The Ruin of Representation

8/12/2019 The Ruin of Representation

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ranslated and dited by

Richard A CohenandMichael B Smith

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IS OVERINXIST N

WI H U S

Emmanuel Levinas

Northwestern University PressEvanston Illinois

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ask the following question: Can the phenomenological reduction itselfbe determined as a descriptive operation? Can one describe it that way

According to HusserI-this is a different idea, but one that movesin the same direction-only the reduction allows us to discover what isa phenomenon. In this sense, HusserI admits that what is immediatelygiven is not the phenomenon, without further ado, but that it transformsitself into the phenomenon (these are his own words) thanks to theoper:ation of the phenomenolog ical reduction. Therefore, in this senseand HusserI asked himselfabout the same subject-the pure phenomenalgivens that are the object of phenomenology are the fruit of an operationcarried out by phenomenology and, HusserI adds, at a very late momentin the history of humanity, after the long developments of the work ofthe Crisis with which you are all familiar. The Husserlian idea is that it isonly thanks to a very special operation of the phenomenologist that thephenomena are discovered. This is similar to Heidegger's notion of thep h n o m ~ n o n in Sein un Zeit in which he says that the phenomenon, inthe phenomenological sense, is at bottom that which does not manifestitself, does not show itself. Is this HusserIian idea compatible with aninterpretation that would say that for Husserl being and appearing areidentified without residue?

LEVINAS: I do not think the reduction is the most powerful idea, northe richest in influence. In France, surely not. HusserI always complainedthat no one starts with the reduction. This seems to be the great failingof Heidegger too. The reduction, through the motivations that make itnecessary and that occupy such an ample place in the Master's work, hasalways seemed to his most eminen t disciples as an overIy narrow methodism. But it has made possible the discovery of the intentional implicationson the basis of which the abstract object regains a concrete meaning.

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o meet a man is to be kept awake by an enigma. Upon meetingHusserI the enigma was always that of his work. Despite the relativesimplicity of his welcome and the warmth found in his home, it was

always Phenomenology one met in HusserI. These memories date backto my youth, when HusserI appeared already clothed in his myth; theycon ain only two semesters of personal con act. Discountingmy respectfultimidity, my excitement and the penchant of a twenty-year-old for mythology, I still believe that rarely has a man identified himself more with hiswork and separated this work more from himself. Referring no doubt topiles of his unpublished manuscripts slumbering in the bottom of somedrawer and devoted to the phenomenology of retenticm, of the sensibleor of the ego, he would say very simply: Wir haben schon daruber ganzeWissenschaften [ We already have whole sciences about that ]. And hesounded as ifhe had acquired rather than created these still unknown sciences. Even in private HusserI spoke of his own work only in the very termsof that work. It was a phenomenology of phenomenology, and, when Iknew him, almost always a monologue one dared not interrupt. And so,for me, the debt to the man is inseparable from the debt to his work.

Of a rather serious but affable demeanor, faultless in his personalappearance though oblivious to externalities, distant but not haughty, alittle uncertain in his certainties, the man reinforced the physiognomy ofthe work: full of rigor yet open, audacious and ceaselessly recommencinglike a permanent revolution; embracing forms one would have liked, inthose days, to be less classical and didactic, and a language one wouldhave preferred to be even less monotonous. A work whose truly newaccents will never reverberate to any but the sensitive or the practicedear, but-obligatorily-alert.By con rast, Heidegger's philosophy presen ed itselfbrillian ly fromthe first. The confrontation of these two philosophies provided an important topic of meditation and i s u s s i ~ n in Freiburg to a breed of studentsalready dying out-those schooled by Hussed before knowing Heidegger.


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Eugen,e Fink and Ludwig Landgrebe were among them. For those whoarrived with Heidegger in the winter of 1928-29, Hussed, who had beenretired since the end of the 1928-29 winter semester and had taughtpart-time during the transitional semester of the summer of 1928, wasbut a figure from the past. It is through the slant of these discussionsthat I myself entered phenomenology and was formed in its discipline. Ishall attempt, in these pages, to evoke the themes which seemed to medecisive in Husserl's thought, from the angle in which they appeared inthose bygone years. Do we retain in a philosophy that leaves its mark onus the truths of an "absolute knowledge, or certain gestures and "vocalinflections" that form for us the face of an interlocutor, necessary to alldiscourse, even interior?

