§8. Separation and Contradiction
The erotic reduction—Does anyone love me?—
leads me outside myself looking for assurance.
 “This assurance can by definition only come
upon me from an elsewhere that is definitively
anterior, other, and foreign to me, an elsewhere
that I lack and that defines me by this lack. There
follows this principle: I am, therefore I am
lacking.” (42)
 The contradiction lies in the assurance of the
ego coming from an elsewhere, an “originary
alterity.”
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“I am neither the principle, nor at the origin,
of myself.” (42)
Let’s prove it by a reductio: assuming I could
love myself and assure myself. Isn’t this the
ideal wisdom sought by the philosophers and
popular wisdom as well?
What would this mean? How can my love of
myself be performed? How can it be verified?
In short, it cannot, but let us examine the
“fragile evidence.”
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First, how can I be doubled or split, which would
seemingly be necessary for me to love myself?
The possibility of the split is absurd for three
reasons:
1. I cannot precede myself.
2. I cannot exceed myself. (In order to overcome
the vanity and become completely convinced
this would be required.)
3. I cannot cross the distance required by loving.
Objection: this impossibility is merely formal,
“every man loves himself first, and infinitely”
(thus says metaphysics).
 Conatus in suo esse perseverandi (This is
Spinoza’s “striving to persevere in one’s own
being.”)
 Objections:
 1. Is this perseverance exclusively in the present?
What about an orientation toward the future?
 2. Isn’t this being rather elementary—the being
of a dead person?
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For a human being, being doesn’t signify
perseverance, but rather possibility. (In other words,
possibility is greater than actuality.)
“A physical body, a being of the world, an object do
not have to decide if they merit being…But I have to
decide. Perhaps the atom, the rock, the sky, and the
animal can, without anguish or scruple, persevere
naturally in their being. I, however, cannot. In order to
persevere in my being, I must first will to be, and, in
order to do that, love to be.” (50)
So this being doesn’t assure me, it doesn’t respond
the question, it doesn’t even hear it.
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A final experiment: Can the conatus assure
me against the vanity of being?
The first hypothesis: I persevere by necessity.
Two objections:
(1) This would mean sinking into inhumanity
and (2) anonymity.
The second hypothesis: I persevere freely.
Can I will to be?
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Although the love of self and perseverance in
one’s being appear obvious in the natural
attitude, under the erotic reduction they are
illusory and useless.
“To have done with these illusions, we will
establish once and for all the exact opposite
thesis—no one can love himself”…because
every man hates himself (53).
Again, suppose I can love myself infinitely.
What does this mean?
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Doesn’t insisting on infinite self-love betray a
“very clear consciousness of not possessing
this serene love of myself”…I who after all
“ooze with finitude.” (53)
If I truly loved myself completely then
wouldn’t this be so obvious that the
question—Does anyone out there love me?—
would never even arise.
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Thus the claim of self-love leads to the
following stages:
1. self-hatred: who has never found himself
pathetic?
2. injustice: the paradox of the finite requiring
the infinite
3. bad faith: lying to oneself that one is not
unlovable
4. the verdict: there are no grounds for love
Self-hatred “sets off a chain reaction with…the
hatred of the other.” (58)
 5. On the hatred of the other: As I find no source
of self-love in myself I recognize the other as
equally unworthy.
 6. The other appears as a paradoxical
phenomenon: as the first that I hate, but also as
the possibility of an elsewhere for love.
 7. But the other ends up hating me.
 8. Thus, I hate other people; I hate the
elsewhere.
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“Thus all love that begins as a love of every
man for himself (impossible) ends up, by selfhatred (actual), in the hatred of the other
(necessary).” (64)
This is not an exaggerated pessimism—we
are concerned with the status of certainty—
“Does anyone out there love me?”
The point of departure of self-love has been
shown inane, so we will need to consider
another point of departure.
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§15. Reducing Reciprocity
§16. Pure Assurance
§17. The Principle of Insufficient Reason
§18. The Advance
§19. Freedom as Intuition
§20. Signification as Face
§21. Signification as Oath
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Towards a new question: We need to look for
another question—”much more original and
radical”—to avoid the conclusion of the hatred
of all for all (“because neither I nor any other can
assure myself of anything but their hatred”).
Our question was too narrow and calculative,
conditioned on reciprocity (commerce,
exchange).
But reciprocity is an obstacle to love and must
be rejected.
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The new question, an open possibility: “Can I love
first?”
The only “proof of love” involves giving “without
return or chance of recovery.” (71)
This is love without being (i.e., without being loved,
without holding back, taking a risk, loving utterly).
Does this mean there’s no assurance?
One loses the assurance of being, but one gains the
assurance of loving—“the pure and simple
assurance of the precise fact that [one] loves.” (73)
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Where does the assurance come from?
From the inward elsewhere
 “Assurance still comes to me, but no longer from
an ontic elsewhere that would conserve me in my
beingness; rather, it comes from an elsewhere
that is more inward to me than myself….” (75)
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Through my acts of love I become myself.
How does the lover love first?
By suspending reciprocity and reason…”the lover
makes love break out.”
 The lover does not reject reason, but “when loving is
at issue, reason is not sufficient: reason appears
from this point forward as a principle of insufficient
reason.” (79)
 “The lover makes appear the one whom she love,
not the reverse.” (80)
 In praise of Don Juan over Sganarelle, who see two
different phenomena
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But Don Juan can be followed only so far, since his
erotic reduction turns into a mechanical
seduction.
“In contrast, the reduction starts off in an advance
that is definitive and without return....” (83)
And without end: the reduction requires ceaseless
repetition that confirms the uniqueness and
infinity of the other.
“The lover bears everything…believes
everything… and hopes for everything.”
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In contrast to Husserl, “the point is no longer
to validate a signification by an intuition, but
rather an immanent and available intuition by
a foreign and autonomous signification.” (97)
This signification must “make me experience
the radical alterity of the other,” thus it
cannot come from me but from “an exterior
elsewhere by an advent” (98).
The face of the other
Note: This section is indebted to Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, where he writes
that “the face is neither seen nor touched.”
“This hypothesis remains: the other’s face holds
me with the gaze that it lays upon me, by the
counter-intentionality that its eyes exert, by a
non-spectacle and a nonintuition, and thus
perhaps by a signification.” (99)
 The signification that arises from the face of the
other is: “Thou shall not kill.”
 “How could an ethical signification fix the
resolutely erotic intuition of the lover—the
vague intuition of loving to love?” (101)
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The face of the other provides a radically new
phenomenon—one that is completely exterior to
me.
 The other gives itself as capable of not giving itself. It
does not present itself as real or as a thing. (103)
 It does not present itself at all, but announces:
“Here I am.” This signification “allows my intuition
to make the phenomenon of the other appear…[it]
arises like an oath.” (104)
 What manifests itself in the erotic reduction is “a
crossed phenomenon.”
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