Monday, May 29, 2023

Spiritual Intimacy, by Louis Lavelle

The texts included in this volume are articles written by Louis Lavelle for philosophy journals, communications at conferences, and lectures given at universities in France and abroad. Each of them presents, in summary, one of the essential themes of his doctrine: Spirit, Time, Self, the relationship between Spirit and the World, Essence and Existence, Participation. They span a period from 1936 to 1951, during which he co-directed, with René Le Senne, the collection “Philosophie de l’Esprit” (Philosophy of the Spirit). Through some texts in this volume, one can see the importance he attached to this series of works. It was also the period when he was writing his major work, “La Dialectique de l’éternel Présent” (The Dialectic of the Eternal Present), which was supposed to be crowned by a final part on Wisdom. He was not granted the time to write it. He was preparing it in his final meditations, and when he was invited to participate in the activities of the Society of Philosophy of Bordeaux in 1950, he chose as his subject: Wisdom as the science of spiritual life. It seemed to us that no text could be more suitable for the conclusion of this volume, which contains a summary of his entire doctrine and ends as his work was supposed to end, with the idea of wisdom where he saw the culmination of all philosophy.

—THE EDITORS.

Part One: Being and Action

Chapter I. Being and Action

If one observes today a worldwide renaissance of metaphysical thought, it is because it responds to a requirement of consciousness that positivism and the theory of knowledge have been able to make us forget for a long time, but without ever succeeding in burying it. To satisfy it, one must not hesitate to affirm that the purpose of philosophy is to lead us back to the moving source of our individual and secret being, which always seeks, as Kierkegaard said, its absolute relation with the Absolute.

One can be suspicious of philosophy and consider it a sterile and powerless effort to reach a reality that is hidden from us, but one can feel that it is precisely necessary for reality to be hidden from us and for us to penetrate it only through a personal act, so that, through the little that will be revealed to us, we precisely acquire everything that we can have of being and life, for everything else is as if it were not.

One can also reproach philosophy for being nothing more than a game of concepts designed, by exercising our subtlety, to deceive our curiosity, but this reproach is less a criticism than a demand towards it; that is to say, we precisely want it to not be a game but the consciousness of our life in the process of becoming, of a life whose roots plunge into the entire universe, which contributes to changing its face, but of which we intend to choose the direction and assume the responsibility. Philosophy is born with consciousness and perishes with it. It has its seat in the human heart as soon as it questions itself, not about what things are, but about what we are and about the vocation to which we are called in a universe on which we depend but which also depends on us. The difficulty of philosophy, the anxiety it leaves us with, the upheaval it causes us, stem from the fact that it is never exclusively theoretical, that it engages the fate of our most intimate self in the conception it has of the world, that it always refers us back to the origin of the movement by which our being is created, and that it only manages to give meaning to life if that meaning is not only understood but also accepted, desired, and so to speak, accomplished at every moment by our thought and our action. And all the contempt in which philosophy is held is the result of a failure that we suffer in the impulse that carries us towards it: they are the mark of a disappointed love.

Therefore, one should not think that one can serve philosophy by confining it to the pursuit of certain particular problems, by limiting its claims, by subordinating it to positive research from which it would borrow the certainty and rigor that otherwise seem to be lacking. In doing so, one only betrays it. For example, it happens that one undertakes to save it by chaining it to science and asking it only to interpret its methods and results. But who does not see that precisely everyone turns away from philosophy then, because it ceases to interest us in the only problems through which it had begun to touch us and move us, because it ceases to promise us the only thing we had expected from it, and also because the ever new and unpredictable conquests of science bring us an immediate and direct satisfaction next to which the comments that philosophy undertakes to mix with it are always pale and colorless? Not that philosophy can sever all ties with science, since, on the contrary, it is up to it to show how all the appearances that science studies arise before our eyes and how science can succeed in establishing between them those abstract connections by which our consciousness acquires a grasp on a world that is initially foreign to it but of which it always becomes the vehicle of its destiny. However, science has no privilege in this regard, for philosophy must consider art, morality, religion, that is to say, all the testimonies of that infinite creative power by which the spirit seeks to free itself, to possess itself through all the works it produces, with the same gaze.

There is no skeptic, agnostic, fact-bound scholar, or indifferent person confined to the search for utility or entertainment who can stifle within himself this essential question that each of us constantly poses about his own being, for it is this question that is our very being. Until then, it is nothing more than a possibility. What we are and what we will be depends on the solution we give to this question, and evading it is still resolving it. It happens that it resolves itself, so to speak, without us. But it is because we have lacked the courage that alone allows us to fix our gaze, in ourselves and in the world, on this point of supreme interest that silences all other preoccupations as soon as it is evoked, and outside of which all the usual objects of attention and desire lose all meaning for us and become marks of our frivolity or despair.

It is not surprising that, in a troubled era like ours, the human soul, which almost always feels threatened, abandoned to itself in abandonment or insecurity, and which may be learning a violent and painful state in which it often seems to take pleasure instead of seeking to free itself from it, turns once again to philosophy to ask it for the keys to this adventure in which it feels carried away.

Not at all, as one might think, can philosophy ever become for us a forgetfulness or a refuge. It would precisely be that conceptual philosophy that disconnects from contact with reality in order to substitute knowledge for it. But knowledge no longer satisfies us. The very magnitude of the events in which we are involved, the intensity of the feelings that affect us, the lack of connection between a present that surpasses us and a past that refuses to teach us anything, with a future that forbids all projects, the impossibility of that inner peace where reflection used to like to establish itself, compel us to confront the meaning of the existence we have received, to bring into play in the moment the very powers by which our life takes root in reality, and of which we all too often forget or postpone the exercise. The mystery of Being is one with the mystery of our own being: and this can only be penetrated when thought becomes clear and sharp enough to reach our point of attachment to the Absolute, that is to say, that supreme point of interest where we want what we are with an eternal will that illuminates each of our particular acts, and to which we are ready to joyfully make all sacrifices.

But it is this word “absolute” that will cause all our difficulties. First of all, we must recognize that the essence of philosophy, what we demand from it, what it promises us, is to make us feel the presence of the Absolute that transfigures the humblest event in life and gives it, so to speak, an unlimited background. And it is by still evoking the Absolute, which it denies, that relativistic thought becomes philosophical thought. However, some will argue that the Absolute is by definition beyond reach, that we only posit it as the origin and support of all our endeavors, or as an object of faith or hope, but one that could not be realized for us without the annihilation of our individual existence. Others wait for the Absolute to be revealed to them as a term that would suspend and fulfill all our efforts and desires, in which we could find rest and the possession of all the goods that will ever be offered to us. But this is not how the Absolute should be considered. For it is not an end located outside of us and towards which we aspire; it is the ground on which our life must consent to establish itself from its first step. It is not the term where our activity, in ending, would come, so to speak, to die, but the living principle from which it continually draws all the forces at its disposal and all the efficacy of which it is capable. One never turns away from the Absolute, as one believes, out of prudence or humility, but always out of lack of courage. For the word “absolute” is not used to mark an illegitimate ambition of pure thought, but rather that attitude of supreme inner seriousness that expresses a commitment of our entire being, that imposes on it the responsibility for what it can be, and demands it to bear it. All men are well aware that it is through this commitment of their most constant and deepest will, rather than through knowledge, that their relations with the Absolute are formed. Only then do they discover their metaphysical vocation, which is to take their place in the world by contributing to its creation, instead of remaining outside it as curious or indifferent spectators. All also feel that it depends on them to fulfill this vocation or to miss it: as soon as they stop being blind to their own life, they experience a feeling of anguish if the Absolute seems to elude them, and receive an incomparable light and joy if the slightest of their thoughts, the smallest of their actions carries within it its character and manifests its presence, instead of concealing it.

It is easier to restate the traditional arguments against the Absolute. For one could say that the thought of the Absolute is precisely the very mark of our powerlessness and misery; the Absolute only appears in our consciousness to show us to what extent we are separated from it. We live in the relative; we never know the object as it is, but only the sensible relations it has with us; we never penetrate into the consciousness of the closest friend: we only have imperfect and precarious affective relations with him, which always remain illusory to a certain extent; and if there is an absolute behind our representation, it is a relation between it and us that conceals it from us even more than it reveals it to us. Hence also this classical opposition, which begins to emerge from the very origin of philosophical thought, between a world of phenomena, which is the one in which we speak and live, and a world of realities where we would plunge through the most essential and mysterious part of our being, but of which we would never know anything. However, no one can avoid accepting a communication between these two worlds. Relative and absolute only make sense in relation to each other, since they form the two terms of a couple; the phenomenon and the being are opposed to each other only because the phenomenon is connected to being and possesses being in some way. Moreover, these opposites are not placed on the same level: one of them is privileged with respect to the other; for the relative is not the negation of the Absolute, and it must be inscribed itself in the Absolute, which cannot exclude anything, and which is the origin and synthesis of all relatives. Likewise, there is a being of the phenomenon, which is not external to the total Being, but part of it, although it takes the infinity of phenomena to reach its totality.

Thus, there is, so to speak, an experience of the Absolute that derives first from a certain direction that we give to our thought. To reject the Absolute from the world is to refuse to elevate to the Absolute what is demanded of us. It is an abdication, a flight. And to this flight, time provides a sort of pretext. For the Absolute must surpass time, since there is nothing in it whose presence can be withdrawn or postponed, unlike what happens in the world of succession where all the events of our experience continue to flow. Should we say, therefore, that we could not encounter the Absolute unless the course of time were interrupted? We always live in the present, and if we are driven from moment to moment, it is because we do not find the Absolute anywhere. But while we cannot stop the fleeting moment, as Goethe demanded, it is within our power not to flee with it, but to access through it to eternity. Since no relation can be detached from the Absolute in which it takes place, nor any phenomenon from the being without which it would have no reality as phenomenon, all transitory moments, which constantly vary in content, must find their place in an eternal present that distinguishes and connects them, which is the common medium of all consciousnesses and from which none of them has ever departed and will never depart. There is the experience we have of the Absolute, in that indivisible point where the relation, in positing itself, posits its own dependence, where the phenomenon demands to take root in being, where, in the present, the moment is always reborn.

The return to a philosophy of the Absolute is for us the condition of the seriousness of thought and the depth of life. But it is to be feared that by immediately giving us the term that is for the mind the highest and most inaccessible object, we will then close all the paths of reflection as Parmenides is reproached for having done, and that, overwhelmed by this appearance of success, we will forever block and paralyze the very impulse of consciousness that we wanted to set free. Does this not seem to depend, on the contrary, on the feeling we have of our own inadequacy and of the effort by which we seek to repair it? It is therefore necessary to show how the Absolute reveals itself to us in turn in the form of Being and in the form of Act, and how this double revelation allows our own life to constitute itself through an independent operation which, with regard to itself, is a first beginning, that is to say, a testimony of its freedom, and which, with regard to the Absolute, presents the characteristics of participation.

There is no problem that has solicited the attention of philosophers as much as that of the first term. And yet we know that this expression contains a sort of contradiction: for the primacy that we attribute to it already implies a subordination of reflection to a temporal order, while this very temporal order is still in question. But this antinomy will be overcome if we remember that, by the name of the first term, we mean nothing more than that pure presence from which none of the moments of succession can be separated and without which none of them could be thought.

Furthermore, we must avoid the prejudice that could lead us to admit that this first term is obtained by the feat of a thought that, renouncing the only method at its disposal and ceasing to ascend step by step from the conditioned to its condition, would oblige us, as far as it is concerned, to bow before an unexplained miracle. But there are two kinds of explanations: one that is suitable only for phenomena and that shows us how each of them depends on another that precedes and determines it, the other that is precisely suitable for principles and that shows how they themselves produce the reasons that justify them by justifying everything that, without them, could no longer be.

For both of these reasons, Being alone deserves the name of the first term: because there is such a close solidarity between Being and the present that we can only imagine nothingness in the form of absence, and as soon as one of the forms of presence disappears, such as sensible presence, it seems to us that Being itself has flown away. And, on the other hand, we cannot go beyond Being without annihilating both the object and the means of all explanation: for there can be deduction only between certain aspects of Being, but not of Being itself, which contains them all as well as the law that distinguishes and unites them.

However, not only must the thought of Being receive a more precise form, but it must also be shown how it is supposed and implied by all the operations of our mind. Now, for this, it is important to subject two postulates, which are tacitly recognized as true by the most different doctrines and which have contributed to making us forget all reflection on Being itself, to criticism: the first is the opposition of subject and object, which is posited both as a fact of experience and as the condition without which all experience is impossible; the second is this turning back of the subject upon itself, of which Descartes, in the “I think, therefore I am,” gave an imperishable description and which he has, so to speak, incorporated forever into the consciousness of humanity, but which should subsequently make all the movements by which the subject tries to leave itself in order to reach a reality that transcends it so difficult.

In a sense, the opposition between the self and the non-self is simpler and more familiar to all beings than the one in which the self first posits itself to consider the non-self as a representation or an idea, that is, one of its modifications. For to first posit the self is at once to assume the non-self and to forbid oneself from positing it. But one can wonder if the essential object of reflection is not to first overcome this opposition between the self and the non-self, without which consciousness itself would not be possible. Not, as has been done, to give the self a kind of privilege and try to deduce the non-self from it, but, following a completely different path, to recognize that the self and the non-self are specifications of the same Being. Without a doubt, it will be said that this is returning to that state of indistinction that the opposition of subject and object has precisely abolished: that is not what we are asking. It is enough for us that this opposition does not hide from us the unity of Being within which it originated, in which it continually remakes itself at every moment, allowing us both to discover and to unfold its richness, and to constitute our own being through a relationship with the total Being that is always questioned and always inexhaustible. The self and the non-self do not introduce into Being a duality that could never be overcome afterwards; they do not produce any rupture in Being. Both are posited in it, and the link that unites them is the testimony itself of its indivisibility. It is remarkable that, failing to consider the self, the non-self, and their relationship as inscribed in the same being, one imagines that the true Being, which consciousness cannot do without and towards which it constantly aspires, is beyond this relationship, concealed and not revealed by it, in such a way that by seeking it where it is not, one prohibits oneself from seeing it where it is.

The distinction between subject and object thus expresses a first analysis of Being. But what is admirable and has not been sufficiently noticed is that the subject always remains within Being and does not need to leave it to undertake such an analysis. Deciding to do so is for the self to posit itself and posit the originality of all the relationships that connect it to the Whole of which it is a part. And it is necessary that the Whole always surpass it by continually providing it with the very power through which the self seeks to equal it. Now the deepest originality of each self resides precisely in this power by which, at every point in the universe, it takes an original consciousness of this Whole in which it is placed and which in some way must take its place in turn, by revealing itself to it from a unique, privileged perspective, by revealing to it relationships between its parts that have meaning only for it and of which it is always in a sense the craftsman and the creator.

It is in this contact of the self and the non-self, in their always similar and always new encounter, that we grasp Being at its extreme point. It is this union and, so to speak, this sought-after and always lost identity that is realized in certain blissful moments through attention, grace, or love. All other states of our life disperse it without succeeding, however, in abolishing between them this community of being without which their very differences could not be posited. This is evident when we observe how the self and the non-self limit each other, but at the same time mutually surpass each other, as if, as soon as one is posited, the other immediately testifies to the infinity of Being itself, from which the first had to be detached in order to define it. Thus, on the one hand, the object necessarily appears limited and imperfect while the subject dominates and encompasses it with its virtual power that always goes beyond everything that can be given to it. But, on the other hand, every act of the subject remains abstract, ineffective, and incomplete in the presence of even the humblest object it seeks to penetrate and reduce: the object possesses an actual richness to which even the most complete and refined representation will never be adequate.

But this double surpassing of the self by the non-self and of the non-self by the self is remarkably instructive, for it shows us that if the actuality of the object and the potentiality of the subject are both infinite, they coincide, but it is in their opposition that they reveal the multiplicity of finite forms of existence and allow each finite consciousness to traverse a path in the world that must be both determined by its nature and desired by its freedom.

We can thus answer all the classical objections that have been raised against the idea of Being considered as the object and origin of all reflection. We should not expect ontology to provide a new revelation that would suddenly and miraculously bring us face to face with Being. Its role is both simpler, more alive, and more beautiful. The revelation of Being begins with life; it continues to renew itself, to diversify and deepen. But there is no possible experience whose characteristics are not already found in the experience before our eyes. Whoever has not known how to discover them here and now will not discover them anywhere or ever. It is because Being is never a separate object that we can contemplate in isolation from what we see and what we do; it is the revelation of what we have always seen and what we have always done, which suddenly gives to the things before us that significance, that light, that relief, and that intensity that constantly astound us, that it is this familiar reality itself that reveals itself to us, not only as appearance but as the very being of its appearance. It is the continuity and unity of this experience that must neither fragment nor interrupt itself, which we express by saying that Being is univocal. This could be easily accepted if one initially thought that by distinguishing different meanings in the word “being,” lower worlds would appear, resembling limbo, to which their presence in the Absolute would still guarantee the minimum of being that we are willing to grant them, for there is no intermediate zone between Being and Nothingness. Secondly, it should be understood that the being we attribute to particular forms of reality is not a separate being that each of them enjoys in some way for itself, thereby equalizing itself with the Absolute, but that it is common and offered to all at once, as the place that contains them and the source from which they draw all the goods they can ever possess, goods that will always be proportional to the purity of intention and the ardor of desire.

Nor should we be stopped by other objections, such as the claim that the notion of Being is so evident and so common that there is no consciousness that does not implicitly recognize it as the condition of its possibility. Indeed, that is the meaning of our thesis. However, we believe that this acknowledgment does not prevent us from quickly dispelling this Being that is everywhere implied and forgotten, which subsequently robs thought and will of all their foundations. Nor should it be regarded as the most empty and abstract of all notions, since Being is precisely what cannot be added to, and everything that can ever be discovered is discovered in it. It cannot even be considered as the term towards which all other notions converge and reunite because, on the contrary, they divide it and borrow from it their reality and all the relationships that link them. The search for Being is therefore not the pursuit of a distant object that constantly eludes us and could always escape us. It is an effort to take possession of a reality that is always present and given, but which is such that it is through this act of possession that our own reality is constituted. This observation alone allows us to suspect that discovery is participation and that it is this participation, through the union of the participant and the participated, that is Being itself.

But we have not only sought to exorcise Being by considering the relation of subject and object as the insurmountable condition of all acts of thought. Sometimes it has been believed to achieve this in an even more decisive way by affirming the primacy of the subject and its impossibility of ever surpassing its own limits. This is the origin of classical idealism, which also justifies in the mind a supreme pride and a supreme humility.

One could perhaps argue against it with this counter-argument: if thought is obliged to discover itself before discovering anything about the world, it means that it discovers Being within itself and at the same time as itself. Far from separating from it by a sort of wall, it is immediately on its level and therefore does not need to later take a perilous leap beyond itself to try to reach it. Since it is not nothing, it already has ontological value in itself. It is competent to know Being because it possesses it.

However, this argument seems to need a more precise form. Because it engages the very definition that must be given to the reflective method, and it forces us to question its scope and value. Descartes described it as a kind of preliminary refusal that thought must oppose to reality, without which thought, subject to a thousand influences that act upon it to surprise it, is incapable of gaining its independence and making any assured judgment about things. It is through this process of separation that thought is constituted: it has, like Mephistopheles, the power to say no. In the negation, it acquires self-consciousness, the feeling of its inalienable interiority, of its invulnerability, of its superiority also to reality from which it has broken away in order to dominate it better and to which it will apply a judgment that cannot be forced. This means that thought only succeeds in freeing and creating itself in the exercise of its critical function, that it must reject reality outside itself in order to transform it into an object, which allows it to test it, subject it to its jurisdiction, and accept and make it its own only through an internal act, a consent that depends solely on itself to give.

However, it must be acknowledged that this conception of reflection exposes us to a double peril into which thought could not fail to fall as soon as it wanted, instead of subordinating itself to Being, to posit itself as a first term to which Being must be subordinated. It can even be said that it then generates a double paradox from which no reflective man can free himself without great difficulty.

First of all, let us consider this reality itself from which thought had separated itself and which it now seeks to reconquer. It can only have meaning for thought, since thought precisely undertakes to appropriate it. This means that it can only be for thought a representation or an idea. But then thought is caught in its own trap and becomes the victim of the very victory it has achieved. Either it will maintain, in a sort of intoxication, that this representation or this idea is reality itself and that there is nothing beyond it, without this assertion ever obtaining anything more than purely theoretical assent; or it will attempt a contradictory effort to transcend the representation and the idea in order to reach behind them a true Being, but which, by virtue of the very position it has chosen, must be defined as unknowable and not even understood how it can suspect its presence. Yet if I cannot do without it, it is because I still remember that total Being that was implicated by the primitive act of my thought and without which it could not have been posited.

The second paradox is that in wanting to remove thought from Being in order to strengthen its power, we compromise its reality. By placing itself above reality, it finds only the void that is incapable of supporting it. Will it be said that it engenders itself by its own operation? This is true, no doubt, but on the condition that two things, which experience never ceases to confirm, are not overlooked: first, that this operation presupposes a power that must itself find its place in Being and that it depends solely on us to exercise; second, that this power must be actualized and can only be so by the very object to which it applies and with which it reveals its solidarity at the very moment it thinks it is freeing itself from it. The consequence of this separation of thought is that we no longer know what mode of existence to attribute to it, which becomes evident when it is described as “formal”: for this word clearly shows that it has been emptied of all concrete reality, in such a way that it is nothing more than a bastard being that presupposes both an ontological subject about which nothing is said to us, except that it must support it, and an objective content, without which it would be nothing, not even the framework of something. Thus, this thought that transforms being into a problem it seeks to solve becomes for itself a problem that no longer has any solution. By separating itself from Being in order to think it, the self deprives both the world, which is nothing more than an appearance to it, and itself, which is nothing more than a form, of existence, and, by a just return, becomes the very form of this appearance.

Therefore, we must stop opposing Being to Thought and defining Being as a line of sight for a thought that, placed as it were outside of it, can only ever give itself the spectacle and thus always miss it. On the contrary, we must regard thought as internal to Being since there is nothing outside of it; it is established in it, it never ceases to move and nourish itself within it; it is in Being as Being is in it. Thus, in its own intimacy, it is the very intimacy of Being that becomes present to us; it is this intimacy that consciousness allows us to participate in. But we know well that the self is not the totality of Being; and that is why the world appears to us as a spectacle that will never cease to surpass and amaze us. However, there would be no spectacle without the secret and intimate being of the spectator. And a spectacle cannot exist on its own, as materialists maintain, that is, independently of the one who looks at it and the one who performs it. And it only makes sense to create communication between them. This communication will reveal to us a new aspect of the Absolute, which is not only Being but also Act, allowing us to understand the appearance and significance of the material universe and the diversity of consciousnesses.

It is important to note that the criticism just made of the reflective attitude often attributed to Descartes does not apply to the true interpretation that should be given to “I think, therefore I am.” Because the trust that Descartes places in thought comes from the very trust with which it establishes itself in Being as soon as it discovers its own interiority. This interiority is one with the self-interiority of Being to itself. In such a way that thought has never withdrawn into itself except to recognize that it cannot posit itself without positing Being itself in which it is inscribed. This is evident when we hear Descartes protest that the idea of Being was not enveloped in universal doubt; even when he doubts, he seeks access to Being that only thought is capable of giving him. In “I think, therefore I am,” one must not forget the “I am” that gives the “I think” its true value, rather than attenuating or limiting it. In the ontological argument, it is the absolute and infinite existence of God that becomes the support of my conditional and imperfect existence. And the transition from essence to existence is realized in the creature through the operation of thought in the same way that it is eternally realized in God through an eternal self-creation. Therefore, it is not surprising that thought is the measure of Being; but it is because it was at the very heart of Being as a power that in principle was coextensive with it.

It is no longer possible now to simply define Being by attributing to it the characteristics of universality, univocity, totality, and to show that in it extension and comprehension are one. Rather, we must try to justify these characteristics and show how they can be justified while reconciling them with the plurality of particular beings. For this, it is important to demonstrate that absolute Being, to whom nothing can be external, can only be posited as a “in itself,” that is, a pure interiority, of which our consciousness gives us an imperfect approximation, a kind of always precarious and threatened attempt. Thus, far from considering “Being in itself” as an inaccessible outside that is beyond phenomena, we will consider it, on the contrary, as an inside that is beneath all the appearances that manifest it and with which our consciousness constantly communicates, to the extent that it is itself more attentive and purer. And if it is true that perfect intimacy can only reside where Being acts and ceases to suffer, if therefore we ourselves only exist where we act, then Being, which is nothing but being, can only be itself an act without passivity, that is, the act by which it never ceases to become. It is this act that is the very essence of everything that exists.

However, we cannot merge with it because we only participate in it. But in this very participation, we will succeed in grasping the nature of this act, the relationship it maintains with us and with all beings, and the very way in which, by supporting them all, it allows them to both distinguish themselves and unite. It is indeed true to say that to think and to will is to give oneself being. However, the power we have is itself limited, and no one would consent to deny that it relies on a power that surpasses it, from which it borrows its effectiveness and postulates unity, first because no power can receive differentiation except from the matter to which it applies - and not from its very essence - and second because even the humblest power, at the moment it begins to exert itself, keenly feels that there is a virtual infinity within it, like in the series of numbers once the first has been posited, and finally because this unity is implied by the very demand that lies at the core of each of us, that the thoughts and wills of all beings can always succeed in understanding and cooperating with each other. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the univocity of Being without which the world disintegrates, and at the same time show how it can explain the possibility of all particular beings without breaking, beings that differ from both the total Being and from each other in degree, value, and dignity. Only the identity of Being and Act allows us to solve this difficult problem, forcing us to reject the pantheism towards which one might think we incline at first: but for this, we had to lend ourselves to the sentiment that univocity implied such homogeneity between the Whole and the parts that these parts themselves had to lose all independence and, so to speak, abolish themselves in the Whole. On the contrary, we believe that there are truly parts in the Whole only if each of them is capable of acquiring an interior existence, that is, of establishing itself in the Whole through an act of participation, which is the only act that allows them to posit themselves as the Whole itself posits itself, and to remain united with it in the very process by which they separate from it.

A. — The secret of creation should not be sought in a distant past or in a mysterious beyond whose access remains closed to us: it is within ourselves. We observe the birth of the self into existence at every moment, and its birth always accompanies its existence, so to speak, simultaneously. It is not enough to say that the self is the origin of its representation: it is first the origin of itself. If its attention wanes or suddenly vanishes, everything returns to death and nothingness for it; if it reappears and begins to explore the various aspects of this vast world once again, the self finds in this world a new dwelling. Therefore, for the self, being and positing itself are one and the same. And no other being can posit it in its place, for it would only succeed in positing it as a representation, thus only positing its body. The most reliable testimony of the most lucid consciousness is that the self resides precisely in that inner and indivisible point where the personal and incommunicable act of consenting to be is accomplished. This act is always a first beginning: the self is one with it.

Moreover, this act does not imply that certain conditions without which it could not be posited: but these conditions limit it without changing its essence; they give it a field of application; they do not alter its exercise itself.

In any case, it remains for me a first beginning. But it is only so for me. Firstly, it always implies a possibility that is offered to me and that depends on me to implement. However, this possibility itself is not indeterminate: it is inseparable from certain situations in which my life is engaged, and without which I would have to deal with an empty possibility that would be the possibility of nothing. Therefore, I must accept them instead of denying them. They are integral to the self, and far from considering them as obstacles accumulated on its path, they must be seen as the very instruments at its disposal. The self must will them as it wills itself. Thus, nature, far from contradicting freedom, is always accepted by it, whether the self only thinks of surrendering to it or undertakes to promote it.

