From Subject–Object Adequacy to Subject–Subject Connection
The union between the man and the woman differs from a synthesis. It is not a question of opposite elements, which become reconciled with one another in order to compose a unity, but of two human beings, which appeal to one another in order to become more than one—to generate an additional ‘to be’ in comparison with what or whom they already are. In the first case, the two elements are moved by a dynamism which is not really their own but results from their definition as opposites. In the second case, the dynamism is produced by the living beings that they are, the difference of which is capable of giving birth to a new being not only at the natural level but also at the spiritual or ontological level. The one, the other and their union represent three potential absolutes which engender one another.
The union between a man and a woman does not aim at the reconciliation of two opposite parts of a human being but at the production of a new being that we too often imagine can only be a natural one. In reality, through their union, the man and the woman are, or ought to be, at the same time engendered, created and spiritualized one and the other and by one another. The fact that such a union, which would be faithful to the potential of the real itself, has been underrated in its ontological fruitfulness is the cause of an additional imagination, which led to a split between reality and ideality and a lack of recognition of what this union really is. From such a misapprehension many other oppositions arose, amongst which was that between materialism and idealism.
In order that the union between a man and a woman should become truly effective, each consciousness must become a true self-consciousness. But, henceforth, it is in the name of reality and not of ideality that this process is needed. Instead of depending on, and thus being subordinate to, object(s), the real then depends on our desire for a con-junction with another subject. In our past cultural, especially philosophical, tradition, consciousness set it up by itself but received its determination(s)—in a way its content(s)—from its relation to object(s) that it opposed in order to appear to itself as such. Now, consciousness is considered to be determined in itself, notably through the background from which it springs, in particular its sexuate belonging. It no longer needs opposing object(s) to define itself as consciousness. It evades this contradiction, but it must undertake another process to become effective.
Consciousness is not immediately aware of its own determination(s). It is only indirectly that such determination(s) can appear to it, as well as through observing particularities in the way of behaving of the self and the manner in which subjectivity expresses itself as through noting difference(s) in relation to those of the other. So becoming objective for itself, the determination(s) of consciousness allows it to exist and to become what it is without opposing itself, even unconsciously.
Consciousness must come to terms with another consciousness, especially the one of the subject for which it longs, as a way to reach the absolute. Then, again, it is not a question of our reducing the other to an object without risking thwarting the search for the absolute that this other as other embodies for us. In reality, the dependence of the subject upon object(s) already amounts to a sort of limitation of its potential in order to maintain its becoming towards the absolute. Resorting to object(s) is of use for specifying a finiteness which, in fact, already exists in consciousness itself as determined. Ignoring the original and natural determination(s) of consciousness, the philosopher, and more generally any subject, is forced to impose on it artificial limits, from which it vainly will attempt to free itself by opposing them. Our consciousness is trapped within the circle that it, itself, has created for producing itself as limited. And yet, acknowledging it as being the one that it was—that is, determined—was sufficient.
For lack of admitting that it is determined, consciousness, which then claims that it is only ideal, is no more than a human production, the physical nature of which is unrecognized. Indeed, who could affirm that the syntax of one’s discourse is extraneous to the forms and the structure of one’s body? What would happen, in this case, between the time when one speaks and the time when one lives? How and why did our culture make such a cut between the two? And what results from this cut with regard to truth itself?
Will we then bring forward the fact that consciousness must enjoy freedom? What freedom is it about? Is it other than an abstract energy which comes from a lack of incarnation and is of use for the functioning of a mechanism cut off from life? Does not freedom, instead, consist in the possibility of becoming who I am? And is it not by taking the risk of longing for you that I liberate, and even produce, my freedom?
Whereas others exhaust themselves in the search for a synthesis between subject and object, idealism and realism, intuition and duty, do I not succeed in overcoming—or avoiding—such dichotomies thanks to my desire for you? Does not this desire, which springs from my flesh and aspires after uniting with yours, exist beyond such dilemmas? Which certainly results from its nature, but also from the energy which drives it. And this happens naturally without any speculative effort.
Reason must endeavour not to harm the natural belonging of desire. Instead of removing desire from its physical origin, of cutting it off from flesh, the task of reason ought to contribute to its union with a desire which is different. And yet, a logic making possible such a union is still lacking. Before imposing limits on our desire, reason must carry out its own transformation. Instead of maintaining that it is capable of controlling subjectivity, reason ought to admit that our identity is first natural and that it has to negotiate with this reality. Then, reason will perceive that a human consciousness is both physically determined and animated by a desire for the absolute. Some philosophies allocate to the object that which is already part of our subjectivity, and the split of the latter into subject and object is thus useless for bringing us back to the real and the infinite. Sexuate belonging makes our subjectivity able to correspond with both, and it also assigns to subjectivity an objectivity which can exist and express itself without any object. Our specificity in comparison with a subject naturally different, which appears notably through our respective acts and works, is able to reveal to us what or who we are. There is thus no need, for us, to resort to object(s) extraneous to our subjectivity in order that this one should exist, all the more so since this would bring about an infinite production of mutual delimitations between subject and object(s). The objectivity of our subjectivity appears through the form(s) and the structure which are expressed by our faithfulness to our own nature.
