“Hell is other people.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

To perceive is to be perceived—an irony not lost on those who would prefer to feel autonomous, self-contained, and above the existential tethers of another’s gaze. Sartre’s phrase captures not just frustration but an enduring paradox: freedom and selfhood, though conceptualized as absolute, become vulnerable under the eyes of others, each gaze turning the desired autonomy into dependency, where the self can see itself only through external feedback. In this way, the claim of individuality reveals itself as a woven composite of “others’ eyes,” and in the lattice of these gazes, we find not liberation, but the constraint of reflection without refuge.

To Sartre, this entanglement is not superficial but reaches the core of existential dread. The self, in its quest for authenticity, yearns to assert itself independently, yet inevitably remains subject to the interpretations and reactions of others. Herein lies a bleak irony: the very presence of another individual imposes a shaping force, like a sculptor chiseling identity out of perception, with each glance a chisel-strike that leaves a mark not of essence, but of surveillance. By existing in society, one is drawn into the position of the observed, the judged, and ultimately, the confined. No judgment need be vocalized for the effect to penetrate; the mere fact of perception brings about a “being-for-others,” where consciousness is bent toward a mirror endlessly reflecting all one has hidden away from sight.

This paradox implies not that freedom is unattainable but that, under the conditions of human interdependence, it is asymptotically approached and never realized. Sartre’s phrase articulates the unyielding fact that, while we are ever poised at the threshold of autonomy, we are also perpetually reined in by the echoes of others’ perceptions, hearing not freedom’s call, but the constraints of relational existence. The inescapability of “hell” lies in the need for acknowledgment—the twisted truth that to feel seen is to experience life itself, however confining.

Through this lens, individuality becomes a shadow within a constellation of “others,” and freedom, the ironic promise of existentialism, is revealed as a solitary goal pursued through the labyrinth of social entrapment. In the end, perhaps “hell” is merely the absence of unobserved selfhood, where we exist not alone, but as patches sewn together by the perspectives of others—a garment we cannot doff.