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human employment of instruments. It is an invitation to break away from the old

philosophies of nature and to initiate a purely internal critique of mans articial

existence. The vice of the social existence of modern man does not lie in bein

aainst nature! what is lackin is not naturalness" but charity. #onsequently"

criticism oes completely astray when it attacks the iantism of industrial" social"

or political machinery" as if there were a human scale inscribed within mansnature. This was the illusion of the $reeks who attached the sima of culpability to

the rape of nature %&erxes spannin a bride across the 'osporus" imposin a yoke

on the sea and piercin (ount )thos" as is witnessed in )eschylus *ersians+. ,e

are in need of a critique other than this idea of $reek measure which opposes the

reat plannin researches of modern life. (ans technical" social and political

experience cannot be limited in its extension" for the theme of the neihbour does

not condemn any hori-ontal extravaance or rowth in these areas. If a particular

orani-ation has overextended itself" this is an error and not a fault within the

ethical realm. In this instance" what is called for is a purely pramatic critique of the

advantaes and disadvantaes of iantism. The optimum dimension of an

enterprise" of a complex industry" a sector of state plannin" a political entity" etc."

has to do with purely technical criteria" not ethical standards. The theme of the

neihbor rather condemns a vertical extravaance" that is" the tendency of social

oranisms to absorb and exhaust at their particular level the whole problematic of

human relationships. The extravaance of the social realm as such lies in what we

earlier called the obectication of man within the abstract and anonymous

relationships of economic" social and political life. The social realm tends to block

access to the personal and to hide the mystery of interhuman relationships" to

dissimulate the movement of charity behind which stands the /on of (an.

Thus the depth of human relationships often appears only throuh the failureswithin the social realm! there is a technocratic or an institutional slumber" in the

sense in which 0ant spoke of a domatic slumber" from which man is awakened only

when he is socially stripped" be it by war" revolution" or reat historical disasters.

,hen these occur" there arises the unsettlin presence of man to man. Indeed" the

lory of such ruptures lies in their ivin rise to new