Hence, nature itself no longer leads us to experience the absolute, the infinite or eternity in a way that is too subjective. Indeed, experiencing our own natural belonging, especially thanks to its difference in comparison with the one of the other, gives back an objectivity to our perceptions—and it is the same with our instincts or feelings. The opposition between subject and object remains effective only when we exclude the other from what we experience, or when we reduce our affects to a stage of our development that we must overcome in order to fulfil our longing for the absolute, instead of considering them to be a path towards the absolute.
As for the opposition between necessity and liberty, it lasts above all when we neglect the fact that we are relational beings and we cannot accomplish ourselves without taking into account our relation to and with the world, all the living beings which populate it, and especially to and with the other(s) different from ourselves by nature. In other words, realizing our potential requires us to develop in accordance with our necessities, and to become the ones who we are, as Nietzsche would say. For such a becoming he (alas!) underestimated the relational part of his being and founded his will to power in a too partial and ideal way with regard to his necessities, in particular those relative to dynamism and energy. He did not assess and place his limits so that he could keep alive the source of his becoming. He focused too much on what he opposed and which destroyed him without cultivating sufficiently what might have allowed him to grow by transforming himself. He also paid too great importance to his nature as a mere physiology without considering sufficiently the role and the impact of his sexuate belonging. For lack of taking into account such determination and energy potential Nietzsche little by little exhausted himself.
Nature and Freedom
Those who substitute concepts for the dynamism that life brings destroy their own potential. They consider our natural determination to be a limitation, in particular because death, without realizing that the source of the motion towards transcending themselves, notably through desire, lies in it. In nature itself is the origin of our freedom with regard to both our own growing and our opening up to the world, especially to the other. Thus contrasting nature with freedom does not make sense.
Moreover, such a gesture locks our subjectivity in a circle of which it is almost impossible for it to go out. Indeed what a philosopher, and more generally our culture, call freedom—a freedom in the name of which we intervene in nature—is often a mere unconscious way of imitating nature, a nature of which we have not interpreted the intervention in our manner of thinking and even of existing. Consequently, we imagine that we impose on nature measures which already amount to determination(s) that it has imposed on us without us knowing. How could we emerge from such a blind circularity? This can happen only by acknowledging and assuming how much we are determined by nature and the fact that our existence entails our incarnating such natural determination.
Contrasting our natural belonging with freedom, as many Western philosophers did, also amounts to considering our freedom to be something external to us and not our capability of achieving the being that we are. To be free, then, would mean opposing our being more than accomplishing it. Indeed, such a behaviour splits us into two irreconcilable parts instead of leading them to contribute towards our fulfilment.
We are not made up of a modifiable matter and of a freedom which would fit reason. Matter of which we consist, our flesh, is already potentially rational, and it is up to us to acquire the freedom of living it as such; which asks us to make certain choices, especially qualitative and not quantitative ones, which contribute towards the becoming of our comprehensive being without subjecting it to laws extraneous to life.
Such laws thwart our growing and, moreover, by intending to subdue nature, ‘they destroy any mutual relationships which are really free, any relation which is infinite for itself, which is without limits and thus beautiful’, as Hegel writes (in La différence entre les systèmes philosophiques de Fichte et de Schelling, p. 157/The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, p. 144, Hegel 1986, my translation). They give rise only to a tyrannical community whereas when the freedom of everyone is dependent on one’s own nature, a community of living beings can exist. And it is all the more so since nature involves a being in relation(s) which both determines the individual becoming and connects it with the becoming of the other in a living and concrete way, as is or ought to be the case with sexuation. Our becoming implies that we transcend ourselves through relationships with the naturally different other, while taking into account and respecting this difference towards making possible a living community.
Such a community is henceforth structured by desire more than by laws or concepts extraneous to life. And caring about the other amounts to taking care of ourselves because the desire for/of the other is necessary for our own becoming. If we do not respect and care about the other as other, we thwart our own relation to the absolute. Thus laws extraneous to nature are not those which can truly form a community, whereas the consideration for the relational requirements that our nature entails can contribute towards that. Laws as well as morality ought to be concerned about the preservation of such imperatives. When they neglect this care, they lead citizens to their being torn in themselves and between themselves, between a matter deprived of forms and formal concepts or rights unsuitable for a physical belonging. This gives rise to a state which imposes itself as an abstract and despotic mechanism upon citizens who are no more than atoms without life or identity of their own, especially at the relational level, and are thus unable to form a community of living beings (cf. ibid.: pp. 161–162/pp. 148–149). Their instincts and drives are repressed, and even punished by rights and laws instead of being acknowledged and cultivated as that which can provide living links for the members of a community. Laws and morality are then what are intended to give forms to a matter which is presupposed to be without forms and vitality of its own.
In reality, sexuation acts as that which can overcome, or rather avoid, the opposition between a ‘natural diversity’ incapable of unifying itself and a formal identity laid down from the outside. The self-determination that sexuation entails does not grant us an arbitrary freedom, which could claim the right to intervene in the natural belonging of the other, of others; this self-determination is firstly one which depends on one’s own nature. Then desire of the other—as desire for or from the other—is not only what allows us to become aware of our sexuate belonging but also what incites us to take care of the other as of the one who participates as other in our own accomplishment. Rights and morality must contribute towards the fulfilment of our longings instead of repressing or chastising what remains alive in us.