Phenomenology is intentionality. \t\lhat does this mean? The refusal ofa sensationalism that identified consciousness with sensations-things? To?e sur:. Bu.t the sensible plays an important role in phenomenology andmtentlOnahty rehabilitates the sensible. A necessary correlation betweensubject and object? No doubt. But there was protest against the idea of as u ~ j e c t separated from its object before Husser . If intentionality meantno more than that consciousness "bursts forth toward an object, andthat we are immediately in the presence of things, there would neverhave been phenomenology.

Instead we would possess a theory of knowledge for the naive lifeof representation that encounters permanent essences, snatched fromevery horizon-in this sense abstract-and offered in a present in whichthey are self-sufficient. Life's present is precisely an unsuspected butprimordial form of abstraction, in which beings behave as if this weretheir e g i n ~ i n g . R ~ p r e s e n t a t i o n deals with beings as if they were entirelyseIf-supportmg, as If they were substances. It has the power to disinterestitself-be it only for an instant, the instant of representation-from thecondition of these beings. t triumphs over the vertigo of the infinite

c o n d i t i o ~ i n g t ~ t true thought, and thought that is true, opens up inthese bemgs. WIthout traversing the infinite series of the past to whichmy .today nonethel.ess refers, I embrace this day, in all of its reality, andderIve my very bemg from these fleeting moments. Kant, in showingthat understanding can pursue its theoretical work without satisfyingreason, has already brought to light the eternal essence of this empiricalreasoning that dispenses with unconditioned principles.

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Phenomenology, like all philosophy, teaches that immediate presence to things does not yet comprise the meaning of things, and consequently does not replace truth. But thanks to the way Husserlleads usto go beyond the immediate, we now possess new possibilities of philosophizing. Above all, Husserl contributes the idea of an analysis ofintentioncapable of teaching us more about being (which these intentions wereonly supposed to grasp or reflect) than could a thinking that entering intothese intentions. It is as if the fundamental ontological event, already lostin a grasped or reflected object, were more o ~ j e c t i v e than objectivitya transcendental movement. The renewal of the very concept of thetranscendental that recourse to the term constitution may obfuscate,appears to us to be an essential contribution of phenomenology. \t\lhence,at the level of what may be called philosophical reasoning,;' a new wayof moving from one idea to another. \t\lhence a modification of the veryconcept of philosophy, which was identified with the absorption of every

Other by the "Same," or with the deduction of every Other fromthe "Same" (that is, in the radical sense of the term, with idealism).Henceforth, a relation between the Same and the Other does not come toinvert the philosophical eros. Lastly, in a more general way a new style inphilosophy arises. It has not become a rigorous science as a body of universally compelling doctrines. But phenomenology has inaugurated ananalysis of consciousness in which the greatest care is devoted to structure,the way one movement of the soul is integrated into another, and the wayitrests and overlaps and is embedded in the whole of a phenomenon. Onecan no longer analyze by enumerating the ingredients of a state of soulThe points of reference of these formulas of structure certainly dependon the ultimate presuppositions of the doctrine. But a new spirit of rigorhas been established; penetration is not a question of touching the subtleor the infinitely small in the soul, but in not leaving these elements ortheir developments without structure. These are the points that seemto me essential to all post-Husserlian thought, and they constitute thebenefit that I, for my small part, have derived from a long acquaintancewith Husserl's works. They have influenced thought since the LogicalInvestigations which defines phenomenology so badly, but proves it sowell, for it does so as one proves movement-by walking.

\t\lhy would the logic that establishes the laws of ideas governing theempty forms of thought require, as its foundation, a description of the


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procedures of intentional thought? This exegetical question became allthe more disturbing as Hussed professed the ideality oflogical forms andthe impossibility of merging them with the real contents" of consciousness, with the acts of representation orjudgment, let alone with "primarycontents" or sensations. This question arose before the publication of theIdeas worried an entire generation of disciples by its explicit formulationof a transcenden tal idealism, apparently maintained against the realismof formal and material essences. The latters' transcendence neverthelessincontestably constitutes the great theme of all Hussed's work, to whichone rallied with the publication of the first volume of the Logical Investi-gations, the most convincing volume of philosophical literature.

