Ii r 84 THE HY POST ASIS 3. ON THE WAY TO TIME

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1 ~, 84 THE HY POST ASS intention is the forgetting of onesef in ight and a desire for. things, in the abnegation of charity and sacrifice - we can discern the return of the there is. The hypostasis, in participating in the there is, finds itsef again to be a soitude, in the definitiveness of the bond with which the ego is chained to its sef. The word and knowedge are not events by which the upsurge of existence in an ego, which wis to be absoutey master of being, absoutey behind it, is bunted. The draws back from its object and from itsef, but this iberation from itsef appears as an infinite task. The aways has one foot caught in its own existence. Outside in face of everything, it is inside of itsef, tied to itsef. t is forever bound to the existence which it has taken up.. This impossibiity for the ego to not be a sef constitutes the underying tragic eement in the ego, the fact that it is riveted to its own being. The freed om of consciousness is not without conditions. n other words, the freedom which is accompished in cognition does not free the mind from every fate. This freedom itsef is a moment of a deeper drama which does not pay itsef out between a subject and objects - things or events - but between the mind and the fact of the there is, which it takes up. t is enacted in our perpetua birth. The freedom of knowedge and intention is negative; it is non-engagement. But what is the meaning of non-engagement within the ontoogica adventure? t is the refusa of the definitive. The word offers me a time in which traverse different instants, and, thanks to the evoution open to me, am not at any moment definitive. Yet aways carry aong my past whose every instant is definitive. But then there remains for me, in this word of ight, where a is given but where everything is distance, the power of not taking anything or of acting as though had not taken anything. The word of intentions and desires is the possibiity of just such a freedom. But this freedom does not save me from the definitive character of my very existence, from the,fact.. that, am. forever stuck with mysef. And 'this, definitive eemenf!is my soitude. The word and ight are soitude. These given objects, these cothed beings are something other than mysef, but they are mine. <1,!. THE HYPOSTASS 85 uminated by ight, they have meaning, and thus are as though they came from me. n the understood universe am aone, that is, cosed up in an existence that is definitivey one. Soitude is accursed not of itsef, but by reason of its ontoogica significance as something definitive. Reaching the other is not something justified of itsef; it is not a matter of shaking me out of my boredom. t is, on the ontoogica eve, the event of the most radica breakup of the very categories of the ego, for it is for me to be somewhere ese than my sef; it is to be pardoned, to not be a definite existence. The reationship with the other is not to be conceived as a bond with another ego, nor as a comprehension of the other which makes his aterity disappear, nor as a communion with him around some third term. t is not possibe to grasp the aterity of the other, which is to shatter the definitiveness of the ego, in terms of any of the reationship which characterize ight. Let us anticipate a moment, and say that the pane of eros aows us to see that the other par exceence is the feminine, through which a word behind the scenes proongs the word. n Pato, Love, a chid of need, retains the features of destitution. ts negativity is the simpe "ess" of need, and not the very movement unto aterity. Eros, when separated from the Patonic interpretation which competey fais to recognize the roe of the feminine, can be the theme of a phiosophy which, detached from the soitude of ight, and consequenty from phenomenoogy propery speaking, wi concern us esewhere. Phenomenoogica description, which by definition cannot eave the sphere of ight, that is, man aone shut up in his soitude, anxiety and death as an end, whatever anayses of the reationship with the other, it may contribute, wi not suffice. Qua phenomenoogy it remains within the word of ight, the word of the soitary ego which has no reationship with the other qua other, for whom the other is another me, an ater ego known by sympathy, that is, by a return to onesef. 3. ON THE WAY TO TME We think - and this is the fundamenta theme of conception of time which runs through these investigations - that time does!'i i r, t

2 86 THE HY POST ASS not convey the insufficiency of the reationship with Being which is effected in the present, but that it is caed for to provide a remedy for the excess of the definitve contact which the instant effects. Duration, on another pane than that of being, but without destroying being, resoves the tragic invoved in being. But, if the deveopment of this theme goes beyond the imits which the present study has set for itsef, we cannot hod back from sketching out, if ony in a very summary way, the perspective in which the themes concerning the "" and the "present," which we have just aid out, have their pace. Cognition and the Ego as a Substance n the fow of consciousness which constitutes our ife in the word the ego maintains itsef as something identica across the changing mutipicity of becoming. Whatever be the traces which ife imprints upon us by modifying our habits and our character, in constanty changing a the contents that form our being, something