Illeity and Prophetism

March 6, 2012

Illeity

The concept of illeity stresses how God is absolutely Other than human beings. God is non-comprehensible; and if we have an idea of God in our minds, that idea is not God. This concept stresses that God’s transcendence can never be totally contained; God is always ahead of us and we can never catch up. Levinas, in stressing transcendence, is showing that God is majestic and absolutely different from us. But although he is distant and different he is non-indifferent to us.

To stress the transcendence of God is to stress that God is not an idol.  An idol is something that one can command, manipulate, or predict. We cannot expect God to do the things we want.  When atheists say “God does not exist”, they have in mind certain ideas of God which, upon critical reflection, must really be killed. Nietzsche was correct when he said certain ‘ideas’ of God must be smashed. Sometimes it is as if God is absent, but perhaps we only have a pre-judgement of how God should manifest.We make God conform to our image, instead of us coming closer to God. This is not the God of illeity. God’s presence is not usually manifested in ways we want or expect.

Though God is not a phenomenon and he is not perceived nor does he hide himself. Because He is always ahead He only leaves behind a ‘trace.’ God shows himself in our responsibility and our genuine relationship with Others. Because God cannot be seen or perceived, it is through the witnesses that he makes himself felt. The glory of the infinite is revealed in what it changes in the witness. Illeity is almost considered absent in order to bring about the creativity of the human being.

This presence is one which retreats to create space so that the human being can be responsible for the Other. The glory of the infinite consists in our creativity for the Other. The infinite is also in me because I am inspired by the Other. Ethics is not just external impositions, but it something that is inside me, disturbs me, and pushes me out to testify.

Prophetism

(Notes on Interview number 10)

Every human being is called to be prophet or witness. The fact that one can be responsible means that one can be a prophet.

Levinas says that responsibility is beyond knowledge and should not remain within knowledge; however, one must go through knowledge. Levinas cannot make us responsible, he can only speak of responsibility. Prophetism is the moment of the human condition itself; every human being assuming responsibility for the Other is assuming responsibility for the Infinite.

Ethics and religion go together. Ethics is the responsibility for the Other. Levinas is showing that the love of God is not the love of God without love of Other.

This responsibility is spelled out in more complete rules and norms in religion. Sometimes people console themselves by following the letter of these rules but are not really following its spirit. When people just confine themselves to fulfilling those rules, they may be ‘religious’ but they are not practicing religion. Religion is the good you do to the Other. There is a difference between a ‘religious’ person and an ethical person.

 

Illeity, Testimony, and Unsaying

March 1, 2012

There is a certain ambiguity in Levinas when he says ‘Other’. By ‘Other’ he means the human Other although what he says also applies to the Infinite Other (God). There is an absolutely Infinite Other who is other than the human Other, however the two are so intimately related that the Infinite Other (God) is also in the human Other. The infinite Other (God) is not fully captured in the human Other because the human Other cannot imprison the Infinite. The Absolute Infinite (God) is not like a topic or theme which one can grasp and completely understand, but is instead a certain trace, of which we can only glimpse.

God’s trace is not an appearance or a phenomenon, in the sense that it is an uncovering or disclosure because it’s not just something given to perception nor is it a matter of knowledge. God’s presence is not a total manifestation, but only a glimpse or a trace. It is through us and through the human Other that God makes ‘manifest’. The infinite is ‘felt’ when, in the presence of the Other, the I says “Me-here-for-you.”The more I become just and responsible, the more I show the presence of God. God is invisible to the senses, we don’t see apparitions. However, we see people comforting and being responsible to Others.

When one does good, he cannot say “I have done all my duty.” Like the exigency for holiness and excellence, the ethical demand cannot be completed or finished. Emphasized here is difference between satis (from satis-fied) and magis. We are all called to be magis and therefore the person who does good knows that there is more good to be done.

 

Illeity

Certain Jewish prayers start addressing God using the personal ‘you’ or ‘thou.’ However, as the prayer progresses, the address to God becomes more distant and the prayer begins to refer to God as “ille,” which is the third person. Ille is the Latin form for the third person.