Why this return to the description of consciousness? Would it be"interesting" or instructive to know, besides the ideal essences, the

s u ~ j e c t i v e acts that grasp them? But in what way would this supplementaryand interesting investigation enable one to avoid certain confusions orambiguities in pure logic, a science of mathematical nature, and not atall psychological? Among these confusions Hussed cites psychologism,as if since overthrown by the Prolegomena it would still justify new efforts. To be slIre, with the introduction to the second volume of theLogical Investigations, Hussed invokes the need to project the clarity ofa theory of knowledge-which would also be a philosophical clarityupon the notions of pure logic. The phenomenology of consciousnesswould discover "the sources whence the basic concepts and ideal laws ofjJure logic spring, and whither they must be led back, in order to givethem the clarit), nd distinctness necessary to pure logic at the level ofthe theory of knowledge.2 But the theory and critique of knowledge,in the sense that these disciplines have taken on since Kant, do determinethe sources of scientific activity, and the limits of the legitimate usage ofreason everywhere. It is not for them to clarify the concepts that scienceitself uses, nor in any case to revise the concepts of pure logic, which hasbeen constituted in its perfection since Aristotle. The novelty ofHussed'sphenomenology, in its gnoseological claims, lies in its having recourseto consciousness in order to c1ariry the concepts of a science and topreserve them against the inevitable ambiguities with which they wouldbe burdened in a thought that, in the natural attitude, remains fixedon objects. It is indispensable to the progress of this research" (of purelogic) '1 Finally, "the fact that the in itself of the object can be representedand, in knowledge, seized, that is, in the end become subjective, "4 would

~ t r j c t l y speaking be problematic in a philosophy that posits the s u ~ j e t asan imminent sphere, closed in itself. This problem is resolved beforehandwith the idea of the intentionality of consciousness, since the presence ofthe s u ~ j e c t to transcendent things is the very definition of consciousness.

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But perhaps all the interest of the announced investigation, insteadof having to do with the subject-object correlation that would defineintentionality, follows from another dynamism animating intentionality.Its true enigma would consist not in the presence to things, but in thenew meaning that intentionality permits being given to this presence.

If the analysis of consciousness is necessary for the elucidation ofobjects, it is because the intention directed to them d.aes not r a s ~ t h e ~ rmeaning, but only an abstraction in an inevitable mlsunderstandmg; Itis because the intention in its "bursting forth toward the object" is alsoan ignorance and a failure to recognize the meaning of h a ~ o ~ j : c t ~ i l ~ c eit is a forgetting of everything that intention only contams unphCltlyand that consciousness sees without seeing. Such is the answer to thedifficulty I called to mind a moment ago. It is the answer Husser gives inparagraph 20 of the Cartesian Meditations, in h a r a c t e r i z i n ~ the r i g i ~ a l i t yof intentional analysis. Its original operation" he says, ''Is to unveIl thepotentialities 'implied' in the actualities (actua: s.tates) of o n s c i ~ u s n e s sAnd thus is realized, from the noematic point of VIew the explIcatIOn, thedefinition and the eventual elucidation of what is 'meant' by consciousness; that is, its objective sense. 5

Intentionality thus designates a relation with the object, but a re-lation essentially bearing within itself an implicit meaning. Presence tothings implies another presence that is unaware of itself, other h.orizonscorrelative to these implicit intentions, which the most attentIve and

, scrupulous consideration of the given o ~ j e c t in the naive attitude couldnot discover. Every cogito as consciousness, is, in a very broad sense'the meaning' of the thing it intends, but that 'meaning' exceeds at eachinstant, that which at that very instant, is given as 'explicitly intended.'It exceeds it, that is, it is laden with a 'more' that stretches beyondThis exceeding of the intention in the intention itse f, which is inherent in allconsciousness, must be considered as essential [Wesensmomenl] to thatconsciousness. 6 "The fact that the structure of all intentionality impliesa 'horizon' [die Horizontstrucktur] prescribes an absolutely new methodto phenomenological analysis and description. 7

The classical conception of the relationship between subject andobject is a presence of the object and a presence near to the object.The relationship is understood in such a way that, in it, the presentexhausts the being of the suqject and of the o l ~ j e c t . The o ~ j e c t is atevery instant exactly what the subject currently th.in1


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By contrast, intentionality bears within itself the innumerable horizons its implications and thinks of infinitely more "things" than ofthe o ~ J e c t l:pon which it is fixed. To affirm intentionality is to perceive

