I AM THE TRUTH Toward a Philosophy of Christianity

Michel Henry Translated by Susan Emanuel

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
2003
Stanford University Press Stanford, California
Assistance for the translation was provided hy the French Ministry of Culture,
National Center for the Baok.
1 Am the Truth: Toward a Philosaphy of Christianizy, was originally published
in French in 1996 under the tide Csr moi le vérité: Pour une philosophie du
christianisme, © 1996, Editions du Seuil.
© 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper. All
rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Henry, Michel.
[C’est moi la vérité, English)
I’am the truth ; toward a philosophy of Christianity / Michel Henry; translated
by Susan Emanucl.
p- cm.
15BN 0-8047-3775-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — 15BN 0-8047-3780-0 (pbk. : alk.
paper) -
1. Christianity—Philosaphy. 2. Man (Christian theology) 3. Truth (Chris-
tian theology) 4. Christian life. 1. Tide. nr10o.n39813 2002 230” .01—dc21
2002007222
Original Printing 2003 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 12 11
10 09 o8 O07 06 Of O04 OF
Typeset by James I! Brommer in 11/13. Garamond
Contents
Note on Terminology
Introduction: What Do We Mean by “Christianity” Truth of the World
The Truth According to Christianity
This Truth Called Life
The Self-Generarion of Life as Generation of the First Living
The Phenomenology of Christ

1
Man as “Son of God”
Man as “Son Within the Son”
Forgetting the Condition of Son: “Me, I”/ “Me, Ego’ The Second Birth
The Christian Ethic
The Paradoxes of Christianity
The Word of God, Scripture
Christianity and the World
Conclusion: Christianity and the Modern World
3
Notes
152 171 191 215 234 259
279
ie on Terminology
Throughout the text, Michel Henry uses French pathos and parhétique y what
amounts to the sense of these words’ Greek roots. For pares, that esaaniic do-
main extends from “anything thar befalls one” through “what fame has suffered,
one’s experience” (including its negative inflection in some- ging lik: English
“suffering”). to “any passive state or condition.” The ad- prrival form—which
we spell “pathétik” because in modern English “pa- fcsic™ has nearly reversed
the meaning of its root, so that ir applies to the ghey thai arouses feeling rather
than to the one who undergoes emotion— cans “subject to feeling, capable of
feeling something.”
The author’s capitalizations of nouns (e.g., “Life”) have been retained ough out.
Thanks to Jeff Kosky for his work on this translation.
01
Introduction What Do We Mean by “Christianity”?
1 do not intend to ask whether Christianity is “true” or “false,” or to establish,
for example, the former hypothesis. Rather, what will be in ques-
tion here is what Christianity considers as pruzh—what kind of truth it offers
to people, what it endeavors to communicate to them,-nor as a theoretical
and-indiffesens couch busas-cthe essential touch thar hy some mysterious
affinity is suieable for them, ta the point thac it alone is capable of assuring
them salvarion. We are trying to understand the form of truth that circum-
scribes the domain of Christianity, the milieu in which it spreads, the air thar it
breathes, one might say—because there are many sorts of truths, many ways of

2
being true or false. And we are also perhaps trying to get away from the concept
of truth that dominates modern thought and that, as much in and of itself as
in its multiple implications, determines the world in which we live. But before
trying for a systematic elucidation of the concept of truth, so as to recognize
the unexpected and buried truth specific to Chris- tianity—a truth in total
opposition to the one we naively take today as the prototype of all conceivable
truth—a prior problem confronts us. How do we define, at least provisionally,
the thing we are interrogating about the na- ture of the truth it professes: What
do we mean by “Christianity”)
What we find expressed in a set of texts designated by the title New Testament
is what-we mean by Christianity—and rightly so, it would seem. Where else
would we seek the “content” of Christianity, so as to reflect on what it considers
truth to be, if not in the corpus constitured by the Gospels,
2 Introduction
the Acts of the Apostles, their Epistles (by Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude),
and last of all in the Revelation attributed to the same John? Were not the
dogmas defining Christianity elaborated on the basis of this corpus? Does not
the knowledge of Christianicy—and thus all reflection on its pos- sible “truth”—
come by way of these texts? Only a meticulous analysis of them can lead, it
would seem, to understanding of what Christianity is at its essential core.
This approach ro Christianity, starting from the corpus of texts in which its
contents are offered, presents two features. First, ir implies an in- finite amount
of research concerning these texts and what one might gener- ally call their au-
thenticity. From when do they dare, particularly those that are reputed to be
canonical and on which dogma will later be founded? By whom were they writ-
ten? By eyewitnesses to the strange events they relate, which gravitate around
the life of Christ? Or much later, by people who would have at least heard
the story from these witnesses? Or in a subsequent era were disparate elements
borrowed from a vague oral tradition deriving from heterogeneous sources and
then subjected ro an effort ar reconstrue- tion, amalgamation, and invention, ro
the point where the very idea of an initial source becomes disputable? Daes this
mean that, in the presence of these reworked texts, whether arranged or quite
simply fabricated—texts that are ultimately the product of a collective imagi-
nary much more than a registering of events that supposedly really happened—
we in fact find our- selves left not with a sacred memorial to the activities of
Christ and his fun- damental words, but rather with a simple mythology?
Indeed, many other questions can be raised about these texts. In what language
were they written? Was it in Greek, according to the most frequent interpreta-
tion, or else in Hebrew. or else in a local language? A language is not simply
a means of communication separate from whatever it aims to communicate.
Rather, invested with multiple significations that cannot be reduced to those of
language properly speaking, language is the vehicle of the pracrical and cognitive
schemas that define a culture. With regard to Greek, all of Greek thought—a

3
manner of thinking that is not only Greek bue will reign over the whole Western
world—hangs over early Christianiry. All the Aristotelian and Platonic inter-
pretations that will determine Chris- tian theology, from the Church Fathers
to the thinkers of the Middle Ages, are founded on this principle. If the first
redactions were in Aramaic or in
Hebrew (in which case they have totally disappeared), then the irrefutable
Introduction 3
references in the New Testament to the Old, which nobody denies, would be
even more decisive. Paul’s claim to introduce people directly to Chris- tianity, by
subtracting Judaism, or at least irs practices and laws—in short, his presenting
himself as the Apostle to the Gentiles, to the uncircumcised —lends itself to
controversy. If the original writings were in Hebrew, refer- ence to the Old
Testament is not limited to a simple historical condition but inhabits the New
Testament itsclf, to the point that the latter, instead of being detached from
the Old (as it will be in the Marcion heresy), on the contrary risks appearing as
one variant among others of Judaic writings. Such writings (arranged according
to diverse strata) have given rise, as we know, to multiple commentaries, to
commentaries upon commentaries, of which Christianity would be one among
many, its heroes the simple reap- pearance of characters who have already played
their role in the drama of the Old Testament. They might even be no more than
the realization of metaphysical and religious entities whose evolution and avatars
could be traced by erudite research.
The second feature of an approach to Christianity on the basis of the above-
mentioned corpus of texts is not only that it leads to endless re- search, Accord-
ingly if you wanted to question the Gospel about the salva- tion of your soul,
then you would not merely, as in Kierkegaard’s ironic re- mark, have to awair
the publication of the very last book on the question,
Id sgill hing else aside and cl £3 study, which dearh wonld surely interrupt
before you could obtain from so
lms of knowled ; - he f T 5 the single quesdionthatmartess. This is because fobat
the answer depends upon, the truth of Christianity, has precisely no relation
whatsoever to the truth that arises from the analysis of texts or their historical
study)
Let us begin with history. From the historical standpoint, criticism of the
founding texts of Christianity splits into two parts. On the one hand, there
is the critique of the events reported in these texts: on the other, the
historical criticism of the texts themselves. For the first, history-possessesa
criterion—which is none other than ire concepr of truth. An event ic his-
tarically true if ir appeaced in the-wosld-as-a-visible pheaomenan of an.ob jective
sort. The yisibiliey of the phenamengn—the fact that, being visible,

4
it could be noticed by witnesses—is therefore the foundation of its objec- tivity.
Or, if one prefers, “objectivity” in the realm of history as an objec- tive science
signifies two things in succession: figsi-that a phenomenon or
~—
J
|
4 Introduction
event has shown itself and, second, thar, having shown itself and thereby
thaving been known (or having been able to be known) by some and by many,
it has become “true” —in the sense of the truth recognized by sci- lence, which
is called objectivity.
Let us set aside a circumstance thar is particularly embarrassing for history
and its concept of the truth. Let us suppose thar an event has actu- ally been
produced in the form of a visible phenomenon in the world and that nonetheless
nobody noticed or mentioned it, orally or in writing. Such an event would
conform to the concept of the truth of history, or, more
Iradically, to its ontological definition of reality, namely, the fact of becom- fn
visible and thus of showing itself in the world under the heading of an objective
phenomenon. Nevertheless, such an event would not escape the truth of history:
ir appeared bur nobody saw it, Or else those who saw it have died without
leaving any traces. Now most evenss, those in any case that iconcern a particular
individual or a limited group of individuals, are of this type: they all escape
the sruth of history. What is at issue are not events or in- dividuals: these
individuals came into the world; they lived. Whar is ar is- sue is the concept of
the truth of history, its incapacity to grasp reality, the reality of those individuals
and of everything connected with them.
Let us now suppose that the Whole of Reality is constituted by indi- viduals, so
that it is the Whole of Reality that escapes history, and escapes it by reason of
its concept of truth—or, more radically, by reason of the ontological definition
of reality that underpins that concept. It is precisely when one requires of a
thing, specifically here an individual, that it show itself or be shown in the
world such thar its existence, attested to in this way, becomes an “objective”
phenomenon, a historical fact, that this indi- vidual—and the quasi-totality
of the individuals who have lived on the earth since its origin—slips beyond
this kind of requirement, beyond the truth of history and its claim ro establish
objective facts that are thereby historically true.
This is why history itself. faced with the general disappearance of what it holds
to be reality, namely, the history of men (since this is nothing other, and can be
nothing other, than the history of an undetermined mul- titude of individuals),
faced with the fact thar this multitude escapes the concept of truth under which
history intends to apprehend it, is obliged to do an about-face. Like any kind

5
of knowledge that runs up against an in- surmountable obstacle, it changes its
object of study. pince individuals slip
Introduction 5
out of its grasp, it will stick ro documents} And so from the history of men it
turns into the history of texts, Thus, from the perspective of history and its
concept of truth as appearance in the world, the corpus of writings com- posing
the New Testament suddenly acquires a decisive importance, becam-
The substitution of the analysis of texts for historical analysis, or rather the
form henceforth taken by the latter forced to reduce itself to the former, places
us in a quandary. The impossibility of reaching as far as the existence.
f specific living individuals, in thar exi furti | hed ap-
Bur any analysis of texts in principle doubles back on itself. It does not con-
sider merely a text in itself, its internal structure (which is, moreover, the ob-
ject of many analyses and multiple theorizations). The reference of this text ve
istarian, On the one-hand, history holds
the text itself to be a historical fact, placing it in the field of appearance that
is the world taken as the universal milieu of the human events it studies. Thar
“place” is its date, its dependence on a context that is social, economic, ideologi-
cal, and religious. Qn the other hand, once situated in this field that overwhelms
it on all sides, the text is worth nothing except in relation ro that field. (fo es-
tablish the truth of a rext—its date, the authenticity of its manuscripts, the
original languages in which they were written—is. from the historical stand-
point, to establish the truth of the events to which the text bears witness)
The authenticity of primitive Christian texts, the knowl- edge and analysis of
the first redactions—thar is what would make their content more credible, this
bundle of extraordinary events grouped around the person of Christ and his
historical existence. Hence, for example, the ef- fort of Christian analysis to
situate the composition of the originals at a date as close as passible to the era
in which the events they relate supposedly oc- curred, with the reliability of
documents reflecting back on the reliability of facts. And hence the contrasting
cffort of skeptical criticism to contest this J proximity, to discredit the texts and,
through them, the story they recount, the story of Christ—even if Christianity
itself is reduced to the historical truth of a certain number of objective facts,
but specifically facts difficult or impossible to establish objectively.
gven a way of considering Chsissianity from 2 historical point of view ? Let
add
6 Introduction
us suppose that the exigencies, the criteria, and the methodologies by which
historical truth is defined are fully satisfactory, to the extent that a truth of
this sort ever could be. Let us suppose that the originators of the Gospels were

6
accessible, that their authors were known, and that, as contempo- raries of the
facts that they relate, they were faithful witnesses whose testi- mony, gathered
under the conditions most conducive to veracity, over- lapped. and so on. Would
the truth of Christianity be established thereby, Loven minimally?
By no means. The truth of Christianity is not that a certain Jesus wan-
dered from village to village, trailing crowds after him, arousing admiration
for his teaching as for his works, grouping around himself disciples in grow- ing
numbers—until his arrest by the priests and his crucifixion at Golgotha. Nor is
the truth of Christianity that this Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of
God and as such God himself~—an affirmation, a blasphemy even,
*” thar was the cause of his arrest and his passion. Rather, the truth of Chris-
a J tianity is that the{ ONE w who called himself the Messiah was truly that
Mes- ’ Hl the Christ, the Son of God, born before Abraham and before time.
the bearer in himself of Eternal Life, which he communicated to whomever he
wanted, making that which is be no longer, or else that which is dead come alive,
The historical existence of Christ, just like the extraordinary declara- tions he
unceasingly made about his own person, could indeed be estab- |lished according
to the rigorous criteria of history—and yer these declara- ! tions would still be
no more than the maunderings of a lunatic or crazy person. The proof is that
many of those who saw him and heard him did not believe him.
Let us suppose. on the contrary, that the composition of the canoni- cal texts is
pushed up to as late a period as skeptical criticism desires, so that the canonical
Gospels date from the fourth century (which is quite implausible), and their
content is suspect to the point that the historical
existence of Christ becomes what it truly is: as uncertain as that of each of the
billions of human beings whe have trod the earth since the human species | first
wandered its surface. In this case the identity of Christ, his identifica- tion with
Eternal Life, if it is true, would be no less true, despite the great emptiness of
history, despite that fog in which everything that was sup- posed to have been
shown there is lost to the world of the visible. The Iproof of this is that many
of these who have neither seen nor heard Christ Ihave believed and still believe
in him.
Introduction 7
The inabilisy of bistosical cut ik inst the rush of
Chrisrianity, specifically the diviniry of Christ js more generally the inca- paciry
of rexzs themselves, Whatever the respect with which they are sur-
rounded, or, rather, whatever the sacred character conferred on them by be-
lievers, they are, despite everything, nothing more than texts, Their content
in the Gospels is deployed in two distinct registers: fipst, there is a story re-
lating a ser of worldly evenrs, Christ’s movements, his meetings, his choice of
disciples, his miraculous cures, and the like. Second, this story is punc- tuared
with quotations that rend the simple fabric of facts and tear it apart.

7
en Christ himself speaks, it is the very Word of God that we hear spo- ken, and
this is so because Christ is defined as God’s Word, his Spoken Word) Without
being placed within quotation marks, other passages report in indirect style the
words of Christ, notably those long and difficult pas- sages in John’s Gospel in
which Christ offers an explanation of himself, re- turning endlessly to his own
condition, to the dual and unique relation that he has with God on the one
hand and with human beings on the other.
Despite their unexpected nature—or rather, their astonishing power —these
words of Christ, like his most extraordinary acts, are spoken. In the Gospel
texts, these are only fragments—signs or meanings borne by words, moments
and parts of a language, of a speech, which can never do more than add one
meaning to another, without ever getting beyand the abyss + - that separates
any signifying eruth from the geality ic signifies. That is pre- cisely the status of
any text, including the Gospels: it is dual. Composed of words and meaning on
the one hand, it is as such susceptible to many philosophical approaches; on the
other hand, it is referential, meaning hat it relates to a reality other than that
of the text inself, in such a way that the wv) ality targeted in this text is never
posited through it. The one who says “I have a ten-franc coin in my pocket”
does not thereby possess it. Similarly, one who says “1 am the Messiah” is not
the Son of God merely through the ef- fect of his words—inasmuch as we are
dealing with human speech com- posed of words and meanings, as is the text of
Scripture.
Ir is nor just under the gaze of history that the text admits its inabil- ity to
posit through itself the reality that it utters, offering itself up to the blade of
criticism, requiring infinite verifications. Wichin history, the pow- erlessness of
the written document to posit the reality of the event to which
it wants to testify in fact reiterates the powerlessness of the evenr itself zo
posit izsclf within being} This double powerlessness describes a circle within
|
8 Introduction
which any historical or textual truth self-destructs. The disappearance of singu-
lar existences into the darkness of time, where they vanish, can only be overcome
in the annals of history. Bur these annals are true only if these existences really
existed. The extraordinary facts and actions of Christ, his companions, those
mysterious women who served him, are known to us only through the texts of
Scripture. But Scripture is true only if these deeds and actions, despite their
extraordinary character, really happened.
o It is remarkable that this criticism of language is formulated in the New
Testament itself. It endlessly discredits the universe of words and speech, and
not simply by force of circumstance, according to the vicissitudes of the story.
burt for reasons of principle: because language, or text, leaves

8
Jerue reality outside itself, thus finding itself totally impotent with respect to
that reality, whether to construct it, modify it, or destroy it. This in- herent
powerlessness of language is opposed in a radical way by what in the eyes of
Christianity alone matters and counts as what is Essential, specifically. power:
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power” (1 Corinthians
4:20). How far this power surpasses our idea of it, which we are able to experi-
ence in our own body, and, by virtue of this surpassing. how this power belongs
only to God. is something the Apos- tle Paul unfailingly repears: “So that you
may know . . . his incomparably great power.” This power gives proof of its
extraordinary grandeur in the inconceivable Act around which the New Testa-
ment is organized, the act by which God raises the dead Christ: “The power
is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he
raised him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:17-20).
he powerlessness of language to posit a reality other than its own does not leave
it totally berefi) One power remains to it: to speak this real- ity when ir does
nor exist, to affirm something, whatever it may be, when there is nothing, to lie.
Lying is not one possibility of language alongside another with which it might
be contrasted—speaking the truth, for exam- ple. This possibility is rooted in
language and is as inherent in it as its very essence. Language, as long as there
is nothing else but language, can only be lying. Hence the fury of Christ against
language professionals, those whose job consists in the criticism and analysis of
texts, ad infinitumi—the scribes and Pharisees “Woe to you, teachers of the law
and Pharisees, you hypocrites! . . . Snakes! You brood of vipers!” (Matthew
23:1-36). To the + | powerlessness of language is added all the vices belonging
to powerlessness
Introduction 9
in general: lying, hypocrisy. the shrouding of truth, bad faith, the over- throwing
of values, the falsification of reality in all its forms—including
the most extreme form, thar is, the reduction of this reality to language and
ultimately, in chis supreme confusion, their identification with each other.
i —the fact that, taken in itself, in its own reality, language contains nothing of
the reality of the thing, none of its properties. This difference from the thing
explains its indifference to the thing, Since a word has nothing in itself that is
identical or similar to what is in the thing, it could as well be united with any
other thing whatever. One could use the same name for two different things or
clse attribute several names to the same thing. But because, in and of itself, the
word contains nothing that is real and ignores everything about that re- ality, it
could just as well bring reality back to itself. identify with it, define it, in such
a way that(everything the word says becomes reality, and pre- tends to stand
for it Emerging from its own powerlessness, the power of language suddenly
becomes frightening, shaking up reality, twisting it up in its frenzy. This frenzy
burns everything. as the hallucinatory text of James’s Epistle (3:3) expresses
in its grandiose conciseness: “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to

9
make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example.
Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by
a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. . . . Consider what a great
forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil
among the parts of the body. . . . With the tongue we praise our Lord and
Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness.”
If language praises and curses in turn what is the Same (the Lord and his image,
God and his sons), if, for want of penetrating the interior of what it pretends
to say, it can only mis-speak, whether in praise and in
blame, and therefore if ic is hy ircelf incapable of giving access to realivpin
I. to char which is a issued Lue of bof Chrisrianisy— then should nar the selatien-
of- language to this ruth be inverted? Jz is nor the corpus of New Testament
texts that can offer us access to the Truth, to that absolute Truth of which the
corpus speaks. On the contrary, it is Truth and Truth alone that can offer us
access to itself and by the same token to that cor- pus. allowing us 10 understand
the text in which Truth is deposited and to rec-
ognize it there.
)
10 Introduction
This is one of the most essential affirmations of Christianity: that the truth
that is its own can testify only to itself] Only Truth can artest to it- self—reveal
itself in and through itself. This Truth thar alone has the power
110 reveal itself is God’s truth. It is God himself who is revealed, or Christ
as ’God. More radically, divine essence consists in Revelation as self-revelarion,
’as revelation of itself on the basis of itself. Only one to whom that revela-
tion is made can enter into it, into its absolute truth. Only one who has en-
tered into thar absolute truth can, illuminated by ir, hear what is said in the
Gospel, which is nothing other than that absolute Truth char, revealing it- self
to itself, reveals itself to that person. Thar the absolute Truth revealing itself to
itself also reveals itself to someone to whom it is given to hear it— that is what
makes the person who hears it the son of that truth, the son of God, according
to the thesis that, as I will demonstrate, constitutes the es- sential content of
Christianity. But in no text is the truth of this ultimate ” thesis given to be
promulgated or heard. herefore language cannot blaze a trail ro either reality
or touth—
i i i i y) Language passes as
the means of communication par excellence, that is, as the means of com-
municating or transmitting the truth, Bur that is its greatest illusion, since the
single truth that it can transmit is a cruth thar already exists, has already A
|been revealed, revealed to itself by itself, independently of and prior to lan-

10
guage. This poverty of language, which comes along to contradict and an-
nihilate the purpose with which one usually defines language’s essence, does not
pertain only to the decisive fact that it does not constitute in it- self and through
itself our access to reality, that it is not itself a producer of truth. A more radical
reflection. to be developed below, will show that lan- guage is the negation of
this reality, of any conceivable reality—unless one |exempts that pallid reality
thar pertains to language as a system of signifi- [cacions and that finds itself in
principle to be an unreality. This fundamen- tal unreality is precisely the truth
of language.
History is no less impoverished. Its poverty bursts into the light of day as soon as
we stop defining the discipline on the basis of a restrictive concept. as specialists
do, and instead speculate on its condition of possi- bility, on the horizon where
all events—and especially human events, the historical facts thar history takes
as its subject of research—become visible. This horizon is none other than the
world. It is also, as we shall see. the horizon of Time. This horizon of the
world’s visibility as the horizon of
Introduction 11
Time: this is the truth of history. a truth such that everything that appears in
history just as quickly disappears. In it, as we have said, each of the bil- lions
of human beings who have inhabited the earth since prehistoric times is forever
lost, dissipated, vanished in the haze. But the i i ind ition £ nossihilin is also
shat of | . 1 will how, | But the making-seep in which any language. especially
that of the Gospels, tude reveals what iv says and whar it is talking about is
not possible, in turn, ex-: wd cept on that horizon of visibility that is the world,
that is Time and th truth of history.
The ical. By re- storing vanished human events to the documents in which they
are sup- posedly preserved, history appeals only to its own truth, and likewise
to language’s truth, The documents are as fugitive and uncertain as the facts
they report. It is important to grasp why these two truths, nor content with
lexting what ought to be their object escape, also allow the truth of the Gospels
to escape, to the point where these texts are not able to say a word ) on this
subject. Truth of history, eruth of language, the rrurh of Chrisrian- ity—the, i
to re 2 Ar this point, we are hearing i)
anguished question that Pilate, faced with the tumult aroused by the priests,
addressed to Christ: “What is truth?” (John 18:38).
Truth of the World
A
There are many kinds of truths. “The sky is getting dark and it’s go- ing to
rain” is one of them. “In a circle all the radii are equal” is another. These
two truths differ in that the first is contingent (the sky could be blue), whereas
the second is necessary: it is impossible that the radii of a circle nor be equal.

11
Philosophers say of fontingent truths that they are a posterior: it is experience
that teaches me that the sky is darkening, since it could equally well clear up.
And they say that hecessary truths are a pri- ori) since it is by the very law of a
circle’s construction, and thus before the actual construction of any particular
circle, that the equality of its radii is implied. Of both contingent truths and
rational truths we nevertheless say, despite the difference separating them, that
they are “truths.” Whar is it
Jp them that is equally “truth” py dndt aed
at is true is what shows itself) It is because the sky shows itself with a threatening
aspect that we can say: “The sky is threatening.” The truth of the proposition
refers back to the prior truth of a state of things, to the appearance of a darkly
colored sky. It is this appearance as such, it is Io fact of the sky showing itself,
that constitutes the “truth.” Suppose that, ”in the manner of logicians, we
wanted to isolate the proposition from the state of things to which it naturally
relates—to consider in itself the propo- sition “the sky is threatening” without
going to the window to verify whether this is correct. Then this propasirion,
reduced to itself, put into quotation marks, would still show itself to us, and
this appearance—in this case, of
Truthof the World 13
the proposition and not the sky—would confer on itself its own truth, making
it, 100, a phenomenon, something that appears and thar, in this way, is true.
What we have just said about “contingent truths,” about the state of the sky or
the proposition that expresses it. we can just as well as- sert about “necessary
truths,” about a geometric state of things and the ) statements that formulate
it.
From these brief preliminary infhcacions it follows tha de coacepc of trurh is
rwofald, designating both itself and - showing, Whar shows itself is the gray sky
or the equality of radii. Bur the fact of something showing itself has nothing to
do with what shows sel) with the gray of the sky or with geometric properties,
and is eyen rotally-in- different to what shows itself. The proof of this is that a
blue sky can show itself to us as well, just as geometric properties, other forms,
or even the fury of people killing cach other, the beauty of a painting, the smile
of 2 child. The fact of self-showing is as indifferent to what shows itself as is
the light to what it illuminate§—shining, according to Scripture, on the just as
well as the unjust. But the fact of self-showing is indifferent to all that shows
it- self only because by its nature it differs from all that, whatever it may be:
clouds, geometric properties, fury, a smile. -showi -
i ini such—that | . Inasmuch as ir consists of the pure fact of showing itself,
or else of appearing, of manifest- ing itself, of revealing itself, we can just as
well call the truch “monstration,” “apparition,” “manifestation.” “revelation.”
Moreover, it is under these three equivalent rerms— apparition, manifestation,
revelation—that the truth is designated in the New Testament, as well and as
often as under its proper name of Truth.

12
If it is in the very essence of truth—in the sense of a pure manifesta- tion, of
a pure revelation—that the fact of self-showing consists. then evr thing that
shows itself is true only in a secondary sense. It is only because the pure act of
appearing takes place, and that, in it, the truth deploys its essence beforchand,
thar everything that appears is susceprible of doing so — thas the sky shows
itself and, likewise, geometric forms, the fury of peo- ple, the painting, the child’s
smile. Thus any truth concerning things—be-
ings [#eanes, that is, beings). as the Greeks said—apy onric truth, refers back
If any truth concerning things—again, for example, the manuscripts
14 Truth of the World
of the New Testament or the events they relate—refers back to a preexist- ing
truth, to the absolute phenomenological truth that consists in the pure act of
self-showing that is implied in everything thar shows itself, then itis of the great-
est importance to know what this act of self-showing consists of, and whar the
nature of the original truth presupposed in any particular truth might be. Mod-
ern philosophy—and more precisely, Husserl’s phe- lnomenology—first posed
this fundamental question explicitly. Bur because phenomenological truth pre-
cedes and derermines everything that is true, whatever the particular nature of
what is true each time. (images, circles, ts,-historical events), the question of
truth in rhis radical sense
manuscrip: has had to be posed-and-truly resolved at least implicitly by philos-
ophy ever since its inception, and perhaps even before the birth of philosophy
prop- erly speaking, through common sense and its most proximate language. In
Greece, things are called “phenomena.” “Phenomenon,” phainom- enon, comes
from the verb phainesthai, which carries within it the root pha-, | phos. which
means light. Phainesthai therefore means “what shows itself by coming into the
light, by coming into daylight} The light into which things come in order to
show themselves in their quality as phenomena is the light of the world. The
World is nor the set of things, of beings, bur the [horizon of light where things
show themselves in their quality as phenom- |ena. The world thus does not
designate what is true but rather Truth irself. The phenomena of the world are
things inasmuch as they show themselves in the world, which is their proper
“monstration,” their appearance, their manifestation, their revelation. Already
implied in the Greek interpretation of things—beings—as “phenomena” is an
intuition that will be taken up by contemporary phenomenology and will serve
as its fundamental principle, to wit, the idea that what is (cloud, circle, etc.)
“is” only inasmuch as it shows itself, precisely as a phenomenon. Consequently,
what is is thar which {is true, in such a way, ultimately, that the being of ev-
erything that is, Being . such, is the truth as such, the pure facr of self-showing
considered in it-
self, as appearance and as pure manifestation. ¢ The interpretation of what is as
what shows itself, and thus the inter- pretation of Being as Truth, dominates the

13
development of Western thought) If you consider, far example, the philosophy
of consciousness that appeare
in the seventeenth century, you soon realize that consciousness is nothing I other
than the act of self-showing grasped in itself, pure manifestation, the Truth. On
their side, things are reduced by this philosophy to what shows
Truth of the World 15
“itself to consciousness, to their status as phenomena. The shift from the
_consciousness-is generally interpreted as one of the grear hreakthranghs in
Western thought. However, such a shift changes nothing in the definition
of the thing as phenomenon but on the contrary carries ir to the absolute level.
{The phenomena of consciousness are its representations, its objects) The rela-
tion of consciousness to its objects allows us to discern with greater precision the
nature of that pure manifestation that is consciousness, the na- ture of truth. To
re-present anything to oneself, for consciousness is to place it before oneself. In
German “to represent” isvor-stellen = 10 place (stellen) . “Ob-ject” designates
that which is placed before, in such a way thar it is the fact of being placed
“before” thar renders the object manifest. Consciousness itself is nothing other
than this manifestation thar consists in the fact of being placed before. hat
is placed before is the ob-ject, that which is true, thar which shows itself, the
phenomenon) The fact of being placed before is the truth, manifestation, pure
consciousness. The fact of be- ing placed before is equally well the fact of being
placed outside: it is the “outside” as such. The “outside” as such is the world.
We say “the truth of the world,” bur the expression “the truth of the world” is
rautological. duis
+ As we now see. consciousness in no way refers to a truth of another or- der
than the truth of the world. Quire the contrary, the emergence of the modern
philosophy of consciousness marks the moment when the world ceases being
understood in a naive fashion as the sum of things, of beings— and this because
things cease themselves to be understood just as naively as what is quite simply
present before us, as what we supposedly have access to, without the possibility
of acceding to these things posing a problem. How-
ever, it is precisely this “being-there-before-us’ thar makes things phenom-
To this original truth of the world is subjected everything that is true, every
phenomenon, whatever its nature, whether a sensory reality, like the blue of the
sky, or an intelligible one, like the equality of the radii of a cir- cle—everything
we can perceive, conceive, imagine, or name through lan- guage. A thing exists
for. us only if it shows itself to us as a phenomenon. Andlit shows itself to us
only in that primordial “outsideness” that is the world} It matters liede in the
end whether the truth of the world is under-
16 Truth of the World

14
stood through consciousness or through the world itself, if in either case what
constitutes the capacity of self-showing, truth, manifestation, is “out- sideness”
as such.
The capacity of self-showing thar finds its possibility in the “out- sideness” of
the world implies that everything that is susceptible of being shown in it is
in principle different from it. We recognize here an essen- tial trait perceived
from the start of our analysis: the division of the con- cept of truth between
what is true and truth itself) This division is made manifest, as we have seen,
in the indifference of the light of the truth to what it Hluminates, to what is
true. It is precisely when the truth is un- derstood as that of the world thar this
indifference is borne into evidence: in the world everything and anything shows
itself — children’s faces, clouds, icircles—in such a way that (vhar shows itself
is never explained by the mode of revealing specific ro the world. What shows
itself in the world’s truth is shown in that truth as other than itself, as forsaken
by it, uncov- ered as this or that, but a “thar” which might be different from
what is shown, a content that is contingent. abandoned to itself. lost. What is
true in the world’s truth in no way depends on this truth: it is not sup- ported
by it, guarded by it. loved by it, saved by it. The world’s truth— qthat is to
say, the world itself—never contains the justification for or the
reason behind what it allows ro show itself in that truth and thus allows ”“to
be” —inasmuch as to be is to be shown.
The world’s truth is not merely indifferent to everything it shows. Much more
seriously, it undermines that which draws its truth from it, which is not “true”
except by showing itself in it. And this is because the world is not some inert
and ready-made milieu thar preexists things, into
which they have only to penetrate in order to find themselves illuminated Iby it.
by the light of thar “eursideness.” fin the philosophies that place con- sciousness
at the foundation of truth, consciousness is defined as an active transcendence
that projects beyond beings the horizon on which they be- came visible. The
placing of the being in the condition of “ab-ject” and “opposite us” [en-face],
and thus of a phenomenon, is only possible through the production of that
transcendent horizon of visibility that is the world itself] Consequently the world
“is” not. but unceasingly intervenes as a horizon that unceasingly takes shape,
but only on the condition of a power that unceasingly projects the horizon. In
Kant this power is called the tran-
; it is the imaging of 2 world that is iself nothing
Truth of the World 17 | heing i & 5 irsclf Lmaging $inan
It is not necessary to connect this production of a horizon of visibiliy as an
imaging of a world with a consciousness and with a particular power of this
consciousness called imagination. It rather suffices to think of this pro-duction
of the outsideness of the world for itself as a primary and ab- solute fact. It
is the “outside” itself that is externalized, of itself and through itself. The

15
“worlds truth” is nothing other than this: a self-production of “outsideness” as
the horizon of visibility in and through which every thing can become visible
and thus become a “phenomenon” for usjNature as con- ceived by the Greeks
was undoubtedly ne different from this self-production of “outsideness” as the
original truth of the world. As for modern con- sciousness, it was merely an
inexact way of formulating this same truth.
objects, This is why it is important to understand thar fonsciousness is noth- ing
other than rhis relation to the ebiect It is “consciousness of something,” pure
intentionality moving beyond itself toward the object and foremost ro- ward
that “outside” where everything is shown as an “ob-ject,” as ‘opposte) us,” as
“phenomenon.”
The self-externalization of the externality of the “outside,” which we call the
world, is not a metaphysical or speculative affirmation of a kind to
leave the reader uncertain or in doubt. To_say that the warld is rch is 10 a i i
¢ . . : . so hap-
pens that this self-externalization of the externality where the horizon of vis-
ibility of the world is formed, its “ourside,” has another name that we know
still better: it is called Lime. Time and the world are idenrical; they designate
Such a process should be examined on two levels: in itself, where it is liter-
ally just the formation of a “world,” the coming outside of that horizon on
whose screen every thing shows itself to us. According to the unconsidered but
constant experience we have of it, this horizon is discovered ro be that of Time.
Ceaselessly being hollowed out in front of us is a “future,” where
things and events take place toward which we are projecting ourselves—1I
18 Truth of the World
will go to work, to the station, etc.; and a “present,” where our immediate
environment is held—the room, the table on which I am writing; and f- nally
a “past,” into which everything that has just been present for us slides away—
those thoughts I have just had while writing. The horizon of the world is thus
deployed before us in the form of three temporal dimensions and is constituted
hy them, The expanses of externality, which Heidegger called the shsee temporal
“ele-stases,” are not fixed but slide into each other, from the future to the present
and to the past, thus constituting a continu- ous flux that is the flow of time.
It is this three-dimensional horizon of time [that fashions the visibility of the
world, its truth. It is against the back- ground of this horizon that everything
that shows itself to us becomes, as temporal, visible.
Here we may perceive the seriousness of the way in which the world’s truth
undermines everything it makes seen. everything that it makes true. To the
extent, then, thar the truth is a placing outside, seizing everything to render
it manifest, it actually casts the thing outside itself at every in- stant. This
putting-ourside-itself by no means signifies a simple transfer of the thing from
one place to another—as if, in such a displacement, it re- mained similar to itself,

16
at most receiving this new property of showing it- self. Rather, this coming-
into-appearance in the “outside-itself” of the world signifies that it is the thing
itself that finds itself cast outside itself. It is fractured, broken. cleaved in two,
stripped of its own reality—in such a way that, now deprived of that reality that
was its own, emptied of its flesh, it is no longer outside itself. in the world’s
Image, but just its own skin, a simple image, in effect. a transparent film, a
surface without thickness. a piece of naked externality offered to a gaze thar
slides over it without being able to penetrate into it or reach anything bur empty
appearance.
This coming-into-appearance as coming-into-the-world—which, ac- cording to
phenomenology, should confer Being an everything that shows
itself—now withdraws Being from it, making of this Being its contrary, a sort
of naught of itself, depriving each thing of its substance in order ro de-
{liver it to us, but in the form of an appearance foreign to reality, and fore-
I most to the reality that ought to be its own, which this coming-into-
J appearance can make seen only by destroying thar reality. [This making-seen
that destroys, which consists in the annihilation of everything it exhibits, not
letting it subsist except under the aspect of an empty apparition, is tim Time
is passage, a slipping away in the form of a slipping into nothingness.
Truth of the World 19
But time is not the incessant annihilation through the effect of a property to
which we would be subject without understanding it, in the manner of a mysteri-
ous fatality. [t is because the coming-into-appearance is here the coming-outside
that, casting every thing outside itself and tearing it away from itself, ir precip-
itates it into nothingness} It is the way of making a thing appear as drawing its
essence from the “outside itself” that is the an- nihilation, How time passes! It’s
already autumn! Already my lamp is out! But time is nor truly a slipping from
the present into the past, according to the celebrated analyses thar approach
common sense. (fr time there is no pre sent, there never has been one, and there
never will be one) In time, things come into appearance, but since this coming-
into-appearance consists in coming-outside, things do not rise into the light of
this “outside” except as torn from themselves, emptied of their being, already
dead. It is because its power ta make manifest resides in the “outside-itself”
that time annihilates
hing it exhihirs. Bur time’ mal i | de L (Thus the “world’s truth” does not refer
to some judgment delivered from on high upon the world and everything thar
shows itself in it, upon the course of things) Because the truth of the world lies
in its manner of making each thing appear, it inhabits this thing as its way of
appearing pre- cisely and of standing out in our experience, of giving itself to us
and rouch- ing us. The truth of the world is the law of the appearance of things.
Ac- cording to this law, things being given outside themselves. being deprived
of themselves, being emptied of themselves in their very appearing, never give

17
their own reality but only the image of that reality thar annihilates it- self in the
moment they are given. [They are given in such a way that their appearance is
also their disappearance, the incessant annihilation of their el
ality in the image of it) This is why there is no present within rime; because
logical 00 of the thine. 4 | lity of sf
S—
past, The coming-into-the-present as a coming-into-a-furure that slips into the
past is thus nothing other than the modalization of an Imaginary—that modal-
ization of the image of the world that is time itself as the world’s time.
as this deployment of the “outside-itself” that is the world’s truth. I said that
fhe world’s truth is indifferent to whar it illuminate
20 Truth of the World
clouds, forms, smiles, manuscripts, events in a history. Starting from the ap-
pearance of the world, one can, in fact, never deduce what appears in it cach
time. Bur appearing in the world confers on everything that appears in thar way
a state of being cast outside itself, emptied of its reality, reduced to an image—
since it is the manner of being cast outside itself that consti tutes appearance as
such. Everything that appears in the world is subject to a process of principled
derealization, which does not mark the passage from a primitive state of reality
to the abolition of that state but rather a priori puts everything that appears
in that way into a state of original un- reality. It is not that a thing would
first be present and then later would pass away. From the beginning this thing
was passing away. When it was still only future, it was already traversing the
successive phases of this fu- ture existence; through them, without halting in the
present. it was pro- pelled toward its nothingness in the past. At no moment
did it cease being this nothingness. If everything appeared to us in this way—if
there existed no other truth than that of the world—there would be no reality
at all any- where but only, on all sides, death. Destruction and death are not
the work of time being exercised after the fact on some reality preexisting time’s
reach: rather. they strike a priori everything that appears in time, as the very
law of its appearance—everything that is shown in the truth of the world, as the
very law of this truth. It is this essential connection that links destruction and
death to the very appearance of the world, to what he calls [its form, that the
Apostle was thinking of in this striking phrase: “For, in- deed. the form of this
world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31). by Sorm of truth, except the truth
of Christianity) This is what we {|must now elucidate and understand. in its
radical foreignness with respect leo everything that common sense, philosophy,
and science call (and con- tinue to call) “truth.”
The Truth According to Christianity
The truth of Christianicy must be understood according to the pure phenomeno-
logical meaning that we have granted this concep. It is not a matter of a truth
of the type: “The French took the Bastille on July 14, 1789.” Nor of another

18
kind of truth, formally similar to the preceding one: “Christ came into the world
in order to save humankind.” In these two ex- amples, our attention is drawn
to a certain content, specifically a historical fact or—since a fact of this type
is never present in isolation—to a cerrain state of things that is itself historical.
It is this state of things that constitutes the theme of thought and that alone
matters as far as that state of things is concerned, to wit, that the French took
the Bastille on July 14 or that Christ
came into the world. What makes-the-two.states of things true-is-situated, ac-
cording ta ordinary thonghe, ar the very level of the state-of things and depends
upon that state. That the French did in fact take the Bastille on
that day, brandishing the head of the governor at the end of a pike, is what
makes the truth of this state of things, and accordingly of the proposition thar
expresses it. Because the verity of the state of things seems of the same order
as the state of things, and ultimately is one with it, its affirmation ap- pears
as a sort of tautology in relation to the state of things, a quite useless way of
expressing it a second time. After the spontaneous realization of the state of
things—the taking of the Bastille—what interest is offered by the variation: “It
is true that the French took the Bastille on July 147? What does the “It is true
that” add?
)
22 The Truth According to Christianity
othing less than the truth of the world) If a state of things seems to count in itself
and to be proof of its own truth, it is only to the extent that it shows itself: it is
on condition of a manifestation that owes nothing to the head of the governor,
any more than to the howling crowd escorting it—a manifestation without which,
however, nothing of that kind would exist. And this pure manifestation, totally
different from what it makes manifest, is the “outside-itself” the “outside,” that
cavity of light sketched by the hori- zon of the world, where there becomes visible
for us everything that is sus- ceptible of being known by us. The philosophical
question of truth as such is thus not superfluous. except in the view of a naive
kind of thought thar, hypnotized by the content of what it perceives or studies
on each occasion, ignores the contents coming into the light of day in its quality
as a phe- nomenon, which, along with Kant, we must call the transcendental
condi- tion of the possibility of experience.
Thus, the philosophical question of Truth cannot be eluded. We see this clearly
when, on the empirical plane itself, the truth of the state of things presents a
problem—for example, when it concerns the coming of Christ into the world.
Did this coming really happen? Is ic true? And the texts announcing it, the
Scriptures—are they also true? What “being true” means is now no longer the
superfluous duplication of a prior and self- sufficient state of things. Quire the
contrary, the state of things is true only ic manifests itself or was once manifest—
more radically, if this manifes- tation manifested itself, in itself and as such. The
coming of Christ into the

19
Yoworld is subordinate to the coming of the world itself, to its appearance as the
world, Because if the world had not first opened its space of light—if ic had not
been shown to us as that horizon of visibility cast beyond things, as that screen
against which they are detached—then Christ would never have been able to
come into the world or show himself to us, or ar least to those who were given
the privilege of seeing him.
Now, did Christ really come into the world? Were people favored with being
witnesses to his extraordinary acts; did they hear his staggering words? Were
the writings into which these words and these acts were con- signed written by
witnesses, or at least by contemporaries? Or are they in- stead collections of bits
and pieces of diverse provenance belonging to a much later redaction? These
questions, with which any approach to Chris- tianity begins, it would seem,
lose their preliminary character, becoming no more than secondary, if they are
subordinated to the prior question of
The Truth According to Christianity 23
the appearance of the world, and thus to a much more original Truth than that
of Christianity itself—if the larcer means we are concerned only with knowing
whether Christ actually came into the world, whether his histor- ical existence
is an established fact or not.
« Moreover, when during our carier approach to Christianity these questions of
the historical truth of the events related in Scripture (or, these events having
themselves disappeared, of the authenticity of the texts that relate them) were
mentioned in passing, did it not appear that the truth of both the events and the
texts immediately referred back to that mare orip- inal essence of the truth of the
world and the nature of this truth? It is be. cause in the time of the world any
particular reality is effaced and disap- pears, it is because language in turn leaves
this reality outside itself and like time, enlightens only through the negation of
that reality, that the truth of Christianity appears so precarious, as if fading.
Ar the end of the day, it is not facts or things that are precarious) fugitive as the
years, but rather their mode of apparition. It is pure phenomenological truch
chat as the world’s truth, determines any particular form of truth for us—that
of history, for example, or that of language—as a sort of evanescent appari- tion,
eroded by nothingness.
Iv is then decisive to note that SHAR.
sence from the truth of the world Like the latter, it is true—and as we shall see,
even more true: it is a pure phenomenological ruth, inn ahsoluce
i- fest bur the pure manifestation, in itself and as such—or, to put it another way,
not the phenomenon but phenomenality. The fact of self-showing, ap- pearing,
manifestation are pure phenomenological concepts precisely be- cause they des-
ignate phenomenality itself and nothing else. Other equiva- lent terms, already
mentioned because they are those of Christianity, are “apparition,” “truth,”
and “revelation}” As soon as concepts of truth, man- ifestation, or revelation

20
are understood in their pure phenomenological sig- ification, a crucial question
arises: i i ifesta- tion. this revelation, consist in2 What within them makes true,
makes manifest, reveals? Ir is not a power situated behind manifestation, behind
revelation, behind truth—that of making manifest, making true, revealin
—because such a background power does not exist. It is truth itself in ie very
deployment that makes something true; it is manifestation as it itself
|
24 The Truth According to Christianity
manifests itself that makes manifest; be is revelation in revealing itself that
/ reveals) But how? Whar does the phenomenological effectivity of this reve-
Jation-cansist in. each and cvery time?
Here appears the radical difference separating the truth of Christian- ity from
that of the world, as well as from all forms of truth that draw upon the world
for their own possibilicy—the truths of science, of knowl- edge, of perception.
How the truth of the world makes manifest is some- thing thar has long been a
subject of analysis. Let us recall from this analy- sis some essential conclusions
so as to understand how the truth of the world and the truth of Christianity
contrast with each other on all points. The truth of the world makes each thing
seen by placing that thing outside itself, in such a way that it is the externality
of the “ourside-itself” that makes seen, which is phenomenality. It is because
the truth of the world consists in the externality of this “outside-jtself” that it
differs from every-
‘thing that is given within this externality, from all the things that are shown
within it as “objects” or beings. From this follows a decisive conse- quence: the
division of the concept of truth between the truth and what is true does not
belong to the concept of truth in toned) It is only when the {eruch is understood
as that of the world, when it makes everything seen by plac- [rs it ouside itself,
that the division in the concept of Truth, the difference be- tween the trush
iwself and what it shows— what ir makes true—is produced.
It is the first decisive characteristic of the Truth of Christianity thar it
_ yin no way differs from what it makes true. Within ir there is no separation
Ww between the seeing and what is seen, between the light and what it illumi-
inates. And this is because there is in that Truth neither Seeing nor seen, no
Light like that of the world. From the start, the Christian concept of truth is
given as irreducible to the concept of truth that dominates the history of West-
ern thought, from Greece to contemporary phenomenology This tra- ditional
concept of truth determines not only most of the phildsophical currents that
have succeeded one another until the present day but even more so the ideas
currently held about truth within the domain of scien- tific knowledge and within
common sense, which is more or less impreg- nated with the scientific ideal. It is
precisely when the Christian concepr of Truth ceases to determine the collective
consciousness of society, as it did in the Middle Ages, that its divorce from the

21
Greek idea of a rrue knowl- edge and a true science appears in full force. And
the consequence is, if not the suppression of the Christian concept, then at least
its repression into
the realm of private life, or even superstition.
The Truth According to Christianity 25
truth is manifestation grasped in its phenomenological purity—phenome- nality
and not the phenomenon—then what is phenomenalized is phe- nomenality it-
self. The phenomenalization of phenomenality itself is a pure phenomenological
matter, a substance whose whole essence is to appear— phenomenality in its
actualization and in its pure phenomenological effec- tivity. What manifests it-
self is manifestation oc What reveals itself is rev- elation’itself; it is a revelation
of revelation, a self-revelation in its original and immediate effulgence. With
this idea of a pure Revelation—of a reve- lation whose phenomenality is the
phenomenalization of phenomenalicy itself, of an absolute self-revelation that
dispenses with whatever is other
than its own phenomenological substance—we are in the presence of the har CI
. he principle of | Gad ic tt
? { The Revelation of Ged is his self-revelation. If by chance “the Revelation
of God” were addressed to people, this would not consist in the unveiling of a
content foreign to its own essence and somehow transmitted to a few ini-
tiates. To reveal Himself to people could only signify for God thar He gives ;
hi | self-revelarion Christianicy is nothing att tly, than the awedinspiring and
meticulous theory of this givenness of s self: i with man.
Where can we see something like the phenomenalization of pure phenomenal-
ity as its immediate and original self-phenomenalization, as the self-revelation
of what we are presumptively calling “God”? Nowhere. But it is also clear
that such “seeing” is out of the question here. Seeing is only possible in a
“world.” Seeing presupposes the distancing of what must be seen and thus its
coming-outside—more precisely, the prior coming- outside of “Outside” itself,
the formation of the world’s horizon. It is the coming-outside of “Outside,” the
“outside-itself” as such, that constitutes the visibility of everything thar, situ-
ated in this “Outside” before our gaze, will be susceptible of being seen by us,
as a being-scen as such. And this concerns not only sensory seeing but equally
so intelligible seeing, any form of experience in which one accedes to what is
experienced as an en- face or as an “ob-ject.”
Thar Gods revelation as his self-revelation owes nothing to the phe- nomenality
of the world but rather rejects it as fundamentally foreign to its own phenom-
enality is something that powerfully emerges in Christ’s final prayer on the
Mounr of Olives: “I am not praying for the world” (John
26 The Truth According ro Christianity

22
17:9). Now, it is not the circumstances, tragic as they may be, that explain
this terrifying declaration; instead, it finds its striking justification in a propo-
sition whose theoretical character cannot easily be challenged: “My kingdom
is not of this world” (John 18:36). Here again one would be sorely mistaken if
one imagined this ro be primarily a matter of moral tjudgment. Everywhere
in Christianity, the ethical is subordinated to the Yorder of things. “Kingdom”
does not mean a sort of domain across which divine power extends, a terrain
reserved for its action. [It is the very essence of Christ as identified with “che
Revelation of God,” with His absolute self- revelation, that is designated foreign
to the world) “even as [ am not of [the world)” (John 17:14). However, if the
Revelation of God owes nothing to the world’s truth — if its pure phenomeno-
logical matter is not identified with the horizon of light that is the world, in
such a way that this Revelation cannot show itself within the world and will
never show itself there—how then can we have access to Revelation? And how
can we even think ir? Thought is only one mode of our relation to the world.
To think is always to think something that thinking brings into sensory or in-
tellectual seeing, and thus brings un- der the condition of the world. Any form
of knowledge—and especially the scientific method of research, including the
phenomenological method— proceeds according to a play of intentional impli-
cations constantly deployed 150 as to result in evidence and thus in a seeing, Ir
is in this seeing, and thanks to it, that any advance in knowledge is constituted.
How could the work un- dertaken here concerning the Truth of Christianity,
thar is to say, concern- ing God’s self-revelation, produce resulss if that self-
revelation in principle slipped away as a target of thought, inasmuch as thought
always presupposes i the prior opening of a world?
The irreducibility of the truth of Christianity to thought, or ro any form of
knowledge or science, is one of the major themes of Christianity itself. Such a
situation does not merely confirm the opposition of Chris- tianity to a tradition
of Western thought oriented toward the world and toward obraining knowledge
that is objective and, as such, scientific. Pre- cisely because this opposition
refers back to a final irreducibility (of the truth of Christianity to any worldly
form of knowledge and science), it, to0, finds itself formulated in an extremely
forceful manner by Christ him- self: “1 praise you, Father, . . . because you
have hidden these things from Ithe wise and learned, and revealed them ro little
children” (Matthew 11:25).
NM
Mo The Truth According to Christianity 27
What is meant L “little children” and their mysterious appropria- tion of divine
Revelation is something we will try to catch sight of. But an
initial difficulty must rst be overcome, that which a priori deprives thought ‘
hiliry of fii lation. | he of Ly how i is itself i -
ifest this divine revelarion— i ized as “outside” Still, the question of ac- cess to
divine Revelation does not concern us either first or principally, we people who

23
think, even if it would inevitably be a matter of knowing, at some moment or
other, how we could arrive at this revelation or how it came to us. Although it
is not thought or some other form of knowledge,
although it is not the truth of the world, that gives access to the Revelation of
God, at least a single possibility persists, already mentioned as a simple marter
of fact and now rendered unimpeachable. Hees: to God, understood
3 7 There where God originally arrives in him- self, in the phenomenalization
of phenomenality that is his own and is thus like the self-phenomenalization
of this phenomenality proper—there alone is access to God. [lt is not thar
thought is lacking and so we cannot accede to the Revelation of God. Quite
the contrary, it is only when thought defaults, because the truth of the world
is absent, that what is at stake be achieved: the self-revelation of God—the
self-phenomenalization of pure
phenomenality against the background of a phenomenality that is not thar of
the world.
since Life is nathing other than that which reveals itself—pot something that
might have an-added property of sclf-revealing, bur the very fact of self revealing,
self-revelation as such. Everywhere that-someching like a self- h Lo is Life LE .
:
welation _— If of he B oy God. If revelation that owes nothing ta the ruth of
the world, and if we ask where such a
selfrevelation is-achieved, the answes is-unequivocal: in Life and in Life alone
Therefore we are in the presence of the first fundamental equation of Christianity:
=
Gad is Life—he is the essence of Life..or if ane prefers, the essence of Life is
God. Saying this we already know what God is, but we do not know ir through
the effect of some knowledge or learning—we do not
28 The Truth According to Christianity po
fa it through thought, against the background of the truth of the world) ather
we know ir, and can know ir, only in and through Life itself. We can know the
essence of God only in God. But this observation is premature.
The assertion thar Life constitutes the essence of God and is identi- cal with him
is constantly made in the New Testament. Here we shall be content with brief
indications—”1 am the First and the Last; [ am the liv- ing one” (Revelation
1:17), “the living God” (1 Timothy 3:15), “by him who is declared to be living”
(Hebrews 7:8), “He who is living” (Luke 24:5)— not to mention the decisive
declarations that occur during a more devel- oped elaboration of the divine
essence, and to which we shall return: “For as the Father has life in himself, so
he has granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Of the Word that
is at the Beginning, John’s cele- brated prologue declares: ”In him was Life.”

24
fo the definitions of God as finding his essence in Life) as well as the many
propositions in which he appears as the Living, people will not fail to contrast
those definitions that make reference to Being. Thus Yahweh, the God of Abra-
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, who names himself in a way that can be approximately
translated “I am who I am,” by all accounts refers to this concept of Being.
Revelation also says of God: “1 am the Alpha and the Omega . . . He who
is, who was, and who will come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). We observe,
too, that the concept of being even intrudes linto statements that identify the
divine essence with life, such as the fol- lowing; “He who is living.” In order to
clear away from the start the mas- sive misconception that equates the essence
of the Christian God with Be- ing, and thus with a concept proper to Greek
thought—opening the path to the great Western theologies that reduce the God
of Abraham to that of the philosophers and scholars (to that of Aristotle, for
example)—we must sremember that. restored to its ultimate phenomenological
foundation, the ‘concep of Being is related to the truth of the world, designating
nothing other than its apparition, its clearing, which suffices to deprive it of any
per- tinence to the Truth of Christianity, thar is. to God himself.
More precisely, the word “Being” belongs to human language, which is that
of the world. This is because, as we have previously suggested and will have
occasion to establish at length, oy language makes seen the thing of which it is
speaking as well as what it is saying about this thing) Such
making seen arises from the world and its own Truth. To_the extent thar the
language of Scripture is.the one spoken ‘by-people, the word “Being” is
Jrvryy wood Hi The Truth According to Christianity 29
When, on the contrary, this lan-
guage is explicitly referenced to God to the point of becoming his own Word,
this Word is then given unfailingly as the Word of Life and as Liv- ing Word
—hut by no-means-as-“the word of Being,” which from a Chris- tian viewpoint
does not mean anything at all. “The words [ have spoken to you are spirit
and they are life” (John 6:63); “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, ‘and
tell the people these words of life’ (Acts 5:20). We will have occasion to cite
many other passages in which the divine essence is explicitly stated to be thar
of Life, “the bread of life” (John 6:48). As for the many metaphors used in
New Testament texts, which will give rise to an entirely new iconography and
generate a specifically Christian art that will change the course of Western ar,
they all converge toward another truth, in the phenomenological sense, than thar
of the world. Things do not appear merely as bearers of “mystical” significations.
Rather, their worldly being actually dissolves in symbols of fire or water—”the
water of life.” In a passage to which we will return, deer drink from the source
of life, flow- ing “down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side
of the river stood the tree of life” (Revelation 22:2). If. af a What is specific to
Jife as selferevelation is therefore the fact that it re- veals itself. This apparent
tautology implies two distinct meanings that we must now separate for the first

25
time. Self-revelation, when it concerns the essence of Life. means, on the one
hand, that i clarion, that seveals—bur, on t ; A i And it is here thar the mode-of
sevelacion specific-so-Life-differs funda- mentally from that of the warld. The
world, too, reveals and makes mani-
fest, bur within the “outside,” casting a thing outside itself, as we have seen, in
such a way that{it never shows itself as other, different, external, in its set- ting
of radical extetiority that is the “outside-itself” of the world] Hence it is doubly
exterior: external to the power thar makes it manifest—and this is where the
contrast between Truth and whar it makes true intervenes— and also exterior
to itself. It manifests itself only in its own exteriority to it- self, emptied of its
own substance, unreal—emptied of this unreality that comes to it from its own
mode of apparition, from the truth of the world.
I£. then, Life reveals irslf nor aaly tn.d ba 1 ach ai
.
but. also because it is irself thar isteveals-in-such-arevelarion, then Life is pos-
sible only because its own mode-ef-revelation-ignores-the world and its
30 The Truth According to Christianity
“ouside.” Living is not possible in the world Living is possible only outside
the world, where another Truth reigns. another way of revealing. This way of
revealing is that of Life. Life does not cast outside itself what it reveals bur holds
it inside itself, retains it in so close an embrace that what it holds (and reveals is
itself, It is only because it holds what it reveals in this em- brace, which nothing
can pull apart, that it is and can be le. Life embraces, experiences without
distance or differencd Solely on this condition can it experience itself, be irself
what it experiences—and. consequently, be irself thar which experiences and
which is experienced. In the self-revelation of Life reality is given birth, any
possible reality. And we can understand why. It is clear from the start that
reality of what- ever sort can be established only if the conditions that make
it a priori im- possible are excluded and are thus incapable of performing their
destruc- tive work. Where the “outside” that casts everything out of itself and
strips it of its reality has neither place nor power—there alone, in the essence of
Life, can something like reality be possible. This is why, from now on (and even
if we will have to return to the point at greater length), we must re- ject an idea
found in Hegel’s philosophy—and in its by-products such as its most tenacious
expression, Marxism—before determining in turn many I of the commonplaces
of modern thought. This is the idea that Chiistian- ity is a Bight from reality,
inasmuch as it is a flight from the world. But if reality resides in Life and only
in Life, this reproach disintegrates to the peint of ultimately appearing as non-
sense. Thus. reality resides in Life not merely because what Life experiences,
being experienced without distance or any kind of difference, is not emptied of
itself within the “outside-itself” of a world, in the noematic unreality of what
can only be seen—because what Life experiences is still itself. The con- trent of
Life—what it experiences—is Life itself, refers back to a more fun- {damental

26
condition, fo the very essence of “Living,” to a mode of revelation ”whose specific
phenomenality is the flesh of a pathos, pure affective mater- fiat in which any
cleavage, any separation, finds itself radically excluded) Itis i uniquely because
such is the phenomenological matter of which this revela- ¥) |tion is made that
we can say that in this revelation what reveals and what is {revealed are one
and the same. {It is this pathétik phenomenological sub- \ stance of living
that defines and contains any conceivable “reality. Le When we say that in the
Living where any reality takes place—in the sclf-revelation that constitutes the
essence of life and thus of God him-
!
The Truth According ro Christianity 31
self—what reveals is the same as what is revealed, is there not a distinction to
be apprehended (ar least in rough outline) between the first of these terms and
the second, even though we are declaring them the same? Is this distinction
not overcome by, or supposedly overcome by, an identification that in fact pre-
supposes it? Similarly, with regard to an “experiencing” that expresses nothing
except Living, when we affirm thar what experiences is the same as what is ex-
perienced, have we not already broken up what we had taken as i i 2 But these
potential differenti- ations, as well as the copula that overcomes them, belong
to the morphol- ogy of language and are ultimately rooted in the world in which
this lan- guage is the only language. ienci i i j
oneself [jouir de soi]. Enjoyment does not presuppose any differences sim- ilar to
those in which the world is born: it is homogeneous phenomeno- logical material,
a monolithic affective body whose phenomenality is af- fectivity as such. The
self-revelation of Life is not a formal structure that can be conceived on the
basis of “outside oneself” and in terms of its own structures, since these are
bypassed, overcome while being maintained in
this very bypassing. The self-revelation of life is its enjoyment, the primos-
self. According to Christianity, God is Love. Love is nothing other than the
self-revelation of ini Zi i
specifically, the self-enjoyment of absolute Life, This is why the Love of God is
the infinite love in which he eternally loves himself, and the revela-
tion of God is none other than this Love, p ap LE LPS
: 2 More precisely, fa relation does Life have with what science means by this
term—with the subject of biology} Doesn’t biology, which concentrates
ithin itself the spectacular progress made by contemporary research and which
possesses extraordinarily sophisticated and complex methodologies, shed an en-
tirely new light on life? Does the archaic discourse of Christian- ity, encumbered
by theological considerations as well as by an obsolete kind of learning, still hold
some interest for people today? How can we think man himself in the light of

27
the Christian conception of Truth, as meaning he single idea of life? Doesn’t
the Greek elaboration of what constitutes
5 Heo oo prarvypi ths Ane, Po
%-
. \ 1 : Urgent questions arise here. If the reuth of Christianity finds irs eri . »
. . «. » ’
32 The Truth According to Christianity
y the humanity of man in terms of his specific difference from animals—as
an animal possessing logos, reason, and language, as capable of thinking, re-
flecting. and reasoning—lead us much nearer to who we really are? And leads
us, moreover, in such a way thar ir is impossible, even dangerous, to see in man
nothing more than a living,
3 | EEE This Truch Called Life
Lf Za f he elaboration of the Christian concept of Truth has made truth appear
to find its essence in Life) Inasmuch as is is identical with Trurh, Life 15 } logical.
That Life is Teud
, in the original meaning we have Foy these terms. Life js nor “ene,” which
would mean nothing more than thar it manifests itself, shows itself. In that case,
nothing would distinguish it from any other phenomenon, from everything that
shows it- self in general. Such a proposition would not only remain indeterminate
but would also leave unexamined the problem of Truth, notably the truth proper
to Life. Thar which shows itself is not the only thing that presup- poses a
“monstration,” a prior manifestation without which ht would ever be manifest
to us, no phenomenon of any sort.
ee ee al
Before aling manifest whatever it may be, and in order to be able to do so,
manifesta- tion must manifest itself in its purity, as such that it is. Before
illuminating
something, light s shines in its own luster. Irie when the central question of
. To the Greek concept of phenomenon that will determine the course of Western
thought—the interpretation of the manifestation of things, or, more rig-
Ne
34 This Truth Called Life
orously, the interpretation of the manifestation of this manifestation as truth
of the world, a truth whose phenomenality is that of “outside” — Christianity
solidly opposes its conception of Truth as Life. Lite thus re- ceives in Christian-
ity a phenomenological meaning that is as original as it is radical. Life designates

28
a pure manifestation, always irreducible ta that of | the world, an original rev-
elation that is not the revelation of an other thing land does. not depend on
anything other, bu is rather a revelation of self, thas absolute self.cevelation
that is Life itself
Through its phenomenological essence—because it is thereby Truth, pure man-
ifestation, revelation—the Life of which Christianity speaks differs
| totally from what biology studies. Whar characterizes biology—whether it has
to do with neurons, electric currents, chains of amino acids. cells, or chemical
properties, or else their ultimate constituents, which are physical particles—is
something wholly foreign to phenomenality. Certainly these diverse elements—
physical, chemical, or specifically biological—are all phe- nomena or refer back
to phenomena. withour which no science, however claborare or sophisticated
its methodologies, would be able ro know any- thing. But these diverse phe-
nomena do not in fact rerain their own phe- nomenality, their capacity to show
themselves to us) Rather, they owe this capacity to be shown. and thus to
become the abjecr of possible knowledge, to a power of manifestation foreign to
them—whereas in themselves they are “blind.” And this power of manifestation
foreign to elements that are themselves blind, those that biology studies, is the
truth of the world.
The radical opposition—berween, on the one hand, the phenome- nological mat-
ter of which Life is made as self-revelation, as original truth, and. on the other
hand, the nonphenomenological matter of the elements constitutive of chemical
or specifically biological properties—raises an em- barrassing but unavoidable
question, {hat of the relation between the ap- Jproach of Christianity and that
of contemporary science, a relation that
[can only appear. it would scems, conflictual. Christ did not know about all the
marvelous discoveries of twentieth-century biology, and, such being the case, the
discourse he professed about life takes no account of them. When he declares,
in a sentence to which we will return, that “lam . . . the Life” (John 14:6), he
does not mean that he is a composite of molecules. And even those among his
contemporaries who see him as only 2 man, or
at most a prophet, do not therefore consider him a “neuronal man.” One might
point out that, at the time Christ lived, science had not
This Truth Called Life 35
yet been born. What was known about a man could be reduced to the im-
mediate expression of the data of sensory perception—a naive under-
“standing upon which was erected the whole set of anthropological and re- ‘li-
gious conceptions that constitute common belief. Whar Christ raught ‘concern-
ing what is most essential in man, and his supposed relation with
the absolute derived from ignorance.