B. — Therefore, we see how the name “Act” that we now substitute for the name “Being” allows us to take a step forward in understanding the relationship between finite consciousness and infinite intimacy. If we limit ourselves to saying that the being that is proper to me is a being that I receive, which is not coextensive with the total Being but also not heterogeneous in relation to it, the unity of the whole is preserved, but pantheism threatens us. However, this being is only mine on the condition that I can dispose of it and, so to speak, give it to myself. At that moment, my being becomes internal to myself: it merges with the act by which I create myself. But this interiority is never perfect, for I am a double being who, even in the depths of itself, finds an object from which it separates and which remains external to it. Only the total Being has nothing within it that is outside of it. It is by penetrating into it that I penetrate into myself, but I never succeed in exhausting its infinite selfhood.

The same relationship will appear even more clearly if I consider in its pure essence the very act by which I say “me.” This act is never free from all passivity. The very world of phenomena attests to its limitation, and the complexity, the increasing richness of this phenomenal world, manifest in this limitation a variety of aspects, a fertility of renewal that shows us that it is itself, so to speak, of immeasurable abundance. It is because here our limitation bursts forth from all sides, revealing the infinity that surpasses us.

Furthermore, this act is me, yet I cannot consider the power itself that it puts into effect as my own. The self finds before it a possibility that expresses, so to speak, the very being that is proposed to it, but which only becomes its own being through the disposition it makes of it. However, in the personal life of the self, this disposition is everything. Therefore, if the total Being encompasses all particular beings within it, the infinite Act, which is pure freedom, can only become a participated act if it grants all consciousnesses the ability to separate themselves from it and establish themselves through an act that is proper to them.

Participation here establishes independence instead of abolishing it. For how could a freedom be communicated except by arousing other freedoms around it? It is to misconstrue the spiritual relationships that exist between beings and replace them with material relationships between things to think that the most perfect being includes within it the less perfect beings, as the largest thing contains smaller things. Spirits do not obey the same laws as bodies. The most powerful and purest spirit is not the one that dictates its own law to transform all the beings around it into docile objects, over which it exercises its own reign. It does not wish to be served by slaves. And if it intends to be imitated, it is to awaken comparable freedoms wherever it acts, endowed with initiative, capable of responsibility, and that in turn become the causes of their existence by collaborating in the work of creation. Participation is the gift of a possibility whose actualization is left to us. The term participation designates an act by which I accomplish what I am, that is, by which I posit myself in a series of steps that I never cease to take up and improve. But what can I participate in, as well as all the individual beings who are part of the same universe as me, other than an Act that eternally posits itself? And participation obliges me to temporally posit myself through an uninterrupted act of freedom without which I would only be the creation of another, an apparent testament to their activity, and not a true being who finds within itself the very source of all that it is and all that belongs to it. The most visible proof of this character of participation, which allows the self to achieve its personal independence through the very gift it has received, is that it can capture, isolate, and turn against its origin the very freedom it possesses, whose use is entrusted to its hands but can never be taken away from it.

C. — It is understood from this how the self itself is a mixed being. Within it, there is, on the one hand, an inner impulse that solicits and animates it, but which surpasses it to such an extent that when it succumbs to it, it seems that it is no longer itself but pure passivity. On the other hand, there is a given that halts it, a state that seems imposed upon it and with which it cannot identify itself without surrendering to a new passivity that is, so to speak, the inverse of the previous one. If either of these two forms of passivity triumphs, the self itself expires. But its own originality lies in being incapable of merging with either of them; it establishes a passage between them, and we see it turn sometimes towards one, sometimes towards the other through pure consent. However, as noticed in attention, love, and grace, there is a certain pinnacle of activity where these two forms of passivity seem to converge, where the call addressed to me becomes one with the response given to me, where attention becomes one with the light it seeks, where love is fulfilled beyond its own hope, where grace and will can no longer be distinguished. But it is when all these conflicts reappear that the self has the keenest awareness of the role assigned to it, its relationship with itself, with things, with other beings, and with God. This compels it to engage in a living dialectic where intelligence and will exert themselves and collaborate, but in order to prepare for that perfect success in which they seem unnecessary and almost self-abolishing.

The mistrust we feel towards metaphysics undoubtedly arises less from the belief that thought is unable to penetrate appearance and reach being, than from the realization that finite being cannot adequately embrace the whole of which it is a part and which infinitely surpasses it on all sides. However, there are three kinds of motives that allow us to overcome this fear. The first is that, however humble we may want to be, our existence as such is an absolute that, as Kierkegaard said, is always in a tête-à-tête with the Absolute; the second is that we only feel overwhelmed when we reduce our being to our body, which seems lost in the immensity of space and time, from which it remains absent, while the slightest degree of freedom that seems to belong to us gives us the incomparable emotion of participating in the dignity of creative power. Lastly, the third is that if, in considering the Whole, we seek to equal it without ever succeeding, it is our egoism that suffers rather than our intelligence or our will suddenly lacking sustenance. Can they complain that the world never ceases to provide for them?

It is undoubtedly a mistake to think that there is a metaphysical ambition within us by which our individual self, impatient with its limits, assigns itself no other end than to push them back, as if it wanted to engulf the totality of reality within itself. This means that it seeks an all-powerful solitude where all obstacles have disappeared, where nothing remains that it does not possess. But such solitude would be unbearable for it; no matter how narrow the limits of solitude may be, we always seek to break free from it, never to expand it. When we say that the highest attribute of God is to be a creator, we do not mean that He is like an artisan who eternally admires the perfect work that has come out of His hands; rather, we mean that He eternally calls into existence beings distinct from Himself to whom He gives the breath of life so that they may become the authors of their own destiny and seek to form with Him a spiritual society. And we too seek [30] outside ourselves what is not ourselves, not to absorb it within us, but to rejoice in its presence and multiply it. All our activity, even that of thought, compels us to leave ourselves in a disinterested and generous movement, instead of solely seeking to acquire and retain some good that only it would enjoy, as avarice does. The most elementary act produces an effect that detaches itself from us and must be abandoned to be given to all. Knowledge seeks the idea, but its truth remains without me, which I can contemplate, lose or find again, and communicate to others. It is not true to think that I can ever introduce it into my subjective life; on the contrary, it is through my subjective life that I succeed, thanks to knowledge, in transcending it. Things themselves, which resist the hand or the gaze, also provide support on which the hand and the gaze like to rest; my body is not jealous of them; it calls them around it to allow its senses to exercise, its movements to reach their goal. What can be said of friendship, which is the very joy I feel in finding outside of myself a self that is not my self, whose every step shows an initiative of its own and in which I am always involved, although they never cease to renew themselves and surprise me? Between him and me, all distinction is abolished between receiving and giving, and his mere existence in the world is enough to fulfill me. The essence of friendship is to make me feel with extreme intensity the presence of the other as other, and not merely to extend my own presence to myself. Hence the singular acuity of this feeling, which is the sign of its metaphysical value, for it is in it that the problem of the relationship between the self and the non-self arises in the most urgent manner, and it is in it that it receives all the light of which it is capable.

It is therefore a mistake to think that the self encounters the non-self only to overcome and assimilate it. Far from repelling otherness, it constantly calls for it. For the essence of the Act is to reveal the richness of the world and not to dissipate it. It is the intimacy of all that is. It teaches us to discover this intimacy and not to reduce it. As soon as it reveals itself, the self cannot help but communicate with it. Its own intimacy and the intimacy of the world are one. And this identity is not demonstrated by destroying the intimacy of the world in favor of the intimacy of the self, but by a penetration of the intimacy of the self into that of the world. Thus, the differences between the original forms of Being are accentuated instead of being annihilated, each of them assuming a role within the Whole that cannot be fulfilled by any other. We see things appearing before us that limit us and separate us from other consciousnesses, but they play the role of witnesses and signs, and by their truth and beauty, they actualize the powers within us and form the paths that lead us precisely to other beings. But it is only when we encounter them and perceive their kinship with us that we have the certainty of having succeeded in surpassing our own limits, that we discover the common source from which they, like us, draw, and a world opens up before us as a spiritual homeland, where its inhabitants immediately cease to be strangers to one another. And there is no reflection more instructive than the one that can be made on the most natural use of the word “intimacy.” For we always speak of intimacy with others, although we know that in principle there is only intimacy with ourselves. But this is because the former is necessary to realize the latter.

Thus, all forms of existence in the world form a vast system of mediations. This means that they are all necessary for each other to support themselves or that the unity of Being can never be broken. It is not surprising that existence always resides at the very point where mediation occurs, that is, where the act is accomplished. The life of consciousness is not an effort of assimilation and conquest. It resembles a dialogue, and even a quintuple dialogue, with oneself, with things, with ideas, with people, and with God. And philosophy must be rightly called a dialectic if its original function in the world is precisely to construct an architecture of concepts, but one in which we find only the conditions of possibility for all these dialogues, in which it is shown how they articulate and hierarchize themselves, how they assume different interlocutors whose very essence is not prior to the dialogue but is defined and constituted with it and through it. It is this dialectic that life implements. Therefore, we see that philosophy is not a reflection on an already made being but that at the very heart of Being it compels us to participate in the very Act by which it is made. This act can only be a free act. To refuse to accomplish it is to accept being merely a thing for others and not a being. This free act is nothing more than an initiative of which I can dispose, but which I cannot think without extreme emotion, shaking the entire universe and to which the entire universe never ceases to respond. It enters into time because the life of the self must be [32] limited and progressive so that the self cannot be confused with God or reduced to the state of a thing. But time does not succeed in making us leave the Being in which our life leaves an indelible wake. At every moment, the representation we have of the world is exactly proportional to the powers we have consented to exert, that is, to our merit. But what we have made of ourselves by inscribing ourselves in Being can no longer be expelled from it. And it was necessary for us to burst into time so that we ourselves, by our own act, can take our place in eternity 1.

Chapter II. Reflective Action and Creative Action

I. - Philosophy begins with the act of reflection: it has the same scope as reflection itself; as soon as reflection ceases, philosophy also ceases. It would be vain to believe that it is possible to surpass reflection, for if reflection is the power to question everything, there is nothing that can be justified or possessed otherwise than by it. And what proves that it is truly a primary act is that there is an object only for it when it posits it, that there is spontaneity only in relation to it when it yields to it; that the self dies when it is interrupted, that when one seeks from where it comes, it is still reflection that seeks. In such a way that there can be no other method for philosophy than to establish itself at the very center of a reflective activity that questions its origin, its nature, its conditions of possibility, the implications it assumes, the affirmations it is entitled to make.

Such are the characteristics of reflection, which each of us experiences in a gathering like this one. We have just suspended for a moment our particular tasks, where habit and the demands of events were sufficient to make us act. We have agreed to withdraw into ourselves in this kind of pure leisure that is the unique abode of thought: we are thus reduced to pure reflective activity. And, whatever disappointments we have already experienced, we hope once again to see arise within us a light that will enable us to witness the genesis of our own being and of the very being of the world, and that will allow us to discover in this activity of our consciousness, where none of our neighbors penetrate, a secret that is common to all.

However, we cannot deny that reflection is the object [34] of a kind of suspicion: but this suspicion always affects philosophy itself. It is thought that reflection is the mark of the pride of the human mind, which separates itself from the real in order to place itself above it and which believes itself capable of judging it and sometimes even of producing it. It abolishes that simplicity, that consent to life, which are the gifts that every being receives from nature as soon as he enters this world. Lucifer is the first being who dared to reflect. But if it is born of pride, one understands that reflection only engenders impotence and unhappiness. For it can do nothing and it believes itself capable of everything.

Thus, we are offered, in opposing senses, to trust either in those profound movements of impulse and instinct that are rooted in our bodies and which it never ceases to spy on in order to destroy them, or in spiritual impulses such as inspiration and love, which it prevents from being born, but which, as soon as they animate us, seem to surpass it and render it useless. But it is forgotten that if there is a conflict between the spontaneity of instinct and the spontaneity of the spirit, it is reflection itself that gives birth to it: it liberates itself from the former, but borrows from it the very strength it possesses; it would like to complete itself in the latter, but it would only succeed by renouncing itself, that is to say, by transforming itself into a nature where spirituality would perish from its very triumph. As soon as reflection begins, it enters a circle that has no end and from which it can never again escape; only reflection can pronounce itself for spontaneity and decide to abdicate in its favor.

But perhaps it is necessary to become more clearly aware of the prejudices to which reflection is subjected, and to obtain with regard to them that inner purification which is the condition for any effective exercise of thought, before seeking to grasp its positive essence, to show that it penetrates to the very root of being and life, and that instead of opposing the creative act, it is on the contrary the only means we have of participating in it.

II. — A) If we maintain a sense of mistrust towards reflection, it is because it appears to be an artificial process of the mind that, instead of remaining in contact with things, turns away from them and constantly substitutes the consideration of their reality with that of their possibility. It reverses the natural movement of thought, action, and life: the gaze naturally directs itself towards the object in order to recognize its characteristics; the hand seeks to grasp it; and life itself continues to promote itself in a creative impulse that reflection always interrupts [35]. However, there is a legitimate use of reflection, which is to retrace all the movements of our spontaneous activity, to compel it to more accurately follow the contours of objects, and to make our adaptation to reality ever more perfect. Its pretensions are only condemned when it hopes to find within us, through a simple introspection, the sufficient principle of representation and action, when, after creating a sort of void within us, it hopes to set in motion a pure power through which we would see things themselves, so to speak, emerge from their own reasons.

B) Thus, reflection separates itself from reality to inquire about its credentials; but it would always remain a mere potentiality if reality were not there to shake it and precisely provide it with the object to which it applies and actualizes it. No one has defined the constitutive process of reflective action better than Descartes in the Cogito. However, the world remains present to him in the very operation by which he erases it; the Cogito, which expresses the possibility of the world, calls it forth, awaits it, and, so to speak, pre-empts it as the response it is about to give. It is also because the world is there that we sometimes speak of putting it in parentheses: however, this manner of neglecting it in order to find it again later is only a feint. For by carrying with us into our spiritual solitude the power to think it, it is still from the world that we borrow the framework of the operation through which this very power becomes capable of exercising itself, as can be clearly seen in Kantism: reduced to its own forces, the activity of the mind would remain undivided and unemployed. Therefore, it is not enough to say, according to Bacon’s words, that it would exhaust itself by spinning a spider’s web that would have neither consistency nor support: the very possibility of the web, the multiplicity of its threads, and the way they intersect evoke a real experience that we have not forgotten, but only stripped of its sensible qualities, retaining only the paths that allow our thoughts to traverse it.

C) There is more: it is also argued that the most serious abuse is to attribute any fertility or even any efficacy to reflection. The very word “reflection” invites caution. It is not enough to say that we only reflect upon a reality already given; we must say that the reflective act, which cannot exist without the creative act, is precisely its negation. It is therefore a misunderstanding to think that reflection is capable of producing anything. Its function [36] is exclusively critical; it can do nothing more than reenact the spontaneous operations of thought and will in order to enable us to better regulate them. As for admitting that it is through this regressive process that we will obtain, as we often believe, a principle of explanation capable of satisfying us, that is an illusion considered both inevitable and unforgivable. It is inevitable because it compels us to start from the world that we have before our eyes, that is, the already realized world. However, for it to be realized, its conditions must also have been fulfilled. But it is precisely towards these conditions that reflection compels us to go back. And at the moment when it holds them within its gaze, they appear to depend solely on its own activity, which supports them and gives them, in a sense, the being of thought, outside of which they are nothing, so that at least at that moment, reflection, forgetting the experience from which it started and which, at the end of this regression, appears only in the future, can do nothing but attribute to itself the power to generate it.

However, this illusion is unforgivable, because not only is it based on the forgetfulness we just mentioned and on the mistaken notion that the product of reflection, which, in the order of being, is a future in relation to the present from which it originates, is also, in that same order of being, a past on which this very present depends, but it also fails to recognize the wager that is inseparable from all reflective endeavors: namely, that it can only be explanatory because it compels us to discover a first term capable of supporting the totality of being and possibility, but it is powerless to give it to us. For the essence of reflection is, at the risk of denying itself the power it claims, to never be able to be suspended and to pose a new question regarding all the terms it encounters, a question that it always doubles. This clearly shows that reflection must constantly draw nourishment from reality but decisively abandon the ambition to produce it.

These critiques, which are directed against an abusive and exclusive conception of reflection that elevates it above any given reality in order to attribute to it a creative power, tend to make it an exclusively human process, with a very limited scope, which subjects us to experience without allowing us to grasp from within the operation that brings it about. They should lead us to delve deeper into the nature of the reflective act and to examine its relationship with the creative act, which separates those who see it as [37] an absolute that is completely self-sufficient from those who view it as relative to an object, endlessly redoubling its representation, thereby testifying to its radical inability to be self-sufficient.

Firstly, we would like to restore to the reflective act the fertility that is claimed to be taken away from it. However, instead of substituting it for the creative act or separating them, we would like to show the presence within it of this creative power to which it attaches itself, so to speak, and of which it gives us, in a certain way, a participation. The world always overwhelms us like an immense spectacle, but it is by turning inward on ourselves that we discover, in the very act by which our being is constantly being formed, an activity from which it draws but never exhausts, which always remains present to it, and of which the world provides us an imperfect representation, but one that is always within our grasp.

III. — If reflection is always the object of a certain suspicion, it is because we imagine that there is a world given to us before it has started to operate. But instead of accepting it simply, reflection seeks to substitute a new, subjective, and unreal world for it – the world of our thoughts, a world in which we judge what can be and what should be, and which we always strive to align with what is, but never succeed in doing so. However, if the initial act of reflection is to detach ourselves from the given, it is evident that it will never rediscover it. But the act of reflection surely begins earlier and has deeper roots than we believe. For this given itself originates from a first reflexive act without which it would never be given to us. In this sense, one could perhaps say that I detach it from myself rather than detach myself from it. To detach myself from it, I would have to, so to speak, reject its presence, which only has meaning for me and in relation to me, and which supports my own existence. But I detach it from myself precisely to place it within a perspective without which it would mean nothing to me: only then does it become a tableau for my gaze, a point of support for my movements.

The appearance of the given is often described as the first obstacle that stands in the way of spiritual activity, as its first failure. We rather think that it is its first success. It is the first reward it receives when it begins to operate. Naturally, we consider any activity as a forward momentum that would turn into reflection when it collides with an obstacle that forces it to change direction. But this interpretation itself is the work of reflection: it hides a singular ambiguity. It grants the obstacle a mysterious privilege that makes us regret the thing-in-itself. In reality, it is not the obstacle that produces reflection; it is reflection that produces it. Reflection is inseparable from the spontaneity of the mind which, as soon as instinctive spontaneity comes into play as a proposition offered to us to establish our own being through a free act, flows back to its own origin where it seeks and weighs the reasons that justify it. It is when this return occurs that the given appears: it is the fruit of reflection. It is the world in its nascent state. And all the objects that fill it are the joy of the mind that discovers them until the moment when, instead of promoting our activity, they restrain and paralyze it. Then they become obstacles for us because reflection does not want to know any stop: it never has security or rest. How could it ever be satisfied with this spectacle before its eyes, which is nothing but the projection of our activity at the moment it interrupts its course? This activity itself was there only to enable reflection to make it its own, to assume responsibility for it and direct it.

Therefore, it cannot be said that reflection, by compelling us to abandon the given, can only move in emptiness and condemn itself to never encounter it again. For there is only the given for reflection; it is reflection that makes it arise before us, it is through reflection that we come into contact with it and take possession of it, always in a personal way. But it is also through reflection that the given multiplies its aspects before us, constantly enriches and deepens itself, and gradually reveals to us the infinitude of the world, which is the ever-present witness of the infinitude of the mind. Far from denying the given, the essence of reflection is to make the entire real become given to us.

IV. — This conception of reflection delivers us from the second reproach made against it, that it confines us within ourselves, where we would seek, in the exercise of our subjective and solitary activity, to generate the world from which it initially separated us. And perhaps all the misunderstandings of philosophy arise precisely from the fact that we seek to place reflection outside the world in order to elevate it above the world, whereas it belongs to the world, exercises itself in the world, and sustains our existence in the world through the infinite multiplicity of relations it establishes between [39] us and the world. By isolating it from the world to preserve its purity, it is natural that it becomes an indeterminate power. What will determine it to exercise itself? And how can it even be called a power other than by reference to the world it calls upon and whose memory it carries within itself?

At first glance, it seems that in reflection, the self penetrates into the very depths of an inner solitude where it finds an activity that is both inventive and judicatory, entirely within its grasp, and through which it gives or withholds a consent that depends solely on itself: indeed, it is in reflection that we grasp the secret process by which each consciousness constitutes itself. But this process is a process of participation. And to define it, it is not enough to say that the reflective act cannot be exercised without a matter or content that only the given can provide, or that the unity of the reflective act can only be broken down into distinct operations insofar as it evokes the outlines of an experience with which it has never severed its connection: it must be recognized that the very activity I possess through reflection is mine only by virtue of the disposition I have towards it, but that it is an activity I have received and which always surpasses the use I can make of it. That this activity is given to me seems difficult to concede despite its dual character of being a power that I find within myself, but that it always depends on me to actualize and to remain available even when I give it no employment. For one can understand that a thing is given to us, but how could an activity be? Yet it is precisely in this that the essence of participation consists, stripping each being of everything it possesses, even the slightest creative efficacy in the very power it sets in motion, but in order precisely to enable it to make it its own in the pure adhesion that it consents to give it. In this adhesion, which no one can violate or surprise, but which engages us entirely, lies the principle of our autonomy that the supremely full act in which it internally participates founds, instead of abolishing it. It is because this act is indivisible, even though it is only participated in us, that there is a world by which each of the operations we perform shows its insufficiency, that is, remains abstract and calls for what it lacks, in such a way that there is always a sensible reality that responds to it and completes it, but that reveals itself to it only through its very exercise and always surpasses it. Thus, the world we see always expresses the exigencies of our activity; it becomes [40] richer and more beautiful as our activity becomes more perfect and pure.

V. — But it is by examining the regressive character of reflection that we will best understand both why it is accused of impotence and why, on the contrary, it is inseparable from the creative act that it puts, so to speak, within our reach. It is shown that it always presupposes a spontaneity that has already been exercised, a given that it seeks to take possession of, that it can only be the inversion of a movement that has already taken place. And that is why it appears sterile. But is it merely a return that implies a departure and adds nothing to that departure? However, it is remarkable that this spontaneity, this givenness only appear to reflection after they have already been surpassed by it, and that it is because there is a return that we know there is a departure. In such a way that, far from maintaining that the departure is self-sufficient and that the return adds nothing to it, it is the return that, in a certain sense, creates both the return and the departure. It is the return that, by establishing a rupture in the creative act between an impulse that I undergo and a process that makes it my own, allows me to participate in it through a free act.

For it is only reflection that can allow me to integrate my participated being into the total being. It is what makes me a spiritual being. Too often, it is thought that reflection must content itself with apprehending an already constituted reality, after which it could disappear like a tool once it has served its purpose. But the meaning of reflection is quite different. It does not add itself to the creative act as a new and gratuitous act whose origin no one would understand: it is this very act that, changing its name, does not change its nature. It is this act, turning back on itself and always seeking its own source. Such a process does not pursue an object that eludes us: it is the process by which the spirit establishes its own interiority, settles within it, and brings forth from the very exercise of its freedom the reasons that justify it. Here we are at the point where, by obliging us to become the cause of ourselves, we penetrate into the original secret of creation. And, in a kind of paradox, this same operation, which seemed so futile a moment ago and in which it seemed that we were merely retracing our steps, is also the one by which we create everything that we are; only it can reveal to us true efficacy. Not that this efficacy is entirely ours: for we only dispose of it, and what we assume of it [41] always calls for a given that responds to it, surpasses it, and is the dual object of a thought that represents it and a will that modifies it.

Hence, we clearly see the weakness of the argument that considers reflection as utterly powerless because it engages in a regression that it never completes. This is precisely the sign, not that it seeks an origin of the real that continually recedes and always eludes it, but on the contrary, that it immediately places us ourselves at the origin of what is. As soon as it is exercised, it calls everything into question. It is because at every instant it makes us rediscover a primal beginning of ourselves and the world. It is said that it exhausts and withers everything it touches, but that is a great injustice: it brings us back to the point of supreme inner emotion where every thing becomes nascent. The infinite regression it implies is not evidence of a repeated failure; it is the mark of that fecundity by which, by introducing us at once into an inner world where there are no longer objects that arrest us and resist us, but only acts and meanings, it reveals to us that no act is self-sufficient except the one that is the principle of everything that is and by which the spirit eternally generates its own presence to itself.

VI. — It is now time to deepen the relationship between reflexive act and creative act; it is only by seeking how they are connected and how they oppose each other that we will come to understand the integration of our individual within the whole of which it is a part and penetrate into the mystery of participation. Let us consider once again this character of inversion or return that is the essence of the reflexive act. It seems that it can never arise on its own. It is a reappropriation of something that existed without us until now and that can now only exist with us. It is in this reappropriation that consciousness is formed, and it is this reappropriation that depends on us. As soon as our activity wanes, consciousness darkens: nature and instinct begin to invade us again. But it is the oscillations of our attentive will that mark the different degrees of our participation in being and life. We then witness the birth of the spirit, of which we feel keenly that it is nothing but an operation that we must accomplish, although this operation finds in us neither the source of its possibility nor the perfection that gives it completion. And that is why the spirit only appears in us [42] in opposition to matter, from which it delivers us, but with which it never breaks. Each of us accords more to matter or more to spirit, and the dividing line between them does not pass through the same points in different beings. It is right that our freedom should trace it according to how we use it, according to whether we prefer to act or to suffer.

But the spirit only begins to exert itself when reality, instead of sufficing, seems to redouble itself in a second step that will precisely allow us to take possession of it. However, without this second step, there would be no reality for us: so that reflection only appears to separate us from the world. It is reflection that gives it all the light that illuminates it and thus makes a world exist for us. But the originality of reflection is that this world it projects before it, and to which it continually applies itself, is of interest to it only because the objects that fill it also remain in contact with it: they are only the correlates of certain acts of thought and will that continually modify its appearance or nature, and that make us perceive in each of them both a new meaning and a new task to be fulfilled. Thus, an uninterrupted back-and-forth is established between reflection and the world, thanks to which consciousness achieves a progress that itself has no end. But this reduplication would have no significance, it would remain the most frivolous thing in the world, if its role were not precisely to spiritualize everything that is given to us and to relate it to an activity that is the source of everything that is and to which reflection allows us to participate through an increasingly lucid and stripped-down operation. So that the process by which we constitute our own being by participating in creative activity is one and the same as the process by which we reflect on this same activity in the very image that we acquire of the world.

A) We can now distinguish three successive stages by which reflection, always pursuing the same reduplication of the given, gradually substitutes, for things, increasingly internal operations that allow us to penetrate their meaning, to ascend to the summit of our spiritual activity, and to grasp it in its very exercise.

First, at the first degree, there is the distinction we make between perception and the thing that shows itself to us in a much clearer manner than other more complex processes the essence and mystery of the reflexive act. For there is no true separation between perception and the thing; they are given together, with each other, and even within each other. And we all think that in perception, it is the thing itself that is present to us. But nevertheless, no one confuses them, not even Berkeley. We always imagine perception on the model of that physical reflection by which the virtual image of an object is formed; only in perception, only the image is given to us. By relating it to a thing, we want to testify that it is itself the product of a reflexive act, that it is insufficient and cannot be posited alone, that there is an infinity of possible perceptions converging to the very place where it appears, and that it is itself capable of infinitely enriching itself. In principle, there would be no difference between the thing and a perception that would be capable of exhausting it. That would undoubtedly be a contradiction, but one that clearly shows that the distinction between perception and the thing is the first evidence of participation. Thus, it is natural that we consider the thing as inert to the extent that it surpasses our perception, that is, our current participation, although perception, at the moment it apprehends it, dematerializes it to already make it the first victory of the spirit.

