Towards a Non-pathological Pathos
We can discover or rediscover a genuine pathos through a cultivation of our sensory perceptions. This requires us to procure a unity for them and for ourselves from the impact that they have on us. Certain practitioners of yoga—such as Patanjali or Roger Clerc, to name only two of them—took an active interest in a possible unification of our various sensory perceptions, as is also the case with some western artists—for example, Paul Klee. It is then a matter of discovering in us a place able to gather and metabolize the diverse effects on us of these perceptions in order that they do not transform us into a field of forces fighting over the privilege of determining us.
We have in ourselves another element of our sensitivity capable of unifying us in an authentic way and from the inside: our sexuate belonging. The latter has a potential that we have too little taken into account, although it represents a crucial aspect of our pathos, and a pathos at once unifying. As Freud states, sexuate belonging does not only concern sexuality strictly speaking but our global being. Nevertheless, and like most of those who approached the question of sensitivity, Freud treats sexuation as a pathology more than as the possible foundation of a new cultivation of human being, both more elaborate and more achieved.
It is true that this asks for a real cultural evolution, the logic and language of which are still to be discovered and carried out. For example, when some of the last philosophers—like Maurice Merleau-Ponty or Michel Henry—approach the domain of sensuous relationships, they basically confine themselves to a subject-object logical structure, without considering what occurs between two subjects. And when such a relationship is envisioned it is more often than not according to a master-slave, dominant-dominated scheme which aims at nullifying at least one of the two subjectivities. None really thinks about the sensitive perceptions that the desire of/for the other arouses in us, perceptions in which it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is experienced by one and what is experienced by the other. Hegel does not wonder about this subtle differentiation between the for-oneself and the for-the-other in our attractions and their expression—which ought to have compelled him to make the dialectical process more complex. Hegel does not imagine that the internal unity with which sexuation can provide us represents a for-oneself but also a for-the-other, no side of which can be overcome by/in the other. Indeed, there is no contradiction in this duality of the for-oneself and the for-the-other, and it must be maintained in order that desire should exist and its strength make effective our sexuate identity.
For all that, must a more or less conflicting, and even contradictory, set of forces to exist, which both our way of conceiving of our sexuate identities as opposite and the motion of the Hegelian dialectics would need? Not at all. Rather, it is a matter of defining another dialectics because, in the motion of the Hegelian dialectics, unity is reached through a process which is mainly dependent on the assessment of consciousness and understanding, which subjects the real to already constructed categories—for example, subject and object—in order to institute a totality.
In our past logic, every connection is dependent on such rules. Certainly Hegel, unlike Kant, is in search of what would be the final universal unity, but he remains within a logic which, in a way, prevents him from discovering it. Indeed, he looks out for this last gathering through the connection between subject and object(s) instead of between subjects. What is more, object(s) then at stake is/are predetermined by consciousness and not given by nature. Thus Hegel supplies himself with an a priori final unity that he will endeavour to reach, and so he puts our being in the service of his way of thinking.
And yet, nature provides us with an original and final unity, the one from which we were born and which we try to incarnate with the other who is different from us by nature. Even if we would confine ourselves to the subject–object logic, the object would thus be given to us by nature, and determining this object according to our consciousness or our knowledge would amount to using the negative as we please—and this could only produce nothingness. Moreover, the subject-object logical structure would still rule over our sensitive, especially our sexual, relations between subjects differently sexuated. Nature would then be subjected to our traditional culture without being cultivated as such—which distorts the truth of the one and of the other.
This also prevents judgement from arbitrating with justice and equity on the possible mediation between the one and the other, be they man and woman, or more generally culture and nature. Consequently, to be and not to be are unequally and unfairly distributed between them, which not only perverts the relation between them but also that which can unite them.
So, and without going further than desire, there is no doubt that this aspires after an additional being arising from a not yet being. Desire needs both a ‘to be’ and a ‘not to be’ in order to exist, and the other will be the support of this aspiration. A dialectical process can make appear whether this ‘not-to be’ is a not yet being or an absolute not being. This asks for an assessment which cannot amount to what Hegel defines as an operation of understanding for several reasons: reflection then is no longer of great help; the other never will be mine, including at the level of intellect; there is no contradiction between two differently sexuated humans and so on. It is on the possible mediation of desire and its potential for achieving or not a union between us that the question must focus; thus, in a way, on the motion itself as being capable or not of leading us to unite with one another towards the accomplishment of our ‘to be’.
