A. METAPHYSICS AND TRANSCENDENCE |. Desire for the Invigibbe? “The true life is absent” But we are inthe world. Metaphys arses snd is maintained in tis alt, Tt ie turned toward the "le- where andthe “otherwise” andthe “othe.” “For inthe mest general form ihas assumed inthe Kstory of thoughe it appears asa moremest forth from a world that fe friar to us, whatever be the Srkngwn lands that bound it or that it hides from view, from an {at hme) (cher si"]¢ whish we inkgit, toward an allen outidest- f [hore-dese (toward a yonder.) "The term of this movement, the iewhere or the ater, i called other in an eminent sense. No journey, no change of climate or of scenery Id satisfy the dese bent toward it. The other metaphysical desired ie not “other” like the bread T eat, the land in which T dwell, he leadsape T contemplate, like, sometimes, myself for mel, hi“ tha “oter?”T ean “feed” on these reaies and toa very great extent tan myel as though Thad imply ben acing them. Thee altri istheteby seaborbed into my own Hen asa thinker or « powroot, Se entiely, toward the it singular pretension. As commonly interpreted need would be atthe indigent and incomplete ast grandeur. It would coincide with the conscious ‘sof what has been lot; it would be essentially a nostalgia «longing for return, But thus it would not even suspect what the veritably other “The metaphysical desire doesnot ong to return, for it is desire for a the Hegelian bei sich—will for Levinas express dhe ‘cist for nell” We4 Totality and Infiity land not of our birth, for a land foreign to every nature, which has not been our fatherland and to which we shall never betake ourelves. ‘The metaphysical desire doesnot rest upon any prior kinship. It isa desire that can not be satisfied. For we speak lightly of desires satisfied, or of sexual needs, or even of moral and religious needs. Love itelf is thus taken to be the satisfaction of a subline hunger. If this language is ‘because most of our desires and love too are not pure. “The desires one can satisfy resemble metaphysical desire ony in the decep- tions of satisfaction or in the exasperation of non-satisaction and desire utes voluptuosity itself, ‘The metaphysical desire bas an- sires beyond everything th Tei like goodness—the Desired doesnot fulfil t but deepens i 1 generosity nourished by the Desired, and thus a ritawship at is not the disappearance of distance, not a bringing together, or—to circumscribe more closely the essence of generosity and of goodness—a relationship whose positivity comes from remotenes, from separation, for it nourishes itself, one might say, with its hunger. This remotenes is al only if desire isnot the possibility of anticipating the desirable, it does not think it beforehand, if it goes toward it aimlestly, that is, as toward an absolute, unanticipatable alterity, as one goes forth unto death, Desire is absolute if the desiring being is mortal and the Desired invisible. Invisibility doesnot denote an absence of relation; it implies relations with what is not given, of which there is no idea. Vision js an adequation of the idea with the thing, a comprehension that encompasts. Non-adequation does not denote a simple negation or an obscurity ofthe idea, but—beyond the light and the night, beyond the Knowledge measuring beings—the inordinateness of Desire. Desce is desire for the absolutely other. Besides the hunger one satis, the thirst one quenches, and the senses one allays, metaphysics desires the other heyond satisfactions, where no gesture by the body to diminish the aspiration is posible, where itis not possible to sketch out any known cares nor invent any new caress. A desire without satisfaction which, precely, understands Centend] the remoteness, the alteriy, and the ex: , _terorty ofthe other. For Desire this alterty, non-adequate to the idea, * has « meaning. Te is understood as the alterity of the Other and of the Most-High. The very dimension of height is opened up by meta- “Tin my opinion, that Lnowled can simply complete‘ A, Metaphysics and Transcendence 35 physical Desire. ‘That this height is no longer the heavens but the Tnvsble isthe ver elevation of height and its nail. ‘To die for the invible—this is metaphysics This does not mean that desire can lupense with ac. But thw acts are either conumption, wor cares, nor liturgy. ‘Demeatd pretension to the lavsble, when the acte experience of the human inthe twentieth centry teaches tht the thoughts of men ae borne by needs which explain scety and history, that hunger and fear can prevail over every human resistance and every freedom! There is no question of doubting this human misery, this dominion the things and the tricked exerci over man, this animalty. But to be a man is to Know | hat thi is. Fredom cmt in amine da emis inal But to know or tobe conscious i fo have time to avoid and forestall the instant of inhumanity, Te is this perpetual postponing ofthe hour of treason—infnitesimal diference between man and not-man—that i plies the disiterestednes of goodness, the desire ofthe absolutely other or oobi, the dimension of metaphyac, 2. The Breach of Totality ‘This absolute exteririty of the metaphysical term, the ireducibilty of movement to an inward play, to a simple presence of self to self, i, if not demonstrated, claimed by the word transcendent. The metaphysical movement is transcendent, and transcendence, like deste and inadequ tion, is necessarily a tranascendence? ‘The transcendence with whi the metaphyrcian designates it is distinctive in that the distance it cexpreses, unlike all distances, enters