Simultaneity

Simultaneity names the temporal relation made possible by the Other’s presence: another consciousness is present to the world at the same time as oneself, and in being temporalized by that Other, the self appears within a shared, universal present. It is not merely two events occurring together; it changes how a solitary consciousness can experience its own time and presence.

Beyond Co-presence

For a single for-itself, the world can contain co-presences, but not simultaneity in the strict sense. The solitary consciousness is everywhere lost outside itself in the world and links beings through the unity of its own presence. Simultaneity requires something different: two existents temporally connected without being bound together in some other relation. If they act reciprocally as parts of one system, their relation does not by itself constitute simultaneity.

The Other as Its Foundation

The phenomenon appears in the experience of simultaneity, which a consciousness could not have in solitude. The glass is for Paul at the same time that it is for the perceiving self; likewise, Pierre’s presence to the world is simultaneous with the self’s. Such examples establish that simultaneity is not simply a property of objects considered in isolation. Its foundation is the presence of an Other, temporalized alongside oneself.

A Shared Present and Alienation

The Other does not merely occupy the same time. As the Other launches toward their own time, the self appears to them in universal time; as the Other temporalizes themselves, they temporalize the self with them. The self’s present, now grasped by another as its present, acquires an outside and is alienated into a present to which the Other is also present. The self is thereby thrown into the universal present, a temporal dimension it could not constitute alone.

This shared present is not a neutral reconciliation of separate perspectives. The universal present in which the self takes its place is described as an alienation of its own universal present. Physical time flows toward a free temporalization that the self is not; the absolute temporalization glimpsed on the horizon of simultaneity remains separated from it by nothingness. Simultaneity thus reveals both the possibility of a world shared with another and the self’s inability to own the temporal standpoint from which it is seen.