Ille is a form of address that shows that the person is tries to show that God has already passed on, and is already ahead. One cannot catch up with him and therefore God cannot be boxed. Because God is transcendent, already ahead, and is only a trace, the way he is manifested is through the testimony of human beings who do the good. When the subject says “Me here for you,” the person is giving witness and is thus testifying to the Infinite. The Greek word for witness is the same word from which we get the word martyr. The martyr gives witness to God and shows witness to God because he is willing to die for that which he believes in. The glory of God consists in retreating and so making the human being an image of his creativity.

 

Saying and Unsaying

We are doing something very paradoxical. The whole philosophy 102 venture has thus been an indiscretion with regard to the unsayable. The real essence of Levinas’ philosophy is not to remain as content in the mind, but to be lived out in action.  Through Levinas we learn many terms and concepts and we will perhaps forget all of these. It’s important to talk about ethics just as, from time to time, you must say to your loved ones “Mahal kita.” But love is not just in the uttering of the words, but in the doing.  Philosophy must be unsaid; that is, philosophy should not only remain on the conceptual level. When you are helping someone you do not think of Levinasian terms, you simply help the other.

The unsaying would be like this: “How do we make God come through us?” This is the very creativity of God, that precisely he uses me, a crooked instrument, to write straight, because I have the capacity of letting him through. This is testimony and witnessing.  Even if one does not believe in God, one can still do the good.

Third Party

Previously we discussed responsibility as radical passivity: even before we decide, act, and think there is already a passivity in us which relates us to the Other. It is a passivity whereby the Other has already sort of invaded us and sort of claimed us.

Responsibility as Economic

Now we discuss responsibility as economic.  It is hypocritical to go to the Other with empty hands. My responsibility consists in giving food for the hungry and giving shelter to those who have no homes.

We must have a good appreciation of the material. The material and the spiritual are linked. You can do a lot of things with resources. We must stress being-in-the-world and embodiment. Because I am embodied, I can open the door for someone. I can donate blood. Responsibility must be embodied and it must pass through my body and my hands.

Levinas discussed the sociality of money. Money is a beautiful invention because it is the fastest way to help others. People who are enterprising are asked to cultivate their skills, to give work to those who have no jobs. Economy includes time, talent, skills, capabilities. You must share your talent and whatever you are capable of doing with your insight and skills.

 

Responsibility Implies a Conversion

Responsibility implies a conversion. Why did Levinas describe jouissance? He spoke of things that we really enjoy. When we give something, it must be something that we really appreciate. It is as if you are about to eat your sandwich but you happen to see someone who needs it more, and you give it away. He speaks therefore of self-emptying or kenosis. I really made a sacrifice in order to be responsible. He uses the word dis-inter-ested-ness which shows that you are tearing yourself away from yourself. The hyphen is supposed to visualize that.

 

The Third Party

The experience of the face is not just the experience of hearing the command of “Thou shall not kill” but also to understand social justice. This is because there are many Others beside the Other. There are Third Parties.

It’s wrong to interpret his philosophy as if there are only two people. When we do something, we have to be aware that there are others. Levinas is trying to establish the presence of the third party, a distinction between the closed society of two people who have only eyes for each other and the open society who are open to all see. Without our knowing it, when we do something to the Other, it has an effect on Others and we may not be aware of the hurt that we do to the Others.

He shows the universality of the Other. If I am responsible not just to a particular Other but to the universal Other. We are dealing with the Other not on the basis of particular characteristics relative to her but according to that universal essence which is found in all human beings. When I respect this particular Other I also respect what is present in all the Others.

I am responsible for the Other. The universal Other includes all the Others and also myself. Part of my responsibility is self development. How can I be responsible if I do not develop myself? There is a distinction between self-development which is just for oneself and ethical self-development, which is self-development in view of Others.

Since the two people are always in a particular society, we have to discern our responsibility to each person. This is why we have law. In society, we will have to make laws and rules, to make the Others conform to what is good for everybody. On the level of just institutions, justice is important: that each one gets what is due to him.