invariabe remains. The "" remains there to tie the muticoored threads of our existence to one another. What does this identity signify? We are incined to take it as the identity of a substance. The "" woud be an indestructibe point, from which acts and thought emanate, without affecting it by their variations and their mutipicity. But can the mutipicity of acdderits ;notfai to ahect the identity of the substance? The re.ationship of the substance with the accidents are themseves so many modifications of that substance, such that the idea of substance is going to enter in an infinite regression. t is there that the concept of knowing makes it possibe to maintain the identity of substance under the variation of accidents. Knowing is a reation with what above a remains exterior, it is a reationship with what remains outside of a reationships, an action which maintains the agent outside of the events he brings about. The concept of knowing - a reationship and an action of a unique kind - makes it possibe to fix the identity of the "," to keep it encosed in its secrecy. t maintains itsef under the variations of the history which affects it as an object, without affecting it in its being. The "" is then identica because it is consciousness. The substance par exceence is the subject. Know- "\ j. THE HY POST ASS 87 edge is the secret of its freedom with respect to a that which happens to it. And its freedom guarantees its identity. t is thanks to the freedom of knowedge that the "r can remain as a substance beneath the accidents of its history. The freedom of the "" is its substantiaity; it is but another word for the fact that a substance is not engaged in the variation of its accidents. Far from going beyond the substantiaist conc 1 eption of the ego, ideaism promotes it in a radica form. The is not a substance endowed with thought; it is a substance because it is endowed with thought. The Ego as an dentification and as a Bond with Onesef But the ideaist interpretation of the identity of the "" makes use of the ogica idea of identity, detached from the ontoogica event of the identification of an existent. For identity is something that beongs not to the verb to be, but to that which is, to a noun which has detached itsef from the anonymous rusting of the there is. dentification is in fact the very positing of an entity in the heart of the anonymous and ai-invading being. One can.then not define a subject by identity, since identity covers over the event of the identification of the subject. This event is not brought about in thin air; we have shown that it is the work of taking position and the very function of the present, which in time (in terms of which it is habituay envisaged) is the negation or ignorance of time, a pure sef-reference, a hypostasis. As a sef-reference in a present, the identica subject is to be sure free with regard to the past and the future, but remains tributary of itsef. The freedom of the present is not ight ike grace, but is a weight and a responsibiity. t is articuated in a positive enchainment to one's sef; the ego is irremissiby itsef. To take the reationship between the and itsef to constitute the fataity invoved in a hypostasis is not to make a drama out of a tautoogy. Being me invoves a bond' with onesef, an impossibiity of undoing onesef. To be sure, a subject creates a distance from itsef, but this stepping back is not a iberation. t is as though one had given more sack rope to a prisoner without untying him.

3 88 THE HYPOST ASS The enchainment to onesef it the impossibiity of getting rid of onesef. t is not ony an enchainment to a character or to instincts, but a sient association with onesef in which a duaity is discernibe. To be an ego is not ony to be for onesef; it is aso to be with onesef. When Orestes says "Save me from mysef each dayf' or when Andromacus cries: "O captive, ever sad, wearisome to mysefr' the reationship with onesef which these words speak of goes beyond metaphor. They do not express an opposition of two facuties in the sou, wi and passion, or reason and feeing. Each of those facuties contains the ego competey. The whoe theatre of Racine is in that. A character in Corneie is aready master of himsef and of the universe; he is a hero. His duaity is overcome by the myth to which his character conforms: that of honor or virtue. The confict is outside of him; he participates in it by the choice he wi make. But in Racine the vei of myth is torn away, the hero is overwhemed by himsef. Therein ies what is tragic in him: a subject is on the basis of himsef, and is aready with or against himsef. Whie being a freedom and a beginning, a subject is the bearer of a destiny which aready dominates this very freedom. There wi be nothing gratuitous in him. The soitude of a subject is more than the isoation of a being or the unity of an object. t is, as it were, a dua soitude: this other than me accompanies the ego ike a shadow. t is the duaity of boredom, which is something different from the socia existence we know in the word, to which the ego turns in feeing its boredom; it is aso something different from the reationship with the other which detaches the ego from itsef. This duaity awakens the nostagia for escape, but no unknown skies, no new and can satisfy it, for we bring ourseves aong in our traves. Time and the Concept of a Freedom But for this burden and this weight to be possibe as a burden, the present must aso be the conception of a freedom - a conception, and not freedom