But suddenly, the thing itself seems to be taken away from us. We are deprived of its presence. There is no longer any given for us. Our spirit has become a naked power. It keenly feels that it is dispossessed and experiences the regret of the loss it has suffered. It finds nothing in itself but an emptiness that it seeks to fill. But in the effort it makes to achieve this, it gradually sees the image of the absent thing taking shape. It gradually acquires a sort of invisible presence; then a new distinction appears between the image and perception, comparable to the one that had appeared earlier between perception and the image. And it happens that, just as we complained earlier that we can only grasp perception and never the thing, we now complain that perception is forever abolished and that all that remains in our hands is the image. However, like perception, which opens the access of our consciousness to the thing, giving it a sort of spiritual form, in the same way and in a sense at the second degree, the image transfigures perception and appeals only to the activity of the spirit to resurrect it. But it is a superficial view that refuses to recognize between the primitive perception and the image [44] that resurrects it anything other than a mere difference in intensity. For the image instructs me much more: I need the distance of the past to have an inner and personal possession of what life continually brings me, for the events that fill it to form a tableau, for me to discern their significance, for me to have a full awareness of myself and of the love that bound me to the beings I have lost. Yet there still remains in it a character of ambiguity: just now, perception was weighed down by the very presence of the thing that prevented us from recognizing in it the spiritual act by which it constitutes itself. Now, it seeks the body that is missing, without which it has difficulty sustaining itself.

Thus, in the image, the spirit only begins to liberate itself; but it still feels the chains that hold it. It oscillates between a spectacle that it continually seeks to actualize without ever fully achieving it and an operation over which it never gains complete mastery. Therefore, it is necessary to take a new step; at the third degree, it realizes the distinction between the image and the idea. Sometimes, it is thought that the idea leaves only a skeletal outline of the image. But that is not their true difference, for a schema is merely a more rigid image. Only in the idea is the primacy of the spirit’s activity over passivity finally assured. The idea is the creative power of thought, stripped of all the servitudes of matter, time, and place. It is an internal operation of which I always rediscover the availability within myself and which, if it needs the image or the thing to embody itself, that is, to complete itself, constitutes their intelligibility, that is, their reason for being, which is the reason for their very existence. It is here, therefore, that we are closest to that initial act by which the spirit recognizes itself as the cause of itself and as the cause of everything that is: like the spirit, the idea is born from nothing.

Yet it still belongs to the realm of reflection, for there is an infinite multiplicity of ideas that delimit and compose one another. None of them is capable of showing us the unity of the spirit in its undivided fullness: it is above each of them because it is the principle of efficiency for all. Each idea expresses a mediation between that act where no passivity remains and that passivity without activity which we call matter, but which itself is only a kind of limit intended to make possible all degrees of participation between these two extremes. There is, so to speak, a positive indeterminacy of the spirit that [45] is only the perfect acuity of an act capable of producing anything; and there is a negative indeterminacy of matter that is only the perfect indifference of a receptivity capable of receiving anything. And between the two, there is an infinity of forms of determination, the most varied, the most precise, the most subtle.

However, it is clear that there exists an interval between perception and the thing, between the image and perception, between the idea and the image, only to allow for the various movements of our freedom, without which we would be incapable of inscribing ourselves in total being through a simultaneously personal and participatory operation. Here, the reflective act reveals its close connection to the creative act, for there is no term that reflection unveils to me that does not appear to me as insufficient and abstract, and consequently does not prompt me to perform an act of opposing meaning, through which I give it its significance and reality, and fully take possession of it. Moreover, in a curious and admirable way, it is as I approach closer to the pure activity of thought, where contemplation should be sufficient, that the demand for this new change of meaning, which compels me to participate in the work of creation, becomes more imperative. Look at perception: it is itself nothing but a frivolous and inconsistent spectacle if it does not become the basis for an action through which I will give it value, either to satisfy a need or desire, or to use it as a vehicle to achieve more perfect communication with others. It is at the moment when I assume this significant responsibility that it ceases to be an appearance for me and becomes a reality. Look at the image: it is connected to my spiritual being in a much more intimate way than perception, yet I cannot be content with it. It always eludes me, and my uncertain mind cannot retain it or fix it. But this is good, for it is a sign that the image itself is the sketch of a creative action. Just as perception calls for a useful movement without which it cannot be self-sufficient, it is the image that moves the hand of the artist. The artist cannot fully realize it within his consciousness; therefore, it compels him to go beyond himself and produce a work in which it becomes visible to all eyes, without which it would be nothing more than a more or less moving virtuality. The power of the image thus surpasses that of perception, whose contours were already given to us; here, it is the image itself that determines them in order to take form. But within the form itself, it is the image that we seek, that we try to revive internally. Therefore, the work of art must constitute a world that is both gratuitous and useless, and which, alongside the real world, always appears to us as both more artificial and deeper. - But now consider the idea: it is the very spirit in action. Its reality lies in its effectiveness: it is always a duty for us to fulfill. “I have an idea,” we say, and immediately our body springs into action and our entire conduct is changed. There is no idea that is not bound to become an ideal, for every idea is simultaneously an action that is commanded to me. There is no idea that is not presented to me as a means to reform the world, that is, to contribute to the very operation through which it is formed. And it would be futile to try to distinguish between theoretical ideas and practical ideas in this regard, for if it is true that only the one who accepts conforming his life to the idea of justice truly thinks it, it is no less true that the idea of a triangle has meaning only for the one who accepts constructing it and deducing its properties, and that the idea of man itself has meaning only for the one who accepts realizing it within himself, fulfilling the obligations it evokes, that is, doing everything to deserve to be called by such a name.

B) The reflective act always seems to separate me from the world, but it is to turn back to the very principle on which the world depends and to show me that participation is always offered to me: and without it, the world would not appear. At each stage, the role of the reflective act is to deepen the interval between what I am and what I can or what I must, without which my freedom would find no means of exercise, that is, without which I would be a thing and not a being. It therefore also seems to separate me from myself, but it is through it, nevertheless, that I recognize what I am, that I distinguish my reality, which already no longer belongs to me and exists more for others than for myself, from my possibility that depends solely on me to discover and actualize. I am a being that always surpasses itself, that has never finished producing its true essence. But how can we conceive of this perpetual surpassing other than through a relation with an ever-present Being that never ceases to provide for me, that compels me, in order to become, to engage my own life in time, and that eternally assumes in the absolute that same causality of self that the use of my freedom precisely allows me to make my own according to my abilities? It is in the interval that separates me from it that all the movements of understanding appear, through which I discover, one after another, through perception, image, and idea, both my limitations and my possibilities: ascending gradually from the thing to the idea, I see the pure given recede little by little and give way to “reasons for being.” But these reasons I produce by producing myself, in such a way that, without abolishing the distinction that has always been maintained between will and understanding, it must also be said that the will is already present in all the operations of understanding, and that it is the light given by understanding that, by always creating a new disjunction between the real and the possible, establishes uninterrupted communication between absolute activity and my own activity.

VII. - Only the analysis of the reflective act allows us to penetrate the mystery of the creative act. It reveals it to us, so to speak, within our reach. However, reflection is almost always considered an independent act that, by applying itself to an already given world, tries with its own resources to construct its representation or rediscover its principle. However, reflection itself is in the world; otherwise, we would not understand how it could reach it; it extends the very act that creates it. Otherwise, from where would it arise? This becomes clear enough when we consider that there cannot be plurality in the act itself, only in the individuals who possess it or in the objects that limit it, that the reflective act enters into the creative act, whose meaning it merely changes, and that it engenders the virtuality of the world just as the creative act engenders its reality, but by creating a gap between them in which we precisely engage our own creative activity. Therefore, it is easy to understand why, being the very testimony of my initiative, it is always prior to me: it reveals to us both the given that it separates from itself as soon as it begins its ascent and the spontaneity itself that it breaks and opposes because it no longer satisfies it. It may well begin, as has been said, in the face of an encountered obstacle that compels me to know it in order to overcome it, but that is only the occasion that sets it in motion. It does not have this origin or utilitarian inflection in itself. It is the very reason of life, which is its instrument, and whose role is only to make it possible. It belongs to the spirit of which it is the very essence: like the spirit, it is constantly reborn from itself. And even if it is aroused by the obstacle, it is only in leisure that it finds its free play and its true abode.

But if the reflective act poses itself as prior to me, it also poses itself as secondary, not in relation to the given or to the spontaneity, which are only the conditions and means of its exercise, but in relation to the creative act that it tries to rediscover, not to make us abdicate before it, but to allow us, by participating in it, to create a destiny that is our own. It is therefore a return to the source, but in which we seek the foundation of this freedom by which we become capable of giving ourselves being. Thus, we can equally say that it is we who reflect and that the creative act reflects itself in us, but to call us to the exercise of freedom. And the creative act itself, considered in its pure essence, is not foreign to reflection; it is only an act of perfect reflection in which the going forth and the return are one. We ourselves do not lack a certain experience of this when we reach certain peaks of spiritual life. But most often, our activity remains divided. Then reflection appears to us once again as assuming an object that it is incapable of creating, as confined to the world of virtuality and possibility, as subordinate and relative to a reality that it tries to give us purely subjective possession of: each of these words is instructive, for they show that the reflective act implies a creative act, actual and absolute, from which it can never be separated, which sustains it, compels us to assume it, and put it into practice according to our abilities.

Shall we say that we no longer recognize in this description the classical face of reflection? But that’s because there are two kinds of reflection: first, isolated reflection that gives man awareness of his powerlessness and misery. It thinks it finds its true origin within ourselves. The world is before it like a stranger, like a scandalous body that it will never be able to assimilate or justify. By renouncing a participation that humiliates it, it renounces everything that is and that is only ever participated in. It is sterile and incapable of producing anything because it has severed ties with the act that produces everything and of which it should have given us, in a certain way, free disposal. It is forced to reduce itself to purely critical and even destructive action, as if, jealous of not being absolutely creative, it set out to undo, point by point, the entire work of creation.

But there is a better use of reflection. Everyone will undoubtedly recognize that it seeks to free us from our servitude to the object in order to ensure the supremacy of our spiritual activity over it. However, this object never disappears. Is it therefore a failure for reflection? And is it not true, on the contrary, that this activity cannot do without it? As it becomes more perfect, the object itself acquires more relief, delicacy, and beauty. It is a gift that is given to us, but its value is always in relation to the operation by which we apprehend it, that is, with our merit. But this operation, in turn, finds its principle in an infinite act to which it is subordinate and which it limits. It is because it never equals it, it is in the gap that separates them that the object shows itself, which is not, as is sometimes believed, a mere construction of our thought, but always that which it lacks, what it calls, what responds to it, what surpasses it. By obliging us to ascend to the principle of everything that is given, reflection does not lose contact with the given, it does not make it disappear. On the contrary, it multiplies it and infinitely enriches it; it becomes for it an uninterrupted revelation. Similarly, it goes back in time, not to force us to return to the distant past, but to compel us to live in the moment when creation always begins anew. But it does not abolish time: that is why there is always in it a double movement, a sort of indefinite oscillation of ebb and flow that prevents the course of time from carrying us away and dissipating us. It always opens up a new path for our free activity; but reflection reminds it at every moment of its connection with eternity.

We do not hide from ourselves the difficulties to which this conception of the relationship between reflective action and creative action exposes us. For the characteristic of an action is that it can only be grasped by the one who performs it and in its very performance. Is there any approach that can take us beyond the limits of the self and enable us to reach the creative act? However, the self never poses itself separately, or rather it finds, in posing itself, the very conditions that enable it to pose itself. Thus, it is seen that it seeks itself by limiting itself. It is not itself that it first finds in front of it, but the universe of which it is a part. Even within itself, it is not itself that it finds, but an activity to which it sometimes consents and sometimes resists. It is this continually rediscovered origin of oneself and the world that we have tried to describe and that seems to us to constitute an act of participation. It is this act of participation that is the secret of every life and the key to all dialectics; it prevents us from remaining enclosed within ourselves and dreaming of an absolute unrelated to us; it is a point of encounter. It is by meditating on it that every spirit would discover its own unique and irreplaceable vocation; instead of seeking to contradict other spirits, it would rejoice in their diversity, which, by multiplying the perspectives we have on the world, reveals its infinity to us. It would not agree to sacrifice any of them. Thus, philosophy would also know the most beautiful developments: history would show us that each doctrine responds to certain requirements, inseparable from all consciousness, but that it needs all other doctrines to support itself, just as each individual needs all others in order to be capable of subsisting. The sciences of the material world and the social world, art, morality, politics, by appearing as particular modes of participation, would find a common principle that would allow them to define their method and object, to lend each other mutual support and, in a sense, to offer different transpositions that are both independent and interdependent on this initial act by which we are both created and called to create ourselves, by collaborating in the work of creation2.

Chapter III. General Principles of any Philosophy of Participation

I. Cogito and Participation

Since the 17th century, philosophical reflection has considered its inaugural step, and even its constitutive step, present and implied in all its particular steps, to be the one defined by Descartes with the two fiery traits of “I think, therefore I am,” which simultaneously introduce us to both consciousness and existence. But the Cogito does not merely posit the primacy of the thinking self in order to make it the arbiter and standard of reality, as is often believed: it presents us with a dual participation of the self in thought and of thought in Being, or rather of the self in Being through the medium of thought, which only gains its full meaning when the ontological argument shows us, in the infinity of Being that eternally produces itself, the actual foundation of participation, that is, the act of our thought, and consequently, its very being.

II. Experience of Participation

The idealistic consequences drawn from the Cartesian argument have always given the mind immense ambition and immense hope, but have never left it without a certain feeling of insecurity. For the primitive experience we have of our thought brings true satisfaction only if it is the subtler and deeper expression of that other experience which is common to all and always accompanies it, which is our own presence in the totality of Being. This experience is not that of the relationship between subject and object, but rather that of our own being as it is inserted in the Whole which surpasses it, and with which it undergoes the test of its kinship and even its ontological identity.

From this experience, we have a familiar and objective image: it is the one that obliges us to inscribe our own body, revealed to us through internal sensations, in a space larger than what our sight reveals. However, our body and the space in which we locate it become present to us only through an act that we perform and which is the creator of consciousness itself. Now, what does such an act consist of? What is the experience by which we take possession of it? It reveals to us a distinction and a connection between an operation that we perform and an efficacy from which it draws, which can be compared to the distinction and connection, in sensory experience, between the proper body and the surrounding space. For me, to act is to have a power that I can put into action within certain limits; I make it mine through a kind of personal adherence whose role corresponds to that of internal sensations, but it infinitely surpasses me, which obliges me to situate myself in a universe of possibilities that evokes the visual spectacle extending in all directions beyond the boundaries of the body. It is the relationship between these possibilities and their exercise that constitutes the problem of participation.

III. Idea of Power

Will it now be said that the word “possibility” has meaning only in relation to me, that is, in relation to the activity that I effectively exercise, whose imaginary condition it expresses through a kind of retrospective reflection (as positivists maintain)? But that would be only an abstract possibility. However, there is a real possibility that I discover in myself through the examination I make of it in the very suspension in which I hold it before putting it into action (which makes it possible to define consciousness as the place where possibilities become powers and where they are elaborated). Now, these powers infinitely exceed the use I can make of them: they constitute, like the visual horizon, a world that is in fact limited and, in principle, limitless.

So what is the reality of these powers and how do they come to be actualized? The answer to these two questions is the same: either these powers do not differ from nothingness, or they are identical to pure efficacy, that is, to an absolute activity that eternally generates itself but is divided, captured, and retained so that each person can make it their own and thereby establish their personal existence. As for the conversion of power into action, it presents no difficulty if power itself was already an action that had been reduced to the state of power only in order to allow me to take possession of it and regulate its course. The incessant transition from power to action is constitutive of participation itself; such is also our fundamental experience, the very experience by which we live. It is an inner process whose reality we prove only by accomplishing it, and one cannot say that this experience itself is unintelligible, since, on the contrary, all intelligibility is based on it and is content to explain it.

IV. Relationship between Power and Freedom

It is therefore in the formation of power that the secret of participation lies. For if participation is nothing more than exercised freedom, it is not enough to say that it is a first beginning that is always justified by its own exercise. In its most humble process, such as moving a little finger, it is the disposition, within certain limits determined by the order of the world, of that self-causing activity that is the radical origin of everything that exists. And its relationship with it presents itself to us in two different aspects: either starting from our own initiative, we are obliged to ascend to an efficacy that is always present from which it continually draws, or starting from this efficacy itself, it appears to us in turn as an ever-active and ever-present generosity, that is, as ceaselessly realizing, at every moment and in every point, the passage from nothingness to being, and by creating itself, it calls on the infinity of particular beings to also create themselves, so that it can always be shared, without ever being divided.

Now, power fills the interval that separates Pure Act from the act of participation. And there are powers in the world only for a particular being who, depending on the center of perspective it occupies, makes them appear, so to speak, within the total Being as the very condition of its own realization. Therefore, it is understandable that one can abandon oneself to them as soon as they arise (that is, allow oneself to be enslaved by one’s nature) or take possession of them, direct them, and hierarchize them through a free act in order to make them the instrument of one’s spiritual vocation.

V. Interval and Infinity

However, the interval in which participation takes place is itself an infinite interval. Infinity is not the characteristic of the absolute, but it expresses our relationship with it, a relationship that prevents us from ever merging with it (and therefore safeguards our independence), but shows us our affinity with it (in a way that makes it the source of all our desires and actions). As for this infinite interval, it would only cause anxiety or despair if it were itself an empty interval through which we would not realize any enrichment and which would always keep us equally distant from the very goal from which it separates us. But this interval is full. And the course of our life takes place not towards Being, but within Being, which never withdraws from us and always remains present to us, although we only imperfectly take possession of it. This allows us to progress incessantly, as it gives us the absolute not so much as a goal but as nourishment and support.

The dialectic of consciousness is precisely defined by the different forms of the interval and shows how they suffice to characterize all modes of our representative and practical activity, all our successes and failures. Now, it seems that we can distinguish three main types of interval, of which all others are specifications: first, the interval between the act and the datum within which power comes into play and participation begins to be realized; then its objective form, which is the spatio-temporal interval within which the universe is constituted; finally, its subjective form, which is the interval between understanding and willing within which our personal consciousness is constituted.

VI. Interval between Action and Datum

The interval that separates the act from the datum compels us, whenever we perform an act of participation, to consider this act as being in itself abstract and incomplete, but as necessarily calling for a datum that corresponds to it and actualizes and realizes it. This datum attests that the act of participation cannot be separated from the Pure Act which, to the extent that it surpasses it, imposes a limitation on it, that is, joins it with a matter that determines and affects it. This matter cannot therefore be prior to the operation that apprehends it but is always in relation to it. It has a qualitative and sensory character, the regulated correspondence of which to a defined operation must be demonstrated, without which it would be nothing. And the sensory must not diminish and disappear gradually at the limit, as intellectualism maintains, but it must assume a form that is all the more varied and delicate as the operation itself becomes more complex and attentive. Thus, the interval that separates them can never be abolished. And here we always find a double surpassing: the datum by the act, which is always determined and limited by it, and the act by the datum, which possesses a superabundant richness that it will never succeed in exhausting.

VII. Spatio-temporal Interval

The interval that separates the act from the datum finds two objective conditions of realization in space and time. That space and time are two aspects of the interval and that they are both infinite, one can say that this is their very definition, which is expressed, for space, by the distance between objects, and for time, by the distance between events. Furthermore, space and time are inseparable from each other, just like the act and the datum: and just as in the relationship between the act and the datum, the interval opens only to be crossed, likewise in the spatio-temporal relationship, space determines nothing more than a pure interval between points that needs to be traversed, and it can only be done in time; and conversely, the pure temporal interval would be nothing more than an eternal absence if it were not traversed, that is, if it did not constantly interfere with the space from which it precisely receives its successive actuality. - Finally, it is easy to see that it is in the way in which time and space are linked to each other that we can observe the conversion of the act into the datum: for every datum presents itself to us in space, but only by virtue of an act that we can only perform in time.

VIII. Interval between Understanding and Willing

Understanding and will are the subjective conditions through which the interval is realized. And just as the relationship between space and time allows us to define the structure of the universe, the relationship between understanding and will will allow us to define the structure of consciousness. Understanding has a privileged relationship with space, as evidenced by the preeminence of mathematics in knowledge, the privileged connection between extension and intelligibility observed in all intellectualist philosophies, such as that of Malebranche, and the timeless simultaneity possessed by all objects of possible thought. Will, on the other hand, has a privileged relationship with time, as it always expresses the determination of the future by the present, that is, the very direction in which time flows, enabling us to make it the very condition of our creative initiative.

Each of these two functions is defined by its own interval: understanding between attention and its object, will between intention and its end. However, these two forms of the interval cannot be separated, since the activity of understanding must be shaken by the will, and the will can only be exercised in the light of understanding. Yet their dissociation was necessary to establish participation, given that it is only possible insofar as it allows me to grasp, through a virtual representation, a world that I do not create, in order to bring forth, within it, through a real action, through an original approach that constantly marks and adds to it, the advent of my own being.

IX. Development of the Doctrine of Participation

These general principles seem to us both necessary and sufficient to support any philosophy of participation. None can ever disregard them, because:

a) They allow us to resolve the conflict between a transcendent reality from which we constantly draw and an immanent reality that is always the result of our operation.

b) They allow us to distinguish, on the one hand, the conditions of possibility of participation, which are common to all individual beings, and therefore must be deducible and which, so to speak, close the very framework of the universe, and on the other hand, the actual use that each can make of them, the original way in which one disposes of them through a free act.

c) They allow us to understand how the representation we have of the world and the very course of our destiny are always related to the action we have assumed, that is, to our merit, and how a plurality of perspectives and vocations, all different and even contradictory, can nevertheless find their place in the same universe.

d) They allow us to define science, art, poetry, morality, politics, and religion as different modes of participation, the specific character and systematic relations of which will be sought to be determined through a dialectic whose first principles can be established once and for all, but which remains forever open, as it has the absolute efficacy of the creative act to support and animate it, and the infinite before it to give it scope.3

Chapter IV. Remarks on the Theme: Legitimacy and Significance of Metaphysics

I. - Metaphysics opposes physics, which is the science of nature considered as external to us but capable of being apprehended through sensory observation and reconstructed through abstract thought. Physics studies a world that is not us, and that only has reality and meaning in relation to us, a world composed only of phenomena.

II. - Metaphysics, as its name implies, studies a world beyond phenomena. It is often believed to be a world of things that would be situated behind the world we see. But these things cannot be known since to know them would be to transform them into phenomena. There is no outside that is not an object, that can have meaning other than for a subject, or that is not a phenomenon. The thing-in-itself is not only unknowable but contradictory.

III. - A reality “in itself” can only exist for itself and not for another. It is the intimacy with oneself that precisely constitutes a mind. Metaphysics, as the science of being, can only be the science of the mind.

IV. - We have an experience of the mind within ourselves. It is not the experience of our own states, which is still the experience of certain objects that are to some extent external to us, to which we are bound by an affective bond that is closer than the purely representative bond we have with extended objects. However, we detach ourselves from them as soon as we consider them, and they are nothing but the expression or phenomenon of ourselves. They belong to the domain of psychology.

V. - But within us, there is an activity that only occurs with our consent, that is always initiative and a first beginning, that depends only on itself, that is the very type of an activity that generates itself or exists only in itself, that produces its own light because it is through its exercise that consciousness is constituted, and that is not the phenomenon of anything because its entire reality is exhausted in its own play, and there is only phenomenon in relation to it. We call it freedom, and freedom is the only authentic metaphysical reality. Metaphysics is a science of freedom and the conditions of its exercise.

VI. - Because freedom never stands alone, it can be said that it first requires its possibility, not an abstract possibility that would be merely an idea, but a real possibility present within it and of which it is the actualization. A freedom that does not act is the reality of a possibility. But just as it depends only on us to dispose of it, it does not depend on us to make it available. This means that freedom itself is received, that is, it is a fact that can only be grasped in this act of taking possession by which we precisely transform it into an act.

VII. - But the effectiveness with which my act disposes is an ever-present effectiveness that infinitely surpasses it, from which it continually draws and to which it always expresses its limitation. Just as our body itself is a part of the represented world with which it is always in communication but from which it distinguishes itself because it affects me, similarly, the activity I exercise is always borrowed by me from an infinite activity with which it is always united, even when it distinguishes itself from it to assume it. And the infinitude of the power in which I participate is as inseparable from the slightest operation I perform as the infinitude of space is inseparable from the narrow space my body occupies. However, to the extent that I make this power my own, it frees me and makes me responsible for its use, while my presence in the midst of the world subjects me to its law.

VIII. - In this infinite power of being in itself that nothing limits, the distinction between possibility and existence, which characterizes our freedom, is abolished. But it is this distinction that provides our freedom both with the possibility that it does not always actualize and with the very effectiveness by which it actualizes it. Metaphysics, insofar as it studies the relationship between pure act and our own act, becomes theology: it allows us to ascend from the latter to the former and descend from the former to the latter. It is an ascending and descending dialectic at the same time, a theory of the origin of things and a theory of creation.

IX. - There is an impossible gap to bridge that separates my freedom from the Absolute Act from which it separates itself but from which it draws nourishment. This separation and communication are achieved only through certain means that can be deduced and that are the instruments of participation. The main ones are space, time, number, cause, and end. They form a system commonly referred to as the table of categories and will be the object of the theory of knowledge.

X. - But these means themselves are only means, and they would fail in their effect if my freedom, through each of the steps it takes to implement them, did not bring forth in the world a data that is both a limit and a response to it. It is precisely this regulated correspondence between the operations of my mind and the face that the universe shows me that constitutes the cosmological problem.

XI. - Nature is inseparable from freedom not only through the spectacle it presents to it externally but also through the spontaneity that solicits it internally, that implants it in the world instead of leaving it isolated, and that, combined with the influence of things, obliges us to define consciousness by the relationship between its acts and its states, which becomes the metaphysical foundation of psychological investigation.

XII. - Finally, each freedom finds in itself, through its impossibility to be self-sufficient and the infinitude within it, a calling not only to an absolute from which it borrows its effectiveness but also to another freedom, limited like itself, with which it can form a real Society by uniting with it through mutual mediation. No object can be the end of freedom, but only the instrument and witness that allows it to communicate with other freedoms to which it constantly lends or seeks assistance. These are the fundamental principles that should be formulated in this “meta-morality” where the foundation of the most precise precepts of any practical catechism should be sought.

This is not, in my view, an abridgment of a metaphysical system but rather a kind of program that it is up to the meditation of all philosophers to fill. On each of these points, the path remains open, not only to a discussion of the form that can be given to the principles but also to an infinite diversity of perspectives through which their modes of application will continue to multiply and enrich. As for the two questions that formed the specific object of the Congress on the legitimacy of metaphysics and its significance, I have not forgotten them. But I told you that the legitimacy of metaphysics is proven by doing it. And its significance cannot be disputed by anyone if it is shown that it is not, as believed, a speculative view of an imaginary absolute that would be beyond all experience, but that it is capable of surpassing appearance or concept to reach being precisely because it is the taking possession of an act in the process of becoming, beyond which there is nothing, but which is the first beginning of all things, describing their conditions and effects that we can only grasp by accomplishing it and teaching us to measure its significance by showing that it engages our entire life and restores to it the character of absolute actuality without which it would be nothing but a frivolous and insignificant dream 4.

Part Two: Discovery of the Self

Chapter V. Discovery of the Self

There is no word that evokes more emotion in consciousness than the word “me”: the self is even the source of all the emotions I can feel. There is nothing in the world that can receive interest, meaning, and value other than through its relationship to this personal and fragile being that is me, the only one from whom I cannot detach myself, the only one who continues to affect me, the only one of whom I can say not only that it is, but that I am.