Undoubtedly, reaching unity is now what is sought, as much for each as between the two, which certainly raises a problem but does not really amount to a contradiction. It is henceforth a matter of evolving through a transformation postulated from our origin: desire between us is firstly a natural datum. However, our aspiration after the absolute must remain undetermined and is dependent on each assuming two negatives: (1) one is not and never will be the other; (2) the unity that one can compose with the other is dependent on each taking on the fact, both real and true, that neither of them corresponds to the whole of the human being. If the absolute, that I sometimes experience in the union with the other, is more absolute than the one which I can live only by myself, it can be experienced only by agreeing to give up being the whole of being, that is, by assuming an irreducible non-being.
I cannot become the other, and taking on this negative supports my desire. The body of the other is irreducible to mine, at least as a living being. It is at such a price that my desire exists, remains sensitive and can ensure an effective mediation between the other and myself. The transcendence of the other for which I long, especially as a desire to be, entails that my longing reaches a transcendental level while remaining sensitive.
From Subordination to Conjunction
The fact that the absolute henceforth corresponds with the absolute of our ‘to be’ means that desire acts as a mediation not only between elements of our own being but between two natural and spiritual being(s) without us having to resort to any object—one could say to any having. As well as making our way towards the absolute as the nature of transcendence to accomplish our being as human is now quite another thing. It is no longer a matter of mastering anything, especially by consciousness, but of acknowledging and letting be the transcendence existing in nature itself as a result of the irreducible difference between our being(s) and of its cultivation towards the ec-stasis of our union. This calls for a transformation of the content and the form of our desire so that the desire of one could be in harmony with the desire of the other. In search of a possible and provisory union, one cannot dominate or subject the other to oneself. For example, one cannot intend to be merely an ‘I’ addressing a ‘you’; each must in turn, and even simultaneously, be both ‘I’ and ‘you’—which thwarts the reduction of anyone to an object and preserves the duality of subjectivities. This also protects the peculiarity of the desire of each, a desire which is never empty or abstractly universal but which aims at a union with respect for difference(s). In this union the most elusive of our origin is joined to the most elusive of our search for the absolute.
Such an absolute cannot be reached through using the copula—to be—at the most radical, and even intensive, stage of adequacy in the relation between a subject and an object. It is the relationship between two subjects which now aims at the absolute. And this presupposes another meaning of the word ‘to be’ and of its copulating use. If its function was in a way to assess the correctness of a link of subordination in the relation between a subject and an object, it is now to carry out a conjunction between two subjects—to be expressing the achievement of such a conjunction. This ‘to be’, at which we then aim, is both sensitive and transcendental, and it allows each to preserve its being from remaining in a sensitive immediacy and from being subjected to supra-sensitive ideals or processes in order to reach the absolute—a motion which henceforth borrows its dynamism from a natural energy which is cultivated towards uniting with one another.
Another important aspect in such a dialectics regarding sensitiveness is that it takes place, at least originally, between two beings differently determined by nature. Thus the question is no longer one of unifying a multiplicity of properties with their integration into a unity in mind, but of allowing different natural determinations to combine with one another towards a more accomplished unity without one ever becoming the other, because this would deprive them of a relation to the absolute of their union.
The necessity of such a union has little to do with mere understanding, even if our culture has tried to bend it to this requirement, notably by subjecting uniting with one another to procreation. And yet, our union as such is extraneous to procreation, and reducing it to the latter amounts to subjecting it to a natural law which is not yet raised to a human state. No doubt, uniting with one another can generate, but it ought first to generate us regardless of any procreation. And this additional deed with respect to our union ought not to be mistaken with our longing for the absolute on pain of the child bringing about the death of its parents, as Hegel asserts.
The aim of our union is not to procreate, because this would put its finality outside of itself, but to fulfil our longing for uniting with one another. And such a motion is not driven by a preconceived objective, which we ought to attain in some or other way but by its own necessity. This cannot for all that be satisfied at the expense of the elements that it intends to unite, on pain of being dashed. The motion and the elements that it attempts to unite are closely related to one another. Assuming such co-determination towards reaching the absolute makes our desire truly human.
And if any motion is determined by space and time, the one which results from desire is particularly complex. At first sight, it may seem that it is autonomous with regard to such coordinates, but this is not the case, at least if we aspire after a human sharing. And it is probably this apparent indeterminacy which led to the subjection of desire to supra-sensitive values on the one hand, and its falling back into mere instincts on the other hand. But, then, desire no longer exists—and, perhaps, no longer humanity either. Indeed, is it not desire that ensures our existence and our becoming as humans?
It is true that desire is identifiable with difficulty, and it is even more the case for its mutual sharing. From a spatial viewpoint, would it be possible to first suggest that the masculine desire seeks to take shelter in the feminine body? If this is the case, is it in search of a union with a woman or of a regression in the mother? The way of inhabiting the inner space of the feminine body is quite different according to such an alternative: if seeking a union can exist in the first case, the man is only in search of self-affection in the second case. And, at the level of interiority, what corresponds for a man to the fact of being in the body of a woman? Has not this question been eluded by speaking of penetration, on the one part, and of reproduction, on the other part? We have no word, no logos, to say to what experience and meaning being in a body other than our own corresponds.