into the way of existing of the exterior being. Tes formal characteristic, to be other, makes up its content, Thus the metaphysician and the other can not be totalized. “The metaphysician is absolutely separated. “The metaphysician and the other do nat constitute a simple correlation, which would be reversible. ‘The reversibility of relation where the indifferently read fro and from right to left a complete one another Jn-asystem wile from the outside. nded transcendence would be thus reabsorbed into the unity of the system, destroying the radical We borrow Ck "Su Tide de a tramscendance™ fn Existence humaine ef trenscendance (Nevchtel, 1944). We have drawn ‘much iapiration from the themes evoked in that sady.36 and Infinity alterty of the other. Irreversitlity does not only mean that the same goes unto the other differently than the other unto the same. ‘That eventuality does not enter into account: the radial separation between the same and the other means precisely that it is impossible to place oneself outside ofthe correlation between the same and the other so as to record the correspondence or the non-correspondence of this going with this return, Otherwise the same and the other would be reunited under one gaze, and the absolute that separates them filed "The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is other with respect toa term whose essence isto remain atthe point of departure, to serve as entry into the zelation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. 4 term can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I. ‘To be is, over and beyond any individuation that can be derived from a system of references, to have identity as one's content. ‘The I is not @ being that always remains the same, but is the being whose existing consists in identifying itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it. Ie isthe primal identity, the primordial work of identifi cation. ‘The I is identical init very alterations, Tt represents them to itself and thinks them, The universal identity in which the heterogenous ean be embraced has the ossature of a subject, of the first person. Universal thought is an “I think.” ‘The I is identical in its very alterations in yet another sense. The I that thinks hearkens to itself thinking or takes fright before its depths and isto itself an other. Tt thus discovers the famous naiveté of its thought, which thinks “straight on” as one “follows one's nose."* It hearkens to itself thinking and surprises itself being dogmatic, foreign to itself. But faced with tis altrity the I isthe same, merges with itself, incapable of apostasy with regard to this surprising “self.” Hegel phenomenology, where self-consciousness is the dist Sot distinct, ex universality ofthe same identifying itself in E he and de self to self. “L singuiah myself from myself; and therein Iam immediately aware that is factor distinguished from me is not distinguished. I, the selfsame_ being, thrust myself away from myself; but this whichis distinguished, phic i set up as unlike me, is immediately on its being distinguished no 1°. qui pene devant elle comme and marche ‘devant voi.” A. Metaphysics and Transcendence 7 not a diference; the 1 ata ohn” “We will not retain from imation of the provisional character of immediate evidence ‘that repels the self lived as repugnance, the I riveted to itself lived as ennui, are modes of selfeonsciousness and rest on the unrendabe identity of the I and the self, ‘The altrity ofthe that takes itself for another say strike the imagination of the poet precisely because it is but the play of the same: the negation ofthe I by the selfs precisely one of the modes of identification of the I. ‘The identification ofthe same in the I isnot produced as a monote- nous tautology: “Iam I." ‘The originality of identification, irreducible to the A is A formalism, would thus escape attention, Tt i not to be fixed by reflecting on the abstract representation of self by self; it ib nee- essary to begin with the concrete relationship between an T and a world. ‘The world, foreign and hostile, should, in good logic, alter the But the true and primordial relation between them, and that jn which the I is revealed precisely as preeminently the same, is produced asa ‘ojoura (séjour] in the world. The way of the I against the “other” of the world consist in sojourning, in identifying oneself by existing here at home with onself (chez si]. In a world which is from the fist other the Tis nonetheless autochthonous. Ie isthe very reversion ofthis alte ation, Te finds in the world a site [lieu] and a home [maison]. Dwell- ing is the very mode of maintaining onerelf [se tenr],* not as the famous serpent grasping itself by biting onto its til, but asthe body that, on the earth exterior toi, holds itself up [te tent] and cam. “The “at home” [Le “chez soi] is nota container but a ste where I can, where, depen ent on a realty that is other, Iam, despite this dependence or thanks to free. It is enough to walk, todo [fire], in order to grasp anything, to take, Ina sense everything is in the sit, inthe last analyis everything is at my disposal, even the stars, if T but reckon them, ealculate the int aediares or the means. ‘The ste, a medium (Le lieu, milieu), affords means. Everything is here, everything belongs to me; everything is caught up in advance with the primordial occupying of a st, everything 'G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, Eng. tao J.B. Bali, 2nd (andon te New York, 1955), poate s * involves the notin of cots ing oneself i isthe idea of an ac.