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Arachne: A Literary Journal. No. 1

(III:3) A God After All?

(III:3) A God After All?

In this impasse of man's relation to one another love is no exception. Love, according to Sartre, consists in the attempt to 'appropriate' the other's 'freedom'. That is, in love I wish not to reduce the other to an object, but to possess his as subject. This, Sartre's lover tries to bring about by making himself beloved. In fact, according to Sartre, to love means 'to wish to be loved'. A definition which betrays Sartre's complete incapacity of establishing true personal relationships. As it is Sartre's lover places himself into the some page 21 what difficult position of wanting to be loved, to use his own jargon, 'by a freedom' while at the same time demanding 'that this freedom as freedom be no longer free'. What this jargon amounts to, is simply this: the lover wants to be for the beloved 'the whole world'.7 Or, 'the absolute centre of reference' from which all values for the other issue. Only under these circumstances will the lover be able to feel justified in his existence. This and no less he demands for his security. For once, he would not be an 'abortive god', but a true god round whom the whole universe revolves. How is it that this magnificient 'project' does not work? Sartre's answer is characteristic. The beloved retaliates by loving the lover and since love is by definition 'the wish to be loved', we are faced with another irreducible dilemma. This is how Sartre sums it up. "Everybody wishes that the other loves him without taking into account that to love is to wish to be loved and that consequently in wishing that the other loves one, one merely wishes that the other wishes that one loves him."8