to manage posture or expression cannot secure the body's meaning. The very effort to control it can become another object for the Other.
The Psychic Body

The Psychic Body
Reflection's Object
Reflection can organize pain into illness and the body into a quasi-object that seems to endure beyond particular episodes.
Alienated Knowledge
The body known through language and others' concepts is not the lived body itself; it is a body constituted from an external standpoint.
Part Three, Chapter Two, Section I
Part Three, Chapter Two, Section II
Part Three, Chapter Two, Section III, opening
Part Three, Chapter Two, Section III, discussion of shyness
Part Three, Chapter Two, Section III, pain and illness discussion