29
This is a strange ignorance, since in its negative definition—as igno- rance pure
and simple—ignorance would be unable to produce anything ar all, not even
the collective representations of an era, which are also assigned
a particular origin (despite their pejorative denotations) in immediate and
ordinary perception. It is this sensory perception of things, as well as the
* sensory networks habitually established among them and serving as the foun-
dation of various ways of judging, reasoning, and evaluating, thar ro-
gether constitute the ideology of a given society ar any moment in its his- tory.
This common way of thinking determines the behavior, customs, and ultimately
the ethics of that society. Bur the teaching of Christ unfortu- nately has nothing
to do with this sensory, immediate, empirical, and prac- tical knowledge that
constitutes the bedrock of a society. One could say that he pursues the very
opposite. In the universe of ordinary perception, one sees the bodies of the
dead decompose in the earth rather chan recurn- ing to life in “Heaven.” In the
universe of perception, wealth decays and clothing is devoured by worms, metals
are eaten by rust. In the universe of perception, dwellings are built by people’s
hands. But Christ speaks of a wealth that does not rot away, and James and
Paul of 2 mezal that does not rust, of dwellings that are not built by people’s
hands.
And it is nor only things but people and their actions that suddenly obey other
laws than those of ordinary perception. In the blinding illumi- nation of Life, in
its unapproachable light, along come the living, stagger- ing as if drunk, their
customary behavior turned upside down. The one who would be first finds
himself seated in the last row, the one who hoards money is deprived of his
wealth, the one who has nothing now possesses every- thing, the one who is
thirsty is no longer thirsty, the one who is hated by all should be glad because
he suffers, and the one who suffers is happy. The one who knows nothing knows
everything, the one who knows everything knows nothing, fir is difficult, in truth,
to attribute such propositions to the knowledge of ordinary perception, to the
naive ideology of an era
Could the chemistry of molecules tell us more about these paradoxes,
)
36 This Truth Called Life
which after all concern the life of everybody every day? Should we think thar,
if Christ had had the opportunity to rake classes in biology at any in- stitute of
biology, he would have been led to modify in any appreciable way his conception
of life—a conception according to which, for example, “whoever wants ro save
his life will lose it, bur whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24)?
Might we rather say, either to avoid polemics or to remove a real difficulty, thar
Christianity and biology are not speaking about Jabe same thing, that their
discourses do not interfere with each other, that | |any comparison berween

30
them makes no sense? Or, to the contrary, thar (there is only one Life, thar of
Christ, which is also that of God and men, and that, to this single and unique life
that is self-revelation—and, morcover, the Ise f-reyelation of God himself—only
the word of Christ can testify?
Ye have been supposing that in Christ’s era people knew nothing (or nothing
much) abour life] Now let us propose the reverse hypothesis. Ler us suppose
that today, at a time when biology has achieved its most inci- sive progress, 2
mounting ignorance is developing on the subject of what life really is—and that,
far from involving only biology. this ignorance ex- tends to the whole realm
of scientific expertise, which, thanks especially to the cult made of it, ends up
infecting the whole public mind. In this case, it would indeed be that the latter—
the spirit of our times, the modern spirit, and thus each person determined by
it—would know less than ever what life is, what a person is. And since it cannot
be a marter here of a sim- ple hypothesis, let us bring this line of reasoning as
much ro bear on the scientific knowledge of our era as on its collective (and to
a certain extent popular) ideology.
s for what science is, we cannot forget the initial decision from which it proceeds
and which will altogether determine it, as well as the world that is its own—
which is our own] The conclusions reached by Galileo ar the
jstarc of the seventeenth century assign to the new science the task of know-
fing the real universe. which is constituted of an array of material objects
measurable in space. Henceforth, the knowledge that should make acces- sible
to us the reality of the universe cannot be sensory knowledge) as had been the
case in the past—the variable knowledge of one individual or an- other, which
is incapable of resulting in universal propositions and is espe- Jeialy ill-suited to
the reality to be known. Thar reality is not, in fact. sen- sible, and the sensible
properties of things do not inhere in the essential ature of things themselves:
they are content to express the empirical and
This Trurh Called Life 37
contingent structures of the animal nature within us—our factitious bio- logical
organization. fo know the universe in an adequate way therefore
implies that, these sensible properties having been sev-aside-as illusory, we
The mathematical determination of the geometric properties of real bodies, as
proposed by Descartes in the wake of the new Galilean science, conferred on
that science its modern physiog- nomy: a physical and mathemarical approach
to the’material particles that constitute the reality of our universe.
Even a moment’s reflection on the genesis of this science thar will up- set the
world, thus opening the way to what we conveniently call moder-
nity, is enough for us to catch sight of the initial reduction thar it im-
plies—namely, ¢ i iti i To take the measure of such a reduction—to grasp its
importance for the fu- ture of humanity not just in a historical but in a properly

31
metaphysical sense, one that affects the destiny of man himself—is to understand
thar the exclusion of sensible qualities implies the exclusion of the sensibility
without which these sensible qualities would not exist. Bur za exclude sen-
sibiliny is. fo exclude che. phenomenological Life thar defines the Truth-of .
This is so be-
cause feeling is possible only fr this place where “experiencing oneself” reigns,
in the original self-revelation of which Life is the essence) Consid- ered from the
viewpoint of scientific development, the exclusion of sensi- ble qualities might
appear a methodological postulate whose legitimacy re- lates to its extraordinary
practical fecundity. In addition, sensible qualities belong to the object, at least
under the guise of apparent qualities: like the object itself, they appear in the
world. Science believes that it continues to operate in its own proper domain
when it reduces these properties to their material physical substrate. What
escapes science is that sensible qualities never exist as the simple properties of
an object. Before being projected onto that object, they are pure subjective i
impressions that | in fact presup- pose sensibility. i The exclusion of life by the
Galilean decision that inaugurates modern science concerns biology above all.
In this field thar decision manifests its most remarkable effect, orienting research
toward the chemical and then the physical substrata of biological phenomena
and their specific functioning. The absolutely necessary consequence is that at
the culmination of such re-
nan
het yo
“7
Pd
pry
38 This Truth Called Life
Jrearch: one finds only physical and chemical processes, and nothing thar re-
Jsembles the internal ordeal thar every living undergoes of its life—nothing
*} J that resembles the very fact of “Living,” meaning the original self-revelation
| that characterizes Life as a pure phenomenological essence and the truth in !
the sense given it by Christianity. This consequence does not follow from the
research itself, from its progress or its own vicissitudes, but rather from
”its initial methodological postulate) In its inaugural decision, having placed
sensible life, phenomenological life in general, outside its field of study, Galilean
science would assuredly not be able to discover it again through re- earch, even
though ir calls itself biology. And in fact biology never encoun- frets life. knows
nothing of it, has not the slightest idea of it. When by some extraordinary
circumstance it is biology itself that speaks—biology and not a biologist who is
imbued with the ideals or prejudices of his time—it pro- nounces a sentence on

32
itself, declares truthfully and lucidly what it is: “Biol- ogists no longer study
life today.” We must take it at its word: in biology there is no life; there are
only algorithms. Thus it is not the case that in the time of Abraham or of
Melchizedek and in the time of Christ people knew nothing about life, whereas
at the end of the twentieth century. before our amazed and vaguely uneasy eyes,
the veil has begun to lift from secrets hidden since the world’s origin. Rather.
the ‘contrary is true: today. despite the marvelous progress of science, or rather
because of it, we know less and less abou life. br. more exactly, we ne longer
know anything about it, not even that it exists) And this is what biology tells
us, saying that under its gaze, in its field of investigation, which is scientifi- cally
circumscribed and defined, nothing whatsoever of the “Living” of life ”is ever
shown. In truth, biology does not say even that, because to say it you have to at
least know what this “Living” is, have a vague idea of it. Buc biol- ogy does not
know this, hasn’ the faintest idea of io Biologists themselves know what life is.
They do not know it in their capacity as biologists, since biology knows nothing
about it. They know it like everyone else, since they, too. live and love life, wine,
and the opposite sex: they ger jobs, have carcers, and themselves experience
the joy of new de- partures, chance encounters, the boredom of administrative
tasks, the an- guish of death. But these sensations and emotions, these desires,
this happi- ness or resentment—all those experiences and ordeals that are c just
$0 many \of life’s epiphanies—are in their eyes only “pure appearance.”
“Appearance” implies in the first place that there is no need to study
This Truth Called Life 39
sw ou . . it. “Appearance,” “pure appearance,” or “mere appearance” in effect
desig-
nate an apparition that has no intrinsic value, which does not contain .
own raison d’étre, that is not explained by itself. “Appearance” means the
appearance of another thing; it refers back to thar other thing and finds i
sole explanation there. Therefore biologists do nor concern themselves with the
appearances that are the modalities of life; their phenomenological sta- tus does
not interest them. They never perceive them in themselves as im- pressions,
sentiments, desires, joys. In these appearances, or rather through
* them, they seize upon electric currents or chains of neurons. The reduction of
absolute phenomenological Life to the content of biology—this reduc-
tion that biology never completes and of which it in fact has no idea—is
”practiced by biologists as a matter of course. Instead, for the self-revelation
af-absalure phenomenological Life, of which they have knowledge nly fromm
inside this self. revelas | theough it Bae ol i
(dng, living fo on ts pheamenalogical Life and i alone. they substie bei Fic ul

33
This is an absurd reduction if it means asserting thar what is experi- enced in
the infrangible parhétik embrace of suffering or joy is in reality something thar
experiences nothing and is in principle incapable of doing so: material particles.
This is an untenable reduction, since the phenome- nological laws of life—fhose,
for example, exhibited by Christianity in is ageless wruc}—have no relation
to biological, chemical. or physical laws, which have never pretended to be the
laws of absolute phenomenological Life. Never has nonphenomenological marter
presented itself as the phe- uemenological mater of life, as irs self-revelation—
which it certainly is nor.
Science has never practiced any reductionism unless of a purely method- ological
sort. It is scientists, forcing science to say what it does not say, who profess
this reductionism. Those who murder life are those who, depriving life of the
self-revelation that constitutes its essence at the same time as that
of all livings, and ering seat pri pe ee
norhing-teduce-everything that lives, and experiences itself a< living, 10.2 set
of blind processes-and to-death.
Reductionist illusions set aside, we must stick to the effective content of science.
The true question will henceforth be the following: Why does the living of life
never appear in the field of phenomena taken up by biol- ogy? As important as
its role in the definition and development of modern
40 This Truth Called Life
gcience has been, does the Galilean reduction suffice to explain why, para- Yiox-
ically life absents itself from the field of biology, as it does, moreover, from any
field of scientific investigation? 1s it really this act of ruling out the sen- sible
qualities of things that has caused to vanish, at the same rime as these quali-
ties themselves, the sensibility to which they necessarily refer back— rand thus
phenomenological life itself, even though it is present in sensibil- iy as that
which originally makes life sensible, as the “feeling of oneself” lwithour which
no sentient thing would ever feel anything?
” However, let us consider the world before the Galilean reduction— the sensible
world in which people live, where there are colors, odors, and sounds, tactile
qualities such as hard and soft. gentle and rough, where things are never given
to us except as clothed in axiomatic qualities such as harmful or advantageous,
favorable or dangerous, friendly or hostile. We are then forced ro recognize thar,
despite these sensible or affective deter-
minations that return everything to life—ro such an extenr thar contem-
porary phenomenology has called this world of concrete experience. this Mworld.
before science, the lifeworld (Lebenswels)—Llife never shows isselfin-it—
And it is for this reason alone that life is not shown in any field of theoret- ical
investigation (especially that of biology) either: whatever the impor- tance of
the processes of abstract purification in preparation for a specifi- leally scientific

34
treatment. this field of investigation has already assumed the form of a world,
having had at the outset to offer itself to view and thus to the truth of the world.
{hus we are sent back to the decisive thesis of
, Christianity, to wit, that the Truth of Life is irreducible to the truth of the
world, so that it never shows itself in the world) It is this reciprocal exclu- sion
between the Truth of Life and that of the world that we must exam- ine more
closely.
o In the world, do we not see, apart from inanimate things, living be- ings, and
even our own life, as more or less similar to that of animals? It is true: we sce
living beings but never their life. If we reflect a bit more on the
[perception that we have of such beings, we realize char a signification is in-
therent in that perception—the signification “living being” —and it is that sig-
nification, coupled with an intuitive grasp of their objective bodies, that make
of these bodies living bodies and make of these beings what they are for us:
living beings. But grasping this signification is by no means equiv-
alent vo the perception of life itself. fo signify means to aim “into the void)’ \
in such a way that no intuition of reality yet cqrresponds with this target.
Pa)
This Truth Called Life 43
When I form the signification “dog,” for example by using the word “dog,” I do
nor perceive a real dog. Similarly, when I perceive livings, I confer on them the
signification of “livings” without perceiving their own life in it-
self, as they experience it. Ipis.precisely because we do nar perceive Life in itself
thar we arrive ar it only in the form of 20 empty signification or, to
9) use Husserl’s term. of a nematic, unceal significarion. This signification is
invested in the living being and determines its perception to the point that the
living being is not conceivable without it. To take another example from Husserl:
“these eyes are perceived as ‘eyes that see,’ these hands as ‘hands that touch™
[trans. modified].? Such significations nevertheless re- main empty, incapable of
containing reality. Whatever the philosophical analysis one offers of them. they
merely signify life without being able to give it in person.
Here we should introduce a radical difference between significations )
relating to life, and thus to the whole set of the living, and those referring to
things. When we say, “The tree is green,” we have formed the meaning “tree”
and the meaning “green” without any tree or any green color being present
before us as the * “real” tree or “real” color. Like any signification in ener, st
ke ai heir obi th, . . ” lly wrnishi ive inruiri But these empty intentions can
be filled in ac any moment. This is what happens in my experience when, after

35
having thought of a green tree or having spoken of it, I suddenly apprehend one.
Then the empty signification is converted into a full intu-
ition, which » we call: a perception. Avy empty signification concerning things
—
tion, into 7 : gnificasion intending life. Such a signification—for example, “liv-
ing” —is incapable of being transformed into a real perception of life or of a
particular life. And this is not because this life “would not exist,” but precisely
because it is in- capable of giving itself to a perception, of becoming visible
in the truth of the world. oan ada, est The incapacity of modern biology to
give access to life itself is not specific to biology. It is not specific to science in
general and thus does not result from the Galilean reduction from which this
science proceeds. There is a similar impotence in any knowledge that opens
onto a world or, more profoundly, in any form of experience that demands and
borrows its phe-
nomenality from that of the world, from the world’s truth. But the presup-
42 This Truth Called Life
position that every form of experience borrows its phenomenality from that
of the world will come to dominate Western thought. This whole manner of
thinking misses Life in the sense we are giving it—in the sense Chris- ltianity
gives it: that of ical Li i
DR
experiences oneself in one’s “Living.” This phenomenological Life that ex-
© periences itself, this actual life that is ours, thar inhabits each of our joys
and sufferings, desires and fears, and above all the most humble of our sen-
sations, therefore constitutes the great absence in the philosophical and cul-
tural tradition to which we belong. But how could such an absence go un-
detected? Why does it not present itself as the greatest paradox, unbearable
fo all those who live this life, wha borrow from it at every instant, without M
ever being able to pay off the debr—rheir own condition as living? he dissimula-
tion of the absolute phenomenological Life that is the sole real life, which does
not cease in its “Living” to experience itself}—this will be a principal theme
in our reflections. And because this dissimulation of life is also, in cach living,
that of its veritable condition, that condition will by the same token constitute
a privileged subject in our study. These questions are those of Christianity, 100.
For the time being, let us be con- stent with a more limited line of questioning:
When a tradition has tra- versed the centuries to result in European culture,
how has such a culture been able to function in relation to the essential reality
that is our life with- out placing it at the forefront of its preoccupations, without
making it the keystone of its various systems of conceptualization? The answer
is power- fully simple: it was by substituting, for this essence dissimulated in

36
life, the consideration of each and all thar lives. But for this substitution to
work, for it to result in the occultation by Western thought of the original es-
sence of life and its “Living,” it was necessary that this substitution be re- pro-
duced on the very plane of the living that came to replace life before the gaze
of that thought. It was necessary, with regard to each and every living, chat iss
external appearance in the truth of the world be substiruted for its self- i\giving
in the Living of life, for the self-revelarion of that life.
And this is what has happened since classical antiquity, and no doubt took place
even before that. [The living is a being that shows itself in the world among all
the other beings and in the same way as they do—among all the other beings,
living or not, and subsequently sustaining with them
|| multiple relations that are themselves worldly, that are disclosed in the i world
and draw their character from it) The living’s belonging to the world
i
This Truth Called Life 43
is so forceful that it determines it from the moment of its birth—which consists
of nothing other than its coming into the world and is exhausted in 50 doing.
It remains to be known what distinguishes this living being from all others,
inasmuch as their mode of apparition is the same—this same and unique world,
with its identical modes of appearance for all,
those spatial and temporal intuitions and the reciprocal correlations to which
they are subject. ife in irs Living i i
. Tinian? warth mi iving? Its properties and characteristics, of which the other
thing is deprived. But these properties and characteristics are objective, they
appear in the world: properties and functions like mobility, nutrition, excretion,
reproduction. And it is these functions unfolding in the form of objective pro-
cesses, and taken as such, thar allow us to characterize the beings possessing
these functions as living beings and to define them as such.
We are left with the enigma of understanding why such functions are considered
to be characteristics of life. {It is not their role as distinctive cri- teria that is
the problem, since one could just as well choose any criteria— decide that the
phenomena bearing onc group of properties are to be placed in the class ”A” and
those without them in the class “not-A.) But why are the phenomena in the first
class designated as “living?” Why are functions like nutrition, mobility, and so
on, considered-specific ta life and hence ca- pable of differentiating specifically
vital qualities? After all, they are only ob- jective phenomena, none of which
reveals within itself life in its “Living,” such as life is revealed to itself. On the
level of sense perception, it is true that these phenomena spontaneously receive
the signification “living be- J ing.” They are perceived as such, or, as Husserl
said, as hands that touch, eyes that see. That which touches within them is life,
That which wees) within them is life. But within the objective process to which
the act of

37
touching is reduced, since it is shown in the truth of sce and cannot see life j
ificisli In the objective movement of the eye or the glance, since it is shown in
the truth of the world, we do not see and cannot see life—we cannot see irs
Seeing. if it is life that sees. Why then do we attribute to them this meaning
of heing Flife self, iF life irself Is itself in thei worldly appearance?
We have said that significations concerning life, unlike those relating
rv
W A tr
\ Fg Vv A
{ gl J
gs
44 This Truth Called Life
to things, are incapable of receiving an intuitive fulfillment, of being trans-
formed into a perception. Now we can say a little more. It is not only the
impossibility that the signification “living” or “living being” can give us life
ythat is at issue, bur the origin of this signification itself. Where does it come
from, if life is never shown in the world, if the very idea of life—its | meaning—
cannor proceed from the truth of this world? It is not only the y possibility of
having access to life in the world that is barred. The issue is I the very possibility
of perceiving in the world a being endowed ar least I with the signification of
being a living being. an “organism.” if the origin
Woof this signification remains unknown.
, fr hat it is impossible for life to be revealed in the truth of the world becomes
evident in Galilean science) As in the case of naive sense percep- tion, it is the
living being. not life, that science studies. What it retains from this being,
as does immediate perception, are the characteristics by which that being is
given as living: functions, biological and physiological phenomena, considered
in their specificity. With sensibility having been subtracted, it is these objective
biological phenomena reduced to material processes—themselves reduced to the
parameters that express them—that constitute its object. There is no longer
anything of life’s Living, anything of the living. Thus the idea thar even the
most minor of these phenomena relates to living beings and belongs to them
concerns biology no more than does life itself. And with good reason, since
the signification of “living” or J ‘living being” fundamentally makes no sense
once it has been stripped of any relation to the Living of life. Biology studies
phenomena of the class
A” The concepts of life and of living are archaic meraphysical entities, no ong
currenf. “In biology there is no life; there are only algorithms.” The final
survival ‘of these obscure entities—”life,” the “viral force.” the “liv- ing”—in a
biology that has achieved a full understanding of itself, of its object and tasks,

38
lies basically in wha it is called—the name of this disci- pline, this bios that no
longer corresponds with anything and has no value cxcepr as an external and
conventional designation of phenomena of the class “A.”
If we consider the sum of the failings of Western thought with regard to the ques-
tion of life, we can find a significant example ar the endpoint of this thought’s
history in {the philosophy of Heidegger] And this is not by chance, if it is true
that. despite his repeated criticism of the history of West- ern metaphysics and
his own efforts to put an end to it, Heidegger’s phe-
This Truth Called Life 45
=,
nomenology recognized (thought through and took to the limit) only the
phenomenological presuppositions that had guided, or rather misguided, this
thought from the start. By inexorably a nd inge niously unveiling the im-
plications of the Greek concept of phenomenon, these presuppositions led is
uch of she world helng laid base. This phenomenology was not
ET A Far from turning us away from the world and its
” “insight,” this phenomenology concerns itself with nothing other than the
original event in which this insight is produced.
With respect to the question of life, the immediate consequences of
* these presuppositions are overwhelming. The first is the fact thar we know
‘nothing about a mode of revelation other than that in which the illumina- tion
of the world occurs. Life has na phenomenalogical existence if we un- degstand
it as a specific mode of the phenomenalization of pure phenom- enality. The
phenomenological nonexistence of life in this radical sense leads back to the
substitution exposed above, which has been recognized as
one of the most enduring traits of Western thought: the substirurion for life of
what is called che living being. Certainly this being presents charac-
teristics different from those of any random being; it has a particular type of
Being, Like any being, though, it derives its Being solely from its qual- ity as
phenomenon. How the living being shows itself to us—how we have access to
it. and, accordingly, how we have access to a life that reveals itself to us only
in the form of this being —is the ¢ question posed and answered in Being and
Time: “Like : it is only accessible in-Dasein.™
Given that the Dasein that pretends to define the essence of a person | is essen-
tially an opening into the world, a Being-in- -the-world, In-der-Welt-
sein, it follows tha i d] Life is
nottruth. It is not,-in itself and. through-isself-apower ar mode of phe-

39
nomenalization. Life is not what gives-aceess, what clears a path ro—noris it.
whar shows, makes.manifest, reveals. Life is not the path to follow if you
want to arrive at what makes the essential-Being of man. his veritable real- ity.
Nor is life the path to follow if you want to arrive at life. Jr is not life that
gives access 10 itself. It is because life is not a power of revelation that it is also
not wha gives access to itself, what reveals itself—that it is not self- revelation.
If the living arrives at life and enters into the condition of liv- ing, this is not
thanks to life. It is only because he is open to the world, in)
sscntially €—
46 This Truth Called Life
Irelation with the truth of the world and defined by this relation, that man is
related ro himself. But it is for the same reason that he is related to life, If it is
nor as living that a person has access to life, then neither is ic as liv-
ing that he knows whar life is. It is only. to the extent that. a person is open
to the world rhar he is related, and can be related, to living heings—to life.
This set of aporias is not specific to Heidegger’s thought; it results from the
oY | phenomenological presupposition according to which “to show oneself” ” |
means “ro show oneself in a world,” in the ek-static truth of its “outside.” vo t is
because the truth is reduced ro that of the world, to a horizon of AN visibility,
that life, stripped of truth, of the power of revealing, finds itself reduced to
something that shows itself in the truth of the world. in the il- lumination of its
“outside” —finds itself seduced t0.an entity) The calami- tous confusion of Life
with a living being, or to use another kind of lan- guage. with a living organism,
results directly from the phenomenological 3” failing of Western thought. from
its permanent powerlessness to conceive fo pt of Life as rruth—and, moreover-
as-the-osiginal essence of truth, Whar is ) true of living organisms as objective
empirical beings appearing in the world “oy according to the mode of appearing
specific to that world, is attribured withour question to life itself. Once its self-
revelation inside Life is elimi- nared, the manifestation of the living is no longer
anything other, in fact, than its external appearance in the form of a being or a
living organism en- dowed with the particular “kind of Being” tha life, reduced
to and defined by the empirical properties of this entity, has become:
Such a reduction, similar in appearance to the Galilean kind and like it con-
cerned only with worldly phenomena, is in fact torally different. The Galilean
reduction has. in principle, only a methodological significance: it leaves outside
its field of interest the decisive phenomenological question of | knowing whether
there exists 2 mode of revelation other than that in which
the phenomena of the world give themselves to us. It is from the radical negation
of such a made of revelation that Heideggerian thought proceeds. If such a mode
of revelation, as a self-revelation foreign to the “outside” of the world, constitutes
the essence of life, then its negation signifies nothing less chan the impossibility

40
of any form of life, and thus amounts to the mur- der of life—not accidentally
but rather in principle.
It is thus the affirmation thar life at least is “a particular kind of Be- ing” that
causes a problem. It is indicative of Heidegger’s embarrassment
that his approach ro life is obliged to pursue different paths. To the extent
This Truth Called Life 47
”that pur access to life reveals Dasein and takes place in the world, the philo-y
sophical problematic of life resembles the scientific approach more than it might
wish} Once and for all, it is living organisms considered from the
- outside, and the objective processes of which they are the site, that furnish
the macerial for analysis and impose a method. Like the biologist, the phi-
* fosopher then chooses the simplest of organisms, protoplasmic, single-celled
”creatures, to sketch by means of example a theory of the organ, a theory
whose aim is not so different from that of science. Moreover, it is from sci-
ence, from the biology of his day, that Heidegger borrows the knowledge
he uses to construct his interpretation of life. Although, regarding certain prob-
lems, such an interpretation may have at its command more elaborate
concepts borrowed from the Dasein analytic, it does not escape the aporia
”into which science itself tumbles. Js it not paradoxical for someone who © was
ta know wha : ;
ar life ic to go and ack protozoa, ar, ar best, honeybees? It iy us if we bad a
relation wivh life that was every bit as totally external and Land fp)
tle as the one we have with beings about which we know pothing— tle As ifawe
were not purselves living,
The application of this totally extravagant methodology leads us, then, to some
disheartening conclusions: from now on, man must know nothing about his own
life, and the life in him must know nothing of it- self, in order that single-celled or-
ganisms can become the new masters of our understanding of life Life is repressed
inte-aclosed- domain that of an- imal nature, so that ir now presents.itself ac
a ser of enigmac. Thar this life is part of man, whether he is understood as a
rational animal or as Dasein, which could only be a living Dasein, with hands to
connect him to the “present-at-hand” (Vor-handen) or to the “ready=to-hand”
(Zu-handen)— does not prevent life from remaining in him and for him an un-
known, whose mystery can be only partially resolved by recourse to protozoa
and bees. And the reason for all these aporia and paradoxes and absurdiries is
that only this external relation to objective organisms, that is to say, in the

41
How far such fegerdemai goes we sce when Heidegger turns to con- sider living
Being no longer as some being subject to a power of revelation that is foreign
to it—specifically, as Dasein—but as bearing within itself,
I mals
48 This Truth Called Life
despite everything, a power that alone is capable of differentiating that be- ing
from some sort of thing or tool—of some dead being. An animal be- haves;
it has the capacity to move and to react to specific stimuli. This capacity is
foremost thar of being affected by those stimuli, of being in re- lation with an
environment, and relating to an environment is possible only in the form of
Being-in-the-world. The bee returning to its hive, guided by the sun, is open
to that sun, in such a way that the sun can act on it, excite it, and determine
its behavior. It is Being-in-the-world, a Being-in-the world now internal to the
animal, that accounts for animal nature and all the properties by which one
defines it, in ignorance of the. sod nt tion specific to life. Thus the failin, i ion
is expased. First of all, it does not consider life as im in its essence, as having
the power to reveal. It is up to Being-in-the-world to give us access to the
living. Second, when this power is conceded to it, life is not understood either
in its originality ar in its origination, but as a fallen mode of the only known
power of manifestation, that of Being-in- the-world. If, all the same, man is
an animal and Dasein a living thing, it is the relation, in them, of Being-in-the
world, open to the world despite the fomnambulisti forms taken by this relation,
thar remains enigmatic. And flstill more enigmatic is the capacity of the drive,
as much in man as in ani- to be in possession of oneself and thus to be able to
act.*|Only the
| insights offered by rhe Christian concept of man will permit us’to pene-
trate this ultimate mystery,
s it correct to assert that life remained the poor relative of Western thought, the
object of its disdaing Without mentioning exceptional thinkers or mystics who
viewed it as the loftiest authority, how can we forger its irruption into the fore-
ground of European thought when Schopenhauer published his major work, The
World as Will and Representation, in 1818 By [‘representation” Schopenhauer
meant nothing less than the manner of ap- fd of the world as it had recently been
redefined by Kant in the great renewal of critical thought. Ir is this truth of the
world that Schopenhauer questioned in such an inspired way, not by ignoring
ir, bur by radically sub- ordinating it to what fie calls the will, which is just an-
other name for life) Instead of leading to arbitrary or debatable assertions, the
determination of the entire world of representation by the irrepressible power
of the will-to- live is destined to result, through the intermediaries of Niewzsche
and Freud in particular, in a reestablishment of Furopean culture on entirely
new
This Truth Called Life 49

42
undations. {These foundations are supplied by this way of thinking about
and are so powerful that in effect they reduce the faculties that tradi-
y defined humanitas to a secbiudaly role and the intellect itself ro the <— of 2
mere “vale” of th ~to-live]-Moreover, this revolution is not
| to the lie of philosophy or thinking, properly speaking: all
s of culture will find themselves turned upside down—literature, the-
morality, painting, art in general, cinema. In each of these realms, the
ork of the greatest creators appears as the expression or evidence of this
A
The most ei characteristic of the advent of life in the fore- nd of modern cultural
preoccupations, as the Schopenhauerian tide bmerged Europe in the final decade
of the nineteenth century and the two or three decades of the twendeth, vas
however the denaturation d falsification of life itself, a denaturation so serious
that it resulted in
very pl rl SY Sr ah dlluminated b 1] phenome nology. Is
E i A ON AE negation of the specific power of revelation of life has a phe-
nomenological dimension as 3 well. Because, for Schopenhauer as after him for
Freud, the power of mak- E % i gs, resides In represensation—in the fact of
being placed before, in the “outside” of the world—life, which \ isalien to this
“outside,” inevitably finds itself deprived of the power of ac-
~ complishing in and through itself the work of revelation—it becomes blind) *
and unconscious. Ablind and unconscious life. life-thaedesises-wichout
astruggle against itself, it becomesthe-souree-of-all-that-ravages the uni- verse—
to the point that the concept, now eminently suspect, can be asso- ciated in
scandalous fashion with the atrocities, monstrosities, and geno- cides of which
our century has been the theater.
Polemics aside, how could we not notice the very disturbing link be- tween these
diverse ways of slandering life? (The first, improperly attributed to biology by
many of those who think they speak in its name, consists of reducing life to
material processey. The second, which pretends to be philo-
so This Truth Called Life
¢ sophical, oscillates between the confusion of the living with a being made
manifest through being-in-the-world and the definirion of the phenome- ”ality
proper to the living by attributing to it a fallen and almost hallucina- tory form
of this same being-in-the-world. (The third makes life the meta-
~” physical principle of the universe, but by stripping it of the capacity to reveal

43
itself, to experience and to live, by stripping it of its essence) Life is only a plind
entity, like the processes to which Galilean science reduces it. Under- neath
these diverse ways of despising life, it is easy to recognize the common Iroot:
the incapacity to construct a phenomenology of life. By way of an awesome
and timeless antithesis, Christianity opposes to these disparaging views on life
its own decisive intuition of Life as Truth. fi is like a trumpet call prefiguring
the angels of the Apocalypse who echo Christ’s words: “I am the Way and
the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). We begin to understand the two final
terms of this proposition, though we sel- dom read them in that order. Not
only does Christ say—against the scien- tism and positivism of all ages, against
Greek phenomenology, against [Schopenhauer and against Freud—rhat, far from
being absurd, blind, or | unconscious, alien to phenomenality, Li is Truth. He
affirms, more fun- damentally. the contrary, thar Truth is Lifd. The primordial
Revelation that stears everything from nothingness by enabling it to appear and
thus to be lis for the first time revealed to itself in an embrace that precedes all
things, thar precedes the world and owes nothing to it—fn a state of absolute self-
H enjoyment that has no other name than Life + This radical phenomenology
according to which Life is constirutive of the primordial Revelation, that is to
say, of the essence of God, is joined with an entirely new conception of man, his
definition on the basis of Life land also as constituted by it—of man as living.
{Whar we must perceive clearly is the extent to which such a conception is novel,
alien in any case to Western thoughy. In the classic conception originating in
Greece, @ man is more than a living, a man is a living endowed with Logos, that
is to say, with reason and language, as we have seen. It follows, reciprocally,
that life is less than man, or in any event less than what makes his humanity.
Hence Hei- Idegger’s assertion thar life can only be understood in a negative or
privative way, on the basis of what is specific to man: {The ontology of life is
accom- plished by way of a privative Interpretation; it determines what must be
the case if there is to be something thar is more than just life) [trans. modified].
According to Christianity. on the contrary, Life is more than man, by which
|
Life is equally more than man adequately understood as living. Life isimare
than the livi i i
apd thesame ol, FA Gad pas
1” This Truth Called Life 1
we understand more oud what makes his humanity in the eyes of classical
thought. (more than Logod more than reason and language. Life thar speaks n
s everything, or in any case much more than reason—And
But—and here is another absolutely decisive thesis of Christianity—
It is these two decisive theses of Christianity that we must first ex- plore, if
we still wish to understand a word about this kind of thought, or rather, this
religion that is Christianity.

44
To the extent that Life is more than man understood as living, it is
. ]
and that of God are ane
To the extent that, in God himself, Life precedes the living, it is in
Him, 100, through Life, through the eternal and immutable process whereby
Life is made, that we must make a starr.
The selazion of Life-to- she ling isthe central thesis of Christianity. Such a rela-
tion is called, from life’s viewpoint, veneration. and from the liv- ing’ viewpaint,
bigth It is Life that generates any conceivable living thing, But this generation
of the living can be accomplished by Life only insofar as itis capable of engender-
ing itself. (a Life that is capable of engendering it- self, what Christianity calls
God, we are calling absolute Life}—or, for rea- sons that will emerge later, ab-
solute phenomenological Life. Tnsofar as the relation of Life to the living occurs
inside God himself, it is produced as the generation of the First Living at the
core of Life’s self-generation. Insofar as such a relation concerns not just God’s
relationship with himself but also his relationship with man. it is produced as
the generation of transcendental man at the core of God’s self-generarion. We
will see how this generation of transcendental man within the self-generarion of
God implies the genera ) tion, within this self-generation, of the First Living,
What is generated in Life as the First Living Christianity calls the first- born
Son, or the only Son, or, in Hebraic tradition. the Christ or Messiah. What is
generated in Life as man, that is to say, as man himself, it calls “Son of God.”
Absolute Life, as it engenders itself and, in doing so, engenders the First Living,
is what Christianity calls Father. Our analysis must therefore follow this path:
| 52 This Truth Called Life
| 1: The self-generation of absolute Life as the generation of the First
I / Living, of the “firstborn and only Son”—which we will call, for I. reasons to
be explained later, the transcendental Arch-Sor)
| “ 2- The self generation of absolute Life as the generation of transcen-1/ /
dental man, of his transcendental “me.” of his transcendental 8
ego—or the generation of man as the “Son of God.” MA r
vw Vl
In both cases, we are dealing, in Christianity, with h transcendental phenomenol-
ogy) whose central concepts are those of Father and Son. The Christian ng) of
the transcendental birch subverts our customary idea , If birth, in the same way
thar Christian concepts of Father and Son will ) *Yoverturn the current repre-
sentations of “father” and “son.” This is the rea- 4% son why we are introducing
the philosophical concept “transcendental,”
n.

45
\ [Fehich does nor refer to things such as we see them—a birth, a father. a
son—but refers back to their most interior possibility, to their essence. But the
possibility of birth, of something like a father or a son. is not seen, be- . cause
this possibility resides precisely in Life, which is not seen either. This [is why
we also call this Life a transcendental life. Transcendental” life is
| J ”| not a fiction invented by philosophy bur refers to the only life thar exists )
- As for the natural life that we think we see around us in the world, it docs wr
not exist, any more than does the supposed “biological” life. This is why there
are neither natural fathers nor sons in the sense of a father or son be- longing to
“nature” and open to explanation on that basis. {Do not call anyone on earth
‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven’ } (Matthew 23:9). But
these are already the radical and disconcerting propo-
sitions of Christianity that we must seek to understand.
} The Self-Generation of Life as Generation of
the First Living
J)
Xe
FE. Co . eo vine. in ”God as well as in man. This is why the elucidation of
what Christianity J} means by life. more precisely, its interpretation of life as
phenomenologi- cal in essence, as self-revelari i indi imi ing. Without rigorous
knowledge of what Christianity takes as life, such a teaching is reduced to a
tissue of enigmatic propositions barely heard, and only by “believers,” those
who make such assertions without understanding them. On the other hand,
for someone who penetrates the interior essence of Life, the enigmatic coir) of
Christianity is suddenly illuminated in a light of such intensity that any one
perceiving it in this light finds himself profoundly unsettled. Every- thing that
appeared until then to be self-evident—this so solid and certain world in which
it is hardly possible not to believe, the things that populate it, the affairs of men
that form the subject of their everyday cares and pre- occupations, the kinds
of knowledge concerning objects as well as activi- ties, the network of sciences
developing today with impressive rigor and ra- pidity, the technical prowess that
results—all that suddenly tumbles into insignificance. How can the mysterious
Life of God,-set-forth in a series of “dogmas,” be capable ofp ing i 2 - etraie ir
in-order—to share in-its Revelation-and-ind-ousselveswransformed Jy ir? These
are precisely the questions of Christianity, ta which we are al- ready able ro give
parsial answers.
yy
54 The Self-Generation of Life
According to Christianity there exists only one Life, the unique es- sence of all
that lives. This does not mean an unchanging essence or an ideal

46
archetype, like that of a Circle that is present in all circles, bur rather an ac-
tive essence, deploying itself with an invincible force, a source of power, the
power of engendering that is immanent in anything that lives and unceas- ingly
gives it life. Inasmuch as chis Life is that of God and is identified with Him, the
Apostle could write: “One God and Father of us all, who is over all and through
all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6). To the extent that God alone ° this unique Life
that generates all living things, Christianity appears as a monotheism. What
separates it from other monotheisms (except Judaism), as well as from the
rarional or natural theologies in which these mono- theisms have sought a form
of expression liable to rally all reasonable peo- ple. is that this unique God is
nor thoughe by the mindYle is nor a Being en- dowed with all the conceivable
atrributes conferred on an absolute power. oran infinite Being, “a being than
which nothing greater can be conceived” and wha for shis reason necessarily
exists, If the Christian God has nothing in common with the infinitely great
Being of Saint Anselm, which will be taken up in all the classical proofs of
the existence of God and will serve as their pillar, any more than it does with
Aristotle’s prime mover, or else with tle audlior of the best of all possible worlds,
or with the simple concept of 2 unique God with whom no ather will later be
able to compete—this is for (the decisive reason that God is not something to
which our thought can
VL . . . | provide access. Thus any rational representation, even more so any
proof of
. God’s existence, is absurd in principle—because to prove is to “make seen,”
to make seen in the light of ineluctable evidence, in that horizon of visibil-
ity that is the world and in which life is never revealed. We will have occa- sion
to return to this point? as Pe hp gaa Aged”
If God is Life, then the first results of the phenomenological analysis of life
make it possible to understand che fundamental arguments of Chris- tianity.
Life never being shown in the world, as we have just recalled, it is therefore
impossible to perceive it there, unless in the form of illusory sig- nifications
coupled to objective processes, significations whose origin re- mains unexplained
as long as one sticks to the appearance of the world and seeks this origin therd,
Absent from the world, life is thus also absent from the field of biology, which
is a worldly one. Hence the question arises: Is it still possible to have access to
Life, that is to say, to the essence of God himself? And if so, where and how?
The Self-Generation of Life ss
» The answer, according to the phenomenology of life we have sketched here, is
as follows: we do have access to Life itself, Where? la-Life-How? gh Life. Thar
ir is anly in 1 ife and through ir that we can accede to. i (This was precisely
our first phenomenological approach ro life, its defi- Phi - nition as truth, or
rather the definition of Truch-as-Lifer life is selfureuelazion. ) A “Within life,
it is efrschar achieves revelation; and itself that is revealed.

47
© This is because it is lif€ itself that originally comes forth by itself, inasmuch
”as it is self-revelation and it comes first. Nothing and no one could ever come
forth if its coming forth in Life did not depend on the very coming forth of Life
in itself—and, beyond that, if its coming forth in life were not “identified with
the original coming forth of Life in itself.
Whar comes forth in Life is the living How rhe living emerges in E ted
in Life by depending on the very coming forth of Life in irself, hy identi- fing
ieselfwith ir with the selferevelation of life ieself that is identical with
~ Two urgent issues now arise. concesning the interior essence of God,
an the one hand, and the possibilicy of ensering into relationship with thar
cssence,on-the other. How does life come forth? How does the living thing
come forth in it? Since the living thing cannot come forth in life except on the
basis of the original coming forth whereby life comes forth in itself. the ) first
question subsumes the second.
‘What we must steadfastly rule out of the analysis of life—at least if we want
to grasp life as coming forth in itself and, moreover, to understand the
served, we are not using the verb “to be” on the subject of life—saying, for
example, life is.” and then taking this fallacious proposition as a piece of ev-
idence, even though we arc speaking of life in human language, which is thar
of the world—which is precisely that of Being) Life “is” nor. Rarher, it ageurs
and does nor cease occurring. This incessant coming of life is irs erer-
nal-coming forth ip jrself, a process withour end, a constant movement In
the eternal fulfillment of this process, life plunges into itself. crushes against
itself, experiences itself, enjoys itself, constantly producing its own essence, inas-
much as that essence consists in this enjoyment of itself and is exhausted
in it. Thus life conrinuously engenders irself. In this self generation without
end the active phenomenological effectuation of the coming-into-itself of
manner in which it does so—is the concepr of heing, As we have already ob- ¢
wd 7 Levy
$6 The Self-Generation of Life
life takes place as the coming into the experiencing-of-oneself within which anv
conceivable living resides. Sustained by the coming-into-itself of life and com-
pleting it, the “experiencing-oneself ” is itself a process in which what is experi-
enced occurs as always newly experienced, whereas Living resides in
ever detached: nothing slips away from it away-from-this self-moving self- expe-
rience, The movement by which life does nor cease to come into itself and thus
to enjoyment of itself—the movemenr of its own living, which it- self does not
cease, is never derached from itself bur remains eternally within itself—such is
therefore the process in which the essence of life consists, its self-generation.

48
Since the coming-into-itself of life is its coming into the “experience- of-itself”
in which, when experiencing itself, it enjoys itself, it follows that this enjoyment
of self, this “feeling of oneself,” is the first form of any con- ceivable phenome-
nality. But the coming-into-itself of life is not merely the originating birth of
phenomenalicy, that is to say, of revelation) In itis un-
questionably revealed the manner in which this phenomenality is phenom- lenal-
ized. i in which this revelation is revealed: as pathos and in the affective at li
flesh of pathos. Hence nothing else is revealed in ix, if not itself. This is what
“to experience oneself” means: to experience what is, in its flesh, nothing ather
than that which experiences it] This identity between experiencing and what is
experienced is the origi ity. And now this, too, can no longer escape us: In the
process of self-generarion of life, that is, the process whereby life comes into its
own, is crushed against itself, experiences itself and enjoys itself, an essential
Ipseity is implicated as the condition withour which and outside of which no
process of this sort could ever be produced. Ipseity is not simply a condition
of the process of life’s self- generation; it resides within it as the very way this
process is achieved. Thus is created, conjointly with the coming-into-itself of
life in the experiencing: jof-itself and the enjoyment-of-itself, the original and
essential Ipscity from pe the experiencing-itself derives its possibility, the Ipse-
ity in which and {as which every experiencing-itsclf comes about. This process
whereby life generates itself is, as we know, a phenome- nological procesy Life
generates irself inasmuch as ir propels itself inta phe- nomenality in the form of
a self-revelarion. Bu ir is only. because this self-
this process as what it always experiences anew. Life is a self-movement that
The Self-Generation of Life 57
troduced, and insofar-as itis, that the process of self-generation ”8s anc with it,
thar the living of life is actualized.
} How can rhe process of self-generarion of life be jis self-reyelation? Tothe sense
thar life’s com ming-intp-itself, in the experiencing-itself in its pathiik embrace,
is its enjoyment of itself, The pathos of this enjoyment
defines the phenomenality of this coming-into-itself, the concrete phe- nomeno-
logical mode according to which, and thanks to which, the process of life’s
self-generation becomes thar of its self-revelation. Because an orig- F inal and
essential Ipseity is required by the process of life’s self-generation, ”it also be-
longs to that self-revelation. Moreover, the Ipseity in which life’s _pathérik
embrace takes place, generating itself by experiencing itself, is the concrete phe-
nomenological mode by which this process of self- generation
, is produced as its own self-revelatory process. Thus self-gencration as thar in
which rhis selfgeneration is achieved as selfs
asthar:which makes ir possible. i Inasmuch as the process of life’s self-generation,
being achieved as its ”process of self-revelation, is actually the same process—
inasmuch as life being cast into the self enjoys itself—the Ipseity that it en-

49
genders is also an active process, and a singular onc. It is a singular Self that
embraces it- self, affects itself, experiences itself and enjoys itself, in such a way
that this embrace of itself in which this Self embraces itself is no different from
the embrace in which life grasps irself, possesses itself, being simply the mode
inowhich ir does sa. Life can embrace-iasell and thus exes itsclfto
eanbraces—itsell as the phenomenalogical lfectuanion of izs own self
embrace. This singular Self within which life embraces itself, this Self that is
the sole possible mode in which this embrace occurs, is the First Living.
Thus, in its absolute self-generation, Life generates within ircclf He hose. the
farm of irs self couolation, The Father—if by this we understand the movement,
which nothing precedes and of which nobody knows the name, by which Life
is cast into itself in order to experience itself, this Father eternally engenders
the Son within himself, if by the latter we understand the First Living in whose
original and essential Ipscity the Father experi- ences himself.
Given that the progess of Life’s self-generarion cannot come about
§8 The Self-Generation of Life
Ww i without generating within itself this Son as the very mode inf which this
process takes place, the Son is as old as the Father, being, like him, present
| from the beginning. This is the reason we call the Son the Arch-Son, not
just the originating Son, not merely the one who, as in a human Ff family,
came along first, before his brothers and sisters, but the One whe inhabits
rthe Origin, the very Beginning—the One who is engendered in the very
| process whereby the Father engenders himself. Given thac the process of Life’s
self-generation is also that of its self-revelation, then the mode in_
which irs essential Ipscity is phenomenalized—meaning the San—mis the
) (1 “3 cnaliry is : is life i
ot embrace, its-enjoyment. Given that there is only one Life, and thus that
the ) process in which it eternally engenders itself is unique, then what is en-
gendered within it as the mode of this self-engendering is also unique, the Y
Unique Son as the Word with which he is identical, inasmuch as the self-
engendering of Life is its self-revelation. That the process of Life’s self-revelation
engenders in it the First Liv- ing as the Arch- Son i is what places us in the
presence of the concept of an
Arch-birth— es-not-take place-in a preexisting life
bu thar belongs as a constituent element ta the upsurge of this life itself, to.the
process, we might say. of life itself—implicated in ir, one with ir. We . i . ”
| En ; pe f

50
0 as to dissociate them co ™)
Ve So | pletely from any natural or worldly process, although the practical reaso
“#* +” for this characterization will only emerge later on. The concept of the
tran- }’ .. scendental Arch-birth belongs only to the Arch-Son and, to be precise,
ap- 1+” plies only to him. Its explanatory capacity is felt, though, well beyond
its (or initial sphere of pertinence. From the concepts of the Arch-Son and his
Arch-birth, the concept of birth receives an unexpected and yet singularly ||
truthful meaning, one that manages to subvert the ordinary concept of birth to
the extent of rendering it meaningless.
To be born, according to the ordinary use of the term, means to come into Being,
to-eater into existence. In the same way, to die means to depart from existence,
to enter into nothingness. But in the same way that Being
always refers back to an appearing that grounds it in reality (since only {hae
shows issel ss iss for us)—in the same way, to put it in philo-
Los rent The Self-Generation of Life 59
sophical terms, thar ontology always refers back to a prior phenomenology,
»
conscious or not—so the statement “a come into Being” should be rewrir- en
phenomenologically. Thus * to come into Being” would be rewritten as “to
come into appearing,” meaning, according to Western thought, to show o come
into the world: Isn’t thar what being born signifies to each of us, philosopher
or not? And itis here that Christianity wholly breaks with all the ordinary
representations and conceptions of birth: in the world, according to Chris- )
tianity, no-hirth is possible. Many things come into the world, that is to say,
they appear in it, in this horizon of light that is the world itself, in its truth.
They appear and disappear without this appearing in any way con- stituting
a birth or this disappearing a death, unless metaphorically. Stones were there
on the road, and then they are removed. A house was built, and now it is
just a ruin. A star that had never been seen before appeared in the firmament,
and others disappeared. Of none of these things, even while it is making its
appearance in the world, do we say that it is born. Therefore coming into the
world as such cannot imply a birth. We are saying not only that many of the
things that come into the world are not thereby born. but, more radically, that
the prior coming into the world precludes any copceivable birth, if it is true that
in the “autside-stself”” of the world, the self:
Isr
cupbrace of life would be sundered before being produced — if Lifes Truth is ir-
reducible to the world’s. We cannot say that everything that comes into the
world will die there, but rather that is foreign ro life’s Living. For any living,
to come for good into the world, and to no longer be anything other than what

51
is exhibited in the world as such, amounts to being offered as a cadaver. A
cadaver is just thar: a body reduced ro its pure externality. When we are no
longer anything bur some- thing of the world, something in the world, that is
indeed what we will be before being buried or cremated there.
Tobe barn is nor 19 come into the world, Ta be horn is ro come into life_We have
to understand this statement clearly, because it carries at least wo meanings. of
which the more obvious is not the more essential, To come into life means, of
course, to come to life, to enter into it, to accede to this extraordinary and
mysterious condition of being alive now. This mysterious character relates to
the phenomenological status of life which we have as yet only touched upon,
so that a more radical elucidation of this status will be one of the tasks of k
phenomenology of birth, which is possi-
60 The Self-Generation of Life ble only within a phenomenology of life) Bur it is
the second meaning of the statement “to come into life” that should preoccupy
us for a moment. To come into life here means that it is in life and from out of it
alone that this coming is capable of being produced. To come into life means to
come [from life, starring from it, in such a way thar life is not birth’s point of ar-
yfrival, as it were, but its point of departure. By placing oneself from the out-
set within life as within the original presupposition our of which something like a
birth is alone possible, we are in a position to understand how this birth occurs:
in other words, how life engenders the living in, and on the basis of. itself. This
decisive question has just been answered by the theory of the generation of the
First Living within the self-generation of absolute phenomenological life. What
was clearly established was this: absolute Life experiences itself in an actualized
Ipseiry, a Self that is itself actualized and, as such, singular. (It is in this way
that the self-engendering of the Father im- plies within it the engendering of the
Son and is one with it} Or rather: the engendering of the Son consists in the
Father’s self-engendering and is one Jones it. Ro Life without a Living. Nor a
Living without Lifd, We should not say char Life’s engendering itsclf engenders
Living, because why would this living being be this one here and not that one
there? And why would there be only one such thing, rather than several or a
multitude? And why would this one, rather than thar one, be the first? We
should instead say:
Life engenders itself like the Living that Life itself is within its self-engendering.
And this is why har Living is the Unigue and the irs “That man,” as John says
(1:33).
Ler us return to the “content” of Christianity. We can better perceive now why
it certainly cannot be reduced to the worldly existence of Christ and to his story,
as astonishing as the latter is. Reduced to tha story, Christ’s existence presents
two more or less contradictory characteristics. On the one hand, it truly is
an extraordinary story, to the point that many whose imaginations cannot get
past the ground level have cast doubt upon it, tak- ing it as the product of a
fabulating imagination of which/they themselves are so cruelly bereft. On the
other hand, it is a story thar takes place in the world, and it dissipates itself

52
in the fog of the world’s truth—where any in- dividual existence is effaced, and
likewise even thousands and millions and
{ billions of them. I is hard to find a mention of Christ’s existence in the
his- torians of the period—an obscure riot in Jerusalem, perhaps. This is the
contradiction: between the astonishing character of this story and the traces
The Self-Generation of Life 61
it left or did not leave in history—which, despite its scientific pretensions, - more
resembles a colander than an approach, however weak, to reality.
Foreign to history and more generally to the world’s truth, the “con- tent” of
Christianity consiste in the nerwork of transcendental (therefore acosmic and
invicible) selacionships that we-can. formulate as follows: the
| ther and the Son, between God and Christ; the relationship of absolute - Life
to all living things—of the Father to his sons, of God to “men”; the relationship
between the Son and sons, between Christ and living people; the relationships
among sons, s, living people, and mankind—what is called in philosophyl(j ne
decisive criterion for the rigorous ex- amination of such relationships is whether
the possibility of reversing them exists. [The one between the Father and Arch-
Son is reversible, but that be- tween the Father or the Arch-Son and sons is
not) On the level of inter- subjectivity, the question of relationships among
sons is meaningless. All . these relationships, though, offer 2a common and
overwhelming character- istic thar lifts them out of the realm of customary rep-
resentations and de- termines them from top to bottom: they are nonintentional
relationships.
Or, stated more positively, they pur Life inta play, Not only do the rerms £
these hi be Life i bas chew life’s relation
self that is constituted as 2 relat ith Life its ¢
e What is a relation that draws its essence from within Life, and how
does it differ from a relation in the ordinary sense? (A relation is the link that
unites two or more terms) Bur the ultimate possibility of such a rela- tion is
phenomenological, it is the “outside-itself” thar places the terms one outside the
other, while externality assures their phenomenality and
thus their unity, and thus the relationship itself. Itis in the externality of space
thar any conceivable spatial reladonship is deployed. and in the ex-
Jerality of rime thar any temporal refarionship is, and in an ideal exter-
ality thar any mathematieslrelacionship-is—in short inthe truth of a world, what-
ever ir may be, and ultimately in rhe world’s truth. But when rapture is experi-
enced and thus enjoys itself, the link thar unires ir ro itself is not outside itself,
and thus does not appear in any world. The link that unites it with itself is the
phenomenological substance of life. {t is within life and within it alone that joy
or anguish can “experience themselves”

53
u Rat
“
A
62 The Self-Generation of Life
inasmuch as “Living” inhabits them, Bur life is not a phenomenological mi- lieu
where, as in a river’s flow, everything thar is living bathes, a sort of “in- terior
world” that would not decide what is revealed within it any more than the
world of “outsideness” decides what appears in its light. Life, as I have said, is
a process, and this process generates within it all living things,
[mis of each of them precisely what it is. Life is the relation that itself generates
its own “terms.” The content of Christianity is the systematic, and moreover
unprecedented, elucidation of this relation between Life and all the living, a
relation that is generation or birth as such.
What is now at issue is the generation of the First Living within Life’s sélf-
generation, specifically the relation between Father and Son, which can- stitutes
the first and most important of the relations considered by Chris- tianity. The
radical phenomenology of life developed here has supplied us with the key to
understanding this essential relation) If we consider more
i” closely Christianity’s content, we see that the Father/Son relation not only
{ 2 constitutes its most essential kernel, but that it is also the subject of an
ex- v ~~ Aplicit discourse, namely, the constant discourse Christ holds about
himself, wand that be offers as rhe only thing that masters. The only thing
thar matters is the salvation of all mankind as defined not by means of thought
but by Life. And this salvation consists exactly of “believing” whar Christ says
about himself. that is to say—and as the problematic of Faith will show— k for
of accepting it as “true” as thought defines truth and thus as the world Idefines
it, but rather of rendering it consubstantial with the Truth of Life,
iin its phenomenological embodiment and in its enjoyment So as accurately to
explain the initially incredible discourse that Christ holds about himself, which
constitutes the heart of the New Testa- \ ment, it is necessary to have a clear
answer to a prior question: Whe-halds. Wi © —~Sthis discourse, and. by.-what
right?” This is precisely the question the Jews ’ asked Christ. (Let us note in
passing thar, notably in the Johannine texts, | “Jews” designates not Jews in
general but those among them who did not
Irecognize Jesus as the Messiah, it being elsewhere understood that those
| who did recognize him or would recognize him as such are also, in the ma-
he Jews, at least in the early days.) Here is the “question of the Jews™: “And
while Jesus was walking in the temple cours, the chief priests, the teachers of
the law, and the elders came to him. ‘By what authority are you doing these

54
things? And who gave you the authority to do them?” (Mark 11:27-130). We
know by what detour Christ avoids answering them on this
The Self-Generarion of Life 63
occasion, sending them back to a question that embarrasses them (“John’s
baptism—was it from heaven, or from men?”) to the point where they pre- fer
to be quiet (“We don’t know”): “Then neither will I rell you by what authority
I am doing these things” (11:33). In this confrontation, which will be repeated
in an increasingly rense and ultimarely tragic way, rwo charac- teristics are
particularly remarkable: on the one hand, the pertinence of the question, which
unfailingly refers the authority to do what Christ does back to the nature of the
one who has or does not have this authority, and, on the other, Christ’s dodging
of this essential questioning: Who are you, then, to assume’such a right? Or
else: “Who do you think you are?” (John 8:53). And eventually, in its final
formulation, this time by Pilate: “Where ve do you come from?” (John 19: 9))
Jdannise ~ Fe god of of dearly © J 3 Thar the answer is at first eluded and
then endlessly deferred—en- re veloped in parables, delivered in a way that is
fragmentary, indirect, and enigmatic, before being suddenly quashed in an act of
extreme brutality— is something one would be tempted to explain by referring
to motivations that belong to the world and to human affairs. Formulated baldly,
finally made as transparent as possible and freed of equivocations, what Christ
says about himself will mean his condemnation to death. We understand, then,
that what he had to say about himself had been held back for as long as Christ
thought it necessary to accomplish his mission. But now ex- plained in this way
in the light of the world, and illuminated by ir, Christ’s words about himself
become largely unintelligible-—because the Truth of hich Chri } | yehich | Bi .
the world’s rrurh. apubny fo de” Pi be, From the world’s point of view, Christ’s
condemnation is perfectly ~~ °% ok comprehensible, and even legitimate. From
the world’s point of view, Christ is 2 man and, as his discourse gradually emerges
from its initial dissimula- tion to appear in the light of day, what he affirms about
himself appears crazy or scandalous. Here is a man who declares he was bprn
en be ore another one, specifically Abraham, who actually preceded him i py
sop sat centuries: who pretends to be able to make what is in fact not be, and
make what in fact is not be—to pardon sins, to resuscitate the dead; who claims
never to die and, to cap ir all, who quite candidly idenrifies himself with God.
These statements are crazy, not because they contradict common sense or the
beliefs of a given society, but because they defy the phenomenologi-
64 The Self Generation of Life
jc structures of the world itself, the way the world comes to exist by ap-
pearing as such—rthe temporality of this world, for example, or its irre-
i versibility, with Christ saying he is not concerned by cither.
Who, then, is the one whose words about himself, breaking with everything
we know about the world, remain inconceivable in its light? There is only one

55
answer: it is on the condition of escaping, in effect, from the phenomenological
structures of the world thar Christ can say every- thing he does about himself.
Only his condition as transcendental Arch- San co-generated-in-absolute-Life’s
selt-generation ix capable of legirimar- ing assertions thar strictly speaking be-
long anly ro God. And this is what is placed before us, especially in John.
Christ’s designating of himself as the Son of God merely comments on his condi-
tion as Arch-Son, in the way that a radical phenomenology of life could establish
i—whereas applied to a man of this world and coming from him, such a state-
ment would appear quite simply as absurd, demented—as it did in the eyes of
the priests of his time and as it would even more so to people today. if by
chance it occurred to them to pay attention to it. The extent to which Christ’s
designating of
thimself as the Arch-Son is merely the immediate transcription of his con-
|dition is something we can establish, point by point. What emerges is a se-
ries of fundamental tautologies, the founding ranralagies of life which we will
alsa call the decisive implications of Christianity, Arranged in an order that will
make them comprehensible, these are as follows:
”As for me, 1 was born” (John 18:37). If, as the phenomenology of birth has
established, birth is possible only in life and nowhere else, then Christ, in this
final declaration to Pilate, has already identified the type of truth in which his
original Apparition occurred. This truth is that of life. However, to come into
life, again as the phenomenology of birth has shown, does not mean to come to
life already within the condition of living, but to
[come ta life from life, and in this way alone, meaning to come to life out of
lithat self-cngendering of absolute Life that is the Father. In all that Christ
says about himself, this is the weightiest and most categorical affirmation, one
that will be constantly reiterated, with great tenacity. be from God
that I have come and to Him [ go” (John 8:42).
In the sort of “story” the Gospels tell, at the point when this affirma- tion
occurs, the text suddenly becomes strained, as in the argument be- tween the
Pharisees and the one born blind whom Jesus has cured: ““We are disciples of
Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this
The Self- Generation of Life 65
fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man answered, ‘Now
that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my
eyes. . . . If this man were not from God, he could do noth- ing” (John 9:29-33).
And in what is presented as the final, or one of the
finul, of Christ’s prayers, his declaration that he was sent by the Father re-

56
turns like an obsessive leitmotiv: “That the world may believe that you have
sent me. . .. To let the world know that you sent me... . [These men) know
that you have sent me. . . . They knew with certainty that [
”came from you, and they believed that you sent me” (John 17:21, 23, 25,
and 8, respectively). But how could Christ believe what he claims for himself,
that he came from God and as such from a divine condition? Who will bear
him witness? . ons . : mation of his condirion as the Son of Gad, making him
equal ro God. Im- mediarely after the prologue in which Christ is identified as
the Word and the Word as God, John’s Gospel invokes the testimony of John
the Baptist: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on
him. ... I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God” (John 1:32, 34).
On the one hand, we have 10 believe what John the Baprist says and, on the
other, to forget thar Christ later declares that he has not received testimony
of his divine provenance from any man: “Not that I accept human testimony
(John 5:34). So in fact he renders testimony to himself, and this is precisely |
the accusation made against him by the “Jews.” © Christ’s answer is twofold.
At a loss at first, he seems to recognize the weight of the objection: “If I testify
about myself, my testimony is not valid” (John 5:31). Then who could do so?
An other, his Father, God! “And the Father who sent me has himself testified
concerning me” (John 5:37). Bur if it is God who renders testimony that Christ
is his Son, who would be able to recognize this testimony, or rather, understand
ie? To this end, would it not be necessary to know God himself in order ro hear
his own testi- mony—the testimony that declares: “This is my Son, whom 1
love; with him I am well pleased” (2 Peter 1:17)? That they do not know God
and can- not therefore recognize the testimony of God regarding his Son—this
is what Christ throws in the faces of those who contradict him: “You have never
heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you”
(John 5:37-38).
66 The Self-Generation of Life
If only one who has heard the very voice of God and what he has said, one who
has seen his Face, one in whom God dwells, could bring tes- timony about the
Son of God and say, “That is the Son,” then only Christ is capable of doing so:
only he can testify to whar he is. “If I testify about
iimyself, my testimony does not count as true. There is another who resti-
! [fies i in my favor, and I now that his testimony about me counts as true”
”(John 5:31; my emphasis). If it is an other—God—who testifies ro Christ, then
one must know God and in this way know that the testimony is valid, that it
has value for one who knows God and hears his testimony. “Even if I testify
on my own behalf, my testimony does indeed count as true, for J know where
I came from, and where I am going. But you—you have no idea where I come
from or where I am going” (John 8:14; my emphasis).

57
If ultimately, then, only Christ can testify about himself, he could not do so as
a man, but only as ene who knows where he comes from—his
ranscendental Arch- birch). It is the transcendental Arch-Son who testifies
about himself, about his condition as Arch-Son, and he alone can do so as
a function of this condition of his—which is that of God finding a home in
him. Thus the structure of the testimony that Christ offers about him- self is
threefold: Reimony that comes from the Arch-Son, Par bears on Jobe Arch-Son,
and4whose possibility resides in the condition of Arch-Son. “Testimony” in the
Johannine context means the same thing as “truth.”
To give testimony ro the truth means thar it is Truth that gives testimony to
itself. And it does so since it is Life and since Life is self-revelation, thar which
originally reveals itself to iwself—or. in Johannine language, that which testifies
to itself. In what Christ says about himself, it is not really the sclf-revelation
of absolute Life that is ar issue, it would seem, but rather | Christ’s testimony
about himself—the testimony of the Arch-Son, as we y have said, about his
condition as Arch-Son, and made possible by (hat
This condition is that of being generated in the self-generarioy Life as. he Fis
Living th ese Ise of which life sersalyen-
genders itself—such that this generation of the First Living is no different from
the self-generation of eternal Life, from its self-revelation as the reve- lation of
God himself, as his Truth, as his testimony. “In fact, for this rea- son I was
born, and for this | came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18:37).
To the extent thar the generation of the First Living is no different from the
self-generation of absolute phenomenological Life itself, f the self-
The Self-Generation of Life 67
generation of Life is no different from the generation of the First Livin
raking place in the form of the latter—to the extent, consequently, thar the
tevelation of the Son is no different fram the selferevelation of God himself.
”Therefore, the first relationship constitutive of Christianity’s content, the re-
lationship between the Father and the Son, can be defined with absolute
rigor as a relationship of reciprocal interiority, since the Son is revealed only in
the Father’s self-revelation, while the Father’s self-revelation takes place only
in, and as, the revelation of the Son. The primordial Father/Son rela- tionship
is not merely this relation whose essence is constituted by Life, nor is it merely
this relation whose essence generates the terms. Rather, it also
_ generates them as internal one to the other, such that they belong together,
one and the other, in a co-belonging that is more powerful than any con-
~ ceivable unity, in the inconceivable unity of Life whose self-engendering is

58
one with the engendering of the Engendered) Manotheism is a naive reli- gion,
or rather it is a religion of understanding, of abstsact thought thar thinks of an
abstract nniry. The God of monotheism is this abstract unity,
accompanied if possible by a consciousness capable of conceiving of it, and
bya a prophet capable ad hoc of enunciaring it. As soon as God no longer
starring with the divine ‘ cssence and including any phenomenalogical me. di-
ation alien to its own phenomenality, imposes itself as the phenameno- logical
acrualization of absalure Life and thus as its self-acrualization in the Self of jrs
essential Ipseiry. Abstract conceprs give way to the fundamental
phenomenological characteristics of life and to the network of relations thar link
them.
Since the reciprocal interiority of Father and Son—that is, Life’s self- generation
as the generation of the First Living—is essentially phenome- nological, it could
be framed in terms of “knowledge.” such that knowl- edge of the second is not
possible without knowledge of the first. “You do ) not know me or my Father,’
Jesus replied. ‘If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19).
It is precisely because they do not know the Father that they do not know
the Son. “Though you do not know him, I know him. If T said I did not, I
would be a liar like you, but I do know him” (John 8:55): and again: “just as
the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:15). So strong is the
reciprocal phenomenological interi- ority of Father and Son, to the extent that
the revelation of the Son is the
68 The Self-Generation of Life
self-rcvelation of the Father—that the first is not possible without the sec- ond.
nor the second without the first—each appears in rurn as the condi- tion of the
other. Granted, revelation is most often given as the means of gaining knowledge
of God. knowledge of such a sort thar there, present in the very speech of the
Son, is his mission: to make God known, to reveal Him to men—“No one comes
to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Yet we cannot forger the many
strange passages in which it turns out that one can reach the Son only by way
of the Father and to the extent that the Father wishes it: “No one can come to
me unless the Father has en- abled him” (John 6:65); “All that the Father gives
me will come ro me” {John 6:37); “No one can come to me unless the Father
who sent me draws him there” (John 6:44).
These are not random assertions, or even copyists’ mistakes. It is the apodictic
order that prescribes a priori that (the path that leads vo Christ can only be
the repetition of his transcendental Arch-birth within the Fathes) namely,
the process of Life’s self-generation that generated Christ in his condition as
First Living. If life were not cast into itself to experience itself in its en- joyment
of itself. then neither would the essential Ipseity that life generates in its self-
generation, any more so than the singular Sclf that belongs to ir in principle,

59
ever themselves have come into life.
But, in the end, did not Christ actually come into this world to save
lit, by making the world know God? Only.a phenomenalagy of Christ can
{answer this question.
The_phenomenalogy of Chuist concerns the apparition of Christ,
which has assumed many guises, and so the question itself has had many formula-
tions. It cannot be limited to one of his apparitions—the first, for example—burt
must take into account all the others as well. The phenome- nology of Christ
therefore encounters questions of this kind: Where was Christ born? Who were
his parents? Where did they come from? Did Christ have brothers? And so
forth. In the Gospels we find diverse information on this subject—more, in fact,
than brief indications. The genealogy of Jesus occupies the long prologue to
the Gospel of Matthew: “A record of the ge- nealogy of Jesus Christ, the son
of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the
father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers , . . Eleazar the
father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Joseph,
the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus. wha is called Christ” (1:1-16).
This genealogy of Jesus is also taken up in Luke: “Now Jesus himself was about
thirty years old when he began his ministry, He was the son, so it was thought,
of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat . . . the son of Enosh, the son of
Seth, {the son of Adam, the son of God] (3:23-38).
However, this genealogy of Jesus, as set forth at the outset of these two Gospels,
is immediately subject to correction. It is not Joseph, accord- ing to Matthew
and to Luke, who is the father of Christ. What a strange
| genealogy to be laid out only to be straightaway refuted! Moreover, the sta-
70 The Phenomenology of Christ
tus of the Virgin has embarrassed theologians to the point that they have seen
no other solution bur to make it an article of faith—which, however, in no way
amounts to indirectly supporting and reaffirming the human ge- nealogy of Jesus,
if it is indeed true that the Virgin bears the Child only upon the intervention
of the Holy Spirit, meaning God. Whether a subject of embarrassment on the
part of believers or of irony on the part of non- believers, the affirmation of
Mary’s virginity scarcely conceals, behind its apparently absurd content, the
essential argument of Christianity, namely, Nhac 20 man isthe son of aman, or.
of any woman either. but only of God The singular character of Christ’s human
genealogy is no less appar- enr in its reprise by Luke, which is found in two
passages. The first consists of a relatively minor modification: “the son, so it
was thought, of Joseph.” But the second offers an incredible list that, after
having designated Cainan the son of Enosh, Enosh the son of Seth, and Seth
the son of Adam, sud- denly declares the last to be the son of God, as if one
could put the two fil- iations an the same footing. as if it were the same thing,

60
in effect, ro be the son of a man or the son of a god—or, more precisely, as if
god only inter- vened in some speculative fashion when, no other person having
presented himself as a man’s father. this role could now be conferred only on
one pre- sumed to be God. But if Adam cannot be said to be the son of God
in the same way as Seth is said to be his own son—the son of Adam—then one
seriously has to jask what the difference is between these two conditions: that
of being the vson of a man, like Seth is of Adam, and that of being a son of
God, as is the case with Adam. We will formulate the answer in the following
terms: the essential difference berween the condition of being the son of a man
and
\ ythat of being the son of God resides in the Truth, or, to be specific, the kind
Wt Jof Truth at issue in each i In the truth of the world any man is the son of
LN Aq iA
\
a man, and hence also of a whman. In the Truth of Life any man is the son of Life,
that is to say, of God himself: But if both these truths speak of birch, meaning
the possibility of a living person coming into life, one of them is undoubtedly
de trop. Seth cannot be the son of Adam if Adam can only be the Son of God.
Inversely, Adam does not need to be the Son of God if Seth can be his own son.
[Therefore one has to choose, to state unequivocally of whom a man can be the
son: of another man or only of God.
What the birth of man, and thus his condition as son 1 the truth of the world,
consists of is something we all know today; aided by the amazing
The Phenomenology of Christ 71
progress in biology and by the dissemination of theories believed to derive from
it. I will make only the briefest allusion to these theories, inasmuch as the
phenomenology of birth has already demonstrated the absurdity of any worldly
interpretation of birth, whether as a coming-into-the-world or as the result of a
process rooted in this world, for example, an objective pro- cess. The absurdity
relates, as we have seen, to the fact that in the world and in the externality of
its “outside,” no “Living” is possible—and consequently no livings either.
Whar the condition of Son, and thus of birth, consists of within the Trurh of
Life is something we will ask of Christ himself. On the one hand, according to
an essential phrase that has already been cited, Christ names
himself “cheTrurh and the Life.” He is himself rhar original Truth that js Life.
On the other hand. ir isin the light of this Truch-tha he analyzes his omen
condirion as Son. Bur can one examine this condition in the light of any other
Truth than thar of Life? Can we speak of it otherwise than Christ
does himself, ifshere is no Son and ao-bicth except in Life, if coming into life is
conceivable only on the basis of life?