itsef. One cannot derive out of the experience of servitude the proof of its contrary, but the thought of freedom woud suffice to account for it. Thought by itsef acks power over being - which shows how metaphorica the expression "act of thought" is. The concept or the hope of i 1 1 THE HY POST ASS 89 freedom expains the dispair which marks the engagement in existence in the present. t comes in the very scintiation of subjectivity which pus back from its engagement without undoing it. _And this is the concept of freedom, which is ony a thought: a recourse to seep, to unconsciousness, and not an escape, the iusory divorce of the ego from its se(f which wi end in a resumption of existence in common. Here freedom does not presuppose a nothingness to which it casts itsef; it is not, as in Heidegger, an event of nihiation; it is produced in the very "penum" of being through the ontoogica situation of the subject. But as there is ony a hope of freedom and not a freedom of engagement, this thought knocks on the cosed doors of another dimension; it has a presentiment of a mode of existence where nothing is irrevocabe, the contrary of the definitive subjectivity of the "." And this is the order of time. The distinction we have set up between iberation and the mere thought of iberation excudes any sort of diaectica deduction of time starting with the present. The hope for an order where the enchainment to onesef invoved in the present woud be broken sti does not of itsef have the force to effect what it hopes for. There is no diaectica exorcism contained in the fact that the "" conceives of a freedom. t is not enough to conceive of hope to uneash a future. The Time of Redemption and the Time of ustice But in what sense does hope aim at time even though it cannot uneash it? As it is turned to the future, is it the expectation of fortunate events which can come to pass in the future? But the expectation of fortunate events is not of itsef hope. An event can appear as possibe by virtue of reasons positivey perceivabe in the present; in that case one expects an event with more or ess certainty, and there is hope ony to the extent that it is uncertain. What produces the thrust of hope is the gravity of the instant in which it occurs. The irreparabe is its natura atmosphere. There is hope ony when hope is no onger permissibe. What is irreparabe in the instant of hope is that that instant is a present. The future can bring consoation or compensation to a subject who suffers in the present, but the very suffering of the present

4 90 THE HYPOST ASS remains ike a cry whose echo wi resound forever in the eternity of spaces. At east it is so in the conception of time which fits our ife in the word, and which we sha, for reasons we sha expain, ca the time of economy. For in the word time itsef is given. The effort of the present ifts off the weight of the present. t bears in itsef the echo of desire, and objects are given to it "for its troube." They do not reease the torsion of the instant upon itsef; they compensate for it. The underying exigencies _of the troube are nuified. The word is the possibiity of wages. n the sincerity of intentions which excudes a equivocation, the ego is naive. t is disinterested in its definitive attachment to itsef. Time, in the word, dries a tears; it is the forgetting of the unforgiven instant and th~ pain for which nothing can compensate. Everything caught up in the ego, a its anxieties for itsef, the whoe mascarade where its face never succeeds in stripping itsef of its masks, ose their importance. The aternation of effort with eisure, when we enjoy the fruit of efforts, makes up the time of the word. t is monotonous, for its instants are equivaent. t moves toward a Sunday, a pure eisure when the word is given. The Sunday does not sanctify the week, but compensates for it. The situation, or the engagement in existence,_which is effort,iis repressed, compensated for, and put to an end, instead of being repaired in its very present. Such is economic activity. The economic word then incudes not ony our so-caed materia ife, but aso a the forms of our existence in which the exigency for savation has been traded in, in which Esau has aready sod his birthright. The word is the secuar word, where the "" accepts wages. Reigious ife itsef, when it is understood in terms of the category of wages, is economic. Toos serve this yearning for objects as wages. They have nothing to do with ontoogy; they are subordinate to desire. They not ony suppress disagreeabe effort, but aso the waiting time. n modern civiization they do not ony extend the hand, so that it coud get at what it does not get at of itsef; they enabe it to get at it more quicky, that is, they suppress in an action the time the action has to take on. Toos suppress the intermediary times; they contract duration. 