 

Thesis Statements

1. The “traumatisms” from life make us reflect. But it is from the “loving struggle” with texts that we become aware that “the true life is absent”. Philosophy as the quest for the “sense of life” can be prepared for by the love of literature (especially national) and the love for the Bible, the Book of books.
2. To think philosophically is to reflect on my lived experiences and to come up with answers that I can address to all humanity.
3. For Husserl, phenomenology as a rigorous science recalls the new vigor given to the intentionality of consciousness. For Heidegger, ontology is the attempt to answer the question of being as a verb.
4. Levinas’ fascinating insight on the urgency to escape “il y a” helps us appreciate the coming of being as existents. In existing, however, there is still a solitude of being from which I have to be delivered by the Other.
5. In emerging as a separate being, I immediately experience life as innocent enjoyment—jouissance. Life is a sincerity.
6. The social relation with the Other is a relation of dis-inter-ested-ness where the I is non-in-different to the Other. The relation of eros and fecundity are relationships beyond knowledge, possession and power.
7. In Descartes’ idea of the Infinite, the Infinite “appears” as the Absolutely Other, the Transcendent that surpasses all our powers of appropriation in the humiliation or kenosis of the subject. The Infinite reveals itself in an enigmatic and extravagant way in the trace of the Face.
8. Subjectivity is not for itself but a responsibility for the Other, which goes to the point of substitution. The subject who, in inspiration, says “Me here for you!” testifies to the glory of the Infinite.
9. The Philosophy of Being Human Course describes the journey from “I am here!” to “Me-here-for-you!” In the course of this itinerary, the Other surprises me and teaches me taht I must live my life for the Other. I must learn to say “After you,” “Thank you,” and “a-Dieu.”
10. It is probably the task of philosophy to be an “indiscretion with regard to the unsayable.” For now, I see the “sense of my life” as . . .

Radical passivity

Previous philosophies put freedom and autonomy before responsibility. When you’ve done something, you’re responsible for what you have done. However, Levinas puts this into question; He says you have responsibility first and then freedom. The subject is not free first but is responsible first. Subjectivity is responsibility.

In Levinas’ two great books Totality and infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, one notices that the description of the subject shifts. In Totality and Infinity, the subject emerges from il y a and experiences jouissance. He is a needy subject and is happy for these needs. In Otherwise than Being, he stressed on radical passivity. Before I can think, choose, act, or begin anything, there is this radical passivity to the Other.

Levinas uses the terms ‘responsibility’ ‘substitution,’ ‘obsession,’ ‘hostage,’ ‘persecution,’ ‘accusation,’ ‘saying,’ and ‘proximity’.  Before I actually act, the Other is experienced as if he was accusing me. The Other, before I can claim the Other has already chosen me and imprisoned me. This is what is meant by hostage. These are actually very difficult terms and they will be called hyperbolical and exaggerated. What does it mean to say that before I think, use or act, I am already a hostage and I am responsible for the Other? It is not a temporal priority, it is a conceptual priority. Levinas wants to show that radical passivity is the transcendental condition for the things that I do. It is the condition for human social existence.

This passivity is vulnerability. It’s not the solitary I that wants to relate with the Other, but even before the actual relation, the I is already related to all the Others.

We may be different and separated, but there is a relation. From the very beginning, there is already that basic responsibility and it is that basic responsibility that emerges in those senseless acts of kindness. The Other has already invaded me and charged me. It is a structure that does not resemble the intentional relation, which, in knowledge, attaches us to the subject. Proximity and nearness is not about intentionality or knowledge.

 

Face and Discourse

We are always with people but what is the meaning of being-with? When are you really with people? The experience of Other as Face is concrete and particular and this reality has a name. It’s important to know the names of people, to see them for their concreteness and particularity. We acknowledge the other. Even before I greet the Other, there is already the acknowledgement of a bond. This is the experience of the Face.

Face

In the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, though there is a return to lived experience, it is the subject who gives meaning to the object and to the Other. The I describes the way the Other appears. Phenomena is that which appears, and phenomenology is a study of how things appear in consciousness.

However, Levinas does not just refer to what appears or what the I describes. He speaks of a reality which is the source of its own meaning. So therefore, this cannot strictly be phenomenology in the Husserlian sense. When one looks, there is always a certain objectification; the other becomes an idea in one’s head. Vision and conception is always a search for adequation.

This Other is just Other, and without context. The experience is unique, concrete and particular. You are you. In this sense, this experience of Other as Face cannot be exhausted in perception; the Face is what is visible in the invisible. It is cannot become an idea or a concept in my head. The experience is not a phenomena (that which appears), but an enigma or a puzzlement. The relation to this reality is not in the level of knowledge but of ethics. It’s not about contemplating or looking but it is about doing.

Levinas says that the access to the Other is immediately and straight-away ethical—that is, it is not about looking but it is about responding and acting. It’s true that you do capture something in the classification and objectification of people, but you also miss something when you do.