61
From the outset of this volume we have been considering the dis- course that
Christ offers about himself to be the essential content of Chris- tianity. It
appears that this discourse not only holds good for Christ but concerns all
human beings as well to the extent thar they, too, are Sons. In
fact, they exist only in Life, engendered by it. All Sons-ace Sons of Life and,
inasmuch-as-there is only one Life and rhis Life is God, they are all the Sons-
of God. If Christ is not merely the transcendental Arch-Son immersed in an
eternal symbiosis with the Father, if in people’s eyes he stands as an
emblematic and radiant figure who causes them to tremble within, it is be-
cause this figure is that of their own true condition as Sons. Thus Christ’s
discourse about himself, consisting in the radical elucidation of the state of Son,
suddenly outstrips its initial and “proper” domain—the autarchic en-
joyment of divinity, the self-sufficient system of Life and of the First tiv) ing—in
order to rebound upon the entire human condition and to place it
in a light that no kind of thought, no philosophy, no culture or science had
dared project onto it before.
For this reason Christ’s discourse about himself, when it turns to people, can
well arouse their emotions yet remain incomprehensible-—be- gause people do
not understand their own condition except in the light of the-wodlds-truch. To
be a son for them means to be the son of one’s father
72 The Phenomenology of Christ and mother. To be born means to come into
the world, to appear at such a point in space, at such a moment in time—to
come our of the mother’s belly in this place and ar this moment, in such a way
that before this birth the baby or ferus was already in the world, ultimately in
the form of seeds in the bodies of the father and mother. This is the modern
interpretation of birth and thus of the condition of son, which perceives and
understands everything within the framework of the world’s truth. Among
people of antiquity, alongside this objectlike vision of humanity’s origin was
myste- riously juxtaposed the idea of a divine provenance. Far from being
reduced to a simple presumption, such an idea spontaneously expressed the
true life of man, his and invisible | . . . dt_Despite constantly experiencing life
themselves, these people did not
manage to artive at a correct understanding of life, or even an image of ir, owing
to jzsi i” . . .
Leb sealisci ions Thi afb | with the advensof-moedern thaughe. By deliberately
removing transcendental
life from the scope of human knowledge, which was subsequently restricted
to objective knowledge of the material universe, (Galileo’s reduction and the
science that evolved from it carried the worldly interpretation of birth and thus

62
of sonhooed to an absolute limir) If the modern discourse on man resulted in his
thoroughgoing denigration, his abasement, and ultimately the elimination of his
individuality in favor of anonymous and uncon- scious processes, thus amounting
to his negarion pure and simple, it did so “by pushing the worldly interpretation
of man’s birth and of his condition as son to its outermost limit—where birth,
son, and man become nothing { but metaphors.
It is this worldly interpretation of birth thar Christ’s discourse about himself
shatters into pieces. ft is remarkable that in speaking of himself, and in locating
his Arch-birch within Life as the principle of any conceiv- able birth, the First
Born, the transcendental Arch-Son, proves capable of conferring upon birth its
true meaning) Now every birth finds itself un-
derstood as transcendental, generated within and by means of absolute Life.
Simultaneously with the concept of birth, the concept of Son is also
subverted, torn from any natural interpretation, But this condition of Son,
thought of as transcendental, as issuing from a transcendental birth, is that
of man: it is man who is torn from narure and returned ro Life Ta place f birch
and the Son within the safekeening of d i
The Phenomenology of Christ 73
dental Arch-Son is necessarily ro refer to absolute Life of which the Arch- B® Soo
is merely the self-realization in the form of his selferevelarion fr calls ”inevitably
on another Truth than the world’s, on this Truth of Life outside , of which
there is neither birth nor Son, no livings of any sort What we are sayi is ime
Christy af himself, with respect 10 himself This genealogy can be called worldly
because it is in the world that people interpret their own genealogy, which in
that world ”appears “human,” each person offering himself as the son of the
one who preceded him, and as the father of the one who will follow. Thus, each
in- dividual understands his condition as son on the basis of his own father’s
condition, which will later be his own. Let me quickly explain why this hu- man
and worldly, genealogy is absurd. In effect, to be a facher means—at least if
we wish to give the term its proper meaning—to give life. Bue cach ”of these
human fathers, who calls himself or believes himself a father, is first one of the
living; he is within life and thus is far from having the power to give life to others
or to himself. Living, whether he appears as son or as ”father, he depends on
life. Only life itself can give life: none of the living is in a position to do so,
since that living, far from giving life, constantly pre- supposes it within himself.
If we say that Ged is living, designating him, for example, as “the Living God,”
it is in an entirely different sense, one in which God is capable of giving Life to
others only because he is first capa- ble of giving life to himself. Befare being
living. he is himself Life. the erer- ingzinto~itsclf itself. It is to this If . Lit ich
he calls | Life a Life d 1 will 1 Je all che li thar Christ sives tl £ Ea ther..and
this is why he says, in the luminous language of absolute truth: “Do not call
anyone on earth ‘father’s for you have one Father. he in Heaven” (Matthew
23:9; my emphasis). ] The addition “he in Heaven” is not without interest.

63
No doubt this expression suffices to discredit Christianity in the eyes of people
today who are believers in the world. In the world’s truth, heaven designates
merely a part of this world, the anc explored by astronauts. Apart from a
“heaven that has become the domain of science, nothing corresponds with this
term. The “Heaven” of Christianity is only a void, or at most an imaginary
place for the phantasmagoric satisfaction of desires that cannot realized here
below. In contrast, the connection thar Christ’s discourse constantly
» hein 4 H Hr Zong LS
74 The Phenomenology of Christ
establishes berween the father and Heaven gives the latter the value of a rigorous
concept: (hat af a Life that does not appear in any world and is re- vealed only
in izself) In its absolute sclf-engendering, Life is the Father of whom Christ is
the Son. Because in his discourse about himself Chrise thinks of himself as this
Arch-Son co-engendered in the self-engendering of absolute Life, he can only
vehemently reject the idea of his human or worldly genealogy, which he does in
different ways, according to the sly- ness or foolishness of his interlocutors.
+ The questioners prove their cleverness when, knowing that the Mes- siah could
only come from God, they forbid Jesus, with whose modest ori- gins they are
familiar. to claim this title: “But we know where this man is from: when the
Christ comes. no one will know where he is from” (John 7:27). It is the same
argument, but in a more naive form, thar was previ- ously formulated by the
“Jews™: “At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, ‘1 am
the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son
of Joseph; whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘1 came
down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42). Christ’s response. as is sometimes the
case, begins with a concession: “Yes, you know me, and you know where I came
from” (John 7:28). We do not fneed to reiterate that everything they know or
think they know concerns
|| his human genealogy, his apparition within the world’s cruth, This is why
Christ’s concession is only a feint—a contradictory viewpoint, or appear- ance,
or illusion, against the dark horizon of which he is going to make manifest his
true condition as the Messiah or Christ. This condition—that of being the Arch-
Son co-engendered in the process of Life’s coming-into- itself as the essential
Ipseity in which Life reveals itself—is co-engendered as the True (for what is
more true than that which reveals itself completely in and of itself?), in such a
way thar Life knows itself in thar essential Ip- seiry thar in turn knows it, being
merely the site of Life’s self-revelarion, which remains unknown to the world
and alien to its truth. Immediately after having declared, ”Yes, you know me,
and you know where 1 came {from,” the text continues: “I am not here on my
own, but he who sent me is true, You do not know him, but I know him because
I came from him and he sent me” (John 7:28-29). Christ’s human genealogy is
neither so modest nor so insignificant that it can be dismissed with a wave of
the hand. Do we not find alongside Joseph—a humble carpenter who is in fact

64
not the father of Jesus—some
The Phenomenology of Christ 75
prestigious ancestors, prophets and more than prophers, the founders of
the religion in which Jesus was raised—David and Abraham, to mention
only two? What is staggering, and could not fail to appear so to the priests
of his day, is to see Christ deliberately undertake to compare himself with these
pillars, so to speak, of Judaism. And to make this comparison so as ©) demon-
strate unequivocally the infinite superiority of his own essence over, theirs: his
state as Arch-Son precisely in the sense thar we have discussed, as meaning his
equality with God.
The extreme cleverness of the argument, if not the mockery it con- veys regard-
ing his Medusan adversaries, cannot mask the decisive character of the reference
to David. If David considered the Messiah sent by God as the equal of God and
as God himself, designating him as such, how could the Messiah i issue from
David within the lineage of a human genealogy?
“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” David’s? “If then
David calls him ‘Lord’ . . . how can he be his son?” (Marthew 22:42-45: see
also Mark 12:35-37 and Luke 20:44).
The clash over Abraham, which will lead to Christ’s being condemned to dearh,
is. even more titanic. Calling themselves the sons of Abraham be- cause they
are faithful to him and adore no idol but God, the Jews consider themselves
by the same token to be Sons of God: ““We are not egiimae.) children,’ they
protested, ‘the only father we have is God himself” (John 8:41). To be the son
of Abraham here means to behave as a faithful disciple of the father of the faith,
to refuse to adore anything that is not god, and thus to consider him, the God
of Abraham, as the sole God. But their spir- itual attitude remains that of
human beings trapped in the human and worldly genealogy of which Matthew
speaks and which leads back to Adam. It is because Christ calls himself the Son
of God in quite another sense, in the sense of the Arch-Son consubstantial with
the Father, that the conflice erupts. On the one hand, Christ declares his work
superior to Abraham’s. the founder of the faith, inasmuch as Christ’s work is
inseparable from his state as God’s self-revelation: “me, a man who has told
you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things” (John
8:40). Moreover, this Truth of God, learned from him, Christ has revealed to
Abraham him- self, who was overwhelmed by it: “Your father Abraham rejoiced
at the thought of seeing my day: he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). And it is
at this point that everything explodes and stones start flying, when the radical
Jide —
76 The Phenomenology of Christ ham, certainly, and the od but only within-
the-wesds<ruth,as a property.and quality i incage—and she srare of

65
Arch-Son generated in Life’s selforevelation and identical with jr: “They picked
up stones to stone him” (John 8:59).
The abyss that separates the Arch-Son in this life from other sons according
to the world’s truth, apprehended within human genealogy— whether or not
these sons think of themselves as sons of Abraham or God —is expressed in the
overturning of this genealogy and of its temporal ori- entarion. Lord of David,
Christ places himself before David, rather than after him as a son. Still more
explicit is the astonishing declaration with which he ends his polemic against
the “Jews™: “Before Abraham was, 1
(mt (John 8:58). This affirmation thar so insults common sense is not to be
raken in isolation, not a simple, rather paranoid assertion, one that can only be
blindly “believed” or not “believed” by trusting Reason. The rea- son behind
it is given quite precisely, in the form of an absolute justifica- tion: the non-
warldly condition of Chriss—the fact that, co-engendered in the self-engendering
of absolute phenomenological Life that is alien to the
world, the Arch-Son is himself alien to this world and its temporality. So it
is really nor a matter of a simple reversal of human gencalogy and its tem-
poral order, as if. placed at first “after” —Christ, son of David, son of Abra-
ham—Christ should instead be placed “before” —Christ, Lord of David and
Lord of Abraham. Rather, it is a leap from one truth to another, from ly truth
whose mode of appearance is time and the world itself to the Truth of absolute
Life that ignores time as well as the world. The reason for the radical “Be-
fore,” the nontemporal “Before” of Christ, is given by Christ himself in words
of phenomenological apodicity: “because you loved me before the crearion of
the world” (John 17:24): “the glory 1 had with you be- Jore the creation of the
world” (John 17:5; my emphasis). The rejection by the Arch-Son of any human
genealogy that pertains to him should be thought through. It implies the pul-
verization of all possi- ble representations of the link between a father and a son,
whether naive, j taking place on the plane of immediate perception, or scientific,
resulting from the reduction of the Galilean approach to this perception. Be-
cause all , these cases concern a worldly representation, the father/son relation
is re- *versible in the sense that, in the world, each son can recreate the state
that i was his father’s, becoming a father himself and engendering his own son
in turn. There are as many fathers as sons. Their relation is reversible not be-
The Phenomenology of Christ 77
use it overcomes temporal irreversibility but because ir allows cach of Fehem
in turn to occupy one of the two places. Moreover, this relation is not only
reversible; it is external, with each would-be father engendering a son
iruated outside him and thus separated from him, different from him. This
externality is merely a mode of apparition in the world, or rather the mode of
apparition of the world itself. {To be born assuredly means to come into the
world and be manifested in i§ This is the case with the son as it F was with the
father. Thus, this conception of birth, which science will iy ply reproduce in its

66
own language of numbers, is in effect its phenomeno-, logical description within
the worlds truth.
V’ nathing of Life, which never shows itself in the warld, everynwhere replac-
ing Life with the living, but in a most naive way. On the one hand, the liv- ing
is no longer considered in himself, within the interiority of its tran- scendental
living state. It is now no more than an organism perceived from the outside,
in terms of the world’s truth, a bundle of objective processes. ”On the other
hand. this organism that has been abandoned to the world is still apprehended
as signifying a “living,” a signification whose origin, which is nothing other than
transcendental life itself. remains mysterious as long as it is not related to this
life. This in turn obscures the very phenomenon of birth, once this phenomenon
is reduced to an objective succession of the living—scientifically paralleled by
an objective succession of chemical pro- cesses. Birth does not consist of a
succession of livings, in each of whom li is presupposed, but rather consists in
; 3 . 2 : ; : itself Nor can birth be understood except on the basis of this Life
and its
own essence—on the basis of Life’s sclf-generation as its self-revelation in
the essential Ipseity of the First Living.
of the Arch-Son, that is expounded in John’s stunning prologuc) (ob knows
nothing of human generation, or rather he knows that such a form of generation
is not really a form of generation at all) This is why he ad- dresses only those
“not born of blood, or by carnal desire or human will
(John 1:12), not because blood or carnal desire ot human desires are bad, but
for the much more radical reason that geither blo ch de- sites are capable of
engendering life Qo the congrary, they presuppose it. Lngendering life is an act
of Life along, inas much as it engenders itselt=—an
t th ,
This description has only ane faule, alheir a major one. it-knows y
t is this genuine birth, the only one possible as the Arch-generation Jy 1° o,
BA
78 The Phenomenology of Christ
to speak not of themselves but of the One who is originally engendered in Life
inasmuch as it engenders itself, namely, the Arch-Son whom he calls the Word—
Logos, or “Revelation.” The revelation at issue is thar of Life, and it belongs to
Life as its very essence, inasmuch as there is no life except as a revelation of itself,
as its self-revelation. The Word designates Life’s self- generation since the latter
takes place in the form of a self-revelarion inas- much as this self-revelation takes
place in the form of an essential Ipseiry and thus of the First Living. Because
there is no Life thar does not occur in this way, in the essential Ipseity of the
First Living, the latter is as old as Life itself. To begin with John 1:1 and its

67
three parts: “In the beginning was the Word.” Because the Truth of Life (this
trurh thay js Life) is radically alien to the world, then thar which Life engenders
inthe initial embrace of irs es< sential Ipseiry—namely the First Living—does
nat mave ourside Life bur. remains within iin life’s embrace: “And the Word
was with God.” Because this embrace of Life in which the Word dwells is that
very life in its self-rev- elation, then this Word is no different from the essence of
that life: “And the Word was God.” The second verse is already a summary of
the essential implications that we have just recalled with John, which constitute
the ker- nel of Christianity—what pe have called the essential tautologies of Lif;
“He was with God in the beginning” (1:2), What this “with” [euprés de) means
is already separated from the long series of misinterpretations that 5 Western
thought-will impose right up to the Hegelian hei sich in the no. | ably dense text
of verse 4: “In Him was Life.” Here the reciprocal phe- nomenological interiority
of Father and Son is affirmed—if it is true that life is not cast into itself except
in the Ipseity of the First Living in such a way that that former carries the latter
within it, and vice versa.
The extent to which the transcendental Arch-generation of the Word explained
in John’s illuminating prologue is opposed to any human geneal- ogy—and espe-
cially to the supposed human genealogy of Christ, which it shatters into pieces—
is something the following few characteristics among many others will suffice to
establish here. The first characteristic of the re- lation established between the
human father and his son is that the latter is exterior to the former, such that
the son can go away and leave home. As we have seen, the exteriority of this
relation is merely the exteriority of the world. and thus the very appearance of
this son is as a human and worldly son—as a son of this world. Since the world’s
exteriority includes time, its ek-stasy, then to say thar the son is exterior to the
father is to say that he
The Phenomenology of Christ 79
“comes after him. No human son comes at the beginning, nor claims to—
”and no human father either, which is why he is only a pseudo-father. By be-
”ginning his Gospel with “in the beginning” but paradoxically placing a Son
there, John explodes the very concept of birth, which always assumes a “be-
fore.” Similarly, he explodes the concept of son, which, in the language of the
world, always presupposes a father who came before him.
Here is the second characteristic upon which rests the radical oppo- sition be-
tween the Arch-generation of the Word and any human genera- tion. Despite
this Arch-generation that places it at the beginning, does the
’ ‘Word not presuppose the Father who came before it? Does the First Living
not imply, like living, that life has accomplished its work in him—this Life
without which no living would live? Did Christ himself not say, “The Fa- ther

68
is greater than I am” (John 14:28)? However, Life has no need of hay- ing
accomplished | its work | wn Christ as io any other living in order for the
2 selfs
gen cna of Lf she isis acts sme eos cone 2 @bout, inasmuch qs it does sa anly by
embract whose phenumenelogivel-effecsivity is noneother thay the Word. The
Word is not the First Living engendered by life in the course of a process that
might have begun without it; rather, it lies within life’s self-engendering, by
which and as which this absolute self-engendering is realized. Then is the Word,
the First Living, not contingent in relation to Life, as is the case with all other
livings, in such a way that life could come about without it just as life can also
come about without livings—withour people? On the contrary, the first among
all the livings engendered by life, being interior to and con- substantial with
the self-engendering of this life, and as its self-revelation— this fife cannot come
about without thar self-engendering just as it cannot come abour without self-
revelation). Thus they are—according to what will constitute the major theme
of the Johannine texts—onc within the other, the Father within the Son, and
the Son within the Father. But in human generation, this reciprocal interiority
never exists: the two are outside of each other, separated from each other—
although in truth neither of them is father, the father of this son, and neither
of them is son, the son of this father, except in the illusory appearance of the
world.
It is this illusion that Christ destroys in remarkably abrupt terms, not out of
ethical or existential motives, as it first appears on casual reflection, but by
reason of the very nature of the phenomenon of birth. This is be-
80 The Phenomenology of Christ
jcause the latter, which is never intelligible according to the laws of the world
”and can neither ground nor justify them, inevitably refers back to the radi-
| cal concept of a transcendental Arch-birth within Life and thus to Chriss own
condition.
In these awesome and magnificent texts, the rejection of any human genealogy.
and the whole set of relations founded on it, cannot be under- stood without
a return to its basic principle: “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?”
Pointing to his disciples, [Christ] said: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and
mother” (Matthew 12:48-50). The subversion of the human order founded on
human genealogy is complete, and no less evidently refers to another order. that
of true genealogy: “Do not suppose thar I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I came not to bring peace but a sword. For [ have come to turn a man against his
father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-
law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who
loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, anyone who loves
his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” {Matthew 10:34-37).

69
Beneath the apparently ethical nature of these prescriptions a phenomenology
is be- ing affirmed: it is because the human father, along with the constellation
of relations constructed around him. is only just an apparent father that this
network of relations is irself only an appearance, one thar will eventually fall
apart. But the human father is only an apparent father because he is a worldly
one: it is because life does not show itself in the world that no gen-
eration is produced there and thar in the world no father is really a father, | hor
any son a son, » The phenomenology of Christ that we have been elucidating
here, of which John’s exposition is unrivaled, can be elaborated as follows. No
true [Father (Life) giving itself to be seen in the world, the coming of Christ
into this world—according to what we arc calling fhe thesis of Christianigy}—
aims to male the Father manifest to people, and thus to save them, those who
have forgotten their true father and the true Life, who are living only with a
view to the world and the things of the world, being interested solely in them
and expecting their salvation solely from them. The religious _ meaning of
Christianity—as offering salvation to humankind—is therefore A N caught up
in a phenomenology, since it requires making the father mani-
©, | festin the world. and thus to people—and pet the world is itself a form of
OY 5
Ww WY
homie srdegrabibi 7 F<
The Phenomenology of Christ a
ifestation} It is with this precise phenomenological demand that John
ic congent of Christianity, and from this arises the rad-
”+ The coming of Christ into the world to save people by revealing to em his
Father who is also their Father: this is the thesis of Christianity-as
formulated phenomenologically by John, in two passages from his Gospel d ar
least one of his Epistles. Let us briefly recall them:
1, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We r . »
have seen his glory” (John 1:14). . “No one has ever seen God, but the Son the
One and Only, who _ is in the Father’s bosom, has made him known” (John
1:18). “Thar which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched”
(1 John 1:1).
ry
LIN)
Hes

70
race rmall z) © God’s Revelation, which is condition for the salvation of men,
myst be Christ incarnate, made flesh And thus it is really Christ’s coming intQ
this woeld that must be God’s Revelation and people’s salvation. But Christ
incarnate, made a man, is like any man. Standing in the presence of this man
named Jesus, how can one know thar he is not 2 man bur the Christ, the Arch-
Son consubstantial with the Father, present with him ac the be- ginning, and
in fact God himself? Or, to put it in rigorously phenomeno- logical terms, how
can a Life that holds its Living only in its own interior embrace, a Life whose
Living consists in its self-revelation—this revelation of itself that it owes only to
itself and expresses only to itself—a Life that ”lived before the creation of the
world and thus hefore anything thar could canceivably be visible: How can this
Life, which nobody has ever seen, re- | ally ask-and-await the visible ro provide
irs revelation, a revelation that i possible only in and through that Life jrself?
sevelob « 2 4 © Like the idea of the Word become flesh, the thesis that Christ as
a man and therefore as a man of this world, visible in it, is equally a condition
of God’s Revelation and is this very Revelation is similarly belied by the context
of each of the statements in which one might believe to have found it. Consider
the context of the first: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among
us. {We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only Son, who came
from the Father, full of grace and truth) (John 1:14). In the Johannine context,
“glory” means the same thing as Truth or as Revelation.
Lh re ll Al
alex- A Ak Aaad
Any mmm frt ood SG emer
82 The Phenomenology of Christ
The Revelation that allows us to contemplate Christ, in which he is revealed
and can henceforth be recognized as such, is his Glory as the Only Son that
he receives from his Father, his glory as Arch-Son—specifically, his own rev-
elation as God’s self-revelation. Because “glory” designates precisely this rev-
elation specific to the Arch-Son as self- and arch-revelation of God himself [that
is, as the original essence of life, the problematic of glory is the same as
that of testimony. I have shown that Christ heeds the testimony of no man,
fibut that of his Father alone, because, as we shall see, his glory is the glory of
the Father himself—because, as Arch-Son, his revelation is God’s self-
revelation and is possible only as such.
The very content of the second text suffices to rule our an interpre- tation to the
effect that the apparition of a man in the world, in this case Jesus, i is capable
of making God known, The one who makes God known,
[ “the One and Only Son,” is precisely the Arch-Son in his transcendental

71
| state as Arch-Son, a state that consists of living in the bosom of God. But
the bosom of God is the invisible life that is prior to any conceivable visi- ble
world: one who, invisible himself, is placed in the invisible bosom of God, can
make God known only within the invisible, where God reveals himself in the
Arch-Son and as the latter. It is there, in effect, that the only Son makes the
Father known. And if we turn now to the context, we find that it reiterates
this idea. Within Life lie grace and plenitude, inasmuch as Life embraces itself
as well as Truth, inasmuch as this embrace of life is its self-revelation). It is
within the Arch-Son and only through him thar this grace and this Truth of
Life come into themselves, far from being able ro do so in the truth of the world
and through that Truth: “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John
1:17).
’* What immediately follows the second text is the prophecy of John the Baptist
in which human genealogy is broken at least twice. This occurs first when John
inverts the temporal order of this genealogy, an inversion whose significance we
have already noted. “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was
before me” (John 1:15). Second, when for- mularing his decisive testimony thar
Jesus is the Christ, John the Baptist does not rest content with what he has
seen—”’I saw the Spirit come down from Heaven as a dove and remain on him
(1:33)—but refers as well to what God had told him, that the one on whom he
saw the dove rest was the Christ. Here again, and in an exemplary manner, it
is evidently not the visible manifestation, the descent of the dove onto the man
and re-
The Phenomenology of Christ 83
ing there, that can bear witness ro and constitute the revelation in the Arch-Son
is revealed as the Word. Rather, [this revelation belongs by to Life: it is its
self-revelation, in this case the Word of God. “In the third text, from John’s SH
the shift from the worldly man- : Be on— ”that which we have heard . . . and
our hands have touched” — what is said to be manifested in this way, in the
world, is still more scrik- e and more disturbing. It is not simply a shift to what
is said to be mifested in this way, in the world; rather, this shift is itself a radical
—an abrupt substitution for what is supposedly made manifest in isibility of the
world, which would be the Word, of another mode of velation that is specifically
thar of the Word and in which the Word re- mals itself, the Word of Life. Let us
recall the text: “Thar which was from ie beginning . . . which we have looked at
and our hands have touched, bis we proclaim concerning the Word of Life. Life
has manifest itself . . .” John 1:1-2). And it is only because this Life—which,
according to the pontext, is “eternal Life” or “what was with the Father and
has manifest it- scl to us”—was made manifest in itself and through it that it is
possible to know thar the One thar bears within itself the Life of the Father is
the Word. It is within the selferevclation of this Life, and only through ic, thar
po 3 fea 5 Word—inasmuch a Word carrie ife inasmuch as it} he Word—and
certainly nor through its ap- E ; ble old. This is what the Johannine problem-
atic and all of Christianity will establish.

72
John the Baptist’s prophecy would suffice to demonstrate thar one ot really
discern from a man’s visible appearance that he is the Word of Life. To the
envoys from the Pharisees who ask if he is himself the Messiah, he declares:
”Among you stands one you do not know’ )(John 1:26). How- | ever, we have to
recognize that John the Baptist finds himself in the same situation as they do—
”I would not have known him” (1:31)—until the One who had sent him forth
to baptize tells him so. Only God’s revelation can re- veal the Word, which is,
moreover, nothing other than God’s slbseseladon)
* A situation in which it transpires thar the mere visible appearance of aman,
even if he be Christ, is actually incapable of revealing that he is the Christ is
constantly reproduced in the Gospels. Such is the case with the . one born blind
who is cured by Jesus and thrown out by the Pharisees: ~ “When he found him,
[Jesus] said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’
‘Who is he, sir?’ the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.’ Je-
§ ca
dechhy 5, re i aa
3
. 1
84 The Phenomenslogy of Christ
sus said, “You have now seen him, in fact. he is the one speaking with you.”
Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” (John 9:35- 38).
It is remarkable here that although he sees Christ, the blind man, once Yeured.
still has to believe in him, believe that he is the Christ, as if the fact [of seeing
him were yet incapable of giving access to him.
The same thing happens again in the extraordinary conversation with Philip,
after the critical declaration in which Jesus refers to his recip- rocal phenomeno-
logical interiority with God, presenting his own appear- ance as that of God
himself: “No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew
me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him, and
you have seen him.” New comes Philip’s de- mand, the demand of a world that
relies upon secing—”Show us the Fa- ther”—and then Christ’s response, which
reaffirms his identity with the Father and thus his state as Christ, inasmuch as
appearance in the world has been replaced by the revelation of Life, or by the
Arch-Son’s Revelation as the self-revelation of this Life and thus of God himself:
“Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?
Any- one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the
A Father? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father. and that the Father is in
| me?” (John 14:6-10: my emphasis).
Linked to seeing the Father transformed into the reciprocal phenom- enological
interiority berween Father and Son, and to this interiority, whose radical nature

73
we have demonstrated, is the concepr of belief—and here is fvhar gives belief
the hitherto unforeseen meaning thar ir will receive throughout Christianity! To
believe does not imply a lesser knowledge, ho- mogencous with the world’s but
still incomplete or imperfect, so that whar one believes in would still have to
prove its reality or its truth by showing it-
iself once and for all, fo believe is not a substitute for a still-absent seeing) To
“yu _ believe does not refer to a waiting, a waiting for something not yet seen’but
”that will be seen someday, in a specific sight, within the world’s truth. To be-
lieve, when what is seen is already present, already visible while remaining in-
.., capable of making visible that which matters, that is to say, the Word in
irs state as Word, precisely because the latter is in itself invisible and no kind
of seeing will ever behold it—”10 believe” can, then, refer only to the substitu-
(tion, for a mode of manifestation that is fundamentally inadequate, of a
more essential revelation belonging to another order. that of the Word itself, /
of Life itself, since Life reveals itself in this Word and in the form of it. If this
The Phenomenology of Christ 85
‘is 50, then only in this Word and through it can one arrive at it. Or, more
precisely, the Word lies within life itself and in the process of its self-revela- tion,
inasmuch as this process is accomplished as the Word itself, the Word
being nothing other than the effective working out of this process. This is
why. according to a hidden but inescapable logic, what follows-in-the text
calls not on the Word but on God, whose Word is the Word, the revelation.
” So these are the very words of God-—of the one who is present within the
”Christ, who as God’s sclf-revelation is also present within him—when
_ Christ declares: “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is
”the Father, dwelling in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when [ say
that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” (John 1421011).
The disqualification of the power of showing proper to the world, along with the
substitution for this power of a mode of revelation that is
* entirely unlike seeing and owes nothing to it, nevertheless alone capable of ) ”
revealing the divine essence being revealed in the Word and as this Word—
* this critical transformation in phenomenology. roa phenomenalogy whose
’ ~nality is 1.1 - world is contained in the words phenomenaliry is 1 ifc and no
longer the
: that give access to the content of. Christianity, wood alheir ar the price of

74
ing the course of West- the Greeks: “Before long the world vill) not see me
anymore, but you will see me because I live and because you also will live”
(John 14:19; my emphasis).
Substituting one phenomenology for another, that of Life or Logos for that of the
world, is not to misunderstand the power of manifestation that belongs to the
latter, but rather strictly to circumscribe its domain and thus its capabiliry. for
traditional thought as for classical philosophy, for common sense as for science,
the pertinence of conceprs related to knowl- edge is founded exclusively on
the world’s phenomenality and the ways of seeing it delivers) In contrast, by
situating original Truth within-the-ozigi- nal form of revelation that belongs
only to life and consists in its self- reveladian=—life drawing its cssence from-
chis capacity to reveal itself and
4
a complete
o—H
cepts that form the basis for any mode of thaughr, bur especially for the
The traditional metaphor for speaking of truth is that of light. But truth is only
understood as light because it is already assumed that the truth at issue is the
world’s. What is true in an immediate sense is what one sees
v 8 The Phenomenology of Christ The Phenomenology of Christ 87
tor what one can see. But whar one sees is seen only in the world’s light, inas-
| much as one sees only what is held before one’s gaze, what is “outside,” and
the world is this “outside” as such. It is this equivalence berween light, world,
and truth, an equivalence that goes without saying and is straightaway adopted
by nearly all conceptions of knowledge, of scholarship, of science and the truth
itself, until it transpires that the truth must be considered in nand for itself, as
is the case with philosophy—it is this equivalence that is | torn apart in John’s
prologue.
It is quite remarkable thar ir is precisely at the moment when itis a question
of Christ’s coming into the world. coming-into-the-world that signifies in Greek
thought a coming-into-the-light) thar the worldly concept
1 of light is struck out—this light of the world being reversed and absorbed into
its contrary: darkness. The light of the world, which now designates darkness,
is contrasted with the “true light,” which is Christ in his own rev- elation. A
series of crucial implications follows, which it is impossible to misunderstand
or obscure. In coming to the world, as long as this is a com- ing-into-the-light,
what comes into the world, or into the light, is shown in that light as it is and is
thus illuminated by ir. Being illuminated in ir, find- ing there its proper place,
it is received by thar light and received by the world. It would be impossible to
oppose to this coming-into-the-world with

75
light itself, since tha light is constituted by this coming-into-the-world and
Jis identified with it. With regard to light, then, there is only one kind, that
lof the world, and precisely for this reason truth and the world are identical.
The ground of this series of implications—the equivalence light/ truth /world—
wavers when, in verse 9 of the prologue, John declares: “The true light thar
gives light to every man was coming into the world.” That
[this lighr comes into the world presupposes that the light does not belong
{to it. Or else how, belonging to this world, being.illuminated in the ek- stasy.
of its “outside” and being produced-at-the-same-time as. the Jatter— how, if
this light is identical with and as ancient as the world, could it re- ally come
about? But what comes into the world is a light different from
ithe world’s, and John shatters any possible equivalence between light and lworld
at a single stroke when he concrasts the light of the world with a true
{light, a light that at once thrusts the world’s light into the shadows and re-
duces it to darkness.
In this rertuming of the fundamental concepts of phenomenality)
forth. Because the true light is alien to the world’s, in fact it is not able to
be recognized there, and. more to the point, it.cannot be recognized, There-
fore, Us light thar is incapable of showing itself in the world’s light aver- .
ulesthesworld and irs own kind of light, rurningit into its opposite, dark- ness.
The world’s light is not inherently shadow: it makes things manifest in its
way, exhibiting stones, water, trees, and even people as they, too, ap- pear lic
by it, as beings in this world. But because the world’s light is inca- pable of
lighting with its light, of exhibiting in that light and thus of re- ceiving the true
Light whose essence is Life in its self-revelation, its power of making manifest
is changed into an utter powerlessness to do so with re- spect to the Essential:
this self-revelation of Life thar is the Word—she Word of Life, This sudden
transformation of the world’s light into Dark- ness when Life is revealed in the
Word is described very concisely in verses 4 and 5 of the prologue: “In him was
Life, and that Life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, bur
the darkness has not understood it.” This sudden dislocation of the power of
worldly light to illuminate, its being changed into darkness when the true lighr
appears, whose essence is Christ’s revelation as the self-revelarion of absolute
Life, is something of which Christ himself speaks: “I have come into the world
as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (John
12:46).
The radical phenomenological irreducibility of these two kinds of revelation—the
one of Life and its self-revelation in the Woid of Life {the Johannine Logog¥)and
the one thar finds its essence-in the light of the world, in the ek-stasy of “outside”
(the Greek /ogas)—lies at the origin of John’s problematic and of the Christian

76
drama in general. In the light of this world this man who appeared in the world
and is named Jesus cannot be known or recognized by anyone for what he truly
is, the Word of Life: “You have seen me, and still you do not believe” (John 6:36).
Indeed, for Christ to appear in the light of the world as this man Jesus, simply
in the form of a man whom others recognize as a man and nothing more,iz.is i)
solely necessary thar he be deprived of his divine condirian, of his-oun reve- ha
ing other than this ohiecri { worldly ap-
is is what Paul declares with astounding rigor in his Epistle to the Philippians:
“[Christ Jesus,] though of divine condition, did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped, but deprived
himself, by assuming the condition of a slave becoming like men; and once
and because of it, the drama of which all Christianity is the history bursts
recognized as man...” (2:6-7; my emphasis). \ #4 \ LSA 7 Ww oo ERNE
88 The Phenomenology of Christ
But if Christ sheds his divine condition in order to assume the as-
pect of a man and reveal himself as such within the world’s truth, then
‘where and how does he reveal himself in his true state as the very Word of
| God, as God’s revelation? Where-and how can one know and recognize
him in the condition that is truly his own—as Christ, the revelatory Word of
the Farher?
The phenomenology of Christ that we have just sketched out sup- plies the
clements of an answer: withi K ist a-man.amang others, and nothi
In the world’s truth, Christ’s claim to be something other than a man is in-
”comprehensible and absurd, it is a blasphemy and will be treated as such. In
the world’s truth, Christ’s condition, if he is the Christ, rakes on a dis-
guise that nothing will ever remove. This is because access 20 Christ can_be
had anly in life and in the truth proper ra ir. We secall once more has Christ
i Nor only is Christ not separated from the life in which he lives while it also
lives in him. but fe is the es- sential reason for this original co-belonging of Life
and the First Livin The Son’s generation co-belongs to Life’s self-generation as
wha this self: generation accomplishes, as the essential Jpsgicy in which Life, in
its selfs embrace, becomes Life. Thus there is no way of reaching the Son other
than lin the course of Lifes self-embrace, in the same way as there is no other
iway for life to embrace itself except in this essential Ipseiry of the First Liv-
ting—no other way for it to reveal itself except in the Word. The Johannine
texts give voice decisively to an endless movement in which the Father and
Son embrace each other—the eternal generation of the Word in the eternal self-
generation of the Father. Bur they express this movement from point of view
of the Word, in what we have called Christ’s discourse about himself. This is
why Christ’s analysis of his own candition as the Word always proceeds from his

77
“Me,” engendered as the essential Ip- seity in which Life experiences itself and
reveals itself, back to the acrivity of this life that experiences itself and reveals
itself in him) In this way he ex- periences himself as traversed by this Life, as
che site in which it experi- ences itself in him—who is himself merely the self-
experience of this di- vine Life. Thus he is nothing other than the realization
of this life; what reveals itself in him is the self-revelation of this Life. which is
his own Rev- elation, his “glory”—for the revelation of life is the glory of the
Father. What is done in him, what he does, is what this life does; fhus he does
. p
The Phenomenology of Chriss 89
thing himself, but everything is transmitted through him] What is said him,
what he says. is what this life says. What is willed in him, what he ills, is wha
this life wills, and he wills only what life wills. Within this radical belonging of
the Son to Life, 2 belonging relating the fact that he is this life’s self-realization,
there truly resides a singular ersal, Totally subject to this life, identifying himself
with the movement of its self-realization and even co-realizing in his essential Ip-
scity life’s self- ization, the Son is inside Life as thar without which its movement
could not be realized—interior ta the Father, consubstantial with and equal to
him, This reversal takes place in-onc of the most radical. texts in which ‘Christ
reaffirms his condition against those who are accusing him of heal- ing on the
Sabbath and, what’s more, of making himself God’s equal by @lling God “Fa-
ther.” The extreme modesty of the reply, the ontological humility thar says the
Son is nothing outside the Father, able to do nothing without him—*The Son
can do nothing by himself, he can do only what he sees his Father doing”—is
abruptly reversed in the extreme proposition that everything the Father does,
the Son does also—“because whatever the Father does the Son does also” {John
5:19). From this stem the momentous declarations: “All that belongs to the Fa-
ther is mine” (John 16:15) and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). oo But
we have just recalled these critical implications, constitutive of the authentic
content of Christianity, which John announces in an apodic- tic fashion: that
inasmuch as Christ is pathing ather than the coming-into- irself of Life-in-its-
essential Ipsciry, everything that is in Chedst-comes—to i —“All things have
been committed to me by my Fa- ther” (Luke 10:22)—in such a way that noth-
ing happens in him that is not made to happen by the Father. Thus Christ
is never alone, not even at the hour of his abandon: “Yer I am not alone, for
my Father is with me” (John 16:32), because, more profoundly, “the Father is
in me . x ’ (John 10:38). How is the Father in Christ? As the Life of which
Christ is, in his essential Ipseity (that is, in his person), the self-revelation. In
the same way, Christ is in the Father: “ . .. and | in the Father” (John 10:38).
this is realized in Christ as his own essence, inasmuch as he comes fram Life
as the Arch-Son co-engendered by Life in its absolute self- engendering. Hence
Christ’s constant reference, constantly recalled by John, to “te One who sent
me.” It is in the name of the one who sent him that Christ does everything he
does, says everything he says, in the same

78
90 The Phenomenology of Christ
way that it is from the one who sent him that he draws his own condition
as God’s envoy, the envoy of Life as its Word. This reference explains the
inexplicable, something initially very mysterious: How can Christ, who never
studied, know everything hie knows and, in fact, know everything?
| “How did this man ger such learning without having studied?” (John 7:15).
| Christ’s reply can only be understood in light of his Arch-condition: “My
teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me” (7:16). This proposi-
tion is reiterated with extraordinary insistence: “For I did nor speak of my own
accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me whar to say and how to say
it. . . . So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say” (John
12:49-50). And again: “These words you hear are not my own: they belong to
the Father who sent me” (John 14:24); “The words 1 say to you are not just my
own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work” (John 14:10):
“I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me” (John
8:28).
» How is what Christ is saying here, just as his Father said to him, a kind of
teaching, and what does this teaching say to us? To teach is to speak the Truth.
If what Christ says, saying what was said to him by the one who sent him, is
true, it is because the one who sent him speaks true, says the truth: “He who
sent me is truthful, and what I have heard from him I tell the world” (John
8:26). But what is this truth spoken by someone who is
truthful and has sent Christ? He speaks.a-very pasticulartrush, nat the torh
of the world or the things of the-warld, bur the Truth of Life The Trurh of Life
is Life itself. Life js the Truth as ir is sel-revealed To speak the Truth,
for the Truthful who has sent Christ, is to reveal Himself; it is for Life to re-
alize its essence in the essential Ipseity of the First Living, in which it em- braces
irself and reveals itself, and which is the very Speech of Life, its Word. In this
way, God’s envay says nothing other than what is said by the one who sent him,
since his speech, the speech of the Word, identical with the Word, is none other
than the speech of God—his self-revelation, accom- plishing itself in this Word
and in irs guise,
The phenomenology of Christ—a phenomenology thar responds to ithe question
of knowing where and how Christ reveals himself, not as a man [whom nothing
differentiates from another man, but rather in his condi- jrion as Christ and the
Word—relares precisely to this condition, to the
i the selgenesarion of shaoluce Life Leitia the pracess of lifes self-revelation hat
she ocd cexeals himself. and only
The Phenomenology of Christ on
But this revelation of the Word as God’s self-revelation is also what we have

79
called the reciprocal phenomenological interiority of Father and So. This in-
teriority is phenomenological in its very essence, being nothing other than the
mode in which phenomenality originally phenom- enalizes itself—as the original
phenomenality that is Life.
As we have noted in passing, John discusses this original phenome- nalization
of Life specifically in terms of “glory.” The reciprocal interiority of Father and
Son, that is, the Sons Arch-generation as the Father’s self-
generation, means in phenomenological terms that each receives his glory only
from the other—the Father’s self-revelation accomplishing itself in the
revelation of the Word, which is nothing other than the self-revelarion of ab-
solute Life: “Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).
These two “glories,” internal to one another, seem to present them- selves as
one outside the other in the transcendental story of Christ’s mis- sion on earth
and of his passion. It is immediately before the Passion story is told that Jesus
says: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glori- fied in him. If God is
glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself” (John 13:31).
This reciprocal situation of the two glories will be taken up in Christ’s final
prayer: “I have brought you glory on carth by completing the work you gave
me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had
with you before the world began” (John 17:4-5; my emphasis). Tha this glory
always refers to Life and to its phenomenological essence in its radical opposition
to the world’s * ‘glory }—which designates only the stage lights of this grand
theater where people parade their qualities and struggle for prestige—-can be
directly inferred from the passage I have em- phasized above. But it is also
the explicit content of another passage, a model of conciseness, in which the
opposition between the glory that peo- ple passionately seek and that of God
himself echoes the fundamental phe- nomenological categories on which all of
Christianity is founded—the cru- cial opposition between the world’s truth and
Lifes truth. “I have not received glory from men. . . . T have come in my
Father’s name. and you do not accept me. . . . How can you believe, you who
accept glory from one another, yer make no effort to obtain the glory thar comes
from the only God?” (Jahn 5:41-44). That Christ is concerned solely with the
Father’s glory, and thar as the Word he is its pure and absolute self-revelation,
is also something that emerges from one of many passages in which Christ, af
A
1
vl
lr
92 The Phenomenology of Christ
firming once again that he is not speaking “on his own account” and daim- ing
anew his condition as Arch-Son, identifies himself with the absolute truth: “He

80
who speaks on his own does so 10 gain glory for himself, but he who works for
the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about
him” (John 7:17-18).
The reciprocal phenomenological interiority of Father and Son pro- vides the
ultimate foundation for a statement like this: “When [a man] looks at me, he
sees the one who sent me” (John 12:45). But you cannor see
Il the Father—nor, for that matter, the Son, since you cannot see the Son un-
Tess you see the Father in him. The statement just quoted is thus formulated
+ more specifically in the immediately preceding one: “When a man believes in
me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me” (12:44).
+ 1”V\ Bur how can one believe either in Christ or in the one who sent him?
Nei-
[at
§|
Wi
bo fi
KY
! +” ther Christ nor the one who sent him is shown in the world’s truth. In the
world’s truth there is Jesus, and the problem is essentially that of knowing
whether he is the Christ. Seeing Jesus and wanting to know if he is the Mes-
siah, the Son of God. the disciples demand: “Show us the Father!” (4:8). 1And
again: “What miraculous sign then will you perform that we may see it 1and
believe you?” (6:30). They could equally well demand: Show us the Son!
The reciprocal phenomenological interiority of Father and Son, the autarkic sys-
tem constituted by the relation between Life and the First Liv- ing, signifies that
there is ny i ithin Li have seen, in the process by-which-life-cternally engenders
irself by experi- irself i ich is its revelation, | rd. In this way Life knows itself in
the Word, which also knows Life, being merely its self-revelation, What does not
belong to this autarkic phenomenological system of Life and the First Living
knows nothing of either one: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father.
and no one knows who the Father is except the Son” (Luke 10:22). We have
encountered this crucial proposition in several vari- ants: “You do not know
him, bur I know him” (John 7:28); “No one has seen the Father except the one
who is from God; only he has seen the Fa- ther” (John 6:46).
In the presence of the aurtarkic system constituted by the reciprocal phenomeno-
logical interiority of absolute phenomenological life and its Word—a system in
which nothing belonging to it ever separates itself from it, into which nothing
that is external to it can ever penctrate—does
The Phenomenology of Christ 93

81
not the very teaching of Christianity suddenly become a problem? What does
it teach apart from the coming of Christ into the world to save peo-
ple? But the phenomenology of Christ has established that Christ re)
show himself to people in the world and that, for this reason, despite his acts
and his extraordinary words, they do not believe in him.
The phenomenological aporia whereby it is impossible for Christ to how himeel€
incl 1 as Chri he Word of God, 4 : ] sibili of m i i i kn owing ( xad as long
as-aan himself continues 1o he understood asa Be-
ing “of this world. This is doubly true: in the sensc that he appears in this
wotld, there taking on the aspect of a man and being recognized in this as- pect,
to borrow Paul’s words; and in the sense that everything that appears to him
appears to him in this world and in its light—in the sense, there- fore, that
the truth to which man has access, and which allows him access to everything
that is, is the truth of this world. Is is conception of a person as a being of
the world that Chris- ianity pulls apart. It does so inasmuch as understands
man on the basis o£his Litre! birth as a. Son of Life and consequent % if Life
is Gad, as the Son of God. First of all, he interpretasion of man 4s a Son of
Gad oversusns the standard Western conception of man. Second, it inero- duces
man into the autarkic system of absolute phenomenological Life and its Word.
thereby making possible his access to Christ as such and at the same time his
access to God, his salvation. It is this interpretation of man as the Son of God
that we must now examine.
Man as Son of God”
o The central affirmation of Christianity regarding man is that he is the
son of God. This definition breaks decisively not only with the customary |
representations of man, whether those of common sense, philosophy, or science
(meaning modern science), but also with most religious definitions. Comman
sense considers man an inhabitant of this world, a living being, although one
endowed with faculties superior to those of other animals. Therefore, the com-
monsense conception is akin to the philosophical con- { ception that sees man
as an animal endowed with reason, that is to say, as capable of forming mean-
ings and thus of expressing himself in 2 spoken or Va conceptual language. For
modern science issuing out of the Galilean rev- olution, what is proper to man
has been largely obscured, as we have had occasion to observe, Nevertheless,
what unites scientific theses that treat man as part of the material universe—
ultimately reducing him to physical and chemical elements, to the conceptions
to which | have just alluded— is man’s belonging to the world. Nor is this
helonging-ro-the-world absent |from-seligious.canceprions, at least as long as
they understand man on the | basis of the concepr of creation. Creation means
the crearion of the world, and inasmuch as man himself is created. is_himself
ens creatum, then he, 100, belongs to this world. From a theological stand-
point, this means espe- cially that, in relation to God, man finds himself in the

82
same situation as does the world in general, that is, as something exterior to di-
vine essence, different from it, separate from it, such thar the religious problem
consists
Man as “Son of God” 95
rincipally of knowing how man, thus distanced from God, is capable of ing him
again, and so of saving himself.
To cancel a Being-of-the- . At least Iwo interpretations at work in the defini-
tions we have recalled must be sep- arated from cach other, if not contrasted.
According to 0 the interpretation c universe in the very precise sense that heads
a macerial pare of ir, even ithis-pastproves.capable of being grasped ar different
levels—biological, chemical, or physical. Such a conception generally goes by
the name ‘ma: trialist.” Its grear weakness is to blur the crucial differences
thar exist be- tween phenomena of a material order and those specific to the
human] order, so as to establish a continuity between them. Unfortunately,
any progress in the analysis of what is specifically human undermines this sup-
posed continuity. This continuity—or. to put it another way, the presup-
tL . : position of homogeneity between material and human phenomena—poses
an obstacle for any truly scientific analysis, that is to say, one free of preju-
dice. In leading to a reductionism that is today more alive than ever, what was
proposed as a principle for understanding is revealed to be merely J principle
of misunderstanding.
the concern ra.gscape reducrienism, by methadologi cally setting aside scientific
knowledge, that has allowed. ends | phenomenology to make immense progress
jn understanding whar is spe- cific to man. Begarding the problem thar concerns
us here, it is a matter of arriving at a definition of man that rejects as basically
improper a naive re- alism that inserts man into the world as a real element,
an element homo- geneous with the substance of which this world is made and
consequently subject to the same laws. But man is in fact not in the world in
the man- ner of some objecr or, in philosophical terms, in the manner of an
intra- worldly entity. What is specific to him, to the point of constituting his
Au- manitas, is that he is open to the world in such a way that he relates to o)
within the context of specific experiences: feeling it and perceiving ir, imagining
it, conceiving it, thinking of it in various ways, fearing it or lov- ing it, for
example, whereas no other thing in this world is capable of ex- periences of this
kind. or, for thar matter, of experience in general) Al- though situated in the
world. the ordinary being remains closed to it: it does not “have” the world,
whereas fran is essentially open to the world Man is thus no longer a Being in
the world in the manner of a natural Bé-
96 Man as “Son of God” oo
fire like a stone, air, fire. He is a being of the world in the transcendensal
sense that he is unto the world, relating to it, never ceasing to experience ir.

83
Thar man is also a natural being—a set of nerves and muscles, and, in the
final analysis, neurons, molecules and particles—can no longer define him Jin
his specific condition as a man who relates to the world, as a transcen- I dental
man. This is because none of the natural elements of which he is said to consist
is capable of “having” a world, of opening itself to what sur- rounds it by
having an experience of it. The natural man of common sense fond of science is
therefore decisively opposed to the transcendental man that modern philosophy,
from Descartes ro Heidegger by way of Kant and ! Husserl (to mention only
the most influential), was able to recognize in that which is proper to him.
That g.transcendental Beingein-the-world-— Des. cartes’s cogiro/cogitarum,
Kant’s relation to the object, Husserl’s intention- ality, Hdidegger’s /n-der-Welt-
sein— defines the very essence of man and is what ultimately distinguishes
him from any other thing may be seen in the fact that man cannot turn away
from the world, fee it, for example, but is fundamentally linked to it, against
the background of an experience of the world that for him does not cease]
Always relating to the world, being open to it in multiple ways, in sensation or
perception as in forgetting or flight, man has the capacity to do so only insofar
as the world shows itself to him, appears to him. It is the primordial appearing
and presupposition of the world thar precedes and makes possible all the ways
in which man relates to it. Bur i i i k
Here arises the revolutionary character of Christianity—its total orig- inality in
comparison to all the problematics deriving from common sense, reiterated to
the point of today appearing threadbare. For Christianity, man is not, in effect,
a Being-of-the-world. neither in the natural sense nor
I” the transcendental sense. This is nat hecause, duped by common sense,
{Christianity is ignorant of transcendental man. On the contrary, no other
kind of thought is more foreign to natural appearance than that of Chris-
\” tianicy, and none rises more immediately to a transcendental conception of
3 , man and of rruth. We may recall thar, since Kant. “transcendental” has 8”
been used for that which refers not to knowledge but to what makes it pos- : \
fo Sin Thus we are no longer dealing with the ordinary knowledge of things SRE
[thar someone acquires in the course of daily existence but with the a priori ¥ ’
possibility that he can arrive at such knowledge. This possibility relates to the
fact char these things show themselves to him, thar they are “phenom-
Man as “Son of God” 97
ena.” The possibility of knowledge does not reside in the things themeelves but
in the fact that they give themselves to us and appear to us; it resides
in their manifestation) By themarizing the way in which things give them.
sejves to us—the mode of their givenness and thus this givenness in itself
ical. At the same time, it

84
exposes the limits of this problematic, since the kind of givenness main- tained
by Kant and by phenomenology itself is that which is brought to d light in the
appearing of the world, in its truth.
By defining man as son, Christianity rules out any form of thought=—
. hilosan ligion—th - wherher in a naive or critical sense. In effect, {there are
sons only in life] A rigorous phenomenological analysis of life has shown thar
in itself life is alien to the world. Eirst, the mode by which life phenomenalizes
itself, or reveals itself to itself by experiencing itself in its pashésik embrace, does
or L / consist of the opening up of a world. Secand, in the parherik flesh of li fee
experience of itself, no world shows itself cither, nothing that takes on aspect of
an “outside.” Neither the made of life’s giving as self-giving an self-revelation
nor the pure phenomenological substance of which this self- revelation is made,
belongs to the world in any shape or form.
Thus the conception of man thar arises with Christianity overturns from top to
bottom the traditional conceprion and all its later variants. . does not do so in
the sense that it places on high what was down below, an vice versa. Nor does
it overturn them as might an axiomatic inversion that proceeds from a new
evaluation, privileging the sensible, for example, over the conceptual, or vice
versa. We note in passing that an antithesis between the sensible and the con-
ceptual, the valorization or condemnation of one or the other, is totally foreign
to Christianity, as is the ethical stance it suppos- edly expresses with respect to
them. This is because neither the seasible nor ] the intelligible belongs to the
essence of man as it is understood y Chris tianity. They do not belong to this
essence because their manner of showing and_is borrowed from it. Christian-
ity’s overturning of the conception of man, once and for all, does not consist in
the inversion of elements in-
cluded in the reigning conception, but in their exclusion. Itisanather phe-
98 Man as “Son of God”
I phenomenality constitutes its substantial reality, the phenomenological
| Besh that is its flesh. Christianity proceeds to a radical subsrirurion of one
mode of truth for another as soon as it posits man as son. Henceforward, ir
tis on the basis of his birth in Life that man must be understood, and thus lon
the basis of Life itself and the Truth proper to it. Bur absolute phenom-
enological Life, on the basis of which man can and must be understood inasmuch
as he is a son, is the absolute Life of God himself. To say that man is a son
inasmuch as there are sons only in Life and that this sole and unique iLife is
God’s is equally to say that man is the Son of God. So the expression “Son of
God” is tautological.
However, if man is the Son, and the Son of God, if he is born of phe- nomenologi-
cal Life and draws his essence from it, then everything that has » been said (and
by the Arch-Son himself) about the phenomenological, land hence ontological,

85
heterogeneity of the transcendental Arch-Son in re- {lation to the world and its
trath—all those singular propositions that dis- pense with an appearance in the
world and everything that follows from
is appearance {the time, space, and causality that are at play in the world
and all the laws said to be those of nature)—all these propositions, we are say-
ing, also concern man himself and place him within the network of fundamental
tautalogies that they establish. This extension to man himself of the radical
arguments that Christ affirmed about himself is something we have discovered
from the transcendental analysis of his condition as Arch-Son. We must now
delve deeper into this paradoxical extension to man of the extraordinary con-
dition of an Arch-Son born before the world and before historical time. But
before attempting this analysis of the im- plications for man taken as Son of
God that derive from the condition of Arch-Son, let us pursue a digression that
will add to the phenomenology of Christ.
One of the traditional difficulties of “Christology,” meaning the cf- forts made
by theologians and philosophers to conceive of the mysterious
{ being of Christ, is the latter’s dual nature. He is both man and God, com-
ing into the world and therefore raking on the condition of a man, but without
losing the condition of Only Sen and First Born engendered in God himself,
consubstantial with him and in the final analysis equal to him. How can we
explain the union within Christ of two heterogeneous natures, one human and
the other divine? Associated respectively with these two na- tures, are not all
the faculties of Christ’s spirit necessarily split in two? For
Man as “Son of God” 99
example, is not Christ’s human will different from his divine will, and pos- sibly
even opposed to it? From the potential conflict between these two wills comes
Christ’s moral merit, his exceptional virtue, since he constantly sub- ordinates
his own will to his Father’s, as we sce in many of his declarations, in the Lord’s
Prayer he i institutes, and finally in the moment of his his ultimate
sacrifice i in the Passion. Jr is this constant subordination of his own will to Jr
fs bis consians suboadination af his own will co)
+ Bur when one tries to BN roar A ZW VP A Christ’s bing on the basis of
the union within him of two contradictory natures, one human and the other
divine, one temporal and the other cternal, one must ser aside at least two
overwhelming prejudices that constantly frustrate any understanding of Chris-
tianity. It is presupposed, on the one hand, thar there is a preexisting narure of
man thar occurs as a co-constiturive element in Christ’s nature— J which is, on
the other hand, conjointly explained by his divine origin. One forgets that, as
he explicitly states, Christ proceeds from the one who sent him and only from
him. Generated in the self generation of absolute Life apd drawing his essence
from ir, there is nothing in him char is pot this Life. Th fpcinn which Christ

86
experiences himself—namely, his subjec- tivity—is the IpScity in which abso-
lute phenomenological Life experiences itself—=namely, this Life’s subjectivity.
And it is for this reason that he is consubstantial and contemporaneous with
Life, having “come forth” since the beginning, the Arch-Son co-engendered in
God’s self-engendering and therefore engendered in the same moment. One for-
gets that man comes too late to intervene, even if only as a constituent element,
in Christ’s na-
ture. Here liss-the aporia:to suppose thar Christ can be explained on the basis-
of a human nature thar did not exist when Christ was engendered in Life’s
self-engendering, in such a way that his essence came about in his ro- tal inde-
pendence from this supposed human nature, and well before some- thing like
man saw the light of day. “Before Abraham was, I am.” If we turn to the
Gospel, even to consider it in the usual anecdotal fashion, how can we fail to
notice that Christ never spoke of himself as a man, and never) ‘ spoke to other
people as if he were one of them?
But this Christology founded on the idea of Christ’s double nature (accurate in
that Christ took on human form, which the Father did not), often hides another
unfortunate premise, one that is actually anti-Christian:
What is the
100 Man as “Son of God”
the divine essence, such that the two together compose Christ’s mixed es- france?
What springs to mind is thar the man who mysteriously blends his nature with
the divine essence of the Logos consubstantial with the Facher is the man of
the world, the man of common sense. of empiricism and ra- tionalism, the
man who is a rational animal, the natural man who is an in- tegral part of the
material universe, or exen-the transcendental man who apens-himself.1o. the
world in_bis experiencing of it—in short, the man re-
jected by Christianity To this man Christianity opposes a radically different.
man, the Son of God, the San of Life. the new transcendental man born within
absolute phenomenological Life, engendered within. this-Life’s self:
engendering and drawing his essence from it alone—man resembling Christ, man
in the image of God!
ere we uncover not only one of the core intuitions of Christianity but at the
same time its devastating power over a Christology bogged down in the pre-
supposition of a “human nature.) This power is exercised
over different traditional conceptions of man that are apparently in com-
’f
f
Man as “Son of God” 101

87
expression of the world’s thinking and its persistence where a world no longer
exists. Therefare, far from understanding Christ {or-evenjusc a par: afhis being)
on the basis of man and his condition. it is man who must be understood on.
the basis of Chriss, and can be so only in this way 7 ” ”To.understand man on
the basis of Chriss, who is himself understood
an rhe basis
nomenalogy of Life. which is.précisely that of Christianity: namely, that ¢~*~#”
Life has the sume meaningfor God, for Christ, and forwan. This is so because
there is but a single and selfsame essence of Life, and, more radically, a sin- gle
and selfsame Life. This Life—thar self-generates itself in God and thar, nits
self-generation, generates the transcendental Arch-Son as the essential Ipscity
in which this self-generation comes abour—is the Life from which man himself
takes his transcendental birth, precisely since he is Life and is explicitly defined
as such within Christianity. He is the Son of this unique and absolute Life, and
thus the Son of God. The tautological expression
“Son. of Gd’ —zaucological in that these are-no-sons except in Life and thus in
God—conceals the profound ruth that man’s essence, that which makes. him-
possible as what he really. is, is.not man as. we understand him, and-ssill less
some dumanitas os-other. Rather, ji is the essence of divine <—
i petition with one another, yer which all view man as a being of the world.
With respect to Christology, these conceptions are inadmissible if within ri”
I’the Arch-Son co-engendered in the self-engendering of absolute phenome-
1
| nological Life, there is no other essence, nor can there be, than that of this
“life of which he is the self-realization. As for man, if he is himself a Son, en-
gendered in Life and on its basis, drawing his possibility and his essence from it,
then there is nothing else in him either, inasmuch as he is a living, apart from
this essence of Life. {An essence of man different from that of Christ or God
appears impossible as soon as man is understood as Son, and explicitly as Son of
God} The idea of a specific and hence futonomotis human nature, of an essence
of humanitas as such, is from the Christian viewpoint an absurdity. To construct
a Christology—which means, in the final analysis, to construct Christ himself
—by adding to a divine essence, of which we know nothing, a human nature,
which from the Christian viewpoint does nor exist: this is the paradox of those
theologies that believe themselves able to rise from a consideration of worldly
and human data to the idea of God, which ultimately means to understand
the latter on the basis of the world and its truth. What these speculative
constructions are ‘missing, in the absence of a phenomenology of life, is the very
notion of what is at issue in Christianity with regard to God, Christ, or man.
A du- alist Christology is obliged to remove any form of naturalism, any naive
life—thac which. makes him onc of the living,-and-thacalonc. oo

88
The thesis of man as the “son of God” thus has a dual significance, part negative
and part-positive. In a negative sense, it prevents man from being understood
as a natural Being, as do common sense and the sciences. But it also prevents
him from being understood, from the wranscendental viewpoint, as a Being for
whom the world would constitute the horizon of all experiences, or the mode of
appearing common to each of these experi- ences. Thus ir is Christ’s sweeping
assertion abour himself thar must he re- considered wirh regard to man and his
true essence: “They are not of the world any more than 1 am” (John 17:14).
Just like Christ, as a man 1 am not of the world in the radical phenomenalogical
sense that the sppearing out of which my phenomenological flesh is made, and
which constitutes my true essence. is not the appearing of the world. This is
not due to the effect of some supposed credo, philosophical or theological: it
is rather be- cause the world has no flesh, becausc in the “outside-itself” of
the world na flesh and no living are-possible—they cannot rake shape anywhere
other than in Lifes pathétik and a-cosmic embrace,
Thus a man must adopt all Christ’s polemical and passionate denials
)
102 Man as “Son of God” concerning his condition if he wants to understand
some part of what he lis. He is not of the world, nor, consequently. is he 2
natural Being; he is not Ithe son of his father. No matter che level on which
it is constructed, an worldly explanation of humanirasis instantly henceforth
stripped of its chim © reach the first and final reality on the basis of which
alone is anythin like a man possible. Character traits and specific psychological
behavior we things we can trace to the first relation of the child to the person
it consid- ered to be its father: its first craumas, the Oedipus complex, and
so forth But since this father is not its father—and since. being incapable of
givin : life to himself, he is certainly in no position to bestow it on anyone
ses fir appears, - the privileged and decisive example of birth, that no worldly
rsequence of events could a i i ore ee cou! | account for the Being of a person,
inasmuch as he Philosophy has tried. to define what a man truly is. In modern
times this grand effort has found expression in the transcendental phenormeno-
logical reduction practiced by Husserl. Taking up the Carresian project that
aspires to get at the heart of what we truly are, the reduction in fact brack- ets
the world. In so doing, Husser! is aware of discovering fields of experi- ence thar
had gone unnoticed by man throughout his history: In these as yet unexplored
fields of experience, those of the ego’s transcendental life the essence of mar-
runfolds. Transcendental man, not natural man, is what the phenomenological
reduction places in the hands of phenomenology, not as the outcome of a risky
discovery but owing to research systematicall , pursued in the light of conscious
premises. But as soon as this eanscen. dental man is reduced to “consciousness
of something,” to In-der-Welt-sein —reduced, in shore, to his phenomenological
opening up to the world meaning to the phenomenological opening of the world
what constitutes his transcendental essence becomes distorted and is lost. This
is because the original mode of phenomenalization by which “man” comes into

89
his con- dition as Son, that is to say. as Living in Life, as the original mode
of phe- nomenalization of Life itself, has nothing whatsoever to do with a “con-
sciousness of something,” with the phenomenological opening of a world —{vith
the ek-stasy of an “outsidd.”
If transcendental man grasped as Son draws his phenomenological essence from
Life’s self-phenomenalization, a process inherently foreign to the opening of a
world, then the thesis of man as “Son of God” is clarified in its many implications.
In effect, being engendered in Life, the engen-
Man as “Son of God” 103
red has the characteristics of this Life. hac is valid for the Arch-Son is “alid
for the Son, and what is valid for them both is the essence of life, or God
himself} This is the meaning of the thesis that “God created man in is image”:
that he gave man his own essence. He did not give it to him as one gives an
object to someone, like a gift passing from one hand to an- other. He gave him
his own essence in the sense that, his own essence be- ing the self-engendering
of Life in which is engendered the Ipseity of all the living, chen in giving his
own essence God gave man the living condi- tion, the happiness of experiencing
himself in this experiencing of self that is Life and in the radical immanence
of this experiencing, where there is neither “outside” nor “world.” To engender
means everything except to create, if creation refers to the creation of the world,
the phsormeolgs ”cal opening up of a first “Outside” where the entire reign of
the visible i ‘revealed to us. 4 Here opens up the abyss that separates birth and
creation} Formanto he the Son means, for him as for the Arch-Son,-thac he is
not created. The thesis that God created man in his image therefore signifies
two things: first, chat man was in fact no¢ created—and this is why he is not
a Being-of- the-wold; and, second, that man is not an image. because in fact
images _ exjstonly in the world, against the-background-of this-ariginal putting:
don. If man were an image, created, he would no longer be the “image” of God
and carry in him the same essence, the essence of Life: he would no longer be,
and could no longer be, a living. The requirements of a phenomenology of birth
suffer
”more Sons in the world than there is an Arch-Son. To make sense of man’s
essence, the phenomenology of the world must be dismissed, as it was for
Christ—and through him.
Or, if you prefer, it is the idea of man in the usual sense that must be renounced.
We think there is something like a man because we are looking at the world. It
is within this gaze, formed by it, that the silhouette of a man is traced, against
the horizon of visibility that is the world’s truth. Be- cause the man one sees
takes his appearance from the world’s appearance, the laws of this appearance
also apply to him: space, time, causality, the multiple determinations woven
each day by the natural sciences and the so-called sciences of man, in whose
web he is caught. This
man is brother

90
if he were created in the way that the world was )
no exceptions; what they imply or exclude is universally valid. There are no j
)
104 Man as “Son of God”
to the automata that can be constructed according to the same laws—and
will be. What this specter lacks in order to be similar to what we are is to
be living—nor the kind of living foreign to life of which biology speaks but
the living that carries within itself absolute phenomenological Life, the
man we do not see, any more than we see Christ, the man who was born “into
Life and takes from his transcendental birth all its parhérik character- istics, the
transcendental man of Christianity, the San of God.
Having outlined what the interpretation of man as Son of God rules out, we
should now explore its positive meaning thoroughly. An inevitable question
arises here: If man carries in himself Life’s divine essence, ishe-nat God himself
or Christ’. What isthe. difference between them? We must pursue the analysis
of the transcendental birch of the Son of Life much fur- ther if the transcendental
characteristics thar define man’s essence are to be firmly grounded. and thereby
intelligible enough to be grasped. We have seen how. fin the self-generation
of absolute Life. an essential Ipseity is en- gendered whose phenomenological
effectivity is a singular Selfl—that of the Arch-Son co-engendered in life as its
self-accomplishment and thus identi- cal with the latter. Analogously, true man
as conceived by Christianity un- der the title “Son of God—what we will now be
calling the living tran- scendental Self—is engendered. in Life. Inasmuch as, in
the self~movement by which Life ceaselessly comes into itself-and-experiences
itself, is erected an Ipseity and thus.a Self (because to experience oneself is
effectively the same as that self, is necessarily that self), then the Self engendered
in this iself-movement of Life is effectively the same as that Self) 100, and is
neces- sarily this one or that one, a singular Self, in essence different from any
other. 1 myself am this singular Self engendered in the self-engendering of
absolute Life, and only that. Life self- engenders itself as me. If, along with
Meister Eckhart—and with Christianity—we call Life God, we might say:
# “God engenders himself as mé.™ The generation of this singular Self thar
I . myself am—the living transcendental Me, in the sclf-generation of absolute
Life: this is my transcendental birth. the one that makes me a true man, the
| cranscendental Christian man. - Bur inasmuch as this transcendental birth is
accomplished on the ba- isis of Life, in the process of this Life’s coming-into-
itself, then the singular Self that | am comes into itself only in absolute Life’s
coming-into-itself and carries it within itself as its never-abolished premise, as
its condition. Thus Life traverses cach of those it engenders in such a way that
there is nothing

91
Man as ”Son of God” 105
in him that is not living, nothing thar does nor contain this eternal essence of
Life. Life engenders me as itself. 1f with Eckhart—and with Christianicy—
we call Life God, one could say: “God engenders me as himself.” But that
was precisely the condition of rhe Arch-San ca-engendered in Gods self engen-
dering, in such a way that his
-generation was the self-generation of God himself, that he was God. We repeat
our question: Me, this living tran- ” scendental Self that I am, am [ aon [Cheis))
Here let me introduce a crucial concept that perhaps ought to have
been introduced earlier, since it governs the philosophical understanding of
prof selfaffection.® What is specific to life is, in effect,
”that it affects itself. This self-affection defines its living, the © experiencing.
itself” of which it consists. Affection generally implies a manifestation. If a
being of the world affects me, it makes itself felt by me, shows itself to me,
gives itsclf to me, enters into my experience in some way or other. And this
is valid for the world itself, which affects me because it is manifests itself ro
me—this manifestation of the world being, as we have seen, its ruth.” )
Tush and-effection-are-equivalent terms. The concept of affection, desig- nating
any affection whatever and thus any manifestation (that affects me via a sound
that I hear, an object that I see, an odor smell. or else that af- fects my mind
via an image or any other representation), contrasts sharply with the concep of
self-affection. In self-affection, what affects me is no longer anything foreign or
external to me who am affected, and donse- quently no object belonging to the
world or the world itself) Whar affects in the case of self-affection is the same
as what is affected. Bur this extraordi- nary situation in which what affects
is the same as wha is affected occurs nowhere except within life. And such a
situation occurs there absolutely, such that it defines the essence of this life.
Life is thar which itself affects it- self inthe radical and decisive sense that this
life that is affecrion, and thar is affected, is not affected by anything other than
itself, by no kind of exter- nality and by nothing exterior to it. In this way,
life constitutes the content ofits affection. The concept of self-affectien as life’s
essence implies its acos- mic character, the fact thar being affected by nothing
other, nothing exter- nal or radically foreign to the world, iz comes about in
itself in the absolute sufficiency of irsradical interiarity—cxperiencing only irself,
heing affected only by irself, prior ro any possible world and independently of
is,
Now, this condition of life and of everything that carries within itself life’s
essence does not result from some speculative assercion. It is a phe-
(fod ssirin nd) fled,

92
J Apt
106 Man as “Son of God”
‘nomenological condition. As such, it can be discerned in each of the effec- ltive
modalities of life. A joy may well be explained by an event in the world or
be related to it, and moreover it may itself be related to some object or cause
exterior to it, some cause or object that stands our clearly in the screen on which
the world appears. But the joy itself is not illuminated in the light of any world.
Considered in itself. in its pure affectivity and as joy’s pure living in which its
reality is exhausted. this j joy is merely a | pathérik modality of life, a way in
which life experiences itself. And this is valid for any of lifes modalities, starting
with the simplest impression.t However, if each modality of life considered in
the immanence of its living carries within it the absolute essence of life, never
being other than a mode of the latter. of ics pazkétik and nonecstatic self-
phenomenalization, then in effect the possibility of a dissociation of this son
of life that I am as a tran- ’scendental living ego, on the one hand, from the
Arch-Son, on the other. ’and finally from the phenomenological essence of this
absolute Life, or ’God himself—now poses itself as a problem.
Lec us distinguish between a strong and a weak concept of self- affection) Ac-
cording to the strong concept, life affects itself in a double sense—first, in thar
it in itself defines the content of its own affection, The “content” of a joy, for
example, is this joy itself. Second, life-itself produces the content of its. affec-
tion, this content thar is.itself, It does not produce this content as it might an
exterior creation, casting wha is created outside
Man as ”Son of God” 107
the affected and what affects it. myself the “subject” of this affection and
content. | experience myself. and constantly, in that, the fact of experienc
ing myself constitutes my “Me.” But Ihave not brought myself into. this
Xperience \(d isaffected and Lam so by myself, in the sense that the content
that affects me is still me—and-notsomething else, such as the affection felt,
touched, “willed, desired, thought, and sa forth. But this self-affection that
defines my essence is not my doing. And thus I do not affect myself absolutely,
bur, precisely put, Lam and 1 find myself self-affecred Here we find the weak
sense of the concept of self-affection, the one proper to comprehending the.
essence of man, rather than ro comprehending God’s
How can we relate the weak and strong senses of the concept of self- affection to
each other? How does the former necessarily refer to the later in such as way as
to be founded on it? The singular Self that I am experi- ences itself only within
the movement by which Life is cast into itself and enjoys itself in the eternal
process of its absolute self-affecting. The singular Self self-affects itself: it is the
identity between the affecting and the affected, but it has not itself laid down
this identity. The Self self-affecss itself only ings:

93
much as absolute Life. is self-affected in this Self Jus Life, in its self-giving, /
which gives the Self go itself. It is Life, in its self-revelarion, that reveals the Lr
Self so irself. Is Life, ints pachizik embrace, thar gives to the Self the pos-
Thus we see the passivity of this singular Self that [ am. a passivity that» gL
determines it from top to bottom) The Self is not only passive with respect
itself, like something other and alien and external. In fact, life daes not cre- ate
content at all: she content of life. is uncreared, Life engenders ir, gives to itself
the content thaeis itself. What matters is the way in which life gives it- self this
content that is. itself. This self-giving thar is a self-revelation is a
Jrmanseendental affectivity, a pathos in which every self-experiencing is pos-
sible as parhétik, as affective in the very depths of its being. However passive
this experiencing that life constantly has of itself in its parhérik embrace may be,
it is nonetheless produced by life itself—and ir is life’s generation of it- self to
which the strong concept of self-affection refers. According to this concept, life
is affected by a content that is itself, and, moreover, it lays down this content by
which it is affected—chis life that affects and is affected. The strong concept of
self-affecting pertains to absolute phenomenological life and is suitable only for
it—that is to say, to God. Me. on the contrary, the living transcendental Ego.
I also draw my essence from self-affection. As far as [ am me, [ affect myself; |
am myself
to itself and each of the modalities of its life, as each suffering is passive with
respect to itself and is only possible as such, taking its affective tenor solely from
this passivity whose pure phenomenological tenor is affectivity a such. Above
all, the. Self is passive. with respect.
. This passivity of the singular Self within Life is what puts it into the accusative
case and makes of ita “me” and not an “1,” this Self thar is passive about itself
only because it is passive. to begin with about Life and its absolute self-affection.
But this passivity of the singular Self in Life—the passivity making of it a
“me”—is not a metaphysical attribute posited by thought. It is phe-
108 ~~ Man as “Son of God”
nomenologically determined such that it is constitutive of the Self’s life and is
therefore continually lived by that Self. This determination is so es- sential,
the proof of it so constant, that our life becomes confused with this feeling
of being lived. If the Self expresses itself spontancously in the ac- , cusative
case, it is because it holds fast to its own experience, which is not that of being
affected bur of being constantly self-affected, within itself, in a self-affection thar
is independent of external affecting or any relation with | the world. Now, the
specific mode of the singular Self’s passivity as seif-affecred in Life’s absolute
sclf-affecting not only defines one of its general traits bur
also engenders the whole set of its essential, and thus parbérk, modalities.