As long as we are living and respectful of our difference(s), we preserve between us a space in which we can live and a space in which we can build, whereas the opposition between us, beyond the fact that it paralyzes or destroys what attracts us to one another, artificially empties the space. Our frustrations and remainders of instincts, which are often transformed into a will to dominate or to submit, even at the level of culture and community, then fill such a space with cries and groaning, but also with various claims, conflicts and debates which are both useless and in a way artificial, as the opposition between us itself is.
On the contrary, the space that the difference between us opens can be a place in which the strength and fullness of our desire can be expressed, a place in which it can receive content and take form in its search for uniting with another desire. The link of freedom with necessity, that our desire wants to reach and tries to offer to the other as a sharing of life, is already a work of art because it allows us to unify in ourselves vital and ideal aspirations. Furthermore, recognizing the other as other delimits the transcendental framework inside which desire can become incarnate; which in a way makes useless any moral duty. The respect for the other, that my desire needs for lasting, already transforms my longing so that it could express itself in community without becoming cut off from my own interiority, or the latter being itself split. What is more, this transcendental frame brings a certain objectivity to my desire and permits me to shape it by myself without laws, extraneous to it, having to care about that.
Crucial Stage of the Relation Between Two
When it tries to overcome our subjective split into two, Western philosophy attempts to overcome what it traditionally brought about. Indeed, it itself has created such a division for lack of taking into account the fact that humanity is comprised of two parts. Moreover, it endeavours to reach a real that it has already elaborated instead of starting from the existing real. Hence, endless debates occur about what is real and what is ideal, even though both are already linked in each of us, as we have to deal with the longing for the absolute which arises in us. At least, it ought to be so if the nature of the relation between us was considered to be a difference, but not an opposition in which one must be abolished in order that the other should rise to the infinite. Which makes their union—or synthesis, in Hegelian terms—impossible while keeping them dependent on one another.
By acknowledging that the two parts of humanity have the same value in nature but are different as identities, without being for all that opposites that could be integrated into a higher unity, philosophy can open up the horizon of a new logic founded on a relationship between two different subjects, and not on the traditional subject–object relation. Indeed, the subjects are different by nature and not only defined as such by some or other consciousness, and they cannot abolish one another because their longing for the absolute is a longing for their meeting—not in the name of an absolute considered objective and universal but towards the union of their natural and transcendental longing for the absolute. Their difference has not to be reduced in the search for the absolute, as is the case for a constructed opposition. It is this difference which supports the unity of each identity and the longing of each for transcending itself thanks to the existence of another identity, irreducible to its own.
The difference between these identities is no longer merely constructed and dependent on some or other idea, ideal or ideology, it is also real—and as such it is qualitative and not only quantitative. It is not a more or less of this or that, for example of matter or form, which, then, defines difference; rather, it is a question of a material and ideal—or idéel—difference in the relation to the absolute. The difference between two differently sexuated subjects must be considered in this way as far as the becoming of each, but also the possibility of a union between the two, is concerned. The fact of having reduced this difference to a difference between two opposite polarities has prevented this union from happening both at a natural and a spiritual level, depriving the two subjectivities of their longing for the absolute in each other and through each other.
When this union occurs, it frees matter as living from already constructed forms and returns it, transformed, to a potentially transcendental level, from which each is then given to itself as human and the horizon in which humanity can be born and develop as such is delimited. It is no longer in the same absolute that elements, presumed to be opposite, can and must unite with each other, and thus the absolute is no longer in a way determined a priori either. Through the union between two naturally different identities, the absolute itself receives new matter and configuration. It is up to each one to contribute to the qualitative nature of such an absolute, so that it could give rise to both a more accomplished humanity and more responsible relations between all the living beings. Indeed, the fecundity of this absolute does not confine itself to the becoming of those who take the risk of uniting with one another in order to found a new life and a new world. Its fruitfulness spreads out over others and over the world, yet without being able to correspond with the same sort of sharing.
Only between two living beings, the body itself as matter can be the source and the place of our sharing. And, between the two, the subject–object syntactic connection is no longer the one which is suitable for favouring a link between nature and spirit. Each is both nature and spirit, and no object is necessary between them if they recognize each other as such without dividing themselves into a body and a mind. Between them as two, each subjectivity corresponds with a body which can unite with the other and find in this union the source and the becoming which fit a desire for the absolute. The mediation of an object is not necessary between two living beings, especially two subjects sexually different by nature.
Nevertheless, such mediation is necessary at the level of a community, above all if this one is based on sameness, identity and equality regardless of the diversity which composes the natural order. Such variety can be really taken into account only by a subjectivity which is concerned with its difference in relation to another subjectivity. Otherwise, the natural diversity might fall again into a subject-object logic, whatever the autonomy and quasi-subjectivity which are attributed to the living beings which make it up. To overcome the subject–object predicative logic, a relationship between two naturally different subjects is crucial. Only in such a meeting and a union can a body and a soul unite with each other and the copula—to be—be of use not merely in the search for the absolute by a single subject through relating to object(s), but in the longing for the absolute that the conjunction between two naturally different subjects can arouse.