Hence, blind drives or moral duties have been substituted for a sensitive experience of our fleshly intimacy. Almost nothing is said about the most irreducible event regarding our being as human. And is not our traditional logos—including the divine one—destined, even without our knowing, to be instilled into us in order that we should enter into communion with and through it to the detriment of uniting with one another thanks to our own desire?
On her side, how experiences a woman the fact of being inhabited by the man? Does she not often run the risk of splitting up into a more or less sensitive and merely physical experience and the excessive development of an imaginary world? An important part of her affects will also be transferred to the child, to her relations with the child. Also for her, alas!, a cultivation of sensitiveness is lacking, especially for passing to a shared sensitiveness without destroying herself or aspiring after mastering the other. In reality such a sharing needs to attain a transcendence with regard to sensitivity itself. Then the woman can welcome the other in herself, while respecting this other and herself as different. And this puts difference in her interiority as a comprehensive one—in that which can, perhaps, be called flesh. Indeed, it is no longer a question of a mere body but of a body which has also become psyche, soul and potentially word—in a way, logos. In such a body, a woman can from then on welcome another flesh and unite with it.
Such a union does not occur immediately. It calls for an elaboration of space and time from the part of the one and of the other. Because of the morphology of her body, the woman has probably a special role to assume in this process. Is she not more able than a man to perceive something about the being, and even the ‘to be’, of the other and to return to the other a living ‘image’, helping in this way this other to experience self-affection in the relation with her? This requires her to reach a perception of herself, one of a different nature from the self-consciousness to which Hegel alludes. Indeed, the issue here is not of a relation between her and herself as same or different, but of a relation in which the other as other takes part. However, this cannot lead the woman to lose the perception of herself on pain of becoming incapable of acknowledging the perception of the other as other. In her own flesh, the woman must ensure a sort of dialectical process between the ‘to be’ of the other and her own ‘to be’. If nature itself in a way takes charge of this during the pregnancy, the placenta assuming the role of mediator between the mother and the foetus, the process which can ensure the mediation between her—and, furthermore, each of us—and the other in the amorous relationship, and in sexuate relationships in general, is too little taken into account. And yet, it is crucial for our becoming as humans.
Self-Affection and Self-Consciousness
By conceiving consciousness as supposedly universal and in the neuter, our tradition has prevented us from perceiving and cultivating a consciousness specific to the man, on the one hand, and to the woman, on the other hand. The mere idea that this might exist arouses scepticism and even irony. This amounts to ignoring that we then think that a consciousness in the masculine could correspond to any consciousness, to a consciousness presumed to be neutral and potentially universal. In this way we distort the truth of consciousness in general, but also that of the self-consciousness of man himself. Furthermore, paralyzed in a consciousness arbitrarily conceived as universal, energy that we invested in it splits into an abstract universality on the one hand and an instinctive naturalness on the other hand. From this result the misfortunes of our relational, especially of our amorous, life, which is consequently ruled by laws and absolutes imposed on us from an outside in a more or less arbitrary way regarding our natural belonging.
In order to define a self-consciousness which is more in accordance with the real and the truth, it would be advisable to start again from a sensitive self-affection, so preserving our natural energy and letting the particularities of each sexuate identity appear. Unveiling in this way the specific structure which underlies the self-consciousness of each allows us to conceive of a consciousness being in accordance with the truth of the real itself. We can hardly anticipate what this will modify in our manner of imagining truth and the logos. For example, it is not inconceivable that the process of reflection which underpins our cultural tradition, and as it is envisioned in Hegelian dialectics, only complies with the requirements of a masculine self-consciousness. As such, this process cannot assert that it is universal without harming both universality itself and masculine self-consciousness, then deprived of its specificity. There is no doubt that we can put an operation of our mind into the neuter in order to more easily reach universality. But of what universality is it then about? Can we speak of a self-consciousness in such a case? Or is the issue at stake rather conforming to a model of consciousness that is already mechanized or robotized by an extrapolation from life? However, the energy of the living being is used in order to ensure its functioning—at least it is the case in Hegelian dialectics, which entails a contradiction in his system that he did not overcome.
To solve such a contradiction, it is probably advisable to wonder about the sensitive element which plays a part in self-consciousness and to make it effective in a process more global than the one at work in Hegelian dialectics. It is thus a matter of acknowledging that sensitivity itself has a transcendental potential to which our self-affection, perceived as such, can aspire and lead.