This is an experience of a reality which is upright. By upright Levinas means physically standing and morally upright, meaning someone who could show his face to the world. The Face is exposed and vulnerable because the Face has no protection. There is a certain essential poverty in the Face and this is why one always seeks to project a certain image of oneself, that’s why we have masks and poses. The Face is exposed, menaced, and inviting. There are people, like children who seem naive and easy to dominate, but the reality says that you shouldn’t. It’s always perverted to make use of your power over people who have less power.  There are realities which command you to stop, and put you into question.

However, this is only an ethical resistance, and not force. You can still kill the Other. The ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity: you can do it though you know you shouldn’t. The humanity of being human is a rupture of Being. His self-sufficiency and drive to domination is put into question.

Discourse

He uses the word Face as a word that evokes the experience of the Other who puts me into the question. The Face is not a category or concept but an experience. He also uses the word discourse, because this reality speaks and it is speaking. The words ‘face’ and ‘discourse’ are synonymous here. The Other as Face speaks to me and I speak to him; the fact that the Other is also a source of speech tells me that I’m not the only one. You cannot program a conversation because you only know your answer after the Other has spoken. Communication is a back and forth.

When the Other speaks, I have to respond. He makes the important distinction between what he calls the Saying (le dire) and the Said (le dit).

If someone tells you they like you but does nothing about it, then there is no Saying there only the Said. There are no times when there is no Said, but someone’s doing is already a Saying. You experience that someone cares for you by really taking care of you, then the Saying is there even though there might not be an explicit Said.

In discourse, we have to distinguish between the Saying and the Said. In a way, the Said would be the legal. However, the legal will not make sense if you do not trace the legal to the ethical. You can interpret the law in a very legalistic sense, and miss the whole sprit. Before rules and legalities, there is this fundamental awareness of the Other.

Cultures have many conventions to show that we acknowledge the Other: it is necessary to speak of anything, no matter what, simply to speak. Filipinos usually ask “Where are you going?” or “Have you eaten?” as a way of showing that there is some humanity in you. If you bump accidentally, you don’t look at the Other as if she was a stone or a potato but you apologize. It doesn’t even have to be spoken, sometimes it could be communicated through body language.

Descartes’ Idea of the Infinite

The appreciation of going out to the Other is also appreciated by other philosophers, and not just Levinas. For Plato, philosophy is not just an monologue but is a gradual ascent to the beyond where the gods are. Philosophy is a dialogue with the gods. We also find this sentiment echoed in Descartes, especially when he discusses the Idea of the Infinite.

Descartes noted that philosophy did not make any progress at all because philosophers disagreed about everything. He thought philosophy did not have the right method. He wanted to try to find the indubitable truth, the truth that cannot be doubted, and once it is found, it will be the foundation where he will deduce other truths of philosophy.

He begins by doubting everything. He cleared the table and started with a clean slate. He began with what he calls the universal methodic doubt. He begins to doubt everything: the world, the body, and God. He did not really believe that there was no God, world, or body. It means that he provisionally put world, God, and body in brackets and set it aside. He concluded the methodic doubt by saying that he can doubt everything, but in doubting I know I exist. This is the famous ‘ I think, therefore I am.’ Descartes ended up simply as a thinking something. I can doubt everything but there is one thing I cannot doubt: that I am, and I have ideas.

Descartes is certain that he has ideas: the idea of himself, other people, and God. But he is not yet sure if these ideas correspond to an external reality. Where do these ideas come from? All these ideas, except for the idea of myself and of God, I could have made up myself. Where did I get the idea of God? He described this idea of God as an infinite substance, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, and all-powerful.  This idea of God in Descartes is the traditional idea in metaphysics.

Descartes concludes that the idea of the Infinite could only have been put in him. It couldn’t have been produced by him because the human being is a limited being, and as a limited being it cannot think of something greater than itself. The effect (the infinite) cannot be greater than the cause (finite human being). The infinite here must be a positive infinite, it is because of this positive idea of the infinite that I realize that I am imperfect.

Descartes idea of God is that God is perfect. If one does not say that God exists, then I’m not really thinking about God because God should have the perfection of perfections—that is, existence. This idea of God is unique because if I think of this idea, I think of something greater than the idea in my head. If one thinks God, it explodes the mind. There is a content which cannot be contained and it cannot stay completely in the mind.

