“Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others”

“Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others” condenses the account of human relations as reciprocal struggle. Each person tries to free themself from the other’s hold and may seek to enslave the other, but the other is engaged in the same effort; neither is simply an object at the mercy of a unilateral will.

Meaning and Scope

The expression introduces a discussion of concrete conduct toward others, beginning with attempts by the for-itself to assimilate the other’s freedom. It states the interpretive frame for what follows: relations must be understood as moving and reciprocal, not as actions directed at a passive object. Each side’s effort to escape the other’s power is met by an answering effort, so conflict belongs to the relation itself rather than arising only as an exceptional dispute.

Reciprocity and Freedom

The sentence’s paired clauses give this reciprocity its force. While one person seeks release from the other’s hold, the other seeks release from theirs; while one tries to enslave, the other tries to enslave in turn. The symmetry does not erase the difference between the two people. Instead, it shows that each is a freedom attempting to determine how the other will appear and be held, while remaining exposed to the other’s corresponding attempt.

Connection to the Look

The surrounding account explains why this struggle matters. In the first revelation of the other as a look, a person experiences their being-for-others as a kind of possession: the other’s look makes their body present as an object in a way they cannot achieve for themself. The other appears to hold a secret of what they are. This object-state is at once experienced as a loss of being and as the condition through which a being that is theirs becomes manifest to them.

The Stakes of Conflict

The person remains responsible for their being-for-others but is not its foundation: the other establishes it through a free transcendence, while the person encounters it as a contingent given. The desire to recover and ground this being through one’s own freedom follows from that tension. The expression therefore identifies conflict not merely with hostility, but with the struggle over freedom and the meaning of oneself as one appears to another.