Nevertheless, can one self alone ensure the dialectical process concerning affect(s)? Or does the latter need one self-affection to enter into relation with another self-affection, thus with another reality than an object, in order to remain sensitive? Indeed, how could we reduce the self-affection of the other as different from ourselves to an object that we could appropriate? Is it not hetero-affection that then must be at stake? And this makes the dialectical process really more complex! Because, if the drive which animates self-consciousness corresponds, according to Hegel, to a longing for one’s self in search of this self through objects generating new desires, it is not the same at all regarding desire at a more global level. More precisely, limiting desire to such aspiration(s), as happens too often, runs the risk of depriving it of sensing the absolute after which it aspires. In reality desire aspires after a conjunction with another subject and not a self-achievement through the appropriation of object(s)—which can only represent a stage, a disappointing one in fact, of its quest. Must desire for all that be dependent on supra-sensitive ideals and absolutes or, instead, try to become embodied in relationship with another subject?
The duplication of the relation to object(s), which consciousness needs in order to return to itself, is then no longer possible—one subject cannot be duplicated by an other without being destroyed as subject. This does not mean that something of one does not take place and is not inscribed in the other, but appropriating it amounts for each to alienating its autonomy, thus its desire. Desire lasts as longing for the absolute only if the other resists any appropriation, either as an object or as a subject of desire; that is, if the transcendence of desire is preserved by both.
Then autonomy does not mean appropriating all the real by, to and for oneself but giving up appropriating what belongs to the life of the other, the latter being a human or a non-human being, and keeping faithfulness to oneself without aiming at being the one who one is not. This allows us to discover or return to the innocence—the dawn, as Nietzsche and Heidegger would probably say—of desire of the living being that we are.
Such an innocence cannot amount to a mere uncultured immediacy. Immediacy with regard to our desire for the absolute is not gained without a cultivation of our instincts or drives. It needs us to renounce ‘objects’ that we want impulsively to appropriate—which requires us to internalize energy itself. It is no longer a question of a sort of confrontation between a subject and object(s), between subjectivity and objectivity, but of the nature of the mediation itself. Will this be capable or not of allowing two subjects to enter into relation with one another, in particular a relation of desire, while preserving their longing for the absolute. The only mediation which is suitable for respecting the becoming of each is probably the one relative to our ‘to be’ itself, a ‘to be’ that sometimes we succeed in making happen in forming an ecstatic union with one another from the being that each is. Through this union both attempt to reach an impossible appropriation of their origin as a source of their desire.
The ‘to be’ for which we long, which we sometimes approach thanks to uniting with one another, does not result from a speculative elaboration—it is an appearing of our life mediated by desire thanks to our sexuate belonging. The external and internal differences, that the respect for our respective sexuate identity is able to maintain, grant us the possibility of transcending an undifferentiated flow of life while safeguarding the immediacy of life itself. Beyond the fact that it sends us back to our origin, sexuate belonging allows us, and even forces us, to assume our own life due to the perspective with which it provides us with regard to life in general and the abstract universality of human life. It gives to us both the freedom and the duty of mediating life in order to reproduce it, but firstly to cultivate it as human. When Aristotle says in De Anima that ‘it is life that constitutes their being for the living’ (Aristotle 1980–2011: 4,415 b 13), designating as life ‘food, growth, and fading away by oneself’ (ibid.: II, 1, 412–14), he misjudges—as other philosophers of the West will do after him—that desire is crucial for feeding life, contributing to its growth or causing its fading. Human life cannot be satisfied with the elements which exist in the universe for feeding itself, growing and even fading away; it needs desire of the other, meaning desire for and from the other, a desire which acts as a mediation between our natural and our cultural human belonging.
An Absolute Rooted in Nature
The desire for the other is also what can work as a mediation between individual and community. This mediation cannot be divided into a supposedly private mediation and a public mediation, but it must act at various levels of the relationship between individuals. This will allow amorous partners to behave in a civil manner and citizens to keep their natural particularity instead of becoming neutralized and abstract individuals.
The desire for the other also makes possible our not leaping from one to the multiple elements of a community of same ones but preserving and cultivating the relationship between two individuals, beginning with two individuals different by nature—hence the necessity of developing subjectivities which correspond to the natural identity of each.
This stage of a human culture, traces of which exist in the ancient Greek language, gradually has disappeared, which has led to an impoverishment and disembodiment of human subjectivity. And all the equalitarian claims, in particular on the part of women, are incapable of compensating for such a loss or of rectifying it. They do not relate to that which is really at stake: a lack of acknowledgement of the existence of two identities, not only at the natural level but also at the cultural level.
To succeed in such an undertaking, we must overcome the logical dualism which underlies our culture, especially the one between the inner and the external self, notably with regard to our relations to the absolute. Once more, sexuate identity provides us with a structure which can mediate between the traditional terms of such an opposition, including when they are expressed as idealism and realism.