This miracle of an existence that is mine, when I fix my gaze upon it, fills me with admiration and anxiety that I can hardly bear. Usually, habit is enough to cover it and dull it: the attention I give to objects, the constant demands of action turn me outward and prevent me from maintaining a direct and vivid awareness of it. Everything I can think, everything I can do, and even, paradoxically, everything that fills my life distracts me from the feeling of living and prevents me from grasping life as my own at its root and in its essence. I am always preoccupied with what might happen to me, attached to my various states of mind, trembling that one of my desires might not be satisfied, delighting in the pleasure given to me, groaning in pain that assails me; and I forget my own existence in favor of the modes that determine it. They all have to disappear for me to rediscover that simple and bare self without which none of the events that happen to me could touch me, and none of the feelings I experience could belong to me.

The greatest shock I can receive is the one given to me by the discovery of this pure power I have to say “me”; of a being that is mine and that trembles with hope and fear as soon as it casts its eyes upon a destiny that belongs only to itself. Everything that destiny may contain, everything that may serve it or harm it, has infinitely less significance and grandeur than this thought, so natural and yet so extraordinary, that this destiny is that of a self with which I am one, and that no other being in the world is capable of claiming in my place. This thought brings us a revelation that is heartrending, through which, from the indifference of an anonymous existence of which we knew nothing, emerges an existence that we cannot refuse or reject outside of us, which adheres to us, which is us. This existence is both imposed upon us and delivered to us: we undergo it and we create it. It is part of a whole that surpasses it, but it is strictly and absolutely personal. It shows us a self that is always being born and that is never anything other than imminent. It is a sort of breakthrough beyond appearances to the very source from which they spring. It can be said that it is the astonishment of existing that allows us to say that the one who lives the most intense life is also the one who never becomes accustomed to living.

I

What gives the discovery of the self its most striking character is that it expresses the most ordinary, the most common, and yet the most personal and intimate experience. It is the most ordinary and the most common; for the experience we have of things is varied and constantly renewed, whereas the experience we have of ourselves is a constant experience that remains the same and that we would not even notice if it were not always associated with some change that revives it. And it is still the most ordinary and the most common because all human beings on Earth are equally capable of saying “I”: and by saying “I,” they affirm their existence in the same way, as if it were an identical existence given to all of them at once.

But at the same time, it happens that although all beings can say “I,” each one, in saying “I,” separates himself from all the others, and this “I” expresses an act that he alone performs and that he alone knows. Furthermore, such an act is always invisible and incommunicable. All aspects of reality to which the word “self” may apply belong to a consciousness within which no other self can penetrate. Every self is solitude. And to say “self” is to close oneself off, not to open oneself to the outside world. Furthermore, I know that everything I feel as mine possesses a uniquely original and individual character that can never be repeated and that no one in the world will ever rediscover the inimitable flavor of. We thus arrive at this strange situation where all beings can say “me” in such a way that there is nothing in the world as widespread as the self, but the self to which they give the same name is never the same self, and it even possesses the power to be different from any other self, to safeguard its own independence, and to decisively escape all gazes. Thus, the self reveals to us, on one hand, what could be called the universal character of individual existence, and on the other hand, the inaccessible secret of all real existence of which we never see anything more than a manifested appearance.

For I am never sure of what is happening in another’s consciousness. And I, in turn, am unable to convey what I feel, even when I try to do so. Each self only sees in another self its body, which bears witness to it. And it is through an act of faith that, behind this body, it imagines a self comparable to its own, capable also of thinking and willing, but with a thinking and willing that it imagines without ever being able to violate its mystery. This is because the deepest characteristic of the self is that it can never be known by anyone but itself, so that its existence is always doubtful for another who can always deny it, since he grasps from it nothing more than signs that express it and that can still remain when the self has lost that initiative and self-awareness without which it is no longer a true self. But it is a very peculiar fact that the self, which is essentially invisible, is always obliged to present a visible spectacle of itself, which belongs to the world of nature and object, that is, to a world that is not only heterogeneous to the self but in a certain sense its negation. That is why neither facial expressions, nor actions, nor words can ever be considered faithful testimonies of the self: they need to be interpreted, and they can only be interpreted if the self confirms their interpretation itself; but it can only succeed in doing so through new testimonies that would need to be confirmed in turn. We thus arrive at this conclusion where the problem of expression reveals its deepest meaning: the self can only ever seek to express itself, but it will never succeed because its nature is to be inexpressible, so that expression is the creation of a new world behind which the self conceals itself in the very effort it makes to manifest itself.

The discovery of the self is the discovery of our own existence in the world; for it resides, one could say, in the junction of existence and belonging. It is often said that philosophy begins when we ask ourselves why there is something rather than nothing, and it seems that in this confrontation between being and nothingness, all metaphysical curiosity is exercised and the very drama of intelligence unfolds. The presence of being imposes itself upon us despite ourselves; but the nature of intelligence is to question everything, including the very being that presses upon it from all sides. Nothingness cannot be given; it is for us only a thought, the thought of crossed-out being, a doubly contradictory thought since it assumes both an already posited being and the very being of the movement that crosses it out. But this thought of nothingness nevertheless reveals to us the essence of intellectual action, which is to want to derive everything from itself and, so to speak, to bring being out of nothingness by virtue of its own operation. However, the intelligence that performs this passage is the intelligence of a being that says “me” and that posits its own existence in the very act by which it questions the existence of everything else. Indeed, the self is the discovery of an existence that cannot be denied because, at the moment it affirms itself, it generates itself. It thus enjoys an obvious prerogative among other forms of existence: it possesses an indubitable character; it bears within itself the mark of the absolute. But, on the other hand, it is not true that this self can ever identify itself with the Whole; its intelligence, at the moment it thinks of generating the world, only generates its representation, which does not prevent it from feeling itself finite and miserable within a world that surpasses and constrains it, even though it only has meaning for it and in relation to it. Therefore, it seeks to find its place in this world, how it is determined by it, but also how it determines it in return. And the first experience we have, the one on which all others depend, is not the experience of the self or the experience of the world, but the experience of the presence of the self in the world, or rather its participation in this grand work of creation of which it is itself a part, even though it also has the power to contribute to its formation. Thus, this emotion that accompanies the self’s self-awareness does not only express the discovery of its own being, but also the discovery that this being, which is its own, is not an isolated being, that it is included in the totality of a universe that welcomes it and elevates it to itself, that makes it a part of itself and grants it an existence that it itself needs to be. Thus, the self, which was initially amazed at feeling unique and separate, is now amazed at this infinity that supports it and with which it is inseparable.

II

However, the problem of the self consists essentially in the taking possession of existence as my own. It is not merely a psychological problem that only interests me in terms of my self-concern, that is, my most selfish interest. This problem has the most serious metaphysical significance. I do not have difficulty positing an existence outside of myself and attributing to it a character of independence and sufficiency, as sufficiently shown by the prefix “ex” in the word existence, which is the sign of externality. But how can this existence be at the same time my existence, stripping away the externality through which it seems to arise in order to apply, as if folding back onto itself, to the very subject that posits it? This appears all the more difficult when, in seeking what constitutes the reality of the self, I expect to find an object that I can see or grasp, and I am amazed not to encounter it anywhere; it is always elusive and vanishing. To give some subsistence to the self, I invent the word “soul,” but I must immediately recognize that I cannot grasp my soul in such a way that I am forced, by a sort of contradiction, to place it beyond this world of consciousness in which I experience what I am, and which is the only world in which I can utter the word “self” and give it a true meaning. Therefore, in order to give more solidity to the self, should it be made into a substance from which the self is absent? Under the name of soul, I most often seek a spiritual object comparable to a material object, although it eludes my senses. But there is no spiritual object.

However, I cannot renounce attributing to the self an objective existence without experiencing immense confusion about its own reality. It is easy to understand why many people identify this reality with that of the body, which I can see and touch, and whose presence is always attested by those around me. Should I now doubt this existence of the self, which escapes others, which I cannot show to anyone and which I testify to only in a completely different world, the world of things? Shall we say that if for others my own self is indeed only a hypothesis, the invisible cause of certain visible effects, it is at least for myself the most assured existence, of which consciousness itself is the guarantee? But if I ask what this existence is that, under the name of self, consciousness allows me to grasp, I once again become uncertain, for this existence is the most mobile of all: it appears only to vanish, it never acquires any consistency; it is impossible to fix or circumscribe it; it is more like a dream than a reality; it is never completed; it always resembles an intention and a volition; it is never properly obtained and possessed. And this is why, undoubtedly, the most fragile object that my hand can reach often seems to have more existence than the self itself. The self sometimes appears to me as bringing a sort of pure reflection of a world that exists without it and to which it adds nothing, sometimes as expressing a virtuality that will need to be realized by becoming incarnate in some material work.

These characteristics of the self cannot be neglected. However, they should not lead me to attribute to the self a form of inferior and subordinate existence, as if the fullness of being belonged only to things that resist our gaze and the action of our hands. This is indeed the meaning of the materialistic affirmation. We can say that the progress of philosophical thought is precisely measured by the strength with which we become capable of reversing its meaning by placing the source and model of existence in subjectivity, as revealed to us by the self, by considering the world of things as they are given to me as a world that only exists in relation to the self and possesses in front of it only that derived and imperfect existence, which is that of representation, that is, of appearance.

We always associate the two terms existence and knowledge. And we imagine that there can be no knowledge without existence. Although these two terms are indeed inseparable, they vary in opposite senses. Where knowledge is most perfect, being tends to be eliminated in favor of representation; where being is purest, knowledge does not come into play to form an idea of it. However, it can be said that the world of things is for us above all a sphere of representations or knowledge: that is why we always ask whether a representation is faithful, whether knowledge is true, that is, whether there is a corresponding reality behind them, and in the highest of all sciences, namely mathematics, this reality is abolished. On the other hand, when it comes to the self, existence surpasses knowledge. No one wonders if it exists, but only what it is. On the contrary, I cannot attribute to myself any of the characteristics by which I determine the usual objects of knowledge. This is because they do not hold true for the self precisely because it is an existence that no representation can replace. That is why there always remains an indeterminacy in the self: I can never know everything that I am. No knowledge ever penetrates to the essence of the self; it constantly surprises itself; it constantly brings some new revelation; it breaks all the frameworks in which I tried to confine it; it seems to always invent itself. It is truly unknowable, both because it is the very source of all knowledge and because there is nothing beyond this pure source that I could know except through images that exhaust it.

That we can grasp the being of the self in a kind of self-presence that surpasses all knowledge is undoubtedly what has captured the attention of all thinkers who have had the greatest power of meditation. One cannot object with the example of Descartes, for whom the self apprehends itself in an act of clear and distinct thought and who maintains that the knowledge we have of it is more perfect than the knowledge of anything else, which always presupposes it. For the Cartesian self is a thinking act, not a thought object; it would be more accurate to say that we are conscious of it rather than say that we know it. In other words, it is only a pure power that can reveal itself to us through its very exercise. In such a way that when I say, “I think,” there is nothing in me that is yet thought, although this thought encompasses an infinity of possible operations, each of which will apply to some object, but never to the self itself that performs them all. Isn’t this saying that the self apprehends itself in the accomplishment of the act of knowing, rather than through knowledge, that is, as the agent that produces knowledge and without which it would be nothing? This is a direct grasp of the being of the self, in the internal process by which it gives itself being, by engendering knowledge and making such knowledge possible. It would be an affront to the dignity of this existence from which all knowledge derives to apply knowledge to itself and to reduce it to the rank of a mere representation. Therefore, we should not confuse the self of which we are conscious with an object of which we have knowledge; but this knowledge of the object itself belongs to the self, and we will say that it is conscious of it.

However, the self cannot be reduced to thought, understanding thought as the pure power of knowing. There are many other powers in it that can be encompassed by the broad sense of the word thought, and they are the powers of imagining, being affected, desiring, willing, suffering, or enjoying, innumerable powers that we will never finish enumerating, which only reveal themselves to us when they start to come into play, and their fertility is infinite. That is why the self is always a new revelation, an uninterrupted creation, a perpetually emerging being. However, none of these separate powers yet constitute the self; the important thing is that we grasp them precisely in the subject that experiences and actualizes them, that cannot detach them from each other or from itself, which recognizes them as its own, because it is the nucleus and germ that contains them all and, provided it gives its consent to them, allows them to flourish. The self is therefore, first and foremost, the unity that binds them together, giving them a common belonging, making me identify with them and find myself in them, whether I yield to them or direct them. Malebranche, who is Cartesian, saw very profoundly that the thinking self can only be felt. It only thinks what is not itself, but feeling is the mark of its self-presence, of what belongs to it. It is consciousness insofar as it adheres to being, instead of detaching itself from it like knowledge; it carries within itself that character of indeterminacy in which all the riches that remain unexplored in the self are discerned, that character of totality that shows that the self is indivisible and fully active everywhere, that character of intimacy finally, which reveals its radical originality and its most secret essence.

The words “self” and “intimacy” have a sort of affinity and even synonymy between them. Everything that belongs to the self also belongs to intimacy. Generally, we content ourselves with opposing the self to the non-self as interiority to exteriority. And although these two terms imply images borrowed from the language of space, it is recognized that the word “interiority” fairly well evokes the idea of an enclosure in which the self is confined, which separates it from the outside and cannot be breached by any stranger. But the word “intimacy” has more depth. For it denotes a kind of ultimate foundation beyond which it is impossible to pass. Intimacy itself is an absolute. It is the appearance of nothing. It is that entire domain entrusted to the self, where all appearances vanish, where each being is reduced, through a kind of continuous stripping of everything it receives and everything it shows, to a pure power of saying “I.” Intimacy in us is the very origin of everything we can think or do. We always delve deeper into it, but we do not go further than it. It is in it that the extreme point of sincerity moves. It is to it that each of our words, each of our acts owes its meaning and value. It expresses that subjective fecundity by which each being draws from itself everything that it is and everything that it wants to be. It is an invisible and hidden reality, bound to always remain as such, under the risk of dissipating into manifestations that not only betray it but abolish it. Intimacy is in each of us the most remote retreat, the source of our most authentic movements, the inaccessible secret that we are incapable of disclosing. It is only through intimacy that we can grasp not only being, in opposition to appearance, but being in the process of becoming, in opposition to things already done.

If we now consider the world around us, we see that it is losing the sufficient existence that we initially attributed to it. Undoubtedly, it is composed of objects that resist our gaze or the movement of our hand, that impose themselves upon us despite ourselves, that compel us to accept their reality and even to suffer it. And it seems to us that in comparison, the being within us is a virtual and powerless being, devoid of both stability and efficacy. But this is only a prejudice. This resistance that is opposed to us is opposed to our body rather than ourselves; it marks the limits of its power. And the world outside of us only makes sense through these very limits that it teaches us to know. But our mind constantly surpasses them, since it is on the object that is beyond us that knowledge begins to reign. However, this object of knowledge is nothing more than a represented object. It is a spectacle that is offered to us. It only exists for us, who are capable of seeing and embracing it. It is a pure phenomenon that has no essence, no inherent intimacy. It is only what it is through the negation of our own intimacy, which is necessary to sustain it and without which it would immediately vanish. But true being exists only in itself, for itself, and by itself, which means that it is intimacy, whereas the property of things is this absence of interiority that makes them always external, existing only for someone who thinks of them, and determined by something else. This is sufficient to show that things can never be anything other than appearances, and why there is no being in the world that is not a self or consciousness.

However, one would still not understand why the world of consciousness must necessarily be extended by a world of things if the latter were not the means without which the former would be incapable of realizing itself. Firstly, we can say that things, through the body, subject the self to conditions that limit and individualize it, allowing it to occupy a specific place in the universe, to receive an action that comes from it, and to exert an action in return. Secondly, they provide the self, without breaking its enclosure, with instruments of expression through which it can exercise and experience its powers, and which will bear witness for it. And finally, they constitute a sort of common field where all paths of communication will pass, through which each self can enter into relationship with the selves of others.

The body then becomes a kind of mediator between the universe and us: it itself is part of the universe as something that can be seen and touched, and yet it belongs only to me. I am united with it in such a close and privileged manner that other people only know me through my body, and I myself consider as mine only what concerns my body and already begins to affect it. It has a double face turned outward and inward. It is at the junction of the two worlds. But while turning outward, it tends to turn me into an object that has no connection with myself, and while turning inward, it not only participates in the intimacy of my consciousness but also establishes it by individualizing it. Without it, my thought would remain impersonal and indeterminate. It still needs to be felt as mine, and it can only be so through its connection with the body, which makes it a living thought, gives it an inimitable resonance, and belongs to me alone. Thus, according to Péguy, every real thought was indivisibly spiritual and carnal.

But if it is mine only if it is felt as mine, it is easy to understand that one can identify the self not with the body, as is often said, but with the sensitivity itself that is associated with the body in a much more direct way than the other functions of the soul, and which is a kind of echo in the consciousness of the body’s own presence. Even if we admit the existence of a kind of spiritual sensitivity that seems detached from the body, we cannot deny that it is nevertheless correlated with an inner passivity where all the oscillations of my activity are as it were recorded, evoking at least the memory of the body and still maintaining some connection with it in the very process by which they emancipate themselves from it. Therefore, it is not surprising that most people are inclined to identify the self with the feeling I have of it, and this feeling itself with everything in consciousness that can affect or move me. And it is true, as it has been said, that since thought and the knowledge it produces have a character of universality, the formula “I feel, therefore I am” expresses in a sense much better than Descartes' formula “I think, therefore I am” the original and irreducible intimacy of the individual self. This affection that I experience reveals myself to myself; it has reality and meaning only for me: I exist where I am affected.

We can go further and show that in affection, pain plays a privileged role. Indeed, desire always tends to make me go beyond myself in order to allow me to attain what I lack; pleasure, which is sometimes thought to lead me to self-indulgence and self-absorption, always marks an expansion of my being in which I always commune in some way with that which surpasses me. But this is not the case with pain, and that is why it undoubtedly reveals to me the very essence of affectivity. To be sensitive, to be affected, is first and foremost to suffer. This suffering I experience can never be denied as mine. And to make someone suffer is to touch them, to reach them to the point where they are compelled to acknowledge the presence of their self. The cruel person, through imposed suffering, seeks to show the self of another that they are at their mercy. For one could say that the zone occupied by the self has the same limits as the zone within which it can experience pain. I cease to be where I begin to be insensitive. And the line that separates the self from the non-self is also the border between affection and representation. For I only represent the non-self, but only the self can affect me. Moreover, we can distinguish pains that are more or less profound, ranging from those that concern only the body and which, regardless of their intensity, are only related to that superficial part of the self where its communication with the external occurs, to those pains that penetrate to the very core of my invisible and secret life, in those mysterious regions of the self that had remained inaccessible to me. This is what is meant when it is said that it is suffering that deepens me.

This exceptionally close relationship between the self and pain, which forces it to acknowledge its presence wherever it suffers and to become more deeply engaged when the pain is more intense—while it goes unnoticed in indifference and remains diffuse in pleasure—can be easily explained. For pain not only reveals our limits by separating us from the surrounding world with an ideal border, but this world outside of us becomes hostile and hurts us, so that the self is forced to withdraw into itself to suffer. Suffering imprisons it in its solitude where it feels miserable and abandoned, struggling for a life of which it becomes acutely aware, always fearing that it will be taken away, or seeking, in order to reduce contact with the oppressing world, to confine itself as tightly as possible within its own boundaries. However, while suffering strikingly reveals to me the intimacy of the individual self, the self remains present wherever sensitivity comes into play, wherever that subjective center of interest— which can never become an object—appears, to which I relate both the image I have of things and the value I assign to them. But this center, unique in the world and inseparable from the consciousness it has of its own states, exists only for itself, that is, in that extraordinary power it has to say “I” and attribute to this “I” everything it experiences.

III

Regardless of the role played by sensitivity, and more directly by pain, in the formation of the self, neither pain nor even sensitivity exhaust the nature of the self or reveal its true essence to me. Pain expresses what limits me, that is, less of what I am than what prevents me from being everything I am. That is why I always protest against it. And the self is in this act of protest more than in the state it is forced to endure. Furthermore, the characteristic of sensitivity is always to have a kind of echo in the passive part of my being, whether it be the influences that the world can exert on me or the oscillations of my own activity, the successes and failures to which it constantly exposes itself. This means that the self is a mixed being, a compound of activity and passivity, in which activity expresses the very initiative by which it is constituted, and passivity represents the boundaries it encounters. These boundaries make me sensitive to the world and to myself.

But only a being capable of action is capable of experiencing. And undoubtedly, it is when it acts that it encounters what could be called the positive part of itself, that which depends on it rather than constrains it, its authentic existence and no longer a limiting existence. Indeed, it can be said that sensitivity expresses what is most intimate in me, since it consists of a set of reactions by which I respond to all the solicitations addressed to me; that these responses vary from one individual to another; that they are the mark of this subjectivity that isolates me in the world, although they also express the unique communication that can be established between me and the world. However, the self present in the feeling does not identify with the feeling it experiences. And it experiences it only because there is a certain activity within itself that the feeling shows us, sometimes how it is favored and satisfied, and sometimes how it is violated and contradicted. If sensitivity reflects the passivity of the self insofar as it is inseparable from its capacity to receive everything that can be given to it, this passivity itself cannot exist without an activity that is correlative to it, that cannot subsist alone, and that in turn requires a passivity without which it would not be distinguishable from pure potentiality and would even prove to be unproductive since it would know nothing of its own effects and could never enjoy the fruits it has produced. Therefore, the very words “limitation” and “passivity” that we use to characterize sensitivity should not lead us to diminish its value: because this limitation, this passivity also reflect our ability to receive and compel our activity to elicit echoes, to hear responses that constantly renew, deepen, and enrich it.

However, it must be said that sensitivity cannot be considered in us as primary. Undoubtedly, there is always a natural inertia within us that needs to be overcome by the solicitations that come from outside; so that we must always be moved to act. Undoubtedly, sensory life, as seen in children, precedes the initiation of independent activity, and even every independent activity must gradually be conquered over emotions and affective reactions. But it remains that this initial awakening of sensitivity is only possible because there is already an activity within us that is directed and in operation, and sensitivity, through the alternations it undergoes, as it were, records its modalities. This shows that we act before knowing that we act, and that the proper function of consciousness is to liberate this power by which being is made, by transforming the impulse of nature into an enlightened will, mistress of itself and which, in each of our actions, truly makes us the cause of what we are. Therefore, if there is a solidarity within us of passivity and activity, and if these two functions only have meaning in the couple where they oppose each other, it must be recognized, however, that there is a logical priority of activity, with respect to which passivity is initially a kind of negation, although by expressing the point where activity stops, it can also become the point it aims for, and it is in the form of passivity that being always represents not only what it seeks, but also what it attains, that is, everything it obtains, possesses, and can enjoy.

Therefore, it must be said that the self discovers itself not, as it first seemed, when it is affected, but when it is aware of acting. The characteristic of affection is to compel me to suffer, which presupposes that there is within me an inner impulse that either reaches its goal or is prevented from doing so. But if the most stirring moment of my life is when I reflect on my own participation in existence, that is, on the presence in the universe of a being that says “I,” it is evident that this emotion is heightened when, instead of apprehending this self as a sensitive and vulnerable being, exposed to all the influences that external things can exert on it, I recognize in it a power both to determine itself and to change its own state and the state of the world at every moment. Through sensitivity, I found myself caught, so to speak, in the world; I was capable of communicating with it, receiving all its favors and suffering all its blows. But through action, the world itself ceases to be an obstacle opposed to me, a whole that surpasses me; I exert a kind of ascendency over it, I contribute to imprinting my mark on it and to making it what it is. Sensitivity subjected me to the world; activity subjugates it to me. And it can be said that by obliging me to take my place in the world and depend on it, sensitivity makes me a creature, whereas activity detaches me from it and puts me in relation to the power on which the world depends. It associates me with its creative operation.

Hence comes the extraordinary and, so to speak, miraculous character of this revelation that is made to me when I suddenly perceive within myself a faculty of action that is under my control. At that moment, I see the exceptional value that I previously attributed to sensitivity disappear; I can no longer identify with it: I clearly see that it only brings me states, but that my being lies in a more hidden and profound place, where it comes into existence through an act of which it is itself the author. It can be said that we are here at the root of our own reality and undoubtedly of all reality. This secret act that is the origin of what we are, when it is assumed by us, is the same act that is the origin of all that is. It is the supreme mystery and the supreme light. All the efforts of human explanation, in all domains, aim to determine the cause on which a thing depends, and we are all convinced that to know it is to know it through its cause, that is, through the very power that produces it. However, we often consider this cause itself as being another thing, in such a way that it in turn needs a new cause, without any term being able to be assigned to such a regression. And we always require the existence of a first cause, beyond which we would not go back, precisely because it would possess in itself the effectiveness by which it generates everything it is and everything it does. For the very core of Being can reside only in an act that, before being the cause of anything, must be considered as the cause of itself. That is the true Absolute to which all relative existences are suspended. But of this absolute, we have an internal experience ourselves: and it is at the point where this experience takes place that we grasp the essence of the self, which can be said to be both relative, since it is subordinate to conditions without which it could not be realized, and absolute, since it is realized by virtue of a movement of consciousness by which I give myself existence and which no other being in the world could ever accomplish in my place.

Self-awareness is therefore the awareness of this pure act of inner attention and consent through which I am constantly born to a life that I can only receive from myself. As soon as I discover this activity that I possess, it produces both anxiety and wonder in me. A while ago, I could say, “I am certainly where I suffer,” but I could not say, “I am what I suffer.” Here, on the other hand, I will not only say that I am where I act, but that I am entirely this very act by which I make myself. What significance does this experience, so dramatic nonetheless, of being part of the world to which I am linked, where the slightest event resonates within me and affects me in my very intimacy, have next to this much more acute and demanding experience of an action that I am capable of accomplishing and that places both myself and the world under my control? I am no longer a thing among things, nor a simple sensitive echo of a reality over which I have no grasp. My being is born from the very act it realizes; I witness its advent, and in a certain sense, I determine it. And the world around me changes before my eyes by the effect of my will, as if to provide me with evidence of this existence that is mine and that I bring into being in the light of day through the same change that I suddenly introduce into my surroundings.

At the moment when the gaze seeks what I am, it finds only my body: and this body itself belongs to me only because I feel all the disturbances that affect it. But now I have an astonishing power over this body that a while ago imposed its presence on me, the power to move it. I raise my hand, and I raise it again for no reason, for pleasure, with an admiration that habit never dulls. Now I feel that I am precisely where I am the cause. My body no longer interests me as the seat of my affections, but as the instrument and proof of my power. This productive activity that I set in motion and which is itself invisible is what now constitutes my true essence. Everything I was capable of seeing or suffering, which constituted for me the reality as I could grasp it, suddenly loses its relief and dignity in my eyes; for what I see is the appearance of a thing being made, and when it is I who make it, I discover the inner principle that gives it meaning and life; the state I undergo is the effect of an action being accomplished elsewhere: but when it is I who accomplish this action, it immediately finds in it its origin and its reason for being. It is sufficient, therefore, for me to act or to perceive myself acting in order to encounter within myself the original movement that makes me be, which possesses a pre-eminence in me and outside of me over all the others, beyond which it is impossible for me to go back, and which properly constitutes my participation in the absolute. This is the ultimate point where I am no longer a piece of the created world but an agent of creation.