~ h o u ~ h t t l e ~ to ~ h e ~ m p l i c i t , into which it does not accidentally fall, butm whICh It mamtams Itself by essence. Thus thought is no longer eithera p.ure.present ?r a pure representation. This discovery of the implicit,whIch IS not SImple "deficiency" of or "fall" from the explicit, appearsas a m ~ n s t r ? S l ~ y or a :narveI in a history of ideas in which the concept of~ c t u a h t y c o m C I d e ~ 1 wlth the absolute waking state, with the lucidity of themtellect. .That dlls thought finds itself tributary to an anonymous and

o b ~ c u r e lIfe, to f ~ r g o t t e n landscapes that must be restored to the veryo l ~ J e c t that conSCIousness believes it fully holds, is incontestably akin tothe o d e r n conceptions of the unconscious and the depths. But it resultsnotJust m a n e ~ psychology. A new ontology begins: being is posited notonly as correlatIVe to a thought, but as already founding the very thoughtthat nonetheless constitutes it.

We will return to this. Let us note for the moment that the conditioning of consc:ious actuality in potentiality compromises the sovereignty of

l ~ e p l . - e s e n t a t l o n much more radically than does the discovery in the life offeelmg of a specific intentionality, irreducible to theoretical intentional ty and ore radically than the affirmation of an active engagement in theworld pnor to .conte.mplation. Husserl puts into question the sovereigntyof e p r e ~ e n t a t l O n wIth respect to the structures of pure logic, the pureforms of the "so.mething in general, in which no feeling plays a roleand where nothmg presents itself to the will; and yet these structuresand forms reveal their truth only when set back into their horizon. Itis not an ir.rationalism of feeling or will that unsettles the concept of

r e p ~ e s ~ l : t : a t I O n : A thought that forgets the implications of thought, whichare l : v I s ~ b l e pnor to reflection on this thought, operates on objects instead?f thmkmg them. The phenomenological reduction stops the operationlI order to get back to the truth, to show represented beings in theirtranscendental emergence.

The idea. of a ~ e c e s s a r y implication that is absolutely imperceptible to the sl:bJect dIrected on the object, only discovered after the f ctupon reflectIOn, thus not produced in the present, that is, producedunbeknownst to me, puts an end to the ideal of representation and the

s u ~ j e c t s sov:reignt y, as well as to the idealism according to which nothing~ o u l d enter Dto me surreptitiously. A deep-seated passion is thus revealed111 t h o u ~ h L A passion which no longer has anything in common witht,he p a s s ~ v : l ~ T of sensation, of the given-which was the starting point

f o ~ empIrICIsm. and realism. Husserlian phenomenology has taught usnelther to prqJect states of consciousness into being, nor still less to

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reduce objective structures to states of consciousness, but to have recourseto a "subjective" field more objective than all objectivity." It discoveredthis new field. The pure ego is a transcendence in immanence, itselfsomehow constituted in terms of this domain where the essential gameis played.

To exceed the intention in the intention itself, to think more than onethinks, would be an absurdity if his exceeding of though by though werea movemeflt ofthe same nature as that of representation, if he potentialwere only a diminished or slack form of the "actual" (or itwould be the ba-nality of degrees of consciousness). What Husserl illustrates through hisconcrete analyse s is that the thought that goes toward its ~ j e t envelopesthoughts that open onto noematic horizons, which already sUjJj ort thesubject in its movement toward the ~ j e c t Consequently, they bolster it inits work as a s u ~ j e c t ; they pl y transcendental role. Sensibility and sensiblequalities are not the stuff of which the categorial form or ideal essence ismade, but the situation in which the s u ~ j e t already places itself in orderto accomplish a categorial intention. My body is not only a perceivedobject, but a perceiving u ~ j e c t ; the earth is not the base on which thingsappear, but the condition that the subject requires for their perception.The horizon implied in intentionality is thus not the still vaguely thoughtcontext of the object, but the situation of the subject. A subject in situationor, as Heidegger will say in the world, is announced by this essentialpotentiality of an intention. The presence to things that intentionalityexpresses is a transcendence already having something like a history inthe world it is only just entering. If Husserl reclaims full light on theseimplications he does so only in reflection. For Husserl, being does notreveal its truth in History rather than in consciousness, but it is no longerthe sovereign consciousness of representation that grasps this truth.