As sexuate, our desire aims at the absolute, but our tradition cut it off from its natural determination(s) by subjecting it to an absolute presumed to be real because it is situated outside of our original self—as well as the absolute as the means to reach it or the prohibitions imposed on our longings. And yet, we long for the absolute in a way determined by what or who we are—in a way by a ‘within us’—which aspires after an absolute situated both within and outside us. Thus we long for the absolute, but this longing can be fulfilled only through an amorous union with an other. Sexuate desire overcomes the traditional opposition between realism and idealism; that is, between an objectivity, which is unconcerned about our subjectivity, and the aspirations arising from our internal being alone. It depends on a structuring of our being which is neither merely objective nor merely subjective and which joins together our inner self to our external self.
This not only objective but also subjective structure, which determines objectively our subjectivity, has been too little taken into account. And it is not thoughtless to wonder whether such oversight is not the cause of the power of the technique on the real and on our subjectivity. For lack of acknowledging the physical-psychical structure which intervenes between ourselves and the world, we have created a mechanism external to ourselves which in a way substitutes for this structure, beginning with the logos itself.
Hence, we mistake a projection of our sensations, affects and aspirations onto the world for objectivity, whereas it is a part of our subjectivity that we do not recognize as such. This is particularly true about the absolute, which obviously does not exist objectively apart from a subjective production. From this viewpoint, it is interesting to note all the dogmatic attempts which argue about the objective existence of an absolute which corresponds with a secret necessity of our subjectivity. It is also fruitful to observe in this connection that idealism dwells a lot on what is probably an immediate natural experience, which is put on hold by supra-sensitive ideals, for lack of having acknowledged and cultivated it in an adequate way, especially as desire.
In reality, aspiring after the absolute exists in us as soon as we are capable of distancing ourselves from an immediate experience. But our culture has not taken into account enough this part of us which, more than any other, longs for the absolute and needs the means to be expressed and developed. Instead of our path towards the absolute being mapped out by moral imperatives, it is our incarnation, with its potential and its limits, which ought to act as a framework for our passage from a natural immediate experience to an experience of the absolute able to correspond with the former. And this would permit us to reconcile nature and the divine which, in reality, take part in the same experience of the real.
In this way, the opposition between the divine, as the infinite existing in the presumed finiteness of nature, and the divine, which would be distinct from nature and brought into it by a divine will, can be overcome—which can amount to surmounting the opposition between a certain conception of Christianity on the one hand, and paganism on the other hand (‘De la relation entre la philosophie de la nature et la philosophie en général’, F.W.J. Schelling or G.W.F. Hegel, dans La différence entre les systèmes philosophiques de Fichte et de Schelling, Hegel 1986: p. 212). Our sexuate belonging, although it is innate, can be spiritualized by desire and unites with another sexuate belonging to freely reach the absolute. Already in each of us the infinite can be experienced and contemplated in finiteness thanks to desire, and the opposition between what is innate and what is acquired can, then, be overcome. However, the union between two different desires makes us reach another stage, and even a new era, with regard to the relation between nature and the divine. Indeed, two infinites, which potentially exist but are embodied in the finiteness of each, unite with one another thanks to an at least relative freedom. This means that the opposition between the innate infinite and the infinite separate from nature, which would characterize the difference between paganism and monotheism, is overcome.
Through desire, the infinite comes into the finiteness of a natural existence, but it also projects itself onto another natural existence, in which it is in search of its absolute fulfilment. Human being itself in this way can contribute to the presence of the infinite in the finite, so opening the time of another relation between nature and the divine. Humans can generate the divine between themselves by uniting with one another as natural beings who are transformed by their longing for the infinite. Each of us can this way return to the other not only their image, but the experience of the absolute that he or she lives through and, as for them, awakens in the other.
Sometimes we can reach a union through a common longing for the absolute, but this can happen only if we keep our difference(s) and preserve the pureness of the energy which unites us. If the faithfulness to nature and the respect for morality have traditionally been considered to be opposite attitudes, they are now combined with one another towards our experiencing the absolute. This absolute cannot exist without a participation of nature, about which the respect for the specific incarnation of each needs a moral, or rather an ethical, concern—which introduces us into a rational order without either dogmatism or quibbling of understanding.
The division into nature and spirit, with its consequent dichotomies, can be surmounted by acknowledging that one does not exist without the other, but that it is their co-belonging which allows them to elevate one another to a transcendental level. Hence, our soul has not to gain a virginity capable of thinking by freeing itself from any material tie but to preserve the breath, of which it is made up, from being used for merely empirical requirements. Hence also the particular can be incorporated into the universal through cultivating our breathing and reaching our being in communion through it.