What is the essence of a triangle? Its essence is to have three angles, but I cannot immediately conclude that the triangle exists because its essence does not necessarily include existence. But with the idea of God, his essence necessarily includes existence. Descartes is saying that of all these ideas, the idea of God is the unique idea because its essence necessarily includes existence. This is how he proves that God exists. Knowing that the all-powerful and all-good God exists assures me that he will not deceive me.

Levinas

Levinas is not interested in the traditional idea of God; but he is interested in the container-contained schema. To know is to have ideas which correspond to external reality.  Levinas is making the analogy that just as the idea of God cannot be reduced to the container-content, the experience of the Other is also an experience of the infinite because when I experience the Other, the Other escapes my grasp and therefore he overflows, and he cannot be contained simply in my mind. Therefore, the other is somehow infinite.

Part of self-knowledge is knowledge that one is related to one higher than oneself. But this relation is forgotten. To know oneself as related to another. Levinas is trying to show that if you only reflect upon yourself, you already have the mark of others in you. Everybody else that came before me. Why should I be responsible? Because others have already responded for me.

Descartes’ argument have similarities to St. Anselm’s ontological argument. Here’s a link that could help you understand why existence is in the essence of God. Press ENTER to proceed to the next ‘slide’. 🙂

Totality and Infinity

Lecture on January 26, 2012

 

There are two ways of doing philosophy, so far as we can tell. The first one is learning, and just keeping things in your head. But the second way of doing philosophy is to really experience the surprises in life. It’s important to note how Levinas speaks of experience.

The Law of the Other: Surprise and Experience

For Levinas, experience is something that takes you out of yourself. He compares ‘prise’ (to grasp or to take) and ‘sur-prise’. There’s a difference between being surprised, and being controlling and mastering what is before me. There are realities that resist the grasping of the I. Maybe experience is not the comfortable possession of the truth but the other thing as the constant journeying, openness, or hospitality and reception of what is different. It’s important therefore to distinguish the way of thinking that goes out, takes something back to my mind and it rests; and there is a different way where the I is taken out.

When we talk about experience, we are speaking of the otherness of reality, and this experience of otherness cannot be reduced to my mind. There is a reality that faces me as if it was really higher than me, and above me—in the sense that it is demanding something from me, commanding me and it’s a command I cannot escape. Maybe the experience of the Other is the experience of what is different, of what does not physically command me but which nevertheless appeals to me. To be ethical is to have a revolution within oneself where one gives priority to the other, and not to oneself.

The Law of the I: Totalization and Domination

Totality is a way of thinking that reduces the Other to the same; it is the law of the I. This seems to be the prevalent way of being in the world. Is domination, totalization and war the most original or natural situation? However, Levinas claims that we have to look at a more fundamental state. War or totalization is not the most original or natural situation.

He is using the transcendental method. Before and behind the war, there is a fundamental openness to the Other. He claims that behind this totalization there is a glimpse of infinity. If you accept that the law of being is war, then it will lead to a contradiction. If everything is war, then it will lead to a situation where everybody is finally killed because war self-destroys.

This violent reality presupposes a fundamental openness. I could not possibly be here if Others are not responsible for me. The reason why I am here is because there are many others who nourished, protected, and took of me.

He evokes what he calls the experience of being a creature. But he does not mean creature in a theological sense. It means that I did not produce myself. I am given to myself. My being is given to me by others. This is the first experience before the violence and war, this is what is forgotten. If I realize what has been given to me, then I must pass on that gift of to others. If you look at how you come to be, others have given much to you. You are all everybody has given to you, and perhaps that is forgotten.

 

What good is philosophy if it only has ideas that stay only in the mind? To do philosophy is to expose oneself to the surprises of one’s experience. There is a contrast therefore in these two approaches: philosophy as being pulled out of myself to experience something radically other and different, being taken out of myself in a reality which other, and the peaceful possession of ideas in my head. There is a contrast when we see the stress of Levinas on surprises. There is a distinction being made by the surprise.

Filiality

January 17, 2012 Lecture

The second concrete example of the law of the Other is called Filiality—the relation of the parent with the child..