94
Thus anxiety is born in the self as if it comes from within. Ir takes its pos- sibility
from the very essence of chis Self, from this feeling the Self has of experiencing
what it does without being in any way responsible for it, without being able to
change anything in it, without being able to get rid of itself or break the bond
that attaches it to itself, which makes it into the Self that it will always be. To
escape the self—this burden thar the Self constitutes for itself inasmuch as it is
constantly affected by itself without this self-affection coming from this self or
being somehow imputable to it—to want to escape the self and not be unable
to do so: thar is what pro- vokes the Self’s anxiety and, by the same token, all
the behavior that anx- iety arouses and through which it tries in turn to flee
itself. Thus, drive, also born in anxiety and issuing from it, is nothing other
than one of these behaviors, or perhaps the most important of them or else their
common source. The drives are the untiring effort of self-affected life—the life
that is constantly assailed by itself. crushed under its own weight—to hide from
ieself, to get rid of itself. Life finds it impossible to sever the tie that attaches
it invincibly to itself, so it tries to change itself, ro convert—and this is the
principle of its action, or of any conceivable action—its suffer- ing into joy.
The essential questions that an empirical psychology believes it can situate on
an objective plane and include in its repertoire of worldly expla- | nations all in
fact derive solely from man’s condition as Son of God, or—
as we should put it ac the close of this analysis—{he status of the singular Self
self-affected within the self-affection of absolute Life) As Son, man is predestined,
and his destiny is written within the reciprocal relation of the weak and strong
concepts of self-affection, or in the relation that is estab-
Man as ”Son of God”
109
hed between a life such as his own,.canstantly self-affected without ever c-
saurce_of this self-affection, and a Life rhar affects itself ab- lurely, the Life
of God. ”With respect to these two concepts of self-affection, naturans and
matura, what, then, is specific to the self-affection characteristic of Christ’s fe?
How can we relate it to the life of God and that of “man”? One of the ajor
themes of Christianity is the effort to comprehend Christ as inter-
-of is something thaca-phenomenalogy of life allows us to grasp more ¢——
Pthoroughly than any other. , for lack of the appropriate means. The rela-
tion of Christ’s Life to Gods is something the theory of the Arch-Son has clearly
laid out. Although he is himself generated in the self-affection of absolute Life,
Christ co-belongs to the process of this absolute self-affection as the essential
Ipseity and the First Living, without which no self affection of this kind could
be accom- plished. Thus he is “consubstantial” with the Father, sharing in the
power of this process in which, embracing itself, [Life makes itself Life. By the
same token, the relation of transcendental man fo Christ is - clarified, inasmuch
as ic is intelligible only in the light of Christ’s relation ’ to God, the principle of
which we have just recalled. A third relation. though, also enters into the ficld

95
of our phenomenological elucidation: the relation of this transcendental man to
God himself. Here we discover the reason why this relation is not direct but is
mediated by Christ. To the the- sis common to Judaism and Christianity that
transcendental man is the Son of God can be added a more properly Christian
thesis (although it is also Judaic insofar as Judaism av awaits a Messiah): that
be is shis Son of God only within the Arch-Sc o livings are possible except within
Lifd As soon as Lifes essence is understood, this assertion follows: po living is
living, that is, self-affecting, ather than in the process of the self affection of
absolute Life. If the essence of this self-affection is understood in turn, the
proposition then becomes: no self-affection is possible that does not generate
in itself the essential Ip- seity implicated in any “experiencing-itself” and pre-
supposed by it. But the phenomenological realization of this Ipseity is a Self,
itself phenome- nologically realized and therefore singular—in other words, the
transcen- dental Arch-Son co-engendered in the phenomenological realization of
he) self-affection of absolute Life as this realization itself. That no livings are
“
ediary between humans and God. What thiscole of “intermediary” con- V1” a
“ God” m uo Man as “Son of God” Man as “Son of Go
| possible except in life therefore means that they are possible within the ’{
Arch-Son. and only in him.
Decisive evidence can be brought forward: If we ponder a living, in this case
the transcendental Self that I am, then it is not simply on the basis of Life’s
essence and because the self carries within itself this essence that we are able to
understand this living, Only the analysis of the essence of Life, inasmuch as this
essence implies the Ipseity of a first Self. allows us ro grasp how and why a place
is opened up in it, in the Ipseity of this First Self, for any and all conceivable
livings—since the latter is possible only as a Self. Thus the Arch-Son precedes
any Son, but not in a factual anterioriry thar could readily be verified. On the
contrary, the Arch-Son precedes any Son as the preexisting and preestablished
essence without which and ouside of
llwhich nothing could be constructed thar is anything like a Son, like a living
| Self—like this transcendental ego that I am. And. in fact, if by means of
thought we plunge into the life of one of these transcendental egos born in Life,
it is clear thar, no more than any of them has (or ever had) the capac- ity to set
itself in motion and establish itself in Life, to make itself living, none of them
has, or could have, the power to unite this Life with itself— presupposing that
Life had flowed ino it like a wave—and, uniting itself in this way, to construct
in Life this Ipseity on the basis of which alone is it pos- I sible as a Self, as this
transcendental “me” that | am.
Now let us return to the most extraosdinary and reckless of Christ’s
| words in order to_perceive their apodictic eruth—a truch such that who- ever
understands it cannot avoid accepting it: “Before Abraham was. . .

96
i Me, I am.” These words signify that no transcendental living “me” is pos-
sible except within an Ipseity that it presupposes (far from having the power
to create it, any more than it could have created its own life)—an Ipseity co-
generated in the self-affection of absolute Life and whose phenomeno- logical
effectivity is precisely the Arch-Son. The First Born within Life and the First
Living, the Arch-Son holds the essential Ipseity in which life’s self- affection
comes to be effective. But it is only within this Ipseity, and on its basis, that
any other Self. and thus any transcendental ego such as ours, will be possible.
Thus, the Arch-Son holds in his Ipseity the condition of all other sons. No son,
no transcendental living ego born in life, would be ”born in this life had life not
previously taken shape as transcendental Ip- 0 seity in the Arch-Son. Therefore,
the latter necessarily precedes any imag- inable Son: he is “the firstborn among
many brothers” (Romans 8:29).
is is because only in his Ipseity and in the originary Self that belongs to
im can life come to each living, ==ne er be poabing of him a me —thi ental har
1 Tr prac [but this means “before any transcendental “ne whatever, whether it
be Abraham’s or David’s], Tam.” Tha a living comes to life only as a living
“me” and thus only on the condition that this life has already constructed the
originary Ipseity that ‘makes it possible for that living person to be a Self and a
“me —this is what Chuistianity’s fundamenzal assertions regarding man imply:
that man | | ’ can be, the “Son of God” only. as the “Son within the Son.” We
must now delve into-shiscrucial argument. @ rp Ah
Man as “Son Within the Son”
, The assertion that man comes into his condition as a transcendental {living
me’ as a Son of Life, only insofar as Life, in generating itself, has generated the
originary Ipseity of the First Living—an assertion that con- fers on Christianity
its very particular physiognomy among other mono- theisms—can be formulated
in many ways. Sometimes it is an idea under- lying propositions that explicitly
bear on other subjects, as in the case of prayers or spiritual instructions whose
aim is to transform a faithful per- son’s life with a view to his sanctification,
and ultimately his participation in divine life. Sometimes, on the contrary, the
thesis is articulated more bluntly, in one of the surprising declarations that
offer what we have called ithe essential kernel of Christianity} Understanding
the transcendental birth of man as his generation within the First Living, and
not merely within Life, is so important that even when that understanding is
veiled by edifying dis- course, the meaning of that discourse is disclosed only
by reference to the generation of the Arch-Son. The latter appears to be the
condition of any ‘modification coming along to affect the history or destiny of
a transcen- tdental living me.
If we consider the opening of the Letter to the Ephesians (1:3-6), which seems
a typically religious text addressed to believers, simultaneously a prayer to God
and an exhortation of the faithful, we cannot fail ro recog- nize the theme
inherent in this thanksgiving to the Father who has given man his condition as

97
a living me, a me in Christ—having “chosen us in
Man as “Son Within the Son”
n3
,” in this Firstborn Son. Thus the Arch-Son appears as the site where “Life
ro the living is made, such that imbued with an ipseiry and receiving from it
the, phenomenological realizarion of Life-chat ir rrans- its, this gift determines a
priori any living as a me, The ipseity of a Self d of a me is not conveyed by this
gift as something that somehow still ;remains ouside it; rather, it is inherent
in this givenness. The givenness of Jife is never anything other than a self-
givenness) and it can be achieved solely in that form, in the original Ipseity thar
inhabits any conceivable self-givenness. It is not only the gift of God, nor only
the site where the gift is given, but the originary co-belonging and reciprocal
interiority of Ipseity and of Life that is unveiled and exalted in Paul’s lyrical
address: *Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has
blessed ius in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For
he ose us in him before the creation of the world . . . having predestined us
to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Chriss, in accordance with his plea-
sure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us
fn the Beloved. . . . In him we were made heirs” (Ephesians 1:3-6 and 13-14:
my emphasis). “Heirs” means the heirs of Life, the fulfillment of grace and all
benedictions: outside of it there is nothing, but uichin-iclies the infinite joy of
the i We are the heirs )
Life, however, only in the Arch-Son; it is in him and through him alone that
we ourselves become sons, the adopted “children” of Life. made chil- dren in its
essential Ipseiry and through it. Chat & ©
From Paul come shorter but no less incisive ‘e passages that unequivo- + cally
designatg Chris i ; possible “me,
itself understood Ee ee and which can henceforth be defined in the striking
language of the Apos- tle to the Gentiles as “God’s temple.” That Christ is
the foundation neces- sary for a person to become God’s temple emerges unam-
biguously: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid,
which is Je- * sus Christ. . . . Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s
remple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? . . . for God’s temple is sacred, and
you are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:11 and 16-17).
In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul even more concisely refers our transcen-
dental birth to Christ, as the conjoined birth of a “me” and a liv- ing person,
a “me” bearing Life within it, and thus God’s “temple” or “dwelling: “And in
him you too are being built together to become a
cdl Y,
£m
U4 Man as “Son Within the Son”

98
dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (2:22). In this way, these tran- Scen-
denual me’s that are “created in Christ” (2:10), taking their Self from his Ipseity,
finding their foundarion in it and being impossible without it, are called “heirs”
(3:6). They share in Life’s heritage as Sons of God only because they receive
this inheritance from the Arch-Son and from his es- sen tial Ipseity, from what
the sacraments call his flesh. This intermingling, inthe transcendental birth of
transcendental egos, of Christs inheritance 1 ods inheriunce, an intermingling
in which “the unsearchable riches ot Christ” (3:8) can be discerned, is whar rhe.
le-offers-as-the mystery hidden throughour the generations (3:21). por
Paul’s brilliant interpretation of Christianity, so in accord with Chris- tianity
that it fuses with the definition of it, nevertheless yields to Johan- nine texts,
which no longer constitute an interpretation, truly speaking. so far do they
seem ro resonate with the very words of Christ. The Pauline in- termingling
finds a more original expression there, in the form of a triple implication. On
the one hand is the immense crowd of the living, and on the other an only Son,
as John constantly refers to him. The many sons are in the Son, and this is
why they will be saved only by identifying them- selves with this Son. who is
himself identified with the Father wichin their reciprocal interiority. It is this
dual identification, the eternal birth of the Son and the birth of sons within the
Son, that constitutes the foundation of Christian salvation. We have already
covered the explanation of this dual identification with respect to the reciprocal
interiority of the Father and the Son, but we have yet to cover that of the sons
and the Son, and thus of the sons and God. Like the first, the second receives
a thoroughgo- ing elucidarion in John.
We turn our attention first to what is proposed in the guise of a para- ble. It
scems a very simple and easily understood parable, about a pen that holds a
flock of sheep. Christ appears in the form of a shepherd, or a good pastor, who
has an extraordinary rapport with his flock. Naturally. this al- legory makes
this rapport comprehensible by referring to that which actu- ally exists between
a shepherd and his flock: the sheep know his voice and follow him, and, as
for the shepherd, “he calls his own sheep by name” (John 10:3). The sort of
relations that anyone can observe in rural life are
!then abrupdy torn from their familiar frame, so that they no longer derive from
it the principle of their intelligibility. Rather, John situates this princi- ple in
the acosmic and atemporal relation that exists between absolute phe-
Man as “Son Within the Son” 115
nomenological Life and the originary Ipseity that it generates in its eternal self-
generation and as the condition for that. No longer does any worldly archetype—
nor consequently any metaphor—help us to understand what is now at issue:
the relarion of sons ta the Arch-Son, which cannot he un- derstood except in
the light of the more ofiginel-relation-of the Arch-San ro ba absolute Life. The
reciprocal phenomenological interiority of Christ and God—this is the key John
uses in turn to understand the relation of the sons to the Son, and it is the

99
only key that fits. If we now suppose thar the relation among the sons can
itself be comprehended only in the light of their relation to the Arch-Son, it
is the totality of relations among the iv) ing in general—humans, Christ, and
God-—tha is called into question. But this overall questioning of the relations
among the living, which takes its principle not from the world but from the
Arch-generation of Life, is something we must provisionally set aside in order to
concentrate on a sin- gle one of its aspects, albeit an essential one: the relation
of the sons to the Arch-Son.
But this relation is exactly the theme hidden in John’s parable, where Christ
appears not only as the shepherd of the flock but also as the gate of the pen
where the flock is kept: “I am the gate” (John 10:9). If Christ is the
gate of the sheepfold, it is hecause access to any conceivable rranscenden-
wl me resides in the original ipseiry in which something like a Self and a
meisalone-pessible. A proposition that situates access to the me within an
Ipseity older than it is, however, should unnerve anyone capable of per- cerving
its profound implications, for this proposition applies ro any tran- scendental
me. my own as well as that of any other man, to speak here only of sons.
Regarding my own me, the proposirion means thar ¥ do nor have ac- cess tom
gs shat 1 canna be sapelf capone by pring though) t am not myself, and cannot
be, except by way of Life’s original Ipseity. ti i ity i i ife is c this me that I
am_Therefore, I cannot join me to myself except through Christ, since he has
joined eternal Life to itself, creating in it the first Self. ale: in_philosophical
language, ic is iss transcendental condition. Since it draws its possibility from
this relation of self to self, the me is irself 2 sran- scendenral me. And, as the
gate through which the sheep pass, (Christ is the
LL
a
16 Man as “Son Within the Son”
transcendental condition of these transcendental me}. Never would a tran- scen-
dental me be given to itself—nor come into itself so as to be capable, in this
continual coming-into-itself, of being a Self—if the original phe- nomenological
Ipseity of the First Self of Life did not furnish ir with the
substance of its own ipseity. Thus, there is no Self, no relarion-to self, ex-
This is the meaning of the parable about Christ as the gate of the
sheepfold. Christ is not foremost the one who mediates berween humans
jand God. Christ is foremost the one who mediates between each me and [ise the
relation to self that allows each “me” to be a me. This relation is not an abstract
relation, however, one thar can be reduced to a formal con- ceptualization. fs
I have said, ir has a phenomenological concreteness, a flesh) If the connection
to self wherein any conceivable me is constructed is the original Ipseity of the

100
Arch-Son who joins each me ro itself, then such a connection is by the same
token the grass on which the sheep graze, the grass that nourishes them and
allows them to grow. Any me thar relares ro itself grows by itself, swells with
its own content. This growth of the self in
any possible me, this self-affection in which the self touches itself at every |
point of its being, is its flesh, its phenomenological flesh, its living flesh. In my
living flesh I am given to myselfand thus [ am a me—I am myself. But it is not
me who has given me to myself; it is not me who joins me to my- self. I am not
the gate, the gate that opens me to myself, nor am I the grass, the grass that
allows my flesh wo grow. In my flesh I am given to myself, but [ am not my own
flesh. My flesh, my living flesh, is Christ’s. As the One whom John quotes says:
“I am the gare, whoever enters through me... will come in and go out. and find
pasture” (John 10:9).
Burt the gate of the sheepfold. which according to this strange para- ble provides
access to the place where the sheep graze—thus founding the transcendental
Ipseity from which each me, being connected to itself and growing in itself,
draws the possibiliry of being a me—this gate provides
fs to all transcendental living me’s, not to only one of them, to the one am
myself. Christ is not within me solely as the force that, crushing me against
myself, ceaselessly makes me a me. Each me comes into itself only in this way,
in the formidable power of this embrace in which it continu- ously self-atfects
itself. This is why the gate opens onto all living things: ac-
ceprin Life’s first relation ra self and in the Self of this firsr relation. Na self
is.possible that does not have as its phenomenological substance, as its flesh, !
the phenomenological substance and flesh of the Arch-Son.
Man as “Son Within the Son” 117
cess to each of them is possible only through Christ, We must understand recisely
what such a proposition means. If access to any conceivable me presupposes
its coming-into-itself thanks to an a priori Ipseity that does ‘not flow from it
but from which it flows, then, in effect, to accede to this me means to follow
the path of this prior coming-into-itself from which it results—to go through
the gate, to cross the incandescent threshold of this original Ipseity in which
the fire of Life burns. Ir is impossible to come to someone, to reach someone,
except through Christ, through the original ’ Ipscity thar connects that person
to himself, making him a Self, the me that he is. Iris impassible to touch flesh
except through the original Flesh, which in irs essential Ipseicy. gives this flesh
the ability to feel itself and ex- perience itself, allows ir tobe flesh Iris impossible
ro. touch this flesh with- aur touching the other flesh thar has made ic flesh. Tt
is impossible to strike someone without striking Christ. And it is Christ who
says: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did
for me” (Matthew 25:40).
This is not a metaphor. It does not mean: whatever you do to one of your

101
brothers, it is as if you did it to me. {In Christianity there are no + metaphors,
nothing of the order “as if.” This Is because Christianity has to do only with
reality. not with the imaginary or with symbols} A me is not “as if” it were a
“me.” This me that I am is not “as if ” it were my own. In that case it would as
well be “as if” it were that of another. another me. These imaginary deviations
derive from the fevered representations of ill- ness, especially the sickness of
life in which each individual turns against himself and no longer wants to be
what he is, identifying with another, if necessary, to accomplish this. Far from
questioning what is irremediable about a me forever anchored to itself, these
imaginary deviations presup- pose it. But the me is not anchored in itself forever
except by force of the essential Ipseity that, giving it to itself, binding ir to itself
in its bin embrace, has made of it this me that it forever is. Thus, before this
me ever existed, the original Ipseity of the Arch-Son cast it into itself. Without
this Ipseity thar preceded it, no me would ever be. So if I have something to
do with me, I first have ro do with Christ. And if I have to do with another,
| first have to do with him in Christ. And everything I do to him, I first do
to Christ. The significance of these implications underlying the Christian ethic
will emerge later on.
Next. the parable puts forward an extraordinary hypothesis: that it is
--
o*
o ”Mew a5 “Son Within the Son” “ta poasblc w™ arrive at any me whatesover,
whether my own or anothers, without passing through the essential Ipseity from
which this me derives its possibility. What such a hypothesis questions. we must
nore, is nothing less than the Whole set of Christianity’s fundamental intuitions,
those which concern life’s self-generation as the generation of an original Ipseity
alone in which any transcendental living me is, in its turn, erected as Son of God
i and Son within the Son.” Could there be a living person, a me, wha dispenses
with life, a me without the original lpseity of a Self within him ’ John’s text
now experiences its greatest moments of “ns as Christ’s anger explodes, a scene
depicted by Rubens in the Brussels altarpiece Bounding into the clouds, holding
a lightning bolt in his hand and bran- dishing it over the world, Christ prepares
ro destroy it: “I tell you the truth the man who does not enter the sheep pen
by the gate, but climbs in b : some other way, is a thief and a robber” (John
10:1). And then comes he astonishing declaration: “All who ever came before
me were thieves and robbers” (John 10:8). Bur no one came before Christ: “In
the beginnin, was the Word”; “Before Abraham was born, I am”; “David called
hin Lord. Lec us bear in mind that these are not straightforward statements
\ but phenomenological propositions of an apodicric validity, and, as I have
pointed out, whoever perceives what it is they aim to describe is obliged to
accept them) That nobody came before Christ means that nobody could have
come before him, because no me is possible unless in the Ipseity en- gendered by
absolute Life in experiencing itself in its original self-affection There is no self-
affection that does not bear an ipseity within it without which it would never

102
come about. Likewise. més who accede 10 themselves and take possession of
their own being, or else those who accede to others and enter into relation with
them—at no time do any of them circumvent the ipseity thar gives them to
themselves, thus allowing them to be mes. What- ever it may say or do, each
me has already made use within itself of an ip- seity into whose power it did
not enter for nothing; it has already ap ro. priated what does not belong to it:
it is a thief and a robber. Thivve,s and | robbers are all those who have not
bent their knees before what within them has given them to themselves, who
have entered the sheepfold with- out passing under the triumphal Arch, scaling
the fence in shame, in the dark of their blindness. Under what conditions could
such a theft rake place —in what dark night? What sort of blindness occurs
that makes it possible? This will be the question we must ask. For the time
being, and for the pur-
Man as “Son Within the Son” 119
pose of {hi ic sis) ir is crucial that we take the mea- sure of Christianiry’s
formidable body of thought about the individual— even if, especially if, from
afphilosophical viewpoine this contribution has remained largely unexplored.
We will now use the term “Individual,” with a capital letter, for the real essence
of what common language refers to under this name. This real essence is ivi :
this i
he most original feature of Christian thought about the Individual is that it
linked the concepts of the Individual and of Life from the outset] What makes
such thinking so limitlessly profound is that this relation between Individual and
Life is precisely not a relation in the ordinary sense, that is, some sort of link
between two separate terms each of which can exist with- out the other. Nor is it
a “dialectic” elation, as defined by modern thought: a relation between wo terms
in which the one could not exist without the other, since each can exist only
in their conjoined condition, in their “syn- thesis.” The dialectic relation leaves
undetermined the phenomenological essence in which this reladon is produced;
but soon thereafter it tacitly in- terprets this essence in a phenomenological way
as the truth of the world, wherein this relation is manifested, along with the
terms between which it is established.
The relation between Individual and Life in Christianity is a relation tha takes
place in Life and proceeds from it, being nothing other than Life’s own move-
ment) This movement is that by which Life, constantly coming into itself in
its ‘experiencing of itself and thus in its “living,” constantly en- genders itself
by engendering within it the Ipseity without which it would not be possible
for this living to experience itself. The relation of the Indi- vidual and Life is
thus identified wich the process of Lifes self-generation as the generation of the
Arch-Son—with the relation of reciprocal interiority between Father and Son,
the primordial relation situated ar the heart of Chrisianity, which we have al-
ready examined at length. From this relation of reciprocal interiority berween
Life and Individual-—between Life and the Arch-individual, we should say— i

103
ivi
come aftec it. To act here means to render obsolete, to subvert. Let us con-
sider in succession how Christianity overturns first the concept of life and then
chat of the individual—it being understood that it is not possible to
We 120 Man as “Son Within the Son”
[od \ consider them separately and that it is precisely this impossibility, namely,
Pp | the originary co-belonging of Life and the Individual, that constitutes one
If of Christianity’s most essential assertions.
As for life, we have had occasion to see how much it has remained a
* . Fvague concep in the history of Western thought) As long as its definition
¥ 4 ie consists of no more than a simple enumeration of the objective properties
that can be discerned in living entities. then life appears as a force whose # Jos
is so uncertain that modern science has had no choice but simply to eliminate it.
Within philosophy, particularly prior to the developments in wwentieth-century
biology, the concept of life finds itself in an analogous situation. Other than as
the objective properties of living organisms, life appears as an obscure entity,
the only difference in this case being that it could be asserted and gradually
become the theme of speculative philoso-
phy. instead of simply being repudiated as in modern science.
omantic thought offers the prime example of a conception of life
”whose prestige largely rests on the indeterminace character of its subject) The
IA - only determination of this indeterminate entity called life derives precisely
Soar Hom the fact thar it is thought of independently from the individual, being
considered as a force superior to that individual. Life thus appears as an im-
personal and anonymous power and, because it excludes the singularity of the
individual, as “universal.” Inasmuch as it is universal, life is ready to as- sume
the role of a principle—the principle of a global explanation of all phenomena.
the principle underlying the world. Universal life is not only superior to the
individual bur foreign and therefore indifferent to it as well. It is an impersonal
flux that submerges what it encounters and is therefore foreign to all it collects,
brings along, or sets in motion. {’It is a matter of in- vi difference to this stream
of life,” says Hegel, “what sort of mills it drives)? The separation of Life and
the Individual reveals its decisive and dev-
astating consequences as soon as the Individual is returned to his proper
/ essence, the ipseity without which no Individual would be possible. Dur- \¢
ing our initial discussion of life (in Chapter 3), we saw that life’s coming to the
forefront in Schopenhauer’s revolutionary philosophy resulted ulti- ve mately in
its abasement. Nor acknowledged in its own phenomenaliey, but rather deprived
of it, finding itself bound up with representation, that is to
say, with the world, life became no more than a blind force. Bur one reason

104
for this incapacity to think of life as Truth and. moreover, as its original es-
sence is now plain to us: the separation of Lite and Individual] A life with-
Man as “Son Within the Son” 121
‘ ity—wvithour Self; it is a life that does not experience itself and that finds it
impossible to do so, a life de- prived of the essence of living. deprived of its own
essence—a life deprived of life, foreign to life. But if the concept of life is to
be reserved for desig- nating chis absurd entity of a life foreign to the essence
of life, a life that does nor experience itself, it is only on one condition: that,
in ane master stroke, this entity is set up as reality and, what’s more, as the
principle of any reality. A life thar does not experience itself is an uncanscions
life. The concept of unconscious life does not result solely from the opposition
be- tween life and the world’s truth but must be understood more rigorously
as the phenomenological expression of the concept of a life deprived of ipse- ity.
incapable of experiencing itself, foreign ro the individual-—the concept ) of an
anonymous life.
vis the conceprofa Life separate from the Individual thar has fue nished ro-
manticism with-is-major themes. It is not that romanticism elim- inates the
individual from the start. On the contrary, the individual is taken as the point
of departure—as a probability, appearance, to be more precise. Romanticism
aims at the dissolution of this somewhat provisional individ- ual in a higher real-
ity, in the flow of the boundless river thar is universal life. Only by bursting the
bounds of his individuality would the individual be able to rejoin the impersonal
depth of reality as a whole and fuse wich it. The elimination of the individual’s
individuality, and thus of the individual himself: this is what is proposed, in a
variety of conceptual ways, as the condition of salvation.
The profound achievement of the Christian intuition is to shed light on the
inanity of these conceptions. The individual can be identified with universal
lite only on the condition that an essential Ipseity does not disap- pear but is
maintained—in the individual as well as in life itself. Failing tha, fas fram being
abl ite with universal life. o indivic d t ihi ile Life Li
ichind uch is the profound insight of) Christianity: transcendental Ipseity as the
condition of the Individual as well as of Life] The former is not possible without
the latter, any more than the latter is possible without the former’s Ipseity. Bu
this crucial connection was not established by Christianity with regard to any
particular individual or any particular life. It was grasped from the beginning,
in the first dazzling ) bolt of Life, there where Life sclf-cngenders itself in its
essential Ipscity.
\
Ww
122 Man as “Son Within the Son”

105
To understand the Individual on the basis of the originary co- belonging of Life
and Ipseity is to propose an entirely new concept. The [individual individuality,
the principle thar individualizes and so grounds
individuality—all are issues thar philosophy has perennially posed. As with any
fundamental question, thar of individuality arises against the backdrop
ofa . . _ phenomenological horizon of questioning that, consciously or not, de-
termines the answer. i iginali jsrianity-d i
the individual within Life’s Truth, wh was not so much misunderstood but was
more often the object of complex and explicit problematics. Since the essence
of the Individual resides in his Ipseicy, which is only realized within Life’s self
realization, then any think-
fos about the individual that tries to grasp him on the basis of the world’s truth
must inevitably meer with failure.
Let us be content here with a brief return to Schopenhauer. For him the problem
of individuality plays a decisive role because, conceiving as he does of life as an
anonymous and unconscious life—unconscious because anonymous, because it
is deprived of individuality and the individual—he
must at least offer a specific theory of life. Schopenhauer had no idea of the
traditional Ipscity in which life’s self.gi its arigi
ch slic nd a gos |larion are accomplished. Nor did Western philosophy as a whole.
Conse-
quently, individuality could be understood only in the light of the sole kind
of phenomenality that was known, thar of representation or, if you prefer, of
the world. In other words, Schopenhauer could only rake up the stan- dard
interpretation of individuality, formulating it in accordance with the conceptual
system and terminology he had just inherited from Kant. His conception of
individuality was not elaborated merely in the light of a the- ory of the world’s
truth; it coincided with it. being but its application to the problem of the
individual or, rather, a reformulation of this problem. The individuality of whar
is posed as “individual” applies to all that manifests itself in the world, whatever
it may be, and consequently to any- thing whatsoever. What individualizes
something showing itself in the world is that it appears at this point in space,
at this moment in time. Thus, two totally identical objects still differ by reason
of the different places they oc- cupy. And two sounds similar in their aural
qualities—in their pitch, their intensity, their timber—even two notes that are
ultimately identical by virtue of the likeness of their properties, would still differ
by the fact that
rs litional of hel 1d’s. Thus, the problem of the individual
Man as “Son Within the Son” 123
they are sounded at two different moments in time. In the final instance, it is

106
not the properties of things that individualize them. since these proper- ties
could be identical and the things still be different. What individualizes, the
principle of individuation, is space and time. Butspace and time arc
£ showing. In K ] | dime are specificall ori ¢ intuition, that is to say, ways of
appearing a nd making appear that together consrine the way of appearing and
of making-appear chatdsthe world. The principle that confers on each thing its
individuality, and thus differ- ) entiates it from all others, is the appearing of
the world, its truth.
This is true for people as well as for things. Whar individualizes a person, what
makes him this individual and not another one, is the place he occupies in the
world, the moment at which he occurs in the time of this world and in its history.
And each of his acts, each grasping motion of his hand, and likewise cach of his
thoughts, receives from the position it
occupies in time a mark thar individualizes it absolurely—making it this
one or that, different from any other. fe now see the absurdity of any thought
that reduces the essence of truth to the world’y. Inasmuch as the
”principle that individualizes is identified with the emergence of this world, . a
person’s individuality is identical with that of every entity shown in this
world and cannot be understood otherwise—other than in the same way as
that of any being whatsoever, whether a historical event, a tool, or a sim- ple
“thing.” Personal individuality is not understood in any other way, and cannot
be, because the princi individualizes is i
Here we should {debunk the so-called unity of the principle that in- dividual-
ized This unity is impossible if the phenomenological principle as such refers
back ro the essence of phenomenality and of truth—or, more precisely, to che
major antinomy into which phenomenality divides ac- cording to the two modes
of phenomenalization, shar of the world’s truth and thar of Life’s Teuth What
individualizes something like the Individual that cach of us is, different from
every other—each “me” and each tran- scendental ego forever distinct and
irreplaceable—is not found in the world at all. The individuality of the In-
dividual has nothing to do with that of a being. which in any case does not
exist, never resulting from anything other than the anthropomorphic projection
of that which finds its condi- tion in the unique essence of individuality. This
is ultimately why the prin- ciple that individualizes is as unique as cach being
that it leads into the condition that is its own. A being has no individuality but
only an exter-
124 Man as “Son Within the Son”
!Inal spatio-temporal designation that makes possible a subsequent para- ”\
metric determination, There is no Individuality except the Individual. The
individuality of the Individual never exists except as its ipseity. There is Ip-
seity only in life. But Ipseity is not found in life like grass in a field or a stone

107
in the road. Ipseity belongs to the essence of Life and to its phenom- enality as
well. {t is born in the process of life’s phenomenalization, in the process of its
parhétik self-affection, and as the very mode in which that self-affecting comes
about) Ipseity belongs to the transcendental Arch-Son and exists only in him,
as’what life necessarily engenders by engendering itself. Ipseity is with life from
the first; it belongs to the first birth. Ir is con- rained in this Arch-birth, makes
it possible, is only intelligible within its oe nology Ipseiey-is-the Logos of Life.
that in which and-as-which
Life reveals itself by revealing irself to self Ipscity i is there in the beginning
and comes before any transcendental “me.” before any Individual. Before Abra-
ham. But all Individuals proceed from this Ipseity and are possible only within
it, in this Ipseity that is prior to the world, in this Ipseity as old fo life, eternal
as life. If by man we usually mean the empirical individual, ”one whose indi-
viduality relates to the world’s categories—space, time, causality—in short, if a
man is a being of the world intelligible in the truth of the world, then we must
come to terms with him: this man is not an Ip- seity, he bears within him no
Self, no me. The empirical individual is nor san Individualand cannot be. And
a man who is not an Individual and who ”is not a Self is not a man. The man
of the world is merely an optical illusion. “Man” does not exist. The collapse
of any worldly conception of a man restores to the in ini- tially disconcerting
theses of their depthless profundity. In effect, here is a man who can be a
man— who is an Individual, a Self, a me—only in Christ, in the original Ipseity
co-engendered by Life in its self-engendering. This understanding of man as the
Son of Life within the Arch-Son and within the original Ipseity of this Life ren-
ders obsclete, and even somewhat ridiculous, the conception of man proper to
modern objectivist ideology, whether that of common sense or of scientism, with
the former largely perverted by the later. How far the essential and originary
connection between Ipseity and Life extends is something that John’s parable,
in which Christ declares he is the gate of the sheepfold, allows us to understand.
In the first place, Ipse- ity is born in life: it is by being cast into itself that life
generates the Ipseicy
Man as “Son Within the Son” 125
in which, embracing itself, it comes into itself. Bur an extraordinary rever- sal
takes place when Christ, identifying himself with the gate that gives ac- cess
to the sheep, presents himself as the one who enables life to nourish it- self, to
feed on itself, to grow and enlarge the self and thus to be living: “I am the gate;
whoever enters through me . . . will come in and go our, and
find pasture.” The reversal follows: Christ no longer as engendered in life buyc
as the one who gives life No longer as the Son—even if he is indeed
the First, the Arch-Son. Nor as a living being—even if he is indeed the First, the
First Living Being. Nor as a living being who presupposes life and is possible
only on the basis of it, but now as the One who, superior here to life in a way,
has power over it, the power to give it and thus to engen- der it. This generation

108
is, unquestionably, no longer formulated in terms of the transmission of Life to
the Living, but in some fashion from the Liv- ing ro Life. And thus, after Christ
calls himself the gate, come the most as- tonishing words of the parable: “Lhave
come that they may have life” (John 10:10).
the sense that no living would be able able to acquire Life had Life not been
transmitted to it as Life thar had already received into itself the form of Ipseity
and been marked with its indelible seal. Only a Life of this kind, a Life originally
ip- seized, is able to make living the livings that we are—livings who are tran-
scendental me’s capable of growing in their own flesh, of expanding at each
moment in their being, in this Self that they received ar the same time as
Life] Only one who has passed under the miumphal Acch-of Asch-Ipseity
cancome-and go out and find pasture, he ane of those sheep grazing in the fold.
The transcendental birth of the living here explicitly receives its pre- cise char-
acterization: w be, without doubt, a Living in Life and only through it. Life
makes room for any conceivable living. It contains a priori in its essence the vast
multitude of all those whom it can call to life: “In my Fa- ther’s house are many
rooms” (John 14:2). Burt each of these rooms is sim- ilar to the enclosure where
the sheep graze in that entry to each of them a) impossible except through the
Arch of Arch-Ipseity. Ipseized Life in the Arch-Ipseity of the Arch-Son prepares
a place in such a way that a place is ready for every conceivable living as a
living me—as coming into itself into the Ipseity of this me, and that because it
is living from a Life come into ir- self in the original Ipseity of the First Living.
“T am going there to prepare
126 Man as “Son Within the Son”
a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and
take you to be with me thar you also may be where I am” (John 14:23). Thus,
there is no place for a living in life unless life has previously been laid down
within ir as an Ipseity in which only the living who draws life from this ipseized
life is henceforth possible as a living me. Ultimately, there is a place somewhere
only for such a me.
The parable leads beyond itself. It lets us hear words thar speak with- out
parable, prior to any parable, words that take hold of and gather to- gether the
crucial ranrolagies of Christianity: “1 am the way and the truth and the life”
[in French: C’est Moi la Voie, la Vérité, er la Vie; or in a more literal English:
It’s me the Way. the Truth, and the Life] (John 14:6). The
Ii of the four terms is posed: I, or rather Me=Way=Truth=Life [Moi =
Voie = Verité=Vie]. [The final identity, Truth=Life, is something we have es-
recon at length: it is the fundamental thesis of a phenomenology of life) Accord-
ing to this phenomenology, phenomenality is originally phenome- nalized in a
parberik self-affection that defines the only conceivable form of
[elf revelation, the self-revelation of which the essence of life consists. So Life—

109
and not the opening of a world into the ek-stasy of “oursideness”™— lconsti-
tuces the original Truth, the original phenomenality. Truth=Life.
a The second term of the taurological sequence—the ‘Way—can be re- [Laced
to the third and fourth terms and to the identity established between fthem, or
to the first term: 1. In relation to the third term—Truth—the Way
expresses a general thesis of phenomenology, that the means of access to some-
thing consists in the manifestation of that thing. Thar is, more gener- ally, it is
the phenomenality of a phenomenon that constitutes the means of access to this
phenomenon. This decisive thesis of phenomenology remains entirely without
meaning, however, as long as we do not know whar phe- nomenality consists of,
or, more precisely, the way in which it is phenome- nalized. Indeed, the study
of the way in which phenomenality is phenome- nalized ought to be the very
theme of phenomenology, its primary and most essential ask. Even when it be-
lieved itself devoted to this task, phenome- nology failed urterly. Duped by the
presupposition that rules Western phi- losophy. phenomenology merely adopted
that philosophy, notably by way of classical thought, and therefore interpreted
the phenomenality of the phe- nomenon as the world’s. Hence, faving thar the
Way is the Truth means say- ling that all to which we can accede shows itself to
us in the world) in a mani- [festation thar is the very Truth of the world. But
when, in revolutionary
Man as “Son Within the Son” 127
fashion, Christianity interprets truth as Life (this is. of course, a metatem-
poral and metahistorical revolution), then the Way that leads, that clears the
way. is precisely Life. It is Life that is the Way. 3 Yay rorally differens from
world’ i i what mani-
at does the Way lead when it is Life? It leads
to Life. This Way is nothing but Life itself, inasmuch as Life self-reveals it-
self in the self-affection that constitutes its own phenomenality—irs phe-
nomenological substance, its flesh, the flesh of all that is living,
And now, relating the second term to the first, the statement reads: “1 am the
Way” (“C’est Moi la Voie”). 1=Way. This fundamental identity has no meaning
unless it is related ro the wo other rautologies contained in the sentence—and
so to two conditions. The first is that the Way is constituted by the Truth,
which it assuredly is, according to the most general thesis of phenomenology.
But the second condition, and final tautology, is decisive: it is that the Truth
is consrirured by Life. If it were constituted by the world, as itis according
to traditional philosophy and even according to popular belief, then the world
would constitute the way; the means of access, to all that can be shown to us.
But if that were the case, there would for us be nei- ther Life nor I (nor, for that

110
matter, any truth, nor any world—although this is not the place ro establish
thar).
s The question is how this I can be the Way when the Way that leads to Life
is life itself, its self-revelation. Bur remember that this I thac is the Way is
not just any transcendental me, anyone among us. This I (Moi) is that of the
Arch-Son, and he alone is the Way. What is the essence of this Way that is the
Arch-Son—to what does it lead? Is essence is the original
I; i fein ion. Thus it is the Way that leads to life inself, the Father’s self-embrace
as his embrace of the Son and as the Son’s embrace of his Father. We have
already discussed this relation of reciprocal interiority, but that is not what
we are concerned with here. The sentence we are studying is very obviously
addressed to people. It is to them that Christ says: “I am the Way.” It is for
them that he is the Way, the Way that leads them to life. as we have seen. Life
does not come to them, does not come into them to make them living people,
except insofar as life has made itself Ipseity in the Arch-Son. It is not a savage.
anony- mous, unconscious life—which in fact does not and could not exist in
this form——that can be transmitted to each living person. Rather, it is a life
thar, having embraced itself in its original Ipseity. can then give itself as a life
char
|
128 Man as “Son Within the Son”
is phenomenologically effective. a life bearing its ipseity to all livings, who, on
account of this ipseized life. and only in this way, will be able to live as a living
“me.” Thus the Way that leads the livings to Life is this life ren- dered living in
its original Ipseity, the Life of the Arch-Son. It is this life in its original Ipseity
that is referred to in the sentence as “1.”
However, the Arch-Son is not merely the Way that leads the living to
Life. Truly speaking, he is not this Way except insofar as he is and was the Way
in another, still more original sense. Before leading the living to Life,
Ihe led Life to the living, and it is only because he has led Life to the living
”that he has led them to Life. How has Christ led Life to the living, such that
he is able to utter the most extraordinary, seemingly crazy, sentence. one in
which he more or less positions himself before Life: “I have come that they
may have life”? He led Life to the living fy fret leading it to itself in him, in.
aad thigugh his cena [psc —and then hy making.a gift of this-ipscity i- ble a5
2 living Self T he generation of the Arch-Son in the self-generation of absolute
Life makes possible the generation of any conceivable living. It is in this way
that Christ is the Way: because, having led Life to each living, he finds himself.
by the same token, the one who leads each living to Life.
In the parable, Christ refers to himself as the gate of che sheepfold.

111
We have called this gate a triumphal Arch, because it is the Way that leads to
Life. One does not pass under this Arch on two occasions. It is not that there
are two trajectories, one leading from Life to the livings—since Life affects itself
in an essential Ipseity in which it now engenders each living— and the other
leading from each living to Life—since in the Self that makes lic living and in
the original ipseity of this Self, ic is in fact Life thav affects
1itself. These rwo trajectories are congruent: there is but a single gate, a sin-
gle Arch, a unique Raprure in which Life blazes forth. The generation of the
Arch-Son in the self-generation of absolute Life inhabits the coming- into-itself
of cach living person in such a way that the coming-into-itself of each person
bears within it the generation of the Arch-Son in the self- generation of absolute
Life and is possible only in this way.
Bur the intersection of these two pathways under the Arch where Life radiates—
the pathway that leads from Life to the living and the one that leads che living
to Life—does not produce a reciprocity between these two terms, between Life
and the living. Reciprocity involves only the relation of interiority between
absolute Life and the Arch-Son, inasmuch as the Ipse-
Man as “Son Within the Son” 129
in which God eternally embraces himself is also that of the Arch-Son who finds
himself generated in this way. The relation between the Ipscity of absolute Life
and the me of cach living implies no reciprocity of this Find: the path cannot
be traveled in both directions. God could just as well ive eternally in his Son
and the latter in his Father without any other liv-
ng ever coming to Life. On the contrary, the coming of any other living to Fife,
the transcendental birth of any me. implies Ipseity and thus the gen- ) eration
of the Arch-Son in absolute Life.
This asymmerry marks the infinite distance thar separates Christ from other
people Iris thie distance, moreover, thar Chuist censtansdy re calls ta them
behind each of his statements—in effect. throughout the Gos-
pels. The asymmetry does not, however, admit its real meaning at first sight.
Christ seems to contrast himself with people understood as natural Beings. The
natural filiation that is appropriate to them and that situates them in the world’s
dme according to the order of generations—Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat,
son of Amos—is abruptly broken off and re- jected by Christ as far as he himself
is concerned, as we have explained at some length. “Before . . . Abraham . . .
1.” Lord of David. It is as the Arch- Son engendered before the creation of the
world thar Christ, it seems, sharply separates himself from people who “come
into the world” and thus appear in the world alone. But Christianity teaches
that when a man is in turn understood as Son and his essence is thus torn from
the world’s truth and reinterpreted as Life’s, then the opposition between Christ
and people can no longer rest on the natural character of people. They are, in
fact, no longer natural beings: they no longer belong to the world and are no

112
longer manifested in it. is_ ruled out from the very moment when bis condition
as Son is posited) It is thus on the plane of life itself that the abyss separating
Christ from people opens up. and it must likewise be under- stood on this
plane. This is what the analysis of man as san within the Son has established.
Something like a living “me,” a transcendental living me,
as we have called it, exists only in-and through. the original Ipseity of ab-
“You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16)—or, as John will formu-
late it in his First Epistle: “We love because He first loved us” (4:19). Thar Life
does not come to any living being except through the original Ipseity in which
Life is given to itself is something the context makes equally clear: “Then the
Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (John 15:16).
130 Man as “Son Within the Son”
Thus, to the reversibility of Life and its Ipseity—of Father and Son, in their
reciprocal interioricy—is starkly contrasted the irreversibility of the relation of
the Arch-Son with all those who receive from him and his orig- inal Ipseity
the possibility of their Self and their me. This irreversibility, however, is not
something negative. Instead, it carries within itself an extra- ordinary event,
the marvel of marvels. It is not merely that in this Arch-
NN Ipseity of Life there occurs the potential for each living to become a living {
cranscendental me. What’s more, thanks to this ipseity in which a living relates
to itself, touches every point of its Being, experiences itself and en- joys itself,
this living is not merely a me but is irreducible to any other, ex- periencing what
it experiences and feeling what it feels, unlike any other— not because what this
“me” experiences is different from what another experiences, or because what
it feels is different from what another feels, but simply because it is the one
experiencing ir and feeling it. In the bo- som of the single and same Life. the
single and same Ipseity, it is irreduc- ibly different. This is because such is the
essence of the Arch-Ipseity generated |\in absolute Life that, giving to every
thing whatever it is to which Life is given | in order to experience itself, Life
makes that thing, in the phenomenological re- alization of experiencing itself,
into a Self that is absolutely singular and dif \ ferent from any other.
Thus, the generation of the Arch-Son in the self-generation of ab- solute Life is to
some extent reproduced in each transcendental birth, since therein a single and
same Life, experiencing itself in and by means of its original Ipseity. gives birth
to howsoever many mois thar are irreducibly different and new—to howsoever
many Individuals, none of whom is even remotely similar to any other, none of
whom has been preceded by an In- dividual who could be compared to him in
some way, none of whom will be followed by another who might encroach even
slightly on, or cast doubt
fon. his irreducibility to and difference from any other Individual —the one who
is this singular Self, forever different, forever newy

113
* No worldly cause can explain this Ipseity of a Self that is radically in- divid-
ualized in the act by which Ipseity joins it to itself and makes it a Self. This
is because this Ipseity does not itself proceed from a world, being pos- sible
nowhere except in Life and in its essence. Life thus produces in its Ip- seity the
infinity of all livings in such a way that cach is itself irrevocably it- self from the
moment ir becomes living, from its very birth. It is the Self’s coming-into-itself
in the Ipseity generated in the self-generation of Life that
Man as “Son Within the Son” 131
makes it a singular and incomparable Self. Because in irs Ipseity that is prior
to the world Life has prepared this “space” for Individuals who are irre- ducibly
singular and new, one may read, in the absolute Here managed by this Ipseiry of
Life, what the confused hero of Kafka’s Amerikg deciphers on ) the poster of the
Grand Theater of Oklahoma: “Everyone is welcome! . .. Our Theater car find
employment for everyone, a place for everyone!™ Each of these places is marked
by a white stone, the one that the Apocalypse destines for the conqueror, “a
white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives
it” (Revelation 2:17). Here are those “whose names are in the book of life”
(Philippians 4:3).
+ That in his Arch-Ipseity the Arch-Son transmits Life to all possible liv- ings—
possible inasmuch as it is not only a living but a Self unlike any other, one who
exists as something absolutely new. whom nothing has preceded or will replace—
is something that explains the very particular place occupied by Christ in the
New Testament. In fact, he awards this place to himself ar the expense of, if
not out of contempt for, everybody else) For someone who listens to him with
sufficient detachment, it appears that the Word of Christ is by no means limited
to moral teaching. Precepts and prescriptions do not seem to be worthwhile in
themselves, or to define what is at all events es- sential. A purpose overtakes
them, moving toward what alone matters. To the ethical question, What should
I do? comes a perplexing answer: “Then they asked him, “What must we do to
do the works God requires?” Jesus an- ) swered: ‘The work of God is this: to
believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:28~29). But as we have demonstrated,
the question soon bounces back. To believe in the one who sent him is to believe
that the one who is speaking is precisely the one who has been sent, that Jesus is
the Messiah, the Christ. “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may
see it and believe you? What will you do?” (John 6:30). Once Moses’ giving of
manna has been set aside as purely symbolic, the true work, the miracle, receives
its true name; the giving of life in its phenamenalagical flesh, the “bread of life.”
Jt
is . so. MOQ? < w
: : ife’” (6:34-35). The reason behind the immeasurable and blatant egocentrism
that pervades
the New Testament is at last clear. {¢ is because Life is given to each in the Ip-}
seity of the Arch-Son that no.one matters other than That Ong} Once again,

114
the commentary of the Apostle Paul hits home: “For I resolved to know nothing
while | was with you except Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
132 Man as “Son Within the Son”
. The interpretation of man as “Son of God,” or, more precisely, as “Son within
the Son.” has many weighty implications. But before we pur- sue them, there
is one question that cannot be deferred. If men are really Sons of God within
Christ, how can we explain that so few of them know this and remember ir?
If they bear within them this divine Life in all its im- mensity—because there
is no other Life bur that, and the living can only bow before its profusion—
how can we understand why they are so un- happy? In the end, it is not the
tribulations visited upon them by the world that oppress them; rather, it is
with themselves that they are so discon- tented. It is their own incapacity to
achieve their desires and plans, it is their hesitations, their weakness and lack
of courage, that provoke the deep
malaise that accompanies them throughout their miserable existence. If they
never tire of atcributing the cause of their failure ro circumstances or to others, it
is only to fool themselves and to forget that the real cause lies within themselves.
As Kierkegaard puts it: “Consequently he does not de- spair because he did not
get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not ger to be Caesar.”
But how can one despair of this me if it is nothing less than the coming into
us of God within Christ? Such despair is possible only if. one way or another,
man has forgotten the splendor of his initial condition, his condition as Son of
God—his condition as “Son
within the Son.” It is this forgerring that we must now attempt to understand.
Forgetting the Condition of Son: “Me, I”/“Me, Ego”
Speaking of ourselves on any subject, and therefore constantly, we say “L” “me.”
People spontaneously using the personal pronoun, whether in the nominative
or accusative case, are scarcely concerned with why they re- fer to themselves
consistently in this way, nor with what knowledge allows them to-do so. But
such knowledge must really exist somewhere, since if peo- ple did not know that
there is a “me,” and more precisely this particular “me,” how could they think
of themselves and present themselves as such? In a sense, this knowledge is so
common that it appears almost ridiculous to speak of it. Why do you say “me”
in speaking of yourself, and what do you have in mind when you say thar and
think of yourself? As trivial as this question may be. put like this, no one is
capable of answering it. No doubt this is why it is dismissed with a shrug. As for
philosophers, they know hardly any more. Their remarks on this subject—we
cannot call them analyses—appear brief and precarious, if not derisory. What
is strik- ing in those rase texts in which the question of “me” is directly rackled
is that this “me” and the knowledge one has of it are always purely and sim-
ply presupposed. Bur this presupposition is so lacking in foundation that the
existence of this “me” might just as well be denied; or else the knowl- edge one
has of it, and hence the knowledge it has of itself, are contested and considered

115
uncertain, if not purely fallacious. In truth, philosophy knows nothing about
what concerns the me and the problems linked to ir. We shall see why.
i
134 Forgetting the Condition of Son
Of this singular me thar I am, that each person is found to be, the only knowl-
edge humanity possesses does not in fact derive from itself. It is not man who
knows that he is a me, nor in general what a me is; it is not man who knows
what makes him a man. This knowledge is possessed by Life and Life alone. On
the plane of thought. it is paradoxically Christian- iry that brings it. Among
religious beliefs more than two thousand years old, not to mention supersti-
tions, Christianity is today the only belief that instructs man about himself.
At the same time, the laborious conceptual system of philosophies. on the one
hand, and research in the positive sci- ences (with their complex and elaborate
methodologies), on the other. can only turn man aside from what he truly is,
to the point chat he loses any notion of what he is and, by the same token, all
confidence in himself, all form of certainty. Confidence and certainty have been
replaced by dismay and despair. The more the positive sciences develop and
boast of their epis- temological breaks, their revolutionary problematics and
deconstructions of all kinds, the less man has any idea of what he is. This is be-
cause what makes him a man—specifically, the fact of being a me—is precisely
what has become totally unintelligible to thinkers and scholars these days.
How man’is a me and first of all a self, more precisely this self and this me that
he is—unlike and to the exclusion of any other—is what the Christian thesis of
man as Son has established: a Son generated in absolute phenomenological Life,
which is that of Gad himself. Tr is because modern thought and science, notably
biology. know nothing of this transcendental Life—the only Life that exists—
that they know nothing of man’s me ei- ther. People do know it if, despite the
terrorist expertise that smothers them, and by means of which attempts are
made to condition their minds from schooldays onward, they continue to say
“I,” “me.” But they no longer know why they say it; they would lower their
eyes if by chance one of these experts or enlightened psychologists were to ask
them—which is unlikely, moreover, since these scholars have no idea themselves,
The pos- sibility of saying “me,” “I”—more radically, the possibility that there
exists something like a “me” and an “I,” a living “me” and “I” who are always a
particular one, mine or yours—this possibility is only intelligible within absolute
phenomenological Life, in the Ipseity of which is engendered any conceivable Self
and me. This is Christianity’s thesis about man: that he is a man only insofar
as he is a Son, a Son of Life, that is, of God.
But what we now have to understand is no longer the generation of
Forgetting the Condition of Son 135
this me in the Life of God, but rather why man has lost the notion of his true
essence: in Plotinus’s phrase, why the sons no longer know they are sons. Does

116
the origin of this ignorance of man about himself lie in some perverse ideology or
does it have some deeper reason (of which this ideology is merely one expression
among others)? The second hypothesis is the right one. Man’s ignorance about
his true condition does not issue from an ex- ternal or transitory cause. Rather,
it is rooted in the very process by which life generates in itself the me of all
conceivable livings. It is inside this pro- cess of life making Ipseity, Self, and me
that we should perceive and grasp it. Thus the occultation of the condition of
Son coincides apparently para- doxically with the very genesis of this condition.
Within the movement of this genesis is hidden that in which, and for which, each
person is this ego that he or she is. The birth of the me conrains the hidden
reason why this me unceasingly forgets this birth, or precisely his condition of
Son.
Therefore, the process by which sons are born must be studied more closely to
bring to light the remarkable dissociation between two concepts man constantly
uses to define himself: “me” and “ego.” “Me” and “ego,” in effect, are not the
same thing, even if classical thought slides from one to the other in the most
extreme confusion and without even seeing that in this double designation of
the Self, as constant as it is, there is at least one problem. “Me,” says the Self
generated in the original Ipseiry of Life, but it says it in the accusative (not
nominative) case. That the singular Self speaks of itself in the first place and
must use the accusative precisely translates the fact that ic is engendered, not
bringing itself into the condition that is its own, not experiencing itself as a
Self, and not having this experience of self, except in the eternal self-affection
of Life and of its original Ipseity. Because this engendering of the me in Life’s
self-affection is phenomenological in a radical sense, the coming of the me into
itself, which rests on the coming of Life into itself, is lived as basically passive
with respect to this primitive coming of Life. We have seen that the me is what
self-affects itself, but since this self-affection is imposed on it by Life and is
just like that of Life, one could say, more exactly, that the “me” is constantly
self-affected. This char- acter of the Self’s being self-affected is designated by
its being put into the accusative: “me.” In the end, “me” signifies this: for each
me. its ipseity does not come from it, bur inversely, it comes from its ipseity.
Here we must follow up on the process of the transcendental birth of the “me”
in the Ipseity of absolute Life in order to understand how, by a mu-
136 Forgetting the Condition of Son
ration as decisive as it is imperceptible. this generation of the “me” becomes
that of an ego. The “me” is engendered in the self-affecting of absolute Life and
experiences itself passively against the background of the original Ipse- ity of
Life, which gives the “me” to itself and makes of ic what it is at every moment;
therefore this “me” finds itself at the same time much more than what is desig-
nated as a “me.” Experiencing itself in Life’s Ipseity, iz enters into possession of
itself at the same rime as it enters into possession of each of its pow- ers. Enter-
ing into possession of these powers, it is able to exercise them. A new ca- pacity
is conferred on it. no less extraordinary than that of being a “me. even though

117
it is a simple consequence. It is the capacity of the me’ to be in possession of
itself, to be one with it and with everything it carries inside, which belongs to it
as so many components of its real Being. Among these components are bodily
powers: the power to hold, to move, to touch, to strike, to get up, to control
its limbs from inside itself, to turn its eyes, etc. There are also powers of the
mind: the power to form ideas and images, the power to desire, etc. There is no
difference in kind between these sorts of powers: both belong to “me” because
it is a me. It is in the parhétik experience it has of each of thes¢ powers that
it coincides with them. It is because it co- incides with them that it is able
to put them into operation and thus to act. To act, to exercise each of the
powers that compose its being, is only possi- ble for a “me” that has entered
into possession of each of its powers—which can only take place because it has
first entered into possession of itself, which in turn can only take place thanks
to the pazhérik proof it has of itself in the original Ipseity of absolute Life. All
chis is accomplished in the transcenden- tal genesis of the “me.” At the end
of this genesis. there comes a “me” put into possession of itself and all of its
capacities. Then, since it advances armed with all irs powers at its disposition,
this “me,” which has taken hold of itself and of all that it carries within, is an
“1.”
“1” means “I Can.” The proposition “I Can” does not bring any par- ticular
property to the essence of “1” but simply defines it. Phenomeno- logical analysis
allows us to recognize in the “I” a certain number of con- crete powers as we have
just done, powers that it is then possible to list and to classify under various
headings, such as “powers of the body” or “pow- ers of the mind.” But the “1”
is by no means the sum of these sorts of pow- ers. Whatever their importance
(inasmuch as each of them opens up a new field of experiences—experiences
thar in the first place are purely interior, those of exercising these powers, and
therefore spiritual experiences), how-
Forgetting the Condition of Son 137
ever, each is a power only if it is at man’s disposition. This is precisely what
characterizes and defines the ego: to be in possession of such powers and have
them at one’s disposal.
If “I” means “I Can”—*“I Can” deploy each of the powers that I find in me.
because, coinciding with that power and placed inside it in some way, I have ir
at my disposal and can exercise it whenever I care to and for as often as [ want—
then an essential distinction is necessary. The relation of the “I” to each of its
powers cannot remain in the obscurity and inde- terminacy of an identity that
has been hastily asserted. Two sorts of pow- ers are at issue—powers not only
opposed to each other, bur really quire different. On the one hand are those
powers we call. for example. holding, moving, feeling, imagining, wanting—
which are in effect in our posses- sion. ar our disposal. Since the “I” exercises it,
each of them is lived by that “I” as its own. There is an incontestable experience
that leads the “I” to say. specifically: Itake, I walk, feel, J imagine, fwant, /do
not want. Each of these powers is at the “I”’s disposal, in its possession, because

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this “I” coin- cides with them and can exercise them when and as often as it
wants. This is something over which the I” has no power whatsoever, which is
allocated to it quite apart from its will. Each power it calls its own (as the very
condi- tion of its exercise) is therefore radically opposed to a nonpower. This
non- power is much more decisive than the power that it makes possible: iz is
the absolute powerlessness of the “I” with respect so the fact that it finds itself
in pos- session of this power, able to exercise ir. In possession of this power,
able to ex- ercise it, the “I” is only an “I” inasmuch as this power is given to it.
But this power is only given to it inasmuch as the “I” is given to itself. And the
“I” is only given to itself inasmuch as it is a “me.” a living transcendental me
given ro itself in the self-givenness of absolute Life. The self-givenness of Life is,
of course, its original Ipseity in the phenomenological effectivity of the singular
Self of the First Living.
This is whar is said in an abrupt way in New Testament texts, and specifically
by Christ himself, the First Self of whom we have just spoken: “Apart from
me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The blinding significance here is that the
possibility of any conceivable power is presented not as residing in a greater
power, an infinite power like that of an all-powerful Be- ing—contrasted with
the limited powers and forces belonging to human- kind and finite creatures
in general. This sort of external and superficial hierarchy, worthy of a natural
theology, totally leaves out the decisive intu-
Forgetting the Condition of Son
na of Christianity, which John starkly reaffirms. The source of all power sists
in the Self of the Arch-Son, that is, the original Ipscity of absolute a Jac. It is
only the coming into itself of any power whatsoever that allows Ahis power to
unite with the self and to act—a coming into itself that is the , @ming of the
me into itself, that is, the coming of Life into itself in the Self -of the Arch-Son.
Any power the ego possesses is given to it in the very process by which ir is
engendered as “me” in the Ipseity of the Arch-Son. This is something that ap-
”pears no less clearly in the final argument with Pontius Pilate. Faced with an
obstinately silence Christ, in order to persuade him to speak and no doubt to
defend and save himself, Pilate makes the threat: “Don’t you re- alize I have
the power either to free you or to crucify you?” The answer is radical: “You
would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:10-
11). From these devastating replies emerge once again the decisive arguments of
Christianity. Any possibility of power im- . plies thar chis power is in possession
of itself, given to itselfi—where any we sclf-givenness occurs, in the original
Ipseity of Life. The originality of Chris- v tianity is demonstrated once more:
as we have seen, within it is neither an obscure farce, nor an anonymous power,
nor unconscious action. This is because force, power, and action cannot be
deployed unless previously given to themselves in the self-givenness of absolute
Life. Here again Paul goes straight to the crux: “For it is God who works in
you to will and to act

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according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). We find ourselves ac the heart
of the Christian theory of the ego. There is no ego but that of the Son, that
is to say. a living transcendental “me” generated in absolute phenomenological
Life. experiencing itself in the experience of self and thus in the Ipseity of this
Life. It is only because such a “me” exists that such an ego is in turn possible,
experiencing itself in the experience of the self and of this “me.” The ego is not
the double of the “me.” its exact copy—and, still less, another name for it. The
ego adds to the “me” whose ego it is that, given to itself in the experience of
self and of this “me.” it enters into possession of its awn being, as well as the
various powers that constitute it, such that ic is able to exercise them—when
and as it wants. The “me” given to itself in the Ipseiry of Life, and only through
that Ipseity, has become the center. the source, the home, of a multiplicity of
powers, and thus of a multitude of acts that ic performs when it pleases. It has
gone from passive to active. Whereas previously nothing depended
Forgetting the Condition of Son 139
on it because its own condition as living transcendental “me” did not de- pend
on it either, now everything depends on it. because it is a collection of powers
and it disposes of these powers freely and unreservedly. This is what “power”
means: not the exterior designation of a simple particular power, but the fact
of being in its possession, as of a potentiality that resides in you and depends
on you as to whether it is acted upon at any moment. And this is also what
being “free” means: to be able to utilize ar any mo- ment this collection of
powers, which constitute your very being. This “me” —generated passively in
life but becoming in this generation the cen- ter of a multitude of powers that
it exercises freely, becoming in the first place one who can exercise them, this
fundamental “I Can” so brilliantly described by Maine de Biran—is the ego.
The condition of the ego, when understood as the center of initiative and action,
appears paradoxical. On the one hand, the ego’s operation of each of its powers
is an incontestable fact, and even more than that: a per- manent possibility thar
is only given to it ar any moment because ic is iden- tified with that possibility,
because it is nothing other than the giving to it- self of this possibility. Thus
this possibility belongs to the ego as its very being. And because this possibility
is that of utilizing each of its powers. it is free to do so. All freedom rests on
preexisting power and is mercly its op- eration. Because the ego finds itself in
possession of this power, it is free. Bur to be in possession of this power is the
reason why it is an ego given 10 itself in its “me.” It is from being a “me” thar
the ego is an ego, and ir is from being an ego that the ego is free. Thus there
is no ego that is not free. Arguments that deny the ego’s freedom treat it as
a worldly entity subject to wordly laws. By that reasoning, humans are only
the produce of the many determinisms that compose the weft of the objective
universe. But nothing of what is shown in the world arises from its appearance
or its laws, or could ever have the least relation with what makes the ego an ego,
in some way acting on it or determining it. It is the mode of givenness of the ego
to itself, and thus its manner of possessing cach of its powers and using them,

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that nullifies the whole set of discourses usually made on the subject—roday
more than ever.!
The ego that is free to exercise each of its powers when it wants to ex- periences
itself as such. It experiences its freedom, or more exactly, this power which is
its own to exercise each of the powers given to it. It experi- ences this power
because, let us say, the givenness that granted it each of
140 Forgetting the Condition of Son
these powers is none other than its own givenness to itself, the self-givenness
constitutive of its Ipseity. Experiencing each of its powers while it exercises it—
and in the first place, the power it has of exercising them—the ego now assumes
it is cheir source, their origin. It imagines that it possesses these powers, that
they are its own in a radical way—produced by itself, and which it could produce
each moment it is exercising them. As somehow the absolute source and origin
of the powers that compose its being (the effec- cive and acting being with which
it identifies and by which it defines itself), the ego considers itself also the source
and origin of this very being,
Thus is born the transcendental illusion of the ego, whereby this ego takes irself
as the ground of its Being. To be itself, to be this Self that it is, is some- thing it
henceforth considers its own responsibility, as something arising from itself and,
in the end, having reference only to itself. To be able, to be able to do, to want.
to freely want what it wants (meaning what it can want), is now something the
ego arributes to its own power, to its own will. Exercising its power and taking
icself as its source. as the ground of its Being, the ego believes it perceives
its true condition and so suffers under the similar illusions of forgetting and of
falsifying that condition. It forgets Life. which in its Ipseity gives it to itself and
at the same time gives it all its powers and capacities; it forgets its condition
as Son. It faksifies by taking the givenness of the ego and all its powers to
itself as the work of this same ego. In the transcendental illusion, the ego lives
the hyperpower of Life— self-generarion as self-givenness—as its very own, and
transforms the lat- ter into the former.
Paul strikes at the heart of the ego’s transcendental illusion: “What do you
have that you did not receive? And if you did receive ir, why do you boast as
though you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). And the Epistle to the Galatians also
makes it clear that this is really an illusion: “If anyone thinks he is something
when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (6:3). The denun- ciation of the ego’s
transcendental illusion uttered in total clarity by Paul re- states Christ’s own,
specifically in the parable related by John that we have already examined—
except he used a more violent tone: “Liars. thieves!” For it is not some kind
of lie, some distortion of the facts, that is exposed here, It is its own condition
that the ego deforms in the very word it uses to enun- ciare it. Fgo implies thar
it is due to itself thar the ego does what it does, is what it is. This implication
is so immediare thar it is produced well before
the ego dreams of formulating it, as soon as it experiences itself as the t Can

121
Forgetting the Condition of Son 141
we have discussed. Who, in fact, lifting a weight, does nor think that he is
the one lifting it; or, taking an object, does not think that his own strength is
doing so? Liar! How could he exercise this power if Life had not given it to him
along with all his capacities? Liar, and hence a thief, too! Properly speaking,
ro attribute to yourself what does not belong to you is a theft. And when the
theft concerns not a particular object but the very nature of the power that is
acting, then the theft is permanent.
Therefore, the first cause of people’s forgetting their condition as Sons is the
transcendental illusion of the ego. Bur this first cause immediately leads to
the second. The egos transcendental illusion is not totally illusory, in fact. In
carries a portion of “reality” and “truth.” which we have to deal with—simply
because it is essential. The gift by which Life (self-giving) gives the ego to itself
is in reality one with it. Once given to itself, the ego is really in possession of
itself and of cach of these powers, able to exercise them: it is really free. In
making the ego a living person. Life has not made a pseudo-person. It does not
take back with one hand what it has given with the other. “If you knew the
gift of God!” (John 4:10): this phrase of Christ’s means that this gift is that
of Life—the extraordinary gift through which a person who by himself would
be nothing (particularly not any self) instead, coming into himself in life, rises
up in the unpardonable proof and the intoxication of self and thus as a living
and as a Self—and si- multaneously as one who, plunging into himself through
life’s transpar- ence, has ar his disposal each of the powers put in him by life.
I Can—the activation of each of my powers—is the contrary of an illusion, as
is the “I am” born of this “I Can.” Thus the effectiveness of this “I Can™/“I
am” over- rides the fact that this living “I can,” this living “I am,” has come
about only thanks to the endless work of Life in it. Thus the positive quality
of an indisputable experience constantly masks what makes it possible. “Me, I”
—I constantly superimpose myself on my condition as Son, without which there
would be neither “me” nor “I” nor any kind of power.
Sill, the active power of the ego could not conceal that it is not the source of
this power if this source did not constantly conceal itself. This source is the self-
givenness of absolute Life that, in giving this ego to itself and in making it an ego.
also gives ir the disposition and use of its powers. Only that phenomenological
status of absolute Life explains the ego’s tran- scendental illusion. It is only
because, naturally invisible, radically imma- nent, and never exposing itself in
the world’s “outside.” this Life holds itself
142 Forgerting the Condition of Son
entirely within thar the ego is ignorant of it, even when it exercises the power
life gives iv and arributes this power to itself. But with respect to it- self, its
own being and all its activities, the ego is the first dupe of ics illu- sion. From
this results the following situation: the more the ego exercises its power, the
more profound the experience it has, in the concreteness of its effort. of effecting

122
this power, the more it attributes this power to itself, and the more it forgers
the Life thar gave it. Superimposing itself on the tran- scendental illusion by
which the ego lives itself in the exercise of its power as the cause of thar power,
Lifes dissimulation pushes to the limit this egos forgetting of its most essential
possibility: its generation in the original Ip- seity consubstantial with Life—the
forgetting of its condition as Son.
Bur another consequence is immediately ried to this: invisible Life’s dissimula-
tion within the ego, even when Life is conjoined with it, opens up the whole
space of the world and leaves the ego free before the world, and for it. The
more hidden Life stays within the ego, the more open and available is the world.
The ego throws itself on i, or rather it projects itself toward everything shown
in this world, toward all the things, whatever they may be. thar have suddenly
become the sole object of its preoccupa- tion. Forgetful of its “me,” the ego is
concerned with the world. Thus an extraordinary situation is created: once it
loses sight of its condition as Son, the ego is only interested in what lies outside.
Everything shown, the en- tire realm of the visible, has value in its eyes and
merics effort and perse- verance. Nothing is desirable except what is accessed
in the world’s “out- side,” and the desire to take hold of what it covets must
also follow this same path. the one leading outside itself—to “worldly goods.”
In truth, even if the ego concentrates its interest on them, making them the
constant object of its covetousness. the goods of this world are not considered
in themselves and for themselves, but only in relation to it- self. It is in their
relation to the ego that they arouse interest, and it is for the ego that they
become “good” and valued. In the world. there is no value. In the end, ic is not
che chings of this world that the ego is concerned with but rather itself. Whar
ic wants is not wealth in itself but to become rich; not power but to become
powerful. Not respect or prestige but to be respected and crowned with prestige.
Moreover, it is as an ego that the ego is concerned with all that: “as an ego”
means as this fundamental 1 Can that
possesses as such the capacity to propel itself toward all these goods and ac-
quire them and, at the extreme, to identify with them and enjoy them.
Forgessing the Condition of Son 143
We are now in the presence of a circle or a system, if it is true that in hie
daily bustle in which people are constantly preoccupied with this or thar, never
dropping one preoccupation except for another ad infinitum, then it is the ego
itself thar holds the power to undertake all these activities at the same time
as it defines their sole goal. To such a system, of which the ego constitutes
the alpha and omega, we can give the name “egoism”™—and because it draws
its possibility from the ego itself, “transcendental egoism.” Buc with regard to
such a system, in which the ego. concerned with this world’s goods, is really
concerned with itself. how can we say that the ego— living in this way, relating
everything to itself and thus only thinking of it- self—constandy forgets its own
condition, and itself?