Light for Which Sensitivity Longs
Being in communion with one another calls for our breath being incarnate—which cannot occur without a cultivation of our sensitivity that the duality of subjectivities permits. The becoming of spirit then no longer happens through a tearing into two of reason but through a meeting between two irreducibly different subjectivities. This, finally, can absolve each one from being both living and an other for oneself. Indeed, our consideration for an insurmountable otherness liberates us from this other which accompanied us as living, one could say from our shadow, and, therefore, makes unlimited the absolute corresponding to each particular being. It is between two different living beings that reason makes its way towards the absolute, an absolute the limit of which henceforth vanishes endlessly. This limit has been acknowledged and assumed as the tearing of human being itself into two parts, and it has no longer to be projected onto reason or the absolute. It exists and is insuperable, but it is this limit which makes possible our having access to an indefinitely open absolute.
In order that such an absolute should remain living, and thus in becoming, it is important that each, at every time, takes on its partiality, especially as a sensitive body. Each one must consent to the other passively, welcome the carnal presence of the other, including in oneself, not for appropriating it but for giving this other back to itself while remembering it towards a union between two different beings.
The duality of natures and consciousnesses can make obsolete the necessity of dichotomies for our understanding. The natural delimitation between two subjectivities means that the absolute no longer has to overcome limitations created by spirit. The absolute arises from a desire of our nature to live it in uniting with an/its other human, which cannot be achieved without the help of consciousness as self-consciousness. This one has not to extricate itself from a totality, it is at once partial, a thing that it can realize through its specific self-affection. Consciousness then remains sensitive, and it does not become merely speculative; which allows it to be faithful to an original experience of life as an absolute with a view towards its cultivation.
Consciousness takes on the non-being of its particular sexuate belonging as that which preserves its aiming at a living absolute as a possibility for it. What is more, by assuming its particularity, consciousness at the same time expels a negative outside of itself. Thus reaching a self-consciousness appropriate to ourselves happens by our agreeing not to be the consciousness of the other. And such self-consciousness now corresponds with a specific nature which can be subjected to a dialectical process without separating form from matter in an absolute way. Indeed, its limits are not determined by understanding but by nature itself endeavouring to become spiritual as such.
It is, then, up to the absolute to take into account a natural determination; something that, by the way, it has always done but without knowing it, at least consciously. Indeed, has not considering our sensitivity to be doomed to finiteness and our intellect fit for the infinite subjected our conception of the absolute to the traditional requirements of a masculine consciousness unaware of its determination(s)? But does not that which happens in our culture today show the limit of this conception of the absolute? And is not this limit due to favouring intellect to the detriment of sensitivity? Is it not advisable to consider the infinite of which sensitivity itself is capable, the infinite after which it aspires, before letting understanding decide on the nature of the absolute—which it cannot do only by itself because it is desire which aims at the absolute? How can intellect claim the right to decide on the absolute and pretend that it alone holds light when it does not take into account the light that desire senses, the light that desire itself already is? Does not speculation then lead us to a more impenetrable night than the one which would correspond with desire? Because the latter is not necessarily blind, but it trusts touch more than sight, and our culture leads it astray by a logic of sameness and an emphasis placed on a plurality of objects through which it loses its most original source.
Hence, desire enters into a universe of opposites, of dichotomies, of violences and concessions which pervert our natural energy and leave us unsatisfied. Desire arises from an original difference that all opposites and dichotomies cover, hiding the light of sensitivity in a maze of rationalizations of understanding which end in nothing, and which compensate for this nothingness with the faith in something or someone. In this way understanding saves the status of the object by making it irrefutable by the subject.
Before giving ourselves up to faith it would be advisable for us to experience what absolute can be generated by the conjunction of two longings for the absolute which are determined by different natural belongings. Such an absolute is not reached through overcoming opposites but through a union in difference. And it is no longer necessary to ‘intensify a division into two in order to increase the need for uniting in a totality’, as Hegel maintains, because the division in two exists and it is insuperable; we have just to respect it. Besides, this division naturally longs for a union. And such a union, instead of calling for an elimination, requires us to give up believing in something that is not true: the fact that object(s) would be capable of corresponding with our longing for the absolute. It is thus a matter of renouncing an erroneous investment to turn our desire towards another subject instead of towards objects. Then our spirit is already prepared for having a respectful relationship with a subject naturally different from us, and this relation is the only one which is able to cultivate sensitive immediacy while safeguarding both the immediacy and the sensitivity of our longing.
