throwback to that time in my existentialism class where the professor asked âwho thinks hell is other peopleâ and half the class slowly and meekly put their hand up
then the prof was like ââŠi mean who originally said itâ
there are some posts that sound utterly made up for the joke or for the notes, but this one I whole heartedly believeÂ
Sounds right to meâŠ
That quote is amazing to me in that itâs quoted completely accurately and yet in a way that means something completely different from what it meant in context.
(Sartre was claiming that Hell was other people. He was not claiming that other people were hell.)
âŠI canât actually tell what distinction youâre drawing there. Can you expand?
The line comes from No Exit, which is set in Hell. Spoilers for No Exit follow
In particular, three people who have been condemned to hell are trapped eternally in a room together. And at first they think they got off easy without any pitchforks or fiery lakes or anything. But over the course of the play they discover that they have been chosen very specifically to have neuroses and character flaws that interact with and torment each other.
Each one needs the approval of a second in an unstable RPS cycle so that any time one of them might be satisfied by a second, the third swoops in and ruins it.
And when they figure this out, one of the characters expresses his understanding, that hell isnât physical torture. âHell is justâother people.â
So the point isnât that other people, generically, are hellish; itâs rather that you can build a hell out of other people.
But when I hear people quote it, itâs usually sort of an introvert-pride thing. âOther people are hell; you should spend time alone.â And thatâs not the point at all. Itâs a statement about how bad unhealthy relationships can be, not a statement about how all relationships are unhealthy!
See also Sartreâs own comment here:
âhell is other peopleâ has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell.
Reblogging for the original post which was hilarious and also for that explanation which is beautiful
Another big point in No Exit is that the characters find out at the end that the room theyâre in is not locked. They could just leave, but theyâre each of them incapable of just leaving without winning their arguments. So really, hell is when we stay in dysfunctional relationships that harm us, when we canât just leave other people be and move on.