'j THE HY POST ASS 91 Modern toos are machines, that is, systems, arrangements, fittings, coordinations: ight fixtures, teephone ines, rairoad and highway networks. The mutipicity of organs is the essentia characteristic of machines. Machines sum up instants. They produce speed; they echo the impatience of desire. But this compensating time is not enough for hope. For it is not enough that tears be wiped away or death avenged; no tear is to be ost, no death be without a resurrection. Hope then is not satisfied with a time composed of separate instants given to an ego that traverses them so as to gather in the foowing instant, as impersona as the first one, the wages of its pain. The" true object of hope is the Messiah, or savation. The caress of a consoer which softy comes in our pain does not promise the end of suffering, does not announce any compensation, and in its very contact, is not concerned with what is to come with afterwards in economic time; it concerns the very instant of physica pain, which is then no onger condemned to itsef, is transported "esewhere" by the movement of the caress, and is freed from the vice-grip of "onesef,",finds "fresh air," 1 a dimension and a future. Or rather, it announces more than a simpe future, a future where the present wi have the benefit of a reca. This effect of compassion, which we in fact a know, is usuay posited as an initia datum of psychoogy, and other things are then expained from it. But in fact it is infinitey mysterious. Pain cannot be redeemed. ust as the happiness of humanity does not justify the mystery of the individua, retribution in the future does not wipe away the pains of the present. There is no justice that coud make reparations for it. One shoud have to return to that instant, or be abe to ressurect it. To hope then is to hope for the reparation of the irreparabe; it is to hope for the present. t is generay thought that this reparation is impossibe in time, and that eternity aone, where instants distinci. in time are indescernabe, is the ocus of savation. This recourse to eternity, which does not seem to us indespensabe, does at any rate bear witness to the impossibe exigency for savation which must concern the very instant of pain, and not ony compensate for it Does not the essence of time consist in responding to that

5 92 THE HYPOST ASS exigency for savation? Does not the anaysis of economic time, exterior to the subject, cover over the essentia structure of time by which the present is not ony idemnified, but ressurected? s not the future above a a resurrection of the present? Time and the "/" We beieve that time is just that. What is caed the "next instant" is an annument of the unimpeachabe commitment to existence made in the instant; it is the resurrection of the "." We beieve that the "" does not enter identica and unforgiven - a mere avatar - into the foowing instant, where it woud undergo a new experience whose newness wi not free it from its bond with itsef - but that its death in the empty interva wi have been the condition for a new birth. The "esewhere" which opens up to it wi not ony be a "change from its homeand" but an "esewhere than in itsef," which does not mean that it sank into the impersona or the eterna. Time is not a succession of instants fiing by before an, but the response to the hope for the present, which in the present is the very expression of the "," and is itsef equivaent to the present. A the acuteness of hope in the midst of despair comes from the exigency that the very instant of despair be redeemed. To understand the mystery of the work of time, we shoud start with the hope for the present, taken as a primary fact. Hope hopes for the present itsef. ts martyrdom does not sip into the past, eaving us with a right to wages. At the very moment where a is ost, everything is possibe. There then is no question of denying the time of our concrete existence, constituted by a series of instants to which the "'' remains exterior. For such is the time of economic ife, where the instants are equivaent, and the "" circuates across them to ink them up. There time is the renewa of the subject, but this renewa does not banish tedium; it does not free the ego from its shadow. We ask then whether the event of time cannot be ived more deepy as the resurrection of the irrepacabe instant. n pace of the "" that circuates in time, we posit the "" as the very ferment of time in the present, the dynamism of time. This dynamism is not that of diaectica progression, nor that of ecstasy, nor that of duration, where the present encroaches upon. THE HYPOST ASS 93 the future and consequenty does not have between its being and its resurrection the indispensabe interva of nothingness. The dynamism of the "" resides in the very presence of the present, in the exigency which this presence impies. This exigency does not concern perseverance in being, nor, propery speaking, the impossibe destruction of this presence, but the unraveing of the knot which is tied in it, the definitive, which 1its evanescence does not undo. t is an exigency for a recommencement of being, and a hope in each recommencement of its non-definitiveness. The "" is not a being that, as a residue of a past instant, attempts a new instant. t is this exigency for the non-definitive. The "personaity" of a being is its very need for time as for a miracuous fecundity in the instant itsef, by which it recommences as other. But it cannot endow itsef with this aterity. The impossibiity of constituting time diaecticay is the impossibiity of saving onesef by onesef and of saving onesef aone. The "" is not independant of its present, cannot traverse time aone, and does not find its recompense in simpy denying the present. n situating what is tragic in the human in the definitiveness of the present, and in positing the function of the as something inseparabe from this tragic structure, we recognize that we are not going to find in the subject the means for its savation. t can ony come from esewhere, whie everything in the subject is here. Time and the Other How indeed coud time arises in a soitary subject? The soitary subject cannot deny itsef; it does not possess nothingness. f time is not t_he iusion of a movement, pawing the ground, then the absoute aterity of another instant cannot be found in the subject, who is definitivey himse(f. This aterity comes to me ony from the other. s not sociaity something more than the source of our representation of time: is it not time itsef? f time is constituted by my reationship with the other, it is exterior to my instant, but it is aso something ese than an object given to contempation.the diaectic of time is the very diaectic of the reationship with the other, that is, a diaogue which in turn has to be studied in terms other than those of the diaectic of the soitary subject. The diaectic of the socia reationship wi