The nature of such an absolute is quite different. In a solitary aspiration after the absolute, subjectivity runs the risk of exhausting the real that it represents in its search for shapes and forms or of splitting up into a multiplicity of objects into which it invests itself. And this happens when subjectivity does not solve in itself the connection of its transcendental longing with its natural origin. This cannot be achieved by passing from a personal natural belonging to a community belonging, neglecting the stage of the cultivation of the relationship with a subjectivity differently structured, notably by its sexuation. Only this kind of situation allows us to combine nature with intellect, necessity with liberty, to reach the absolute. It only allows us to overcome the dichotomy between interiority and exteriority through dealing with two different interiorities, the becoming of which is together supported and limited by one another.
This becoming is both real or physical and spiritual. And Hegel would probably agree with me that desire then acts as a light which enlivens the gravity of the bodies in order to make them ascend and be attracted to each other in a way that remains physical, but a physical endowed with different properties which are able to restore or awaken in our soma a motion in which freedom and thinking can have a share.
Hegel would also maintain that for the living being, or the ‘animal’, that we are, light must be both external and internal. He even asserts that ‘in the animal, light then exists by itself as both subjective and objective because of the polarity of the sexes; each individual searches for itself and finds itself in an other. Light remains internalized with a greater intensity in the animal, in which it establishes individuality, like a more or less variable voice, like a subjectivity in a state of general communication, which recognizes itself and wants to be recognized’ (La difference entre les systèmes philosophiques de Fichte et de Schelling, p. 179/The Difference between the Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, p. 168, Hegel 1986, my translation).
Unfortunately, Hegel does not consider sufficiently what happens in a union between two naturally different humans in which both matter and spirit, nature and mind, take part. Even if, without lingering much on that, he seems to give up a dichotomy between the genuses, his dialectical process does not involve the possibility of a transformation of the physical matter by the light of desire, and he opts for the ideal—or the idéel—and the common without taking enough into account the real, dynamic and spiritual fruitfulness of the carnal relations between the sexes. This remains a link which is too little broached in his thought even if it seems that he wanted to treat of it.
Hence, Hegel contrasts consciousness with nature in a way that a consciousness dependent on a theoretical construction needs more than nature itself. In reality, the oppositions that his dialectics intends to overcome are problematic oppositions because the two elements, which are presumed to be opposite, have not the same value, and the one which prevails over the other is not autonomous with respect to this other. Contrasting elements in order to overcome their opposition thus seems to be a strategy for entrusting to the mind and not to nature the development of the dialectical process.
Sharing the Fire
One symptom among many others bearing witness to the subjection of matter to spirit is the fact that Hegel, although he takes an interest in the physical properties, goes from gravity to light without lingering on the question of fire. And yet, it is fire which acts as a possible transition from the natural to the spiritual state, especially through the mediation of desire. The intervention of heat as a stage of the evolution of matter is nevertheless tackled in The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline (Hegel 1970/2010: §287–290). But heat is viewed in terms of its negative effects—loss of the limits of the bodies, alteration of gravity and cohesion, lack of qualities—more than in its positive contribution to the growth, the attraction, the transformation of the bodies. This seems to result from the insufficient attention that Hegel attaches to desire.
There is no doubt that fire, including the fire of desire, blurs the already existing limits, but this can give rise to new limits. It is the same when desire affects a merely physical cohesion in order to produce one which is more spiritual. And if desire can act in this way, does this not mean that it involves motion and heat? Certainly some light arouses desire, but the impact of the latter on matter, the fact that it can transform matter and provide it with new borders, after having brought to it more expansion and fluidity, results from the surge and fire that desire includes.
Perhaps I could suggest that desire corresponds to a transcendental intuition in search of a truth which has a part of physical reality? And if desire succeeds in aspiring after a truth inscribed in nature or matter themselves, could a more suitable path towards the absolute exist? Then it is no longer a question of an absolute which can definitely reconcile subject with object, subject with predicate, but rather of an absolute which springs from a dynamic mediation between the subjective and the objective both in the self and between the selves.
Desire, the origin of which would be firstly light, would need the temperate fire of love to ensure such a mediation. Having faith in you would mean hoping that my intuition with regard to you could be fulfilled thanks to love, notably because it arose from a physical reality longing to become incarnate as truth: sexuate difference as the origin of my being. This difference is an original datum that not even scientists until now have succeeded in appropriating. If they can intervene in the somatic development of the embryo, they cannot create the germs or chromosomes which give birth to it. Their material existence and their dynamic potential are the source of our being in an irreducible way. And the desire between us is that which brings us back to this origin.
As well as in our origin as in our desire, matter and form cannot truly be distinguished from one another, either in each of the elements or in their union. Matter is already endowed with a structure which at once differentiates it and calls for a union with an other. And such an origin of our being is a real which potentially determines truth itself, ours and the one that we consider to be objective. This obvious fact has been unrecognized in our culture—hence, we lack a speech which contributes to developing more than destroying our living belonging and the most original and fruitful link between us.
Acknowledging this fact differs from our traditional understanding of truth itself. Now, the structure and the real—in a way the form and the content—do not separate from each other, which forces us to invent and put into practice another logic, in which truth does not divide from the real and from the dynamism of matter itself.
