Search for Self in Other in Cicero, Ovid, Rousseau, Diderot and Sartre

Search for Self in Other in Cicero, Ovid, Rousseau, Diderot and Sartre examines how these five theorists recognized that searching for self in an idealized other can lead to a variety of perversions. Cicero warned against seeking friends whom we regard as being everything that we are not: he advised to first be a good person and then to seek other. Ovid showed that Narcissus had no close friends to reinforce his identity; because he never knew his father, he searched for a male figure with whom to identify; he was oblivious to his own assets and tried to live vicariously through other. Even after Narcissus realized his error, he continued to look outward: it is often futile to try to break out of familial and historic patterns in which one is firmly entrenched. Rousseau explained that identification with other stems back to natural man who, when roaming freely through the forest, felt compassion and pity at the sight of a suffering other. Therefore, modern man, seated in a theater, is transported by pity, anxiety, and fear for the welfare of fictional characters as if it were his own. Thus, we have the genealogy of the death of self. Moreover, the theater destroys authenticity: it teaches us to pretend to be someone other than who we are, to conform to the dictates of society, and to aim to please others with the goal of furthering self-interest. Diderot showed how the absence of self can be exploited by the powerful to reshape the minds of the weak. He proves that given the right environment and length of time, any one of us, like the victims in The Nun, could just as easily have his life ruined. Sartre reminds us that it is impossible to be-in-exterior. We see ourselves according to the way that others perceive us, which is based on conditioning and prejudices. Sartre untangles the snarled web of misperception of self that arises from "the look" of the other. This study addresses man's growing understanding of the death of self in the mirror of other across the corridors of time-from Narcissus' ancient pool, to Cicero's Roman forum, to Rousseau's Parisian theater, to Diderot's convent, to Sartre's twentieth-century hell.