The way is open for the philosophies of existence, which can leavethe field of the pathetic and the religious, to which they hitherto confmedthemselves. The way is open for all Husserl's analyses of the sensibleand the prepredictive that he so obstinately preferred, going back tothe Urimpression which is at once primary subject and primary object,giver and given. The way is open for the philosophy of the lived body,in which intentionality reveals its true nature, for its movement towardthe represented is rooted there in all the implici t-nonrepresentedhorizons of incarnate existence. Incarnate existence draws its being from


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those horizons, which, nonetheless, in a certain sense, it constitutes (sinceit becomes conscious ofthem)-as ifhere constituted being conditionedits OW11 constitution. This is a paradoxical structure, which Heideg ger willmake evident and put to work everywhere. He will show that subjectivity,the very dimension of the subjective, is as it were brought about by being,in order that what is inscribed in the revelation of being, in the splendorof the physis in which being is in truth, may be accomplished.

The presence near to things referring to initially and most frequen tly unsuspected horizons-horizons that nonetheless guide that verypresence-indeed also announces the philosophy of being in Heidegger's sense. All thought that directs itself to a being already stands withinthe being of that being (which Heidegger shows to be irreducible to abeing), as within the horizon and site that commands all position-taking,the light of a landscape, already guiding the initiative of the subject whowills, works, or judges. All Heidegger's work consists in opening andexploring this dimension, unknown in the history of ideas, to which henonetheless gives the most well-known name of Sein [Being]. In relationto the most traditional model of objectivity, it is a subjective field-but

s u ~ j e t i v i s m "more objective than all objectivity."Transcendental activity is neither the fact of reflecting a content,

nor the production ofa conceived being. The constitution of the object isalready sheltered by a prepredicative "world" that the subject nonethelessconstitutes. Conversely, the sojourn in a world is only conceivable as thespontaneity of a constituting subject, failing which this, s ~ j o u r n wouldhave been the simple belonging of a part to a whole, and the subject asimple product of a ground. The wavering between the disengagementof transcendental idealism and the engagement in a world, for whichHusserl was reproached, is not his weakness but his strength. This si-multaneity of freedom and belonging-without either of these termsbeing sacrificed-is perhaps inngebung itself, the act of bestowing ameaning that runs through and sustains the whole of being. In any case,transcendental activity receives this new orientation in phenomenology.The world is not only constituted but also constituting. The subject is nolonger pure suqject; the object no longer pure object. The phenomenonis at once what is revealed and what reveals, being and access to being.vVithout bringing to light what reveals-the phenomenon as accesswhat is revealed-being-remains an abstraction. The new accent andthe brilliance of certain phenomenological analyses-this impressionthey give of deformalizing notions and things-derives from this doubleperspective within which entities are placed. Objects are uprooted fromtheir dull fixity to sparkle in the play of rays that come and go betweenthe giver and the given. In this coming and going man constitutes the

119T H E

world to which he already belongs. The analysis resembles a harping uponan eternal tautology: space presupposes space, that is, represented ~ a c epresu pposes a certain im plan ation in space, which in turn is only o s s l ? l ~as the project of space. In this apparent tautol06)' the ~ s s e n c e t h e bem.gof the entity-shines forth. Space becomes the expenen.ce of.spa:e: It Sno longer separated from its revelation, from its truth, 1Il WhICh :t IS n?longer merely prolonged, but is rather fulfilled. P h e . n o m ~ n ? l o g y ~ t s e l f Sthis reversal in which being creates the act that projects It; m whIch thepresent of the act or its a c t u a l i t y - t u r ~ s into th: past, but n which t.hebeing of the object is at once p e r f e c t ~ d I the a t ~ l t U ~ e t h a ~ S taken ':"lthrespect to it and in which the antenorIty oo bem.g S agam placed. m .afuture. Phenomenology is itself this reversal m WhICh human behaVIOr Sinterpreted as original experience and not as the fruit of an x p e r i e n ~ e . Itleadsus outside the subject-object categories and topples the sovereIgntyof representation. Subject and object are only the poles of this n t e n ~ i o ~ a llife. The phenomenological reduction has never seemed to me to u s t l f yitself by the apodicticity of the imminent sphere, but by t ~ e o p e m ~ g ofthis play of intentionality, by the renouncing .ofthe fixed o ~ J e c t ~ h a t S thesimple result of and the dissimulation of thIS p l a ~ . IntentIOnalIty meansthat all consciousness is consciousness of somethmg, but above all th.ate oery object calls forth and as it were gives rise to the consciousness through whzchits being shines and, in doing so, aPfJears. . . . . .Sensuous experience is privileged, because withm It that ambIgUItyof constitution, whereby the noema conditions and s h e l t e r ~ t h ~ no.esis that constitutes it, is played out. There is the same predI ectIOn m