Henceforth, matter is no longer considered to be a product of consciousness, as is the case after Kant; it is taken to mean the living as such, what is more, the living animated by a consciousness belonging to the human being. And in order to last and to develop as living, human being cannot split up into subject and object, mind or idea and matter, unity and diversity. It is everything through its flesh, and it must discover how to cultivate the latter; that is to say, how to think of and incarnate itself in order to preserve this flesh from becoming an object, amongst others for the sciences, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, from becoming a source of energy for the functioning of technique or technologies—a logical abstraction only succeeding with difficulty in reunifying such a scission towards the absolute. Human being is then in exile with regard to its desire for the absolute, a desire that its own productions have removed from it.
The desire for the other, the relation of desire with a subject naturally different, is that which can give back its longing for the absolute to a human being by protecting it from being reduced to an object, and from being put in the neuter or subjected to structures or forms extraneous to the living being that it is.
In the relation of desire between two humans differently sexuated, it is a question of meeting between two subjective worlds. Even if each must resort to a subject–object logic, this must undergo a dialectical process in order that the meeting should take place. At this stage, each subjectivity remains dependent on a subject–object relation, above all subjective as far as it itself is concerned but objective for the other—to allude to the comments of Hegel (in La différence entre les systèmes philosophiques de Fichte et de Schelling/The difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, 1986). This forces each to think about the nature of the subjective and the objective for itself and for the other in order to make possible a union in which longing for the absolute is preserved.
Such a longing for the absolute is as much, if not more, a desire to regain our flesh—that is, our physical matter already transformed by desire—and to transcend it, as to acquire a new shape or form. Indeed, if it were not the case, desire would above all aim at a repose. No doubt that the aspiration after a repose takes part in the desire for uniting with one another, but it cannot prevail over the force of attraction—for example, through a sort of regression to parental ties in which we still lack an autonomy and determination of our own, at least at a conscious level.
Such a relationship cannot correspond to the desire of an adult. The latter must assume, as much consciously as is possible, the particularity of each and transform an attraction, in which the force of gravity keeps a universal and undifferentiated character, apart from at a quantitative level, into a horizontal and qualitative attractiveness, which is wanted and in part gained with a view to a more spiritual becoming. Such a conversion can be achieved thanks to the longing between two humans who care about the accomplishment of their own being enough so as to work on their continuously being born or reborn here and now. Without contenting themselves with being merely subjected to gravity or denying its impact by resorting to supra-sensitive ideals, they search, through the levitation that desire can bring about, after another force that is of use for modifying the density of matter.
The disadvantage of a master–slave struggle in relation to that which the desire between us can provide is then understandable. Indeed, to what amounts the satisfaction of any possession in comparison with the ecstasy which can occur between two subjects in love with one another? But this asks for another way of conceiving of subjectivity, according to which our natural belonging is maintained, is acknowledged as determining and is transformed towards reaching an absolute which fits our desire. This desire now keeps an immediacy which feeds its energy, an immediacy which is no longer abstract and short in differentiation, but is specific and longs for combining with a differently determined immediacy.
Wanting to suppress the immediacy of the desire, merely our own or this for or of the other, in the name of a freedom in search of the absolute is thus a mistake. This amounts to destroying the energy necessary for such a quest, an energy more crucial than any satisfaction obtained through the mediation of an object, which anyway we will have to renounce and overcome. The matter is no longer one of destroying any object but of transforming our subjectivity itself, especially in order that it should become able to unite with another subjectivity, irreducibly external to our own. Indeed, this exteriority is crucial in our search for the absolute by supporting our desire, a desire which does not need any object to go from interiority to exteriority given its dealing with touch.
The Leading Part of Touch in Fleshly Dynamism
As Aristotle already points out in his De Anima, touch, differently from other senses, does not need mediation because it includes mediation in itself. And this mediation is able to evolve from a mere physical consistency to a more subtle energy. Touch, according to Aristotle, is always both matter and form and never exclusively one or the other. It can neither merge into matter without running the risk of vanishing nor become only form. It always comprises both and as such ensures a passage from our physical to our spiritual belonging, and this constantly. Touch is both substantial and in becoming. And its consistency as well as its evolution must maintain a measure which keeps it as a living touch, for oneself and also for the other.
Touch is an in-itself which is also a for-itself, but a for-itself which is both singular and common—a common which does not imply sameness but, nevertheless, allows a sharing to happen. What about this sharing? Most of the philosophers ignore such a question, whereas others openly assert the absence or their refusal of such a sharing—for example Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and even Emmanuel Levinas in their discourses regarding the caress. Others—like Michel Henry—maintain that our inability to share touch is proved by the failure of our carnal union. What meaning can this union have for them? Is it not the place where it sometimes happens that the touching of the one and that of the other can end in a touching one another, and in a communion in which our physical matter becomes so subtle that it can reach the absolute while remaining matter?
Might I just as well say that the gravity and substance of our physical matter are then changed so that they should allow us to experience our flesh—and ourselves—as absolute? Does not the latter correspond to a transformation of matter which does not for all that dry up into mere form(s) but keeps a density which can lead us to an ecstasy thanks to its dynamic potential? This requires such a dynamism to differ from an attraction to, or by, emptiness, and correspond to a becoming more subtle of our flesh in order that we could live more fulfilled exchanges with the other.