6 94 THE HYPOSTASS furnish us with a set of concepts of a new kind. And the nothingness necessary to time, which the subject cannot produce, comes from the socia reationship. Traditiona phiosophy, and Bergson and Heidegger too, remained with the conception of a time either taken to be purey exterior. to the subject, a time-object, or taken to be entirey contained in the subject. But the subject in question was aways a soitary subject. The ego a aone, the monad, aready had a time. The renewa which time brings with it seemed to cassica phiosophy to be an event which it coud account for by the monad, an event of negation. t is from the indetermination of nothingness, which the instant which negates itsef at the approach of the new instant ends up in, that the subject was taken to draw its freedom. Cassica phiosophy eft aside the freedom which consists not in negating onesef, but in having one's being pardoned by the very aterity of the other. t underestimated the aterity of the other in diaogue where the other frees us, because it beieved there existed a sient diaogue of the sou with itsef. n the end the probem of time is subordinate to the task of bringing out the specific terms with which diaogue has to be conceived. With Another and Facing Another The socia reationship is not initiay a reationship with what goes beyond the individua, something more than the sum of individuas, in the Durkheim's sense, higher than the individua. Neither the category of quantity nor even that of quaity des-..;, cribes the aterity of the other, who does not simpy have another quaity than me, but as it were bears aterity as a quaity. Sti ess does the socia order consists in the imitation of the simiar. n those two conceptions of sociabiity what one is ooking for is an idea of fusion. One thinks that my reationship with the other tends to identify me with him by immersing me in a coective representation, a common idea or a common action. t is the coectivity which says "we" that fees the other to be aongside of onesef, and not facing one. And a coectivity is necessariy set up around a third term which serves as intermediary, which suppies what is common in the communion. Heidegger's Mitein- THE HYPOST ASS 95 andersein aso remains a coectivity of the with, and it is around truth that its authentic form is found. t is a coectivity formed around something common. And ike in a phiosophies of communion, in Heidegger sociaity is competey found in the soitary subject. The anaysis of Dasein, in its authentic form, is carried out in terms of soitude. To this coectivity of comrades we con 1 trast the -you coectivity which precedes it. t is not a participation in a third term - intermediate person, truth, dogma, work, profession, interest, dweing, or mea; that is, it is not a communion. t is the fearfu face-to-face situation of a reationship without intermediary, without mediations. Here the interpersona situation is not the of itsef indifferent and reciproca reationship of two interchangeabe terms. The other as other is not ony an ater ego. He is what am not: he is the weak one whereas am the strong one; he is the poor one, "the widow and the orphan." There is no greater hypocrisy that that which invented we tempered charity. Or ese the other is the stranger, the enemy and the powerfu one. What is essentia is that he has these quaities by virtue of his very aterity. ntersubjective space is initiay assymetrica. The exteriority of the other is not simpy an effect of space, which keeps separate what conceptuay is identica, nor is there some difference in the concepts which woud manifest itsef through spatia exteriority. t is precisey inasmuch as it is irreducibe to these two notions of exteriority that socia exteriority is an origina form of exteriority and takes us beyond the categories of unity and mutipicity which are vaid for things, that is, are vaid in the word of an isoated subject, a soitary mind. ntersubjectivity is not simpy the appication of the category of mutipicity to the domain of the mind. t is brought about by Eros, where in the proximity of another the distance is whoy maintained, a distance whose pathos is made up of this proximity and this duaity of beings. What is presented as the faiure of communication in ove in fact constitutes the positive character of the reationship; this absence of the other is precisey his presence qua other. The other is the neighbor - but proximity is not a degradation of, or a stage on the way to, fusion. n the reciprocity of reationships characteristics of civiization, the, asymmetry,of the intersubjective,h id r~ i, f i ((,; i