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”The answer is thar this relation to self—the background against which the
ego relates everything to itself, the world and its goods—assumes che form of
Care. To relate to oneself in and through the care of oneself is to throw oneself
forward toward oneself, project oneself ahead, open toward oneself a path thar
is “outside oneself,” that is “outside” the world. Itis to be projected toward an
exterior self, a self that is to-come and unreal: unreal not because the exterior
self is still to-come, in the mode of not-yet, but be- cause it is exhibited in the
world’s truth, where there is no Life, no Ipseiry, and consequently no possible
Self.
Thus two radically different ways for the ego to relate to itself, wo
different modes of this relation, confront each other. One is the relation to
stself of the ego in care for itself, in which the ego, throwing itself outside it-
sclf toward itself, never reaches anything bur a phantom, some possibility (to
become rich, powerful, prestigious) it gives itself as a task “to realize,” but which
is precisely never real, as long as it relates to this rask in Care, The other is the
relation to itself of the ego in life, a relation generated in the orig- inal Ipseity
of Life and only possible within it. The ego’ relation to itself in
Being-carcful-of itself is not only radically opposed to the refation to itself
of the ego in Life’s Ipseity, but in fact they are mutually exclusive. The rela-
tion to itself of the ego in Life’s Ipseity determines the real Self, the ab-
solutely immanent Self, grasped in the pathétik embrace of Life and consti-
tuted by ir, which never leaves that embrace yet cannot be observed by the eye.
On the contrary, the relation to self of the ego in care of itself in the world
liberates only a ghostly and unreal Self. It constantly occupies the stage; lies
behind all projects; all projects bring it back to itself. Whether oc- cupied with
its own business or another’s, with things, or directly with it-
144 Forgetting the Condition of Son
self, this ego never really stops being occupied with its own self. Buc because the
true Self that ultimately makes this ego possible, which gives it © itself in Life’s
Ipseity, never appears in the foreground bur keeps itself outside the performance,
the ego is not concerned with it. It is due not ro simple dis- eraction or some
sort of futility, but for a more profound reason that it is impossible for the ego ta
care for its true Self. This reason lies in the very structure of the Care projected
into this “oursideness” where no real Self ever lies. Due to the transcendental
system of egoism, in which, in its bus- ting activity, the ego never stops relating
to itself in che world, the Self gen- crated in Life is absent in principle. Thus
arises the mutual exclusion upon which Christian ethics will be founded. The
more the ego is concerned with itself. the more its true essence escapes it. The
more it chinks of itself, the more it forges its condition of Son. oo This crucial
situation results in the passionate polemic Christianity directs against Care.
Thar people have to be concerned with goods neces- sary to their existence is

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cereainly not what Christ condemns. The very short prayer to God in which
he formulates the requests speaks of “daily bread” (a request that sounds less
archaic than was asserted not so long ago). How else can you celebrate life except
by putting first the most ele- mentary needs? The critique of Care cannot be
understood unless you re- fer to the fundamental presupposition of Christianity
concerning Truth. Refusing to define humankind by Care means eliminating the
reduction of phenomenality to that of this world, and consequently, eliminating
the de- finition of humankind as Being-in-the-world. That man is not primarily
Care and does not have to behave as such results directly from the argu- ment
chat. as Son, he has his essence in Life. In Life there is no world whatever, no
place for care, which always projects itself “outside” and is never preoccupied
except with what is other, is preoccupied with irself only as something other.
“The rose (a metaphor for life] has no care of itself. goes a famous line by
Angelus Silesius. It has no care of itself because it never relates to itself in the
distancing of a world, in the “outside” of see- ing. “The rose has no care of itself
nor does it desire to be seen,” the text continues. Living in conformity with its
essence of Life has removed in principle the very possibiliry of Concern, as well
as everything Concern is concerned with. This correlation between the setting
aside of Care and the definition of man as Son is expressed in Christianiry’s
opposition between two kinds
Forgesting the Condition of Son 145
of men. On the one hand, there is the man of the world, who is only con- cerned
with the world and can only be so against the background of his previously con-
ceived essence as being-in-the-world. On the other hand, there is the man who
is not of the world because, Son of Life, he finds him- self originarily determined
in himself by Life’s a-cosmic character. The op- position between these two men
primarily relates not to a difference in be- havior, but to the phenomenological
structures to which they refer. It is not people’s situations and gestures that
bring them to hate those who act otherwise. It is their very nature—belonging
to the world in Concern— that makes them rebel against the Sons of Life, the
ones who demand from Life and it alone the principle of their actions, as what
they feel and expe- rience. “And the world has hated them, for they are not of
the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:14).
The opposition between belonging-to-the-world and belonging-to- Life is so es-
sential that Scripture, too, is determined by it—precisely be- cause, as we have
seen, it always has a phenomenological basis. “They are from the world and
therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.
We are from God, and whoever knows God lis- tens to us, but whoever is not
from God does not listen to us” (1 John 4:5-6). Once again, Paul makes this
essential contrast reverberate: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly
things,” thus preserving the phenomenological motivation by which life, even
that of a person, only comes abour in Life, whereas in the world’s “outside it-
self,” into which Care throws itself, humans encounter only death. “For you died,
and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:2 and 3). Then

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there is his imposing declaration to the Galatians, which explicitly links the
con- demnation of Care to the phenomenalization of the world and its concrete
temporal modes: “You are observing special days and months and seasons and
years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you” (4:10-11).
Because Care is care for the world, ir finds that its capacity to give what it cares
for has been dislocated. What ir gives is suppressed in the very movement by
which it cares for it. Care gives something only in destroying ir, in the form of
what is not yet or no longer and consequently will never be. It gives only in the
form of an unreal, whatever the form taken by it: memory, expectation, image,
or simple concept. This unreality of every- thing Care cares for resides not in
Care as a particular mode of life bur in
146 Forgetting the Condition of Son
the kind of phenomenality to which it has entrusted from the beginning every-
thing it cares for. This phenomenality, that of the world. as we have seen,
makes unreal a priori everything it makes visible, making it visible only in the
act by which, posing it outside itself, it empties it of reality. Christianity had
the profound intuition of this primary derealization that Care performs. It calls
this derealizing Care “covetousness.” “You want something but don’t get it. You
kill and cover but you cannot have what you want” (James 4:2). The reason
for failure lies not in what is demanded but in the mode of the demand, in the
mode of manifestation of what Care cares for, since this mode of manifestation
derealizes what it makes mani- fest. “When you ask, you do not receive, be-
cause you ask with wrong mo- tives” (4:3). The critique of covetousness occurs
constantly in the New Tes- tament: “Do not conform to the evil desires you had
. . . for evil human desires” (1 Peter 1:14 and 4:2). Throughout this critique,
the significance is transparent: it refers the ontological dissolution of the object
of this Care to the milieu onto which Care opens. Hence it often takes the form
of a cri- tique of the future: “You who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to
this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why,
you do not even know whar will happen tomorrow” (James 4:13-14). It results
in the assertion of Life’s self-sufficiency in its independence from every- thing
arising in the world: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;
a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
And hence the contrast berween two treasures, one amassed in the world instead
of being built in life. The opposition Life/Concern is baldly formulated: “Who
of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Luke 12:25). It achieves
its paroxysmal form in the words of Christ
himself, praying not for the world (John 17:9), refusing kingship in the 1
world (John 6:15), and placing humankind in a position to choose: “He who
is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters”
(Luke 11:23). It is the phenomenological status of Care, then, that falls prey to a
strange dialectic. As a way of living, Care arises from the mode of phenomenality
proper to the way of living, experiencing itself as what it is, as the suffering from

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an empty desire. However, inasmuch as ts is cast outside itself toward what it is
concerned with, it is the outsideness of whar ir is concerned with that fascinates
it, the phenomenality of the world invades its gaze and so then, according to
phenomenology’s inversion of concepts—an inversion culminating in the idea
that Life means Light
Forgetting the Condition of Son 147
and the world means darkness—it must be said that “If the light within you is
darkness, how great is thar darkness!” (Matthew 6:23).
In Care, man’s forgetting of his condition of Son takes drastic form. In this
respect, forgetting follows directly from the system of egoism, which fol- lows
from the transcendental illusion of the ego. Thanks to this illusion, in- side
this system, in Care, the ego, relying on itself and aware of acting from within,
throws itself into goals thar are its own possibilities to come—it throws itself
outside itself and toward itself, in such a way that it never attains self, never
attains this goal that it is for itself in the guise of various possi- bilities. This is
because outside itself, in the world’s outside, there is no Self at all. The ego’s
transcendental illusion, the system of egoism, and Care— these three superim-
posed and related forms of forgetting of self have a com- mon premise, however:
that the Self allows itself to be forgorren when, in Care, the ego cares only of
itself, or when, in egoism, it thinks only of itself. This premise was mentioned
concerning the ego’s transcendental illusion, precisely as its condition: it is Life’s
phenomenological status. its original and essential dissimulation that plunges
it into an apparently insurmountable forgetting, Ir is this forgetting of Life that
we must try to elucidate.
We usually understand forgetting as a mode of thinking, We forget what wé are
not thinking about or not thinking about any longer. To think of something is
to relate oneself intentionally to it, to direct one’s gaze to it in such a way that
what we are thinking about rises up before this gaze, in the “outsideness” that
is the truth of the world. As long as we keep our gaze on this object, we are
thinking abou it and not forgetting it. But as soon as the focus of our thought
turns away from it we forger it. However, what we forget in this way we can
always remember. All thar is shows itself to us in the world’s truth we remember
and forget in turn.
This is not the case with Life. In Life there is no “outside,” no space of light
into which thought’s gaze could slip and perceive anything before it. Because
Life is not separated from itself, because it never places itself ac
- a distance from itself, it is incapable of thinking about itself or even re-
membering itself, Life is forgetting, the forgetting of self in a radical sense. The
forgetting that Life has regarding itself has nothing to do with the for-
getting of thinking with respect to what is shown in the world’s truth,
which, as we have just seen, is always susceptible to being changed into a

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corresponding memory. In contrast, the forgetting of Life is definitive and
insurmountable. Life is without memory. not due to distraction or some
148 Forgetting the Condition of Son
unfortunate disposition, but instead because no intentionality, no focus of some
objectum is capable of taking place in ir, of being interposed between Life and
itself. Since it escapes any conceivable memory, Life is the Im- memorial. It is
because Life escapes any possible memory that humankind forgets its condition
of Son—albeit this condition is as a living whose es- sence is Life.
The analysis of the condition of Son lays bare three relations—the relation of
the ego to the self, its relation to Life, and Life’s relation to it- self—because
the ego relates to irs self only inasmuch as it relates to Life, and ir relates to
Life only inasmuch as Life is related to itself. Ir is within Lifes relation to the
self, in effect, and only there, that the ego relates to its self. This relation, in
all three cases, draws its essence from Life, from its Immemorial. This is why
the Immemorial, which ineradicably marks Life’s relation to the self. similarly
marks the relation of the ego to Life, its gen- eration, and the relation of the
ego to itself. the “self” of man.
Let us begin with the latter. If it is within Life’s relation to itself that the ego
relates to itself, then is it not extraordinary ro realize (as a decisive proof of the
implication and the nature of these different relations) that the dissimulation of
Life’s relation to itself is identical to the ego’ relation to itself, the dissimulation
of the ego itself? It is wichin the relation to itself, within its very Ipseity. that
the ego is invisible—in the same way as the Life that gen- crates this Ipseiry, and
thus this ego. Just as the forgetting that life has to- ward itself—life incapable
of taking its place before its own gaze, thinking of itself, remembering itself—is
insurmountable. so is the forgetting that strikes the relation of the ego to itself,
the “Self” of this ego.
Once more, the traditional representations of “1.” “me,” and “self” are over-
turned. That the ego is incapable of thinking of itself. and notably of remember-
ing itself, will appear paradoxical—since thinking of and re- membering oneself
indeed occupy a major part of most people’s time. But whar ego presents itself
to their thoughts, and whom do they remember? Why, an empirical individual
born in a specific place at a specific time, leaning over his mirror to counc his
facial wrinkles, remembering the time when his face was smooth. But such an
individual does not exist unless he
is perceived as a me, and he is only perceived as a me on the condition of an
Ipseity tha for its part never shows itself in the world, occurring only in the
invisible life and as the phenomenological effectuarion of it.
In the relation to the self constitutive of the Ipseiry thar secretly in-
Forgerting the Condition of Son 149

128
habits any visible man and woman, there is neither thought nor memory, and
this is what dislacates che classic conceptions that ground the possibil- ity of
me in memory. In effect, they represent the me’s life as a succession of “lived
moments” [vécus] that occur continuously. The possibility of the me appears,
then, as the maintaining of its identity through the continual flux of its states.
It is precisely memory that is given the task of reunifying these sundered states
by apprehending them as those of one identical me whose unity, and thus pos-
sibility, are safeguarded in this way. Unfortu- nately, any attempt to ground
the possibility of me in memory immedi- ately turns upon itself because, with
respect to our living “me.” and thus the possibility of life within it. any intru-
sion of a memory distancing this life from ieself in order to allow it to see the
past in distance has already de- stroyed the essence of this life, its self-affection.
Crushed against itself, it experiences itself in its parhérik immediacy without
ever being separated from itself and without being able to be so. Far from
gathering life into its “unity with self.” which is nothing other than its Ipse-
ity, memory opens up the gap in which no life is possible, but only what is no
longer. A life given by memory would be a life in the past. But a life in the
past is a phenom- enological non-sense, something that excludes the very fact
of “living,” The forgetting thar the Self maintains regarding itself allows us to
bet- ter understand its true nature: the self is only possible as pathetically sub-
merged in itself without ever posing itself in front of itself. without pro- posing
itself in some visible form (sensory or intelligible) or another. Such a Self, for-
eign to any apparition of itself in the world, is what we are calling a radically
immanent Self, a Self neither constituted by nor the object of thought, without
an image of self, with nothing thar might assume the as- pect of its reality. [t
is a Self without a face, which never lets itself be en- visaged. It is a Self in the
absence of any perceptible Self, such thar this absence of any perceptible Self or
thought constitutes the Self’s vericable Ipseity, as well as everything possible on
the basis of it. It is only because no Image of itself is interposed between it and
itself, in the manner of a screen, that the Self is thrown into itself unprotected
and with such violence thar nothing can defend it from that violence any more
than from itself. It is solely because this violence is done to it of being a living
person in Life’s forgetting of self. and thus in the forgetting of itself, thar the
Self is possi- ble—as this Self of which no memory throws back the image, which
noth-
ing will separate or deliver from itself, so that it is the Self thar ic is forever.
150 Forgetting the Condition of Son
Life’s forgetting of self has a corollary: the Self’s forgetting of self is
generated in its self-generation. This is what explains, in the end, man’s for-
getting of his condition of Son. In this way, man’ forgetting of his condition of
Son is not an argument against thar condition bus rather its consequence, and
thus its proof But man’s forgetting of his condition of Son not only proves this;
ic also explains the no less extraordinary fact that, despite the egos constant
exercise of its power—which makes it say “I Can®™—*“1,” this ego, no less

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constantly forgets its condition of ego than the ego forgets its condition of Son.
Here we discover a theoretical sequence that is more than essential. Precisely
because man has forgotten his condition of Son, his own condition of ego escapes
him. And, in effect, as soon the Ipseity in which any me and any “ego” is gener-
ated becomes occulted, then the condition of this me and this ego is abolished:
the ego is no longer possible. No longer possible, the ego is no more than a
phantom, an illusion. From this disso- lution results one of the most character-
istic traits of modern thought: an extremely serious challenge to man himself.
his devaluation and reduction to what subsists when one no longer knows what
makes him a man—to wit. an ego and a me. We would have to follow step
by step the modes of this theoretical murder from Kant to Heidegger and, on
a mare superficial level, by Marxism, structuralism, Freudianism, and various
human sciences, not ta mention the scientism specific to our own era—but that
is not our task here: at most, we may grasp the principle of this disaster rather
than re- count its history.
Even deeper than the forgetting of the ego’s relation to itself is the for- getting
that permeates its relation to Life. In effect, in its relation to self, the ego can
well forget the true Self thar establishes it—outside the world, in- dependently
of any thought or memory or care. In the night of this absence of thought, the
ego is no less given to itself, experiencing itself pathetically in the constantly
exercised I Can. Thus it remains submerged in itself and unaware—cven when
it is concerned only with the world. Bur the relation that unites the ego, no
longer with itself but with Life, is very different. If the ego comes into itself
only in the coming into self of absolute Life and in the process of its eternal
self-generation, then was this process not accom- plished from the stare? And
has Life not come into itself in its Ipseity before the world so that any ego may
be able to come into itself, too? Does Ab- solute Life not precede all livings as
the unsurpassable presupposition, as an already” that can never be withdrawn,
as a pas that can never be caught up
Forgenting the Condition of Sen 151
with—an absolute pase? Life’s anteriority to cvery living (and similarly, the
First Self’s anteriority to any particular Self) corresponds to the most radi- cal
forgetting. Forgetting here no longer bears on what one is without knowing it,
but rather on what happened before one existed—on the sys- tem of autarchic
enjoyment constituted by the reciprocal interiority of Fa- ther and Son, when
there is not yet any me nor any ego such as our own. In the absolute already of
Lifes autarchic enjoyment lies the Immemorial, the Arch-Ancience that eludes
any thought—the always already forgotten, that which lies in Arch-Forgetting.
Nevertheless, Christianity asserts the possibility that someone may surmount
this radical Forgetting and rejoin the absolute Life of God—this Life that pre-
ceded the world and its time, eternal Life. Such a possibility signifies nothing
other than salvation. To rejoin this absolute Life, which has neither beginning
nor end, would be to unite with it, identify with it, live anew this Life that is
not born and does not die—to live like it does, in the way it lives, and not to

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die.
To rejoin the absolute Life of God—would thar no also be, though, for someone
who has forgotten it, to find once again a condition that was once one’s own, if
it is true that in onc’s transcendental birth one came into oneself only in the
very coming into itself of absolute Life? Would it not mean to be born a second
time? But can someone be born a second time? This is Nicodemus’s anguished
question in his nighttime conversation with Christ: “How can a man be born
when he is old? Surely he cannot en- ter a second time into his mother’s womb
to be born?” (John 3:4).
The Second Birch
Christianity gives itself the explicit task of allowing people to secure their sal-
vation. According ro its decisive intuitions, this salvation consists for the ego
of finding once again in its own life the absolure Life that does not stop en-
gendering it. This project implies two initiatives. The ego/per- son lost in
the world, preoccupied only with things and thinking of itself only in relation
to things—”“Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things”
(Luke yo:11)—must perceive, by contrast, its true con- dition, thar of a living
thar does not draw its condition from itself. The true person, we have suffi-
ciently shown, is not the empirical individual per- ceived in the world, but the
transcendental “me” who constantly experi- ences itself as living, as that ego
thar leads the life that is its own without ever being the source of this life. This
is why it experiences life precisely in the radical passivity specific to any life
thar does nor bear itself inside. To live as a living transcendental me, given
to itself in a life thar does not itself give but that is given in the self-givenness
of the absolute Life thar is God’s, such is the Christian definition of man, its
condition of Son. This cond;-
tion of man as Son is precisely what allows his salvation. If man undergoes
the experience of this absolute Life, which has neither beginning nor end, if he
coincides with that Life (and no longer with himself), then he will not know
death.
How can a person regain this absolute Life of God, so as to live hence- forward
from this Life that does not die? The way in which Christianity un-
The Second Birch 153
dertakes to answer this crucial question makes manifest its extraordinary logic,
the power and coherence of the intuitions on which it is based. 75 re- discover
in one’s own life the absolute Life is something that is only possible in life
itself and in the Truth thas belongs so it. In contrast, it is impossible to dis-
cover, find, or re-find absolute Life in the world’s truth, by means of some
kind of knowledge. This is the first presupposition of Christianity’s quest for
humankind’s salvation: the setting aside of everything to which people usu- ally
address their demands, if not for salvation in a properly religious sense, then
at least for progress, success, or the obtaining of what one desires, es- pecially

131
happiness. If, in traditional philosophical thought, it is wisdom—a wisdom built
upon knowledge, careful thought, judgment, and so on—thar ought to lead to
beatitude. then we must recognize that this beatitude has nothing to do with the
Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. But the banishment of knowledge—any
form of knowledge, whether philosophical or scientific, intelligible or sensory—in
the process of Christian salvation is not gratuitous but rather is motivated by
the very nature of the expected sal- vation. In order to vanquish the Forgetting
that renders absolute Life Im- memorial, the Forgetting in which thought holds
Life, we should precisely nor ask that of thought. The salvation that consists
of rediscovering this ab- solute Life escapes all orders of knowledge, expertise,
and science. It does not spring from consciousness as understood by classical or
modern thought, as in “consciousness of something.” It is not some “becoming
conscious of” that can liberate a person. It is not consciousness’s progress
through various kinds of knowledge thar will secure salvation.
We must take the measure of what is disqualified regarding the pos- sibility
for people to come to God: nothing less than what defines human- iras in the
eyes of Western thoughe—thought itself, knowledge, science, Reason. The fact
thar access to God cannot be achieved in and through thought, and in rational
thought less than any other, renders absurd the very project of demanding
proof of God’s existence. Here we come upon one of the great weaknesses of
traditional religious philosophy: the ruinous confusion it creates between, on
the one hand, the concrete internal possi- bility of effective access to God, and
on the other, the prior establishment of his existence from a rational standpoint.
This confusion between the parhétik relation of the living being to absolute
Life—a relation achieved in life—and a relation to God thar is reduced to a
proof of his existence ef- fects a decisive displacement of the question of God,
which finds itself
154 The Second Birth
posed and shaped on terrain where it has already lost any.possible mean- ing—
at least if the question concerns the possibility for people of meeting God, of
uniting with him and being saved.
Ir is Saint Anselm of Canterbury who first performed what we may call the
denaturation of the question of God, the transformation of an af- fective fusion
with divine life into a mediated rational approach, With the substitution of the
latter for the former, the Christian project of Individual salvation gave way to
speculation on “proofs of the existence of God,” and this went on until Kant put
a stop to it—withour being able to offer hu- mankind any other path toward
the foundation of its Being, that is to say, its true essence.
However, it was indeed the possibility of our access to God that pre- occupied
Saint Anselm: “Teach my heart where it may seek thee, where and how it
may find thee.” At lightning speed, the condition of this access is perceived
and posed unequivocally: it is that I place myself where God does, or else
thar God place himself where I am: “If thou art nor here, where shall I seck

132
thee?” And in effect if God does not reside in this Dwelling that is also mine,
I will never be able to find him, unless I change myself into something quite
other and extraordinary, totally foreign to what I am. Bur then, once the
indispensable condition of access—that is, God’s presence—is granted, along
comes the disconcerting realization that, with this condition fulfilled, access has
not taken place. “Bur if thou art everywhere . . . why do I not see thee
present?” Instead of seeking to
elucidate chis crucial paradox. which lies really at the heart of Christianity,
that is, that the essence of God is such that it may be present without any- one
seeing ir, Saint Anselm confines himself to a hasty borrowing from Scripture:
“No doubt you reside in an unapproachable light.” Here, then, the condition of
access to God is suddenly ruined, since the light in which it resides, meaning
access to God, is precisely inaccessible. From this fol- low very logically the
lamentations that fill the long first chaprer of the Proslogion, about the exile in
which humankind finds itself now thar it is separated from God. This separation
is so radical that one cannot compre- hend how humankind could even search
for God— “Teach my heart how to seck thee” —nor, in truth, comprehend the
possibility of this prayer. At the beginning of chaprer 2 comes the faith that
stimulates the un- derstanding by which faith opens up to God: “Give me . .
. to understand that thou art as we believe and that thou art thar which we
believe” (my em-
The Second Birth 155
phasis). Buc this faith that arouses and stimulates the understanding im-
mediately gives way to that very understanding. The text goes on: “We be-
lieve thar thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived”
{ibid.). “We believe that” here means we think that, we judge that, we con-
ceive thar God is a being such that one can conceive of nothing greater.
Our access to God is now reduced to this. It is no longer a question of 2
revelation of God, of a revelation revealing God and produced by God himself,
a revelation made to Beings capable of receiving ir, which ulti-
mately means Beings consubstantial with this self-revelation of God—in short,
a revelation of itself that Life makes to livings. It is also not a ques- tion of
Faith understood in its specificity, as Faith and certitude of life in itself, as we
have suggested. Access to God is reduced to a conception of the understanding
(of our understanding). which consists of what we hence- forth are calling Saint
Anselm’s proof. This proof is developed in two stages. First one establishes
that the content of this conception is incontestable if one reduced ir to a pure
representative content. It is incontestable that [ may represent to myself a being
such that one cannot conceive of anything greater. Then one establishes that
such a being necessarily exists (if not, then one could conceive a greater one and

133
it would exist). In philosophical terms, such a being does not exist only as the
content of the understanding (in intellectu), bur in reality (in re).
Now it behooves us to perceive the massive contradiction implied in the reduc-
tion of access to God to a proof of his existence delivered by the understanding.
In general, to prove is to prove something, to submit this something to a set of
conditions that it must satisfy, conditions that to- gether constitute the proof
itself. From the start, the proof appears more lofty than what must be proven:
it is erected in the manner of a tribunal, and it is before this tribunal that ev-
erything that intends to demonstrate its rights is constrained to offer itself, in
the proper manner. conforming to what is expected of it, thereby to receive the
approbation that will deliver up its existence. In the case of God’s existence,
this citation before a power of validation greater than it not only is strange but
immediately contradicts Anselm’s definition of God, that nothing greater exists.
But it is on the phenomenological plane that the absurdity of any proof of God’s
existence becomes apparent—and it is impossible to define “proof” other than
in a phenomenological way. In effect, to prove is to make seen, such thar what
is seen in this seeing (it lide matters what is ac-
156 The Second Birth
tually seen and how it is seen) cannot reasonably be doubted. What is seen in
this clear-sighted way and is thus found to be indubitable could be something
like 2+3=5 or else, “If I think, I must indeed exist.” Any ratio- nal truth rests
on such an evident given, on what gives itself to be seen in and of itself. It is in
effect by being seen in this way that any content of thought may be recognized
and affirmed by any mind—rthar ir becomes “rational.” If God could be shown
in this way, it would be a rational truth and any reasonable person ought to
affirm his existence. There would be 2 place for a rational theology and for a
gradual development of this theology, as for any other rational knowledge.
But whar sense is there in demanding a proof of God’s existence? When we
put into play the rational requirement of any kind of knowl- edge—thar is.
evidence—with respect to God, we commit a number of catastrophic confusions,
of which some have already been pointed out in the course of this discussion.
In the first place, we are confusing what is shown and its way of showing itself.
What is shown could be either z+3=5 or “If I think, I am.” The way it is
shown is obviously. within sight, in that “outside” that is the world’s truth. To
demand a proof of God’s existence means to put God on trial in the world, to
subject him to the obligation to appear according to this mode of appearing
that is the light of this world, the ek-stasy of exreriority, where things and ideas
are shown. In effect, a criterion of truth preexisting God is applied to him, to
which he must con- form, ar least if he pretends to existence and to truth.
Here are two more absurdities implicated in the project of submit- ting God
to this truth criterion. The first is the presupposition that Ged is inherently
foreign ro Revelacion and consequently forced to request, from a revelation
external to his essence, the possibility of being shown in that revelation, in

134
the place it assigns and the fashion it prescribes: as evidence such as Reason
would have ic, before consciousness’s gaze, as consciousness would have it when
it claims rationality. And a second absurdiry is to pre- scribe for God the mode
of manifestation implied by any evidence, this horizon of visibility that is the
world’s “outside.” To prescribe to God such a mode of appearing means to
prescribe it to absolute phenomenological Life, which is never revealed like this,
never elsewhere than in itself. It is not just rational thought, or what calls
itself such, that commits the major mistake of wanting to apply the criterion of
evidence so as to make divine essence the subject of rigorous knowledge—or to
relegate it to meaning-
The Second Birth 157
lessness if it refuses to conform. Philosophies that strain to break the nar-
row confines of rationalism—even phenomenology itself—have succumbed to a
double contradiction. First, they pretend to subordinate God to 2 mode of
manifestation alien to his proper essence—as if God did not reveal him- self, as
if his essence did not consist of an original and absolute self-revela- tion, that of
Life. Then, they ignore this original mode of phenomenaliza- tion that is Life’s
self-revelation, and which constitutes God’s essence, and submit the latter to
the sole mode of manifestation that is known, which is the world’s truth.
For Heidegger, the truth of the world is that of Being itself. Here we must
restate the necessary subordination of ontology to phenomenology. “The Truth
of Being” means there is no Being except in this Truth. It is not Being that
dispenses Truth, but the reverse. It is only within Truth, in che appearing and
insofar as Truth appears, that anything whatever is in turn capable of Being,
since it is shown in this appearing and through it. But this primordial appearing
is understood by Heidegger as that of the world. The absurd subordination of
God to Being is the subordination of Lifes Truth to the worlds. Even worse
is the misrecognition of the former as the latter and its exclusive reign. But
misrecognizing Life’s Truth also means misrecognizing divine essence. Whether
one simply denies it or carries ignorance of Truth to the extreme of absurdly
subordinating it to the world’s truth is actually of secondary importance. What
good is citing the “sacred,” “god,” or gods, when one has totally lost the divine
essence in its proper and irreducible phenomenaliry? Heidegger comes up with
inadmissible propositions: “The experience of God and his manifestness, insofar
as the latter can encounter humans, strikes in the dimension of Being”;* “The
sacred . . . does not burst into appearance unless beforehand . . . Being has
been illuminated.” Far from the illumination of Being unfolding the appearance
in which some- thing can be shown to us as “sacred.” “god.” or “the gods”
—the gods of fan- tasy put there to do good, to conceal the limits and finally the
platitude of any worldly thought—this illumination forever forbids access to it.
We must now return to the founding intuitions of Christianity. Ac- cess to
the living God—access to Life—occurs only in Life, in the eternal process of
its self-generation as self-revelation. Nor, truly, is the issue now the process of
absolute Life considered in itself, but rather the possibility for people to reach

135
and to have access to God. But here arises the greatest obstacle, on which the
problematic of salvation has broken apart. Let us
158 The Second Birth
recall the terms of this aporia. Life’s self-engendering, in which each living ego
is engendered, signifies for that ego an absolute-Before: what is ac- complished
well before it and without it, before David, before Abraham— “before the world
was.” How, then, can this ego rejoin a Life that outstrips it in an antecedence
that is scarcely thinkable? How can it be that we are not separated from what
happened long before us in this absolute-Before, in this Immemorial of which
we have no memory? Is not any “Before,” for one who comes after, necessarily
past and lost? And when this Before is Life, a Life thar is always already
accomplished, always already living, so that from it can be born all livings,
then is not the latter, the one who comes after Life’s Before, forever cut off from
it, separated from this absoluce Life in which alone it could escape death?
What Christianity obliges us to find is an entirely new and unusual conception
of temporality—one that is the essence of Life’s own temporal- ity. Only this
previously inconceivable temporality allows us to grasp the relation of our birth
to the Before thar absolutely preceded it, which is also to say, the relation of
our birth to what is not born. The ordinary concep- tion of temporality is that
of the world, which has given rise to different in- rerpretations. Common sense
and science understand time as a sort of en- compassing milieu in which things
appear such that they are caught in the flow thar carries them to nonbeing.
Contemporary phenomenology has given rise ro much more elaborated concep-
tions of time. Overall, time is identified with the phenomenological upsurge of
the world, and thus with its truth. Hence the temporalization of time consists
in a coming to the outside, a distancing, the establishing of a gap into which a
horizon of vis- ibility is dug, which is precisely the world’s horizon, its phenom-
enality, its light. This is why time and the world are identical, and why the
world’s truth, consisting of time, is an appearance/disappearance in which all
the things of this world are caught.
Regarding the problem ar hand, that of the relation of the living to Life’s
absolute-Before, the presupposition that has just been restated involves the fol-
lowing consequences. Any “before” implies a gap, a distancing, or, as we might
call it, an ek-stasy. For something like a “before” to appear in our experience.
the one to whom “before” is shown must retrospectively relate to it, such that
one’s relation ro this before consists of a retrospective look that supposes this
distancing, this ck-stasy. In the “outside” of this ek-stasy is discovered both the
horizon of the before—the phenomenological and
The Second Birth 159
ontological dimension of the past as such—and also (inside this horizon of the
“before”) what was before, wha is past. What is past is no longer, but we
understand why this is so. Due to its ex-static nature, the horizon of the past is
a horizon of unreality because, placing everything outside itself, it has deprived

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everything of its own reality, emptied it of itself, and reduced it to an empty
representation. Thus everything shown on this horizon is unreal because, being
shown in that way, given in the past, it is no longer.
This double condition—of opening like a horizon of exteriority within the past’s
ek-stasy and of giving on that horizon only what is no longer—is avoided by the
absolute-Before of birth. This is because, in the process of Life’s self-generation,
which is its coming into itself, no horizon of exteriority, no ek-stasy, is ever
deployed. In this way, never is what is en- gendered in the process of Life’s
self-generation related to what engenders it as a before from which it could be
separated by any distance whatever, by the dis- tance of an ek-stasy— specifi-
cally by the ek-stasy of the past. How, then, is what is engendered in Life—the
living—related to the power that engenders it, if that power truly remains for
it an unending absolute-Before? We have to imagine a form of relation to the
Before that is no longer the distance of the past—no distance, no “ek-stasy.”
Any form of relation that does nos rake its possibility from the distancing of an
ek-stasy instead draws it from feeling.
First we have to perceive what is incontestable about the possibility of such a
relation. A pure sensation. considered alone, is never ex-statically re- lated to
itself, because then it would have ceased to feel itself in order to be- come the
sensation of something outside, an object’s sensible quality, for ex- ample. Ir
would no longer be that pure impression immersed in itself, incapable of taking
the least distance from itself, of separating or detaching from irsclfi—thar pain
that the person who feels it is forced to feel just as long as he feels it. Bur the
parherik relation to oneself that inhabits any sensa- tion and any feeling, any
modality of life. is not the doing of thar particular modality, that pain, that
impression. Rather, it belongs to Life as its parbérik flesh, the pure phenomeno-
logical substance of which life is made. Bu life, as we know, is a movement, a
process, the process of eternal coming into it- self of that which experiences itself
without ever being separated from it. This movement of coming into itself that
is never separated from itself is life’s own temporality, its radically immanent,
inex-static, and pathésik tem- porality. In this temporality there is neither be-
fore nor after in the sense we understand them, but rather eternal movement,
an eternal flux in which life
160 The Second Birth
continuously experiences itself in the Self thar life eternally generates, and which
is never separated from itself. As soon as we understand the possibil- ity of some-
thing like “living,” we see that in the temporalization of this original immanent
temporality there is nothing of the past nor anything thar has nor yet been—
nothing lost and nothing anticipated. In the very movement of living (since it
is accomplished as the Self’s self-movement), everything is living and continues
to be so.
But now the issue is not this movement of life moving and experienc- ing itself
pathetically in the immanent temporality of a self-movement never separated

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from itself. but rather, we remind ourselves, the possibility for an ego like ours
to be inserted into it. This possibility does not reside in the ego itself bur in
the condition of Son—in the condition of someone who only comes into himself
in Life’s own coming into itself. Not in the coming into itself of the ego’s own
life, which it is precisely incapable of bringing about, but in absolute Life’s
coming into itself, which alone is capable of doing so, of bringing about and
giving itself to itself in the power and joy of a self- givenness and an effective
self-affection. Thus there is only one Life, and it alone gives the ego to itself.
Only because in the self-movement of its im- manent temporality this Life is
never separated from itself, the ego (given to itself within the self-givenness of
absolute Life) is not separated from Life any more than from itself. It is only
because this absolute Life is capa- ble of bringing itself about in the hyper-power
of its effective self-givenness and thus of living thar, given to itself in the hyper-
power of this absolute self-givenness, the ego is itself capable of living, not by
irself, bur thanks ro the hyper-power of this absolute Life. Thus the Christian
definition of hu- mankind becomes radically clear. There is no living except a
Son. Bue there is no Son except thar of this unique and true Life that engenders
itself con- stanly. The Son is not like a simple living emerging somehow in a
factual life that lives itself somehow—about which we can establish only one
sim- ple fact: this Son is generated in the hyper-power of this absolute Life thar
brings about its own life, the only possible life, the only one capable of be- ing
brought into life and thus of living—rthe Life of God.
Nevertheless, few of the New Testament passages about man and his condition
as Son understand the matter in this way: Son of God most often means not
what man is bur what he must become. Precisely because he is not thar, he must
become so. A resulting division is established among hu- man beings, between
those who are Sons of God and those who are not—
The Second Birth 161
or not yet. This division is not gratuitous, and its conditions are clearly de-
fined. The Son of God is the one who does not commit sin: “Anyone born of
God does not continue to sin” {1 John 5:18). To the extent that he does not
commit sin, the Son of God is not separated from God burt “keeps him safe”
(ibid.). An equivalent to John’s proposition is found in Paul’s Epistle to the
Romans: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Ro- mans
8:15). There is also a sort of corollary: “It is not the natural children who are
God’s children” (9:8), which itself echoes the Prologue by John we have already
discussed: “Those who are not born of the flesh . . .
To be born of God and to keep him within oneself without being separated
from him, and thus without falling into sin—this precise and overdetermined
meaning of the concept of Son of God is found in many essential passages of the
New Testament that deal with salvation. This sal- vation resides precisely in
the condition of Son of God in the sense just stated, which appears repeatedly
in Johns writings: “Whoever does justice is his child” (1 John 2:29): “Everyone
who loves is a child of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). To carry God within

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oneself is also, according to a series of implications that have been laid forth, to
believe that Jesus is the Christ and that the Christ is consubstantial with the
Father. To carry God within oneself in these different ways is thus to be the Son
of God in the strong and overdetermined sense that we have been elucidating:
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God” (1 John 5:1);
“Every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from
God” (1 John 4:2). Salvation consists of carrying God within oneself while being
his Son in this new sense, according to the amazing declarations in Revelation:
“They shall walk with me in white”; “His name I will never strike off the roll of
the living, for in the presence of my Father and his an- gels I will acknowledge
him as mine;” “the Lamb . . . will be their shepherd and will guide them to
the springs of the water of life” (3:4: 3:5; 7:17). And that this filiation comes
from radical becoming, from the transformarion of one who in his identification
with Life receives his salvation from it, is also stated no less abruptly: “Behold!
1 am making all things new! , „ Iam the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
and the end. A draught from the water-springs of life will be my free gift to the
thirsty. All this is the victor’s heritage; and I will be his-God and he shall be
my son” (Revelation 21:5-7, my emphasis).
The overdetermination of the concept of Son, as Son of God having
162 The Second Birth
a share in the source of life, generated in that place where life self-generates, is
obviously linked to the strong concept of self-affection by which life en- genders
itself as the true and eternal Life. But doesn’t this overdetermination of the
strong concepe of Son, grasped in its connection to the strong con- cept of
self-affection that belongs to absolute Life, also leave indeterminant the weak
concept of Son, whose life does not have the ability to bring itself into Life?
What, then. is the condition of one who lives his own life, who does not drink
from the source of life, who has not received the heritage of the victor, one whose
name is not written in the roll of the living—one of whom God has not said
“I will be his God and he shall be my son”? To the questions implicitly raised
here, the Book of Revelation replies with the same brutality: “Though you have
a name for being alive, you are dead” (3:1). Far from attributing this type of
declaration to some visionary excess, Paul’s systematic construction includes it
in his thematic: “Although you were dead because of your sins and because you
were morally uncircum- cised . . . ” (Colossians 2:13). The question posed
by Paul, as well as by Rev- elations, becomes, then, the unavoidable paradox
around which a constel- ladon of problems revolves: how is it possible to live in
any fashion if one is dead? If thar is the case, how is the pure appearance by
which one ar least passes for living still conceivable? Inversely, if one is really
dead, how can one rediscover and drink anew the water of the source of life that
watered the stags? How can one suddenly find one’s name in the Book?
These questions are linked to the relation thar exists between Life and the living,
which consists of a series of necessary implications. These define the whole set of
equally necessary responses that should be given to such questions. Because the

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relation of Life to the living has been the sub- ject of a systematic elucidation,
we are now in possession of these answers.
Here is the first: a living is living only by the working of Life in him. Con-
sequently. the relation of a living to Life cannot be broken, and cannot be
undone. This relation is so essential that the living not only carries Life as his
most intimate and ever-present condition: it is his very presupposi- tion, in the
sense chat Life necessarily precedes any living as the absolute- Before relative
to which he is always second. It is only because Life comes into itself in the
eternal process of its self-affection thar the living (in and through this process)
comes into himself. This is shown by the phenome- nology of birth, establishing
in an apodictic way that any living is the Son of true Life, absolute and eternal.
and of it only. “Here and now, dear
The Second Birth 163
friends, we are God’s children” (1 John 3:2). And again: “How great is the love
that the Father has shown to us! We were called God’s children, and such we
are” (1 John 3:1). The issue is not understanding how people living from an
uncertain and ill-assured life, incapable of founding itself—how people similar
to the dead—could be capable by some radical transforma- tion in their nature
of changing into quite different beings, those Sons dressed in white that are
described in Revelation, these “children of God’s promise” that Paul speaks of
(Galatians 4:28), who are promised to an in- corruprible life. Rather, the issue
is perceiving how the Sons who are all Sons of God’s absolute Life, living only
in and through it, can actually lose this condition. And how, having lost it,
they can find it again and be reborn in this unique and absolute Life that, from
affecting itself and giving itself, does not know death.
It is remarkable that this double possibility, inscribed a priori in the relation of
the living to Life as two ways for this relation to be realized, is de- scribed by
Christ himself in the extraordinary parable of the two sons, usu- ally known as
the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). We recall that the younger one, having asked
his father to give him his share of the inheritance and having squandered it in
a foreign land. returns to his father: “Father, I have sinned against God and
against you: [ am no longer fic to be called your son. ...” (verse 18). The father
showers him with gifts: “For this son of mine was dead and has come back to
life; he was lost and is found” (24). To the other son, who had remained faithful
and is offended by his father’s be- havior, he declares: “My boy, you are always
with me, and everything | have is yours” (31).
Two decisive theses arise here. First, the idea that the spiritual trans- formation
of the Son into his true condition as Son of God, as spoken of in Revelation,
into his condition as “child of God’s promise” (promised to incorruptible Life),
is only possible within the context of the prior condi- tion of living, born of Life
in the very movement by which life comes into itself. It is in his capacity as Son
and because he is one that the lost Son can regain a condition that was originally
his, and thar, for this reason, he in fact regains it. The prior character of the

140
condition of living does not merely mean that living precedes any becoming
that may occur. Rather, this condition of living itself refers back to its own
precondition, to the absolute-Before of Life from which the living person takes
his living qual- ity. Any becoming that can happen to him presupposes within
the living
164 The Second Birth
that absolute-Before, to which this becoming ultimately returns. Ir is to this
radical presupposition of absolute Life, included in the condition of the living
and making it possible, thar the Christian concepr of Son refers. It is due to
this absolute presupposition always included in him that the Son can and must
regain the condition that is his. This is also one of John’s decisive intuitions:
“If we know that our requests are heard, we know also that the things we ask
for are ours” (1 John sus). Thus the return of the prodigal son to his Father’s
house, the return of the son to his condition of Son, is made possible by his very
condition as Son. To come back to Life, to be reborn, is given as a possibility
always present to one who is born of Life. A rebirth is thus implied in any
birth because the new life to be reached. the second life, is just the first one.
the oldest Life, the one thar lived at the Beginning and that was given in its
transcendental birth to all living people: because, outside it and without it, no
living person nor any life would be possible.
A final difficulty remains before us. The possibility of being reborn to this ab-
solute Life, which he had forgotten by losing himself in the world and becoming
concerned only with things and himself, subsists in man, who derives it from
his transcendental birch and carries it inside as what constantly gives him to
himself—this is still only a possibility. In its imma- nent temporality, absolute
Life has in vain joined to itself someone who, coming after it, is not thereby
separated from it—any more than separated from himself. Although Life in-
deed remains in each Son as the interior pre- supposition of his condition, from
which he cannot separate himself, the prodigal son has nonetheless forgotten
this. The power, closer to man than himself, that gives him to himself, can
continue to work within him with- ouc his knowing ir: bur for him things don’t
seem thar way. Phenamenolog- ically, someone who lives only for himself, who
cares only about his own feelings and pleasures (as if he gave them to himself
and as if the power that really gives them did not exist), who believes he leads
an autonomous life and is not the beneficiary or debtor of any heritage or any
promise—is that person not the prodigal Son? And why would he come back,
guilty and ashamed, to his Father, someone who no longer even knows he has a
Fa- ther, who no longer knows he is a Son?
There is no access to God in the world (any “proof” of God’s exis- tence, any
rational theology is ruled our), bur only in life. But there are two lives: the one
given to itself in its self-generation and che one thar is only
The Second Birth 165
given to itself in absolute Life’s self-gencration. Foreign to the world, the Chris-

141
tian problematic of salvation is unfolded exclusively in the field of life, and this
is why it finds itself abruptly confronted with the doubling of life. In a sense,
it is true, this doubling is merely apparent, since the ego is not given to it-
self in whar becomes its own life except in absolute Life’s self- givenness. The
immanence of absolute Life within the ego’s own singular life is what makes
theoretically possible the ego’s salvation. Bur, once again, this possibility re-
mains theoretical. only a simple possibility. Why does the ego tha lives from
its own life, thoughts, desires. and pleasures (while the power that gives it to
itself remains for it insurmountably Forgotten)—why would this ego overcome
this Forgetting, suddenly feeling inside rhe only life that exists, the power that
in its self-givenness gives any conceivable life?
Here we are offered one of the strongest intuitions of Christianity, linked to
all those we have already discussed. Life leads us to something no knowledge
allows us to see. Bur the doubling of the concept of life, the dis- tinction
between absolute Life’s self-givenness and the life of the ego that is only given to
itself in absolure Life’s self-givenness—this differentiation is not only theoretical
but phenomenological. It is the Forgetting of the former that the ego must
defear if ic wants to be reborn and escape death. This second birth only comes
about due to a mutation accomplished within life itself, the decisive mutation
thanks to which the very life of the ego is changed into Life of the absolute.
Inside life. this mutation is not prepared by any theoretical knowledge. It can
only find its principle in life, in ab- solute Life and its movement: it is a self-
transformation of life according to its own laws and structure. Willed by life, this
self-transformation of life leads to its true essence. to absolute Life. That this
transformation of life, owing nothing to the world’s truth or its logos, receives
its motivation from this life, that it belongs to this movement and concretely
accom- plishes it, this determines life as an action. The self-transformation of
life that it wills. consisting of an action and leading it back to its true essence,
is the Christian ethic. This ethic is announced in Christ’s words: “Not everyone
who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but only those
who do the will of my heavenly Father.” (Matthew 7:21).
Thus the Christian ethic presents itself from the start as a displace- ment from
the realm of the word, meaning also of thought and knowl- edge, to the realm
of action. This displacement is decisive for three reasons.
First, it leads the world’s truth back to Life’s. Second. dissipating all the il-
166 The Second Birth
lusions chat traditionally link the truth to representation, to theory, and to
their ecstatic foundation, it unequivocally relates Life’s Truth to the process of
its self-engendering, to the power of an action. Third, in life, it is pre- cisely no
longer the ego’s power, the I Can constitutive of its will and free- dom, that is ar
issue, but the “Father’s Will,” or the process of absolute Life’s self-engendering.
Now the ethic can link the two lives. the ego’s and Gods, in such a way that
it assures the former’s salvation in practice. 70 do the Father’ will designates

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the mode of life in which the Self s life takes place, so that what is henceforth
accomplished in it is absolute Life in its essence and by its requirements.
The Christian ethic thus rigorously follows the fundamental presup- positions
of Christianity and is their application. The presuppositions are thar God is
Life; char access to God is access to Life in itself, its self- revelation; that man
rakes the means of reaching God from his condition as Son, as living in Life. He
has within him the selfs relation to Life, a re- lation that joins him to himself
and alone can join him to God. To do the Heavenly Father’s Will is to let the
relation to the self that joins the singu- lar Self to itself be accomplished, just
like the relation to itself of absolute Life—for the living man it is to let life be
accomplished in himself like the very Life of God.
The genius of the Christian ethic is to point out in the simplest of or- dinary
lives, accessible to all and comprehensible by all, the concrete con- dirions—
the circumstances, as it were—in which the extraordinary event is produced by
which the ego’s life will be changed into God’s. As an ex- ample, let us-consider
the parable of the Good Samaritan (whose good deed is rerrifyingly represented
by Luca Giordano in the painting in the Rouen Museum). Someone like the
priest or Levite, who passes by withour help- ing the man robbed by brigands
who has been thrown down and is cov- ered with wounds—that person now
advances along the route to perdition without knowing it. By contrast. the
Samaritan, setting aside his own busi- ness, all preoccupations about himself or
his interests, is concerned only with the unfortunate one. Taking him to an inn.
having him tended, pay- ing for everything—in short, practicing mercy, he has
done everything that could be done to “inherit cternal life” (Luke 10:25-37). If
such is the meta- physical destiny of the protagonists in the parable, it is good
that acts are what count.
Precise behaviors of the kind indicated in the New Testament were
The Second Birth 167
”summarized by medieval theology as the “seven works of corporal mercy”
(to feed those who are hungry, clothe those who are naked, care for the sick,
release captives, visit prisoners, and so on) and of spiritual mercy (reach the
ignorant. convert sinners, console the afflicted, pardon one’s enemies. pray for
the living and the dead, and the like). It is not conformity with an ex- ternal
model of conduct that is required. Rather, within each person who performs
each of the stated acts of mercy, salvation flows. Salvarion is the second birth
entry into the new Life. The action of the Christian ethic places the living person
into the absolute Life that was before him and, giv- ing him to himself, gave him
life in his condition as Son. How that action allows the recovery of that condition
remains to be specified. Any action, as we have shown at length, consists in
the application of a power that can be exercised only if it is in possession of
itself—which means only if given to itself, not by itself but within life. This is
the ego-defining condition of the [ Can. When the Christian ethic effects the
decisive displacement thar leads from words ro acts—”Tt is not the one who

143
says . . . but the one who does . .. ”—it addresses this ego, draws on a power
that is within it, The ethic designates this ego as someone who, in performing
an act of mercy, achieves his salvation. At the same rime, the ethic disqualifies
language as inherently incapable of playing this role, because as a milieu of pure
unre- ality, language is foreign to life. The contrast between acts and words
that traverses the Gospels has no meaning unless there is a decisive opposition
between what carries life in itself and what is deprived of it in principle. This is
because the doing carries life as its irresistible presupposition, be- cause there is
no doing unless given to itself in life’s self-givenness, unless the work of salvation
is entrusted to it.
Entrusted to doing and to action, but nor to any old action. If we ex- amine
the list of works of mercy, we see that is not a simple enumeration of empirical
attitudes and conduct thar would be beneficial to people who prac- tice them.
A hidden contrast runs through them, but not an opposition be- tween simple
precepts still removed from their achievement in practice, which is demanded
as the single road thar leads to life. Instead, the opposi- tion appears on the
level of the action itself. It distinguishes and contrasts two types of action—in
effect, one that leads to life and the other to death.
Isnt the one leading to life quite simply mercy? This is what ought to direct our
conduct with respect to all those whose situation of need or dis- tress requires
us to bring them aid and assistance. So is it not someone who
168 The Second Birth
comes up to us, without even speaking or making any sign—a simple face that
calls on us in such a way that we can either turn away or respond to the appeal?
We know the decisive role played by the other person, more exactly by the
neighbor, in the Christian ethic, something to which we shall re- turn. The
question of the relation to others, however, cannot be examined by itself until
the presuppositions underlying Christianicy’s approach to it have been clarified.
These presuppositions concern precisely the way of act- ing implied in works of
mercy. Paradoxically. it is neither the neighbor nor the mercy with which we
should treat him that explains the way of acting required by the Christian ethic.
Moreover, if it was really the other person that lay at the principle of this ethic,
reduced to a sort of radical altruism, how could it determine a conduct different
from one finding its principle within me? Is the other person more than me? Is
one person worth more than another?
It is in the essence of action itself, nowhere else, that the Christian ethic per-
ceives the principle of the division of all forms of action between those that save
and those that lead to perdition. It is enough to recall the es- sential link that
unites the transcendental illusion of the ego to the problem of action, since the
ego finds itself constituted in itself as I Can. Disposing of itself and each of
its powers, leaning on itself, by the same token it takes itself as the source of
these powers, as we have said. Not content just with attributing everything it
does to itself, it even poses itself as the unique goal of all its actions, caring for

144
things, other people, and itself only with itself in view. So it is in its very action
and each of its acts that it has lost zhe es- sence of action, if action consists
not in the application of determinate powers bus in the hyper-power that has
given each of these powers ta itself—in the hyper- power of absolute Life. In
the action of the ego as action, supposedly issu- ing from itself and aimed only
at itself, the very essence of absolute Life is ruled out. Far from leading to the
life outside of which there is neither ego nor action, this action turns away from
it, and by the same token turns away from life everything it touches, others as
well as itself.
The action implied in merciful works is now quite clear. Whether it involves
nourishing those who are hungry, clothing those who are naked, caring for the
sick. or another act, the manner of acting in these various ac- tions has ceased
to concern the ego that acts or to relate to it in any fashion; a common trait
equally determines them all: forgetting oneself In a radical phe- nomenology of
life like that of Christianity. and in the essence of the Ipse-
The Second Birth 169
ity in which life arains itself, the forgetting of self has a double meaning. What
is ruled out is not only the empirical and worldly individual {ro which the
ordinary understanding of a person is reduced) but also, more essen- tially, the
transcendental ego that acts. For this particular ego, which puts into effect the
powers of its body and mind, which says “I Can,” there is no longer any question
of that ego it cared about until then and which was sill him. It is the system
of transcendental egoism (in which it is the transcen- dental ego that acts and
thar acts with a view to itself) thac is abolished.
Hence. what kind of action is acting in works of mercy, if it is not a power
proper to the transcendental ego that says “I Can” In this ego there is no power
different from its own, different from all che powers it pos- sesses, except for the
hyper-power of absolute Life thar gave it to itself in giving itself to itself. /n
works of mercy—and this is why they are “works™— a decisive transmutation
takes place by which the ego’ power is extended to the hyper-power of absolute
Life in which it is given to itself. In such a transmu- tation, the ego forgets itself,
so thar in and through this forgetting an es- sential Ipseity is revealed—nor its
own Self but precisely whar gives this self to itself by making it a Self, absolute
Life’s sclf-giving in the Ipseity of which this life gives itself. It is no longer me
who acts, ir is the Arch-Son who acts in me. And this is because “I no longer
live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Here some of the founding intuitions of Christianity take shape. The analysis of
the Self showed that there is no true Self other than a radically immanent Self,
whose relation to self excludes any distancing, any putting at a distance, any
“outside,” any possible “world.” Thus this Self has no im- age. no perception,
no memory of self, is not concerned with itself, and does not-think of itself.
This relation to self is Forgetting, not the forgetting chat might be cancelled
by the corresponding memory, but the Forgetting that nothing can cancel—the

145
Immemorial of its relation to self in the Ipseity of absolute Life. It is only
with the elimination of the worldly self shown in the world and of the worldly
relation to self in which the Self sees itself, de- sires to be seen, is concerned
with itself, works with a view to itself, thar che advent comes of the true Self,
which experiences itself within the Ipscity of absolute Life and is nothing other
than that.
But what does “advent” mean here? How does this transformation of the worldly
self come about, which (in the forgetting of everything it is for itself) opens up
to the original Ipseity of Life? Nothing for which we
170 The Second Birth
have established the theoretical possibility—not even the theory we have
sketched—can be accomplished by theory. Only the work of mercy practices
the forgetting of self in which, all interest for the Self (right down to the idea
of what we call a self or a me) now removed, no obstacle is now posed to the
un- Jurling of life in this Self extended to its original essence. Forgetful of
Itself in merciful actions, in this new action there is only its givenness to itself
in the Arch-Givenness of absolure Life and in its Arch-Ipseity. The person has
rediscovered the Power with which he is born—and which is itself not born. He
is born a second time. In this second birth he has rediscovered Life, so that
henceforth he will not be born anymore; it can truly be said in this sense that
he is “not born.”
Here then is how each work of mercy leads to salvation. Each time, it produces a
decisive substitution, by virtue of which the worldly acting of the ego concerned
with things, others, and itself, with a view to itself, gives way to the original
action of Life that gave this ego to itself. Because action is wholly phenomeno-
logical, the process of this substitution is phenome- nological. too, and one who
practices mercy has felt the eruption in him- self of Life,
This phenomenological process, incontestable each time it happens, is not some
even arising from magic, the effects of which we can only ad- mire after the fact.
One who is born of life finds actions capable of satisfy- ing him only if this action
suits his condition. The action can only suit the condition of Son if it comes
from thar condition and returns to it. Its com- ing from the condition of Son is
what makes it possible in the first place. There is no “I Can” except in life. As
extraordinary and difficult as the require- ments of the Christian ethic appear
to people, the no less extraordinary fact remains thar they are rooted in their
true nature. The requirements of- fer themselves as safeguard, and thus they
return to the Son. The Christian ethic eestifies to its own condition, in which
is simultaneously designated the only possible ethic for humankind. Qutside of
ir, humankind cannot help but be literally denatured, scorned, destroyed. Here
is the reason why the precepts of this ethic are formulated so trenchantly, not
as advice or suggestions, but as conditions of life or death.
We should now review this ethic.