Our physical matter, when it is livening up in this way, regains a dynamism which preserves it from a mere passivity, especially with regard to gravity. Nevertheless, it must keep a carnal density, though this has no longer the weight of a corpse: it is lighter and more porous—which permits it to retain cohesion and unity in its relation to and with the other. The structure that our sexuation provides, a structure which is turned both to the internal and the external of the organism, safeguards the possibility of experiencing our own flesh while opening it up to another flesh. In other words, I could say that placing myself in relation to the different living structure that the other represents is what allows each of us to protect our flesh from vanishing into the abstract universality of the human species.
Our sexuate structure brings together unity, consistency and limits to the living being that we are. It provides us with the physical resistance of a specific structure, and also with the spiritual dynamism of the desire that arises from between the two, which enables us to become aware of our sexuate belonging. And a meeting between two fleshes cannot end in removing one of the two, or reducing one to a mere plastic or elastic consistency which leaves its own space to the other. Instead, meeting needs a transformation of each towards a communion which does not destroy the duality of carnal subjectivities.
Such an ability to modify the physical nature of matter thanks to a carnal communion is perhaps specific to humanity, at least as a path towards a spiritual becoming and not only towards copulation or reproduction. Rather, it then mainly aims to lead the human being to accomplish what or who it is without going no further than only reproducing, either oneself or another human. To succeed in this evolution, we have to overcome categories in use until now, in particular oppositions such as internal–external, corporal–incorporeal, matter–spirit. Emphasizing quality and difference is one of the means to carry out such an undertaking, especially through resorting to another economy than the traditional one regarding the relations between matter and form.
Remaining in an economy governed by similarity, I perceive my genus only as the same as the other, thus not as different, apart from as opposite. If qualities are considered to be specific to my genus and in a way which brings a content to it, notably thanks to the unity through which it puts them together even though they determine it, then things happen otherwise. By my belonging to a genus, I correspond with a world which is different from, but not opposite to, the one of the other genus. As such these worlds can approach and fertilize one another, provided that each takes on the particularity of its genus and the partiality that it represents in relation to a universality which would be merely spiritual and supposedly in the neuter.
Qualities are capable of going from the outside to the inside of the body, and they are not necessarily subjected to gravity. Moreover, they are their densities—which does not mean their weights, their contrasts, their forces of attraction, and so on—which contribute towards putting in touch and even uniting two different worlds without for all that dismantling the structure of one or the other.
Qualities have also the ability to link together the corporal with the spiritual, especially because they create an inner physical place which can address our spirit. They allow us to identify the other at the carnal level too. Qualities are able to build, in us and between us, bridges and mediations between matter and spirit. And, if they can stimulate our needs—for example, the one of eating—the latter cannot abolish them. They subsist as a beyond that needs cannot destroy by their satisfaction. Could I say that they subsist as an element of desire—a desire in which matter and form are indissociable from and irreducible to one another? Hence a constant opening up to the infinite, but also a relation to touch under different modalities.
Touch, indeed, is not perceptible without being together matter and form. But it is then a question of a form which is drawn into flesh itself and which is experienced more than it is seen. This probably explains why the potential of our touch has been unrecognized by a culture which favours sight, outside, seizure, nerves linked with muscles to the detriment of touch, sky and mucous, intimacy, elusiveness and flesh as a sensitive medium.
For lack of attention, cultivation and even perception regarding it, touch vanishes into an external and undifferentiated empathy scarcely conscious as well of oneself as of the other; which transforms our flesh into a sort of almost inanimate and opaque corporeal matter. The ability of flesh to know, remember, change, evolve and share is then neglected. This deprives us of a crucial potential for our human becoming and keeps us divided into body and spirit, lacking a flesh capable of acting as a mediation, especially between us as two different beings.
By adhering to the external world or remaining trapped within it, we have not become able to build the world which corresponds with us, a world of which any living being is badly in need, and in which the little child seems to still live, but that our culture forces us to leave. Hence, we wander in search of ourselves, of the other, of a habitable world. We survive, borrowing from matter, culture and the other(s), without really caring about how to develop ourselves as living beings, and even unable to still perceive that which our being consists in, its desire(s) and its becoming.
Loss of Differentiation Due to Sight
Our lack of differentiation from the world paradoxically results from the prerogative that our culture attaches to sight. We end in making one with what we see, as Merleau-Ponty asserts. The sense which underlies our theory, more generally our culture, is a sense which brings about our mistaking the one who perceives for what is perceived. Hence a logic which focuses on adequacy in the subject–object relation. Then, the subject–subject relationship is not yet possible, each subjectivity being immersed in a universe of objects from which it cannot truly distinguish itself.
Carrying out a reversal of the hierarchy between the senses is necessary in order that the subject could emerge as such from the background. It is touch which will allow our subjectivity to gain this individuation, and in particular a touching or retouching oneself which can be at the origin of a differentiated self-consciousness. Sight, which is presumed to be the sense of discrimination, is finally what immerses us in the world in which we are, whereas touch allows us to become an autonomous living being and to live in our own world.
The world that we must first inhabit is the one of our living body, of our flesh, and not a world built and told, one way or another, by the logos. We must succeed in saying ourselves in order that we could place ourselves in the saying of the world in which we live. And we must embody our difference before subjecting our existence to systems of equivalences which structure the logos and the world. The saying of nature in us ought to be capable of assessing the symbolic order that the surrounding world imposes on us.