7 96 THE HYPOSTASS reationship is forgotten. The reciprocity of civiization - the kingdom of ends where each one is both end and means, a person and personne 1 - is a eveing of the idea of fraternity, which is an outcome and not a point of departure, and refers back to everything impicated in eros. For the intermediary of a father is required in order that we enter into fraternity, and in order that be mysef the poor one, the weak and pitifu. And in order to postuate a father, who is not simpy a cause or a genus, the heterogeneity of the and the other is required. This heterogeneity and this reationship between genders, on the basis of which society and time are to be understood, brings us to the materia to which another work wi be devoted. To the cosmos, the word of Pato, is opposed the word of the spirit, where the impications of eros are not reducibe to the ogic of genera, where the is substituted for the same and the Other [autrui] for the other. The pecuiar form of the contraries and contradictions of eros has escaped Heidegger, who in his ectures tends to present the difference between the sexes as a specification of a genus. t is in eros that transcendence can be conceived as something radica, which brings to the ego caught up in being, ineuctaby returning to itsef, something ese than this return, can free it of its shadow. To simpy say that the ego eaves itsef is a contradiction, since, in quitting itsef the ego carries itsef aong - if it does not sink into the impersona. Asymmetrica intersubjectivity is the ocus of transcendence in which the subject, whie preserving its subject, has the possibiity of not inevitaby returning to itsef, the possibiity of being fecund and (to anticipate what we sha examine ater) having a son. n Maurice Banchot's Aminadab, the description of this situation of reciprocity is pushed to the point of the oss of persona identity. CHAPTER V CONCLUSON To have a time and a history is to have a future and a past. We do not have a present; it sips between our fingers. Yet it is in the present that we are and can have a past and a future. This paradox of the present - a and nothing - is as od as human thought. Modern phiosophy has tried to resove it by asking if indeed it is in the present that we are - and in contesting this evidence. The origina fact woud be existence where past, present and future woud be caught up at once, and where the present does not have the priviege of harboring this existence. The pure present woud be an abstraction: the concrete present, pregnant with a its past, aready eaps toward the future; it is before and after itsef. To take human existence as something having a date, paced in a present, woud be to commit the gravest sin against the spirit, that of reification, and to cast it into the time of cocks made for the sun and for trains. The concern to avoid the reification of the spirit, to give it a pace of its own in being independent of the categories that are vaid for things, animates, a of modern phiosophy from Descartes to Heidegger. But in this concern the present, with what it suggests of the static, was incuded in the dynamis~ of time, and defined by an interpay of past and future from which it coud no onger be seperated, so as to be examined apart. And yet human existence does contain a eement.of stabiity; it consists in being the subject of its own becoming. One can say that modern phiosophy has been itte by itte ed to sacrifice for the sake of the spirituaity of the subject its very subjectivity, that is, it su bstantiaity. t is henceforth impossibe to conceive of substance as the

8 98 CONCLUSON persistance under the current of becoming of an invariabe substratum. For then one coud no onger understand the reationship between this substratum and becoming, a reationship which woud affect its subsistance - uness that substance were situated outside of time, ike a noumenon. But in that case time woud cease to pay an essentia roe in the economy of being. How then are we to understand subjectivity without situating it outside of becoming? n returning to the fact that the instants of time do not take form out of an infinite series, in which they woud appear, but that they can aso be out of themseves. This way for an instant to be out of itsef, to break with the past from which it comes, is the fact that it is present. The present instant constitutes a subject which is posited both as the master of time and as invoved in time. The present is the beginning of a being. The expressions which constanty recurred in this exposition, such as "the fact of...," "the event of...," "the effecting of...," aim to convey this transmutation of a verb into a substantive, and to express beings at the instant of their hypostasis, in which whie sti in movement they are aready substances. Such expressions are consonant with a genera method of qeaing with states as events. The true substantiaity of a subject consists in its substantivity: in the fact that there is not ony, anonymousy, being in genera, but there are beings capabe of bearing names. An instant breaks the anonymity of being in genera. t is the event in which, in the pay of being which is enacted without payers, there arise payers in existence, existents having being as an attribute - an exceptiona attribute, to be sure, but an attribute. n other words, the present is the very fact that there is an existent. The present introduces into existence the preeminence, the mastery and the very viriity of the substantive. They are not what is suggested by the notion of freedom. Whatever be the obstaces existence presents to an existent and however poweress it may be, an existent is master of its existence, as a subject is master