ABSTRACT
In Jean-Paul Sartrean terms, the older was taken by surprise by being subject to the 'look' of the younger, made to feel the object of that look, to realise his 'being-for-another' in a new way. The older cousin finds himself subject to 'the word' of the younger and treated as 'object', as an 'object of loving concern'. Sartre has shown how dualism collapses into idealism about the reality of the conscious life of another – both dualistic 'realism' and idealism about others are unstable. Sartre evokes the immediacy of the rapport, resists proving the existence of the Other – that would lead to some sort of reduction of the Other. Sartre appropriates the 'Other' as 'his responsibility', which is incommensurate with its first, primary role in de-centring the 'I'. At an early stage of Being and Nothingness, in 'Transcendence', Sartre's remarks about knowledge had begun to deconstruct public knowledge and to set it up as an 'impossible possible'.