What is more, our desire aims at a union—in Hegelian terms at a synthesis—which calls for an opening and not a closing of the ‘system’ or the totality. Desire prompts us to open up to the other, and not to conflict with the other; which allows us to unite with one another towards an absolute which itself remains potentially open. If this can happen, it is because sexuate difference consists both of matter(s) and of form(s), without amounting to a contrast between matter and form(s), as is generally presupposed. The two sexes are suppliers of matter and form(s), and it is the fact that they are different, but not opposite, which contributes to making them autonomous with respect to each other. If they unite with one another it is with the aim of reaching another absolute, a still more absolute absolute, the objectivity of which is irreducible to any object, and is the fruit of a conjunction between two different subjectivities.
Such a conjunction can be achieved only thanks to a natural energy aspiring after the absolute. The shape that this absolute can take can be called into question in order to improve the nature of the absolute itself, not necessarily in a quantitative way but in a qualitative way, especially with regard to a correspondence with the ‘to be’ that each human must incarnate and its always ongoing becoming or genesis. The latter cannot be determined a priori and carried out only through an adequacy between subject and object(s). It is between two subjects that the human ‘to be’ can be generated thanks to a suitable conjunction in difference, which above all depends on the quality of energy which allows them to relate to and unite with one another.
Such quality implies that matter and form(s) no longer conflict with each other, with the need for a continuous suppression of one by the other. Henceforth, one transforms the other by a sort of embrace and, in such a transformation, form is more a means or a mediation than an objective or an end. In this way our desire takes shape from the matter from which it arises and towards the matter at which it aims. However, any of these matters is undetermined or inert. Desire aims at uniting them, acting as a mediation between two different matters. One could say that what drives it is a transcendental intuition in which desire assembles matter and consciousness, reality and ideality, immanence and transcendence.
Desire as Transcendental Intuition
Going back to our sexuate desire reverses the trend of our culture which mistakes idea for the real, or subjects matter to consciousness. Such a gesture returns desire to its living origin in which physical nature and form(s) already interact. Instead of subjecting an undetermined, and supposedly neuter, aspiration to forms which turn it towards the absolute, the determined nature of our longing is then cultivated as such, because in it lies the absolute at which our desire aims. This cultivation must originate from it as a living sap, which tries to blossom in faithfulness to the matter that it makes blossom.
Desire, as a transcendental intuition, senses that, for it, the path towards the absolute can be cleared through the other, an other who would be able to correspond with such intuition. However, instead of searching for transcendence beyond matter, desire aspires after finding transcendence in matter itself, a matter with which it could combine to soothe its thirst for the absolute. At least it is so a first time, at a stage in which the risk of transforming the other into an object exists. But this would amount to falling again into the subject–object, subjectivity–objectivity, and even idea–real dichotomies. In this case, desire falls back into the trap of a master–slave struggle which deprives it of a living relation to the absolute. More exactly and radically, it is facing an insoluble dilemma: to long for matter or spirit, object or subject, real or idea. And our longing for the absolute thus gets lost in such alternatives.
That which keeps us faithful to the real while continuing to aspire after transcendence is our longing for uniting with an other as other, firstly an other naturally different from us. Through such a desire, human being aims at its spiritual accomplishment in faithfulness to its nature. In order to unite with the other, it unites in itself the body with soul and spirit, and so it makes its body spiritual. In other words, it transforms the materiality of its body into flesh.
Desire attempts to unite with the other not by overcoming opposites, which result from a certain logic, but by its aiming at our becoming, more precisely at transforming its physical background into a spiritual background. Then our desire for the other becomes an aspiration after uniting with this other; that is, our longing moves from a term of the relation to the relation itself, a relation which exists thanks to an insuperable difference. If it succeeds in preserving this difference, without the latter being reduced to an opposition between the two terms or one of them being reduced to an object, this relation is by itself spiritual. Such a spiritual quality results from a respect for life in its various embodiments.
For Hegel, there is no development of thought without intuition. However, this intuition is continually contradicted by reflection which objects to it. Aiming at the absolute then requires us to overcome the antinomy between intuition and reflection. Such a dialectical process can take place only inside an already constructed world.
Indeed, if I return to the living world, I note that there is not a real opposition between myself and another living being. When I adopt the dialectical method of Hegel, I cut myself off from my living belonging and from an effective relationship with another living being. And yet, there is no antinomy between me and another living being, and the question is thus: How can I carry out my becoming without such an antinomy because there is not a mere continuity between us either? It is then a matter of discovering another method in which intuition cannot be refuted by reasoning.