It is not the prerogative of sight which permits the saying of our nature to be expressed. Instead, it is this way fragmented and objectified, unless to be reduced to a projection onto the beyond or the future, from which some images, reflections and even speculations sometimes are sent back to us. So, we are deprived of the perception of our natural belonging. And the tactile experience, which more truly tells this belonging, more often than not vanishes into the visual universe in which we are exiled. If an individuation of our bodies, and thus their distinction from the world and from the others, occurs in such a universe, it is no longer a question of autonomous living beings which enter into relations through a dynamism which is their own. Henceforth, we are dealing with an artificially fabricated world, a world without differentiation, distance and freedom—a world extraneous to life. And the assimilation—the ‘colonization’, according to Merleau-Ponty—of touch by sight makes impossible the tactile experience thanks to which we could recover for ourselves, and also return to the other(s), a threshold which both allows us to gather with ourselves and the others to gather with themselves as the living organisms that we are, and also to open up to the other(s) and to the world.
Such a gathering and an opening-up are neither in the neuter nor lacking in differentiation: from the beginning they are sexuate. Considering this sexuation to be only a stage—for example, an oral or anal pregenital stage—prior to sexual intercourse strictly speaking amounts to denying or unrecognizing that our experience of ourselves, of the world and of the other is at once comprehensively sexuate. Indeed, an energy and a desire which correspond with our sexuate belonging animates us from our birth, and in a way from our conception.
Sexuate difference in the manner of perceiving ourselves, the world and the other(s) is then a qualitative difference, which will be later reduced to a quantitative one. And yet, quality belongs to another experience than that which has been favoured by our culture. Such an experience requires us to listen to and accept passively in ourselves what happens and be able to transform it into other than an immediate external activity. It needs the cultivation of an internal touch as the elaboration of an intimate space extraneous to the opacity of matter. It is not only through our sight that we can perceive the world and the other(s), by means of images or representations, it is also through the trace in ourselves of their way of touching us. Such a perception is less momentary, fragmentary and external than the visual perception, and it is more easily integrated into an organic living totality than into a totality mentally constructed.
At least it can go in this way if we take time to linger on such a perception, instead of merely assimilating and incorporating it into what or who we already are. It is also possible if we consider it to be a potential factor of our development and that of the between us—which compels us to adopt another manner of experiencing space and time, and to live what happens in ourselves beyond the alternative introjection-rejection, with which many philosophers content themselves. In order that what touches us and tells us in the intimacy of our flesh might take shape, another manner of thinking is needed, one which considers the truth of sensitivity itself. This requires us to be able to differ from the other(s) by and for ourselves, a possibility that belonging to a genus can grant us without the length that other processes of individuation necessitate—for example, the evolution of human spin, brain or hand.
Such a process of individuation cannot be achieved by denying the by-itself and for-itself of the other. I must acknowledge that the other is capable of a for-itself, with which it can provide itself—which asks me to take on a negative not with respect to the other but with respect to the particularity of the by-myself and for-myself and my longing for the infinite and the absolute. From such a perspective it is acceptable to suggest that, in our culture, until now the man has imposed his by-himself and for-himself as universally valid without acknowledging the viewpoint of the other as different.
Acknowledging the potential reality and truth of the by-itself and for-itself of the other as different is a stage of individuation that humanity has not yet reached. And yet, this stage is crucial for us connecting truth with ethics. Indeed, to gain our individuation as belonging to a specific genus entails defining a place in which to dwell, a dwelling in ourselves, that we must respect and which must determine our way of entering into relations with ourselves, with the world and with the other(s).
This place is our own, but the other can be present in it, both externally and internally. The other does not amount to what we too often reduce it: an object that we can appropriate or an embodiment of the negative against which we can pit ourselves. The other is an element of the environment in which I live and of the nature that I, myself, am and with which I must negotiate for being and becoming the one who I am.
The other corresponds with an aspiration which lies in me but I cannot appropriate—as I can in a way do with regard to my needs. Unless I understand my need for the other to be due to the fact that this other can resist being shaped, assimilated or destroyed by me in what is particular to it. My want of the other exceeds my singularity while preserving it. It is a call for a beyond, for an infinite which does not abolish me but answers an intimate aspiration in search of its fulfilment. It represents the need for a transcendence in order to achieve my becoming. As such, my want of the other cannot be satisfied—at once it is longing for a beyond, an absolute, and even a universal after which aspiring constitutes me as a human subject. The need for the other as other in reality is desire. And it is between two different desires that the universal, the absolute, the infinite can happen without being ever appropriated by either of them.
Desire unites in an individual spirit with the body. Through its gravity a body is already individualized with respect to the universe in which it takes place, but through desire it can appropriate this weight as its own and modify it. Indeed, the gravitation that my body undergoes is both specific and non-appropriable; it is an objectivity which is imposed on my subjectivity. However, thanks to desire, the latter can act on gravity, but the becoming lighter that desire can grant is truly physical or merely ideal. Indeed, a subjection to supra-sensitive ideas or ideals can provoke a sort of weightlessness, but this more often than not has nothing to do with my body and can even make me experience it as heavier.
