Separation as Life

Abstract

In describing die metaphysical relation as disinterested, as disengaged from ail participation, we would be wrong to recognize in it intentionality, the consciousness of…, simultaneously proximity and distance. For this Husserlian term evokes the relation with the object, the posited, the thematic, whereas the metaphysical relation does not link up a subject with an object. It is not that our intent be anti-intellectualist. In contradistinction to the philosophers of existence we will not found the relation with the existent respected in its being, and in this sense absolutely exterior, that is, metaphysical, on being in the world, the care and doing characteristic of the Heideggerian Dasein. Doing, labor, already implies the relation with the transcendent. If cognition in the form of the objectifying act does not seem to us to be at the level of the metaphysical relation, this is not because the exteriority contemplated as an object, the theme, would withdraw from the subject as fast as the abstractions proceed; on the contrary it does not withdraw enough. The contemplation of objects remains close to action; it disposes of its theme, and consequently comes into play on a plane where one being limits another. Metaphysics approaches without touching. Its way is not an action, but is the social relation. But we maintain that the social relation is experience preeminently, for it takes place before the existent that expresses himself, that is, remains in himself.