Being-with

Being-with is Heidegger’s account of human existence as essentially shared: the Other is not an accidental object encountered after an initially solitary self, but part of the structure through which human reality is what it is. Sartre recognizes that this approach moves the problem beyond knowledge and toward being, yet concludes that an abstract, universal Being-with cannot prove the existence of, or create a bridge to, any particular Other.

Heidegger’s Ontological Proposal

In Sartre’s account, Heidegger’s analysis of being-in-the-world distinguishes three inseparable moments: world, being-in, and being. Being-in is described through Befindlichkeit and Verstand; the question of being concerns the mode in which human reality is its being-in-the-world. Heidegger names this mode MitSein, or Being-with. Human reality, on this view, does not first exist independently and then happen to meet another person. Being with others belongs essentially to its being.

This structure is not imposed from an external, totalizing viewpoint. Heidegger begins from the human reality disclosed to the one who asks the question, making explicit a preontological understanding of itself. The Other consequently appears not merely as a particular existence found among worldly things, but as an ex-centric limit that helps constitute the self: the Other draws the self beyond itself toward structures that both escape it and define it. The relation is thus a matter of being, not simply of one consciousness knowing another.

From Being-for to Being-with

Sartre sets this proposal against accounts in which consciousnesses are related through being-for: each consciousness appears to, or constitutes itself for, the other, and the problem becomes one of mutual recognition between subjects confronting each other. Being-with has a different emphasis. It does not primarily describe reciprocal recognition or conflict arising when another human reality appears among the objects of the world. It signifies an ontological solidarity in the shared activity of making a world available for human purposes.

The Other, in this account, is not originally one more instrument or object within the world. The Other remains a human reality whose being-in-the-world determines the self. Being-in means inhabiting or haunting the world, rather than being trapped inside it; the relation between people is therefore described as oblique interdependence rather than frontal opposition. As each organizes the world as a complex of instruments for its own ends, each is determined by another who organizes that same world for different ends.

Being-with is also not merely a condition passively received. Since Heidegger describes being as making oneself be through one’s possibilities, a person freely realizes this relation in authentic or inauthentic modes. In the anonymous mode of the they, public things disclose a shared, impersonal existence: ready-made clothes, common transportation, parks, gardens, public places, and shelters for anyone. These instruments belong to everybody and, insofar as the person lives as everybody, belong to that person too. The resulting social unity is not yet a relation between unique, irreplaceable individuals; its terms remain interchangeable.

Sartre presents the image of a crew as the clearest emblem of Heidegger’s intuition. The original relation is not initially a distinct you confronting a distinct me, but a we: rowers share the rhythm of the oars and the coxswain’s regular movements, pursue a common goal such as overtaking a boat or yacht, and inhabit a horizon that includes spectators and the performance. This common existence does not erase individuality forever. Heidegger’s account allows the call of conscience and a resolute movement toward one’s own death as one’s most distinctive possibility to disclose authenticity; the revelation of being-unto-death makes a person stand out from the common ground while also raising the others toward a shared solitude.

Sartre’s Objections: From the Ontological to the Concrete

Sartre grants that Heidegger has identified the sort of relation required to challenge solipsism: a being whose own being implies the being of the Other. But he regards the account as an indication of a possible solution rather than a demonstrated one. Experiences of mood or shared existence may suggest coexistence, yet they do not explain why coexistence should be the unique foundation of human being, what kind of being it has, or how the negation that makes the Other other can be preserved without reducing the relation either to opposition or to monism.

The central difficulty is the gap between ontological Being-with and concrete, particular relations. A universal assertion that human reality is with others by its structure does not explain a friendship with Pierre or the couple formed by Annie and the person speaking. The abstract Other in the ontological relation cannot, by itself, become this particular Other. For Sartre, Being-with therefore cannot solve the concrete psychological problem of recognizing another person; the ontological and ontic questions require separate answers.

The problem becomes sharper if Being-with is treated as an a priori structure that defines in advance the whole domain of relations. Particular encounters could then be only specifications of that structure, not genuinely independent connections. But relating two concrete beings-in-the-world cannot simply be counted as an experience already constituted by the universal law. Sartre argues that such a priori Being-with excludes the possibility of a concrete human reality arising for itself as an absolute transcendence. As a structure of the self’s being, it supplies neither proof that the Other exists nor a bridge to the Other; despite its apparent promise of solidarity, it risks isolating the self as surely as solipsism does.

Significance and Limits

Sartre’s criticism does not deny the force of Heidegger’s shift from knowledge to being. It accepts that the problem of the Other cannot be resolved simply by treating another consciousness as an object of knowledge, and that human existence is not adequately described as an initially self-contained subject. The shared crew, the public world of everyday instruments, and the possibility of authenticity all give Being-with concrete interpretive force as an account of how existence is lived among others.

His objection is that this force is not yet an explanation of actual relations. By defining transcendence as an a priori movement outside itself, Heidegger’s account, Sartre argues, does not escape idealism: what human reality finds at the inaccessible limit of that movement remains the self. The flight outside the self becomes a flight toward the self, with the world appearing as the distance between self and self. Being-with thus marks both a decisive reframing of the problem and its unresolved limit: shared existence may be fundamental, but a universal structure cannot substitute for the encounter with a concrete, independent Other.