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The Christian Ethic
The Christian ethic aims to allow people to overcome the forgetting of their
condition as Son in order to rediscover (thanks to it) the absolute Life into
which they were born. The decisive presupposition of the Chris- tian ethic
is that the possibility of this second birth consists not in knowl- edge bur in
doing. Bur this process of salvation does not rely on doing (to the point of
being identified with ir) unless it is totally transformed. To do, to act—this
has to be thoughr of quire differently. How? In life and as the fundamental
determination of it, more as a mode of absolute Life. Because, in Christianity,
doing is situated in the dimension of life and belongs to it, so its achievement is
mixed up with life’s movement. to the point—when it has become “thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven” —of being noth- ing bur the self-achievement
of absolute Life. It is only because doing is life’s doing that it can ultimately be
what makes life: the absolute self givenness and self-revelarion of Life, in which
God’s revelation is achieved.
‘We must clearly perceive the extent to which doing, understood by Christianity
as action by invisible Life, belongs to Life and, invisible like ir, breaks decisively
with the usual representations of acrion that derive from Greece, as well as from
classical and modern thought. The principle of the Christian ethic only becomes
intelligible in the light of an entirely new phi- losophy of action. The same is
true for all the “commandments” that define this ethic and for the very meaning
of what Christianity understands by “commandments.” In ancient, classical, or
modern thought, to act means
172 The Christian Ethic
to take some interior design, some subjective project, some desire or wish or
will (whether or nor explicit or conscious), and give it an exterior real- ization.
in such a way that the ontological weight of reality resides in the objective
formation in which the action results. It does not matter whether this objective
formation is still only a mental content or a thought content (for example a
geometric figure), or whether. on the contrary, itis a real ob- ject (for example,
a vase made by a craftsman). In all cases, reality resides in the product of
the action, which appears as a content situated within con- scious sight. and
therefore objective—a content that can be touched, in the case of the material
vase, or at least seen with the mind’s eye, in the case of the geometric figure or
ideal object.
As for the action that led to this objective result, it consists of the very process
that leads in general to something objective: a process of ob- jectification. It is
the very movement by which what did not yer exist ex- cept in internal vircuality
finds itself brought outside, placed within sight, and henceforth perceived by
that sight, become visible and thus objective and real. Action consists literally
of this passage from interior to exterior. from what is not seen to what is seen,
from what is still only a simple sub- jective intention, in itself deprived of reality,
to what, from having emerged into exteriority and become visible as such, now

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finds irself real. In action more clearly than in any other phenomenon, it appears
thar phenomenal- ity consists precisely in this coming outside into the world’s
light: action is like making, ir is a making-come-outside.
To act. to make or do [faire]. also means to produce. Pro-duce ( pro- ducere) is
to lead before. in that outsideness of the world thar jointly defines phenomenal-
ity and reality, inasmuch as what shows itself is real—what shows itself in the
world’s truth. In all respects, making or doing [faire] is conceived within West-
ern tradition on the basis of the world’s truth. Mak- ing or doing [faire] is only
understood as a requirement of reality. Bur it is in the world that any reality is
realized. By itself, the realization is just the coming into this world, and finally
the coming of the world itself—its emergence into the light, its appearance, its
Truth.
Christianity proceeds to overthrow the concept of reality as well as that of action.
In tearing action from external Being and from the process of objectification
leading to it, Christianity situates action in its rightful place, where to do is to
make an effort, take pains. suffer to the point that the suffering of this effort is
changed into the joy of satisfaction. To do
The Christian Erhic 173
refers to life’s internal parhérik self-transformation and finds there its sole mo-
tivation, its unique purpose, not to mention the very milieu in which it 1s
accomplished and is possible. So, surprising as it may seem at first glance to
the naive realism of ordinary perception, the subjective conception of action is
the only one chat preserves its possibility. If we consider action as an objective
process similar to a natural process, to a cascade of water that makes a turbine
turn, then nothing distinguishes this so-called action from some material pro-
cess, and there is no longer any action, bur only objec- tive phenomena. Human
acting and the effort and suffering involved are reducible to causal sequences.
to “the action of gravity.” for example.
If we consider action as a process of objectification and externaliza- tion, the
aporia we run up against is no less insurmountable. It would re- quire that
in each instant, by an extravagant leap outside his condition as a radically
subjective and invisible living person, the agent is transformed into an object
situated in front of it, that he himself becomes this object, an inert thing, In
reality, the action does not stop being subjective, any more than does the living
person who performs it. From beginning to end, it is action by life, which, like
life, is never separated from itself. What we call the exterior result of action is
always just the global re-presentation in the world’s truth of what has its original
site in Life’s Truth. Whar is exte- rior are the objective displacements of an
empirical individual who is him- self objective—this individual whom one may
see. But a person is never this, but rather an invisible transcendental me, and it
is this me who acts. If it is its body that acts, it is its living body. its invisible
transcendental body. The exterior “action” is just the representation of this
originally sub- jective and living interior action. The genius of Christianity is to

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have un- derstood from the start, apart from and long before any philosophical
pre- supposition or analysis, that action is lifes, and only possible as such.
Ta situate action within life has a rigorous phenomenological mean- ing, however.
7b say paradoxically that action is invisible is to assign it a mode of radical
revelation, that of Life itself, ultimately of God Himself Action, do- ing, practice,
and the body are torn from the absurdity of positivism, which would reduce
them to objective phenomena analogous to all phenomena in the universe. They
are also torn from the absurdity of classical philosophies, which see in them a
passage or, rather, an unintelligible leap berween two irreducible orders. They
are torn, finally, from the confusion of a viralism thar, making action the basis
of determining human existence, nevertheless
174 The Christian Ethic
proves incapable of assigning it any phenomenological status whatever, making
it the expression, denuded of meaning, of a blind and anonymous force. The
fact that action is of life and belongs to it leads, by contrast, to relating phe-
nomenological analysis of the former to the latter, with decisive consequences
for the ethic, which will be apparent to us. Among these con- sequences, the
most important is to transform a naturalistic or humanistic ethic into a general
conceptualization of action, on the basis of the inter- pretation of a person as the
transcendental “me” born of God—a concep- tualization that is consequently
only intelligible on the basis of God him- self, and not of “man” or “nature.”
The phenomenological analysis of life has shown that lifes givenness to self in the
transcendental “me” is founded in absolute Life’s givenness to self and is only
possible through ir. If absolute Life’s self-givenness is God’s self-revelation, then
the latter is implicated in the life of the transcendental “me,” which is only self-
revealed in this absolute Life’s self-revelation—that of God himself. Any life is
now accomplished “before God.” God is like an Omni-seeing Eye that sees what
happens in each individual life; once again, this is because life’s self-revelation
carries within it God’s self-revelation.
This decisive and almost unthinkable situation, which ensures that our life:
is accomplished in God’s sight, a sight that is nor a gaze but racher absolute
Life’s feeling itself inside any individual life, involves all our actions, to the
extent thar they are no longer dissociable from our life, any more than our life
is from the self-revelation of absolute Life.
Thus. whereas in the world’s truth my action is manifest in the guise of objective
external conduct accessible to all, in Life’s Truth grasped as one of its modalities
(even better, as its very action), this action reveals itself not just to itself in the
transcendental me that accomplishes it. In this revela- rion to itself of my action
is included lifes self revelation and thus God’s. So each of my actions is revealed
to God at the same time as it is revealed to me, and in the very act by which
it does so. “When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it
will not be obvious to men that you are fasting. but only to your Father, who

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is unseen, and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you”
(Matthew 6:17).
The extraordinary phenomenology of action thar results from Chris- tianity’s
linking of it to the phenomenology of life finds in this stupefying passage its
irresistible formulation. The radical opposition set up between the world’s truth
and Life’s Truth corresponds to a duality of action: be-
The Christian Ethic 175
tween, on the one hand, its exterior appearance in the form of a visible ob-
jective process accessible to all and, on the other hand, the secret character of
this action, since, belonging to life in its very movement, it is as invisible as
life. But the phenomenology of life practiced spontaneously by Chris- tianity is
by no means limited ro the opposition, as decisive as it may be, between two
heterogeneous modes of revelation: that of the world, in which everything is seen
from the outside, and that of life, in which everything is lived from the inside.
More secret than life itself (because operating within it) is the ultimate division
between the absolute self-revelation in which life gives itself to itself and the
passive self-givenness in which the transcenden- tal me is given to itself—such
that the later is never separated from the for- mer, from God’s self-revelation.
This is the Omni-secing Eye that scruri- nizes all of my actions, the ineluctable
“before God” to whom a person owes the fact of living—this Son of Life who is
given to himself only in the self: revelation of absolute Life.
The modification of action when it is transferred from the sphere of the world’s
truth to Lifes is so important that we must differendate its stages and med-
nings. According to a belief that is as widespread as it is naive, as long as
action takes place in the world, it obeys its laws. These are partly laws of
things and partly laws that make these things manifest (for example, space and
time) and constitute the phenomenological structure of the world prop- erly
speaking, “outsideness” as such. The laws of things are not only physi- cal laws.
Among these “things” are social and cultural ones, and even people as empirical
individuals appearing in the world. This is why there are along- side natural
laws social and finally moral laws, laws relating to the conduct of these individu-
als and supposedly regulating them. Unlike natural laws, which are as necessary
as the facts they govern, moral laws are presented as prescriptions or commands:
they carry an obligation for people to conform their acts to them. Although
this obligation is felt by individuals, the overall belonging to the world’s truth
by the system of actions means that every- thing within this worldly system is
objective: actions, of course, but also the individuals who perform them, and
finally the laws—the Law to which they submit themselves. This Law, which
governs the ethical and religious system of a people, is exterior to the individu-
als who compose it, transcendent to them. This exteriority is the world’s, and
in its truch the Law is manifest.
At the same time as action is torn from the world’s truth to be im- mersed in
life’s pathos, Christianity throws the whole worldly system of ac-

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176 The Christian Ethic
tions into its abyssal subjectivity. It calls into question the objective char- acter
of action itself, which is stripped of irs pretension ro contain the reality of action
and acting as such it is only an appearance, and a fallacious one. Therefore,
what is presented as the exterior conduct of fasting is not what fasts. How
can the conduct of fasting, shown before us as a conduct that the whole world
sees as external and objective, at the same rime not be the action of fasting?
Because the action of fasting does not appear itself in the world’s truth and
cannot appear there, and this in turn is because no action (particularly not this
one) reveals itself, except to itself in life’s self-revelation.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the
outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence!”
Then comes the terrible judgment: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Phar-
isees. you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful
on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything
unclean” (Matthew 23:25,27). The implacable and untiring denunciation of
hypocrisy is not foremost 2 judgment, bu rather presupposes a schism within
appearance between two irreducible modes of phenomenalization. Luke expli-
cidy refers the Pharisees to a preexisting phenomenological dualism: “You are
the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts”
(Luke 16:15). This dualism of phenomenality is radicalized in all the Gospels; it
appears in John, for ex- ample, as the dualism of two kinds of “praise” when it
is said of the Phar- isees: “Many even among the leaders believed in him. But
because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith . . . for they loved
praise from men more than praise from God” (John 12:42).
It is not only action that Christianity removes from objectivity. The law that
should govern action undergoes a displacement that is no less de- cisive. Leaving
the sphere of exteriority, in which the law was given to peo- ple in the guise of
an ethical or religious proposition—a transcendent Law that is alien to living
subjectivity and supposedly regulates it from the out- side, like an imperative or
an objective statement—the law, too, is assigned in a paradoxical way te another
phenomenological site—thar of Life, of which it is just the self movement of
absolute Life, from which any partic- ular life receives its own impulse.
Here arises a critique of the Law within Christianity, formulated with rare vio-
lence by Christ, and for which Paul finds and wonderfully explains the ultimate
motivation, which relates it to Christianity’s central thesis,
The Christian Ethic 177
which places reality within life. It is precisely because the Law is transcen- dent
and exterior to life and perceived by life as beyond it that it is deprived of
reality. And by the same token, it is deprived of whar finds in life’s real- ity
the possibility of being fulfilled: action. The Law is thus unreal and pow- erless.
Because it unites powerlessness with unreality, the Law places the whole system
organized around it (especially the people to whom it is ad- dressed) in an

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untenable situation. On the one hand, it prescribes, in the form of injunctions
that are perceived quite clearly and thus indubitably: “Thou shalt not kill, thou
shalt not commit adultery,” and so on. On the other hand, however, this clearly
enunciated commandment (not suscepti- ble to being used for trickery) is by
itself incapable of producing the action that suits it. “Has not Moses given you
the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law” (John 7:19).
The basic powerlessness of the Law to produce by itself the action it prescribes
confers onto the world built upon it, onto the ethical world in general, a conrradi-
crory feature. To the extent that the Law is given by Moses (and consequently
the world is not only ethical but, more pro- foundly, religious), it is religion that
is struck by this contradiction. On the one hand, the world of the Old Law is
riddled with commandments, pre- scriptions, prohibitions. On the other hand,
those who inhabit ic and con- stantly run up against the Law in the course
of their daily existence find themselves unable to observe it, lacking the force
necessary to accomplish it. This force resides neither in them—or they would
nor have need of the Law—nor in the law, whose unreality deprives it of all effi-
cacy. Thus the Law projects before action the path ir should follow to approach
Ged, without granting it the least bir of the power ir would need to commit to
following this path.
To see what ought to be done without possessing the power to do so, to see what
ought to be done while finding oneself deprived (in and through this seeing, in
and through this commandment) of the ability to execute it—this is the dramatic
and desperate situation in which the Law has placed each person, despite the
fact that it is addressed to him from outside as a transcendent Law. A Law
that defines the infraction and the crime, that opens before people the gaping
possibility withour giving them the power to avoid either, is a cursed Law. An
absence of Law would be better, a state of innocence in which the possibility of
crime was not every moment within sight. The Law, on the contrary, curses all
those who do not put it into prac-
178 The Christian Ethic
tice—in fact, it curses everybody, since it gives nobody the power to follow it.
The Law multiplies crime. as the Apostle says in a striking phrase: “The law
was added so that trespass might increase” (Romans 5:20).
We must recall why the Law is powerless: it is not located in the life where any
conceivable action takes place. and thus it is incapable of putting that action
to work. The Law is foreign to life in the double sense Chris- tianity gives to
this concept. It is foreign to my life and resides beyond it. Moreover, it is
foreign to absolute Life, which generates each living by mak- ing him a Son.
The Christian ethic lies in the interplay of these two lives: to the degenerate
son, who takes himself for his own master and the reason for everything he does.
everything that comes into his head, ir assigns concrete mades of action that
alone might return him ro the splendor of his initial condition, that is to say, to
righteousness. Righteousness occurs when every- thing is restored to its place

152
and man is reestablished in his dignity as Son. Bur this interior transformation,
this re-birth, this re-generation, at the end of which comes righteousness, cannot
be produced by a Law cha is foreign to action and thus to any transformation.
“For if a law had been given thar could impart life, then righteousness would
certainly have come by the law” (Galadians 3:21).
Pauls analysis goes further. The Law as an ideal archetype for all ac- rions
conforming to this model is revealed as nevertheless incapable (due to irs basic
unreality) of producing them. Bur one might be tempted to limit the scope of
this objection with an important observation. The Law at least aims to offer
this model, rather than leave action in uncertainty about what it should do. In
this way. the Law does not make only trans- gression (and thus crime) possible,
bur also observance and submission. At least this is what happens in a religious
society when, in conformity to the Law, priests offer sacrifices in expiation of
sins, their own as well as those of the faithful, In these sacrifices, made according
to the Law and thus thanks to it, expiation and purification are actualized: they
enter into real- ity’s effectivity and engage in the world of salvation.
This is whar Paul is contesting. According to him, the inefficacy of sacrifice and
offerings relates precisely to the fact that these ritual acts are patterned on the
Law. Everything happens as if the Law’s unreality were communicated to the
acts it motivates, determining their own unreality and, by the same token, their
inefficacy. “For there are already men who offer the gifts prescribed by the law.
They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy
The Christian Ethic 179
and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was
about to build the tabernacle: ‘See to it thar you make everything ac- cording
to the pattern shown you on the mountain (Hebrews 8:4-5). The inefficacy of
action guided by the Law’s pattern is twice affirmed. The first is an assertion:
“For if there had been nothing wrong with chat first cov- enant, no place would
have been sought for another” (Hebrews 8:7). To this first reason, still just a
statement, is added a more decisive one: the in- definite repetition of ritual
sacrifices suffices to prove their vaniry. For if a single-one of them erased sin,
then there would be no need for another one. “[ The law] can never, by the same
sacrifices repeated endlessly year af- ter year, make perfect those who draw near
to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the
worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt
guilty for their sins” (Hebrews 10:12).
But if sacrifices have been effectively offered. if the sacrificial act has been
really accomplished, how could it be ineffective? Does the fact of be- ing based
on the ideal (and hence unreal) pattern of the Law suffice to strip action of
its own reality and make it inoperative? Could the powerlessness of the Law,
which comes from its unreal status, flow back onto the action itself, to the point
of distorting it? Has the action of the Old Covenant ceased: to work? Here
the Christian theory of action abruptly illuminates the critique of the Law and

153
makes it both possible and necessary. The cri- tique of the Law is never only a
critique of the Law, but really implies a cri- tique of action tied to the Law, and
this is whar it is ultimately aiming ar— action conforming to the Law and whose
essence is to be ruled by it. So an actions conformity to the Law is objective
conducts conformity to an ideal model; to the Law’s pattern. This objective
conduct merely offers the exte- rior appearance of action within the world’s truth
and not real action, re- vealed to itself in the parheérik. invisible testing of life.
Thus one may offer sacrifices without life itself being offered in sacrifice, in the
sole place where sacrifice is possible, where true action, Christian action, takes
place—where life is given to itself and where, thus given to itself, it acquires
the power to give itself. The duplicity of appearance—the dual character of
truth— forcefully explains how the external appearance of an objective conduct
showing itself in the world’s truth (for example, a conduct conforming to the
representative model of the Law) by no means involves real action that acts in
the secrecy of life under the all-seeing Eye of God. And this is why
180 The Christian Ethic
external conduct that conforms to the Law means nothing—no more in the case
of sacrifice than in that of fasting. In its overall relation with the transcendental
Law and in the Law’s view, in the world’s truth, externa! conduct (ultimately
identifiable with an objective process) betrays its dif- ference from real action
and manifests its total powerlessness. As Paul says: “Ir is impossible for the
blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (He- brews 10:3: see Psalms 40:6-8).
But it is not in the same fashion as in Paul’s creating and unfolding of a complex
(and sumptuous) problematic that the critique of the Law oc- curs in the Gospels,
where it is no longer truly a critique but rather a rotal rejection that occurs in
the critical situation created by that rejection. It is not even a rejection, properly
speaking, since rejection looks at what it re- jects and is still defined in relation
to it. It is not a sort of contesting of the Law: rejection presupposes the Law
after all, and in some manner follows upon it. In the Gospel, by contrast, an
action arises that no longer takes ac- count of the Law and quite simply ignores
it. Christ heals the paralytic on the Sabbath. Among the many implications
of this extraordinary act is above all this one: the Law does not count, it is
not a Law for action and to which he should submit, since in this act, precisely,
he does not submit to it. The Law of the Old Covenant is dismissed. This
is why a problem- aric of the Law, accounting for the Law and reflecting on
it, only occurs af- ter the fact, in a retroactive look back at what has been
superseded. Hence the scandal for all those who still live under the Law and
wanr to define their actions by it—even though, in practice. this is something
they never do: “So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the
Jew per- secuted him.” This annulment of the old Law and thus of an ethic, and
even a religion, that had reigned until then, must have a powerful motive, one
which concentrates within it the cardinal theses of Christianity. This motive is
put forward all at once: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and
1, too, am working” (John 5:16-17).

154
By this abrupt reply (at first glance unsuitable, since it does not ad- dress
the nonobservance of the Law thar has provoked this scandal), Christ in effect
displaces the object of the debate, transferring it from one domain of reality to
another: from the domain of the Law (which is precisely not that of reality) to
the domain of Life. Still, he does not call upon an arrifi- cial life that. depending
on the course it follows and the vicissitudes it tra- verses, could still (considered
trom outside and as one conduct among oth-
The Christian Ethic 181
ers) find itself in accord or not with said Law. Whar is addressed, in a sort
of unexpected leap, is not such a life (even less such acting) but the essence
of phenomenological Life and, by the same token, its original acting, which is
trself absolute: the process of self-generation of this Life, which does not stop
engendering itself, or, as John puts it, the “Father” who “is always at his work.”
As for Christ, he has justified his act of healing on the Sabbath by identifying
it with the original essence of acting, itself identical with the original essence
of Life, that is to say. with the process of its unceasing self- generation. [tis
because the process of absolute Life’s self-generation does not cease, because
“the Father is always at his work,” that Christ, 100, does not cease working, not
even on the Sabbath day: “1, too, am working.” By identifying his acting with
God’s absolute acting, with the unceasing process of self-engendering of absolute
Life, Christ refers to himself un- equivocally and, once more, as consubstantial
in his acting with the action of this process. He is the transcendental Arch-Son
cogenerated in the pro- cess of self-generation of Life as the essential Ipseity.
and the First Living, in which (and in the form of which) this process is alone
accomplished. This is why ir is given to him, as to the Father, to work—and
work with- out cease. Life does not know rest on Sunday or Saturday—which
is better for all livings, moreover.
The violent displacement of the principle of acting, its transfer from the unreal
universe of the Law to the essence of Life. which defines reality ar the same time
as it overthrows the reigning concept of ethics, determines the Christian ethic
from top to bottom. That it has rejected the Old Law, or, more simply, that
it has ceased to maintain it as the directing principle of acting, does not mean
abandoning action to contingency or to the arbi- wrariness of the subjective
attempt of the moment, at the whim of the act- ing subject—as if char were
possible! It is not the idea of the Law, in truch, that is at issue, bur the
representation made of it. Precisely, the Law is no longer a representation and
cannot be so, because the Law thar commands act- ing cannot be of another
order than acting itsclf, which belongs ro Life and only deploys its essence within
it. Because acting has its site in Life, no con- tact with it is possible, no manner
of acting upon it so as to put it into op- eration or modify it is conceivable—
unless within Life and because of it. Therefore, if there must be a principle
of acting, unless it be given over ro uncertainty or chance, then this principle
(lacking which, one is left with

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182 The Christian Ethic
radical impotence) cannot help but be homogeneous with ir, with Life it- self.
The principle, the New Law, the Commandment, is thus this author- ity of Life
and none other. This is the decisive displacement Christ effects, having grasped
and placed the Commandment within Life and as the Commandment of Life
itself.
But if Life now constitutes the Commandment, if it is the New Law, then
the whole Christian analysis of life has to be considered anew, if only very
briefly, if the ethic that it professes is to be understood and perceived in its
principle. What, then, in the light of the fundamental intuitions of Christianity,
is the meaning of the thesis that Life itself constitutes the Commandment. the
sole principle of the ethic? Of course, this: that the Commandment is no
longer in any way external to life, alien to what it must submit to as to a
transcendental authority that might constrain it— from the outside. This is
a scholastic hypothesis, as Paul has shown, if itis true that the transcendent
Law, external to life, foreign to its reality and thus to action, finds itself to be in
principle an unreal entity, incapable of acring. If it is. on the contrary, Life itself
that is the Commandment, then the status of the latter has completely changed:
it is a radically immanent Commandmenr, inside life. merely one with it and
with its movement. The relation berween Life and the Law is thus inverted.
It is no longer the Law that determines Life, something the Law proves itself
precisely inca- pable of. One might say that it is now Life that determines the
Law, since there is no more Law in the ordinary meaning of this word, in the
sense of an ideal norm. This is because the Law is now inside life, one with ir.
Buc this entirely new situation must be elucidated. The identification of the
Commandment with Life places us outside the Old Law without yer say- ing
what the New Law is, except that, unlike the former, it carries Power within it.
But how does the Commandment command, how does it exer- cise its power,
what does it command and to whom? This is what we can ask only of Life—if
it is Life thac commands.
In the light of the Christian concepr of life, the relation of Com- mandment
to the one who is commanded is exposed in extraordinary clar- ity: it is the
relation of Life to the living person. The relation that opens the Christian ethic
is the transcendental birth of the ego. What is commanded takes the form it
does because the Commandment is that of Life. The re- lation that opens the
Christian ethic is the relation of filiation. The one to whom the Christian ethic
is addressed is not man such as he most often
The Christian Ethic 183
and primarily understands himself, such as he has been understood since
Greece—a man who is a particular being, endowed with signifying prop- erties.
The one to whom the Christian ethic is addressed is a living tran- scendental
me, this one, this living Self generated in Life’s Ipseity—a man, if you wish, but
the transcendental Christian man, transcendentally de- fined by his condition

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as Son and by it alone. This is the first command- ment of the Christian ethic:
you will live, or, more precisely, you will be this living Self, this one and none
other.
Here opens up an abyss that separates the Old Law from the New Law: whereas
the Old Law is incapable of positing what it commands, the acting it prescribes,
so that those to whom it is addressed remain both un- changed in their real being
and yet cursed by the Law that they do not ap- ply, by contrast the New Law
has already accomplished its prescription—it has already thrown into Life those
to whom the injunction is made to be livings. This is a strange Commandment
if it is already accomplished in them in the form of this living self that each
person discovers himself to be and which has made of each, without that person
wanting or even know- ing it, what he or she is. Can one even say that this is
a Commandment? A sort of contingency is linked in principle with the idea of
commandment: the fact that it may or may not be observed. The one to whom
it is ad- dressed is separate from the commandment, distinct in his being from
what the commandment itself is. This separation acquires a decisive meaning,
both ethical and ontological, if the acting prescribed by the Law, but which
must be added to it, contains reality in such a way that, if deprived of it, the
Law remains merely an empty representation, whose sole power is to curse and
condemn. But if in the New Law the Commandment is Life, if it car- ries
within it reality and realization, and is already realized in each living person,
then can we still give it that name? Is an ethic even conceivable if everything
is accomplished once and for all, if no task remains, no Law to indicate what it
is, no liberty to submit to?
Bur as we have recalled, the relation of the Commandment to the one who is
commanded is identical in the Christian ethic to the transcen- dental birth of the
ego, the institution of the transcendental Christian per- son in his condition as
Son. The Commandment of Life, which is Life, thus generates the ego to whom
it is addressed, whom it addresses inas- much as it generates and establishes it
in its condition of living ego. There- fore, it also contains the freedom required
by any ethical commandment
184 The Christian Ethic
that addresses and can only address free will. We have seen how, given to itself
in life’s self-givenness and thus given possession of its powers, the ego finds itself
free to exercise them. The task prescribed by the Command- ment has also been
defined: it is to live. Thus, the Christian ethic, whose Commandment is Life,
contains at its core all the elements of an ethic, even though it overturns their
nature and meaning. The New Law is no longer an ideal norm, an empty noeme,
bur rather the essence thar defines reality. Life. From the new Commandment
flows nature itself. and pri- marily the existence of the one whom it is addressing
in the very process by which it engenders it—its freedom as well. without which
there is no ethic at all. But what commands has also conveyed to the person it
commands what is commanded of him: to live.

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What does the task of living mean to someone who is already living? Into
the breach opened by this unheard-of question plunge all the funda- mental
intuitions of Christianity. The first is the definition of a person as Son of God.
It is clear that what man has to do, what he must do—bur also what he can
do—depends on the essence that is originally his. If we inter- pret man as
a natural being (as is done nowadays), it follows thar the tasks that may be
assigned him are rooted in the processes that are constitutive of such a being,
notably in his psychological processes, with psychical pro- cesses being reduced
to the physiological processes of which they are just the “representatives.” There
is a prior state of affairs and, within this, a pro- gramming, such that human
action is merely its unfolding. If, despite every- thing, a norm may be imposed
upon this unfolding, it is only the sum of these processes thar might define that
norm. For the biological individual (which is believed to exist), it is a matter of
“living well”—that is to say, of finding an equilibrium resulting from the proper
functioning and harmony of the processes of which he is composed. The idea of
an ought-to-be [devoir-éere), of a duty [devoir], of a Law in the sense of ethics,
seems de- prived of any foundation; there is a natural “morality.” whose job, by
means of some kind of “psychoanalysis.” is to reduce this Law to the wish for a
har- mony resting on the organism’s structures, and prefigured within them.
When “man” is understood in his condition of Son generated in the original
Ipseity of absolute Life, there is also a prior state of affairs. It is no longer pro-
gramming but rather pre-destination—the radical and essential pre-destination
by virtue of which, through his condition of Son, a person is destined to be this
living person generated in absolute Life’s self-generation,
The Christian Ethic ~~ 185
living only from is, able to accomplish his own essence only in the essence of
this absolute Life. It is this radical and essential pre-destination that Paul is
thinking of when he writes to the Romans: “We know thar in all things God
works for the good of thase who love him, who have been called ac- cording to
his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to
the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers”
(Romans 8:28~29).
Those called are Life’s called, called by Life to be its Sons. They were known in
advance by Life, because it is by joining itself ro itself that Life has joined each
of them 10 itself; it is in its self-revelation to itself that each has been revealed
to himself. But this self-revelation of absolute Life is its original Ipseity, whose
effectivity is the First Living. Thus each of the sons revealed to himself in Life’s
self-revelation can be so only in the Ipseity that belongs to this self-revelation
of Life’s, only in the Arch-Son. In each of the Sons, the Arch-birth of the Arch-
Son must be accomplished if he is to be born in turn. If he is able to be born
and if he is born, if he is to be joined to himself in the effective and singular
phenomenological Ipseity of Life in the First Living, then the latter must already
have been born. The First Living was che first experience with itself of any
conceivable living and thus of any Son who is asked to repeat the condition, “to

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be con- formed to the likeness of the Son,” as the Apostle says. Because life’s self-
generation is implicated in the Arch-generation of any conceivable living person,
the pre-destination was that each transcendental living Self should repeat in
itself the condition of Arch-generation, to wit. the Arch-Son him- self, “that he
might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
The radical and essential pre-destination implied in the condition of Son (iden-
tical to his Arch-generation) is what constitutes the principle of the Christian
ethic, the Commandment. John perceives this Command- ment in its original
form, in God’s phenomenological life and identical with it. He calls it God’s
love. God’s love is the first and only Commandment of the ethic. “The com-
mandments ‘Do not commit adultery,” ‘Do not mur- der,” ‘Do not steal,” ”Do
not covet,’ and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up
in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as your- self” (Romans 13:9). But why
love others, why love yourself? If what is at issue, in them and in me, is the
person-in-the-world, there is hardly any rea- son to do so. The most pessimistic
doctrines, for example Schopenhauer, remain quite distant from Christianity
with regard to their judgment of
186 The Christian Ethic
people, who, as Paul says, are “filled with every kind of wickedness. evil, greed,
and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife. deceit. and mal- ice.
They are gossips, slanderers, God-harers, insolent, arrogant, and boast- ful:
they invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents, they are senseless,
faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:29-31), And according to Peter, “Their
idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes,
reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. With eyes full of adultery.
they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed—an
accursed brood!” (2 Peter 2:12~14).
[tis only insofar as the other or myself is considered in his condition of Son
that the Commandment becomes comprehensible. Bu this hap- pens only to
the extent thar the condition of Son refers to the process of absolute Life’s self-
generation. This is what the Commandment is. It only commands as a function
of what Life is. The Commandment is only a Commandment of love because
Life is love. Life is love because it experi- ences itself infinitely and eternally.
Because it is Life, “God is love.” as John says (1 John 4:8). It is because God
(as absolute Life) is love that he com- mands Love. He commands it of all the
living by giving them life, by gen- erating them in himself as his Sons, those
who, feeling themselves in infinite Lifes experience of self and its evernal love,
love themselves with an infinite and eternal love, loving themselves inasmuch
as they are Sons and feeling themselves to be such—in the same way that they
love others, inasmuch as they are themselves Sons and inasmuch as they feel
themselves to be such. If che Commandment only prescribes love because the
One who commands is himself love, iv is because far from resulting from the
Commandment, love is on the contrary the presupposition of it.

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The immersion of the Commandment in absolute phenomenological Life, which
experiences itself in the enjoyment and love of self. is what ulti- mately overturns
the echical relation according to which the Command- ment determines acting
and acting determines reality. According to that re- lation, the Commandment
is powerless, as acting and reality lie outside i. Ir is because Kant assimilated
the Commandment of love to an ethical com- mandment separated from reality
that he was able to mount against Chris- tianity what he believed was a radical
critique and to substitute for it his morality of duty: but this was a vain pretense:
since one cannot command someone to love when that person does not love, how
could one command him to do his duty by respecting a law that prescribes it?
Why would respect
The Christian Ethic 187
for the rational law come more easily to someone’s soul than love? Kant does not
perceive that in Christianity the Commandment of love is not an ethical law, nor
is it addressed to a person who has to be persuaded (one knows not how) to love.
In the Commandment of love, Christianity is ad- dressed to a Son, to someone
who, given to himself in lifes self-giving and thus in the infinite love that absolute
Life bears within itself, bears this love within himself as what engenders him
at each moment. Only because it is joined to itself in life’s pathétik embrace,
edified in the love in which Life eternally loves itself, embracing itself and loving
itself within this love, hav- ing become an ego in it and taking its power from
it—for this sole and unique reason is the ego, constituted by this Commandment
of love and drawing its condition of Son from ir, able eventually ro obey it.
John recognizes at the ground of the ethic the immanence of the Commandment
in the process of self-generation and absolute life’s love of self, in which each
living person is engendered in his condition of Son: “And this is love, that we
walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his
command is that you walk in love” (2 John 6). Similarly, in the First Letter:
“This is love for God: to obey his com- mandments” (1 John 5:3). If to keep the
Commandment, to live in the Commandment, is to live in love, then one who
daes not observe the Commandment, who does not keep it, cannot remain in a
state of love: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need
but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (1 John 3:17).
Someone who, born of love in the sense that has been explained and holding
from birth che condition of Son, still comes to lose this love, this person has
also lost his condition of Son, and inasmuch as he is alive only in this condi-
tion, he is already held in death: “Anyone who does not love remains in death”
(1 John 3:14). That the Commandment of love is absolute Life’s love of self
(which generates within itself each living person in his condition of Son), and
consequently that the loss of love is the loss of this condition, are affirmed by
John equally explicitly: “This is how we know who the chil- dren of God are
and who the children of the devil are: anyone who does not do what is right is
not a child of God: nor is anyone who does not love his brother” {1 John 3:10).
The connection between the fundamental concepts of John’s ethic emerges here.

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First there is the essential link between the Commandment and practice. Be-
cause the Commandment is identical with the process of
188 The Christian Ethic
the generation of livings in his condition of Sen and thus with the creation of
life in him, in his living praxis, Commandment and praxis, Command- ment
and acting go together—the acting of the living proceeding from the acting of
absolute Life within him, from its unceasing work. Command- ment and action
are originally consubstantial with generation. It is only af- ter the fact, in the
nonpractice of the Commandment, when the person no longer holds himself in a
state of love and finds himself expelled from the condition that was originally his,
that Commandment and pracrice diverge in a kind of catastrophe—from which
the Old Law’s ethic arises. Then, emptied of its substance, the Commandment
requires a practice with which it no longer coincides; one no longer sees where
it comes from or how it de- rives its power.
The second connection demonstrated by John combines the concepts of praxis
and truth. Because acting belongs to life and is only possible
within it, its phenomenological status is that of life, its self-revelation like
pathétik self-affection. It is this parhétik self-affection that constitutes the very
possibility of any power and any conceivable action. which is only in a posi-
tion to be exercised if it is in possession of itself in and through this pathérik
self-affection. But life’s pathétik self-affection, its infinite love of self, defines
the original essence both of Truth and of Life. Thar acting belongs to Truth
and Life’s original essence springs from this key verse: “We know that we have
come to know him if we observe his commands” (1 John 2:3) We do not observe
commands as scholars observe a molecule in the microscope. We do not observe
them like scribes and Pharisees analyzing and com- menting upon the Law. We
observe them by putting them into practice. /n the practice of the Command-
ment of love, absolute Life gives the Son to himself by being given to the self
who acts, in such a way that in this practice it is God himself who is revealed,
who loves himself with his infinite love. “The man who says, ‘1 know him,” but
does not observe his commandments is a liar, and the cruth is not in him. But
if anyone observes his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This
is how we know we are in him. Whoever claims to dwell in Him, must live as
Jesus did” (1 John 2:4-6, my emphasis).
The belonging of acting to truth and to the parhétik flesh of its love. its capacity
while being exercised to effectuate this truth and this love, is the foundation
of the Christian ethic and its power to reintroduce each into his condition of
Son. The correlation in the Commandment of love between acting and truth is
explicit; this is what males acting the site of the emer-
The Christian Ethic 189
gence and recognition of the Truth: “Dear children, let us not love with words
or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we

161
belong to the truth” (1 John 3:18, my emphasis). This is why action’ power
of revelation is constantly affirmed and revelation leads back to ac- tion, which
is thus nothing but the process of this revelation being accom- plished. This
self-revelation, and thus the possibility of recognition of what is implied in the
condition of Son. is offered everywhere in the Command- ment of love as its
realization; “This is how we know who the children of God’are™; “This is how
we know what love is”; “And this is how we know that he lives in us” (1 John
3:10, 16, 24). Also, what always permits this rec- ognition is no less clearly
indicated: it is the acting of the Commandment of Life. “He who does justice .
. . who loves his brother, who lays down his life, who keeps his commandments”
(ibid).
The “observation” of the Commandment, the actualization of the process of
generation that has led each to his condition as Son and thus to the reinsertion
of that person into his original condition—such is the eth- ical behavior in which
love arises: “Whoever has my commands and prac- tices them, he is the one
who loves me” (John 14:21). The one who loves me in fact means: in the
action of this someone, the self-revelation of the essential Ipseiry in which he is
engendered is the pure enjoyment of this Ip- seity. the love of Christ, And the
Gospel continues: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father,” which means
that because the self-enjoyment of the Arch-Son is just the self-enjoyment of
absolute Life embracing itself and thus loving itself eternally, the one who loves
Christ carries all that within-him: the self-enjoyment of Christ like the Father’s
self-enjoyment, such that it is present in each Son inasmuch as he feels himself in
the Son’s self-enjoyment, in which the Father’s self-enjoyment is accomplished—
Life’s infinite love of self. Ultimately, therefore, this is the essence and final goal
of the generation of each person within absolute Life: that Life may embrace
itself in him as soon as he is alive. “And I too will love him and show myself to
him” (ibid.)-—to him who in his self-enjoyment is nothing other than Christ’s
self-enjoyment as the Father’s self-enjoyment.
The Christian ethic is the culmination of the decisive phenomeno- logical and
ontological implications that compose the kernel of Christian- ity. Thus it leads
in exemplary fashion to its Truth—to the mode of reve- lation of absolute Life,
which is the essence of this Life and God himself, as it appears in the excraor-
dinary question from Judas (not Iscariot), which
190 The Christian Ethic
arises, seemingly unexpectedly, right in the middle of the chapter we have been
discussing: “Bur, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and nos
to the world?” (John 14:22, my emphasis). The answer contains the deci-
sive implications we have tried to make explicit, and does so with stupefy- ing
densiry: “If anyone loves me, he will put my teaching into practice.
My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with
him.”
The Paradoxes of Christianity

162
The Christian ethic introduces us to a certain number of paradoxes. Because
this ethic is rooted in the founding intuitions of Christianity, these paradoxes
come from Christianity itself. Some of them, however, are purely superficial,
and we will allude briefly to them. Others seems to rock its foun- dations. So
the question is whether they really undermine Christianity or rather allow its
solidity to be rested.
A first paradox arises regarding what we call the critique of works. This critique
contests the possibility for a person to be saved on account of his own works,
that is to say, on account of the acts of which he is the au- thor. But how can
such a criticism be made of an ethic that explicitly grants acting, specifically
an action that is the doing of an individual, the power to reestablish him in
his original condition of Son and, in this way, save him? Moreover, it is in the
repeated assertion of the necessity of obeying the Commandment of love, in
its fulfillment, that John situates salvation. It is not only in the work of love
that love proves itself, but it is in work that love is nurtured and from work
that love takes its reality. Since salva- tion consists in the realization of love,
it comes from work. No less explicit is the formation of this thesis in James’s
Epistle: “Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did
when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?” (James 2:21). The reference to
effective action here takes on substance, since it is the very hand of Abraham
abou to strike his son that is held back by the angel, as we see in so many
famous paintings.
12 The Paradoxes of Christianity
It is che very act, the real and monstrous act of cutting the throat of his own son,
that encapsulates salvation. Of course, to accomplish such an act, Abraham
needed to have absolure faith in his God, but it is the act and it alone thar
makes faith effective. Before the act properly speaking, the faith appeared to
be undermined by a sort of doubt, which held back the act. It is by going on
to the act, by throwing oneself frantically into it, thac faith artests that it is
faith, an absolute faith that is only possible thus. This is why James says in his
Epistle: “His faith was made complete by what he did”; and again, “You sec
that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone”; and more
categorically, “Show me your faith without deeds, and 1 will show you my faith
by what I da” (James 2:22, 24. 18).
As we know, it is in the name of Faith that Paul denies works the power to
confer salvation, or (as he says) righteousness, “the righteousness that comes
from God and is by faith” (Philippians 3:9). As for Faith, itis itself the effect
of grace. so that salvation ultimately comes through grace. But then, “If by
grace, then it is no longer by works, if it were, grace would no longer be grace”
(Romans 11:6). The question of whether man can save himself, that is to say,
through his works, or whether he owes his salvation solely to grace from God
{hence arbitrary), is a question thar will occupy theologians as well as believers
for centuries, who will ask whether, if sal- vation comes only from a grace freely
granted by God. it is still worth the effort to go to so much trouble.

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Let us be content here to observe that the question of whether man can assure
his salvation by his own works is alien to Christianity and ought not to have
been posed in this way. This appears to be true if one refers once more ta one
of its founding intuitions, namely, that man in the sense that we understand
it nowadays, the democratic man, for example, the au- tonomous man capable
of acting by himself, does not exist in the New Testament. What exists is
someone who, through his transcendental birth in absolute Life, is a Son and is
only possible as such. From absolute Life the Son takes not only his condition
as living but also the possibility of acting, in the way we have stated: insofar
as, given to himself in absolute Life’s self-givenness, he finds himself now in
possession of himself and all of his powers, now able to put them into play and
thus free to do so. But if it is the possibility of acting that is given to man—
through grace, if you want to pur it that way—then how could a single one of
his acts escape this condition. arise from an initiative for which man is truly
the founda-
The Paradoxes of Christianity 193
tion? What Paul criticizes in the pretense thar works save through them- selves
is this belief that they are the doing of man and result from his au- tonomous
activity, In the Epistle to the Romans, shortly after the assertion thar salvation
does not come “by works” but rather “by faith,” comes the unequivocal decla-
ration: “You do not support the root, but the root sup- ports you” (Romans
11:18).
Therefore what is at issue are “human” works coming from man’s own power and
thus explicable by it. The ather objection ro such works is that they are works of
the Law—which means that man has produced them by taking the Law as model.
In addition to the powerlessness of man inca- pable of producing by himself the
saving work comes the powerlessness of the Law to accomplish itself through that
work, such that the two forms of powerlessness are superimposed and definitively
undermine the efficacy of “works.” As for the Faith that Paul abruptly contrasts
with them, it must also be understood in the light of the founding intuitions
of Christianity. not as a form of thought but as a determination of Life. As
we have ob- served, Faith is not produced in the field of knowledge, as a sort
of knowl- edge of inferior degree, whose object is presumed without being truly
seen. and perhaps without ever being visible—a knowledge that is not only
infe- rior, then, bur illusory. Faith is not a signifying consciousness that is still
empty, incapable of producing its content by itself. Faith is not of the realm
of consciousness, but rather of feeling. It comes from the fact that nobody
ever gave himself life, but racher that life gives itself, and gives itself to the
living, as what submerges him—from the fact that in life he is totally liv- ing.
as long as life gives him to himself. Faith is the living’s certitude of liv- ing.
a certitude that can come to him ultimately only from absolute Life’s own
certitude of living absolutely. from its self-revelation, without reserva- tion, in
the invincible force of its Second Coming. Having entered into him in its own
certitude that life is for living, Faith is within the life of each transcendental me

164
as the feeling it has of absolute Life. From this comes its irrepressible power, not
that of the transcendental ego placed in itself and in its 1 Can in absolute Life’s
self-givenness, but the power of this self- givenness, its invincible and eternal
embrace. This is why Faith never takes its force from a temporal act and never
mingles with it. It is the Revelation to man of his condition-of Son, the grasping
of man in Lifes self-grasping.
Only human works. then. may be opposed to Faith, nor the Com- mandment
of love to which Faith leads. If it is just absolute Life’s experi-
194 The Paradoxes of Christianity
ence inside any person, then Faith is also thar of absolute acting, acting re-
vealing itself to be thar of a Son (no longer that of a man). This feeling of self,
this love of self of absolute Lifes, as a person feeling within Faith his condition
of Son and acting according to this feeling, is referred to by Paul in Galatians
as “faith acting through love” (5:6). In the end, Paul means the same thing as
John does. At the core of each conceivable action, of the egos I’Can, there is
this other acting, that of absolute Life, which reveals itself to itself by joining
the ego to itself, the Arch-Revelation of Arch-generation, the all-seeing Eye to
which each act, even the most modest, owes being linked with itself and being
able to act—the all-seeing Eye that precedes it and accompanies it as its most
interior and most inevitable possibility. This unbreakable connection between
the Arch-Revelation of absolure Life in any living ego and the simplest act by the
latter appears in the stunning statement in Apocalypse: “I am he who searches
hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds” (2:23),
As saon as we examine one of Christianity’s paradoxes, we are brought back
to its founding intuitions. Rather, then, than enumerating these para- doxes,
then locating them and offering a solution for each, it is better to pro- ceed
in the opposite direction: to gather these intuitions together so as to recognize
in them the origin of all the paradoxes thar are their inevitable re- sult and
thus so many “proofs”—not factual proofs but in some fashion apo- dicric ones,
receiving their validity from the Source itself, from absolute Life and the eternal
process in which it generates all livings.
Four founding intuitions thar form the essential kernel of Christian-
. ity also make all of its paradoxes intelligible. These are:
1. The duplicity of appearing.
2. The antinomic structure of life itself, a structure that we have not yet dis-
cussed but which will appear later.
3. The difference between Life and livings, that which separates the (absolute)
self-affection of the former from the (relative) self-affection of the latter.
4. The decisive significance of praxis and Ipseity in life’s essence.
First, then, the duplicity of appearing means that in Christianity every- thing

165
is double. First of all, appearing or the mode of appearing, is double: on the
one hand, there is the way Life appears, grasping itself immediately in its own
pathos without ever putting itself ar a distance: on the other
The Paradoxes of Christianity 195
hand, there is the way the world appears, as the “outside” —the horizon of
exteriority against whose background everything shown to us in the light of this
“world” (both things and ideas) becomes visible. So on one side is pathétik and
in-ecstatic Life, and on the other, the ecstatic truth of the world, the appari-
tion of this milieu of exteriority in which everything is shown to us as exterior.
Because the way of appearing is double, what appears, even if it is the same,
nevertheless appears in two different ways, in a dual as- pect. Thus our singular
body appears to us in two different ways: on the one hand as chis living body
whose life is my own life. inside of which I am placed, with which I coincide at
the same time as 1 coincide with each of its powers—to see, take, move, and
so on—such thar they are mine and the “I Can” puts them into operation. On
the other hand. ir appears asa body- object that the “I Can” sees, touches,
feels—the same as any other object. But what is true of my body is true of
each of my behaviors: lived by me from inside in the identity of my own life,
and at the same time appearing to me from the outside, as to others, in the
form of a behavior similar to any other objective process. Everything is double,
but if what is double—what is offered to us in a double aspect—is in itself one
and the same reality, then one of its as- pects must be merely an appearance,
an image, a copy of reality, bur not that reality itself—precisely. its double.
Tio eventualities are then offered: that this double, this exterior appearance,
corresponds to reality, ar that it does not correspond to it. In the second case,
appearance is a rap; itis the appearing of an acting that is not produced from
where acting draws its possibility, in the invisible life of the person. For exam-
ple, there unfolds an external conducr that is reputed to be that of fasting, with
all the charac- teristic aspects of fasting, and yet the one who behaves in this
way, of whom we say that he is fasting and who presents all the aspects and
marks of fast- ing. is not really fasting. Similarly, someone adopts the posture
of a believer and makes all the right gestures, but does not in fact believe. In
instituting the permanent possibility of the trap and the lie, the duplicity of
appear- ance unfolds a universe whose principle is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy does
not establish itself in the form of an already realized state of affairs. as if all
the detectable behaviors in such a universe were hypocritical. In this case, no
hypocrisy would be possible. It is precisely in the guise of an always open pos-
sibility that the duality of appearing makes hypocrisy reign in a meta- physical
system constituted and defined by this duality. Precisely because
196 The Paradoxes of Christianity
the metaphysical system of Christianity rests on appearing’s duplicity and is
therefore a system based on potential hypocrisy, Christ railed against it endlessly
and with unexpected virulence. Because there is the permanent possibility of
hypocrisy in such a universe, “values,” advocated by John more than anyone else,

166
are the values of truth, which is the Truch of Life and exists only in Life—where
duplicity has become impossible: before the all-seeing Eye of God himself.
Bur what also reigns, at the same time as the possibility of hypocrisy and the
duplicity of appearing and through them, is paradox. Christian paradox is not
the opposite of common opinion, even if it is contrasted with opinion. Paradox
holds together two truths that exclude each other, such that, although each
is possible if considered in isolation, the fact of as- serting them at the same
time about the same reality seems inadmissible. Someone may well believe or
not believe, he may fast or not fast, buc for this person and not another to
believe and at the same time not believe— that he fasts and ac the same time
that he is not fasting—this is not possi- ble. Unless appearing itself is in fact
double, such that in this double way of appearing. the same thing or the same
reality—to believe, not believe, fast, not fast, be someone and not another—also
finds itself doubled, puts on a double appearance, thar of belief and unbelief,
fasting and the absence of fasting. Belief and unbelief, fasting and the absence
of fasting, are possible at the same time within the same individual because
they are appearances, each having the actuality of its appearance and being
incontestable as such. This copresence at the same time. in the same individual.
of two opposite and contradictory yet apparent determinations, both equally
shown, is what we have called hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the prototype of the
paradox whose nature we are trying to elucidate—paradox. like hypocrisy, there-
fore, takes its principle from the duplicity of appearing.
However. in the duplicity of appearing of the same reality, there is something
else we have seen: thar this reality is real only once, there where it embraces
itself in the flesh and in the irreducibility of its pathos—whereas its exterior
apparition in the world’s “outside-onesclf ” is precisely just a simple appearance.
It is permissible to conceive that nothing in lifes effec- tivity corresponds to this
appearance: no real faith lies inside the exterior conduct of faith—since this
faith is only real in life, as the experience that each living has within him of
absolure Life. This is why Christianity can turn worldly values upside down,
not as the result of a resentment of these
The Paradoxes of Christianity 197
values. which would lead it ro denigrate and hate what it does not possess, but
because these “values” are only an appearance in the world: the ap- pearance
of fasting, of faith, of love, of the strength that belongs to love— in short, the
appearance of what only becomes effective within life. The duplicity of appear-
ing opens a space of interplay between reality and its counterfeit. One mode
of appearing, that of Life, makes the former (real- ity) possible: another one,
that of the world, its counterfeit. So Christian- ity does not turn values upside
down; on the contrary, it assigns them their unquestioned place. In granting
values to Life, it withdraws them from the world. By the same token, it distin-
guishes two fundamental values, or rather, fundamental value and the place of
all values, on one side and, on the other, counter-value and the foundation of all
counter-values. Truth and Life versus Lies and the world. This is why Christ

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says: “You are from below: I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of
this world” (John 8:23). He says “I,” meaning Life and Truth, and “the world,”
mean- ing the counterfeit, life, hypocrisy. “I, the Truth, Life [Mos la Vérité, la
Vie]: Life’s self-revelation, which is Truth, isaccomplished in the Ipseity _of the
First Living, .in this Me thats Christ.
If the duplicity of appearing has conferred a dual appearance on every- thing,
such that one of them alone contains reality, while the other is in fact only a
double, flimsy and empty, then a criterion is required if one wants to be able to
decide which is appearance and which is reality, and to make this a legitimate
decision. Each appearance, overall, has for itself the effective- ness of its appari-
tion, and so it is a phenomenological given like any other. Here Christianity
does overturn values, the values of truth, everywhere sub- stituting the truth
of Life for that of the world. This is where its revolution- ary character lies. If
anything goes without saying in the eyes of Western thought and its rationality.
it is indeed that the criterion of any conceivable truth resides in perception,
whether sensory or intelligible. Consequently, the criterion of any rationality
consists in the fact of raking this perception as the foundation of any assertion
that pretends to be rational insofar as it leans on perceptible information and
firmly sticks to it. This is the criterion of any rational knowledge, as well as
that of common sense, which Chris- tianity abruptly turns, upside down. For
Christianity, the truth no longer consists of showing itself in the world’s light,
but on the contrary, one might say, by avoiding this. The same is the case with
life: never showing itself in a world and not taking its manifestation from it, it
is no less revealed in its
198 The Paradoxes of Christianity
parhétik, unimpeachable flesh. This radical overturning of the criterion of any
truth is a paradox because it completely upsets ways of thinking about humanity,
whether of today or of ancient times. Beyond these ways of think- ing, ways of
doing and the practical conduct of societies. as well as individ- uals, are also
overturned.
In effect, from this paradox flows a multitude of consequences, which are them-
selves paradoxes; here we confine ourselves to mentioning or re- calling some of
them. The first is the action of grace addressed by Christ to his Father to be
made known not to those who have knowledge but to those who do not: “Any-
one who will nor receive the kingdom of Ged like a lietle child will never enter
it” (Mark 10:15). It is a paradox that he grants knowledge of the Essential to
those who know nothing—but only an ap- parent paradox, if this Essential is a
Life that is foreign to knowledge but consubstantial with all those it generates
as its Sons. Still more of a paradox is sicuating the criterion of truth not in
its universality but, on the contrary, in an absolure singularity, in a Me, as
prestigious as it may be: “I am the truth!” [C’est Mot la véritél); “I will give
you words and wisdom” (Luke 21:15). This is also just an apparent paradox if it
is true that the first and last possibility of any truth is its self-revelation in the
essential Ipseity of a First Living. But still a paradox, if the overthrow of knowl-

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edge, of its criterion of evidence, of its character of universality, all necessarily
correspond with the overthrow of all laws, both theoretical and practical—and
thus of the wis- dom thar relies on them and on observing them. “Has not God
made fool- ish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20). This is just
as appar- ently paradoxical if, along with life, laws reign other than those that
govern the course of things and by which people seek to regulate their actions.
Other laws: those of life. precisely.
These are the laws of life that oughr to be taken into account if we would now
understand a new series of paradoxes, which no longer rest on the duplicity of
appearance bur take their principle from Life itself and its own Truth. {The issue
now is Lifes sclf-revelation in its pathos) It is this mode of original revelation of
life that constitutes the principle of the weightiest paradox. Because this mode
of revelation is offered in itself as an antinomy, it determines the antinomic
structure of life itself, independently and beyond any opposition to the world
and its truth. So the antinomic structure of life is a universal structure; it
involves any possible life what- ever. and thereby. everything that draws from
life its own possibility: any
The Paradoxes of Christianity 199
conceivable living. The clear apperception of life’s antinomic structure consti-
tutes what we will call the second founding intuition of Christianity.
The mode of revelation proper to life consists in the pure fact of ex- periencing
oneself. We now know that there are two ways of experiencing oneself: the way
of absolute Life, which is God’s, and the way of each liv- ing, of the living I
myself am. To experience oneself in che latter way is to be radically passive with
respect to one’s own life, to submit to it at each moment in a submitting that is
stronger than any freedom. It is to suffer what one experiences and thus what
one is, to bear it, to bear oneself, to suffer oneself, such that this “suffer oneself,”
this “bear oneself,” is the sole mode of access thar leads each person to himself.
This mode of access is life. It is truly the phenomenological structure of life to
which “suffer one- self” refers. Because “suffer oneself” is the structure of life, by
the same to- ken it finds itself to be the structure of the living—the living who is
given to himself only in life’s self-givenness, a self-givenness that is merely this
“suffer oneself.” This self-givenness of life, in which the living is given to himself,
this “suffer oneself” that constitutes the phenomenological struc- ture of life and
thus of any person, has 2 phenomenological substance that we have recognized
as pathos. a pure and transcendental affectivity, the concrete affective flesh in
which (everywhere and always) life affects itself inasmuch as it is life. What we
now perceive, then, is that his pathos is by no means indeterminate, but always
takes the concrete form of a specific tonality, that of the suffering included in
the “suffer oneself” and consti- tuting its essence. The transcendental affectivity
that belongs to life’s essence as the original mode by which it is phenomenalized
is a particular (yet fun- damental) affective tonality, the tonality of suffering
that determines from the very start, in its entirety, any possible life and hence
any person.

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In experiencing oneself in the “suffer oneself” of life, each person re- lates to
himself in such a way that he bears himself. finding himself charged with self
without having wanted it but also without ever being discharged of this charge
that he is for himself. Charged with self forever, he cannot break the tie that
attaches him to himself in the “suffering” of the “suffering oneself.” This tie is
his ipseity, the ipseity of his Self. Ipseity is not identity. the simple identity
with self of a “me” defined by this formal and empty structure, the formal and
empty structure of A=A. So empty is this identity that it is lost from the first
step, broken int difference—the difference of A from itself, a difference to which
this identity is identical. The true ipseity is
200 The Paradoxes of Christianity
an affective tonality that is fundamental and irresistible, a pure phenome- no-
logical tonality in which, suffering and bearing oneself, the Self is thrown into
itself, in and through this suffering, to suffer and to bear this Self thar it is.
This charge is heavy. Heavier still is not being able to discharge it: so heavy
that, under this burden that cannot be removed, suffering changes into a pain
that is unbearable, yer consubstantial with the person’s life and with his ipseity.
From the suffering of this Self charged with self in the suf- fering of his ipseity
there arises anxiety, the anxiety of the Self to be a Self— this Self thar he is
without being able to avoid or escape this condition, the fact that he is a Self,
and. even more, this particular Self that he is now and will be forever. Taken to
its extreme, this anxiety is called despair. Anxiety and despair do not happen
to “me” as a function of the vicissitudes of a per- sonal history. but are born in
“me,” in the phenomenological structure of the Ipseity that makes “me” a Self.
and in the affective tonality of the “suf- fer oneself” in which the essence of this
Ipseity consists.
In che “suffer oneself” of its Ipseiry and in the suffering that comes to it from the
inexorable character of this suffering, che “me” feels irself and has the experience
of self; therefore it is put in possession of itself and of each of the modalities of its
life: ic enjoys itself, it is enjoyment, it is Joy. The stronger the suffering in which,
thrown into self, given up to self, overcome by this burden that it is for itself
and which it cannot get rid of, the “me” ex- periences itself in the suffering of
this “suffer oneself,” then the stronger is this testing, the more violent the grasp
in which it grasps itself and is carried away with itself and enjoys itself—and
the stronger is the joy.
Thus is disclosed to us the antinomic structure of life as the anti- mony of the
fundamental affective phenomenological tonalidies in which life is revealed to
itself by feeling itself in the flesh of its own pathos—in such a way thar this
pathos does not contribute to a hazardous succession of external events but is
split (because of the structure of the mode of rev- elation proper to life) into two
different and contrasting affective tonali- ties. But we have to understand this
opposition between two phenomeno- logical ronalities that are coconstitutive
of life’s self-revelation. This is precisely not an opposition in the usual sense,
an opposition between op- posite terms. Instead, Suffering and Joy are linked

170
by an essential affinity, which refers back to a primitive unity: the absolutely
primitive original unity of Suffering and Rejoicing. Suffering appears to be the
path that leads to enjoying, and thus its condition. It is only in experiencing
oneself
The Paradoxes of Christianity 201
in the “suffer oneself” that the life of the living Self comes into itself, such that
suffering is veritably a path and a way. It is the rest chat life must pass so that,
in and through that test, it attains itself and comes into itself in that coming
that is the essence of any life. the process of its self-revelation.
But to suffer is not a way or a path in the sense in which we usually understand
it; it defines no place in which one would have to be so as to leave it to enter
into another place and stay there in turn. in that place where joy reigns. On
the contrary, “to suffer” dwells inside “to rejoice” as that which leads 10 joy
inasmuch as it dwells within it, as its internal and per- manent condition. It is
only in its “suffer oneself,” insofar as that occurs, that life attains itself in the
self-enjoyment of its own rapture. It is only at the limit of this suffering, when it
is carried to a paroxysm in extreme suf- fering, that joy finds itself borne to its
extreme point and elevated to its paroxysm, to the extreme point of beatitude
and joy. This is the antinomic structure of life, its division into the dichotomy
of affectivity. between the opposed tonaliies of suffering and happiness, such
that the former can only lead to the latter, inasmuch as suffering rakes place
and does not stop taking place within happiness, as what gives it to itself, as
its internal and insurmountable condition.
Blessed are those who suffer. The hallucinatory proposition pronounced before
the centuries, before the earth and the sky existed, was stated by Christ himself:
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Luke
21:33). The co-belonging of suffering to joy as its interior and unsurpassable
condition of possibility—this is the second founding in- tuition of Christianity,
one that has not come up before now. This second founding intuition is thus tied
to a new series of paradoxes, those that are enunciated in the Beatitudes. While
the paradoxes analyzed until now have rested on the duplicity of appearing, on
the double truth of Life and the world, the paradoxes of the Beatitudes relate
in an essential way to life and its internal structure. Most of them express the
original co-belonging of suf- fering to enjoyment. This co-belonging defines the
Arch-structure of suf: fering, which wills that it be in the accomplishment of suf-
fering and in its own becoming that having joy comes along and is accomplished,
and only in this way.
This series of paradoxes consequently takes a single form: beatitude is affirmed
as the lot of those who are plunged into suffering. Neither suf- fering nor the
beatitude to which it leads, and still less the relation that
202 The Paradoxes of Christianity
unites them, is a simple fact. Suffering and beatitude—and the implica- tion of

171
the former within the latter and so the latter within the former— are essences,
processes of becoming ruled by the a priori structures of the phenomenalization
of phenomenality, as the latter happens in the living of life. Hence, in any
effective living, for ir to be so, to suffer and have joy are joint and contempo-
raneous modes of its pathérik self-affection. This is the reason why there are
no particular conditions that motivate suffering, which instead derives from its
phenomenological structure—the suffering that allows life to be carried away
with itself in self-enjoyment. Similarly, blessed are the poor, the afflicted. the
hungry, the persecuted, those who suffer calumny. those who suffer for justice.
The Beatitudes are not added to their suffering, after the fact, by a kind of syn-
thetic adjunct, like a sort of recompense or promise, a recompense or promise
held in abeyance else- where than within the suffering itself—in another world
that supposedly follows it. The Beatitudes do not follow upon suffering except
insofar as suffering is the path thar leads to them, a path outside of which
no access to Beatitude is possible. This is because suffering belongs to living,
whose Beatitude is just its achievement. It is this internal link between suffering
and Beatitude that makes the latter arise inevitably wherever the former has
reigned. The future that in Macthew (5:3-12}), as well as in Luke (6:23), links
the Beatitudes to various forms of suffering and persecution takes the form of
the apodictic: far from signifying the exteriority and contingency of the link
that unites the fundamental tonalities of living in the Arch- structure of pathos,
it presents irs inexorable character.
A difficulty remains. We understand that the antinomic structure of life is the
basis of a paradox, to the extent that ultimately paradox appears as the simple
formulation of this structure and thus as its immediate confir- mation. But does
the antinomic structure of life—of the mode of phenom- enalization by which
its own phenomenality is phenomenalized—not con- tradict this phenomenaliry?
Life is a self-revelation, It reveals itself, not only in the sense that it is what
carries out revelation but, as we have seen, in an- other sense, in that what
it reveals is itself. This determination of lifes self- revelation is found again in
each of its modalities, which make pain be pain, hope be hope, hate be hate,
precisely as each modality indubitably feels it- self. Each sensation is what it is
because it feels itself in its immediate suffer- ing, and thus what it feels is itself,
“what iv is” purely and simply without any possible discussion. We know that
upon this decisive trait of each of life’s
The Paradoxes of Christianity ~~ 203
modalities (which he improperly calls cogizationes), Descartes will base the
certainty of the cogiro. But if pain is that insurmountably and incontestably
possible pain, if the sensation is invincibly this sensation, then suffering, too, is
this suffering such as it experiences itself in the self-revelation of its own pathos:
it is this suffering phenomenological flesh and nothing else. How can we then
say that it is joy, this joy whose affectivity, whose tonality, dif: fers so obviously
from that of suffering—how can we say that the summit of its “ro suffer” is the
summit of this joy?

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Another difficulty arises from examining the Beatitudes. While Mat- thew gives
eight, Luke cites four—which he follows with four maledic- tions. But the
first two maledictions are strange; their following on imme- diately from the
Beatitudes causes an unease, a sort of contradiction that might recall the one
we just mentioned regarding suffering, which was that at the same time as it
is suffering in its phenomenological flesh and thus in its self-identity, it must
also be something else—joy. The first maledicrion says “But woe to you who
are rich, for you are your own consolation” (Luke 6:24). The object of this
malediction is really the identity with self and thus the certitude of each modality
of life, the fact that each of them, immediately experiencing itself, is what
it is—and nothing else. Thus the experience of wealth, the joy it procures,
what is said to be its “comfort” — this joy as it feels itself, then, is what is
cursed. Cursed is the fact that one of life’s modalities may be what it is: joy
a joy, satisfaction a satisfaction. This identity with self of any modality of
life’s immediate feeling of itself is demolished by the second malediction. This
satisfaction, this joy, this happy sentiment that life has of being itself and so
enjoying itself—this is what is broken, torn apart, dislocated, destroyed, blown
up, abolished. “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry”
(Luke 6:25). The plenitude of life and the feeling of satisfaction it brings—this
must yield to a great tearing apart, to the Desire that no object can fulfill.
Here the understanding of the paradoxes of the Beatitudes relates to the third
founding intuition of Christianity—nor the simple duplicity of appearing, not
the antinomic structure of life, bu che difference that separares Life from the
living person and the former’s self-affection from the latter’s.
The first difficulty is thar suffering mighe be its contrary, joy. If 1 truly suffer
and if what characterizes any suffering is its identity with itself or, to express
it phenomenologically, this specific affective tonality, irre- ducible to any other
and which experiences itself as it is—as this suffering,
204 The Paradoxes of Christianity
and this one as opposed to that one—how can we sustain the idea that amid
this suffering precisely, confusing me with its impressionable and suf- fering flesh
and identifying me with that suffering, thar I am yer happy? But the whole
problematic of Christianity, its conception of man as a tran- scendental me
generated in absolute Life and thus as Son, has now and for- ever demolished
that objection. This is because this suffering is only joined to itself in the manner
in which the living Self is joined to itself—not by itself, but in the self-givenness
of absolute Life and in it alone. When a suf- fering experiences itself, zhere is
still within this ordeal something other: it is nor thar suffering thar experiences,
and what it experiences is never limited to itself alone, either. What experiences
when suffering . . . itself is absolure Life, and what is when this ordeal of self
rakes place is not only its own content, the specific tonality of this particular
suffering. Inevitably and at the same time, the absolute Life thar gives suffering
in itself is given to it- self in the Ipseity of this suffering, in its self-givenness.
Suffering’s self- givenness outstrips each suffering. and it only gives suffering to

173
itself inas- much as it first gave the Self to itself. And suffering has only given
the Self to itself inasmuch as it was first given to itself by giving the Self to
itself. The Self is living only in life—it would never experience itself if it did not
first experience life, if life did not first experience itself in the Self. as the Self
experiences itself: if life did not experience itself in the Self and the Self did not
experience itself in life each time that it experiences something, so as 10 be able
ro have done so: if absolute Life did not feel itself in the Self and if the Self did
not feel itself in Life in each suffering thar it experiences.
Such is the transcendence present in any immanent modality of life, for example
in any suffering; there is not some exteriority in which this suf- fering would
find the means to avoid the self and flee itself. It is within suf- fering, on
the contrary—since. in its radical immanence, it is crushed against itself and
overwhelmed by itself, as it were, by the oppressive part of its con- tent and by
this burden it is for itself—that the work of absolute Life’s self- giving that gives
it to itself rakes place. Suffering is within Life, as thar which is of another order
than it, that does not come from it, and to which alone it owes its coming into
itself, to which this particular suffering first owes the experiencing of itself and
of living. Thus. suffering is always more and other than itself. In it is always
revealed—as what reveals it to itself. yet more hid- den and more contestable
than its own—another life, the “to suffer” and “to rejoice” of absolute Life,
whose suffering is never just 2a modality.
The Paradoxes of Christianity 205
But because suffering never reveals itself without there being revealed in it at
the same time what suffering reveals to itself, therefore in fact it is never alone
but always surprised. surpassed, submerged, by this antinomic structure of life
that inhabits any life and thus any of life’s modalities. /s is not suffering itself
but the “to suffer” included in it as what delivers it to itself that leads to the
“rejoicing” implied in any “to suffer” and made possible by it. And the sharper
the suffering, the more it gives to feeling that “to suffer” enveloped in it as what
gives that suffering to feeling and throws it into it- self as an unbearable burden,
then the more this “to suffer” given to feeling in the excess of this suffering will
give to fecling the “rejoicing” it achieves —and the more surely the suffering at
the summit of itself will produce beatitude. is the phenomenological structure
of absolute Life that the Bear- itudes enunciate. The Beatitudes describe to
man his condition of Son—a Son finding in the essence from which he is born
his phenomenological predestination, that of reproducing in himself the destiny
of absolute Life, its perpetual coming forth, in the “to suffer” and through it, in
the joy of self and in the exhilaration of this rapture. It is because suffering bears
within it this “to suffer” and gives it to feeling more strongly than any other
ronality of life that all those whom it strikes will also bear within themselves
what is given ar the summit of this “tw suffer” —absolute Life’s joy of self and
its exhilaration.
What the Beatitudes celebrate and what they bless is the ultimate metaphysical
situation, which wills that within each form of life, even the most unhappy, there

174
is accomplished the essence of absolute Life, its self- givenness according to the
structure of the “to suffer” in which it comes into itself in its pathétik embrace.
Bur from this same relation berween each particular form of life and absolute
Life arises the maledicrion; this is what supplies its motif. “Woe to you who are
well fed now.” In the pleni- tude of its living, does not life exercise its highest
purpose? How could this plenitude become the stake in a contest, let alone the
object of a curse? But it is precisely not absolute Life (whose “ro suffer” leads
to self-joy) that is cursed—any more than the unhappy life that always feels
this “to suffer” in how it is immersed in its suffering without having wished it.
Whar is cursed is what experiences itself—and thus the pleasure of experiencing
oneself and of experiencing pleasure, and to be living—as its own good. as
what comes from it and thus comes back to it, as something it has some- how
produced. This illusion is the transcendental illusion of the ego.
206 The Paradoxes of Christianity
As we have seen. the ego attributes to itself all the dispositions and capaci-
ties that ir discovers within it. Because, given to itself in absolute Life’s self-
givenness, it finds itself to be in possession of itself and thus of this living Self
and can then dispose of all the powers that belong to its body or its mind, so
that it takes itself, we were saying, as the source of these powers. That it may
put them into operation seems to come to the ego from its own power. and
moreover this is what defines its power, what it can do, this “1 Can.” as it refers
to itself. But the ego considers that everything it experiences, and notably the
pleasure of experiencing itself and living, in the same way comes from itself,
having its source within. This illusion reaches its extreme point in the case of
autoeroticism, in which the person reads into his most evident experience the
notion that he is pro- ducing his own pleasure. When, in the ordinary eroticism
of heterosexual ity. this pleasure comes from the other as much as from oneself,
it is in any case a person and the body of a man or woman that is the origin of
all that he experiences and notably the pleasure thar he gives himself or by the
in- termediary of the other, who is like him.
The transcendental illusion of the ego, we see increasingly clearly, consists of a
person’s forgetting of the condition of Son. This forgetting, present in all the
attitudes thar the person actively determines, is the real objecr of the curse,
which is not wealth, but wealth lived by people as their awn property. It is
the absolutely general way the Self’s constant experi- ence of self is lived by
it as something coming from itself—it is this way of living, of experiencing
oneself, the feeling of having an autonomous life— this is what is cursed. “Well
fed” means fulfilled, filled with possessions. Bur in reality, it is the self that
attributes to itself the merit of finding itself in this situation in which it is
showered with everything, because it first granted itself the merit of finding
itself in that situation that is its own, as if it had gotten there all alone, into the
transcendental condition of being this living Self—as if, generated in absolute
Life’s self-generation and in it alone, it had not first been a Son.
For someone feeling himself as the source of all his powers and all his sentiments,

175
especially his pleasures, someone who lives in the permanent illusion of being
a self-sufficient ego having only from itself its condition as ego as well as all
that thereby becomes possible for it (acting, fecling, en- joying)—to that person
what is lacking is no less than what constantly gives this cgo to itself and is not
in: absolute Life’s self-givenness, in which
The Paradoxes of Christianity 207
this ego is given ro itself and everything else is simultaneously given to it {its
powers and pleasures). This terrifying lack in each ego of what gives it to itself
—what it is missing even when it feels itself as lacking for nothing, as sufficing
to itself, and especially in the pleasure it has of being itself and be- lieving irself
the source of this pleasurc—rthis is whar determines the great Rift. This lack
and absolute void is the Hunger that nothing can satisfy, the Hunger and Thirst
for Life. which the ego has stopped feeling in itself at the same time as its
condition as Son, when, in pleasure, it takes itself for the source of this pleasure
and identifies with it as its own property. “Woe to those who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry” (Luke 6:25).
Whar is one hungry for, in this Hunger that comes to all those who are well
fed, as the misfortune that none of them will escape? What is lack- ing to each
person who sees himself as the site and source of his pleasures and powers, even
the power that gave him to himself, and doing so, gave him, in experiencing
himself, the possibility of experiencing the power that gave him to himself to
enjoy himself and to enjoy the power that gave him the joy of self? Ir is absolute
Life, for which all those who are “well fed” will hunger if each is satisfied with
himself as the source of this satisfaction. Thar they are hungry for absolute
Life—whether this absolute Life is the single Food that can satisfy the Hunger,
especially the hunger of those who are well fed, or else the sole Water able
to quench the Thirst of all those struck by the curse because they live their
satisfaction and pleasure as their own doing—is stated in the uncompromising
words of the one who speaks about Life as about himself and of himself as of
Life: the Arch-Son, in whom Life generates and reveals itself. “I have food to
eat that you know nothing about” (John 4:32); “Everyone who drinks this water
will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.
Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up
to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). This Food, finally, is the self-accomplishment of
absolute Life, as is also stated: “My Food is to do the will of him who sent me
and to finish his work” (John 4:34).
The difference berween absolute Life, which gives itself to itself in the hyper-
strength of its self-generation, and the life of the ego. given to it without having
willed it, always already given to itself without ever hav- ing wanted this power
to give itself to him and thus to engender itself— this difference is a parhérik
difference. The hyper-power of one is an ex- hilaration, the nonpower of the
other, a feeling of impotence. Therefore,
208 The Paradoxes of Christianity

176
when the ego is affected by a content that it did nor itself produce, this content
seems burdensome. And so any life issuing from a birth and thus not cast by
itself into birth is heavy to bear. This is the principle of the “unhappiness of
being born”—the Arch-fact due to which each person carries the burden of this
Self that he or she is without having willed it, without ever being able ro decide
if he wanted ro come into life. into this life that is precisely his own, nor into this
Self thar is his. Never having been able ro will or not ro will coming into life or
into this ego of his is not at first negarive, as we have had occasion to observe. It
is only after the fact, once its transcendental birth is accomplished, that a living
Self or an ego can ask whether or not it wanted to come into this Self that it is.
les question always comes 100 late. The sentiment of forever being burdened
with self without having wanted to is the sentiment it experiences as an un-
happiness at being born, in the anguish that arises from this unhappiness. Bur
this sentiment of being forever burdened with self without having wanted to is
precisely not given by the ego to itself, nor does the ego determine its conditions,
nor does it even bear this burden: only absolute Life’s self- givenness gives it to
the ego, what carries and bears it is only what makes it bearable to itself, the “to
suffer” of absolute Life, in which that Life comes into itself in the exhilaration
of its original Ipseity. “Come ro me all you who are weary and burdened, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle
and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy
and my burden is light” (Mar- thew 11:28-30).
Why is this burden (that the ego is for itself) so heavy to bear, while that of
absolute Life—which also has the experience of itself—is so light? Because it
is absolute Life that throws itself into self in the absolute joy of itself and the
infinite love of self, in the absolute living in which nothing is borne if not its
unlimited joy and love. This absolute joy and love is expe- rienced by the Arch-
Son in the essential Ipseity in which absolute Life ex- periences itself. This is
why—since the experience it has of self is that of ab- solute Life (the “to suffer”
that is only “to have joy”)—its burden is so light. The idea that the Arch-
Son does the will of his Father and is nothing other than that will—*I always
do what pleases him” (John 8:29)—thar the self: affecting accomplished in its
Ipseity is that of absolute Life and thus of the love with which God loves himself,
and finally that, in this way, he keeps his commandments, the commandments
of love—these are ideas that clar-
The Paradoxes of Christianity 209
ify the enigma of John’s First Epistle: “This is love for God: to obey his com-
mands. And his commands are not burdensome. . . . ” (1 John §:2-3).
This transformation of the heaviest burden into something lighter, this magic
transubstantiation, too. of the greatest suffering into the exhil- aration of un-
limited love—all this only takes place in one in whom—in the image of Christ—
absolute Lifes self-affecting has been substituted for the simple person’s self-
affection, given to himself without having wanted to, yer in and through this
absolute Life’s self-affection. All this happens in him only if—living his condi-

177
tion of Son and being nothing else, feeling himself in the experience of infinite
life and living from this experience— he is born a second time, regenerated in
a second life. Because this second birth announces itself pathetically, with the
brusque mutarion of the heav- jest burden into the lightness of absolute living
and its love, it is incon- testable, Its explanation through words, though, opens
a new series of para- doxes, which unveil Christianity’s third founding intuition,
the one that now concerns us and leads ta this paradox.
The difference between absolute Life’s self-affecting, which is brought into itself,
and that of the ego, given to itself withour having any hand in this givenness,
places us in another situation of aporia, On the one hand, the ego thar has not
brought itself into self appears functionally deprived of this power to do so (the
power of living )}—if the power of life is precisely to bring itself into self and
thus to experience itself and live in the “to suffer” and “to rejoice” of this living.
As regards this power to live, to affect oneself, to feel oneself, and thus to be
a living self and a living me—the ego is to- tally impotent. But on the other
hand, this ego, essentially deprived of the power to be brought into itself so as
to feel itself. to be joined to irself and to be a Self, still feels itself as joined to
itself, it is this Self joined ro itself, this Living Self, from which this me and this
“ego” that inhabits ir draw their possibility. Its impotence is lived and carried
to its summit, as in the suffering in which, experiencing its own life and bearing
it as an unbearable burden, it equally feels it has nothing to do with the fact of
experiencing and bearing, of experiencing itself and suffering itself and enjoying
itself. This power is stronger than any other, the invincible and inalienable
power of life, which suddenly occupies the whole place of its impotence that has
become the unlimited power of life. This ego at the summit of its impo- tence
is submerged by the hyper-strength of life. “Cus impotens tunc potens sum,”
“For when 1 am weak, then Tam strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). Paul’s
mse
210 The Paradoxes of Christianity
amazing statement suddenly clarifies the condition of Son: if the ego that is
nothing is despite everything an ego and a living ego, it is because in it God is
everything. To be nothing and yet to be a living ego is to bear in oneself absolute
Life’s self-affecrion, which joins it to itself and outside of which it would nor exist.
Such is the paradoxical condition of the Son thar Paul for- mulares: it is ar the
summit of my impotence, of my powerlessness to be for myself the ego thar 1
am, thar I experience—as what joins me to myself in the Ipscity of my “me,” as
myself—the unlimited strength of life.
The contrast between absolute Life’s self-affection (in which this life engenders
itself) and the relative self-affection, let us call it, in which the ego experiences
itself given to itself but not by itself, leads to a radical question- ing of the latter.
Ultimately there is only one self-affection, that of absolure Life, because the self-
affection in which the ego is given to itself is only ab- solute Lifes self-affection,
which gives the ego to itself by giving life to itself, a self-affection without

178
which no person or ego would ever live, Such is the paradoxical condition of the
ego: that of being wholly itself, having its own phenomenological substance {to
wit, its own life as it experiences it), yet be- ing nothing by itself, and taking
this phenomenological substance (its self- affecting) from a phenomenological
substance that is absolutely other than it, from a power other than its own, of
which it is absolutely deprived, the power of absolutg Life to be thrown into life
and living.
Ir is this paradoxical condition of the ego—that of Son in truth— thar is ex-
pressed in the great Christian paradoxes, especially the greatest of all: the one
that proposes that the ego. existing not at all by itself, never ex- ists as its own
phenomenological substance, either, as an autonomous real- ity. Hence someone
who wants to establish himself upon that reality and base his existence upon a
life that is supposed to be his own—that person will just as quickly lose his life,
any conceivable life that he believes to be his awn but which only affects itself
in absolute Life’s self-affecting—which is God’s life. The words of the greatest
paradox resound three times: “Who- ever finds his life will lose it, and whoever
loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 10:39): “For whoever wants to save
his life will lose it, bur who- ever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24);
“The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this
world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). Paul states it a fourth time: “In
our hearts we felt the sentence of death. Bur this happened that we might not
rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
The Paradoxes of Christianity 211
From the fact that the ego, taking its living phenomenological sub- stance from
life’s phenomenological substance, is nothing in itself (that is to say, “nothing”
according to the non-Greek concepts of Christianity, meaning not nothingness
but death), there results a number of conse- quences that have determined the
Christian ethic. They are linked to the transcendental illusion of the ego, and
here it will suffice to recall them briefly. If the ego is nothing in itself, it follows
that any ego wanting to pose as the foundation of its action and base that action
upon itself will find that action cut short. This action is not just pretending
to develop from the ego and the power it attributes to itself, but also rakes
this power as its purpose, concerning itself with things and other people only
in relation to itself, its advantages, and its prestige. The more the ego leans on
itself with a view to elevating itself. the more the ground disappears under its
feet, But the more the ego forgets itself and confides itself to life, the more it
will be open to the unlimited strength of that life and the more strength will
surge up in it, making it invincible. “For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14). And
later: “No one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for
the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this
age and, in the age to come, eternal life” (Luke 18:29; also Matthew 19:29). The
one who is placed in the first rank will be placed last, and the one who is placed
last will find himself first, and so on,

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The same invincible logic, truly a decisive phenomenological con- dition, that
of Son, unites Christianity’s paradoxes, precepts, and com- mandments. This
condition reflects another. of which it is the “image”: the Condition of the One
who. co-engendered in the process of absolute Life’s self-generation and thus
consubstantial with it and eternal like it, is no less felt in him, in his Arch-
humility, his staggering coming-into- himself as the coming into self of absolute
Life: “Nor as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
That self-affecting—in which the ego is given to itself and thus as a living Self is
nothing other than absolute Life’s self-affecting giving the Self to itself by being
given to it—carries on a phenomenological level extra- ordinary consequences.
In the life that is extraordinarily its own (life before regeneration and before
rebirth), in which it is given to itself without hav- ing wanted this, in the
previous subjection of its freedom and independent of it, the ego, as we have
seen, bears itself and bears its life as a burden from
22 The Paradoxes of Christianity
which it cannot be released—for example, by separating or distancing itself from
its life. It is only within the space of thought. in the exteriority of a “world,”
that such distancing would be possible. (This is another proof, if one were
necessary, that the Truth of Life is totally foreign to the world’s truth and has
nothing to do with it.) This property of the ego’s life of bear- ing itself without
being able to escape itself is also thar of each of its modal- ities, which, as life’s
modalities. have the same phenomenological structure as life. Ler us return a
moment to this property of each of the modalities of our life ro be what it is.
Thus, ler us say, a suffering bears itself without be- ing able to be separated
from itself or avoid what is oppressive in its being. Because it Is riveted to
itself without being able to break this link that links it to itself, “it is what it
is”—which means: ir experiences itself as it experi- ences itself. In this way of
experiencing itself as it experiences irsclf resides is truth—the fact that each
of life’s modalities, reduced to what ir experiences when it experiences itself, is
absolutely certain. Thus the ego goes about its life from certitude to certitude—
even though it does not think about it and because it does not think about
ir. Its life is the succession of its sentiments, each buried in its unthought-of
certitude, inasmuch as, in its invisible sub- jectivity, each of them is felt as it
feels.
And nevertheless Paul says—and this declaration comes before mod- ern think-
ing, before followers or opponents of Descartes, philosophers of “consciousness”
ar of the unconscious, and precedes them by many more billion light-years than
separate us from the Big Bang—TPaul says: “Do not cling to your own sen-
timent” (Romans 12:2). And again: “I care very little if I am judged by you
or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is
clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1
Corinthians 4:3-4). More violently, Christ says to Peter, who reproached him
for foretelling his Passion: “Ger behind me, Sa- tan! You do not have in mind
the things of God. but the things of men” (Mark 8:33).