However, this very experience I have of the change I can introduce into my body and, through it, into the rest of the world, still runs the risk of diverting my gaze, attracting it to the object that bears the marks of my action, and intoxicating me with my power, turning me away from considering this act that is entirely internal, through which, before producing any effect on the world, I bring about, so to speak, my own existence. Now, before accomplishing it and in order for me to accomplish it, it must first be like a power left to me, and it depends on me to put it into action. And precisely there lies the deepest core of my intimacy: within me, there is an availability that is as if it were nothing if I do not seize it to actualize it, but if I consent to make it mine and to make use of it, it suddenly gives me the existence that I lacked until then. It is understood that one can know oneself for a long time as a body, and even feel subjected to all the tribulations of affective life before experiencing within oneself the presence of this power that remains inert as long as we have not accepted to exercise it. If such power exists and its exercise depends solely on me, this discovery will undoubtedly give me the highest metaphysical emotion that I am capable of experiencing. This power of which I become aware only when I am about to use it creates within me a sort of trembling: for an infinite distance separates what it is before and after its use. In relation to me, this distance is the distance from nothingness to being, and yet I feel that it is I alone who must cross it. It is not I who have given myself this power: it is, so to speak, offered to me. But I accept or refuse its disposition, and it is this acceptance or refusal that leads me into an existence where I enter only because I have willed it. I am both the cause and the effect of my own operation, and I form, so to speak, the very trajectory that unites them.

Therefore, the self resides in this consciousness I have of setting in motion a certain effectiveness that remains a pure possibility as long as I have not granted it the consent that engages my entire personal life by obliging it to emerge itself in the real world. Thus, the self appears as always suspended until the moment it agrees to take risks, decides to act, and determines its own destiny. Now the self feels with extreme acuteness, where anguish mingles with hope, the gravity of this step by which, ceasing to remain confined within its own virtuality, it suddenly undertakes to realize it. This is a true birth for it, of which the other was only the condition and the image. The act that created me has given me nothing more than the power to create myself. And this power is always in my hands; I am only what I make of it.

That is why the self cannot exist either in the past where there resides a being that I have surpassed and am no longer, which leaves in me only the memory of the self I used to be, nor in the future where there resides a self that I am not yet and whose nature I cannot know. But the present is the act by which I render myself present to myself. And this present is always renewed. Thus, I must give myself existence through an operation that I perpetually revive. In fact, I do not become accustomed to existence; or at least, one can say that the existence to which I become accustomed is that of the corporeal or social being who continues a series of movements and thoughts in which I barely participate and from which I myself am absent. But as soon as the self emerges again and truly assumes the existence that is its own, a rupture immediately occurs with this apparent existence that was mine until then: I say that I regain myself. I reenter being anew through an act that is always a first act, that always retains the same miraculous character, that no memory dulls, that has had no precedent and can never be repeated. The essence of the freedom that founds my existence is always placing myself at the origin of myself and the world. I drag behind me a long past that continues to oppress me; and nature, in turn, continues to solicit and overwhelm me. But the self is the very act by which I shake off this enslavement; I do not allow my past or nature the power to determine me; I ask only of them the materials that will enable me to act. I can even renounce what I was yesterday and fight against nature within myself instead of yielding to it. I am reborn to life every day, and even every moment. I purify myself each time of all my impurities. And in my deepest essence, I find myself reduced to this absolute initiative by which, repudiating everything in me that is already done or constituted, I make myself by constantly surpassing myself. This is the meaning of the word “act” with which the self must be identified, expressing this intimate and secret process by which I compel myself to always go beyond myself, and which therefore forbids me from ever merging with a thing.

Therefore, this self, which makes itself and sees itself making itself, acquires the ultimate and radical consciousness of itself precisely at the moment when it acquires the sense of its own responsibility. Until then, it was in its own eyes only a kind of spectacle, an object among others, to which its sensitivity attached it only by closer ties. And one could wonder if there was behind this spectacle a reality of which it would give us, so to speak, the representation. But when I act, all spectacle is abolished. I am the actor who can no longer become a spectator of himself and who creates himself by creating his role. It is I who determine what I will be, both for myself and for others. And it is this spectacle of which I am the author that will justify or condemn me.

However, the meaning of this spectacle is not only to make my invisible reality visible to the eyes of others. This reality is nothing itself until it has been expressed: until then, it remains a pure intention. I cannot act inwardly without acting outwardly, without giving flesh and blood to the will that embodies and authenticates it. That is why each of my acts has a resonance that always exceeds my expectations; not only does it give me a place in the world, but it also attests to my solidarity with all other beings and has infinite consequences of which I am myself the cause. Where the self seizes itself in the act it accomplishes, it therefore assumes a triple responsibility: towards itself, towards others, and towards the totality of the world. In contrast to what we said when we showed that the self discovers itself in this sort of dependence in which its most intimate sensitivity places it in relation to the world, the self now discovers itself in this dependence of the world on its activity, which, by determining itself, determines them both.

IV

If we now seek to understand what constitutes the existence of the self, insofar as it is separated from the world and carries within itself an inner, subjective, and secret reality that suffices to distinguish it from any other self, we can say that the self is a pure possibility. The essence of our life is to actualize this possibility, to transform it into existence. But we must not overlook that the self is, first and foremost, the existence of this possibility. And it can be said that it is the feeling that we are indeed a possibility, whose future is, so to speak, entrusted to us, that gives our consciousness its most acute form. We no longer turn to ourselves as to a given object to which our curiosity applies, but as to a being yet to be born that it is up to us to bring into the light, that we must not know but produce.

However, possibility resides in a certain encounter that takes place within each of us between freedom and nature. If we were only freedom, we would also be all-powerful, and one wonders how we could still choose and what would guide or limit our choice. But if we were only nature, we would be subject to implacable necessity and would have no more right to say “I” than a plant. Now, nature makes us into a being that is both determined and connected to that great Whole in which it is placed, which continues to support and nourish it. And the essence of freedom is to prevent us from identifying with it, to allow us to dispose of it instead of remaining enslaved to it. It thus produces a transformation of our nature that radically changes its significance. As long as freedom does not intervene, nature is nothing more than a play of forces that act within us despite ourselves, and in which the self is not properly engaged. But freedom suspends their course: it reduces them to the state of pure powers that offer material for our activity and whose use is, so to speak, left to us.

Therefore, the image we had of consciousness is significantly modified. It has often been questioned what is the original character of subjective reality and how it differs from the other. It is not formed by objects, however subtle and tenuous they may be conceived, since the very nature of any object is to have an existence outside of us. It is not formed by phenomena, since it is precisely, in contrast to the phenomenon, that which does not show itself, that which does not manifest itself. It is not formed by states either, which always have a certain stability, whereas the subjective is, as has often been said, instability itself. The essence of consciousness is precisely to contain nothing that is already realized or even, if one wishes, that is already real. In relation to the world of bodies where our visible existence unfolds, our consciousness is indeed made up only of possibilities. Hence the character of ambiguity that is always inseparable from the existence attributed to it. For some, by opposing it to what is seen, what is touched, they will say that it is devoid of existence, that it is a shadow or a reflection or, according to a famous term, an “epiphenomenon,” that it does not leave its imprint on things or that it is devoid of any effectiveness: which is true as long as it is considered pure consciousness. Others, on the contrary, will say that it has a reality deeper than that of all phenomena, since it is not the phenomenon of anything, that far from being the phenomenon of a phenomenon, it is the source and the focal point to which the power of representing phenomena and modifying them must be referred. Thus, it is natural to place consciousness sometimes above and sometimes below the observable universe, for it is below it because there is nothing within it that is accomplished, so that, strictly speaking, it can be said to be nothing; yet it is also remarkably above, since it is the origin and the reason for being of any object we can ever conceive. This is precisely what is meant by saying that it is nothing more than a possibility, but it is the very being of that possibility.

Now the relationship between the possible and the real can always be traversed within consciousness in two opposite directions. It can be said that the essence of intelligence is to transform the real into the possible, with representation being nothing more than the possibility of the object, and all explanations by cause or reason aiming to rediscover in the real the possibility from which it can be derived. On the other hand, the essence of the will is to take possession of a possibility and allow it to enter into a real and shared world by providing it with the missing material and overcoming the resistances it continually opposes.

We do not have the right to deny all existence to possibility on the pretext that it opposes present and given existence. We must even attribute to it an existence comparable to all others since it is not pure nothingness and there is an absolute break between being and nothingness. But possibility is precisely the form of existence that belongs to consciousness alone: for in it, everything real becomes possible, and everything possible aspires to be realized. It is, so to speak, the crucible and laboratory of all possibilities. It is also for this reason, as has often been pointed out, that it questions everything that exists, that it brings everything back to its pure origin, that it is strictly the first beginning of myself and the world.

The true dignity of the self, therefore, is to always break contact with its real being to become at every moment a possible being that precisely transforms its real being. But as soon as we realize that we are a possible being, we cease to collide with ourselves as a resistant and immutable block to which fate chains us. We participate in a flexible and malleable reality that we can both receive and create. It regains richness by losing rigidity. But it is a richness from which we have yet to draw, and we do not yet know what we will be able to possess from it. Hence the uncertainty in which the self constantly remains, the anxiety that never leaves it in the face of this perpetually open future, both as a threat and as a promise. The most remarkable characteristic of possibility is that we can only conceive it as multiple. To reduce it to unity is to turn it into necessity. The essence of consciousness is to constantly oscillate between different possibilities. Each of them can be said to be the self and not the self at the same time. The self is above all possibilities; in one sense, it soars above them, and in another sense, each possibility, as soon as it is conceived, expresses a proposition that is made to it, and already a part of its essence. They cannot all take their place in reality at the same time. Because each action determines and fixes us and always excludes certain possibilities. But this exclusion is perhaps less absolute than we think; there are no possibilities within me that I completely renounce: regret always accompanies this renunciation. They often find some detour through which they can still break through. They imbue and color with an original hue the very possibilities that have been realized.

However, it cannot be denied that the essence of life is to obligate me to make a choice among all these possible selves that I carry within the depths of my being, which are said to struggle for existence at times, and at other times, external circumstances stifle one and allow another to emerge, but which I cannot deny, nonetheless, that my will encompasses them all and finds in them the material and instrument of its exercise. Thus, I cannot consider, without an admiration that arouses both uncertainty and eagerness, all these nascent beings that I feel within me at every moment, with which I constantly compose, whose growth I either promote or hinder, and which it seems to me I can never completely annihilate or bring to the end of their perfection. The self is always unfinished; it is always on the path from power to will and from possibility to being; more multiple than one, always more complex than it appears, fearing both not being realized and mutilating itself once it is realized, choosing within what it is, engaging with what it will become, incapable of recognizing in advance what it abandons and what will be given to it, constantly receiving a new existence that nevertheless depends on an act it has just accomplished, an act that never expresses more than one of its powers and yet surpasses them all. It is this ambiguity of possibilities that it carries within itself that is the true self. The plant or animal, and even the animal within us, have only one possibility before them. It is because the self has an infinity of possibilities that it is properly a self and that what it will become can be regarded as its own.

Therefore, we will say of the self that it is not an object, nor a material object, for it does not coincide with the body, nor a spiritual object, for there is no spiritual object. It is because the self is spirit and being spirit, it is nothing more than an act that is accomplished. But it is an act engaged in a nature. And that is why we can introduce a distinction between the potentialities it possesses and the operation that actualizes them: these potentialities will never all succeed in being realized. Therefore, we should not be surprised if the self always takes pleasure in itself, where it finds an inexhaustible and unexplored richness, and yet it cannot be content with it since it exists only for itself as a constantly renewed aspiration rather than a true possession: life suddenly acquires an extraordinary gravity for it when it must produce outwardly the reality it carries within, subject it to the test of obstacles, testify for itself, leave the retreat where only the gaze of the self could reach it to appear in a visible world to all where the self shows its presence, plays its role, assumes its responsibility.

However, in saying that the being of the self is a possible being whose realization is left to it, it is important to distinguish three different meanings of possibility: it is their relationship that constitutes the very life of consciousness. In the first sense, we can understand by this all the dispositions that belong to our nature and which are nothing more than possibilities as long as we prevent them from being exercised. They then provide a sort of keyboard for the play of the will. But these powers of nature express what is individual and limited in us, what has been given to us or what we have received. Hence the inequality that can exist among them. There is nothing in the world that seems more arbitrary to us, that produces so much astonishment, that raises so many questions as the distribution of natural gifts among different individuals. Let us set aside the problem of whether there is a mysterious compensation between them. Let us simply observe that each gift within us is only an offer made to us, that its use depends on us, that we can let it wither, but if we know how to recognize it and put it into practice, it must become the instrument of our vocation. Let us also acknowledge that all humans possess, albeit to different degrees, all the characteristic capacities of humanity itself, and that culture is capable of developing certain of these capacities whose birth had only brought us the seed. Finally, let us note that the nature of humans itself is by no means a closed world, as is sometimes thought, but it plunges into the entire nature and has countless communications with it that never cease to renew and enrich it. Therefore, we will say that the possibilities provided by nature are not determined and circumscribed in each of us once and for all according to their number or value; their number can increase, their value can indefinitely grow, from the moment freedom applies to them and discovers their immediate or distant connection with the totality of the universe.

This is precisely the task of intelligence, which reveals to us a second aspect of possibility that can be opposed to natural possibility, which allows us to grasp more distinctly the characteristics that reflection habitually attributes to the possible and which has the advantage of showing how the possible, instead of being offered to the inner self, is created by its own act and does not exist elsewhere than in that very act that posits it. It is easy to see, first of all, that intelligence thinks nothing more than ideas, that is, potentialities, and transforms the real into the virtual. Thus, its original task is to question it so that we can act upon it and have, so to speak, control over it. But first, intelligence is universally applicable, which means that there is nothing in the world that does not belong to it. Thus, it begins by taking possession in us of the powers that belong to nature; then they cease to be forces that impel us since intelligence suspends their course, permeates them with light, compares and combines them with one another, so that they can integrate into our spiritual self which now dominates and directs them. There is more: intelligence applies not only to our nature but to the entire nature: the latter is no longer linked to us only by that obscure solidarity that obliges us to depend on it, to let ourselves be carried by it, to feel within us the presence of that inner energy that animates it and to which it never ceases to make us participate. We seize it through thought; we recognize in it, behind all the phenomena that manifest it, general laws that are as many means at our disposal, that free us from the bondage to which they first reduce us, that allow us to predict and determine the future, that extend and infinitely multiply the power we can exert over everything around us. Thus, it can be said that if the self reduces its own nature to becoming a mere possibility that it can dispose of at will, intelligence allows it to expand the scope of this possibility through knowledge to the point where it coincides with the very limits of the universe. Therefore, while the body initially imposed on the self a subjugation from which it freed itself by transforming the impulses that had initially constrained it into possibilities, we see the entire universe, as if it had in turn become the very body of the self, extending the action of the personal body and constantly offering the self new resources that it will never exhaust in discovering or employing. The essence of the self is not only to be a possible being rather than a real being, but to convert the reality of its body and the entire universe into possibility in order to make this immense, ever-available, and constantly enriching possibility the inexhaustible material of all its creations.

However, the self is not limited to the possibilities of nature or the possibilities of intellect. There is a third kind of possibility within it by which it dominates and surpasses them. It is this infinite possibility that resides precisely in its freedom. It encompasses all other possibilities and brings them forth as the materials it needs to realize itself. It confronts them and puts them into action. It allows us to transcend our nature by confronting the powers of instinct with those provided by knowledge, which constantly illuminate and promote them. In principle, freedom is the very possibility of the Whole: and it is this possibility of the Whole that, when we discover it within ourselves, gives us a vivid sense of our dignity and greatness.

But this possibility cannot be thought of in its pure state; it cannot be dissociated from a demand that is inherent in it and that is the demand for its actualization. We only grasp it in the act that realizes it. But in fact, as soon as it begins to be exercised, its power immediately appears as remarkably limited: it is caught in a situation constituted by our body and the circumstances in which it is placed, where it is, so to speak, obliged to be incarnated. Yet it still proves its ascendancy over this world, which it refuses to accept as a given, by bursting it in turn into a bundle of possibilities that it constantly reworks. Therefore, this world is always a world to be made for it, and in making it, it makes us ourselves. That is why it does not merely transform the given things into possibilities: it goes beyond all created things; it is the thought of what is not but could be or should be. It is the thought of the ideal. And it can be said that freedom moves within a world of possibilities, some of which are means to it and others are ends, and it is up to freedom to discover, produce, and actualize them. For we know well that our freedom would be nothing if we could not first oppose possible being to realized being: it is its role to tear the possible from the encompassing existence and give it a new existence that depends on its sole consent. The summit of the self lies in the act of freedom, an act that is at the crossroads of being and possibility and constantly traverses the path that unites them.

At the point we have reached, the self can no longer be defined as a merely possible being. It is beyond all possibilities. It contains them and gives birth to them. One cannot say that it finds them all made, nor that it is limited to realizing them. It is the one that calls them into the light, and in a sense, it is the one that invents them in order to be able to invent itself by breaking the unity of the given world, in order to introduce into it at every moment its initiative and the very mark of its creative action. There are only possibilities for a freedom: it begins by virtualizing the world, and that is why the richness of the representation that our intelligence is capable of obtaining is the effect of our freedom and defines the extent of the field in which it finds itself exercising. But freedom is expressed even better by the very force with which the will is capable of choosing between these possibilities, of engaging in them and with them, by taking the responsibility of bringing them into existence. Thus freedom is both in the world and above the world. It is indivisible; it is always exercised in the present moment and always fully reborn in each of its decisions. It is always the very first beginning of itself. It is a self-creating power that can only access existence through its own admission. Therefore, one cannot say that the self is free, but rather that it is free to be free; only, it can be said that at the moment it implements this freedom, it assumes the creative power through an act of participation by which it introduces into the world an effectiveness that is its own, in such a way that it is by changing the face of the world that it introduces itself into the world.

V

Now we understand the whole distance that separates the discovery of the self from the knowledge of the self. For we only know things. But the self is not a thing and cannot be known. It is far beyond all knowledge. It first appears to us as taking place in a world that surpasses it on all sides. But it is not in this world as a part in a whole that contains it. For we situate in the world only the body, to which the self is attached, and not the self itself, which has no body and even contains the world through its thought in a perspective that, it is true, belongs to it alone. The world is an appearance to the self; but the self is an existence behind which there is no other deeper existence, of which it would itself be the appearance. It is pure intimacy, that to which everything else is exterior and which is itself exterior to nothing. And this intimacy reveals itself to it at the very point where it is affected, where it cannot deny the wound that strikes it, nor the pain that it undergoes. And yet all the disturbances imposed on me only make sense in relation to an activity that they come to interrupt or disturb the momentum of. It is therefore this activity that makes me exist. The variations of my emotional life only make me know the oscillations, the alternations of success and failure. And now I recognize in myself an initiative, that is to say, a miraculous power by which I change the state of my body and the state of the world; I sought in myself a creature and I find in myself a creator. But then my situation in the world and the very idea I had of my existence become completely different. The natural forces that used to carry me become powers that I control. The world itself becomes my knowledge, that is, a system of representations, or means and ends, which are available for my action and allow me both to make myself what I am and to introduce into this world the imprint of my every step. Admirable reciprocity between me and the world, which means that I am present in the world as the world is present to me, that it offers me, at a certain point in space and at a certain moment in time, individual conditions of existence, a unique and privileged situation, without which I would not be the unique self, different from all others, having a vocation that belongs to it alone, but which at the same time allows me to surpass everything that the world can give me, to envelop it entirely within my own consciousness and to draw from it means of enrichment that never fail me: this is what so closely binds together my action upon the world and the world’s action upon me, that I attain being by inscribing in the world the effects of my own operation, but also by compelling the whole world to resonate, so to speak, within me, to respond as if by an echo to all the actions by which I solicit it.

Now we understand why it is impossible to speak of true self-knowledge. And the consciousness I have of myself is something entirely different from knowledge. I only know a being that is already made and from which I can somehow detach myself, but not a being that is becoming and that can never oppose itself to itself as a known object. It could be said, perhaps, that something must be accomplished for us to be able to know it, while the self is an accomplishment. Now, it is this accomplishment that is the work of consciousness itself. Therefore, we see why the self is, as has been noted, both too close and too distant to be known, too close since it is the center and the heart of existence where we are constantly born into life, beyond all the manifestations that reveal it, and too distant since the self is a being in becoming, which cannot measure its possibilities or foresee the fate that awaits them, that instead of being a circumscribed and graspable being, it refuses all boundaries within which we still seek to embrace it: it is its very essence not to be able to settle without becoming a thing and always to remain itself an expectation, a promise, and a hope.

We will also say that the discovery of the self turns our gaze away from that public and shared spectacle to which it was previously applied. For the self’s own existence is only for itself. It is a reality that cannot become a spectacle either for others or for itself and that resides entirely in an inner initiative always ready to be exercised. It inhabits a secret cell where no one can penetrate: I cannot say “myself” without separating myself from the world, without entering into a solitude where things cease to serve as support, where they suddenly become external and foreign to me, where all presence is spiritual and personal, where I grasp at its very source this being that is mine, which is no longer an appearance but the very act by which I create myself, by fully engaging my responsibility in it. Solitude, intimacy, and secrecy, these are the characteristics by which the self first reveals itself to itself. It grasps within itself an absolute existence that is its own because it has the charge of it, that is its own original source, that forms its own destiny, and in the face of which the visible existence is only a manifested existence that expresses and betrays it, that offers it both obstacles and means without which it could not be realized.

Because the tragedy of the self is that after discovering its hidden life, non-phenomenal, unknown to all, which makes it penetrate more and more deeply into a marvelous and unexplored world, it realizes, however, that it cannot be content with it. For no matter how much it pushes its body into the external world and seeks to reach that immaterial activity whose exercise has reality and meaning only for itself, it cannot doubt the close solidarity it maintains with the body that creates communication between the world and itself, that carries all the influences that come to it from the world, all the influences that it itself exerts on the world. It cannot escape its body. Moreover, it cannot defend itself from a kind of doubt and anxiety about the reality of its solitary being, which, however, surpasses everything around it in dignity if it cannot manifest itself, put it to the test, force it to come into contact with the real, to give itself a face that makes it visible to all eyes. Otherwise, its existence would remain purely virtual. However, there always remains an impassable gap between what I am and what I show. And this gap can only cause me suffering. But even when I retreat to the furthest reaches of myself, without seeking to express what I think or what I feel, my existence still leaves some trace in the apparent world. The private being is still a public being. Its essence is that it cannot remain secret. And yet I tremble at every action, every word, and even at the mere presence that exposes me to the gaze of others: and I begin to retract as soon as that gaze lingers on me with a little insistence. I do not want to be confused with what I show of myself, nor do I want it to penetrate beyond that appearance to force that life within me that ceases to belong to me if it ceases to be a hidden life. It needs me to protect it; and although I cannot prevent it from expressing itself in some way, its expression still unsettles and troubles me. That is the origin of modesty: and the discovery of the self is the discovery of intimacy precisely because it is at the same time the discovery of modesty.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the self is always in a state of defense, ready to retreat into its own solitude at any moment, to withdraw into its own powers as soon as they begin to emerge. But since these powers cannot remain in a pure state, otherwise they would not be distinguished from nothingness, would be the powers of nothing and reduce the existence of the self to a sterile oscillation between possibilities that would never be realized, the self itself must take hold of them and make use of them. This is the task of sincerity. It does not consist, as is often believed, in faithfully translating into sensible signs a reality that is already formed within ourselves. It consists in finding it and making it. Sincerity refuses to let us live in a world of pure appearances or to let our conduct be directed by forces that we simply undergo. It compels us to seek deep within ourselves the authentic origin of all our actions. It requires us to learn to know all that we can, all the gifts that we have received. But there is no gift that does not create an obligation within us. It is up to us to prove its worth by putting it into practice. Sincerity is therefore indivisibly turned inward and outward. All sincerity is active. It reveals to us the self in the process of becoming, in that ultimate core of itself where it is pure freedom but always in relation to possibilities entrusted to it, between which it constantly chooses and which it is responsible for realizing in order to realize itself, in order to create itself by contributing to the creation of the world, in order to find in the action it accomplishes a path that allows it, without breaking its solitude, to communicate nevertheless with other beings enclosed like itself in their own solitude. Therefore, we will not say of the self that it is, but that it becomes; and if we cannot pronounce this word without emotion that goes even to anxiety, it is because in this task it has to fulfill, it always has to overcome a triple conflict between an initiative that it must exercise and a nature against which it clashes and that provides it with the very resources it needs, between that secret intimacy that is its only abode and the external action that manifests it and never fails to betray it, between that separation from the world by which it acquires an independent existence and that aspiration that obliges it to find around it other consciousnesses, endowed like its own with a separate life, and with which it constantly seeks to cooperate and unite 5.

Chapter VI. Metaphysics or the Science of Spiritual Intimacy

  1. — Metaphysics, in the usual sense of the word, and justified by its formation, is an inquiry that claims to surpass the reality as it is given to us in order to reach the reality as it truly is, that is, the Being behind the phenomenon and the Absolute behind the relative. The mere idea of such an inquiry implies that the world before our eyes, at the moment we say it is given, phenomenal and relative, is a world that does not satisfy us, that is not self-sufficient, that does not contain its own reasons. This is an affirmation that no one doubts. However, some believe that we are confined within this world and unable to escape it, while others believe that we can traverse it to discover the foundation that supports it. Some believe in the possibility of metaphysics, while others do not.

  2. — Thus, it is easy to understand how one can speak of a “metaphysical illusion” that is constantly denounced and constantly revived. It is constantly denounced because it is evident that there is a contradiction in seeking to know reality as it is, while the very nature of knowledge is to relate it to a subject and thus make it an appearance or a given. And it is constantly revived because perceiving this characteristic of knowledge already transcends it, already limits knowledge by positing the idea of a reality of which knowledge is the limitation, or, in other words, positing beyond all factual knowledge, which is always limited, the idea of a knowledge of right, which itself is without limitation.

  3. — However, this does not mean that reality as it is in itself and reality as it is for us differ only in degree. For I am not only a finite being who has contact only with a part of reality, I am also a determined being: I perceive the real in a perspective that is specific to me; I thus endow it with certain subjective qualities that depend on my nature and further distance me from it. Thus arises the traditional conception of the two worlds, one of which is not an image that reveals the other but a phantasmagoria that conceals it. It is not surprising, then, that most people oppose a knowledge devoid of reality to a reality that itself eludes knowledge. But it is this double contradiction that metaphysics seeks to overcome.

  4. — It seems that it could only succeed by distinguishing two forms of knowledge, one of which would apply to sensory experience, subjecting it to the requirements of thought, while the other would undertake to posit, beyond all experience, by virtue of these requirements alone, an object that derives its entire reality from its intelligibility alone. This is the path that metaphysics had embarked upon but that Kantian criticism was to close forever. Pure thought is incapable of giving itself its own object, and it is when it grasps nothing that it believes it is grasping the absolute.

  5. — However, far from imposing, as is too often believed today, a definitive halt to metaphysical inquiry, Kant actually gave it the most admirable impetus. It will be discussed for a long time, and in vain, whether the great philosophers who came after Kant and claimed to follow him were unfaithful to him or extracted the essence of his thought. Perhaps it must be said that Kant’s greatest merit is to have undermined the metaphysics of the object or the very idea of a metaphysical object. Not that this is the entirety of past metaphysics, but metaphysics always needs to be purified, and objectivity is idolatry to it. Kant himself did not escape this, as he maintained the existence of a thing-in-itself, which he should have said was impossible to “think” as much as it was impossible to “know.”

  6. — The fundamental error that is constantly made about metaphysics, and which is the origin of all the criticisms directed against it, is that beyond this world that we see, which it shows us as composed of mere appearances that only exist for us, there would be a world composed of true things that would have existence in and of themselves, and that it would nevertheless teach us to know. Not only does metaphysics find no difficulty in acknowledging that such knowledge is contradictory, for it would have to posit their existence and exclude the possibility of the act that posits it, but it extends the contradiction to the very idea of these things. Just as there is no object without a subject, and no given without an act that gives it, there is also no thing without a consciousness that affirms it as a thing. And the indeterminacy of the thing changes nothing: it is the pure idea of that which has existence and meaning only in relation to an interiority that it assumes and denies.

