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 . . .