of its attribute. n an instant an existent dominates existence. But the present is neither the point of departure nor the point of arriva of phiosophica meditation. t is not the point of ) 1... CONCLUSON 99 arriva; it does not express an encounter between time and the absoute, but rather the constitution of an existent, the taking up of a position by a subject. t is capabe of bearing a further diaectic which time woud bring about, and it cas for that diaectic. For the engagement in being on the basis of the present, which breaks, and then ties back, the thread of infinity, contains a tension and a contracting. t is an event. The evanescence of an instant which makes it abe to be a pure present, to not receive its being from a past, is not the gratuitous evanescence.of a game or a dream. A subject is not free ike the wind, but aready has a destiny which it does not get from a past or a future, but from its present. f commitment in being thereby escapes the weight of the past (the ony weight that was seen in existence), it invoves a weight of its own which its evanescence does not ighten, and against which a soitary subject, who is constituted by the instant, is poweress. Time and the other are necessary for the iberation from it. And the present is not the point of departure. This tension, this event of a position, this stance of an instant is not equivaent to the abstract position of the ideaist ego, nor to the engagement in the word of Heidegger's Dasein, which aways goes beyond the hie et nunc. t is the fact of putting onesef on the ground, in that inaienabe here which is a base. t makes it possibe to account for both the substantiaity and the spirituaity of a subject. n position, in the reationship which it effects with a pace, in the here, we wi find the event by which existence in genera, anonymous and inexorabe, opens to eave room for a private domain, an inwardness, the unconscious, seep and obivion, which consciousness, aways wakefuness, reca and refection, is back to back with. The eve~t of an instant, substantivity, invoves the possibiity of existing at the threshod of a door behind which one can retire, and which modern thought has caught sight of behind consciousness. Consciousness is not just incompete without its background of the unconscious, seep and mystery. The very event of its being conscious consists in being by arranging for itsef an escape hatch, in aready drawing back as it were into those interstices in being where the Epicuran gods urked, and in thus extracting itsef from the fataity of anonymous existence. t 1 (1

9 ...,... ' 100 CONCLUSON is a scintiating ight, whose very fash consists in extinguishing itsef, a ight which at the same time is and is not. n insisting on the : notion of taking i position, we, are not opposing to the cogito,~ which is essentiay a thought and a cognition, some wi, feeing, or care which woud be more fundamenta than thought. On the contrary, we beieve that the phenomena of ight and carity, and of freedom which is at one with them, dominc!,te wi and feeing. We think that feeings are constituted according to the "inside-outside" mode and coud be, to a degree righty, taken by Descartes and Maebranche as "obscure thoughts," as "information" about the exterior which affects our body; and we think that the wi in movement from the inside to the outside aready presupposes the word and ight. Feeings and wi come after.the cogito. t is in the perspective of the cogito that wi and feeing have been considered from Descartes to Heidegger. One aways ooked for their object, the cogitatum; they were. anayzed as acts of apprehension. / But behind the cogito, or rather in the fact that the cogito eads f back to '.'a thinking thing," we discern a situation which precedes ' the scission of being into an "inside" and a "outside." Transcendence is not the fundamenta movement of the ontoogica adventure; it is founded in the non-transcendence of position. The "obscurity" of feeings, far from being a mere negation of carity, attests to thai antecedent event. The affirmation of the ego as a subject has ed us to conceive of existence according to a different mode from that of ecstacy. To take up existence is not to enter into the word. The question "what is it to exist?" truy distinguished from the question "how is the object which exists constituted?" - the ontoogica probem - arises before the scission of being into an inside and an outside. nscription in being is not an inscription in the word. The way that eads from the subject to the object, from the ego to the word, from one instant to the next, does not pass through the position in which a being is paced in existence, and which is reveaed in the disquietude which his own existence awakens in man, the strangeness of the hitherto so famiiar fact that he is there, the so ineuctabe, so habitua, but suddeny so incomprehensibe necessity of taking up that existence. There ies the CONCLUSON 101 true probem of man's destiny, which eudes a science and even a eschatoogy or theodicy. t does not consist in asking what are the "compications" which coud happen to m.an, nor what are the acts conformabe to his nature, nor even what is his pace in reaity. A these questions are aready formuated in terms of the given cosmos of Greek rationaism, in the theater of the word, where there are paces aready to receive, existents. The event which we have been inquiring after is antecedent to that pacing. t concerns the meaning of the very fact that in Being there are beings