  7. — This means that the thing, no less than the object or the given, cannot subsist on its own. Its very essence resides in its relationship with a “being” for whom it is precisely a thing. It is not an imperfection of the thing to exist only for another; it is precisely what makes it a thing. Hence we conclude that the essential characteristic of the thing (or the object or the given, which differ only in terms of the aspect under which they are considered) is, in order not to be nothing, always to be an appearance or a phenomenon for someone. This is already implied by its exteriority, which clearly defines it, since if it were to be converted into interiority, it would abolish the thing as such.

  8. — Consequently, it is entirely futile to seek behind sensible things “intelligible things” hidden by them and possessing the perfect resistance and immovable stability that the former lack. By stripping them of any relation to our sensibility, we believe we have given them a sort of self-subsistence. However, it is evident that they can only have existence for the very mind that thinks them. And in a kind of paradox, if we are inclined to make them real by granting them perfect objectivity, it is only because we can embody in them that presence of the mind to itself that allows it to resurrect them indefinitely.

  9. — Therefore, it is a return to interiority, that is, to an act of consciousness, as to the source without which there would be no sensible or intelligible object. Existence can never appear in the form of an object, since every object is necessarily phenomenal or ideal. And we rightly say “it is only a phenomenon” or “it is only an idea” to show that we never confuse existence with objectivity. Thus, we must once and for all abandon this common conception of metaphysics, which, if true, would discredit it precisely because it suggests that beyond appearances there could be a world of realities that would suddenly reveal themselves to us if the veil separating us from them were to fall or if the gaze of the mind were penetrating and pure enough.

  10. — For existence should not be sought on the side of an absolute object that has been stripped of any real relation to a subjectivity that establishes it. An object that is only an object would reduce to the mere idea of such a relation, abstracted from all the determinations that qualify it. The fundamental distinction on which the possibility of metaphysics rests is that of the “in itself” and the “for another.” It seeks in the deepening of the “in itself” the explanation of the “for another.” It is not a perilous leap intended to project me without myself into the absolute of things. It does not place being in the negative character of being “outside of me” pushed to the limit, which would be nothing itself if dissociated from the positive character of being “in relation to me.” It places it in a pure interiority that it seeks to free from any exteriority that reveals it and transforms it into an appearance; on the other hand, things are a pure exterior and only have existence through the interiority that we attribute to them, or through the interiority of ourselves, which precisely makes them things for us.

  11. — But is not the relation between exteriority and interiority a reciprocal relation? And if we say that exteriority can only be sustained in relation to an interiority that it denies, must we not also say that interiority in turn is defined only in relation to an exteriority that it posits, but from which it becomes independent through the very act that posits it? However, if it is true that two opposites are always inseparable, they are never on the same level. One is always both the reason for itself and for the other. And just as darkness is obtained by simply abolishing light, while light must be added to darkness to dispel it, exteriority is a limitation of interiority, whereas interiority contains a fullness and sufficiency that absorb exteriority instead of limiting it.

  12. — It is this fullness and sufficiency of interiority that we now need to justify if we want to give metaphysics its true foundation. However, it might be better to use the term “intimacy” here instead of “interiority,” since the latter, in opposing the term “exteriority,” always evokes a relation of container and content, that is, spatial metaphors, while intimacy suggests the idea of an ultimate foundation beyond which it is impossible to go, and which is both the ultimate essence and the secret consciousness of the one who has established himself in it, as opposed to the idea of a surface that expresses and betrays it, but only for an observer who contemplates it from the outside.

  13. — What we seek is what constitutes the intimacy of the “in itself,” which is the origin of all appearances or phenomena but cannot itself be an appearance or phenomenon of anything. The expression “in itself” itself risks misleading us: it is intended only to exclude another term that would serve as its container, or, if we maintain the spatial image, to designate a content that would be its own container. So, for example, we cannot say that intimacy is contained within the world, since we discover it only through the negation of the world, which, however, only subsists in its relationship with intimacy. Being resides where intimacy resides, which must be strictly identified not with the “in itself” but with the “self.” Every self is an absolute to which everything else is relative. Every non-self is a relative that derives its existence from the self with which it is in relation. Thus, metaphysics is nothing, or it is the theory of the self and the internal conditions by which it posits itself. So far, the conditions appear purely dialectical, but it is a living dialectic that, in the consciousness of each being, merges with the very experience that allows it to say “I.”

  14. — Therefore, we shall say that an being can have no other intimacy, that is, no being that is truly its own (in contrast to a nature that would still be foreign to it and that it would be obliged to undergo), than the being it is capable of giving to itself. For the center of intimacy must also be the point where I no longer make any distinction between what I am and what I want to be, whether it seems to me that I merely perfectly consent to what I am, or whether I find nothing more in myself than the very operation that gives me being. As long as this coincidence between my will and my being is sought but not attained, I have not achieved true intimacy with myself. There are still obscure and unassimilable elements within me that limit and press upon me but that alienate me from myself. In the very pure and fleeting moments when they seem to vanish, an immediate connection between myself and being is realized. But even if they never disappear, the self is present to Being only where it produces its own being and to the extent that it does so.

    • This means, therefore, that metaphysics encounters being on the hither side of the phenomenon, rather than beyond it, where it discovers the act whose essence is to create itself or, if you will, to be the cause of itself. Of this act, while it is exercised, no one can deny that it is an absolute that must posit itself so that any other term can be, which is not simply the mode of a preceding substance from which it could not spring forth (and where one finds only a reified act, that is, degraded and petrified), which is not even the act of a person, for what would this person be outside of the very act that constitutes it?
    • But to this identification of absolute Being with an act that is the cause of itself, one will no doubt oppose the preliminary question. Is there not, in fact, as has often been pointed out, a true contradiction in this expression “cause of itself”? How can we introduce into the unity of Being this division that would make it both cause and effect of itself? Where I say that it is the cause, I commit the circle of attributing existence to it before it possesses it and so that it can receive it, and even this causal existence always surpasses in dignity the existence of the effect that stems from it. Where I say that it is the effect, I deprive it of the absoluteness that I am precisely trying to define: I posit in it a dependence on a being with which, as it is itself an effect, it cannot be confused. However, it is evident that this is merely taking advantage of a verbal artifice. For when we say that it is the cause of itself, we do not at all mean to distinguish in it a causing existence and a caused existence, but to isolate the essence of the act as it transpires in the causal relation by terminating it, so to speak, in itself, [102] that is, by reducing it to its pure exercise. There is being, there is the self in the nakedness of their self-creative essence.
    • Nevertheless, one will observe that the cause is nothing more than the first term of a relation, the other of which is the effect, and therefore it is vain to try to apprehend it in its original efficacy, independently of the effect without which its name would no longer have any meaning. Yet this is precisely what we seek to do and what makes us prefer the word “act” to the word “cause,” where the act is defined not in itself, but in relation to the trace it leaves in the world. Here we reiterate, concerning relation, the remark made in §11 concerning opposites, namely, that the relation is self-sufficient only if one of the terms enjoys, in relation to the other, a privilege and creates, so to speak, its relativity in order to share it. Relativity is introduced into the first term only when the second has already appeared: it is itself indirect and derived. Thus, there is no effect without a cause, but the cause always surpasses its effect, and the relation it sustains with it specifies it without exhausting it. This is sufficient to explain why one might think that action finds in the appearance of the effect not its culmination but its decline, and its interruption rather than its fulfillment.
    • But it is important to make a distinction here between the different meanings of the idea of causality in the world of external experience and in the world of internal experience: the use of the same word in both domains attests to their connection, but it requires a transposition when one passes from one to the other. Thus, physical or interphenomenal causality eliminates any true action; and in moving from effect to cause, it reduces the cause to the specific condition without which the effect could not occur. On the contrary, internal causality is transphenomenal; it descends toward the effect; it contains within itself the possibility of other effects than the one we see. This effect masks its essence as much as it reveals it to us. It subjects it to a kind of unilateral necessity that obliterates its creative fecundity. Far from disappearing in its effect, it always resurrects with a new youth from the ashes it has left behind.
    • However, it cannot be said that it is adequate to all its possible effects, which could lead us to consider it as an indeterminate power, even though it is always an actualized act. The mystery of the act precisely lies in its self-realization before realizing any effect. It is possible that it can only achieve this through the means of the effects, yet it is true that these effects themselves depend on its own fulfillment and that it is its own genesis that conditions the genesis of all things. It is this genesis, to the extent that all others depend on it, that metaphysical thought never ceases to scrutinize, while other disciplines content themselves with knowing things as they are given, in their relationships with each other or with us.
    • Thus, if only the act cannot be the appearance of something else, nor be posited in relation to something else, and if it must posit itself in order to posit everything that can be, we can say that what it delivers to us is not only, as is believed, the first beginning of everything that is, but being itself in its most hidden source and in the very essence of its intimacy. In this Act-Being, the passivity of the given thing and the activity of an unexercised power are both overcome. Activity and passivity are one; and the given being merges with the act that accomplishes it. Each is at once the father and the son of itself. It is this circle that allows being to be perfectly interior to itself and to be self-sufficient without anything outside of it that determines or transcends it. But it itself is transcendent in relation to all things and states.
    • Activity gives passivity its meaning as soon as it is itself negated; but the reverse is not true. And to undergo is to cease to act. This primacy of the act, taken in its absolute purity, obliges us to define being no longer as fact, nor as doing, but as self-doing. The verb of Being is neither the passive verb nor even the active verb; it is the reflexive verb. This is verified in the experience of volition, which is nothing before being exercised, which resolves itself in its pure exercise, which is both the beginning and the end of itself and which maintains a rigorous independence from all its effects.
    • However, it is difficult not to consider the act as occurring in time. Does it not presuppose a starting point, an endpoint, and progress that is realized in between? But these distinctions are the result of an analysis that focuses on the manifestations of the act rather than its operation. It is the [104] effects of the act that unfold in time, not the act itself. This can be shown in three ways: for, on the one hand, common sense itself agrees that the act is origin and first beginning, and for it to be so, there must be nothing in it that is posterior or derivative. Furthermore, to say that it is the origin and first beginning of everything that occurs in time implies that, in time itself, there is neither origin nor first beginning. - On the other hand, we know well that the act, at the moment it is accomplished, always takes place in the present. It is the creator of presence, and at the same time of existence. It would be absurd to locate the act in the past or in the future, although in the present, by resurrecting the former and anticipating the latter, it gives them the only reality they can have. - Finally, at the very moment when we consider the act as inseparable from time, it is to make it solidary not of the diversity of its moments, but of their transition, which can indeed be said to surpass time or to found it, but not to be subject to it.
    • This act that we reduce to pure effectiveness can also be considered as absolute creativity. Undoubtedly, it must be recognized that it is not itself a thing, and that it cannot have any thing as its origin or any thing as its end: for any thing can only be to it an appearance or a means. But if it is an eternal existence, it is in the sense that such an existence is an eternal birth. It is always identical and always new. It is the same act that temporal beings never cease to find, not as a given that is familiar to them and reassures them, but as a surplus that adds to everything given to them and always demands to be assumed.
    • At the point we have reached, it will no doubt be said that the Act we are speaking of evokes a motionless dynamism from which all movements that occur in time draw the energy that makes them be. But we are not yet there, and this interpretation of the results obtained so far would risk altering their meaning. For the Act has not been considered as the ultimate foundation of Being because it generates all reality, but because it generates itself. We have not sought to reach in it, as is too often done, the source of all externality, but this unique source of intimacy where Being ceases to be an object, that is, a phenomenon, to become an Absolute, that is, [105] a in itself, or a self. One more step must now be taken. It must be shown that this being, entirely internal to itself because it is the author of itself, can only be a spirit or consciousness.
    • Indeed, the Act cannot be assimilated to a sovereign force, as a certain materialist tradition does. For this force is itself an object as long as there is not an exact coincidence between its implementation and the ability to say “I.” It belongs to the realm of externality, not as a spectacle given to us, but as a constraint imposed on us and imposed on itself by a necessity of nature that it is incapable of governing. No one, of course, will propose to confuse the Act with force, which oppose each other as an engagement of the whole being and a brutal power that can only be suffered.
    • Also, in seeking to discern in volition the essential character of the Act as it is revealed in our inner experience, what we have sought to grasp is not a blind spontaneity like that found in Schopenhauer, but an initiative of which we have control and through which we are always born to self-consciousness. And for this reason, there is no proper act of volition that is not at the same time and indivisibly an act of thought. For how can we conceive of an act of thought that will not be animated and supported by the will, or an act of will that thought would leave without penetrating and illuminating? Thought and will are the two aspects by which we attempt to represent the fecundity of the same act: they dissociate as soon as consciousness becomes discursive and imperfect, as soon as the will is the search for the act rather than the act itself, as soon as thought is that of the object and no longer of the act being accomplished. At the summit of our consciousness, they are no longer discernible: this is properly what is called intuition, which is not the presence of the object to thought, but the intimacy of a spiritual operation without any object, and not, as has been said at the risk of causing much confusion, becoming its own object.
    • In the mind, the identity of volition and intellect is always realized, but consciousness is not exclusively spiritual. It is subject to thinking an object that infinitely surpasses the power of volition. And the condition of its limitation, that is, its progress, resides precisely in this opposition of intellect and volition, which does not allow me to realize everything I think, which forces my thought to be the thought of an object, and my will to be the intention of an end. But consciousness becomes spirit when it rises to its own source, and by abolishing the triple duality of intellect and volition, object and subject, intention and end, it is nothing more than the inner light of the act itself in its pure exercise.
    • However, the famous Kantian argument is often cited against this conception of an act knowing itself in its own accomplishment, which states that we can only grasp the mind in its work, and that there is a kind of contradiction in turning against itself the act by which we know everything else, in order to make it an object of knowledge in turn. This is undoubtedly the most serious objection against metaphysics, and if it were overcome, a royal road would once again open before it. However, we do not prohibit ourselves from ascending through necessary induction from the products of the act to the producing act, which is the very condition of their possibility. It is only said that this act is beyond consciousness, which does not deliver to us anything more than the effects of its operation. However, it should be noted first that the name “transcendental” given to it cannot prevent, if the act escapes consciousness, it from resembling those scholastic powers that we have learned to ridicule. Secondly, in order for the word “act” to be applicable here, it must be the case that we have some other experience of the act itself that assigns it a meaning. Finally, it is a true challenge, but one that has seduced many minds, to want the source of all light to itself be hidden in darkness.
    • True, one does not dare to proscribe the expression “transcendental consciousness,” but there is hesitation when it comes to determining whether it is real consciousness or a mere condition of empirical consciousness. And the source of this hesitation lies in a theoretical prejudice. For thought is not the creator of its object, but only of the knowledge of its object, which renders us incapable of distinguishing between the consciousness of its form and that of its content, not because consciousness precisely results from their connection, but because the preoccupation with the content that we cannot give ourselves blinds us to the operation without which it would not be given to us. However, a sufficiently refined analysis would undoubtedly succeed in finding, within every knowledge, the consciousness of the apprehension of the consciousness of the apprehended. But when we consider the practical activity that is properly creative of its effect, although it is always inadequate to it either by excess or by deficiency, no one can deny that it is truly a spiritual activity only by virtue of the consciousness we have of it, even if this consciousness must be sought far below the level where the will seeks to justify itself by reasons.
    • All these difficulties have the same origin: it is that the act is considered as producing something else (an object of representation or an end of volition) before it is considered as producing itself; that is, defining the absolute by the relation of oneself to oneself, which is intimacy itself. And this is also the law of our consciousness before it becomes a relation with something else: which expresses, rather than its essence, its limitation and the very condition of its enrichment. This condition is indeed required for it to be able to establish itself, but it is this condition that calls it as the means that makes possible the connection of its own finitude with the infinite Act from which it proceeds and towards which it tends.
    • The description we have just given of an act that perpetually produces itself and is prior to all imperfect acts that introduce “otherness,” that is, all those phenomena and effects by which the world is engendered in time, coincides with the primacy of the infinite over the finite on which Cartesian metaphysics and undoubtedly all possible metaphysics are based. But while the relationship between the infinite and the finite often seems to have only an ideological meaning, the relationship between pure act and imperfect act is the living experience of ontological intimacy itself. This is what Descartes saw admirably when he started from the “Cogito,” which can well be said to cause itself, without which it would have no privilege over the very objects of thought, but which is nevertheless unable to sustain itself due to the inadequacy that is in it and which is revealed to us in a twofold manner: by the doubt that besieges it with regard to any possible object, and by the impossibility, however, for it to cease being a mere potentiality except through the thought of some determinate object. Thus, the connection of the “Cogito” and the ontological argument in the Cartesian system is intended to express that if we experience ourselves as the cause of ourselves in the act of thought, this causality by which we give ourselves a finite existence presupposes, with even greater reason, in infinite existence an absolute power of self-realization without which our own existence would not be possible. This allows us to understand why Descartes can say that we ourselves are a created being, but that our ego is only an act of thought, and nothing can be created in it except the possibility of this act, whose disposition is always left to it; so that it is created creator of itself to the extent that the realization of this possibility can depend only on itself. It can be seen at the same time how profoundly Descartes, in this connection of his own existence, as it was revealed to him in the intimacy of the “Cogito,” with total existence, far from according to the latter an externality or objectivity that would subordinate it to the “Cogito,” identifies it with the absolute self-creation by itself, that is, with the very perfection of intimacy.
    • By pushing further than Descartes did the solidarity of the “Cogito” and the ontological argument, one encounters that fundamental spiritual experience which is that of an act that I perform and yet surpasses me, that makes me be and from which I never cease to draw, but to which I always remain inadequate, not so much due to an externality that resides in it and that I am unable to assimilate, but due to an externality that resides in me and that I never manage to overcome. It is this externality that makes there be a world for me, both a physical world composed for me of objects, and a psychological world composed of states of mind. And then one understands very well how the profound identification of dialectic and experience, which superficial philosophy often opposes, is realized: for what would an experience be that did not articulate itself in a thought process that surpasses it? What would a dialectic be whose phases and the relation that unites them were not expressed by an actual operation of my thought? Therefore, it is not enough to say that I rise from my own act to the absolute act through a simple inference that would make it a hypothesis always subject to dispute: this absolute act is itself somehow present in the act that I perform, both by the positivity that is in it and by the limits that I assign to it. My act is no more foreign to it than my body is foreign to the world of space of which it is a part. I enter into it through this very act, just as I penetrate into the world of space through my body. And this act that is mine reveals to me the very intimacy of pure act, not in spite of the fact that it is mine, but precisely because it is mine, and thus I become a participant in its intimacy and creativity, just as all physical laws are present in my own body and sustain it in existence. Thus, its essence itself is revealed to me, but in such a way that, being obliged to recognize my limitations, I must go beyond all possible limits in order to posit them, but through an operation of my thought that allows it to recognize at once the origin of its power, the condition of its progress, and the ideal it aims for. It must not be forgotten that this surpassing is still an act, which can indeed be called an act of faith because it lacks not a reality that is never external to it, but a fullness to which it always remains unequal and without which it could neither subsist, nor sense its inadequacy, nor find resources that allow it to enter into time and repair it. Thus, the exercise of my own act testifies to the presence of the absolute act, but it is the presence of the absolute act that establishes the possibility of my own act.
    • It is now evident how metaphysics is the discovery and deepening of spiritual intimacy, how it is based on an experience which, true, is never that of the given object, but that of an accomplishment with which the being that accomplishes itself can never fail to identify. It is the spiritual act becoming self-conscious in its own genesis. Such an act is always engaged in a double dialectic, an ascending dialectic that ascends to its own source through incessant purification, through continuous reduction from materiality to intelligibility and from diversity to unity, and a descending dialectic, the more beautiful of the two, which has sometimes been considered impossible, and even impious, and which, instead of consummating the abolition of all particular existences in the sterile identity of a solitary act, shows in the perfection of that act itself a call to actualize itself for perpetually renewed possibilities. And undoubtedly, the deepest mystery of Being resides in this inner fecundity which we experience, at the very heart of our own experience, to always be proportional to its capacity to suffice itself. Spiritual intimacy is nothing but an abstraction devoid of substance and life if it is not a double movement of coming and going, which, on the one hand, allows all individual existences to rediscover in themselves the absolute act from which they proceed, and, on the other hand, allows this very act to establish the initiative that belongs to them and to provide them with the effectiveness they possess and share without dividing it.
    • Therefore, it is possible to outline the contours of a science of spiritual intimacy, but one in which the word science would receive its full and strong meaning of adequation of knowledge to being, as it was once given, which cannot be suitable for knowledge concerning phenomena, where the measure is never quite precise enough, nor the hypothesis quite flexible enough, but which, on the contrary, receives rigorous application wherever being is reduced to the operation that produces it, where experience merges with this operation in the process of being carried out. To this act that is born from itself, all reality is suspended: it fills the interval that separates the absolute act from every approach that participates in its exercise without, however, exhausting it. It can then be understood how each consciousness can establish itself through the correlation established within it between its activity and its passivity. And their mutual relationship establishes our everyday life with the constant alternations it experiences, with its richness and poverty, with the strength that uplifts it or the weakness that burdens it.

  35. — However, it would be a mistake to think that passivity is solely negative. It is undoubtedly the mark of our limitation, but as we see in sensory perception or in the pleasure we experience, it adds to the incomplete operation that we have just accomplished. It is a kind of resonance produced in us by that which always surpasses it in the Absolute Act, a response that the Whole, in which it is inscribed, constantly makes to it. And that is why every imperfect act necessarily concludes in a givenness. It is these givennesses that constitute the world for us. Let us not disdain them under the pretext of reducing our own consciousness to a purer and more stripped-down activity. We would find nothing more in it, in the theoretical order, than an exclusively abstract operation, and in the practical order, than an exclusively intentional operation. This is the truth that lies at the heart of the classical opposition between form and matter. But the error is to think that this matter is heterogeneous to form, so that its origin remains mysterious, it is defined purely privatively, and its accord with form is nothing more than a fact that itself resists all explanation. On the contrary, here we would like to show that there is kinship and reciprocity between form and matter, as both proceed from the same Act that expresses their indivisibility within Participation itself, with one being nothing more than the initiative of the participant and the other being its limit, but also its point of encounter and connection with that which surpasses it and becomes present to it in some way, as the very measure of its success or failure.

  36. — This sufficiently explains why matter can be considered in itself indeterminate, although it never presents itself to us except as determined and qualified, why it will never be absorbed into the perfection of the act to which it applies (which would otherwise cease to be an act that individualizes me), why it is born from that very act, and instead of vacating the space and fading away when that act becomes more intense, it assumes more and more diversity, subtlety, and richness, why quality, far from resisting the act that apprehends it, always corresponds to it with the utmost delicacy. Thus, this act, instead of opposing the givenness, finds in it the term of its accomplishment. It brings intelligibility within the quality itself, which gives us true spiritual intimacy with the real, as seen in art. Here, passivity, far from being the negation of our activity, is integrated within it, posited with it and by it, and the very limit it opposes gives it both its content and a particular, concrete existence. Thus, it is the task of metaphysics to establish a science of quality, that is, not to give us its actual and full possession like art does, but to show us how it corresponds, in each of its species, to an original act of consciousness that extends and consummates it. Therefore, since each of these acts is itself a free act, the spectacle of the world, although it always surpasses our creative power, is always the expression of our merit.

  37. — The originality of metaphysics lies in making us discover the universality of spiritual intimacy, the common source where all consciousnesses draw nourishment, and which, to the extent that each of them is capable of rediscovering it, establishes its most personal existence. It shows us that all the steps from which knowledge and action derive are free steps, that is, so many absolute beginnings, but that they can only be realized according to certain conditions, which are the same for all beings, and that they are subject to producing a single and same world in which all their effects are composed. Metaphysics then becomes a kind of genesis of necessity from the very exercise of freedom. But the science that strips reality of its intimacy, that retains only the exteriority of things, also knows only that naked necessity.

  38. — We will not be stopped by the objection that there cannot be a science of intimacy because freedom itself eludes our grasp. For not only is it perfect knowledge for the one who exercises it, and who, at the moment of exercising it, merges with its pure exercise, but also this freedom that makes a being different from all others is, so to speak, in each of them the same power to produce its own difference. This sufficiently demonstrates why all consciousnesses communicate and oppose each other at the same time and, so to speak, at the same point. How could it be otherwise if they did not have both a common source and common conditions of possibility? Each of them, for example, is obliged to pass itself through an uninterrupted movement from nothingness to being, which implies that it must engage in time, and yet the totality of the world must be given to it currently, that is, it must spread out before it in space. It must be able to comprehend all that is realized by the circumstances of its realization, which is the requirement of causality, and it must be able to continually introduce into the world the mark of an action it has chosen and that depends on it alone, which is the requirement of finality. Thus, a true deduction of the categories becomes possible, no longer a mere empirical enumeration, for consciousness defines in them those instruments of participation by which, detaching itself from the pure act, it remains united to it and can endlessly pursue its own progress. And the categories, in turn, cease to be a kind of fortuitous residue of experience or a mysterious constraint of our mental nature, acquiring genuine interiority by becoming for us the means not only to constitute the spectacle of the world but, through the very constitution of this spectacle, to constitute ourselves through continual communication with the Absolute Spirit.

  39. — In such a conception of intimacy, we achieve the closest union one could desire between a constantly present and available universality and a constantly actualized and realized particularity. These are the inseparable aspects of being that cannot be broken for the sake of the former, as traditional intellectualism does, or for the sake of the latter, as various forms of empiricism do. Thus, it is true that being resides in quality, even in its most particular and fleeting nuance, and yet this quality would be nothing without the conceptual operation that makes it possible, but which also summons it and is not sufficient to produce it. Likewise, we can say that every freedom is unique in the world, and that its operation is the secret of each of us, but there are certain characteristics that allow it to be defined as freedom before it becomes this or that freedom, engaged in a nature and different from all others both by the situation within which it finds itself and by a decision that never depends on anything other than itself.

  40. — But we must go further in the deepening of intimacy. By identifying the intimacy of Being with itself through the Act by which it is accomplished, by showing that this act is indivisible, which compels every particular freedom to define itself as an act of participation, thanks to a symmetrical double genesis of qualities and categories, we have only considered the act of freedom in relation to the representation of the world. But if we seek how it is itself founded in the absolute act, we can either fix our gaze on their indissoluble union, turning it away from all determinations that express it, as mysticism does, or, without ever losing sight of this union, describe the metaphysical conditions that allow this free act to draw from the absolute act the resources by which it constitutes itself. The paradox here is that this participation of an act that is eternally self-causing, instead of absorbing its independence, as pantheism maintains, produces it, and it can only be realized precisely by making it in turn the creator of itself.

  41. — Therefore, it is not surprising that it is the intimacy of consciousness with the pure act, that is, with perfect intimacy, that gives it its intimacy with itself. However, this freedom that we possess and by which we are capable of creating ourselves distinguishes itself from the pure act because it is initially only a possibility whose use is in our hands. And consciousness is nothing more than the being of a possibility. But that is not enough to say; the essence of consciousness is to bring forth in the pure act a bundle of possibilities among which it will be its task to choose before actualizing them. Freedom is therefore not only a possibility for us, but it carries within it the coexistence of different possibilities; it is that very coexistence. However, there are no possibilities preexisting the act by which consciousness creates them as possibilities itself. And one would better understand the unique originality of consciousness if one were willing to recognize that it is the laboratory where all possibilities are elaborated. It is the place where the pure act is converted into possibility before that possibility itself is converted into a participated act. And no one can deny that the ultimate foundation of consciousness, in the most moving experience it gives us of itself, and in contrast to any experience we may have of an object, lies in this revelation of a constantly new possibility that is offered to us, in this responsibility that we feel when we realize that it depends on us to actualize it. The secret of creation is there, reduced to our measure.