180
In effect, if all the sentiments that an ego feels and that compose its life are
felt as they feel themselves in their immediate self-giving, then the latrer is not
their doing, nor the ego’s. Nor is it this ego’s self-givenness to itself in the Self
of its Ipseity. Nor does the latter rake from itself whar joins it to itself. The
self-givenness of these sentiments, of this ego, of this Self, and of this Ipseiry
that is their basis, is that of absolute Life giving itself to itself in the original
Ipscity of the Arch-Son. Thus the truth of sentiments
The Paradoxes of Christianity ~~ 213
is not their doing, but God’s. That this Truth of sentiments is nor their own but
God’s is explained by the radical gap between these sentiments and God him-
self. How could the basest and vilest sentiments—thaose that habitually occupy
people’s lives, the sentiments of cupidity. jealousy, re- sentment, vengeance, but
also boredom or disgust—how could these sen- timents (given to themselves as
so many indubitable cogizariones that are what they are, in their splendor or
most often in their misery) nevertheless not owe their truth to themselves but to
lifes rruth? It is not to themselves that they owe their givenness to themselves,
any more than to the ego to which they belong, any more than this ego owes to
itself its givenness to it- self. Rather, they take this self-givenness from absolute
Life and from it alone, which is the absolute self-affection apart from which
nothing is given to itself nor given in any fashion—apart from which there is
neither living nor world.
Bur because each sentiment is only given to itself in the givenness to self of
absolute Life, then the absolute Truth of Life inhabits cach sentiment: by being
revealed to itself, it reveals it to itself and illuminates it so thar it reaches its
smallest corners, it hits it as the core of this light thar is not seen and that
sees everything. In that core, in each sentiment, the most fleeting or the most
revolting, resides the Judge, the implacable Judge, the all-secing Eye, the God
“who sees what is done in secret.” “The Judge is standing at the door” (James
5:9); “God, who tests our hearts” (1 Thessalonians 2:4); “The face of the Lord
is against those who do evil” (1 Peter 3:12); “God, who does not lie” (Titus 1:2);
“Your Father, who sees what is done in secret” (Matthew 6:6); “For the word of
God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates
even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow: it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all cre- ation is hidden from God’s sight.
Everything is uncovered and laid bare be- fore the eyes of him to whom we
must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).
To this series of paradoxes explicitly formulated by the Gospels and related to
Christianity’s founding intuitions, for which they are offered as so many deci-
sive illustrations, may be added another that is not formulated in the texts but
results from the interlacing in them of two theses that are ap- parently contradic-
tory. On the one hand, the Christian ethic rests on a re- peated denunciation
of simple words—”It is not the one who says Lord! Lord . . . ”—to which
are contrasted acts, sole depository of life’s reality, in which the relation of the
living to that life and thus to God takes place. On

181
214 The Paradoxes of Christianity
the other hand, the role devolved onto the Word, whether oral or written, is
immense, Within tradition, this role has never been contested—on the contrary.
That the Word is not only important but essential and decisive is not only
maintained by a tradition thar considers Scripture as the founda- tion of faith,
bur also, in these Scriptures themselves, the role of the Word (Scripture itself)
is exalted. Paul’s verse cited above will suffice to show this: “For the word of
God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword . . . ” (Hebrews
4:12) But it is Christ himself who puts the word into its own place, that of Life.
And since Life is eternal, so too is its Word, ac- cording to the verse already
cited from Luke: “Heaven and earth will pass away bur my words will never pass
away” (Luke 21:33). The word—whose critique of the Law has shown that it lets
reality escape and is therefore stricken with powerlessness and alien to life—how
could that word be called living and identify itself with life, be consubstantal
with its eternity? This is the final paradox we must elucidate.
12
The Word of God, Scripture
”The question of the Word immediately arose at our first encounter with Chris-
tianity inasmuch as it presents itself in the form of a text. From the start, the
text of the New Testament gives itself as different from any other by virtue of its
divine provenance, which is manifest in the fact that the telling of events relative
to Christ’s existence is constantly broken up by quoration marks that introduce
another speech, not that of the person re- lating these events, Matthew or Mark,
Luke or John, but thar of Christ himself, that is to say, God. “Looking at his
disciples, he said, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of
God” (Luke 6:20). If the Word of God reaches us like a double-edged sword,
this is not only because of the stupefying character of what it says, but precisely
because it is He who is speaking.
And that was the first difficulty. It is Christ who speaks but his words come to
us only in the account given of them by Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke in the
text of Scripture. Reinserted into this account, caught in the text, the word of
the Scripture has become similar to.the words spoken by men: it is a collection
of unreal significations incapable in themselves of presenting a reality other than
their own—norably the reality of He who speaks through them, the reality of
Christ 4nd of God. Thus a first vicious circle is drawn, of the powerlessness of the
word, and hence the powerless- ness of the Law and of the ethical Commandment,
which is merely its con- sequence or example. The powerlessness of the ethic
means the Law’s in-
216 The Word of God, Scriprure
ability to produce the action ir prescribes. It is this powerlessness that has
provoked the decisive displacement effected by the Christian ethic, from word
to deed, to deeds foreign ro language and outside it but immersed in life, whose

182
action coincides with the very movement of this life.
A singular parallel is then drawn between the question of ethics and, more
generally. that of Scripture. The powerlessness of the word is exposed in both
of them. However, the ethical dictum is aware of its weakness and instinctively
calls on the deed, to which it confides the ontological task of its realization. But
Scripture is more than an ethic and not limited to a set of precepts, as important
as they may be. Whar most essentially character- izes Scripture. and what the
legitimization of the precepts depends upon, as we have seen, is the claim of
divine origin. But upon what authority does the Scriptural word call to establish
its divine character? Whar resources does it possess to overcome the inherent
ontological deficiency of the realm of signification, of language? On the ethical
plane, the substitution of the New Law for the Old Law raised this difficulty. The
New Law, the Com- mandment of love as John conceives it, in laying down the
principle of deeds instead of an edifying but inoperative precept. is an cffective
power, not the simple power of the ego bur the hyper-power of absolute Life with
the formidable weight of its parhétik dererminations—suffering, joy. love, It has
swept away the traditional ethic, its formal legalism, its powerless moralism.
and all the effects of this powerlessness: its quibbles, casuistry, hypacrisy. But
in the case of Scripture, on what foundation could the word establish the truth
of what it says, if it is incapable of doing so by itself?
Here another of Christianity’s decisive intuitions presents itselfi—or rather, the
same one as before but in another form—and so we already possess it. This
intuition (too often overlooked and yer explicit) is that there exists another
word than that spoken by people. This other word speaks otherwise than do
human words. What it says is other than what human speech says. Because
it speaks otherwise, is says something else. Because it speaks otherwise, the
way it should be understood differs, too, from the way one understands people’s
words. This other word, which speaks oth- crwise than human speech and says
something else and is heard in another way, is the Word of Ged.
The habitual declaration (at least by believers) thar Scripture is the Word of God
is a highly equivocal affirmation, which we understand to mean that because it
is addressed to people, Scripture for this reason uses
The Word of God, Scripture 217
the words people use. This speech is human speech in its form and way of
speaking. But what it says—in this language comprehensible to people— has
content that is not human but sacred. Inspired by God, it transmits to people
what God has to say to them, to reveal to them. The content of Scripture is
divine revelation, but this revelation is made to people in the language that is
their own. Now, how is a human language capable of re- ceiving and transmitting
divine revelation? Or, inversely, how can divine revelation take the form of
human language, and why would it be forced to do so? Divine revelation, in
other words, would not be revelation as di- vine bur as it expresses itself in
human speech, taking its form, in order to be understood by people. But how

183
could this revelation, made accessible to people in human speech, revealing
itself to them in the form of their own speech, prove its divine character? How,
beyond its human nature, is such speech in a position to attest that it comes
from God? God must have requested his capability to reveal himself—to reveal
himself to people in any case—from a power of revelation other than the one
thar constitutes his own essence.
* Whar we need here to escape this set of paradoxes is a radical eluci- dation
of the essence of the word, which will establish that there are two kinds of
word. First, there is the human word, composed of individual words thar carry
significations. Considered in their immediare written pre- sentation, Scripture
is a word of this kind, a set of texts obeying the general laws of language, which
people use and which allows them, as we believe, to communicate with each
other and to make themselves understood. The other Word, with which we are
now dealing, differs in nature from any hu- man speech. Ir understands neither
words nor meanings, neither signifier nor signified, it has no referent, it does
not come from an actual speaker, nor is it addressed to some interlocutor, ro
anyone at all who might have ex- isted before it— before it spoke. It is this
other Word thar allows us to under- stand Scriptural speech and, in addition,
to understand thar this speech is of divine origin. This other Word allows us
to understand the content of the Scriptural word, as well as the divine origin
of this word, which is the sole Word of God. Therefore, we must examine the
nature of these two kinds of word: that of Scripture, similar to any human word,
and this other Word, older and functionally different, which allows us to hear
the Scrip- tural word, its content and its origin.
The human word relies on language, which is composed of words that
218 The Word of God, Scripture
relate to things and are like signs of them. In this respect, the word acrs as an
instrument or medium, by conferring a name on something thar is already there.
to grasp it, to manipulate it symbolically. But, however it is concep- tualized,
this instrumental function of the word relies on a phenomenolog- ical basis that
is dual. On the one hand, the word that designates the thing
— whether an oral or visual sign—must show itself, even if in the course of
ordinary language we do nor pay attention to the word itself but only to the
thing it designates. On the other hand, there is the thing that must also ap-
pear, and all the more ostensibly, since it is what the word is targeting. Thus
the word cannot say the thing unless it gives it to be seen. In truth, what the
word gives to be seen is not only that of which it speaks bur also what it says
about it, the set of properties or predicates that it attributes ro it.
If we reflect on the kind of apparition implied in any language, on its phe-
nomenological basis, we clearly see that this apparition is nothing bur what we
have called throughout this book the truth of the world. Iris in a world that
the thing designated by the word appears; similarly, it is in a world that in

184
the same way all the predicates (real, imaginary, or ideal) con- ferred on it are
shown; it is in the world, finally, that the word (visual or aural, but also the
ideal portion words always include) is shown to us, as fugitive or marginal as
this apparition may be. Because it finds its phe- nomenological basis in the
world, because each of its constituents—words, significations, targeted things,
and the predicates attributed to these things —is also shown in the world, the
speech of people belongs to this world in the radical sense thar speech finds
there its irresistible phenomenological foundation. So we will call it the world’s
speech. Human speech says by showing in the world. Its manner of saying is a
make-seen, that make-seen that is only possible within the horizon of visibility
of the “outside.” What is said in the world’s speech therefore presents a certain
number of traits re- sulting directly from this speech’s way of showing:
1. It gives itself by showing itself outside in a world, in the manner of an image.
2. It gives itself as unreal. Let us consider the first verse of Trakl’s poem entitled
“A Winter Evening”!
Window with falling snow is arrayed, Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.
The Word of God, Scripture 219
The things referred to—the snow, the bell, the evening—named by the poet and
called into presence by their names, are shown to our minds. Yer they do not
take a place among the objects surrounding us, in the room where we are, They
are present, but in a sort of absence. They are present in thar, evoked by the
poet’s words, they appear, and absent in that, even though appearing, they are
not here. This is the enigma of the poet’s word: it makes rhe thing appear and
thus gives ir Being, but such that, although said by this word, the thing does
not really exist. The word gives it Being by withdrawing Being from ir; it gives
the thing bur as not Being.
3. It is not only the poet’s speech thar gives in such a way that it with- draws
Being from what ic gives, by its very fashion of giving. Any human speech
does the same, offering what it names only in a pseudo-presence, such that
the thing named, as long as it only exists in and through this nomination,
does not really exist. I may confine myself to saying: “A dog is man’s best
friend,” bur there is still not, by virtue of this statement, any rcal dog or man.
This is the powerlessness of human speech, its radical pow- erlessness to place
into actual existence everything it speaks about, every- thing ir says. The
powerlessness of the traditional ethic—the precepts of the Old Law—to produce
the deeds it prescribes is just one particular case of this powerlessness. Speech’s
powerlessness to bring to existence whar it names is not due to chance, to some
exterior and contingent obstacle. It is the very way it speaks that de-realizes in
principle everything of which it speaks. It is its way of showing in the world’s

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exteriority that, placing every- thing outside itself, therefore strips it of its
reality, leaving behind only empty appearance.
4. If. by stripping everything of its reality by throwing it ourside it- self in
the world’s exteriority, the world’s speech gives only an empty ap- pearance to
be seen, reduced to an exterior “aspect,” then how could such speech put us
in touch with Life—the Life foreign to the world, which is never shown in that
world, which has no “aspect” and no “outside™ Life that never separates from
itself bur thar embraces itself in the immediacy of its parhétik flesh? Life that
holds in itself all reality bur also excludes from itself all unreality? Life touches
itself in every point of its Being, and where it touches itself, there where it is
life in its living, there is neither past nor future nor present in the sense of
the world’s present, nothing imagi- nary, no signification, no “thought content,”
nothing thar is not the plen- iude of living, in the “to suffer” and “to rejoice” of
its pashérik self-
220 The Word of God, Scripture
affection. All the decisive intuitions of Christianity, those of a phenome- nology
of life, form a unit. They defy the world’s speech to communicate 10 us a parcel
of life’s reality, if only in the form of an empry signification. We should add that
neither this speech nor the world itself are ar the ori- gin of this signification,
which would never appear in the field of our ex- perience if the thing of which
it is the signification had been given ro us clsewhere, in another Word. This is
the final intuition of Christianity, of a phenomenology of life.
The other Word, the Word of God, is Life. Life is a word because. like any word,
it is phenomenological through and through: it shows, it makes manifest. In this
the Word of God shares with the world’s speech the common trait of producing
a manifestation, an appearing—in such a way that in this appearing something
can be shown, can be said. But here. also, the word of God differs radically from
that of the world, to the point that to understand the former one has to lose
sight, as it were, of what we ordinarily understand as a word: the one spoken
by people, the one that says by making visible in the world what it says. If the
divine Word is also phenomenological in essence, if it is revelation, the crucial
question it pases relates to a radical phenomenology: How does the divine Word
reveal, what sort of appearing does it deliver? Or even: How does the divine
Word speak and whar does it say? Now. the Word of God reveals, speaks as
Life. The Word of God is the Word of Life, the Logos of Life. recognized by
John. Life speaks and reveals because in its essence it is the original revela-
tion, the self-revelation, which reveals itself, being nothing other than the fact
of revealing itself.
How does life reveal? In the “to suffer” and “to rejoice” of its living, in the
phenomenality of its pathos, What does it reveal in its parhétik phe- nomenality?
Itself. We have established this previously. Life reveals in such a way that what
is revealed is itself and nothing else. Ir affects itself such thar the content of
its affection is itself and nothing else. Unlike the world’s word, which turns

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away from itself and speaks of something other than it- self—of something else
that in this speech finds itself thrown outside itself, thrown away, deported,
stripped of its own reality, emptied of its substance, reduced to an image, to an
exterior appearance, to a content without con- tent. both empty and opaque—
Life’s speech reveals Life and gives Life. Lifes Word is life’s self-giving, its
self-revelation in the enjoyment of itself. The Logos of Life, the Word of Life,
the Word of God is precisely absolute
The Word of God, Scripture 221
phenomenological Life grasped in the hyper-powerful process of its self- genera-
tion as self-revelation.
Power is generally attributed to speech. Power reaches its height when it receives
an ontological signification. Then it has the power to create, that is to say
properly, to institute within Being. Thus the act of naming things has the
property of making them exist. This ontological capacity of speech to confer
Being on what it names is ordinarily reserved for God. Thar is where his all-
powerfulness lies, an all-powerfulness that is his word—a word thar has only to
be spoken for the whole order of everything that is to arise immediately from
nothingness at the simple sound of his voice and then to submit to the details
of his organization. In this domain, moreover, it is not long before God has
emulators or rivals. On the model of God, the modern artist boasts of being
a creator, creator of a work thar is sup- posedly richer, more surprising, and
assuredly more novel than the nature created by God. In this way, the artist
supposedly wins out over God by his inventive genius and his sophistication. In
the case of the writer, the power of words to raise unknown worlds is still more
evident.
. The analogy between divine creation and the creative act of the mod- ern artist
is one of the commonplaces of criticism in our era. We can now perceive its naive
bur hidden presupposition. The word that serves as pro- totype for the idea of
aesthetic or divine creation is the world’s word—the word that names objects
by making them visible within the horizon of the “outside.” What characterizes
such speech is its incapacity in principle to lead to the effective existence of that
of which it speaks. Hence the specifi- cally magical character it assumes when
one wants to make it play this role. This is what magic is: to pronounce words,
if possible intelligible. to which is attributed the power to establish a reality
thar the words, as empty signi- fications, are incapable of producing,
By what paradox has the world’s word, incapable of producing any- thing real,
been taken as the prototype and principle of creation? Because, for want of
creating what it is speaking of. ir at least has the property of giv- ing it to
be seen, if it already existss—or of producing an appearance of it if it does not
exist, as in the case of the poem. What is decisive for our argu- ment is the
fact that the world’s speech is taken as the archetype of any speech, whether
the word of God or that of people. The word that names birds, fish. the colors
of their wings or scales, fire, trees, water, clothing, shoes, food. excrement, and

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so on is supposedly the one that is going to let
222 The Ward of God, Scripture
us understand the interior essence of divine Life, since it is the original Word,
Life’s Logos. This external designation of things is supposed to ex- plain to us
how the Word of Life speaks to cach of the living and makes it- self understood
by each of them—what is signified for them by hearing the Word of God and,
if the latter is offered as a call, what the nature of this call may be. and what
kind of response it expects. And finally, if one says that Scripture is the Word of
God, a Scripture composed of words and meanings like any human speech, then
ic is in the light of this, the ordinary speech of people, thar we are supposed to
understand the Word of Ged!
However, with the intuition of a Word of Life, these naive presipposi- tions and
exterior paradoxes are exploded by Christianity. At the same rime, the whole
ser of relations organized around the word, the relation of the word to what it
says, to the one who hears it, as well as the nature of hearing, are turned upside
down. Above all, the very work of the word. its operation, changes totally.
The Word of Life does nor sustain any reference to the things of this world any
more than to the world itself. It is used neither to create them—a task thar
the human word only really manages in magic— nor even to unveil them; the
world and things of the world are, quite simply, foreign to its field of action.
Moreover, the Word of Life does nor “act” in the sense usually given this word,
which we have denounced—in the sense of a creation of objects, of their pro-
duction, especially of an objectification, The operation of the Word of Life is not
an “action” of this kind but a genera- tion, in which what is generated remains
internal to the power that generates it because the power that generates remains
internal to what it generates. So the Word of Life is not only a generation but
a self-generation. It is lifes self- generation as its self-revelation, It is this power
to reveal itself in generating itself that is expressed in the notion of Word; it
designates the phenomeno- logical power of absolute Life. Absolute Life is a
word because it generates it- self such as to reveal itself in this self-generation—
even more profoundly be- cause ir generates itself by revealing itself. For this
reason, by generating itself, absolute Life engenders within it a Logos, precisely
that of Life, which is consubstantial with it. Life speaks at the beginning, inside
this Logos that is its self-generation as self revelation—as Word,
Because Life generates itself by revealing itself in the Word of Life, this Word
of Life does not speak only in life’s self-generation, where it is con- substantial
with the Father, where it is its own Logos. Everywhere that Life’s self-generation
(and thus its self-revelation, and thus its Logos) is implicated,
The Word of God, Scripture 223
there too speaks the Word of Life. The Word of life does not speak only at the
beginning; it speaks in all livings. What the Word of Life says within any living
is his Living. In this way it generates them by giving life to them, thar is to
say, by allowing them to reveal themselves in its own self-revelation— in the

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self-revelation consubstantial with its self-generation. Thus each liv- ing lives
only from the Word of Life, inasmuch as he lives. What the Word of Life says
to him is his own life. And because this Word of Life is love— absolute Lifes
self-revelation in the enjoyment and love of self—what it tells him is his own love.
Thus is defined with an unprecedented rigor the con- stellation of relations that
are organized around the Word, such that, grasped on the basis of the Word of
Life and no longer on the basis of the world’s word, these relations are effectively
overturned.
In the world’s word, the relation of this word to what it says is the world itself; it
is exteriority. This is why everything of which this word speaks is exterior to it:
it is the tree that is green, the square thar has four cor- ners, and so on. Because
it is exterior to the word, what it says is different from it. The word that says
that the tree is green is itself not the tree, it is not green. Precisely because the
word that makes visible is exteriority, then the difference of everything it says
and makes visible is exterior to that word, dif- ferent from it. The fact char
what the word makes visible is the world, dif- ference, and exteriority produces a
decisive consequence, which we have al- ready encountered several times because
it is rooted in the very nature of phenomenality. This consequence is terrible:
the functional indifference of this word toward everything it says. Whether it
concerns a tree, whether this tree has leaves or not, whether a geometric figure
has so many sides, whether it concerns a broken tool. a goat, an equation, a
hydroplane, a reality or an image, a prescription or a concept—it doesn’t matter
much. The most deci- sive trait of this indifference of the world’s word, implied
in the difference in which it shows everything, is the following: never do what
is said in the world’s word, nor its genre, nor its properties ever result from the
nature of this word, to wit, the mode of appearing in which it makes visible
every- thing ir does. Never does the nature of whar is unveiled depend on the
na- ture of the unveiling, since it is that of the world. This is why, unable to
pen- ctrate what it says and never understanding it in its internal possibility,
understanding nothing, the world’s word confines itself to a simple stare- ment,
stated and repeated: “Thisis...,” “Thereis....”
Any word is heard or is at least susceptible to being heard. We hear
224 The Word of God, Scripture
words and pay attention to them or not, but we do so only to the extent that
we a priori possess the capacity to understand them. This capacity to hear the
word precedes any particular listening and makes it possible. In the world’s
word, the capacity to hear this word rests on the fact thar we are open to the
world. There is a possible hearing only of what is outside us, given to be heard
by us in this “outsideness” that is the world. In the same way as speaking
means making seen in a world, so hearing signifies per- ceiving, receiving whar
(from thus being shown to us in the world) might in fact be perceived and
received by us. It matters litte whether we are dealing with a visual, aural, or
ideal phenomenon. Thus ro speak and to hear have the same phenomenological
foundation, apparition in a world. The same Gap is constitutive of primal

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Hearing, of which speaking or lis- tening are modes. The fact that Hearing—
the possibility of hearing in gen- eral, of speaking or listening—resides in this
Gap from the world results in a fundamental uncertainty about everything thar
is said and heard in this way. This is because, separated by this Gap from
everything that is said and heard as something outside, different from him, the
one who listens is thereby reduced to conjectures and interpretations about his
subject.
This is even more evident in the nevertheless privileged situarion in which it
is supposedly the same person who speaks and who listens, who listens to his
own words. This situation is that of moral conscience where, in effect, a person
supposedly hears a voice thar speaks to him about him- self but also comes
from him, from his depths, as if he were speaking to himself by some trick of
the voice of the moral conscience, exhorting him to moral action. This Depth of
a person from whence speaks the voice of moral conscience has been interpreted
differently by various philosophies. What matters is that the word of moral
conscience is interpresed in vhe light of the traditional concept of the world, as
the world’s word, This word speaks by making heard what it says in an “outside”
where it resonates. What it says resonares in this outside: it becomes accessible,
audible, and one can either pay attention or ignore ir. In any case, what is said
is an external content, whether sensible or intelligible. To the extent thar it is
shown as external content, what is said can be heard. To speak and to hear
presup- pose the world and its openness. The person who speaks and hears
must be open to this world.
One of the most famous descriptions of moral conscience is the par- adigm of
the situation we are describing. According to Heidegger, man is
The Word of God, Scripture 225
Dastin, open to the world. In moral conscience Dasein itself addresses an appeal
to itself. Because this call, even though coming from Dasein, comes to him in the
world’s openness, it comes to him from outside, from “afar.” This call from afar
requires a whole problematic. Separated from the word that launched it as it is
separated from the person who should hear ir, the appeal is mysterious. This is
why it gives rise to many misunderstandings. among which is the whole range
of philosophies of moral conscience or moral philosophies—except Heidegger’s.
Still, when he wants to be more precise about the content of this call from
moral conscience, he too simply proposes his own philosophy as a response. The
content of the call of moral conscience that Dasein addresses to itself without
knowing it is somehow to know it. to understand it, and thus to be understood
in its truth: as Dasein thrown and surrendered to the world to die there. Such
is the abscurity of the call and the gratuitousness of the response thar, between
the Word and its hearing, a primal Gap has slipped in that separates them
forever. So in effect it comes down to interpreting them as one can and wants.
In any case, phenomenology has given way to hermeneutics and commentaries,
or rather, to endless hypotheses.

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The constellation of relations organized around the word also in- cludes the
face that the word is addressed to someone who is able to hear or listen to
ic. It goes without saying thar every word is addressed to someone. Bur as
soon as this relation between the world and the one who hears it ceases to be
considered a trivial facr, we are in the presence of a fundamen- tal problem,
one of the most difficult of all those confronted by philosophy. For the word
to encounter someone who is capable of hearing ir supposes an essential affinity
between the nature of this word and the nature of the person who is destined
to hear it. Bur this affinity is much more than asim- ple affinity. It must
involve a basic compatibility, which within Christian- iy is no longer mysterious.
Rather it is tossed into our faces as what con- stitutes our very essence. The
original compatibility between the Word and the person who must carry inside
the possibility of hearing ic is the relation of Life to the person. Such a relation
consists foremost in the fact thar Life has engendered the living, Engendering
itself in its essential Ipseity and en- gendering in the latter the living as a Self
and as the transcendental me, the Ward of Life has thus engendered he whose
responsibility is to hear it. That one who will hear the Word does not preexist
it. Here, unlike with human dialogue, there is no interlocutor waiting for a word
to be addressed to him.
226 The Word of God, Scripture
Nobody is there before the Word, before it speaks. But the Word engenders
the one to whom it is destined. The call does not find but extirpates from
nothingness the person it calls in its formidable appeal, which is the call to
live—an ontological appeal inasmuch as being draws its essence within Life and
only from Life.
Moreover, engendering the one to whom it is addressed and doing so by making
him a living, the Word of Life has conferred on him in his very generation
(somehow even before he lives, in the very process by which he came to life, in
his transcendental birth) the possibility of hearing it—the Word he heard in the
first spasm of his own life, when he experienced him- self for the first time, the
life whose embrace of self, whose Word, has joined him to himself in the very
surge of its Self and for ever after. Thus the pos- sibility of hearing the Word of
life is itself for each person and for each liv- ing Self contemporaneous with his
birth and consubstantial with his con- dition of Son. I hear forever the sound
of my birth, which is the sound of Life. the unbreakable silence in which the
Word of Life does not stop speak- ing my own life to me, in which my own life,
if I hear that word speaking within it, does not stop speaking the Word of God
to me.
Since the possibility of hearing the Word of Life is consubstantial with my
condition of Son, certain consequences follow. This consubstan- tility implies in
the first place an essential co-belonging between me (the living transcendental
me) and this Word of Life. I belong to the Word of Life in that I am engendered
in its self-engendering, self-affected in what then occurs as my own life, in its self-
affection, self-revealed to me in its own self-revelation—in its Word, Therefore

191
there is an abyss separating the Word of Life from the world’s word. Whereas
the world’s word. different from everything it says and makes visible in the
world’s exteriority, by the same token manifests its total indifference toward
everything it makes man- ifest in this way, the Word of Life does not cease
to embrace in itself che person it is addressing; it is consubstantial with what
it reveals, with the per- son who is revealed to himself within the Word’s self-
revelation. At no mo- ment does it let that person go outside it, but rather
holds him within, in its radical immanence, as this living Self that he is: the
word does not stop speaking to him while he is speaking to himself. Its speech
is not made up of words lost in the world and stripped of power. Its word is its
embrace, che pashétik embrace in which, holding itself. it holds the person to
whom it speaks by giving him life—by giving him to be embraced within this
em-
The Word of God, Scripture 227
brace in which absolute Life embraces itself. The embrace in which ab- solute
Life embraces itself is its love, the infinite love with which it loves it- self. Trs
word is that of love, in the end the only one that the anguished peo- ple of
our day. lost in the world’s ennui, still want to hear. Bur what does this word
say to them? Just itself, just their own life, too—the unspeakable happiness of
experiencing oneself and of Living,
Because the possibility of hearing the Word of Life is consubstanrial with the
condition of Son, another consequence follows. 1f we understand the possibility
that is given to any living Self of hearing the Word of Life as an appeal that this
word addresses to him, then the schema we usually use to interpret this call (and
as a corollary, its relation to a likely response) proves totally inadequate. This
is because, once again, the word is grasped as the world’s word, with respect to
both the word that addresses the call and the word that is supposed to respond
to it. The word that speaks in the world and the call it addresses are warldly
things, visible or audible. And the word whose role is to reply must first hear
this call, receive it as some- thing it can receive only by opening up to the
world—in this Hearing thar is openness to the world as such. It is a mediation
of the exteriority of the world that links the call and the response.
In this way, call and response are different, exterior to each other, sep- arated
from each other in this Difference that is the world. Separated from the call,
the response must turn toward it to hear it in the world where ir re- sounds. It
can equally well not do so: turn away from it, not hear it, or just not respond
to it. The response is contingent in relation to the call. This contingency, the
possibility for the response to respond or not respond, is what we call its freedom.
But, as we have seen, the structure of the world’s word, which speaks by speaking
in the world and by hearing what resonates in the world, has separated call and
response now and forever.
In the Word of Life, by contrast, the difference between Word and Hearing, the
call and the response, has disappeared. Because the Hearing in which I hear the

192
Word of life is my own condition of Son, my own life en- gendered in absolute
Life’s self-engendering, this Hearing has no freedom at all with respect to what
it hears. It is not the Hearing of a call to which the person has license to respond
or not. To be able to respond to the call, ro hear it in an appropriate listening,
but equally to turn away from it—it is always too late for all that. Life, thrown
into itself. has always already thrown us into ourselves, into this Self that is
similar to none other, that at
228 The Word of God, Scripture
no moment ever chose to be this Self that he is, not even to be something like
a Self at all. No person has the opportunity to ignore the arch-coming of the
Revelation, which has given him Life. Whether he remembers or for- gers it
arises only from his own thought and in no way affects his condition as a living.
Life has only one word that never goes back on what it says, and nobody evades
ir. This Parousia without memory and without failure of the Word of Life is
our birth.
The radical significance of the opposition between the world’s word and the
Word of Life is ultimately measured within Christianity by a deci- sive criterion:
action. In the light of this criterion, the world’s word is char- acterized by its
radical powerlessness to produce the action corresponding to what it says—or,
more radically, to produce any action whatsoever. This powerlessness marks
any ethic of Law; it is what motivates the shift from the Old to the New Law.
If the Old Law must be not abolished but com- pleted, it is for the very simple
burt decisive reason that it cannot be com- pleted by itself. Its intrinsic content
(its prescriptions or interdictions) is not primarily at issue, but rather the fact
that, deprived in itself of the force nec- essary to produce action corresponding
to prescription, the enunciation of a rule remains a representation in the mind
that leaves unchanged the be- liever’s way of living and acting. Bur this is all
thar matters, because living and acting define reality. Because the Word of
Life carries in it a primal Act- ing, the eternal process in which life never stops
engendering itself—be- cause, more precisely, as self-revelation of this Acting,
it is hyper-Acting that leads acting itself into effectivity—then, far from being
opposed to reality, as is the world’s word, the Word of Life is tied to it. This tie
is so tight that not only does the Word of Life contain reality bur it produces it
in some fashion, to the extent that any reality, that of Acting itself, presupposes
a first revelation, the Arch-Revelation of Life and its Word.
We must now reexamine a previously encountered difficulty. This con- cerns
Scripture considered as the foundation of Christian revelation. Isn’t this reve-
lation said in the Word thar we have stopped calling that of the world? Isn’t
Scripture composed of words bearing meanings? If the world’s word is char-
acterized by its powerlessness. doesn’ this affect Scripture as a whole? It is
not only the Old Law, but also the New Law (since it, too, is for- mulated in
the language spoken by people) that proves incapable of span- ning the abyss
separating language and reality. Does Christ not speak to peo- ple in their own
language? Isnt it in this language (which is their own) that

193
The Word of God, Scripture 229
the Truth he has brought them is revealed? Doesn’t the fact that this reve-
lation is uttered in the world’s word, that it takes the form of propositions and
sentences imprisoned in their world of unreality, render inoperative the Christian
revelation itself, Scripture as a whole?
Here it suffices to recall thar text, here Scriptural text, has never been the object
of our study. This is because any text aims at an object, or (as they say), has
a referent. So it is not the text that gives us access to the ob- ject to which
it refers. Because the object shows itself to us, the text can re- fer to it, and
more generally, the word can speak of it. In the case of the world’s word, it
is the world’s light that allows the word to speak of any- thing shown in this
light. What is shown in the light of the world is by no means limited to material
things. When I say that in a circle all the radii are equal, that 2+3=5, that
science permits progress, that aesthetic value differs from moral value, that if [
think therefore [ am, then a horizon of visibility
“is unfolded so thar, in the clear space opened by this horizon, everything
that has just been said is shown. Not only is the content envisaged in each
of these propositions shown in this “outside” dug our of a “world,” but the
propositions themselves that aim at these various “contents” only appear on
thar horizon.
We have contrasted the world’s word—whose phenomenological es- sence we
have just recalled as the way in which it speaks by making visible in a “world”
—with the Word of Life, whose power of revelation is idenri- fied with the self-
revelation of Life itself. Grasping the essential connection that is established
between the Word of the world and the Word of Life and, in this way, how it
is possible to understand the former thanks to the power of the latter, leads to
deeper reflection on Scripture. This connection between the two words, the one
spoken by people and the other by God. is indicated to us in Scripture, in fact.
It tells us how one can understand it. too—what sort of Hearing may lead us
to what it wants to tell us.
Scripture says that we are Sons of God. Saying this, it speaks in the manner of
the world’s word. It utters propositions that relate to a reality different from the
propositions themselves, to a referent situated outside them—to wit, these Sons
of God, about whom it affirms thar this is what we are, this is our condition.
Relative to its worldly word, this referent— the condition of Sons of God—is
exterior to them. Scripture does not have the ontological power to bring it into
being, to make it exist, any more than does any other human word. It says but
cannot prove that we are the
230 The Word of God, Scripture
Sons of God. Bur this referent, which is exterior to it and which it cannot bring
into existence. this is where we are, we the living—living in Life, gen- erated
in absolute Life’s self-generation, self-revealed in our transcendental Self in the

194
self-revelation of this absolute Life, in the Word of God. By say- ing, “You
are Sons,” the worldly word of Scripture turns away from itself and indicates
the site where another word speaks. It achieves the displace- ment that leads
outside its own word to this other site where the Word of Life speaks.
So we cannot avoid coming back to the singular analogy established between
the word of Scripture and the Christian ethic—an analogy that re- lares to the
fact that, in the end, the prescriptions of this ethic are inscribed in Scripture
and form an integral part of it. In the same way that, in the case of the ethic,
the precept that is prisoner of its unreality gives way to Life’s Commandment of
love, unfolding in cach person its pashétik essence, so that the word of Scripture
refers back ro the Word of Life that speaks to each person his own life, making
him a living, Bur it is nor the word of Scripture that lets us hear the Word of
Life. Rather, ir is the latter, by en- gendering us at cach instant, by making
us Sons, thar reveals within its own truth that truth recognized by the Word
of Scripture, to which it testifies. The one who listens to this word of Scripture
knows that it speaks true, since inside him the Word that establishes him in
Life listens to irself’
So do we really need Scripture? Isn’t it there to be understood after the fact?
Isn’t its truth recognized only on the basis of a truth we already carry inside us—
and so, in its prior accomplishment, since the beginning of Life in us, could easily
do without Scripture? Bur what does “being recognized after the fact” mean?
A philosophic argument that has been accredited since Plato says that the pos-
sibility of any knowledge—for example, the possibil- ity of hearing Scriprure—
is always just a re-cognition {re-connassance] that presupposes the knowledge
[connaissance] in us of what we are thus (for this reason) merely rediscovering,
re-cognizing in things—in this case, in Serip- ture. This thesis concerns Chris-
tian revelation only if it undergoes a modifi- cation so essential thar one may
ask if it is still the same idea. This modifica- tion (or perhaps subversion) is as
large as the abyss separating Greek thought from Christian intuitions.
If it is prior knowledge in us that makes possible the effective knowl- edge of
everything we can grasp—which is therefore just the reminiscence of this first
knowledge—then everything depends on the nature of that
The Word of God, Scriprure 231
knowledge. So it is not sufficient to advance, along the Platonic line of ar-
gument, that only atemporal contemplation of Ideas that are the arche- types
of things allows us to know them by recognizing them for what they are—as
Descartes again asserts in his famous Meditations, by making the idea of a
person that I carry inside me the condition thar allows me ro take for people
these hats and coats that I see from my window passing along the sidewalk,
What most matters is the nature of this primitive knowledge that is in me, the
reminiscence of which makes possible any ulterior knowl- edge in the form of a
re-cognition. What is in question, at the same time, is the nature of recognition.
Is it of the same order as primitive knowledge? If it is the reminiscence of

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primitive knowledge, does thar mean that it is related intentionally to it in a
memory, which is to say, in a thought? Is primitive knowledge itself a thought,
a secing? Are both, or either, un- folded in the world’s truth? Finally, what
does the “in me” of primitive knowledge mean—of this knowledge that I must
in effect possess in some way, so as to be able to know on the basis of it, by
relying on it, everything that I will know and will be capable of knowing?
In Christianity, primitive knowledge—notably that which allows us to recognize
the truth of Seripture—is the condition of Son. Therefore, it is not me, the
ego, who is capable as ego, through my though or my will, of re-cognizing that
Scripture is true. It is not me who decides thar this voice is the voice of the
angel or of Christ: it is only the Word of Life in me. It is only because I am
the Son generated at each moment in the self generation of Life, self-revealed
in the self-revelation that is its Word, that the Word of Life can tell me that I
am this Son, and in this way that what Scripture says (to wit, that I am the
Son) is true. The nature of primitive knowledge, as Christianity conceives it,
is therefore unequivocal: ir is life’s self-revelation. It is precisely because it is
life’s self-revelation, in which I am self-revealed, which I carry inside me (like
this primitive knowledge), thar | can re-cognize everything that I will re-cognize
on the basis of it. By the same token, it is the nature of re-cognition that
is determined. It is not the mode of manifestation in which I re-cognize the
Archerypes of things (and thus these things) for what they are. it is not the
primitive Seeing in which | contemplated these Ideas for the first time—it is not
a Seeing, it is not the world’s truth. Pathetically, by giving me to myself in the
embrace in which it is given to itself, Life has let me experience that I am the
Son, and only this pathésik experience, since it is accomplished in me, allows
me
232 The Word of God, Scripture
to recognize the truth spoken by Scripture in the word it addresses to peo- ple:
that I am the Son.
One doubt remains. If by my condition of Son | experience this con- dition such
that it is not possible for it to be otherwise, whar good is it to say so in the
word of a man, addressed to men, to empirical individuals lost in the world—
which I, the transcendental Sen of Life, am not? What good, once again, is
Scripture? This question has been answered at length. It is man’s forgetting of
his condition of Son that motivated the promise and coming of a Messiah, all
of his words and deeds—in short, the content to which the text of the Old and
New Testaments refers. It is precisely, we might say, because man forgot his
condition of Son that he needs Scripture to remind him of it. But how can a
man hear Scripture, listen to its word, know that what it says is true? Because
the Word of Life speaks in him. But how in turn can this Word of Life be heard
by man? Does he not con- stantly forget it, even when it constantly speaks in
him, establishes him within life? .
Man’s forgetting of his condition of Son relates not only ro the Con- cern for

196
the world in which he constantly invests himself. As we have scen, itis the
phenomenological essence of Life that makes Life what is most for- gotten, the
Immemorial to which no thought leads. Because Forgetting de- fines its phe-
nomenological status, life is ambiguous. Life is what knows it- self without
knowing it. That it suddenly knows it is neither incidental nor superfluous.
The knowledge by which one day life knows what since the beginning it knew
without knowing ir is not of a different order than rhe knowledge of life itself: it
is a pashétik upheaval in which life feels its self- affection as absolure Life’s self-
affection. This possibility, which is always open to life, to suddenly experience
its self-affection as absolute Life’s self- affection, is whar makes it a Becoming.
But then, when and why is this emotional upheaval produced, which opens a
person to his own essence? Nobody knows. The emotional opening of the per-
son to his own essence can only be born of the will of life itself, as this rebirth
thar lets him sud- denly experience his eternal birth. The Spirit blows where it
wills.
Yer Scripture remains as the always open possibility of the Becoming, in which
any conceivable regeneration consists. That the emotion withour limits in which
the self-affection of each living is experienced as that of ab- solute Life in him,
and thus as his own essence (as this essence of life that is also his own), thar
such an emotion (as Revelation of his own essence)
The Word of God, Scripture 233
happens to someone who reads Scripture, and it says to him nothing other than
his condition of Son, is by no means astonishing. Thus, from the moment that
this condition of Son is precisely his own, the condition of Faith is always posited.
Only God can make us believe in him, but he in- habits our own flesh.
Christianity and the World
The major objection addressed to Christianity at different times and in many
forms is that of turning people away from a world thar constitutes both the
only real and tangible world and (for this reason) the true domain of those
who inhabit it, the “inhabitants of this world” —we people. The “world”: this
one here—the earth, with its elements, its horizons, its tem- porality, its laws—
everything circumscribing the circle of concrete possi- bilities that define “human
existence” and by the same token set its fini- tude. It is in this world, relying
on it and fashioned by it, that all the projects and actions we are given to
undertake take on shape and consis- tency: the itineraries we must follow, the
time required to follow them, the set of arrangements to observe, the sum of
the efforts to supply. Of course, these conditions change constantly, and exper-
tise and technology cause them to evolve all the time. But these changes and
this evolution happen on the basis of a preexisting state of affairs, upon which
one can act only by starting from there. This irresistible prerequisite for all
modifications and all possible inventions—possible on the basis of it and only
in this way-—is the world itself. So this world is the imprescriprible horizon of
all human behavior and ambition.

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To turn people away from this world thar constitutes their true do- main, and
literally the ground and fulcrum of all their movements and ac- tivities, means to
hurl them into the imaginary. This is the reproach: the invention of a fantastic
(or even phantasmagoric) other world, a place of
Christianity and the World ~~ 235
imaginary satisfaction of all the desires and all the aspirations that a person
cannot realize here below—rthe “beyond” that the here below calls forth as
the indispensable complement for all lacks and all frustrations. That an in-
capacity to obtain, by an effective transformation of reality, and hence by work,
satisfaction of the multiple impulses within the human being leads outside reality
is something for which we have ac least two examples and thus two proofs. The
first is provided by the ordinary course of individual existence, in which the
dreaming portion measures the size of nonsatisfied aspirations, that is to say,
efforts from which the individual has shrunk. What desire has not been able
to obtain in fact, it at least forms in images. But there are aspirations to
which no work of any sort can respond. Here is where “reality” reveals its true
nature: thar against which one can do nothing, that which defies any kind of
acting designed to modify or deny it—for example. the mourning of a cherished
person, or death in general. Here the only “work” is to accept reality, specifically
the death of the loved one—to accept a world whose finirude is precisely death
itself.
In the second example of this process, the incapacity to satisfy desire leads to
fabulation of a beyond: Christianity. Here the issue. to be clear, is the prior
conception of reality. Reality having been understood as the world, inevitably
there is raised against Christianity the criticism, supposedly de- cisive, of “flee-
ing” reality. That this flight should end in the construction of a false “other
world” is merely one possible consequence. One could also conceive others. The
very idea of “Hight” does not come first. Whar is found at the origin of this
whole process is the misunderstanding of reality in itself, the refusal or incapac-
ity to recognize its true essence—the world as it gives itself to us and thus as
it is. Thus, this misunderstanding does not lead first or necessarily outside the
world but is manifest inside the world itself through a series of contradictions.
The most significant is the arrempe to erect a new reality, a new Kingdom, by
misunderstanding the conditions of reality. Such an attempt can only result in
the disappearance of all acru- ality, in a pure “void”—in this empty place, alien
ro reality, that is Chris- tianity’s Heaven,
Ir is remarkable thar such a criticism was especially addressed to Chris- tianity
in the Romantic Age. when the figure of Christ held for so many thinkers a
very special fascination. The young Hegel was more given to crit- icism than
to fascination. What he reproaches Christ for is constantly con- trasting the
invisible and the visible, such that reality is shattered and so, as
236 Christianity and the World
prisoners of this contrast, individuals can lead only broken lives. On the one

198
hand, Christ tries to found himself exclusively on the first of these terms. on
the pure and infinite love of God, by rejecting all that is not him, all that has
the mark of the world. Hence he has to renounce many things, individuals
relations with the society in which they live, their relation to political orga-
nization (to the Jewish state). and also to the various associations they main-
tin among themselves in social activity, and all external manifestations of
life. “A great number of active relations and living relationships were lost.”
The destiny of Christianiry is foremost that of any historical form thar wants
to develop by misunderstanding or rejecting an essential part of reality; by
constantly encountering this, it can only (in this permanent conflict) rake
the path of decline and disappearance, The tragic destiny of someone who
takes his affirmation of himself only from his opposition to the world,
meaning to reality—from what is now only the “Opposite of the World” —
is the destiny of Christ. The young Hegel thought this and described it as
follows: “Because what he saw in God were his own collisions with the world,
his flight from the world, he had need only of the Being opposed to the world, in
which his own apposition to the world would be grounded.” But there is more.
Christianity splits reality between “here below”
and “the beyond.” If someone who is opposed to the world inexorably col- lides
with it and in this lost cause must admit his powerlessness, it is be- cause this
bad world is reality. not a part of it but the only effective reality, whereas what
is contrasted with it, in the name of which he thinks he can condemn it, is only
an empty Heaven. What Christ teaches is purity of the heart, an internal and
unlimired love. But what is a love that is not “real- ized” and docs nor ace?
To be realized, to act. is to confront the world, not by maintaining an external
and formal opposition to it, but by sransform- ing it. To transform the world,
to make a real modification occur, is to rec- ognize its laws, to use them, and to
produce because of them a change that always presents itself in the form of an
objective determination, as this par- ticular effective reality that always results
from an action that is also par- ticular and thar everyone can see, which is there
for each and every one of us. The young Hegel contrasted the “unaccomplished”
life with the “ac- complished” one, in which the accomplishment consists of this
mulriplic- ity of concrete activities that compose the infinitely rich and varied
weft of the world of people. Outside this richness and this objective variety,
there is only an empty subjectivity. But objectivity for Christ was “the greatest
Christianity and the World ~~ 237

199
enemy.” This is why the refusal of objective determination is supposed © involve
Christianity in an “amorphism” deptived of content. By turning away from the
world on Christ’s example, the disciple not only loses the concrete richness of
life, but what is offered to him in exchange for this “re- nunciarion” is literally
nothing except this absolutely empty representation of an imaginary Heaven.
Is it necessary to stress the reverberations of such a criticism? The whole
Hegelian system reproduces it constantly in various forms, of which the most
famous is perhaps that of the “beautiful soul.” Incapable of getting out of
itself, of confronting the world and really acting, the beautiful soul can only
rely on this interior purity and “in this transparent purity, evapo- rate like a
wisp of smoke in the air.” Such criticism is not only found among a number
of Hegel’s contemporaries but will inspire one of the most striking positions
within Marxism. It is no longer an issue of dreaming of some interior perfection
that relies on itself, nor even of sketching a harmo- nious system of actions in
which this perfection would be possible. Nothing can be done within a person,
no change capable of affecting his real being thar does not presuppose as its
precondition a real change in the world—a world whose true essence is not
primarily natural but social. There is a fre- quently cited statement by the
young Marx: “Philosophers have only inter- preted the world in a different way;
what matters is to transform it.”
Thanks to Marxism, the critique whose origins we have just recalled broke out of
the narrow circle of philosophy to become one of the com- monplaces of modern
ideology. As regards the problem we are concerned with here, it bears the
following traits: a rejection of any “beyond,” which is definitively assimilated io
an illusory imaginary: attention and interest de- vated exclusively to this world,
knowledge of which is all that matters. This interest is not just theoretical but
also practical. If metaphysical illusions must be removed and knowledge become
scientific and turn toward the ob- jective universe, it is precisely because ir is
no longer a matter of assuring one’s salvation in “Heaven,” but of transforming
this world. Scientific and ethical ideals shift at the same time. Mentalities
merely express this shift. If in the twentieth century, in a country like France, a
great number of Chuis- tians have lost their faith, it is because this faith was a
faith in the “beyond.” What ought to have taken its place quite naturally was
the effective trans- formation of this world and adherence to forces that were
engaged in this direction. The ethical ideals of Christianity—love of others,
solidarity. gen-
238 Christianity and the World
erosity, justice, and so on—could well have been conserved, and in fact they
were; it was simply a matter of realizing them. What Christianity was finally
reproached for was not its morality but its moralism. The problem was not
its ideals bur that by projecting them into an empty heaven it reduced them
to pious wishes instead of bringing them into daily life, through struggle and
contradictions in the difficult history of humankind. Entire generations have
repeated this catechism. But the critique is nor confined to our era. Be- cause it

200
is rooted in the heart of things, it revives ancient themes: “One should cultivate
one’s own garden,” “Do not aspire to immortality, O my soul, but live to the
limits of one’s power,” and so on.
When brought into rapport with the founding intuitions of Chris- tianity, what
are such criticisms worth? On what “evidence” could they be justified? To
return to the young Hegel, it is totally erroneous to pretend thar Christianity
has split reality into rwo realms, of the visible and the in- visible, and thereby
plunged human existence into the rift. Such assertions, with the “critical” con-
sequences that we have reviewed, testify only to an absolute incomprehension of
the “spirit of Christianity” and of the decisive thesis that underlies it. This the-
sis is thar there exists only one reality. that of Life. It is precisely because life is
invisible thar reality is invisible—not just a particular domain of it, a particular
form of life, bur any possible life, any conceivable reality. It is invisible not only
in the sense of that imaginary and empry place that is called Heaven, but in-
visible in the sense of that which experiences itself—like hunger, cold, suffering,
pleasure. anguish, boredom, pain, drunkenness—invincibly, outside the warld,
independently of any seeing. And which, experiencing itself in its invincible em-
brace, is incontestable. It is living and thus “real” even when there is nothing
else, even when there is no other world (according to Descarres’s equally invinci-
ble argument). So there is no opposition between the visible and the invis- ible,
between two forms of reality. Wichin Christianity nothing is opposed to reality,
and there is nothing other than life.
The second criticism moves beyond the limits of incomprehension into the ab-
surd. Christianity is reproached for an artitude that Christ him- self constantly
and vehemently denounced. Did the Good Samaritan aban- don himself to the
vaporous dreams of his beautiful soul when he bent over the traveler covered
with blood to help and care for him, when he car- ried him to the inn, when he
came back to settle the bill and check that he was getting well? Do the seven
works of corporal mercy lead us ouside this
Christianity and the World ~~ 239
world? Who, then, in barbaric times, in the Middle Ages, for example, built
the first hospitals? Who drained swamps and spread agricultural and livestock-
breeding techniques? Who provided teaching in all domains? Were the seven
works of spiritual mercy any less constraining? Who taught a person to let
another pass in front of him? Doesn’t the whole Christian ethic effect a dis-
placement from the order of words and pious declarations to the order of ac-
tion? Isn’t what is decisive abour such a displacement the presupposition of the
unreality of the world and of pure though, their as- similation to the empty and
almost imaginary place of unaccomplished impulses, of intentions not followed
by effects—whereas reality is un- equivocally entrusted to action and to it alone?
Before taxing Christianity with moralism and reproaching it for turning people
away from action and reality, it would be better to inquire into the conditions
that have allowed such a reproach to see the light of day and ro rarget a doctrine
that recognizes as true and truthful only the real, and as real only action.

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These conditions are nothing other than the whole ser of presuppo- sitions that
comprise the truth of the world. That they extend their hold over almost the
totality of the development of Western thoughr, to the point of determining it
almost entirely, by no means suffices to establish their validity, especially since
a suspicion cannot help bur arise that they might be a simple formulation of a
prejudice of common sense. What is more immediately evident than this: reality
is what we see? Action does not escape this rule. The modification it produces
is itself something that one can see; it is a “rransformation of the world.” The
circle implied in this se- ries of “evidences” is apparent, though, when we ask:
What is evidence, what phenomenon does it involve? What shows itself to us
is evident—what one can see, with the body’s eyes or the spirits. What shows
itself to us, what one can see, is what is seen or can become visible, within
the horizon of the world’s visibility, within its truth, Thus the world’s truth
is the presupposi- tion—hidden or conscious—of all the theses that identify
reality, espe- cially that of action, with this truth, with the world itself. From a
philo- sophical point of view, it is the extraordinary originality of Christianity
to perceive this circle and to radically challenge it.
To challenge it with regard to action, specifically. It is not sufficient ro investi-
gate action and denounce fine sentiments and empty declarations, a denuncia-
tion to which anyone could easily rally. What is in question are the
conditions for effective and real action and thus the conditions of reality itself.
240 Christianity and the World
The conditions for effective action are not the circumstances in which such an
action is capable of occurring. For example, when we say, “The child should be
tall enough to be able ro reach the door handle, otherwise he could not open
it,” or else, “The working classes had not reached a suff- cient level of matu-
rity ro acquire a clear vision of the forces ar work and to organize themselves
accordingly,” such conditions are still merely exterior, contingent, and variable
conditions for action—they are historical. They define a situation that is more
or less complex bur particular, in which one can guess whether such and such
an action, itself particular, would have a chance of succeeding. They by no
means work back to the ultimate and es- sential possibility of what makes, in
each of these cases, something like an “action” possible—that the child will be
able to extend his arm to the han- dle, or that people take up weapons and
run to the barricades. Far from elu- cidating the internal possibility of acting,
worldly theories of action simply presuppose it. without even perceiving it as a
problem.
It is precisely this interior and ultimate possibility that Christianity seizes upon.
It seizes it at the profound level where it is identical with the pos- sibility of
the ego itself, Because it is a transcendental ego, this fundamental I Can whase
genesis we have described, a person is capable of acting—ab- solutely not as
an empirical individual, as a person belonging to the world. This is why one’s
action is no longer a worldly action, an objective process, but the action of this

202
transcendental ego, of this I Can that alone can act. Christianity has taken to its
limit the analysis of this interior and ultimate possibility of acting. The genesis
of the fundamental I Can that I am, which alone can act, is the transcendental
birth of the ego. Analysis of the cgo’s birth has shown that each of the powers
thar compose the being of this ego—to take, walk, and run, but also to think,
imagine, and so on— is only possible if given ro itself, and thus put in its own
possession and hence made ready to be exercised. But this givenness to self of
each of our powers as the indispensable precondition of its exercise resides in the
given- ness to self of the ego, in which resides the givenness to self of absolute
Life. which rakes place nowhere else. Thus the simplest act, presupposing in
itself Life’s sclf-givenness, nothing other than its self-revelation, each hum- ble
act carries within it this self-revelation of absolute Life, the all-seeing Eye of
God, we called it—such that it takes place “before God.”
Here the theses that situate action in the world appear superficial. Not only are
they incapable of taking account of the metaphysical and re-
Christianity and the World 241
ligious aspect (we might call it “Dostoyevskian®) of human acts, of the “Judg-
ment” that seems to be invincibly attached to each of them. On the philosophi-
cal plane, they are powerless to distinguish human action from a simple objective
displacement, a natural process. This is because they are content with a simple
acknowledgement of the latter, and so are not in a position to work back ro this
internal possibility of acting without which no action could be produced. In the
same way, they cannot take account of the essential fact that all action is tied
to an individual who is its agent. Like the possibility of action, the possibility
of the “I” of the “I Can.” on the basis of which action is always produced as an
action individual by its very nature, also escapes them.
Christianity is not only opposed to superficial descriptions that in- terpret acting
as an event in the world. Starting with its own intuitions, it can understand
perfectly well why such descriptions are inevitable, pro- duced everywhere and
received as faithful expressions of the phenomenon of action. Christianity in fact
by no means misunderstands the world’s truth, that way of appearing we have
described at length, which as an ef- fective mode of appearing is incontestable.
But Christianity circumscribes its sphere, refusing to this mode of appearing
the power to exhibit reality in itself—especially the reality of acting. Thus,
in the world, acting only appears in the form of an external behavior that lets
reality escape because reality is held within life. Thus the duplicity of appearing
explains why hu- man acting manifests itself in two different forms, of which
one contains the reality of this acting, while the other. the external behavior of
fasting, for example, is only action’s empty shell.
But the pitiless denunciation of ethical appearance refers back to the phenomeno-
logical intuitions that define the division between reality and il- lusion, The
splitting of action into true acting and fallacious behavior cor- responds to a
duality of the body. On the one hand, there is the body in the world’s truth,

203
which people take as the real body, and in fact as the only real body. the one
you can see in the world, the visible body, the body-object ranked alongside all
the objects of the universe and sharing its essence, that of having extension: res
extensa. On the other hand, there is the body in Lifes Truth, the invisible body,
the living body. According to the phenomenolog- ical definition of truth as life,
identical with reality, it is the invisible body that is real, while the visible body
is only its exterior representation.
This new Christian paradox can be established philosophically. The
242 Christianity and the World
body that is seen presupposes a body that sees it, a power of vision—which can
be exercised only if put into possession of self, given to itself in absolute Life’s
self-givenness. Thus there is a transcendental genesis of the real body in life
which, as the transcendental genesis of the I Can and thus of any conceivable
power, is no different from the transcendental birth of the ego. With the con-
centration of all form of power in life and, moreover, with the identification of
the generation of this power with the self-generation of ab- solute Life itself, it
is the entirety of reality that finds itself returned to its site of origin, to invisible
life itself and to its hyper-power. Far from the invisi- ble designating the empry
site of an illusory heaven, it is upon it that is built any conceivable power, and
thus any effectivity thar contributes to a power. In the invisible any conceiv-
able body and any form of reality literally rake on shape. The objections made
to Christianity about its flight from reality merely ignore the essence of thar
reality.
But then, we might say, if reality is concentrated within transcenden- tal life to
the point of being identified with it and giving itself to feeling only in its invisible
pathos, is it not suddenly this world that is empty? Can the radical overthrow
of concepts relating to reality that Christianity effects be turned against itself?
We can no longer reproach Christianity for fleeing reality if reality resides in life,
if the real body is the living body—nort this visible object that naive tradition
has always taken as our veritable body. But doesn’ the visible as a whole, now
stripped of its pretension to exhibit reality, any conceivable reality, find itself
thrown into the realm of shadows? What can we do with a world reduced to
a fallacious game of appearances? What can we do in this world if it is no
longer anything? The reproach ad- dressed in modern times to Christianity by
post-Hegelian thought is barely disturbed, and to some extent it remains valid.
Christianity is certainly not flight from reality if any reality lies within invisible
life; but it is indeed flight from the world if, deprived of reality. the world is
given over to ap- pearance. Doesn’t Christianity, as well as Christ, succumb
more than ever to the young Hegel’s criticism, thar in any case (whether or not
it can be identified with reality) it is “the Opposite to the world”?
We have to say a little more about the latter if we want to understand how,
far from turning us away from the world. instead Christianity is the means
of access 10 what is real in that world—to the unique reality. We recall our

204
preliminary study of the world’s truth, which showed how this Truth is split
between appearing in the world and what appears in it. On the one
Christianity and the World ~~ 243
hand, there is appearing in the world, its “outside,” this horizon of visibil- ity in
which all things of the world are shown to us. Then there is what ap- pears in
it: all the things that, being shown in it. constitute the “content” of this world.
It is the content of the world that constitutes its reality. Such a content is dual:
social and natural.® It is the social content that is the most important, so let
us concentrate on that.
The social refers to all the concrete activities by which people con- stantly
produce the totality of goods necessary for their existence. It suffices to inquire
into the nature of these activities in order for the worldly defin- ition of reality
to be exposed as vacuous. All these activities, which form the content of society,
undoubtedly appear in the world. It is in this world that we can see them and, we
think, recognize and describe them. But as long as we confine ourselves to seeing
them, we do nothing, If, seared in the bleachers of a stadium, I watch an athlete
who is trying to beat a record, 1 am not running myself. The manifestation of
a race in the world’s “outside” is totally foreign to the reality of the race. The
reality of the race is situated nowhere else than in the living body of the one
who runs, in the funda- mental 1 Can of the transcendental ego, which utilizes
its powers to the extent that it is in possession of them, each of these powers
being given to itself in the sclf-givenness of this cgo, itself given to fuself in life’s
self givenness. All the activities that constitute the content of society—social
praxis —have acting as their essence. It is from this essence that they take their
properties, even their possibility. They take their properties and their possibility
from Life’s essence and from it alone. If this set of human activ- ities constitutes
the content of the world, what appears in it, its reality, then we have to say:
what appears in the world owes nothing to appearing in the world. The world’s
content owes nothing to its truth. By turning us away from the world’s truth,
Christianity does not turn us away from its reality: on the contrary, it indicates
to us the place where reality lies and leads us to it. This decisive thesis, for
Christianity, for the world, and for ourselves, is what we must now establish.
We will do so with two crucial examples, since they question the reality of this
world: first, what is called the “economy.” which constitutes the substratum of
any society; and second, relations with others, without which there is no social
world, either.
By “economy” we usually mean two things: on the one hand, a par- ticular
domain of reality with its specific phenomena and their laws, and on the other,
a certain science that is defined like any science by what it selects
244 Christianity and the World
and isolates out of the whole to take as irs objecr of study. The particular domain
of reality, designated under the title of “economic reality,” is that of social labor
and the phenomena linked to iv: salaries, merchandise, value, money, capital in

205
irs various forms, and so on. As for the science that srud- ies this “economic
reality” in its various aspects, it is called “political econ- omy” or else (more
simply but in an amphibiological way) “economy.”
In order to establish the pertinence of the fundamental concepts of Christianity
in comparison to the “content” of the world and its reality. we refer to the
analysis by Marx, one of the greatest thinkers of all time. the only person
to have cast upon society and its economy a transcendental gaze capable of
producing the principle of their intelligibility. In line with the du- ality of the
concept of economy. Marx’s critique is dual. On the one hand, ir is a critique
of “political economy,” thar is ta say, of thar science that studies economic
phenomena and their laws. This critique is radical in thar, beyond questioning
certain theses of the English school, of Smith and Ricardo no- tably. it takes aim
ar political economy in general, the very possibility of a science like economics.
This critique of the possibility of an economic sci- ence is radical only because
it is first a critique of economic reality itself.
What does a critique of economic reality mean? Contrary to the illu- sion of
economists, which Marx called ferishism or economic materialism, it means there
is no economic reality, in the sense in which one speaks of re- ality as something
that exists in and of itself and that in some way always has. But labor, the
salary paid in exchange for this labor, the consumer goods produced by it, and
the money that results from this labor, various exchanges, and industrial, com-
mercial, and financial activity in general— isnt all that quite real, constituring,
as is partly evident, the “content” of this world? Here the decisive intuitions
of Christianity upset this system of evi- dence. Behind all these so-called “eco-
nomic” and “social” activities, what is acting, as we have just recalled, is the
transcendental ego, whose every power is given to itself in the givenness to it-
self of this ego, such thar this funda- mental I Can is alone capable of walking.
lifting, striking—of accomplish- ing each of the acts implicated in each form
of labor. Because it is only given to itself in the self-givenness of life, this I
Can is living and exists only as such. Taking its possibility from life, ir takes
from it all its traits—ic is living and thus invisible, subjective, individual, and
real. For a number of the es- sential traits flowing from the essence of action,
we cannot find any eco- nomic index. Walking, talking, carrying, striking, and
even running, singing,
Christianity and the World ~~ 245
and so on—these activities are all modes of acting but have nothing eco- nomic
about them, Labor, then, inasmuch as ir consists of such acts, has nothing
economic about it.
This was Marx’s fathomless intuition. He reproaches the English school, and all
economic science, for having treated labor from the start as an economic real-
ity, without seeing that there is a prior question on which everything depends.
To labor considered naively as economic in itself, as it is by both nineteenth-
century and contemporary economists, Marx con- trasts “real” labor. asserting

206
its original and essential phenomenological de- terminations: labor is “subjec-
tive,” “individual,” and “living.” Thus labor is understood as a mode of acting,
and it is unequivocally related to the es- sence of acting, to life. If labor (and,
even more precisely. all human activ- ity) constitutes the content of the world,
its reality, then in fact we have to say: the world’s reality has nothing to do
with its truth, with its way of showing, with the “outside” of a horizon, with
any objectivity. The reality thar constitutes the world’s content is life. Here is
the new evidence: far from fleeing the reality of this world, a Christianity that
knows only life deals only with this reality.
The proof of the living character of the world’s “content” is brought out in
Marx’s economic analysis as a whole. He proposes a transcendental genesis of the
economy. and we should briefly retrace its stunning construc- tion. According to
Marx, reality is by no means economic. One can analyze a sugar cube and never
find its price. One can analyze any human acrivity, whether it is recognized as
labor or not, and never find there something like a “salary” or money or exchange
value. Everything that might be said to be “economic,” and so be examined by
a science like “political economy.” is in itself foreign to the world. ”Economic
reality” is the product of an invention by the human mind. A world, the people
who inhabit it. who produce in it the goods necessary for their existence, who
maintain among themselves a network of complex relations—all thar could very
well have been produced, and still economy {economic reality and the science
of that reality) might
nevertheless be absent from this world. This again is one of Marx’s ideas.
How did an economy in itself foreign to the world’s reality arise, then? Why has
it developed to the point of extending its domain over the world and determining
it altogether? Here the founding theses of Chris- tianity make an unexpected
appearance. Only, in effect, the invisible essence of life explains the appearance
in the world of an “economy.” Here is how.
246 Christianity and the World
With each form of human activity taking its essence from acting and thus from
life, labor finds itself defined by that life. Since life contains reality, la- bor is
itself real. Since it carries within it a basic ipseity, this real labor is in- dividual.
Since life is subjective, work is subjective. Since it is living, work is living, These,
as we have said, are all the traits recognized by Marx in la- bor: real, individual,
subjective, living.
In the concrete activity by which people produce the goods thar are necessary
to them, a moment occurs when, due to the growing complexity of this acrivity,
people must exchange the product of their labor. How can you exchange x
amount of merchandise 4 for y amount of merchandise & when these goods are
qualitatively and quantitatively different? How can you define the weight of salt
that should be given in exchange for some quantity of animal skins? Why, as
a function of the sum of work required for the production of the salt and for
thar of the skins. Therefore, the only possible criterion of exchange is labor.