“I am my child and I am not my child.”  The parent can see himself or herself in the child, but the child is different from the parent. The parent must respect otherness of the child. The possibilities of the son are not the possibilities of the father. In other words, Levinas is trying to oppose a conception whereby the children are seen merely as extensions of the parent.

Sometimes there is the dramatic conflict because the parent is trying to treat himself as the source of creativity; but part of being creative is standing back and letting the other person be creative in turn. The possibility of the son becomes the impossibility of the father, and the parent should rejoice. This is the meaning of fathering, mothering or teaching. It is not to occupy the stage, but to create space.

The main idea here is the idea of parenting as receding in the background. There is a point in a person’s life where the apron strings are cut off. Your mother carried you inside her womb. The whole of life is about not getting back into that womb, it is an ever going out of it. It is about exodus, exteriority and transcendence. The cutting of the umbilical cord is the first sign of independence; you set the other free. One is free but related.

This is also about letting go of the person who does not desire you; but you have to accept it because the other is separate and different. This is part of loving; you have to respect the desire of the Other. We are talking about relations that do not depend on projection.

t doesn’t mean that those who have no children are not capable of this relation. Biological filiality is not just the only kind; you can be a parent to someone who is not related to you. One can have a paternal relation to the other if you establish relation beyond the possible—not by making them extensions of your ego.

This is related to the idea of time, which is not seen as a continuous time, but time as emphasized as an instant, a pulse and a beat where I begin anew in another being. I am there but in a new way. Infinite time is not continuous duration, but it is in novelty and beginning anew in the Other. And therefore, there is something better in growing old and beginning anew. He is talking here about transcendence; he really have gone out of myself by having a child but that word ‘having’ is not purely adequate because the child is not fully possession. I ‘am’ the child but in a pluralistic notion.

Levinas also says that each child is unique, that each child will be the chosen one. Each child will be loved in a unique way, and he or she is irreplaceable. One should not put hierarchy to love. All love must strive to resemble this kind of parental love, which strives to love the loved one as unique.

Feminine

In the history of Western philosophy, the I is always considered male; the emphasis was on virility, power and activity. Women, who were generally invisible in history, were seen as passive and weak. Levinas wants to show that qualities historically associated with femininity are also important.

The subject has always been interpreted as male and as in control. Modernity has always seen the subject, the cogito, and as placed on top of the pedestal. He is the reference and everything goes back to him. But perhaps the meaning of being a subject is to be subject, to be a base, to carry the other, to respond to the call of the Other.

The Law of the I (autonomy) is a way of being that places the I at the center. The alternate way of thinking is heteronomy, which is a thinking where the I goes out but does not come back. This is a thinking that starts with the familiar and goes towards the unfamiliar. There are two figures that exemplify the two ways of thinking. Autonomy is exemplified by Ulysses who left his home Ithaca to go to the war in Troy and then eventually return to Ithaca. The exemplar of heteronomy is Abraham who was called by God to go forth to a new land; he did not return to the place of his birth.

The success of Western civilization and culture can perhaps be attributed to their general way of thinking—autonomy. The Western civilization is a history of colonization and their philosophy reflected this: the I is always the center. There’s a horror or an allergy of the Other. In autonomy, the I gives the meaning of the other, and breaks down the other to reduce it to itself. The rule is the Darwinian survival of the fittest. If you have to preserve your being at all cost, then it is alright to crush the other.

The feminine is the reality which escapes the grasp of the I. Levinas has revalorize the attributes traditionally associated to woman like passivity and gentleness. We have to broaden the idea of the subject to being gentle, supportive, passive. Sexual difference is only next to the primary relation, the relation between persons. You don’t relate to a person because she is a woman or he is a man, but because that person is a human being.

Is there way of thinking that does justice to the Other? Can we think of difference not as opposition to the I? Can we think of difference in a positive way?  Levinas employs the woman as the metaphor or the feminine as the metaphor to stress the positive otherness.

Why is the woman associated with dwelling? Levinas alludes to the situation where the male goes out to hunt and then comes back to the dwelling. The woman, because she keeps the house, is able to make the hunter recollect and to become reflective in the home. The woman is the condition for recollection, the interiority of the home. The presence of the other is discreetly an absence; the woman’s presence—she might not be physically there but there is her presence because the house is in order. The Other’s absence is discreetly a presence.

The feminine is compared to a dwelling, home, interiority, gentleness, kindness, modesty, essential discretion and finally ‘delicious weakness’.