  42. — We can see, therefore, that possibility itself cannot be detached from the pure act in which it takes root, nor from the act of thought that creates it as a possibility, nor from the act of will that actualizes it. It is remarkable that possibility acquires true reality, and consequently allows us to realize ourselves, only through the cooperation of the entire universe within which it must come to take its place. Metaphysics cannot be the science of the intimacy of being unless it is the science of the formation and advent of possibilities, none of which is anything other than what consciousness itself produces in order to assume its burden. It will study the degrees of possibility, from logical possibility that expresses the conditions of agreement among possibilities and, so to speak, the unity of the possible world, to those forms of possibilities that are in accordance with the being already realized, with circumstances, with place, with time, and where theoretical thought completes its determination by the demands of practical thought. Above all, it will not forget that possibility cannot be dissociated from the very life of consciousness, that each being invents possibilities in relation to its own genius, that these possibilities become powers, which can be said to must accord with the universal order, but without losing sight of the fact that they also contribute to its production.

  43. — However, this spiritual intimacy finds its ultimate form only in the relation of our consciousness to another consciousness. It is even remarkable that it is only then that the word intimacy receives its most perfect meaning for us. It is intimacy with another that gives us true intimacy with ourselves. It happens that the solitary person is to himself like a stranger and sometimes like an enemy. On the other hand, there is a metaphysical essence of friendship that reveals to us that beings realize themselves only by communicating, and that their communication occurs only through this common power that founds the freedom of each and the union of all through mutual intermediation. In friendship that posits an other being, not identical to myself, and that I want to be other than myself, in order to ceaselessly receive from him what I cannot give to myself, I recognize the essential laws of this world of spiritual intimacy, where the perfection of my freedom resides in an act by which I surpass myself, and where the response that is made to me is always in relation to a call in me that is always being reborn.

  44. — That the absolute act, which creates itself eternally, offers itself to the participation of an infinity of free beings finding in it the very possibilities they actualize, that they all together form a spiritual society that is the fruit of both their initiative and their cooperation, that would undoubtedly suffice to provide the first foundations of a theory of values. But it also provides the first foundations of a theory of nature, if it is true that nature only realizes the conditions without which different spirits would be incapable, on the one hand, of receiving a limitation and therefore of being distinct from one another, and, on the other hand, of inscribing their existence in a world common to all instead of remaining purely subjective potentialities, and finally of entering into relation with one another, and of becoming for one another true mediators. Therefore, it is understood that the very order we have followed in this exposition must be reversed if we want to transform critical analysis into explanatory genesis. What is first is spiritual intimacy, the initiative of freedom considered in its relation to the pure act which, by positing itself, allows it to posit itself and to realize a living communion with other freedoms. What is second is the relation of subject and object, which can only be considered as the means and expression of all the inner steps by which the spiritual world is constituted.

  45. — This is why metaphysics belongs both to transcend science and to found it. It requires an intimate experience, whose dialectic articulates the different steps, and which is entirely different from the experience of the object. But the impossibility of metaphysics, in the eyes of most people, comes from this prejudice of objectivity that would force it to pursue some transcendent object, for which it would have to resort to a mysterious operation of pure spirit. However, this would subordinate the spirit to a hypothetical reality that can only have meaning through its relation to it. It fails to see that true being resides in the spirit, not in making itself its own object, but in producing through its sole exercise both the real and its reasons. For all aspects of the real are the conditions or means of this exercise, which simultaneously express its success and failure. This is not proposing a metaphysical revolution, but merely seeking to uncover in metaphysics its hidden essence, which often remains enveloped amidst other inquiries where the preoccupation with the object continues to fascinate us. It is understandable that the object could become an obstacle that reflection would have to constantly overcome. But it must undoubtedly also be a witness, which can be said to always bring us the revelation of the level of our spiritual activity, at the very point where it demands that there be nothing that can be given to it that it has not deserved.6

Chapter VII. Insertion of the Self into Being through the Distinction between Operation and Datum

Introduction. Primacy of Being and Identification of Being with Action.

The notion of being is the first one that presents itself to reflection; it is through it that thought is immediately established. It is coextensive with every real or possible object; all other notions, including that of thought itself, are determinations derived from analysis.

Idealism itself does not escape the affirmation of being. Often, it is true, it simply relegates being to another world, different from the one in which we live, by simply stating the identity of the object and its representation. However, when it follows through with its premises, it must confer absolute being to the very subject that engenders this representation. Nevertheless, the obstacles it encounters in such an undertaking are as follows: first, the subject, being finite, cannot posit itself without borrowing the power at its disposal from elsewhere. Much less can it alone posit all other finite beings; it would thus be cornered into enclosing itself in a solipsism that contradicts the idea of its limits. Lastly, regardless of the ingenuity of the artifices used to demonstrate how it engenders its representation, one can never succeed in reducing the element of passivity found within it; one would alter the essential character of knowledge, which is to discern, within a given universe, the parts that have some relation to us, but not to express our solitary essence through the mysterious creation of an objectless spectacle.

The preeminence we attribute to the notion of being over all others would be readily granted to us if we could justify its fecundity. But it seems, on the contrary, to be the most sterile of all. This is because it is seen only as a generic denomination that can be applied to an infinity of concrete terms that give it content, and whose genesis must be explained by other means. It would not be so if it could be shown how being divides itself to blossom, revealing an infinite multiplicity of different yet interconnected aspects, allowing an infinity of beings to be constituted within it by participating in its nature, which they never exhaust.

It is during this analysis of being that our personality acquires its own being. However, it cannot create itself without constantly running the risk. As it aspires to independence and forgets that it lives at the expense of the being within which it originated, it eventually believes it can detach itself from it and suffice on its own. It becomes inseparable from the transitory and perishable part of itself and, under the pretext of increasing, constantly brings about its own destruction. Conversely, if it attributes to their origin all the goods it can receive, it knows that they will never be lacking, for they are endlessly renewed. If it abstains from trying to retain and appropriate them for itself, it will no longer fear losing them. It has found their source as soon as it becomes indifferent to the temporary enjoyment they can provide.

The universality of being has never been seriously contested; however, it is important to remember that a phenomenon itself is a mode of being. On the contrary, there has never been a more lively debate than that of univocity. It has been feared that this univocity would promote pantheism and a confusion between the being of the creator and the being of the creature. However, there are undoubtedly two different meanings of the word univocity, one of which legitimizes this distinction, while the other abolishes it. The solution is already implied in the need to make the phenomenon itself a mode of being. That there is an essence in being that makes it be for itself and a phenomenon that makes it be for another is only possible because both are included within the universality of the same being. Similarly, the difference in dignity between the being of the creator and the being of the creature, between the being that creates itself absolutely and the being we say is created by the creator, but by which we mean that it can only actualize a power it has received, far from undermining the unity of meaning of the word being, assumes it, as otherwise one would not understand how being could be transmitted or received. Any qualitative or analogical diversity among the forms of being refers to a univocity that specifies it, rather than contradicting or excluding it.

Nevertheless, being considered in itself compels us to affirm the two preceding characteristics without justifying them. But if the act is defined as the absolute intimacy of being, their possibility and necessity are immediately understood. It is the very principle that engenders them and ensures their intelligibility. For pure act is the common source of everything that is, and it is still fully present through the most different forms of participation, regardless of the distance that separates them from itself and from one another.

Nonetheless, the nature of the act retains a kind of mystery. What is the precise relationship that the act sustains with being? Should these two terms be distinguished from one another only by an abstract distinction? But then, how can the same object appear under these two different aspects?

In fact, being always seems to be presented to knowledge from the outside. Whether it is the being of the self or the being of the universe, in both cases, one believes to be dealing with things that can only be described. It is not the same with the act: the essential difficulty we encounter concerning it arises from the fact that the act, not being a thing, cannot be represented in any way, even inadequately. It has reality only for the one who exercises it and who, in exercising it, possesses it immediately, just as they possess mediately the being that the act grants them. Knowledge of the act is inseparable from its accomplishment. The world now ceases to be a spectacle for us and becomes an operation in which we collaborate. Thus, we must turn to inner experience to judge whether this operation is real or illusory. But we can only judge it by attempting to perform it. Thus, all metaphysical inquiry ceases to be a rational interpretation of reality and becomes a consenting participation in the work of creation.

I. Reciprocal Relationship of the Self and the Whole as Operation and Datum.

The self actualizes being as a universal data through the act of its individual thought; and it actualizes itself as a particular data through the potential universality of this same thought.

It is an undeniable fact that being first presents itself to us with a character of passivity. All knowledge appears as an encounter. This encounter is generally expressed through the opposition of subject and object. However, both are understood within the total being. Therefore, it is true to say in another sense that knowledge consists, for the part, in recognizing itself as a part within a whole that surpasses it. But this whole must not be confused with our own being; it must be a given for it, even though this given can only be actualized by our thought. The self is then defined as an individual subject.

If we now try to think not of the whole, but of this particular self that must necessarily be inscribed within the whole, the self itself becomes a data, and it is the act of thought that extends infinitely beyond it. Then the idea of a universal subject appears.

We are therefore faced here with a reciprocal relation that deserves our full attention: when our self, considered as a subject, confronts the entire universe, this universe becomes an immense data that gradually illuminates before our eyes and appears as the revelation of being itself. But when we try to think of ourselves, then our self becomes an object that must in turn receive being, and, conversely, thought is then a universal power that actualizes our self but does not merge with it, since it has, by right, an unlimited extension.

In both cases, we have encountered an encounter: it was first thought that awakened in an imperfect and rudimentary form in contact with the total being from which it seemed detached in order to know it; it was then the same thought that, in contact with this limited being we call the self, discovered its impersonal fecundity and universal scope. However, on both sides, we named the encountered term as being rather than the agent of the encounter, and that is why the being of the self was spontaneously confused with the body.

Yet the possibility of establishing a permutation between the individual and the universal, which forces us to individualize the act of thought when we universalize its object and to universalize this same act when we make the self an individual object or a body, must lead us to recognize an affinity and even an essential identity between the object and thought that only seems to break in order to allow all activity to be exercised in between and for every particular being to be realized through participation.

One may wonder at what point, in this diversity of aspects, being and the self will reveal their own nature to us. Should being first be conceived as the totality of objects that can be given to a faculty of subjective representation, or as this very faculty, but transcendent to the limited subject and actualizing everything that surpasses it and must forever remain for it in a state of pure possibility? One may suspect that this distinction has no inherent meaning, but only for the subject itself, who, participating in the whole only subjectively and through an unfinished operation, constantly opposes to the act it accomplishes all the acts it could accomplish and yet cannot maintain its connection with the total being except under the double condition of seeing it unfold before it as a vast data that imposes itself on it and over which it has only partial control, or of discovering in its operation a possible fecundity that goes infinitely beyond the limits in which it will ever be exercised. However, since the data always appears to it as external to the operation, it can hope that it would dissipate if the operation suddenly became perfect.

Should the self now be conceived as the subjective power to present the universe to us in the form of representation, or as a particular object that presents itself to thought among many others in the infinite abundance of the real? Here again, it will be shown that we are dealing with two perspectives on the same term rather than two different terms. Because the power we have to make the universe present to us is subjective, that is, ours, only because it is limited; it is precisely because it is limited that it appears as a power that is exercised not all at once, but gradually and never exhausted. Consequently, it must itself be correlative to a particular data that inscribes it passively into being, not as a result of its own activity, and that is enveloped amidst an infinity of others on which the power of thought still exercises its jurisdiction. This is a kind of deduction of the idea of the body. It explains why the body appears to be a condition of consciousness while also being an object for it.

Of these two aspects of the self, which one will give us the deepest insight into it? It will certainly be the inner aspect and, if you will, the psychic aspect. For it is well known that if the role of the body is to support consciousness and make it possible, it is only because it explains what is limited in it, because it is the focal point and center of the reality it reveals to us. To the extent that consciousness wanes, we tend to become a mere body, that is, a being that only exists for others. To the extent that it sharpens and expands, the self tends to encompass the entire world, with the body becoming only a small fragment around which the rest of things unfold.

II. Mutual Limitation of Action and Being in every Finite Individual, yet both Infinite.

Between being and action, we have just observed a double intersection. For the action of an individual subject appears empty and ineffective, a pure possibility, if isolated from the total being in which it is embedded and to which it applies. On the other hand, no particular form of being, even this privileged form which is our body, can subsist if it is not connected to all others in a world that can only be encompassed by an infinite act.

Thus, the limitation of the act evokes the idea of a given infinite being, and the limitation of being evokes the idea of an infinite act that perpetually exercises itself. Is this not to say that the given infiniteness of being is the somewhat passive presence of the infiniteness of the act, in relation to a consciousness that merely participates in it? Is this not also to say that the act is realized through the given, which determines it, and that the given is called into existence by the act, which posits it?

If one tries to confine reality within an act, reality will always reveal an infinite surplus. Conversely, if one tries to apply the act to a real term, the infinite excess of its power will immediately burst forth. Moreover, it is each particular term that surpasses the efficacy of the act since within this particular term there is a present infinity, of which the infinite divisibility of space is an abstract expression. And it is each particular act that surpasses the richness of any concrete term, since within every act there is an infinity whose possibility of being endlessly recommenced in time is an empirical expression.

Thus, both the act and being, both infinite, relentlessly pursue each other, continually surpassing one another and never managing to reunite, let alone embrace. And yet one cannot help but think that they must necessarily overlap. For there is not a single form of being that cannot become a given for a penetrating and subtle enough act, and there is not a single act that can be detached from being, neither by its origin nor by its object.

Against this whole development, one may invoke the famous argument that an object can only be limited by an object of the same nature, namely being limited by being and thought limited only by thought. But this argument is not without reply, and the purpose of our analysis is precisely to show that it is false. For in a homogeneous milieu, no limit can be drawn. The notion of circumscription or figure presupposes a qualitative difference between what fills the figure and the milieu from which it detaches. Geometric delineation is a sort of ideal materialization of this difference within a pure space. We thus maintain that the particular object upon which the gaze of our thought currently rests can only be limited by objects upon which it does not rest, and which are only objects of a possible thought. Similarly, conversely, a particular act that is exercised in the present can only be limited by an act that is not currently being exercised and therefore coincides with an unthought object but could be thought. Thus, we justify this double correlative infinity of thought and object, which is such that without the former, the object could not be limited, and without the latter, thought could not be. It is the way they exclude each other and yet pursue each other that gives movement to the dialectic of knowledge as well as that of action.

III. Inalienable Originality of Operation and Datum.

The act we are talking about will be described as nothing more than the very possibility of being: therefore, it is not surprising that it contains all the characteristics of the being from which it is derived, and none other. However, it would still be necessary to explain how we can distinguish the pure possibility from the given being. Moreover, this possibility is not abstract; otherwise, it would not be grasped in a real and effective operation. In fact, we are obliged to recognize that if being is present, it is the operation that presents it to us, so that if the act seems to derive its content from being, being certainly derives its actuality from the act. Therefore, although there is solidarity between the two terms, one is not simply a replica of the other: each of them retains an inalienable originality. It is not in vain to observe that the operation always anticipates what the given offers, while the given always conceals secrets that elude the operation. In the absolute, undoubtedly, the given and the operation coincide, not in a precarious and limited way, but perfectly and adequately. However, in that case, there is no longer any given or operation. Because these two terms only make sense for a finite being; they can only be posited through their correlation.

The fact that the operation enjoys a prestige inaccessible to the given is easily understood when we reflect that the given is always a spectacle in which we can place ourselves, but with limitations, whereas the operation is both our inner essence and the guarantee of all the victories we will ever achieve over the given when we seek to reign over it and reduce it. Thus, the given marks our limits both through its passivity and the horizon within which it is confined. The operation marks our power because it is intimate, effective, and rich in infinite promises.

Therefore, if idealism has thought that the world is reduced to a system of representative data resulting from the operations of a finite subject, which is a psychological interpretation of knowledge, how can we not add to it an ontological interpretation, since it has been recognized that the finite subject cannot suffice unto itself, that it cannot be posited as a first term, nor deduce everything else from its sole essence? Then, the interiority of being would appear in the form of an act in which the operations of consciousness would translate the indivisible unity through participation. However, since these operations themselves are multiple and occur in time, it is important in each of them that the totality of being remains present to us, and it can only do so by transforming it into an immense concrete data, inexhaustible but not impermeable, with which space, time, concepts, and qualities would allow us to ensure regulated communication while safeguarding our independence. The act would not then be the mere possibility of being. It would be being itself, considered in itself and in the principle that allows consciousness, on the one hand, to transform it into a concrete spectacle and, on the other hand, to penetrate it through a set of operations that draw their effectiveness from it. Thus, it is itself the true agent of all these operations and correlative to the existence of the spectacle and the consciousness that gives it to itself.

As for the universe itself, it can only appear as a vast system of data. No matter how extensive or refined our gaze, we will never discover anything more in it than data: in it, the unity of being is expressed through the necessary relations that connect all these data. This is the aspect of reality perceived by materialism. But it forgets that it is through an inner operation that we make this universe present, just as idealism tends to think that the operation suffices unto itself. However, if such an operation only makes sense through its reciprocal determination with a given, it is no more self-sufficient than the given; in reality, the given disperses the unity of being, just as the operation enumerates its power. It is only if we could demonstrate that the act is in itself indivisible and entirely present where it is exercised that we would succeed not only in justifying the characteristics previously attributed to being but also in showing how the inner union of consciousness and God takes place at the very moment when the universe presents us with its visible face.

IV. Virtual Infinity within the Self of Operation and Datum.

If we now seek to understand how this distinction between being and action takes place within the self, which only makes sense for the finite subject and becomes an essential identity when we try to apply it to the whole, we can notice that being individualizes itself only through this very opposition. However, as soon as we consider each of these opposed terms in isolation, we find precisely in them the infinity that is characteristic of being and that compels us, wherever we posit it, to posit it in its entirety.

What is limited in a body, other than the configuration we delineate in thought, allowing us to consider the former as finite and the latter as infinite? But if we try to consider the body in itself and direct our gaze not only towards its boundaries in space and time but towards the content within these boundaries, that is, its positive essence, we will then realize that each of its properties initially expresses some momentary relation that this body may have with a neighboring body. However, if these relations were to multiply enough for its total essence to be present to us, we would find within it influences coming from all points in space, an echo of the farthest past of the universe, and the prefigured announcement of its most distant future. This is because the entire being is present in each of its parts, but we only discern a few aspects of it. To discern them all, we would need to have the totality of space and time: time and space are precisely the means that allow us to bring forth these aspects in turn by connecting each part to all others through movement, that is, through an operation that the body itself appears to accomplish. This leads us to conceive the universe as an indefinite array of distinct terms. However, intellectual analysis would be capable of finding in each term its point of articulation with all others. This analysis is therefore the metaphysical root of all processes that unfold it and symbolize it. An object cannot be distinguished from the sum of the relations that unite it with all others; it is, so to speak, their intersection. And the sum of these relations coincides at each point with the knot of possibilities that allows each individual form of being to inscribe itself in the universe through a participation that, in principle, is total but in fact, is always incomplete and unfinished. That is its true essence. As for our own body, it differs from all others, with which it is homogeneous, only because, being the center with respect to which all others orient themselves and can be perceived, it expresses itself, in the current originality of its functions, the momentary state of our nature and the level of its development.

Let us now consider not our particular body, bounded by the infinity of thought applied to other objects, but our particular thought, bounded by the infinity of being on which it does not currently extend. There is always a virtual infinity within it. From the outset, it regards itself as adequate to the totality of being, and no one can claim that it is mistaken. Just as visual power, without changing its nature but only varying its extent and acuity, is capable of perceiving the most different, subtle, and distant parts of the spectacle of the world, the ever-new ideas that intelligence conceives do not alter or exhaust its essence. After each act of thought, it retains the same unity and the same youthfulness. And the object, which seems to realize it, limits it by making it coincide for a moment with the being of which it is only one aspect. But this aspect, in turn, limits being, although it seems to add content to it by revealing it to us.

Thus, when we examine the two aspects of our nature, we find that the totality of being is present in each of them, but expressed in a different language. The characteristic of our finite individuality is precisely its inability to make these two infinities coincide with each other, although it never ceases to strive for it. We know that the current infinity of the body cannot be ideally distinguished from the intelligible infinity through which this body is connected, step by step, to all parts of the universe. However, we will never succeed in rendering the totality of the former intelligible, nor in making the totality of the latter actual.

Time is precisely the condition without which the bodily self and the thinking self could neither manifest their content, nor oppose their modalities, nor justify the identity of the principle that establishes them. It is through time that the finite being, without losing its limits, can appear to itself as the possibility of the whole. However, this possibility would be the possibility of nothing if it were not a real possibility, that is, inscribed in an actual whole.

The body provides only an image of this reality, just as movement expresses through an image the possibility for this limited body to occupy all positions in limitless space. Although the body must appear as limited in each of the views that can be taken of it, regardless of their richness, since it is necessary for it to express the totality of being through its intrinsic nature and not only through external relations that can never be fully enumerated, it will also not suffice for the analysis to be capable of finding in it an infinity of elements that can only be distinguished from each other in an ideological time. It must also be possible to consider them all as present in it from the very beginning of the analysis, albeit in an undivided and non-serial form. Thus, the immediate presence of the body leads us back to the idea of an operation that is both accomplished and unaccomplishable. However, although by saying that the body has the right to existence only within and by a whole that is only the object of a possible thought, we seem to admit that it is the possibility of being that establishes its actuality, it is actually its actuality that establishes its possibility, since the latter merely expresses the imperfect effort of a finite consciousness to subjectively make itself present, in the form of successive data, the inexhaustible richness of an act that must be exercised indivisibly and entirely for even the humblest experience to be posited, as this experience necessarily calls for all others, and the body, which is only one of them, is at the same time the instrument and the shortcut to all others.

V. Insertion of the Being of the Self into the Being of the Whole.

It is the distinction between being and action that allows any finite being to give itself being through an operation that is proper to it. In the subjective interval that separates them, all individual beings are inserted. Subjugated in being by their limits, they seek to equalize themselves with it through their operation. But there is no difference between the totality of being and the completion of the operation. As long as individuality persists, the operation is never completed. The perfection of the operation is represented in space and time by the totality of individuals who share in its accomplishment. But in fact, this totality is never closed. This is because being is not a sum of parts. It is the common principle that allows each of them to detach from it to contribute to its formation while receiving from it the initiative by which it can subsist.

Thus, we will never encounter being separated from particular beings. In each of them, being is present in its entirety. It does not measure its gifts to any of them. However, the exercise of their freedom creates a deep inequality among them. They are all faced with an infinite wealth, but it can only become a good for those who know how to appropriate it. Only those who, instead of hoarding like misers, ceaselessly renew their participation in the act that makes them be, succeed. They are as generous as they are selfless because they have experienced that the only true use of goods is to produce them. It is our responsibility to generate our power and happiness and not to wait for them.

Although being itself is perfect and immutable, it is sustained only by an eternally available internal act that, through participation, opens up an unlimited career before each freedom. However, regarding the individual, their particular acquisitions will appear necessary to adequately express their vocation and enable them to fulfill their destiny exactly. However, it should not be forgotten that they originate from an identical principle without which they would have no access to being. And since it is this same principle that equally nourishes all particular existences at all points in space and time, it is understood that all goods, in themselves, may appear indifferent to us, but they receive, on the other hand, an intensity and a unique flavor, regardless of their intrinsic value, from our union with the matterless act that they make perceptible to some and conceal from most.

Moreover, it will not be believed that there are two separate terms in the universe, the one and the diverse, between which a more or less precarious communication is established. This communication is the very essence of reality. It is what gives rise to the one and the diverse. It is through it that a unity, always ready to act, is introduced into the world, which is both the origin and the end of all our actions, and a multiplicity, each term of which must be incapable of sufficing in itself, so that it can obtain through personal effort everything that it lacks.

If God is essentially a gift of self, it is impossible to conceive of Him apart from the creatures to whom He continually gives Himself. And how could He give Himself to others than those who are willing to receive Him? How, then, could creatures, in turn, enjoy real existence other than by giving it to themselves through an act that is both consent and participation? For each of them, the existence of God will remain a pure possibility until the moment when, by uniting with Him, it brings about His advent in its own consciousness. This leads us to admit that a rigorous justice presides over the metaphysical distribution of essences since each of them is assured of finding in the world everything it can ever give itself, of setting its own limits, and of suffering only from wanting to jealously contain the entire universe, and it is free at any moment to renounce these limits by discovering in itself the common principle that constitutes both its own being and the being of all things, even those that appear to it as obstacles and yet are means without which it would be nothing.

On this issue, as well as on that of univocity, one would not want to expose the reader to any misunderstanding. Just as univocity, as it should be understood, establishes instead of abolishes both the sovereignty of absolute being and the irreducible diversity of the modes of relative being, each of which expresses, according to a general law, the inalienable originality of an individual essence, similarly, divine freedom, in its relation to particular freedoms, is neither constrained by the necessity to create them nor transformed into them, as would necessarily happen in a doctrine that could be called, if this expression were not contradictory, a “pantheism of freedom.” Because, on the first point, it is evident that if this creation is a gift, the very nature of a gift is, under penalty of not being, to express that perfect gratuity which is the very definition of freedom and which the notion of gift alone undoubtedly allows us to understand. So that, if we cannot have an approximate notion of the divine action except by considering its relation to creatures, it must nevertheless be said that there is nothing in them that can necessitate the creative act, since their appearance in the world is the effect of God’s freedom and, so to speak, the testimony of the very perfection of this freedom. On the second point, if it is true that sovereign freedom proves its absolute nature by creating other freedoms, so to speak, analogous to its own, and if it is true, therefore, that each of them creates its own being and thus becomes an image of divine freedom, one cannot draw from this the conclusion that the creative act has been communicated to the creature, who now has its disposition. Because, unlike the creative act, we never derive our own being from nothingness, but from mere possibility, which itself is a “real possibility” constantly offered to us by divine generosity and whose sole use is left to us. So that, although it is impossible to undermine in us this initiative and this choice that allow us to make ourselves everything we will become one day, it is on the condition, however, that we do not forget that we receive from God both the possibility that we are responsible for actualizing and the very power by which we act, but sometimes with Him and sometimes against Him.7

Thus, the indivisible unity of being is found everywhere: the efforts of self-love are an unsuccessful attempt to break it, which testifies against us when we believe that our independence is based on its ruin. It is enough for us to recognize it so that our subjective being, ceasing this state of rebellion that must always remain possible so that the part and the whole can arise from their very opposition, no longer makes a distinction between its own will and the action of the creative power within it.

The self constitutes its individual essence through the opposition of being and action, which, in principle, are both adequate to the whole but, by alternately representing the part or the whole, depending on whether each is considered as actual or as possible, allows it to create itself through ceaseless participation. Although the crossing of being and action, occurring in an instant, seems to actualize only the particular, that is, the object or the momentary act of my thought, the totality of possible being can only be conceived as the act of an infinite intelligence and the fullness of virtual action as the very infinitude of being, on which thought claims a reign of right before being able to exercise a reign of fact. There is nothing more instructive than these comparisons to safeguard the autonomy of particular beings by maintaining in each of them the presence of the total being. These two seemingly contradictory characteristics must, however, be necessarily associated if one accepts that nothingness does not exist, that there is no intermediary between being and non-being, that the total being is solitary and of sovereign independence, that limited beings depend on the whole, that is, on all other beings, if considered within their limits, but that if their own being is considered, they must imitate the whole and realize its idea, that is, acquire the same independence as it and not be imprisoned within limits except to free themselves from them through the deployment of an activity that is constitutive of their very person.

VI. Exteriority of Being, or Being as it is present to us and limits us.

The being is what first captures our attention because every operation of a finite intelligence presupposes it, as it provides both an object and a limit. It cannot be otherwise since it is impossible for us to posit any particular term other than through its inscription within the whole or, more precisely, through its participation in the whole. Whether we consider the universe or consider the self, we must first make them objects through which the power of thought actualizes. This is why the universe always appears infinitely richer to us than perception, and the self infinitely richer than the consciousness we have of it.