henomenolog y for the cultural attributes that thought constItutes, but~ ~ o m which it is already nourished in constitution. The c ~ l l t l ~ r l wOrld: inappearance a latecomer but the very b:ing of which conSIsts m b e ~ t ~ w l I l gmeaning, sustains, in phenomenologICal analyses, all that seems SImplycontained and given in things and notions.The notions that up until this point remained on the level of theobject from now on form a series whose terms are not connected to oneanother either analytically or synthetically. They do not mutually complete one another like the pieces of a puzzle, b u t . c o n ~ i t i o n one a n o t ~ l e rtranscendentally. The connection between the SItuatIOn and the o ~ J e c tthat refers to that situation, as well as the link between the phenomenathat constitute the unity of a situation (revealed in reflexive d e s c r i p t i ~ n ) ,are as necessary as the connections of deduction. Ph.enomenology bringsthem together despite their strictly oqjective isolatIon. t produces rapprochements that until then only poets and prophets allowed h e ~ s e l v e ~ ,through metaphor and "vision," and accumulated by languages Il ~ ~ e l retymologies. Earth and sky hand and tool, body and other, condItIOn

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knowledge and being in an a priori way. Failure to recognize this con-ditioning leads to the production of abstractions, equivocations, andgaps in thought. It is perhaps through this caveat directed against clearthought, forgetful of its constituent horizons, that Husserl's work wasmost immediately useful to all theoreticians, particularly to all those whoimagine they spiritualize theological, moral, or political thought by theirfailure to recognize the co ncrete and in a sense carnal conditions fromwhich the ostensibly purer notiqns derive their true meaning.

IVBut the fact that thought is essentially implicit, that the ideal of a totalactuality can only come from an abstract view, abstracted from thoughtitself, marks, perhaps, the end of an entire philosophical orientation.Philosophy'arose in opposition to opinion, and led to wisdom as themoment of full self-possession in which nothing foreign or other anylonger comes to limit the glorious identification of the Same in thought.Advancing toward the truth consisted in discovering a totality in which thediverse found itselfidentical again,that is, deducible on the same level, oron the level of the Same. This explains the importance of deduction thatderived the totality from partial experience (whether this deduction wereanalytical, mechanical, or dialectical). The thought that made explicitwhat was implicit in the represented was in principle this power of totalactualization, the pure act itself.

And so it is that thought directed upon the object in all the sincerityof its intention does not touch being in its naive sincerity; it thinks morethan it thinks and otherwise than it thinks at the moment and, in thissense, is itselfnot immanent, even ifbyits look itholds the object it intends"in fl sh and blood" e are beyond idealism and realism, since beingis neither inside nor outside thought, but thought itself is outside itself.A second act and second thoughts are necessary in order to considerhidden horizons that are no longer the context of this object, but thetranscendental givers of ts meaning. ore than the instant or the eternityof self-evidence is necessary to hold the world and truth.

That Husserl himself conceived these second thoughts in the formof objectifying and completely actual acts of reflection (in virtue of whatprivilege?) may not have been decisive for the influence his work has had,This life that bestows meaning may reveal itselfotherwise, and presupposefor its revelation relations between the Same and the Other that are nolonger ~ j e c t i f i c a t i o n but society. The condition of truth may be sought

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in ethics. Is it only by chance that Husser had the idea of philosophy asteamwork? . t .To put an end to the conception h ~ t t h o u g ~ t and ~ 1 e s U ~ J e c t ~ o )Jectrelation are coextensive, is to offer a glImpse of: a relatIonship w I ~ h theother that is neither an intolerable limitation of the thinker, nor a Simpleabsorption of this other into an ego, the form of a content. ~ ~ rall inngebung was the work of a sovereIgn ego, the other could m factonly be absorbed in a representation. But in a p h ~ n o ~ e n o l o g y where theactivity of totalizing and totalitarian r e p r ~ s e n t a t I o n IS a l r e a ~ y e ~ c e ~ d e d. 't own intention where representatIon already finds Itself placedIn 1s b . h h' 1 . otwithin horizons that it somehow had not willed, ut WIt v lC 1 1 cann .dispense, an ethical inngebung becomes possible, th,at IS a S l n r ~ g e b ~ n g. tf I of the Other In Hussed himself, the constItutIOnessentIa y respec u . ., , . 1of intersubjectivity, undertaken on the baSIS. of .0bJectIfymg acts, SOClarelations, irreducible to the objectifying constItutIon that meant to cradlethem in its rhythm, are abruptly awakened.

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The Ruin of Representation