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In fact, in the many exchanges con- stantly occurring, wha is exchanged is not
merchandise bur the labor thar has produced them. Since exchange presupposes
equality, the exchanged labors should be equal. But as a mode of acting and
drawing its essence from this action, each of these labors is real, subjective,
individual, living— invisible. None lends itself to any measurement, quantitative
or qualitative. This is the aporia: exchange presupposes the measuring of labors
but this is impossible.
And here is the solution: the invention of economy. If the exchange of mer-
chandise presupposes measuring the real labor that has produced them, and if
this measuring is impossible because the labor is invisible, then it becomes a
matter of constructing objective entities to represent these modalities of invis-
ible action and be their equivalents. The invention of economy consists in the
construction and definition of objective equiva- lents that are supposed to repre-
sent invisible real labors and permit com- paring them and thus calculating and
exchanging them. Economy is noth- ing other than the result of this genesis:
the set of objective “representatives” of action, representatives reputed to be
their equivalents.
What do these “representatives” consist of but the representation of real labor,
positioned before the gaze, in the world’s truth, in the form of an objective
norm, of what finds its reality in the Truth of Life: living work. And since
everything shown in the world’s truth is unreal because it is shown there, so the
set of objective equivalents to living labor is also un-
Christianity and the World ~~ 247
real, or more precisely ideal, because they are concepts. The genesis of the
economic consists therefore in the construction of a ser of ideal and unreal
objective equivalents of living labor—notably the prime example among them,
“labor” in the sense of economics, the economic labor done by econ- omists that
Marx called “abstract,” “social” work. Economic work is pre- cisely the unreal
representation of real and invisible work.
This is not the place to explain the construction of each of the ideal objective
equivalents of living and invisible labor, equivalents that are con- stitutive of
economic “reality.” Let us confine ourselves to a few essential observations. Ob-
jective cconomic “reality” is ideal and unreal, like each of the equivalents of
labor from which it is constituted. Thus the economic universe by which mod-
ern thought tends to define the “real” content of so- ciety is only a universe
of abstractions, cach arising from the substitution, for an invisible and unrepre-
sentable modality of living action, of a parame- ter in which one tries to represent
the properties of this action—properties that take their reality only from life.
The economic entities are not confined to representing living labor bur proceed
from them. One of Marx’s key ideas was that exchange value, money. capital,
and so on are produced by the living subjective form of labor and only by it.
The economic universe as a whole constitutes the “content” of this world, which
proceeds from life and refers back to it. Of this content, the world’s truth offers

208
us an inefh- cient appearance, whereas the Truth of Life reveals its veritable
nature, the action that produces economic objects and determines their history.
Far from fleeing economics, Christianity’s intuitions lead us back to the princi-
ple of its development and make it intelligible.
It is on the plane of concrete relations with others thar the reference of the
world’s “content” to the invisible essence of life presents itself with invincible
force. This time it is not a matter of analysis, by a phenomenol- ogy of life, of
“economic reality,” its nature and functioning. The declara- tions of the New
Testament, of Christ himself, enter directly into play in order to produce, in
this domain of the experience of other people more than in any other, their
revolutionary effect.
Since the other, “others,” the “neighbor,” is just another me, an alter ego, its
essence can only be identical to mine. It follows thar everything thar Christianity
has asserted on the subject of this “me” that I am also holds good for this other
“me” that is the other’s ego. The transcendental birth of the ego perrains to the
other just as much as to me. The consequences of
248 Christianity and the World
this observation, usually considered trivial, are immense, however, and overturn
everything that could be said or thought in an implicit way, then or now, about
relations with others. If there is a presupposition thar goes without saying and
on which any approach to this relation inevitably re- lies, then it runs as follows:
the other appears to me in the world; he is 2 Being situated in this world, and my
relation with him, consequently, is a form of this relation to the world and is only
possible within it. Or else: the other is an empirical individual, worldly, bearer
of a set of characteristics that are themselves empirical and worldly. These
characteristics, as we know, are of two sorts, some relating to the content of this
world—social or nat- ural characteristics, then—while others relate to its Truth,
that is to say, to the concrete modes by which the world is phenomenalized:
space, time, causality, and so on. Thus such an individual is born in some place,
at some rime, of parents belonging to some ethnic group, some social milieu,
and he is himself bearer of some sexual determination, some property or some
physical or mental deficiency, and so on.
But if, by his transcendental birth in absolute Life, the ego, the other ¢go as
well as mine, is the Son of this Life, the Son of God, such thar this condition
defines his essence and consequently all his essential determina- tions, then all
his empirical and worldly characteristics are immediately eliminated—especially
everything that arises from a natural genealogy. Here an observation presented
in the course of our preceding chapters takes on a singular focus. What Christ
refused for himself —the very idea of a natural genealogy, the idea that a person
is son or daughter of a man and a woman, that he or she has parents “in the
flesh” —all that is withdrawn from the per- son, too. A person, by virtue of
being a living person in Life, by being its Son, has no other Father than the
One who is “in Heaven.” All his or her characteristics, flowing from the divine

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and invisible essence of life, thus have nothing to do with what arises from the
world and the truth proper to it. And hence this is valid for the other just as
much as for me. The ather is no longer what we see of him in the world and
what we believe he is. Here is Paul’s radical and stupefying statement to the
Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female . .
. ” (3:28).
As for the first four negarions, we would accept them upon reflec- tion, despite
their very strange character. This strangeness relates to the fact thar cach of
them implies rejection of the visible. In fact, this person here is really a Greek,
and that one a Jew. This one is a master and that one a ser-
Christianity and the World ~~ 249
vant. Why are such characteristics, despite their evident importance, social or
spiritual, even despite this evidence, suddenly stripped of meaning, or at least
taken as secondary? One might say it is for ethical reasons. Ir is be- cause we
have an ethical idea of a person whose essential reality cannot be reduced to
Greekness or Jewishness, still less to a social condition, what- ever it may be,
that we refuse in effect to reduce him to this condition. Bur from where does the
idea come that makes us accept despite ourselves this sudden disqualification of
worldly evidence? If it is a matter of history, then we have to say it comes from
Chiistianity itself. If it is a matter of philosophy, then the idea of an ethical
person irreducible to worldly deter minations and unfathomable on their basis
can only come from his invis- ible essence—from his condition of Son generated
in absolute Life and taking from that Life his veritable reality.
But the two final negations plunge us into uncertainty by their extra- ordinary
character. To be a man or a woman, these qualities of the “human being” —
is this nothing but an external, visible, “natural” determination? Or on the
contrary, is it not the innermost reality of such a being, his or her sensibility,
affectivity, intelligence, way of relating to others and to himself, thar is affected
from top to bottom according to whether this “being” is a man or 2a woman?
Paul’s extraordinary declaration cannot be actribured to the singularity or the
excess of his personal thought. On this essential point as on so many others, it
is Christ’s teaching, which he was not able ro hear, that he is taking up in a
rigorous way {contrary to the thesis thar the Chris- tianity we know is a sort
of fabrication by Paul). When the Sadducees, to contest the resurrection, ask
Christ, with regard to the seven brothers who died one after another without
children and had, according to the Law, each married the same woman: “Now
then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be. since the seven were married to
her?” Christ answers, identify- ing the resurrected with angels, that they “will
neither marry nor be given in marriage . . . for they are like the angels. They
are Sons of God, since once resurrected” (Luke 20:27-36).
Does the determination of a person as Son of God abolish the deter- mination of
virility or femininity? Or else, does this abolition only concern the “Son of God”
in the strong sense, someone who has identified himself with absolute Life and

210
who, born a second time, resurrected, has become as cternal as Life? Or else,
referring to resurrection and to Heaven, is this abolition of sexual differentiation,
like this resurrection and like Heaven,
250 Christianity and the World
just an article of faith? Or else, can Paul’s radical thesis (which echoes the no
less radical reply of Christ to the Sadducees—the affirmation thar the essential
reality of the human being is located outside or beyond sexual dif- ferentiation),
can rhis affirmation, instead of arising exclusively from Faith, be proved philo-
sophically, not by a speculative philosophy with always problematical results,
but by a phenomenology capable of formulating propositions of an apodictic
order? Thus it is a matter of knowing if the es- sential truth of the human be-
ing laid bare in the condition of Son leaves sexual determination outside itself,
thus authorizing the apparently extrav- agant declarations of Paul and of Christ
himself.
The phenomenological analysis of the condition of Son that we have pursued
through this book allows us to answer this question with certainty. It will be
shown, moreover, that this question is of decisive interest for un- derstanding
the relations with others that now occupy us. Paul’s setting aside, in defining
a person, determinations like Greek, Jew, master, slave, and finally. man and
woman, is radical only in proportion to the weight (or. if you like. the seri-
ousness) of these determinations. To render his statement less implausible, we
preferred, at first, to consider the determi- nations in question in their empirical
aspect and thus as purely worldly. And it is true that the enumerated properties
are shown in the world. It is from this visible manifestation that they derive
their reality in the eyes of common sense. But this is not the case. Far from
being reducible to their worldly appearance. the determinations set aside by
Paul do belong to life; it is from life thar they draw their reality; it is because
they are living thar they are real. To be Greek or Jew is not limited to the
presentation of ob- jective ethnic characteristics that in fact scarcely exist or do
not exis ar all. To be Greek or Jew is to find oneself determined on the level
of sensibility, affectivity, intelligence, ways of acting—therefore, subjecrively,
according to viral essential modalities—and all this results from belonging to a
cul- ture that cannot define itself except subjectively, by the fundamental sabi-
tus of transcendental life.
To be master, similarly, whether a master in Paul’s time or the boss today of a
waiter or a factory worker, is to be fashioned by the concrete modalities of praxis,
a praxis that is real, individual, subjective, and irself just a determination of
living acting. To be a man or a woman, finally, is quite another thing than to
present a certain external aspect or recogniz- able natural properties, such as
an objective body tha is sexually differen-
Christianity and the World ~~ 251
tiated. Here again, what is said to be “natural” or “objective” can only be
defined on the basis of a certain number of transcendental subjective ex- pe-

211
riences, for example, the internal and lived unfolding of feminine “sex- uality”
and. more generally, the internal unfolding of a body that is origi- nally, in the
very possibility of its “acting” and its “feeling,” 2 subjective and living body.
Why, then, does Paul think he is able to set aside such deter- minations ar the
highest “real” point of what makes for veritable reality and a persons condition?
Because this condition is that of Son. Each of the real determinations thar are
those of a Son are only so—real and living—if given ro themselves in the self-
givenness of absolute Life that gives this Son to himself. And this holds good
for the nevertheless essential determination that makes each Son of Life, here
below, in this world, a man or a woman. In this way, the Christian definition
reveals its infinite profundity. If we scrutinize, in its most essential subjective
transcendental reality, what makes, within each man and each woman, his vir-
ile or her feminine sensibility, with the mul- tiple and differentiated modalities
that impregnate his or her whole life, where would we find something in com-
mon between them, berween these virile and feminine sensibilities, something in
common that would allow Paul, speaking of human beings, to proffer his stun-
ning declaration, “nei- ther male nor female”? This essential common truth is
nothing other and nothing less than what inhabits each determination of virility
and femi- ninity, to wit, the fact that this determination is given to itself and
that this givenness to isself takes place in the same way, is the same, for man
as for woman. It is, for each “human being”—man or woman—the condition
of Son: the living person given to himself in the self-giving of absolute Life. It
is this self-givenness thar is Identical in each: Christ, God. Neither male nor
female: Son of Gad.
Now, what is Identical in each person—the self-giving of absolute phenomeno-
logical Life in its original Ipseity—determines in its entirety the Christian theory
of the relation to another, which now presents a certain number of traits.
The first is that what we dealing with in the relation to the other is never
primarily or solely, despite worldly appearance, a Greek or a Jew, a master or
a slave, a man or a woman: it is a Son. This means a transcen- dental Self
generated in the sclf-generation of absolute Life and in its es- sential Ipseity—
Self taking its ipseity from Life and Life alone. It is only in
252 Christianity and the World
such a Self and through it that any me and any ego are possible. And there is
no Greek and Jew, master and servant, man and woman, unless each of these is
an ego and a me. Thus any relation to one of them, to “others,” pre- supposes
a relation to the transcendental Self without which none of them would be an
“other,” another ego. But any relation to a transcendental Self presupposes a
relation to rhe process of self-generation of life in the Ipseity of which this Self
has been engendered. Any relation to another presup- poses the One whose Son
he is, withour which, being neither a Self, nora me, nor an ego, he would not be
an “other,” another ego.
Thus we return to the decisive intuitions placed in evidence in the parable of

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the shepherd and the sheep related by John and analyzed at length in Chapter
7. It is impossible to have a relation with any me if we do nor also enter into
relation with the power that has joined him to him- self. It is impossible ro enter
into relation with any other—Greek, Jew, master, slave, man or woman—if we
do not first enter into relation with the One who has given this Self to itself in
the original Ipseity in which life is given to self. thus giving itself potentially
to any conceivable living. What gives each Self to itself, making it a Self, as
we said, is its flesh, its parhérik and living flesh. Bur this flesh that is its own
has itself a Flesh that is not its own, the Flesh of the giving to self of absolure
phenomenological Life in the Arch-Son—the Flesh of Christ. We said it was
impossible to touch any flesh without first touching that Flesh.
From this first trait of the relation with the other come a number of ethical
consequences. These “consequences” are nothing other than the very principles
of the Christian ethic, because this ethic is merely the formula- tion of the
intuitions constitutive of the Revelation of Life. If the relation that unites each
Self to itself, making it this self that it is, is in fact the rela tion of Life to itself,
its self-revelation, meaning God, then it is impossible to love God and at the
same time not love each of the Selves thar God gen- erates by giving them to
themselves in His own self-givenness. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,” yet hates
his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). And again: “Whoever loves God must
also love his brother.” This is because “Everyone who loves the father loves his
child as well,” and from this comes, beyond any possible challenge, a value of
absolute attestation: “This is how we know that we love the children of God:
when we love God” (1 John 4:21 and 5:12). The text adds: “and practice his
commandments” (1 John 5:3). We see clearly that these commands are merely
the formulation of the radical phe-
Christianity and the World ~~ 253
nomenological situation in which Life engenders all livings. Moreover, from the
latter’s point of view, these commands are the formulation of his tran- scendental
birth in his condition of Son. Thus the two famous commands of the Gospels,
the two commands ro Love, are placed in the radical intel- ligibility of their
identity, which expresses the condition of Son generated in absolute Life’s self
generation: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And
the second is similar: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37~-38, my
emphasis; see also Mark 12:28}.
From the Identical in each of us—the self-giving of absolute phe- nomenological
Life in the essential Ipseicy of the First Self and thus of any conceivable Self
—results the second trait of Christian theory in relation to others. Within the
perspective belonging to modern philosophy, but also within the customary
representations of this phenomenon, the relation ro the other is thought of on
the basis of a first term that is the ego itself, more precisely this ego that I
am. This is why this first term appears as the origin or center from which the
experience of the other begins. We have to un- derstand how the ego that I

213
am can reach that of another, the alter ego, and thus enter into “relation” with
it. It is not possible to explain systemarically the reasons why all the theories
that take the ego as their point of departure for the relation with others have
failed—ar the network of paralogic that dooms them. We will content ourselves
with a few brief observations.
The first piece of paralogic in the theorizations of the experience of the other
understood as the other ego is precisely the presupposition of the ego itself.
That there is an ego, the other’s as well as mine, goes without saying, to the
point that the very possibility of something like an ego. the possibility of a Self
and an Ipscity in general, never appears as a problem, Thus any theory of the
experience of another is itself undermined by an es- sential lacuna, which a priori
renders unintelligible everything it purports to talk about and even effaces its
existence. What is radical abour the Christian theory is that it places at the
foundation of the relation with the other the most irresistible possibility: the
very existence of egos between which this relation unfolds. Not their simple
existence, in truth, but their very possibility, the possibility of something like
an ego of any kind, mine or that of someone else. And this possibility is that of
a transcendental Self taking its ipscity from the Ipseiry of absolute Life—this is
the Christian de- finition of a person as “Son of God” and as “Son within the
Son.”
254 Christianity and the World
However, if the ego is only possible when generated in the Ipseity of
absolute phenomenological Life and the original Self of this Ipseity, then the
very terms of the relation with others and this relation itself are over- turned.
As long as the ego is taken naively as based on itself and self- sufficient, it can
in fact furnish the point of departure for the relation ro the other, as well as
the terms of this relation: the other himself, the other ego. But as soon as
the possibility of the ego appears as a problem, as soon as evidence appears
thar no ego has ever brought itself into its own condi- tion and that this radical
powerlessness pertains to the other ego as well as mine, then rhe ego’s incapacity
to form the point of departure or the point of arrival for the relation with
others is simultaneously discovered, and thus the usual way this relation is
posed collapses. The relation between egos yields to the relation between Sons.
The relation between Sons implies the Life in which each Son is given to himself.
Thus Christianity circumscribes the very dimension in which the relation with
the other can rake place: in Life and only in it. This is because the terms
between which such a relation must be established are themselves not possible
unless within this life. Bur Life nor only underpins each of the terms between
which the relation with others is established. It also under- pins the relation
itself, not only the possibility of cach of the Sons bur also the possibility for
each of them to enter into relation with the others, to be with them. How
does life underpin this possibility for each of the Sons to be with another, their
being-in-common? Inasmuch as it is itself this Being-in- common. Whar they

214
have in common, in effect, is to be livings. carrying this life in them. The
Being-in-common of the Sons resides in their condition of Son. For this reason,
Being-in-common is as easy and as difficult to understand as the condition of
Son. For this reason, too, Being-in-common fluctuates as does this condition.
Let us look ar these two points,
That the possibility for each person to enter into relation with another resides
in his condition of Son in fact displaces quite radically the point of departure
of this relation, which no longer lies in a person, even if he is un- derstood as
a transcendental ego. Nor does it lie in the transcendental Self thar underlies
the ego. It is beyond the transcendental Self, in what joins it 10 itself, that the
point of departure lies: life, its process of self-generation as the generation of
the First Living in the Ipseity of which any living Self comes into itself, mine
as well as yours. Only in this process of life is access to livings possible. Only
because each living Self comes into itself in this
process of life and rakes part in this process is potential access preserved for
Christianity and the World 255 # :
it, in this process and through it, ro any conceivable living Self.
This is one of the crucial intuitions of Christianity, that the relation to the other
is only possible in God—precisely in the process of divine Life and according to
the modalities in conformity wich which this Life is achieved. Hence, the way in
which any transcendental Self reaches another is the same as the way in which it
reaches itself: by passing under the tri- umphal Arch, through this Door that is
Christ in the parable of the sheep reported by John. It is in the very movement
(Life being made Ipseity in the Self of the Arch-Son and generating in itself any
conceivable Self and particularly mine) in which I reach myself and am given
to myself through my transcendental birth, that I also reach, eventually, the
other—since | identify myself with such movement and coincide with it.
Here is the second point. Since the Being-in-common of Sons resides in their
condition as Sons, it fluctuates like that condition. How does the condition
of Son fluctuate? On the contrary, isn’t it an invariable essence that must be
imperatively present and preserved in its unchanging structure, lacking which
there could be no Son, no person in the Christian sense? But according to
Christianity. the concept of Son is dual in that, forgetful of his condition, de-
prived of his original splendor, de-generate, throwing himself into the world and
fascinated by it, the lost son is only concerned with this world and all that
shows itself to him in it. In this fallenness, his relation with self is modified
from top to bottom: it is no longer his relation to self in Life, the ordeal he
had, by experiencing himself, of the self-experience of absolute Life in him. The
self-experiencing from which he constantly rakes his condition as a living he now
attributes to himself. Thus he is enclosed within himself. The experience he
has of Life within him has become the ex- perience of his own life, purely and
simply. Formerly Son, he has become an ego. this ego thar takes itself for the
foundation of itself and of everything it does. He has entered into the system

215
of transcendental egoism, a system in which he cares only for himself, such that
his relation with himself is no longer his relation to himself within Life—within
Christ and in God—but his relation to himself in a care for self through the
space of a world, What is obscured in this relation to self of a Self caring for
itself in the world is nothing less than his veritable Self, which is only given to
itself in absolute Life’s self-giving, outside the world, far from any Care. Whar
is also ob- scured is absolute Life, God himself.
256 Christianity and the World
Here lies the decisive consequence regarding the relation to others, since this
relation of the Self to the other is of the same nature as its relation ro itself:
Both vary in unison and in the same way. Just as the Self in relation to itself
forgets what makes it possible. its givenness to itself in life’s original Ip- seity,
so the Self relates to the other by subtracting what in the other gives him to
himself —precisely. his givenness to himself in life’s self-givenness. He relates
to the other as to an empirical individual shown in the world, in the best case
as another ego, similar to his own and self-sufficient in his quality as ego. What
is ruled our in both cases is the self-givenness of ab- solute Life in the Ipsciry of
the First Living One, or Christ/God. Or, to put it from the standpoint of each
of these egos, his condition of Son.
Is it necessary to observe that the normal play of intersubjective rela- tions
unfolds inside this system of transcendental egoism? Placing himself at the
center of this system, each person is concerned with the other only with a
view to himself. The other person matters only in relation to my project, is
worth something only with respect to me. But because care is al- ways directed
outside oneself, its reign over exreriority is never interrupted. Whether the ego
is related to itself or to the other, it is always in a world. Hence, the relation of
domination between egos can be reversed, as one sees in eroticism, for example.
The ego shown in the world as other than itself can then, must then, say: “I
am another.” In this exteriority and even when he would like to be reduced to
it, giving himself to the other as if it were just tha, this thing being offered and
good to take. this body ro pos- sess, he does not cease to live himself and to
understand himself as an ego —but an ego that is only open to the world and
given in it. And conse- quently an ego that forgets its very own essence.
In his second birth, by contrast, delivered from the transcendental il- lusion
of the ego, the Son. who never brought himself into the condition thar is his,
experiences life as what constantly carries him into this condi- tion and gives
him to himself. Thus he finds himself placed first within this Life before being
placed in Being itself. Where he finds himself placed first is also where his
relation to the other begins. Just as his relation to self now repeats the process
of his transcendental birch and expresses phenomeno- logically his condition of
Son, so, too, his relation to the other finds irself turned upside down, It is no
longer the ego in him thar furnishes the point of departure for the relation, but
rather, within the Son that he is, life it- self. Similarly. it is no longer to another
ego that he relates, bur to a Son,

216
Christianity and the World ~~ 257
to Life. Where the Son is placed first. there too, the other is found first.
Where the Son comes from, from there also comes the other. Where he be-
gins, the other begins also. The self-givenness of absolute phenomenologi- cal
Life, in which each Son is given to himself, is the Being-in-common of Sons, the
preunifying essence that precedes and preunites each of them, determining him
a priori both as a Son and as sharing in this essence, po- tentially. along with all
conceivable Sons, and in this way as “members of God’s household” (Ephesians
2:19), “a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9}. Access to the other is only by
way of the access of a Son 10 a Son, in the transcendental birth of both, in the
self-givenness of absolute phenom- enological Life in its essential Ipseity—only
in God and within the Arch- Son: “So in Christ we who are many form one
body” (Romans 12:5).
From the fact that the Being-in-common of Sons is their Being-in- God and their
belonging to a “chosen race,” to a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9) result the
prescriptions of the Christian ethic. We see once again that these prescriptions
are not unreal and ideal laws, bur modalities in which di- vine action is accom-
plished, the generation of Sons in Lifes self-generation, what Christ calls “the
Father’s Will.” Thar one should love the other is a pre- scription any ethic could
accommodate, as uncertain as its foundation might be. An ideology lacking any
foundation, as for example democratic social- ism in our day, could equally well
lay claim ro it. But that ene should love the other who is your enemy, even if he
is depraved. degenerate, hypocriti- cal, or criminal. is in effect only possible if
this other person is not what he appears, not even this I Can, the transcendental
ego who has committed all these misdeeds. lt is only if, as Son, the other carries
within him Life and its essential Ipscity that he may. in his depravity, be the
abject of love, or rather not him—in the sense of a person, the one whom other
people call a per- son—but the power that gave him to himself and constantly
gives him ro himself even in his depravity. The command is to love the other
insofar as he is in Christ and in Ged. and on this condition alone.
This is why, as soon as this condition fails to appear, the imprescrip- tible love of
others also disappears. The other is now just another person, a person as people
are—hypocrites, liars, ambitious, sinful, egotistical, blind, fighting ferociously
for their own advantage and prestige, no less combative toward others who
oppose their projects and desires. Forgetful of their ver- itable condition and
the others veritable condition, they behave toward themselves and others as
mere people. Then the whole edifying morality
258 Christianity and the World
chat wishes to found itself on the mere person, on the rights of man, dis- covers
its emptiness, its prescriptions are flouted, and the world is given over to horror
and sordid exploitation, to massacres and genocides. It is not by chance that
in the twentieth century the disappearance of “religious” moral- ity has given
rise not to a new morality, a “secular morality,” albeit a moral- ity without any

217
definite foundation, but to the downfall of any morality and to the terrifying
and yer daily spectacle of that downfall.
By implicating God in the intersubjective relation between “people” understood
as his “Sons,” Christianity has given that relation an incredible depth, a char-
acter that is not only pashérik but tragic. It is pathétik because the substance
of this relation is life, whose substance is pathos, and tragic because when Sons
either forget their own condition or rediscover it, this relation correspondingly
plays out for them their own perdition or salva- tion. There is salvation when
a Son relates to the other as to another Son— as to someone given to himself
in the original Ipseity of absolute Life and in the originating Self of this Ipscity.
“He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who
sent me” (Matthew 10:40).
The schools of thought that have reproached Christianity for its flight from any
effectiveness, outside the world, toward an imaginary “beyond,” find within the
living relations between individuals (relations that, even more than the social
praxis of which they are also the weft, form the real content of this world)
merely bitter disappointment. What lies at the origin of the conflict with all
these superficial schools of thought, which have for- ever identified reality with
what one can see and touch, with what is shown in the world, is the radically
new definition of reality as life that Christian- ity offers. It is a phenomenology
of life thar gives reality its veritable essence, pathérik and invisible. Radically
foreign to the world, life nevertheless con- stitutes its real content. Here below,
too, life extends its reign. Its concrete modalities are the atemporal substance
of our days. Any visible appearance is paired with an invisible reality. With
each mouthful of the visible, as Kafka says, an invisible mouthful is given to us:
on earth as in heaven.
Conclusion
Christianity and the Modern World
The relation of Christianity to the modern world can only be under- stood
against the background of a radical divergence in their appreciation of what
man’s veritable Being might be. To a certain extent. modern thought contin-
ues the traditional approach, according to which what man is is linked to the
knowledge we can have of him and depends on ir and its ad- vances. What is
more obvious? From this perspective, the veritable Being of man is nor a point
of departure for knowledge and thus of everything it can teach and show us. We
will know at the end of knowledge’s development what our Being truly is, when
everything that was only vaguely glimpsed in an overall intuition has become
the object of precise and rigorous scholar- ship, what is today called science.
If the veritable Being of man depends on the knowledge we have of him, then
in effect an upheaval in knowledge—its nature, methodologies, and objecr of
study—should lead to a complete change in the conception of what a person is.
Such an upheaval in knowledge occurred at the begin- ning of the seventeenth
century, as we mentioned, when Galileo contested the reality of the sensible

218
qualities of the universe in order to oppose them, as constitutive of the reality
of the universe. ro material objects with mea- surable dimensions. The sensory
knowledge of these illusory sensible qual- ities would be replaced. by geometric
knowledge of extended material bod- ies. With Descartes and the mathemarical
formulation of this geometric
260 Conclusion
knowledge, modern science—a physical and mathematical approach to the ma-
terial universe—was founded. : Inasmuch as man himself is subject to the type
of knowledge that & considered today the prototype of all rigorous scholarship
(and thus of an Yo science), so his nature is likewise clearly defined. A man is
composed of ma- terial parricles, and his veritable reality depends on certain
specific struc: tures of organization in these particles, especially chemical and
biological structures. Let us recall that when he achieved the proto-founding
act of modern science as geometric knowledge of material bodies, Galileo attrib-
uted the existence and nature of the sensible qualities of objects to the bio-
logical properties of the human organism. Thus man is part of the material
universe and can be entirely explained on that basis. Whether one likes it or
: not, this conception of man determines in various ways thought in our era.
_ Man is a trivial thing. Not only is he just a cog in this immense machine,
subject to its blind functioning, but he himself does nor escape a radical de-
termination that is not only external but internal: he is not even master in his
own house! Such conceptions are linked to science, to the point of appearing as
scientific conceptions themselves, as scientific truths in the sense thar they make
themselves part of science and have to be asserted as such. This is an illusion
we have denounced’ by tracing an insurmountable line between what science
says and what is said by many of those who practice it, who believe they are
speaking in its name—between science and scientism. To reduce man to a pare
of the material universe, similarly subject to the phys- ical and mathematical
approach of modern Galilean science, it is necessary to have previously reduced
any form of knowledge to such an approach: to presuppose that there exists no
mode of knowing other than Galilean science, that is to say, modern physics.
But science by itself is incapable of establish- ing such a presupposition—a fact
that escapes its notice. What does it re- ally see? In the Galilean field, there are
only material bodies with their ideal physical and mathematical determinations.
Where in such a field is it shown, where can we read the assertion, thar it is the
unique constituent of any conceivable reality? One might think in the presence
of this field that it shows itself, and that showing is not in itself precisely any
of these material objects nor any of their ideal determinations. This showing is
the appearing of the world as opposed to what appears in it, a pure appearing
that Galilean science never
”takes into account, even when it is the irresistible ©
does take into account. But something else appears’in - that it is not concerned
with, either: the sensible qualities of hing Galileo disregarded but without which
he would never have had the sgh est idea of these things. Their being placed

219
outside the field that will’ bele to science does not prevent the fact thar that field
is constituted, positive and negatively, on the basis of them. And then, once
these sensible qualities are placed outside the scientific field, what becomes of
them? What is their basis if they are foreign to its mareriality, its extensiveness,
its forms, and their ideal determination? Bur, in any case, it is another sphere of
reality that they define or to which they refer. Moreover, it is another mode of
appear- ing than that of things, than the world’s truth, which they presuppose,
since the sensible qualities laid out on the surface of things and which seem to
- long to things could have been dissociated from them—since they refer in
il
; : afi : . 3 id necessity to a sensibility, to sensations and pure impressions, and
ultimately,
to their manner of appearing and of giving themselves: in the experience of
self of absolute phenomenological Life and its patherik self-givenness and only
in it. Thus we are sent back to Christianity’s decisive intuitions. We have
just recalled that the confrontation between these intuitions and the Galilean
postulate, which will determine the modern world and its thought, produces an
understanding of the relation of Christianity © this world, yr well as of their
respective opinions on what makes up the veritable Being 0 a person. , While
the knowledge that has become the modern Galilean science 0
the material universe reduces a person to a part of thar universe, to a com- plex
of molecules and particles and the mathematical determinations from which they
are inseparable, as they are just the point of intersection of these parametric
networks, what does Christianity have to say about the veritable Being of a
person? That he or she is the Son: not the son of a biological life, which
according to biology itself does not exist, but that of the only life thar does exist,
the absolute phenomenological life that is nothing other than God’s essence. Let
us leave that last part aside, though, since science neither knows what God is nor
recognizes any properly religious assertion arising from “faith.” Let us consider
this phenomenological life in icself, from a purely philosophical viewpoint, as we
have done throughout this book. Of course, one cannot “consider” this life, since
we never see it. With respect to invisible life, philosophy (a mode of thought)
is as powerless as science, be-
262 Conclusion
cause life in general escapes thought and any intentional aim, any gaze, any
“outside,” just as it escapes the physical and mathematical knowledge of the
material universe, which is merely a particular form of this gaze. But the life
that does nor show itself in the world, that eludes its truth, reveals itself to
itself in its parheétik self-revelation, experiencing itself with an invincible force,
such thar, even if we were to say that no other world exists—no kind of thought,
no knowledge or science—still this experiencing of self by life that is its “living”
would nevertheless be produced. It is of this invisible and invincible Life that a
person is the Son.

220
However, a person is radically other if the access to what makes his essential
Being, if his own access to himself, resides in invisible Life and only there. The
access by a person to himself is his own essence, his relation to himself, his Self.
How a person can accede to himself, how he can relate to himself in such a way
as to be able to be a Self is what is explained by the theory of Son (Son of Life,
since thar is where Sons are). Inasmuch as life gives itself to itself in the original
Ipscity of the First Self and in this alone, each Self is given to itself so as to
become this Self thar ir is, the Self of any me and any conceivable ego. Bur it is
only as this Self, as this me or this ego. that something like a “person” is possible.
Therefore one has to say not only what we have just said—that man is otherwise
if the access to his es- sential Being, if his own access to himself. is made within
life—but also that he would be otherwise if the access to himself were made in
the world, in knowledge, in thought, and especially in modern scientific thought
is- suing from the Galilean revolution and in the field opened up by this sci-
ence. In the field opened by Galilean science, there are material bodies, mi-
crophysical particles, molecules, amino acid chains, neurons, and so on, but
no Self. in the field opened by modern science, there is no person. It is not
that the upheaval of knowledge that resulted from the emergence of the entirely
new scholarship of modern science has similarly upset (or at least modified)
our idea of a person, what makes his essential Being; rather, sci- ence quite
simply suppresses it. On the contrary, the obsolete knowledge of Christianity,
a knowledge that is two millennia old, furnishes us not with entirely limited
and useless data about humans: today it alone can tell us, in the midst of the
general mental confusion, what man is.
That man, who is only possible as a Self, and thus as a me and as an ego. should
by the same token be possible only where something like a Self intervenes, is
rigorously taken into account by the Christian theory of the
Conclusian ~~ 263
Son. That man is the Son of God, Son of absolute Life, does not mean any-
thing other than this: it is in the very movement by which life gives itself to
itself in the process of its eternal self-revelation that also is born the Ipseity
in which any conceivable Self is given to itself as this Self that it is. Such a
process constitutes the transcendental birth of man in God, as his Son, since
man carries a Self in him and he is only possible on this basis. Thar is why
man is only possible as a Son of God, why there is no man—no Self—ex- cept
engendered in Him and by Him, in this process of Life’s self-givenness, which is
identically thar of His self-revelation—the Revelation of God. However, if man
is only possible insofar as he is a Self, and if this Self is only possible in turn if
engendered in the process of the absolute Life of God, the decisive consequence
is that the negation of God is identically the
. negation af man. It is this dual negation that the modern world places con-
stantly before us, thereby revealing itself as a fundamentally anti-Christian
world and thus radically alien to man.

221
The negation of God results directly from the fact that, never being shown in
the world, Life can only in fact be denied, explicitly or not, as long as the
world’s truth, extending its reign over everything that is, is posed as the site of
any conceivable reality. It is precisely with the rise of the Galilean field and the
systematic spread of this field as the sole object of true knowl- edge that (reality
being circumscribed to this field) no other phenomeno- logical site appears in
which anything like the Living of life can occur—no place for God.
Once again, it is not science that denies God—any more than biol- ogy denies
life, How could they? We have attributed to biology itself the words of Frangois
Jacob—”Biologists today no longer study life”—be- cause, for once, what is said
about science by a scientist does not spring from scientism but is absolutely true.
Bur if you think about it, you must admit that this proposition stating the truth
of biology cannot be formu- lated by biology. To know thar biology is no longer
concerned with life, you have at least to know what life is, which is precisely
what biology does not know. The same is true for science in general: thar life
is absent in prin- ciple from the Galilean field is something about which science
knows nothing and has no means of knowing. It does not even have an idea
of life. which never appears to its gaze. Because they ignore all this absolute
phenomenological life and cannot formulate any proposition about it and still
less pronounce a denial of it, biology and science cannot be held re-
264 Conclusion
sponsible in themselves for what is happening before our eyes. They are in-
nocent of God’s murder.
Because biology and science in general know nothing about Gad, they don’t
know anything about the living transcendental Self drawing its essence from life
and withour which no person is possible. There is no per- son who is not a me
and a living Self, and no Self who does not experience itself in absolute Life’s
original experience of itself—in God’s Ipseiry. No more than it could achieve
God’s murder can science achieve that of man, the man whose true essence it
is basically ignorant about, to the extent that it has eliminated the living of
life, and thus any living Self, in the very act by which it was constituted. Thus
the idea of scientific reductionism, as specific to science and accomplished by
it, appears highly contestable. In order to reduce the living transcendental Self
(the Self that experiences it- self in life’s experience of itself and is a Self only in
that experience) to the thematic content of Galilean science (for example, to a
system of neurons), it is by no means necessary to know everything about those
neurons, as elaborate and developed as this knowledge might be, The precondi-
tion of any thought process aimed at reducing the true and essential Being of
man to biological structures (for example, to systems of neurons) is the prior
knowledge of this vanscendental Self without which there is no person— a Self
thar escapes the gaze of biology. as of science in general. Inasmuch as it obeys
the presuppositions and prescriptions pertaining to its foundation, modern sci-
ence finds itself in principle incapable of proceeding to the re- ductionism with
which it is reproached.

222
Still, the extraordinary progress of this science in modern times, no- tably bi-
ology in the twentieth century. and the spectacular results ic has produced,
which continue to slowly modify people’s ways of life—thereby posing what is
called “society’s problems” —have given birth to the univer- sal convicrion that
roday science must define the only true knowledge hu- manity possesses, and by
the same token thar its object (this Galilean field composed of molecules and
microphysical particles) must he the only real- ity. Hence, while mathematics
and its methodologies are alone held as wor- thy. what is not offered to their
examination and does not appear within the domain of knowledge they circum-
scribe instead is eliminated, stricken from any pretense to be an object of science
and thus to be something real. Of course, the living transcendental Self is not
shown and cannot be shown in this Galilean field. and so the motivation of the
thesis—rthar Galilean
Conclusion 265°
knowledge is the only truth and that its domain defines the field of all possible
reality—cannot be shown there, either. It doesn’t matter! This is now a con-
viction, not only of science but of the modern mind, which believes irself to be
“scientific” and to speak in the name of science: reality is the material universe,
It is this modern mind with scientific pretensions that everywhere enters into
conflict with Christianity in order to destroy it. From this con- flict results the
theoretically anti-Christian or a-Christian world in which we are living.
In fact, from the moment scientific knowledge is taken as the only true knowledge
and the Galilean field of the material universe that it ap- prehends is taken as
the sole reality, then what does not appear in such a field — absolute Life, which
experiences itself outside the world, the Ipseity of this life that is its “experience
of self.” any transcendental Self drawing ‘its essence from this Ipseity, and finally
any “me” that is possible only as a Self—nothing of that exists. “The death
of God,” 2 dramatic leitmotif of modern thought attributed to some audacious
philosophical breakthrough and parroted by our contemporaries, is just the
declaration of intent of the modern mind and its flat positivism. But because this
death of God de- stroys the interior possibility of man, since no man is possible
who is not first a living Self and a “me,” it surikes at the very heart of man
himself. Therefore, ar the moment they are challenged Christianity’s crucial
theses are verified. Just as these say it is impossible to reach a living without
reach- ing Life, to strike a person without striking the Christ and therefore the
God in him, so it is impossible to deny the latter without proceeding by the
same token to the negation of the former, ro spit upon God without spit- ting
upon man. And this is why the elimination of Christianiry under the combined
effect of Galilean beliefs and their almost exclusive teaching in all places where
this teaching is practiced inexorably leads to the debacle of humanism in all its
forms.
The defense of the veritable man, transcendental man, is the task that philoso-
phy has always recognized as its own. In modern philosophy. this defense has
taken the form of a transcendental cheory of knowledge. What characterizes

223
such a theory is that, unlike science. which is con- cerned with knowledge of
the objects in its specific domain, transcenden-
tal theory asks about the possibility of any knowledge in general. Thus Kant
has shown that the possibility of knowing any phenomenon whatso- ever refers
back to a priori forms of intuition (space, time) as well as to cat-
266 Conclusion
egories of understanding, forms without which there would be no phe- nomenon
for us, and consequently no science. Transcendental philosophy leads us from
what appears to the appearing of what appears. This pure appearing consid-
ered in itself is called by modern philosophy “conscious- ness,” “transcendental
consciousness,” “consciousness of something,” “in- tentionality,” “Being-in-the-
world,” and so on. These diverse systems of conceptualization assert the relation
ro an “Qutside” and the truth of the world as the unique essence of phenomenal-
ity. Within the world’s truth, though, as we have repeatedly shown, no Ipseity
is created and there is no Self, no me. and so no man, either. The incapacity
of modern philosophy to preserve man’s true being echoes thar of science and
raises ir to a pitch.
The vanishing of the inner possibility of man, of his “essence,” makes him an
empry shell, a cavity open to all winds and susceptible to being filled by any
content. The different contents proposed by modern thought and presented as
so many determinations (and ultimately, definitions) of what makes the essential
Being of man are naturally borrowed from the different sorts of knowledge that
have risen on the Galilean horizon. On the one hand, there are the properly
Galilean kinds of knowledge, the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, biology.
On the other, there are the so-called “hu- man” sciences attached to certain
specific aspects of human behavior: psy- chology. sociology, economics, law,
history, and so on.
The hard sciences ignore everything about man, starting where man finishes,
finishing where man starts. If what makes the essential Being of man is the
experiencing of itself by a transcendental Self, then it is deprived in principle
of neurons, molecules. particles, and so forth—in the very act by which their
nature has been decided a priori. This occurred in the Galilean foundation of
modern science, which excluded from the universe everything that was human
about it: everything sensible, subjective, living,
The so-called human sciences, fascinated by the Galilean model, bor- row its
mathematical methodologies and strain to extend them systemari- cally. In so
doing they remain outside the sphere of what is proper to man as living Selves.
In effect, an abyss opens between life and mathematical ideals, separating reality
and irreality forever, This abyss was perceived by Marx’s transcendental gaze
when he asked about the possibility of measur- ing the living (and thus real)
work that made possible the economic ex- change of goods. The random and
arbitrary construction of ideal economic objects that are presumed to be the
representatives (thus the objective equiv-

224
Conclusion 267
alents) of invisible life, the invention of economics, was the response of hu-
manity to a practical and unavoidable question.
This substitution of ideal entities for life, on the model of economics, is what the
human sciences unwittingly accomplish. Thus they take their specific objects for
the definition of reality, while the transcendental Self to which these “objects”
always secretly refer (and without which they have no meaning) disappears be-
neath the superimposed strata of all kinds of para- meters. So now the possibility
of this living Self, or the transcendental birth in absolute phenomenological Life,
has become gibberish for the human sci- ences. Their objects become analogous
ro those of the hard sciences, purely Galilean, and any difference between the
two types of science tends to be ef- faced. Henceforth, their contents, too, tend
to be identified with each other. Experimental scientific psychology, for exam-
ple, is now just biology applied to the complex animal that is man. There is
no longer even any question of man in his specificity, as a living transcendental
Self and possible only in this guise, as something that experiences himself, who
feels, who agonizes, who suffers and enjoys, who acts, who wants and does not
want.
What is a man who is no longer a me, a person emptied of his capac- ity to feel
himself and thus ra “live”? At bottom, this amounts ro asking: What is a person
reduced to his apparition in the worlds ruth? The answer is: an automaton, a
computer complex, a robot—the external appearance of a man without what
makes him a man, the transcendental Self. But still, no transcendental Self
brings itself into the condition that is its own. Given to itself and feeling itself
in the self-givenness of absolute Life and in it alone, any transcendental Self is
Son of this life.
Son of Life or automaton is what John perceived in his apocalyptic vi- sion.
The automaton is the Beast—or not truly the Beast, since the Beast contains
a hidden reference to what might be something like this living and harmonious
subjectivity that inhabits us, this phenomenological subjectivity that makes us
beings of Light in the very bosom of our Night. The Beast still mimics life.
What is proposed and defined as a man empty of what makes a man is therefore
not the Beast, nor even the Monster. It was not the monstrous Beast that made
Marx shudder when he entered a mechan- ical workshop of his day and saw in
the equipment functioning all by itself a sore of terrifying caricature of human
action, of “living work.” When the material apparatus functioning all by itself
is really cut off from any relation with any human activity and is defined by this
exclusion, then it is no
268 Conclusion
longer a Beast but something that is foreign to any feeling, any action, any
living, to the capacity to experience itself, but that still behaves as some- thing
chat acts. Whar Descartes uneasily calls by the name used at the time, the
“automaton,” John sees in its nakedness, stripped of what is still the subjective

225
condition of this function, this “automatism”; not the Beast but its inert copy,
inanimate, “the statue of the Beast” (Revelation 13:14). Bur “automaton” or
“statue of the Beast” exists only on condition that any transcendental Self is
destroyed, annihilated—denied. Bur how can a transcendental Self be denied
unless the conditions that make it possible are themselves denied? These con-
ditions are explained by the transcendental birth of this Self, withour which
no person is possible. They refer back to the generation of the first Self in the
original Ipseity in which Life generates itself; they refer ro Christ. Someone
who denies not man’s existence but his very possibility, who undertakes the
process of eliminating it in principle and a priori—an elimination that precedes
and involves the effective and radical elimination of man—is the one who de-
nies Christ: the Anti-Christ. The negation the Anti-Christ undertakes is thus
double. On the one hand. he denies that Jesus is the Christ (the affirmation
that Jesus is the Christ is what defines Christianity; outside this affirmation
Christianity does nor exist), To deny thar Jesus is the Christ is to say thar man
has no need of being a living Self and consequently a living Self generated in Life
and in Life’s original Ipseity. In other words, it is not necessary to experience
oneself in order to be something like a man, And because such an assertion is
absurd, the negation uttered by the Anti-Christ is the negation of man. But the
Anti-Christ proceeds to a second negation. To deny cha Je- sus is the Christ is
to deny thar there was a Christ, and also to deny that there was a First Self
generated in Life’s self-generation as the precondition of this self generation. To
deny thar Jesus is the Christ is not only to deny man, bur also to deny this
First Self and the Ipscity from which absolute Life was engendered. and to deny
Life itself. It is to deny the Father and the Son, inextricably. This is what
the following verses from John’s First Letter say, densely and precisely: “Who
is the liar? It is the man who denies thar Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is
the antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son
has the Father; whoever ac- knowledges the Son has the Father also” (1 John
2:22-23), Why is someone who denies thar Jesus is the Christ a liar? We must
think this through if we want to understand anything abour the essence of
Conclusion 269
our world and also the singular relation thar ties Christianity to this world.
In other words, who is the Anti-Christ today, who is the liar? How and why
does the Anti-Christ lie? We have established, on the one hand, thar a liv- ing
transcendental Self only occurs in the coming into self of Life and in the Ipseity
in which this coming into self takes place and, on the other hand. that no man
is possible who is not a Self, if he does not himself come into the Ipseity of this
life. If one denies both of these assertions, wha re- mains of man? We asked:
What remains of man outside the Truth of life, in the world’s truth? An empty
appearance, a bell that rings hollow. This is the lie: making us believe that
man is reduced to something that feels nothing, and does not feel himself, to
what Revelation calls “idols that cannot see or hear or walk” (Revelation 9:20),
to waves of particles, chains of acids.

226
Who is the Anti-Christ today, in our time, in our world? Why, the world itself—
or rather, the principle on which this world is being con- structed and organized.
For here we should note that the negation of the transcendental Self of man is
not only speculative or theoretical, On the theoretical plane, it is true, this
negation involves immense consequences. As we have seen, the content of any
knowledge about man is not only modified but orally changed when this content
is interpreted not as a Self, but precisely as a reality in itself foreign to this Self
and to transcendental Life, from which it is born, The very honorable assertion
that Jesus is a man (albeit an exceptional and extraordinary man whose erecting
of a magnificent morality should in any case inspire respect) proceeds to a hid-
den but no less radical negation of the being of the Self. Here an appar- ently
modest and well-meaning assertion takes a scandalous turn. To say that Jesus
is a man, to speak simply of “Jesus,” is to deny that he is the Christ and to
treat this marvelous man as a liar—since it is true that Jesus always explicitly
referred to himself as the Messiah and that the theme of the New Testament, the
passionate confrontation with the priests. and moreover, what Christ says about
himself and his own nature, all rest solely on the tirelessly repeated affirmation—
the foundation of the Christian faith—that he is the Christ.
Bur we have to grasp this question of whether Jesus is just a man— exceptional,
extraordinary, and so on—from a still more essential perspec- tive, Within the
truth of Life such a proposition is quite simply absurd. In the Truth of Life and
in the metaphysical light of this truth, man, the living transcendental Self, is
only generated in this Life and in the original Self of
170 Conclusion
its essential Ipseity. We have established ar length? thar there is no man ex- cept
as “Son of God” and “Son within the Son.” So then, if the Son does not exist,
no man is possible. The Allegation of the Anti-Christ—the as- sertion that the
Christ is just Jesus and that Jesus is juse a man, that he is not “Jesus Christ”—
is not only the liar’s greatest deceit, bur also philosoph- ically untenable. Just
as it is impossible to conceive a living without pre- supposing the absolute Life
in him, and just as it is impossible to live as this living without experiencing
chis life within (“absolute” because no liv- ing brings this life into himself, but
only experiences himself in it), there- fore no me and no Self has ever had the
power to bring itself into its Ipse- ity, into this condition of being a Self and a
me. It is only within Life and within the Ipscity in which it has become Life
that something like Selves and transcendental me’s are possible.
Burt we are not going to return to the consequences, infinite and quite fatal for
man, of the Anti-Christ’s thesis. I have said that this assertion has not only
theoretical value but also determines practice. Upon the Anti- Christ’s Alle-
gation (even when this Allegation is completely ignored these days) is founded
the organization of the whole modern world. Any form of organization acts and
rests upon this. Acting itself implies an I Can without which no power can be
exercised, without which no action is possible. This I Can that relies on the ego
thus leads back to a me, to a Self, and finally to the Ipseity of absolute Life—to

227
Christ/God. Such were the presuppositions of the Christian theory of acting.
On the one hand. acting is only possible in life, there is only living action—for
example, living work. On the other hand, acting is not only unfolded in Life bur
receives any possible moriva- tion from it, from the life that is not only the ego’s,
bur this absolute Life to which any particular life, all living. and any living Self
owe their lives. From the foundation of any particular and concrete action upon
the absolute Life that gives the self to itself comes the principle of the Christian
ethic—partly an ethic of renunciation, the possibility of rediscovering, in the
ego’s rela- tion to itself, the power thar relates it to itself, the acting of absolute
Life. But it is also an ethic of regeneration and second birth, which consists in
re- discovering in oneself this acting of absolute Life, and henceforward to live
this new life, which is eternal life.
What becomes of action under the imprint of the Anti-Christ? To the extent
that the negation of the First Self involves thar of any conceivable
Self, ir destroys the very possibility of acting. What would action be if it did
Conclusion 271
not carry within ir a living Self, did not experience itself and reveal itself in
life’s self-revelation? It would be a blind external process, analogous to all
those that compose the universe’s fabric. So if it is a matter of organizing and
transforming that universe, what kind of knowledge would serve as a basis for
this transformation, if ir can no longer be, as in man’s past, the experi- ence life
has of itself in the parhétik effort of its living action? lt will be the knowledge of
Galilean science. The mransformation of the material universe re- bing upon the
physical and mathematical knowledge of this universe is modern technology. So
it is seen as a matter of setting up and putting into operation objective material
apparatuses borrowed from this universe and its internal processes. apparatuses
constructed and developed in the light of Galilean science. Technology (modern,
Galilean, not traditional technology relying on the living body and essentially
subjective) is the self-transformation of the material universe thanks to the
physical and mathematical knowledge of this same universe, such that in the
system of this self-transformation, there is no living left: neither “man,” nor me,
not Self nor Son nor Arch-Son. not God—no life of any sort. And also such that
each element or each con- stituent of this system repeats its overall structure.
A technology in princi- ple foreign to life (and based upon its exclusion) is the
essence of action in the era of the Anti-Christ, when the very possibility of the
living Self has been denied.
The implementation of that kind of technology carries consequences that are
visible everywhere today, to the point that you could say that the modern
world is its billboard. Such consequences are necessary to the extent that they
merely repeat the presupposition of a system that extends its reign to the whole
planet, sowing desolation and ruin everywhere. Along with the destruction
of the living Self. the presupposition is its elimination of any form of action
and its very destruction, inasmuch as there is no action ex- cept living action

228
and its replacement by modern technology. that ensemble of objective marerial
processes that are in themselves foreign to any life.
One of the traditional forms of acting consists of the production process for the
material goods necessary for human existence, which is there- fore present at
the base of any society. What is happening today to this pro- cess is the tragic
illustration, and thus the proof, of the expulsion of the liv- ing Self outside
human action, and the consequences of this expulsion. Ir is only too evident
thar these consequences—the destruction of the living Self and thus of man—are
just the repetition or reappearance of the presupposi-
272 Conclusion
tion of a system that is not only that of the economy bur of the modern world
as a whole. “Exclusion,” notably the exclusion of a growing number of workers
from the economic and social circuic (or what we have just called the expulsion
of the living Self outside human action) is not an unfortunate byproduct of the
senseless extension of a purebred capitalism indifferent to people. The extension
of this uncontrolled capitalism goes along with its in- ternal destruction under
the effects of the hyperdevelopment of modern technology. By constantly di-
minishing living work, technology exhausts the source of economic wealth, that
is to say, capital itself, which it destroys in turn, But nothing of this would
have been possible if man, the transcenden- tal Self generated in the Ipseity of
absolute Life, had not been previously eliminated from the Western view and
from the organization of the world ser up by that view.
If the system of technology that sweeps man away from the surface of the earth
proceeds from the negation of man’s transcendental Self—or ultimately. from
the Anti-Christ—and if the Anti-Christ is the liar, and if today one must cry
as in John’s time “Who is the liar if not the man who denies that Jesus is the
Christ?” then in what way can such a system, re- vealing its ravages day by
day, be called “lying”?
When pilots are trained for supersonic warplanes, those in charge of this training
encounter almost insurmountable difficulties. How can you entrust an aircraft of
the utmost complexity—and cost—ro an apprentice pilot who has not mastered
it? And who can attain mastery of it except by being in contact with the aircraft
by practicing the maneuvers of takeoff, navigation, combar, landing. and so on,
by being able to handle multiple commands and decode multiple signals?
We know that warfare, and everything that prepares for it or is linked to ir in
some way, has heen one of the principle causes of technological progress—at
least as long as technology was obeying ends other than itself, The solution here
was to simulate a space similar to one in which the pilot will be placed. the
ensemble of conditions in which his actions will un- fold—the instruments. their
placement, and the precise gestures required to use them—exactly ro duplicate
all the information that he will receive and more generally the whole perceptible
universe that will define his field of action. the sensations and impressions
of all sorts that he will experi- ence—visual, aural, kinesthetic—in shart, the

229
simulation on the ground of the concrete “living” that will be che pilot’s in flight
and in combat. This
Conclusion 273
solution implied the construction of a set of complex and sophisticated
apparatuses—computers, robots, and so on—capable of reproducing faith-
fully for the pilot not only his immediate instrumental and technological
environment, but also his relations with it, the experiences and perceptions
thar he would have if he were flying a real aircraft.
The internal arrangement of the pseudocabin would be just part of a fictional
spectacle, similar to the spectacle and impressions that the student pilot would
perceive and feel if he were really flying, What he sees outside, too, would be
similar to what he would see in a real flight, in a real sky! The same bursts
of light, the same trajectories of phantom airplanes on which he opens fire,
the same explosions, the same racket, same looping, same losses of equilibrium,
same rockets, same targets. hit or missed, same suc- cesses, same failures! A
complete and prefect reproduction, in its “physical and emotional components,
of simulated combat—of real fictive combat of, if you prefer, of fictive real
combat. In the perfect simulation, as in a hal- lucinarion. there is no longer any
difference between the true and the false, and there cannot be. But when nothing
distinguishes true from false, then a new era begins, a dangerous time, not just
of episodic lying but of sys- tematic, permanent, efficient, and ontological lying
that can no longer be perceived a such. All series of appearances are false,
even when, by their im- mediate sensory pressure, they impose themselves as
real. Bur this timc of a lying that is no longer so perceived, and cannot be, is
a rime of madness. Madness is nothing but the impossibility of distinguishing
appearance from reality—in the example here, the impossibility of establishing
a division be- tween the series of simulated appearances and the exactly similar
ones that compose the system in reality. oo
Now let us imagine the simulation in the technical and scientific world of a
procedure applied not only in the military domain but to social relations, for
example to the erotic relations between men and women. And lét us hypothesize
that men can use a simulator. The man (like the student pilot) is placed in a
certain position and the appearance of a womans body is gradually unfolded in
its various aspects, not as on a two-dimensional screen burt beneath his fingers
such that each movement of his hand or body discovers a new segment of the
female body with its own corresponding movement—to each of his caresses cor-
responds a woman’s caress—while within him are wakened the preset sequences
of desire and erogenous sen- sations. For the user of this erotic simulation, a
sort of ontological reversal
274 Conclusion
is produced. Science has reduced the living transcendental Self to a dead ob-
ject of the Galilean field, to networks of neurons that feel nothing, think nothing,
say nothing. So now it is necessary to restore to this automaton some human

230
property or appearance. Special computers enter into the ac- tion. Beneath his
touching, the appearance of the female body quivers, the eyes close, the mouth
twists and starts to moan: all the signs of pleasure are there. The statue of the
Beast comes ro life, its fictive life mingles with that of the simulators user. As
the Apocalypse says, it is a matter of giving “breath to the image of the first
beast, so thar it could speak . . , ” (Revela- tion 13:15). This is the marvel—
virtual reality—thar is going to seduce the inhabitants of the earth, the work of
false prophets and false messiahs. They will make extravrdinary machines that
will do everything men and women do 50 as to make them believe that they are
just machines vhemsetves.
To those among the Thessalonians who announced the coming of the Day of the
Lord as imminent, supposedly on the strength of letters from him, Paul objected,
“That day will not come until the rebellion oc- curs and the man of lawlessness
is revealed, the man doomed to destruc- tion. He will oppose and exalt himself
over everything that is called God or is worshipped . . . 7 (2 Thessalonians
2:3-4). “That is called God or is worshipped” Life, the true Life that animates
any true living Self and makes it a true Living Person—Life that denounces the
hollow idol, the statue of the Beast, everything given the appearance of a man
or a woman yet neither one nor the other. Everything that will accompany “the
coming of the lawless one . . . all kinds of miracles, deceptive signs and marvels,
as well as all the temprarions thar evil offers to those who are lost because they
did not accept the love of the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). The Truth: Life.
Signs and marvels: the simulation of Life. Evil: everywhere this sim- ulation
takes place, as in the erotic simulator, where a man who wants to embrace a
woman, ro experience his life where this life experiences itself, in its living Self,
in fact only embraces the void, pure Absence, radical evil: NOBODY.
In the simulator, but also everywhere such a metaphysical situation is produced:
everywhere a man or a woman is only an object, a dead thing, a network of
neurons, a bundle of natural processes—where one is put in the presence of
a man or a woman bur finds oneself in the presence of wha, stripped of che
transcendental Self thar constitutes its essence, is no longer anything, is only
death.
Conclusion 275
“During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die,
but death will elude them” (Revelation 9:6). Men debased, humiliated, despised
and despising themselves, trained
in school to despise themselves, to count for nothing—just particles and
molecules; admiring everything lesser than themselves and execrating every-
thing that is greater than themselves. Everything worthy of love and adora-
tion. Men reduced to simulacra, to idols thar feel nothing, to automatons. And
replaced by them—by computers and robots. Men chased out of their work
and their homes, pushed into corners and gurrers, huddled on subway benches,
sleeping in cardboard boxes.

231
Men replaced by abstractions, by econemic entities. by profits and money. Men
treated mathematically, digitally, statistically, counted like an- imals and count-
ing for much less.
Men turned away from Life’s Truth, caught in all the traps and mar- vel where
this life is denied, ridiculed, mimicked, simulated—absent. Men given over to
the insensible, become themselves insensible, whose eyes are empty as a fish’s.
Dazed men, devoted to specters and spectacles that always expose their own
invalidity and bankruptcy: devoted to false knowledge, re- duced to empty
shells, to empty heads—to “brains.” Men whose emotions and loves arc just
glandular secretions. Men who have been liberated by making them think their
sexuality is a natural process, the site and place of their infinite Desire. Men
whose responsibility and dignity have no definite site anymore. Men who in the
general degradation will envy the animals.
Men will want to die—but not Life.
It is not just any god today who is still able to save us, but—when the shadow
of death is looming over the world—that One who is Living.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. My emphasis.— Trans,
CHAPTER 1
1. On the term phainomenon, sce Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans.
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 51-55,
)
my commentary in Phénomenologic matériclle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1990), pp. 112ff.
CHAPTER 2
1. If life is the essence of God, as it is of Christ and of man himself, the
con- cept of life stands at the core of our search. The reader may perhaps be
surprised to see the word sometimes spelled with a capital “L.” and sometimes
with a low- ercase one, occasionally in the same sentence. Ler us simply say
here that, written with a capital, the terms refers to the Life of God; written
with a small letter, it refers to our own life. Since life is one and the same,
however, these terminologi- cal nuances are intended to refer to one condition
or the other (divine or human). Taken in an as yet undifferentiated sense, the
word is written with a small “L” But,
of course, these are no more than general indications. It is only in the context
of)
our analysis that an attempt is made to provide a radical elucidation of what is
meant in each case by “life.”

232
CHAPTER 3
1. Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity, trans. Betty
Spillman (New York: Pantheon, 1973), p. 299. Referring back to the context:
“The processes that take place at the microscopic level in the molecules of living
beings are com- pletely indistinguishable from those investigated in inert systems
by physics and chemistry. . . . In fact, since the appearance of thermodynamics,
the operational value of the concept of life has continually dwindled and its
power of abstraction declined. Biologists no longer study life today.”
280 Notes to Pages 41-131
2. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology,
trans. Dorian Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964). p. 97.
3. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 50; Being and Time, op. cit., p. 75.
4. On the inability of Heideggerian thought to account for the problem of life,
sce Didier Frank, “Lérre et le vivant,” Philosophie, no. 16 (1987).
5. On the decisive influence of Schopenhauer on European aesthetic creation at
the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, see the groundbreaking
works by Anne Henry, especially Proust romancier: Le tombeau égyptien (Paris:
Flam-
marion, 1983), Schopenhauer et la création littéraire en Europe (Paris:
Méridiens- Klincksieck, 1989), and Céline éderivain (Paris: LHarmattan, 1994).
6. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 75.
CHAPTER 4
1. Saint Anselm of Canterbury, “Proslogion,” in Basic Writings, trans. §. W.
Deane, 2d ed. (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1995), p. 53. 2. See Chapter 9.
CHAPTER 6
1. Meister Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and
Defenses, Bernard McGunn and Edmund Colledge, O.5.A., eds. (New York:
Paulist Press, + 1981). Sermon 6, p. 187, 2. Ibid, p. 187. 3. ltwas in the light
of this concept [auto-affection] that I explored the concept of life in L’Essence
de la manifestation (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963; 2d ed., 1990,
esp. pp. 31ff. 4. Impression is not situated in the world or in the objective
body except by virtue of an illusion criticized by Descartes: ”Often we are even
mistaken in judging i that we are feeling pain in some part of our body.” See
Principles of Philosophy. 67.
CHAPTER 7
1. Moican mean both “me” and “ego,” as will be discussed in this and the fol-
lowing chapters.—Trans.

233
2. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York:
Humanitics Press, 1966), p. 316.
3. Understanding the essence of a person as a transcendental Self who is radi-
cally singular and irreducible o any other rules out scientism’s discourse on peo-
ple. Consider, for example. the views of Frangois Jacob: “Perhaps it will also be
possible to produce at will, and in as many copies as required, exact duplicates
of individuals, a politician, for instance, an artist. a beauty queen or an athlete.
There is nothing to prevent the immediate application to human beings of the
selection
”: Notes to Pages 135-70 28 - bJ
processes used for race-horses, laboratory mice or milch cows™ (The Lagic of
Lif, p- 322). The idea of identical individuals would appear ludicrous, if the
refrsence were not to an “individual” in the human senscbut to a transcendental
SIE whisch is in its essence unique. That which comes into the condition of
cxperienciag is self discovers. owing to the absolute singularity of any experience
of 2 phenome: nologically realized self, that it, too, {s absolutely singular) Two
biological individ- uals who were strictly identical woul Foc no less differen€
as transcendental Scbves. - We see from this crucial example that it is hardly
“sciemific” to claim to define
man from the point of view of biology, chemistry, or physics—thatis to say, by
ig-
biological viewpoint confers on the biological individual is merely that of a
thing—a “worldly” individualiry, torally forcign to the ipseity without which
there is neither Self, nor “me.” nor man.
4. Franz Kafka, Amerika, trans, Will Muir and Edwin Muir (New York:
Schocken Books, 1974). p. 272.
5. The Sickness Unto Death: Kierkegaard s Writings, Vol. 1g, trans. Howard
Vin- cent Hong and Edna H. Hong, pp. 19-20.
ity. The individuality that ~) /
CHAPTER 8
1. | might add that the theories that deny the ego’s freedom by transposing into
its sphere (abour which they know nothing) rules or conceprual systems bor-
rowed from the world’s phenomena do not just commit a theoretical mistake:
this is secretly motivated. It is the abyss opened in front of man by freedom
that is be- ing rejected: the abyss of the possibility of sin. In constructing a
system of absolute necessity—belied by experience, morcover—Spinoza’s bad
faith endeavored to of- fer man a more sure salvation.
2, See above, Chapter 7.
3. Le Pélérin chérubinique: Description sensible des quatre choses derniéres,
Book 1, distich 289.

234
CHAPTER 9
1. Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogium, Monologium, trans. Sidney Norton
Deane (La Salle, 1ll.: The Open Court, 1903), p. 3.
2. Jean-Luc Marion’s problematic aims ro dissociate the question of God from
that of Being: see God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago:
Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1991).
3. Heidegger, Zurich Seminar, quoted and discussed by J.-L. Marion in God
Without Being; see also Jean Greisch, Heidegger cf la question de dien (1980).
p. 334.
4. Heidegger, Questions II (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 114.
s. Eckhart, Treatises and Sermons, p. 258.
282 Notes 10 Pages 215-270
CHAPTER 12
1. Quoted and discussed by Martin Heidegger in On the Way to Language, rans.
Peter DO. Herez (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982, ¢. 1971), pp- 159-98.
English translation in Poerry, Language, Th hought (New York: Harper and
Row, 1971), p- 194,
2. Heidegger, Being and Time, op. cit., p. 316.
CHAPTER 13
1. G.W. E Hegel, The Christian Religion, trans. Peter C. Hodgson (Missoula,
Mont.: Scholar Press, 1979), p. 197. :
2. Ibid., pp. 193-97.
3. G.W.E Hegel. The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New
York: Humanities Press, 1977), p. 667. 4 Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, The
German Ideology (New York: Interna- tional Publishers, 1973), p. 123, Thesis
XI on Feuerbach,
5. Reflection on the natural content of the world would show that, due to the
senses, this content, too, refers back ro life.
CONCLUSION
1. See especially Chapter 3. 2. See Chapters and 5.
Cultural Memory | in the Present
Michel Henry, I Am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity
Gil Anidjar, “Our Place in Al-Andalus”: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in
Arab-Jewish Letters

235
Hélene Cixous and Jacques Derrida, Veils FE R. Ankersmit, Historical Repre-
sentation E R. Ankersmit, Political Representation
Elissa Marder, Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity
(Baudelaire and Flaubert)
Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spac-
ing Concepts
Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media
Hubert Damisch, A Childhood Memory by Piero della Francesca Hubert
Damisch, A Theory of /Cloud): Toward a History of Painting Jean-Luc Nancy,
The Speculative Remark (One of Hegel’ bon mots) Jean-Frangois Lyotard,
Soundproof Room: Malraux Anti-Aesthetics Jan Patoéka, Plare and Europe
Hubert Damisch, Skyline: The Narcissistic City
Isabel Hoving, In Praise of New Travelers: Reading Caribbean Migrant Women
Writers
Richard Rand, ed., Futures: Of Derrida
William Rasch, Niklas Lubmann’s Modernity: The Paradox of System Differen-
tiation

236