The desire for and of the other, and above all a shared desire, is able to give rise to a phenomenon of levitation which transforms the weight of the body itself. It takes part in our individuation, both in an active and a passive way, through its impact on the density and the cohesion of our flesh. Sexual desire, even any sexuate desire, above all can contribute towards such a transformation, and it is an aspect of our nature on which subjectivity can act so as to modify our physical gravity and make it more compatible with a spiritual experience. It is a means of overcoming the opposition between body and spirit and also of changing our relation to gravity in order to harmonize it with that of the other.
Living Individuation Shaped by Mutual Desire
We have to keep a unity in order to preserve our desire for the absolute. We must experience ourselves as a whole, not only the merely organic whole of our natural belonging but the whole that we acquire thanks to desire. It is desire which grants us an experience of the infinite which is not merely that of life but which corresponds with our wish to reach the absolute. We are those, as determined subjectivities, who can safeguard our relation to the absolute, and not only life as such. And it is our sexuation, as a structure which can unify the multitude of our sensitive experiences, which can provide us with the immanence of a whole destined to transcend itself.
When we are exiled from such a whole, we are also exiled from our longing for the absolute, deprived of the relation to the simplicity that it represents and which is able to transform multiplicity into infinity. Keeping our desire alive amounts to maintaining a passage from a natural absolute to a spiritual absolute. It contributes to preserving our longing for the infinite not only as a driving surge towards becoming ourselves but also as a motion towards uniting with the other in order to become the ones who we are.
Cultivating our desire is also a means to ensure the connection between freedom and limits. These are no longer imposed from an outside as a restriction or an opposition to the exercise of our freedom. They belong to our being itself and represent a structure outside of which it cannot unfold endlessly towards its accomplishment. Sexuation is not external to us but is a living structure starting from which we can develop.
Sexuation requires a dialectical process between my becoming as sexuate and my relation to and with an other differently sexuated. The motion corresponding to such dialectics is other than the one at work in the Hegelian dialectics. Indeed, the other sex is not opposite to mine: it is both same and different. We have no longer a word to express such a meaning that the Greek heteros still conveyed. The other sex—as the other hand, the other foot, the other lip, the other eye—signifies an other of two, whose individuation and relationship involves a really specific economy. The same as and different from the other, each element of the pair has an autonomy that is granted it notably through its relation to the other. Entering into relation with one another takes place through a finite structure which appears, is cleared, thanks to the space that, then, exists between the two.
Gaining our individuation implies that we maintain such a space, thus that we renounce the immediacy of a fulfilled union with the other. This asks for a certain heroism from us given the longing for uniting with one another which supports the dynamism of our desire. It is no longer through conflicts and wars, as it is from a Hegelian perspective, or by opposing the other that individuation is gained; rather, it is by preserving our difference and thanks to the restraint that this needs. Each must thus dwell in itself, keeping its desire as particular, without it merely merging or being confused with the desire of the other. Holding back from fulfilling the immediacy of our surges in order to respect the other transforms the nature of our desire, raises it to a transcendental level where the for-ourselves becomes a possible for-the-other.
Such a process is without end, it is never achieved once and for all and it requires us to be as much vigilant as wide awake. It results from taking into account a determination which grants us a margin of freedom with respect to our physical materiality and our needs in general, something that our belonging to a people cannot guarantee to us. Hence the necessity of waging war, according to Hegel? Our sexuation gets, for us, the possibility of remaining within ourselves on the condition that we constantly expose ourselves to open up to, and even to unite with, the other. It gives us a freedom which involves our being able to keep ourselves independent and autonomous whatever our longing for becoming the other or for losing our individuation in uniting with the other.
This does not occur without courage, but a courage different from the one which is needed for waging war. However, if Hegel considers the man capable of being courageous during war to be free, a war which answers a spiritual requirement according to him, the man capable of being courageous in love would show higher courage, freedom and spirituality. Instead of expecting from war a sort of negation of negation, man, then and in my opinion, takes on an insurmountable negative, and in this way works continually on the transformation of spirit itself. Man no longer entrusts the safeguard of spirit to a people or a state, a process through which spirit becomes paralyzed by being frozen in fixed values, and thus needs conflicts in order to be set in motion again. Indeed, desire has lost its dynamism; it has become dependent on values presumed to be ideal but which are acknowledged as such only by a given community at a given moment of history and according to the place where this community takes place.
Because of the static character of such values, the connection between nature and culture gets lost and disappears, a link that only desire can continuously ensure in the present on the condition that it succeeds in freeing itself from what is already established by a people, notably through its history. By considering that a people corresponds to the incarnation of the individual, Hegel underestimates the necessary mediation of desire for the individual and the collective becomings. He does not take into account sufficiently the living way through which each can and must contribute towards forming the whole that it itself is and connecting it to a community. Hence, it is with death, more than with life, than humanity is confronted, and heroism consists less in making life blossom than in risking it for a people through war.
By alienating the dynamism of desire in the life of a people without having first cultivated it in the relationships with the naturally different other(s), the citizens, as they are imagined by Hegel, miss the necessary connection and constant interaction between nature and culture and the work of the negative that they imply. From this results the Hegelian search for creating a motion inside of a world cut off from its natural energy resources, a motion which will be kept going by confronting oppositions, which artificially and inadequately substitute for a natural energy. Conflicts and wars then represent processes which aim at arousing again an energy which, in reality, they instead exhaust.