Authenticity, then, always looks like an emergence from “them,” a refusal of conformity, because inauthenticity is, by definition, a failure to resist the domination of Others, the tyranny of the “they.” Others constitute an existential threat. Is it any wonder, then, that in his play No Exit Jean-Paul Sartre would put in the mouth of Joseph Garcin the jarring suggestion that “hell is other people”? This is not a bland misanthropy; rather, it stems from a picture of intersubjectivity not unlike Heidegger’s, in which others are fundamentally competitors, threats, robbers of my peace and rest.
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