Perhaps we must give up using the word intuition with its past meaning: to apprehend by sight with a presentiment of what is not yet appearing. We must return into our deeper and more comprehensive sensitivity or flesh, and even adopt another word or, at least, modify its meaning. Why not use ‘sensing’, but as what can happen through being touched? The dialectical process which is needed by such a touch perception is different from the Hegelian one. Indeed, a tactile experience can exist between two living beings, especially between two humans, and it is probably that which gives rise to desire. The becoming of this sensitive experience towards the absolute no longer results from an opposition between what I experience and the existence of the other but through the difference between what I experience of the other and what this other experiences. There is no antinomy between the two: what I experience of the other cannot be the opposite of what he or she experiences if we are both faithful to the living being that we are. And, if in order to become the one who I am and to contribute to the becoming of our relation I must take on the fact that I am not the other, this does not mean that I do not perceive anything of the one who he or she is. However, in order to acknowledge this I must assume the fact that I am not completely them.
I could say, differently from the words which sometimes are uttered in a mystical discourse: I am you on the condition of not being you. And this occurs at a double or triple level. I am not you as being, either originally or currently, if you have grown in faithfulness to your own ‘to be’. Nevertheless, I can sometimes experience better than you the ‘to be’ that you are, which allows me to give birth to you at an ontological level. An inner dwelling place in my flesh makes this bringing you, or bringing you again, into the world possible, provided that I assume our difference. If, at the mental level, the absolute can correspond to an idea or an ideal, at a comprehensive level, longing for the absolute makes perhaps possible for us to incarnate our ‘to be’ and that of the other as different towards our uniting with one another.
The limit and interval between these two different ‘to be’ are what enable us to open up to the absolute without even resorting to understanding and reasoning. Then it is no longer a matter of overcoming opposites defined by our understanding, which is unable to speculate otherwise, but of us taking on a difference between two absolutes and so opening up to an absolute which is still more absolute. The absolute at which each of us is capable of aiming allows us to structure a world, notably of thinking, but this world can be surpassed towards a horizon which opens up to a more absolute absolute by harmonizing with, instead of opposing, another absolute. The particularity of these worlds or horizons—Hegel probably would say of these systems—is that they remain open. In this way, they are both structured and faithful to the living being that we are. They are determined by our own specific belonging and its opening up to relating to the other as naturally different.
The way of evolving of these ‘systems’ or worlds is more qualitative than quantitative. It does not correspond to the extension or expansion of a system or a world but to a qualitative change, which becomes obvious notably through the density of energy allowing each to gain a more suitable relation to the transcendental and a relationship between two of a more transcendental nature too. Thus empirical and transcendental no longer conflict with one another but they attempt to be in accordance with one another in order to reach an absolute in which subjective and objective gradually end in being the same.
There is not for all that any object at stake because neither the other nor myself are reducible to an object. And it is no longer the relation between subject and object(s) which is in search of appropriation, equality or identity. Each subjectivity is in search of itself as well as in a relation to itself as in a relation to the other, but this search develops through a process of self-affection extraneous to the subject–object relation. Such a process makes possible a more comprehensive and fulfilled becoming for each and for the relationship with the other. The issue is that this becoming cannot be interrupted by an appropriation of the process by either of them. Affection and self-affection must remain what acts as an invisible dwelling, both internal and external, in which each stays and preserves an integrity which allows it to become itself and to enter into a relationship with the other with respect for the two subjectivities. Such a process is really complex because it is not easy to distinguish in one’s affect(s) and even self-affection what belongs truly to oneself and what belongs to the other.
This, furthermore, raises a question about the nature of consciousness itself, especially of self-consciousness. How can we affirm that it is really ‘pure’ and that the other does not participate in it? However, the consciousness of the other affects us differently from the consciousness of an object—we cannot distance and differentiate ourselves from him or her as we can do from an object. Contrasting subject with object(s) is not possible when it is a question of the other and ourselves, and this subject–subject relationship needs another logic. Our tradition did not care about this need and it implicitly left this concern to the religious field, which led to a cultural aporia with regard to relating to one another.
The other alters my consciousness and it is not by making myself an object for myself that I can free myself from this alteration. The latter happens before such a process, which by the way could be only reactive. Besides, the relation to and with the other is never merely empirical and I cannot contrast it with a relation to the transcendental. The other, when it is considered to be truly other, is transcendent to me, and this transcendence is both natural and spiritual. It is such a relation which is able to make my consciousness virgin again with regard to an unconscious alteration which is, at least partially, due to the other.
Thinking about the nature of our ‘to be’ can also contribute to liberating our consciousness from what unconsciously affects it. Our way of thinking of being is based on an ‘it is’, which already presupposes an ‘I am’ who asserted it, but it is not possible to reduce ‘you are’ to an ‘it is’ and even ‘he is’ or ‘she is’. ‘You are’ takes place between an ‘I am’, which one way or another remains faithful to my nature and expresses my ‘to be’ as a life of my own, and an ‘it is’ which, at least traditionally, is situated and viewed inside a system of representations which already has removed being from a living existence.