@philosophyminis: Ask someone close to summarise you in just a few words, and as you hear or read what they say, measure how you feel. Do you feel happy that they've got you just right, or do you feel reduced or simplified in some way, as if these, your closest relatives, have missed so much about the complexity of your existence? This feeling is what Sartre means in his famous quotation: hell is other people. We all have incredibly complicated inner lives. We have fantasies that we'll tell nobody, secrets we'll never share, our fears we're scared to reveal, and complexities that no one has ever seen. And yet, other people will reduce you. When you walk into a room, everybody makes a judgement based upon what you project, and you are, for them, an object, and they will give you a label. You are the funny one, the quiet one, the boring one, the rude one, and so on. Even those you think are your closest friends will never appreciate the full depth of your character. And so we rage against the injustice of being so misrepresented. We say, I am so much more than this, but we are just as guilty. We are the ones objectifying and labelling other people as well. We make other people less real, less full, and less important, because the world is full of objects, and I am the only subject. So, hell is other people because they reduce our personhood. They make us feel less important, more boring, more shallow, more vapid. We want to say, I am so much more than how you see me, and yet we bite our tongue, because it seems churlish to do so.

Jonny Thomson

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Region: GB

Saturday 20 December 2025 14:59:36 GMT