Only subsequently does reflection reveal to us the operation we are performing, which necessarily appears to us not only as belonging to the domain of being but as being the very intimacy of being itself, of which the object only shows us the phenomenon, as having an extension equal to its own, as being the secret reason that explains and produces it. The identity between being and act needs to be demonstrated: it can only be demonstrated through the possibility of participation, moreover, through its own exercise. Pure being can only be act if defined by its aseity and perfect sufficiency. But particular beings, at the moment they form their own essence within it, cannot consider the whole of being as that which exceeds their operation while simultaneously supporting and indefinitely nourishing it. Therefore, we cannot begin to act without first positing the universality of being, which proves to be indiscernible from our own operation considered in its state of completion and perfection. In other words, we only discover the interiority of being by giving it the measure of our own subjectivity: but we can only conceive of it by inserting it into an unparticipated whole, from which it does not differ in essence and from which it must detach precisely to seek to join and embrace it.

We will now understand why the primitive character of being appears to us as given. We undergo it instead of creating it. It seems to impose itself upon us from the outside, and we only have to observe and describe it. Our own existence does not escape this law. We too have received it. We only have its use. We can even destroy it once we possess it. It is only at our birth that we are devoid of action. It depends, in a sense, on others, that is, on our parents, who seem more like its instruments than its agents.

Likewise, no matter how much we multiply the testimonies that demonstrate the action we exert on the spectacle of the external world, analyze the role played in representation by our senses or our mind, we cannot avoid considering this spectacle as being offered to us rather than being produced by us: the qualities of bodies cannot be changed at will, and if we can introduce some modification into them, it is through the intermediary of motion which allows us, according to fixed laws, either to vary them with distance or to group them in new assemblies.

However, the characteristic feature of being is, it seems, to subsist independently of our apprehension, not to appear in solidarity with the subjective form that consciousness gives it. Should we then admit that being can only be revealed by thought and that, in this very revelation, it conquers a true autonomy with respect to thought? It is as if the represented possessed an abundance that, surpassing representation, would compel us to posit it contradictorily as external to it. It is as if the self never reveals itself to itself fully and must be posited contradictorily as external to its own subjectivity. Nevertheless, it remains that exteriority appears to be the fundamental property of being, an exteriority into which we enter to form our own interiority, but which infinitely exceeds it, if not in essence, at least in the new aspects it continually offers.

Intuitionist philosophers have sought to overcome this duality by relying on the affinity that must be recognized between the two opposing terms. Thus, some have been led to admit that the subject is capable, by untangling itself from any own activity, of identifying with the being given to it, while others have sought to absorb the object of intuition into the act of thought, which also made it difficult to explain the immediate testimony of consciousness regarding the nature of being considered as a presence that resists us. But it seems that neither the act should be sacrificed to being nor being to the act, although being would necessarily have to resolve into act if it were not necessary to posit their correlation to make the advent of the individual possible in the world. For then the exteriority of being, instead of surprising us, instead of appearing contradictory to the representation that reveals it to us, will invariably show itself in solidarity with it. The term “existence” already manifests this exteriority of being: for what exists subsists outside of ourselves at the moment we perceive it and would continue to subsist even if we ceased to perceive it and even if we were to die. What does this mean if not that we identify with the act of representation but not with its content? And therefore, being, that is, subsisting outside of us, can only have meaning for a subject conscious of its limits and who brings the real into a perspective that is peculiar to it, attributing to itself the perspective and not what enters into it.

By saying that what is must be for us without being us, we encounter a popular belief. How could one explain that being is given if it were not given to someone? But the one to whom it is given must himself be part of it, so that the gap that separates them is that of the part to the whole, of the finite to the infinite. Their identity of nature and the participation that unites them create a kind of ambition of the first over the second, a right of control and jurisdiction: but it can only exercise it by giving the universe the form of its own subjectivity, so that, in a true paradox, it is in the images we make of things that they appear to us as distinct from us. For a thing to be external to us, it must therefore be external to us: and these two expressions would undermine each other only if one wanted it to be in itself what it is for us. Exteriority is revealed to us through perception. But although the given is traversed by the combined traces of all our functions and all our needs, there is in it an actual metaphysical presence that is impossible to exhaust or reduce, which is the characteristic of being and with which we must be in solidarity in order to be conscious of both our power and our limits.

VII. Interiority of Being, or Being as it reveals its essence to us and allows us to participate in it.

It is evident that this passivity through which being reveals itself to our eyes only makes sense for us and not for itself. In us, it is already correlated with the activity it limits. It cannot be made a property of being considered in itself: because being cannot be a given to itself; the doubling that is necessary for that, this kind of limitation and passivity towards oneself without which being would never be a thing, is precisely realized in individual consciousnesses as the condition of their possibility and the foundation of their existence. And in order to distinguish being from its subjective image, it has been observed throughout time, on the one hand, that the variations of the image are subject to a rule independent of our will, and on the other hand, that different consciousnesses manage to understand and communicate with each other through a universal knowledge of their own individual states, and finally, that the image itself encompasses an infinite hidden richness from which each of us derives a currency proportional to our needs.

From being, which is a given for others and can only become a given for oneself by being another for oneself, we must therefore move to being that gives all other beings the data through which it manifests its essence to them without ever exhausting it, and which must be conceived on the model of a spiritual operation that will never correspond to any given, except in consciousnesses of which none will be its own. We also know this being from within through our activity, but inseparably linked to a data that always seems external to us, not decisively and by its very principle, since otherwise it would not even be given, but only in such a way that it always exceeds our momentary activity and never our possible activity.

There is no more intense or complete emotion than the one we experience in metaphysical research when we discover the homogeneity between the external world and the one we carry within us. For our self, which until then appeared fugitive and precarious, now acquires the stability that is the characteristic of being and the whole, while the whole acquires the intimacy by which, instead of crushing us, it never ceases to understand and respond to us.

There is a remarkable reciprocity between the two notions of being and action, which can be said to bring us face to face with a first term, regardless of which of the two presents itself to us first. But here we want to go beyond the simple correlation that unites them, which is obviously the law of every individual consciousness. We have already shown that being is only being in relation to the finite, that is, using a crude expression, in relation to its own parts. In itself, it is action or operation. And it is this action that allows different consciousnesses to participate in the inner being while encountering it everywhere before them as a given.

By identifying being with action in this way, we avoid ever looking at being as a genus or as a purely extrinsic designation. For it is the nature of action to renew and multiply its operation indefinitely, without altering its essence, according to the power of participation that belongs to all individual beings in the world. However, action is not, as has sometimes been believed, external and transcendent to being. Despite the tendency that is all too often shown to reserve the name of being for material things, it cannot be repeated enough that action is present wherever being is present, that it is the common support of operation and data, and that instead of denying being to it on the pretext of enhancing its prestige, one should rather call it, if this expression were not a useless pleonasm, the being of being.

Therefore, we will say indifferently that action is being and that being is action. And thus, we have avoided two dangers: the first consisted in opposing action to being on the pretext that action can only be possible being. But besides the fact that this possibility is not nothing and that it must be inscribed somewhere in the being of which it is a form, it is evident that action consists not in possibility, but in its exercise. Possibility can only have meaning in relation to a finite being. It is the aspect of being with which my own subjectivity has not yet coincided, which it has not yet assimilated and made its own. But far from saying that action opposes it, it must be said that it is through action that being is constantly actualized in all consciousnesses.

The second danger would be more serious: it would consist in subordinating action to being by asserting that there can be no action without a subject. But then it would be impossible to penetrate the nature of being, at least if being is to be identified with such a subject. In reality, the subject does not distinguish itself from the action it exercises: it is because action is one that the subject is one. The seemingly unfathomable mysteries of metaphysics arise from these subjects in which an idolatrous inclination realizes the abstract idea of permanence and which it is easy to see are resistant to all intelligibility and incapable of any efficacy. Only action is concrete and alive. The body, which is always obscurely thought of when the subject is invoked, cannot be its support; nor is it its product; it would rather be its shadow. It is in a sense the condition and instrument of it, since without it, action would not be limited, would not have development in time, and would not affect a subjective form. But true action is indeed an action without a subject, which is fully found in all subjects and allows each of them to establish their own existence through a process that must never be completed in order to be both personal and shared.

However, it is easy to understand that this process itself, which always appears in a new aspect, evokes in being an infinity of different data that surpass it and respond to it, which are like the appropriate matter for this form and which we can now see how it will be possible to deduce. We have defined the data and operation in the most general way in what precedes, and there can be no question here of examining their different species. However, it can be foreseen that if the insertion of the self into being can only be achieved through a participation of the self in the action expressed by an incessant distinction and correlation of operation and data, the constitution of consciousness itself can only be realized in turn through a doubled and symmetrical distinction within the operation itself, between its properly intellectual character by which it takes possession of the data and undertakes to reduce it, and its properly volitional character by which it seeks to modify it and, in a sense, to produce it 8.

Chapter VIII. Psychological Experience of Time

Introduction.

The time is the central problem of philosophy, the one that generates all the others and that, so to speak, creates problems. It is easy to see that our entire life is a problem for us only because it unfolds in time: the mystery of life is the mystery of its origin and its outcome. And when we ask where we come from and where we are going, we are merely searching backward into the past for a principle on which we depend and which explains how we began, and forward into the future for a goal towards which we strive and which gives meaning to what we will have done. Within our own life, all the problems posed by intelligence or will involve time as the condition that allows us to pose them as well as resolve them: to know is to seek the cause of phenomena, and to act is to choose an end that we intend to achieve. It is by virtue of the structure of time that the world, life, and our consciousness itself appear to us as so many questions that we must answer. And perhaps it must be said that it is time that must reveal to us the secret of existence, if it is true that existence is always offered to us, but precisely so that we take possession of it, that is, as a problem whose solution lies within our hands.

The reason that gives time a sort of privilege among all other objects of philosophical meditation is that our life cannot detach itself from it. We have a constant experience of time that is both personal, variable, and stirring, that divides our consciousness between regret, fear, and hope, and that sometimes drags us along a course of events that we are incapable of mastering and sometimes opens before us a path of possibilities [138] in which our will engages with conquering exhilaration. This experience, we feel it, we undergo it, and we live it at the same time. It is unique to each one and common to all; it is a secret for each consciousness and an opening of each consciousness to the secret of the world. Through it, what is given to us are the very conditions of our entry into existence and our participation in a reality that surpasses us, the play of our powers, their exercise and limitation, an order of events in which we are entangled and yet can act, the intersection, at each moment of our life, of fate and freedom. The intimate experience of time allows us to grasp the genesis of reality in the genesis of our very being. It is turned toward the innermost part of ourselves, and it can be called psychological in contrast to a physical experience, which, to reach time, could consider only movement, that is, an order of succession between the positions of a moving object in space. But it is at the same time metaphysical because what it allows us to grasp are the profound processes by which we witness from within the creation of our own life, its insertion into the universe, the emergence of this ever-changing spectacle that surrounds us and that simultaneously limits and unfolds our consciousness. Thus, in the intimate experience of time, we find an application of that method which is the very method of philosophy and which could rightly be called a psycho-metaphysical method, which, in the most hidden and solitary depths of each of us, seeks the origin and meaning, in the total Being, of a life that belongs to us only to the extent that, with all those to whom it is offered, we accept to take responsibility for it, and therefore to make it.

I. The Two Aspects of the Experience of Time.

First of all, it should be noted that Time may not be, as is often believed, the object of immediate experience, but only an object of reflection. Spontaneity abolishes the consciousness of time. The child lives in an immediate present: absorbed in sensation, pleasure, or play, he does not have the leisure to form ideas about what no longer is or what is not yet. All humans experience moments of easy and happy innocence when time passes without them perceiving its course, so faithfully do their attention and activity accord with the events [139] that present themselves: no anticipation, no memory can distract them. And we all know that in the highest moments of our life, in the emotion of discovery, creation, or love, the consciousness of time is abolished: it is no longer the future that seems to open before us, but eternity.

On the contrary, as soon as the consciousness of time appears, our spontaneity is broken, our activity begins to weaken, a flaw enters the density of that presence which, a moment ago, filled our consciousness to the brim. We begin to experience the feeling of our limitation and insufficiency, to oppose what we have to what we lack, to doubt even the reality of what we possess, which is taken away from us as soon as it is given and which only briefly appears before us before escaping. A feeling of uncertainty, of insecurity seizes us. The ground slips beneath our feet. Our very existence keeps dissolving. Everything turns into an ephemeral and inconsistent illusion for us. And that is why those who have considered in time only the aspect by which it shows us the infinite variety of forms of being that vanish in turn, without intelligence being able to grasp them or love to retain them, have regarded life with a despairing sadness, thus joining in the lament of Ecclesiastes and in all the moaning of lyrical poetry about the vanity of existence, about the unbridgeable abyss between the infinity of our desires and the fragility of the objects by which they seek to satisfy themselves.

But that is not the only aspect of time. For at the moment when reflection discovers it, it indeed suspends our life. It can indeed give us the consciousness of our misery, but it is to show us that if we possess nothing in a stable manner, it is because our life is never completed but is always in the process of becoming. Nothing is ever acquired for us, and everything is constantly taken away from us; but it is so that we do not identify ourselves with any object in which our initiative would, so to speak, be consumed and die. This flow of appearances, which constantly unfolds before our eyes without ever stopping, precisely prevents us from binding our fate to any of them: it shows us that we ourselves are of a different nature; it allows us, by thinking them, to rise above them and to conquer through them our spiritual independence. It teaches us, instead of seeking true reality in things, which do indeed allow our activity to exert itself but which continue to pass away, to place it in this very activity, which we possess, and through which our personality gradually forms. The fact that appearances flee from us after having served us is a sign that the function of time is not only dissipative but also purifying and liberating.

Every person who contemplates time dominates what is given to them; they think of what is not yet and what is no longer. The idea of what has been and what will be opposes the reality of what is. The possible begins to compete with being. The individual no longer merges with a determined form of existence. The world takes on a certain play: it includes both the spectacle before our eyes and a past thought that exists today only in our consciousness, where it has acquired a spiritual existence, and a still virtual future, where our thoughts test possibilities before converting them into actions. Thus, the experience of time is the experience of the spirit in its dual capacity as knower and creator.

And it is understood that this experience does not occur without an incomparable emotion. In this experience, it seems that we lose the being that we thought we had, only to find ourselves reduced to a pure power that obliges us to assume the responsibility of the being we will become one day. It is a power that is entrusted to our hands, which, beneath all the states we may experience, constitutes our deepest essence, which always appears to us as intermediate between being and nothingness, and which compels us, like Hamlet, to constantly choose between them. This is what the psychological experience of time reveals to us, a time that constantly carries everything away except the thought that thinks it, always reappropriates the abolished past, except the activity that produces it, and constantly opens before it the void of the future where it tests its own effectiveness.

II. Presence and Absence.

However, these two aspects of time, both opposed and interconnected, between which the consciousness of each of us always oscillates, do not exhaust our experience of it. If we study this experience in its nascent state, we see that it is far from possessing the organized and systematic form that later reflection gave it. One could say, in a certain sense, that this experience is paradoxical and that if there is, as Hegel thought, a misfortune inseparable from consciousness, it is because consciousness is obliged to both accept and reject it. It accepts it because time is constitutive of each of its movements. It rejects it, not only because it desires to escape from time, which perpetually tears being away from itself, but also because this very experience appears to it as impossible and contradictory. Indeed, the past and the future are nothing. How could we have the experience of what does not exist? By definition, all experience is the experience of a present reality. Moreover, observation confirms this mental view, for we know very well that we never leave the present and that we have never left it. The past and the future are ideas present at the moment when I think of them, and they can only be present realities at the moment of time when I situate them. In such a way that the scandal of time is that it seems to drive us away from the present when in fact it is only a relation between different forms of a permanent present from which neither life nor thought can escape.

However, it happens precisely that these different forms of the present have very unequal values for us. And even when the presence of the object, or perceived presence, disappears to become a purely represented or ideal presence, then we rightly say that absence replaces presence. And this absence is felt precisely as absence because it allows the very idea of what we lack to persist, and its role is to show us the hollowness or emptiness of that idea when we compare it to the fullness of possession when the reality of the object is indeed given to us. This contrast appears both in the disappointment of a child from whom a toy is taken away and who cries because he retains the present image of it, and in the death of a loved one, whose memory, still vivid in consciousness, continually increases the pain of not being able to revive them in a more real presence.

The experience of time is thus based, first and foremost, on the experience of the opposition between presence and absence, or rather, since pure absence is nothing, between sensory presence and imaginative presence. And perhaps it is true that the very misfortunes that fill our life, the feelings that sustain it, the activity that animates it, arise from the interval that separates these two forms of presence, from the impossibility, yet the hope, that they will one day coincide. [142] It is important to note that this opposition precedes the distinction between the past and the future. What matters to me is knowing whether an object is there before me, within my reach, or whether it is not there and I am reduced to thinking of its possible presence through its actual absence. The past and the future are the two aspects of absence; the notion of time is formed for consciousness only when I succeed in recognizing their difference. But this does not happen all at once. In most moments of life, the clear and distinct line that I immediately draw between absence and presence is sufficient. The child confuses the past and the future and situates them both in the same undetermined realm, the realm of things over which he has no control: he immediately realizes that a certain person he knows is not there when he represents them, but he does not yet associate this representation with a past time when he has already seen them or a future time when he will soon see them again. This distinction is the object of a more refined analysis; it is what gradually reveals the true notion of time.

III. The Opposition in Today between Yesterday and Tomorrow.

We almost always imagine the awareness of time as the awareness I would have of a current that carries me, and yet would be such that I always occupy a determined place within it, that I could simultaneously feel and embrace the continuity of its flow. Perhaps this representation comes from a certain contamination that takes place within me between two different perspectives I can take on time. Sometimes, indeed, it is time itself that I think about while observing either a moving body, or flowing water, or the succession of my own states: I then deal with a series of events, each of which occupies a determined position between another that precedes it and another that follows it. But I cannot think of myself in this way within time: for it would require that the time I think of overflows my consciousness that thinks it. At the moment when I believe I am placing myself in time, it is always time that I am placing within myself. Therefore, it is not true, although it is an assertion that we never cease to repeat and that seems to be a truth acquired by universal consciousness, that the feeling I have of my own life is that of a passage, of a transition that would continue indefinitely. Everything, in fact, passes around me and within me: the objects upon which my gaze falls, the words I hear, even the feelings I experience. But is it true to say that I also feel myself passing? As soon as the entire world has appeared to me in the guise of becoming, I can also consider myself as being caught up in it and rolling along with it. But is this a true experience, currently felt by consciousness, or is it only a notion? We know that we entered here a moment ago, that we successively traversed a series of sensations, feelings, and ideas, and that we will soon depart from here. But can the unfolding of what is given to us be transported from the spectacle to the soul of the spectator? In order to appreciate the passage of time, I must direct my attention to some object that I have before my eyes rather than to myself: it is because it leaves me while I cannot leave myself. When we try to retreat into our innermost and most secret being in order to discover therein, in a sense, the reality of pure becoming, it slows down and immobilizes itself: hence the boredom felt by all those who live only for the external world and who need time to press them and always chase them as far away from themselves as possible. We are thus reduced to the following alternative: if my consciousness tries to feel time flowing within it, it stops this flow; and if it allows it to occur without being attentive to it, then this flow no longer exists for it.

This is because the awareness of time is more complex than we believe. It is not the immediate apprehension of an evident reality that would be the same for everyone. It is a product of reflection: to represent time is to construct it. Each of us lives in a time that we create according to our own measure, that we fill as we please, and on which the meaning we give to our destiny depends, following the direction of our attention in the present, the faithfulness we maintain to our past, and the choice we constantly make among the different possibilities that the future continually offers us. But in order to understand how the experience of time occurs, we must abandon this classical image of a continuous current that, originating in a distant past, carries us along with it towards an unknown future. The experience of time is not like that. It is not stretched from the past to the future. Like every experience and like myself who experiences it, it is established first in the present. It always starts from the now. However, in this now, where I always find myself as if on a sort of summit or ridge that dominates the entire horizon of my consciousness, I see objects changing and my states of being altering; I can distinguish two opposite slopes, depending on whether I consider the objects and states that leave me and fall one after another into the past, or those that approach me and emerge from the future, sometimes despite myself, sometimes because I have called them, and that will soon join those that have abandoned me and have already descended the other slope. Thus, I only discover yesterday and tomorrow through contrast with today, just as absence is discovered through contrast with presence. The thought of the past is never primitive but always retrospective, and the thought of the future is always prospective: it is that of what will one day be present before becoming, in turn, the past. It is, in a sense, anticipated past. The past and the future both oppose the present, which nevertheless connects them to each other, since it is by traversing it that the future is realized and completed to merge in the end with the past.

IV. The Instant.

Such a description should allow us to rediscover the characteristics that belong specifically to the different phases of time, as well as the fundamental operations by which consciousness opposes and unites them. We must start with the instant. But we know very well that the instant is a pure cut without dimensions between a past and a future, both infinite, so that this instant appears devoid of reality to us, and in order to save it, psychologists show us that it always encroaches a little on what precedes it and what follows it, that it contains within itself a rudiment of memory and a rudiment of desire. But this admission alters the true essence of the instant and precisely robs it of the reality it seeks to have. By maintaining the rigorous indivisibility of the instant, we succeed, in fact, in exempting it from becoming, instead of reducing it to being only a very short fragment of this becoming, the way in which, by adding itself to other fragments, it would supposedly generate the flow of time, its uninterrupted continuity, is difficult to understand. Because I know very well, not only that the instant in which I am speaking is real and that its reality does not need defending, but also that the entire reality of the world is contained within it, that it is suspended from it and depends on it. It does not need external reality added to it, as it already gives reality to everything that, without it, would not have yet left the realm of possibility. But it is because it is the very origin of all reality that we must preserve its indivisible purity. We say that it is a cut, and we draw this cut between a past and a future that appear to us as two different forms of being, whereas if we considered them in themselves, they would belong more to non-being than to being, and the being itself that we attribute to them is given by the instant, insofar as they are opposed in it, touch each other, and perpetually change into one another. The metaphysical privilege of the instant will remain fully intact only if we therefore leave it with its dimensionless simplicity. We will then perceive its true nature, which is to be, not an element of time, but its very source, the point where our life is anchored in the absolute, and through which all possible being must necessarily pass in order to one day become realized being.

Hence, two seemingly contradictory aspects of the instant. It is in the instant that everything passes if we consider either the succession of events or the succession of our states of mind. Therefore, it has no content. It is the place of pure transition, a vanishing point and a point of imminence. It is what prevents us from retaining or possessing anything. The impossibility of grasping anything that presents itself to us in the instant liberates us from the servitude of all objects and states: it prevents us from merging with them; it saves our spirituality. However, this instant in which everything passes does not pass itself. And because it does not pass, we see everything passing in it. It is our own presence to ourselves; it is in it that the very act of our existence is realized. The instant is always present: there is no longer an instant in the past, nor is there one yet in the future. It is by entering into the instant that all existence asserts itself, that all memory becomes actualized, that all endeavor is accomplished. How, then, can one speak of a plurality of instants, except by confusing the instant with the events to which it gives fleeting actuality, that is, by spreading them out along a time that is no longer or not yet this actuality they have either not received or have already lost? Actuality does not divide itself. One cannot speak of an actuality that has been or that will be: it is the same actuality that all events encounter, it does not accompany them when they appear to us as preceding or leaving it. It is in the same instant, like an infinitely narrow gate, always open to an eternal reality, that all aspects of our perishable life succeed each other. And that is why it can appear to us, at times, as an uninterrupted change if we consider what fills it, and at other times, as the unchanging constancy of my participation in existence if we consider the act by which I think it and make it my own. Thus, the instant itself is always the same, and yet always new, but we cannot say that it ages or resurrects: it is an ever-recurring first beginning. It is through the same instant that the content of my life, as it flows, generates time, and if even God himself is not within time, it is because he is the eternal instant.

V. The Future.

But it is impossible for the finite being to maintain a constant presence to itself and the world. Time is precisely a divided presence, a presence that splits into different or even opposing aspects, in order to manifest, on one hand, the insufficiency or imperfection of my nature, and on the other hand, the possibility of giving myself an existence that I have chosen, which depends on my own operation, and without which I would be a thing among things, and not a being endowed with consciousness and initiative, capable of saying “me,” that is to say, of assuming responsibility for itself. Time is thus both the mark of my powerlessness, as it reveals to me what I lack and what escapes me, and the mark of my freedom, for it is through time that I am capable of acting, choosing, and making the very life I have received into a work that belongs to me.

Therefore, the experience of time is inseparable from the thought of the future. Undoubtedly, one cannot deny that the originality of time first manifests itself, as has been shown, at the moment when the possession of a beloved object is suddenly taken away, leaving us only with the painful memory, or that the past, precisely because it is accomplished, always remains for us a privileged object of knowledge, or finally, that the very idea we have of the future is entirely drawn from the relationships we establish between our present and our past, and that our present appears to us to necessarily have a future precisely because we remember that our present was itself the future when our past was the present. However, in the genesis of time, the future must enjoy a sort of primacy. For every past has first been for us a future. And if reflection is naturally turned toward the past, we can say that life always looks toward the future. It is a leap that moves toward it in order to penetrate it, conquer it. Life is first and foremost a simple power within us: it is offered to us; [147] but it is up to us to dispose of it. To become self-conscious is therefore to become aware of one’s misery, but also to feel within oneself a strength that allows us to repair it. Being is never in us more than a possibility that it is up to us to actualize. To be born is to be called to make oneself. Therefore, a path must be open before us, which is such that it is nothing more than a path, so that we can engage in it and leave the trace of our footsteps. Or rather, this future is nothing more than a plurality of paths between which we must choose and which we have to clear. The future is empty because it is we who must fill it. It is undetermined so that we can impose on it the imprint of our actions. It is non-being that must be converted into being, but through a process that is ours and that allows us to shape our own being.

Undoubtedly, it may seem to us that the future will always happen without our will having to intervene: often it surprises and contradicts us. And this gives us the illusion that the future is, so to speak, preformed, and that it comes forward, making all our actions futile. But that is because the future, when it has become the past, always presents for us a character of necessity: we think that it could not have been otherwise. Moreover, at the moment when it is still for us only the future, our will, which seeks to control it, experiences its weakness; it must contend with the forces of nature, with other wills, with the inertia of matter and the past, which weigh on all its decisions. It is often defeated: the end it achieves never coincides exactly with the one it intended.

Thus, consciousness can have various attitudes toward the future: waiting, first of all, which seems to have a character of pure passivity, which prolongs time indefinitely and gives us, in a way, the emotion of a possibility that delays becoming an existence. When waiting takes on a sharper form, it turns into anguish, into that anguish to which some of our contemporaries want to assign the character of a metaphysical revelation, because it reveals to us the very situation of the self-conscious ego, aware that it is only pure power, but trembling to exercise itself and to remain suspended between being and nothingness. Waiting, anxiety already contain a combination of hope and fear: and the thought of the future continues to oscillate between these two opposing sentiments, whether they do not yet apply to any determined object or whether they borrow from our past experience memories that justify them. There is already more activity in desire, which [148] undoubtedly constitutes our true experience of the future, that is, of deprivation, but which calls for possession and already envelops it in a certain way, a power that demands actualization and a conversion that must occur between a virtual or thought presence and a given or realized presence. Will does not renounce desire; it borrows its strengths and permeates it with all the lights of reflection: it concentrates around it all the resources of consciousness and obliges the entire person to assume responsibility for it.

Therefore, the future is nothing more than being in its indeterminate form, possible or unfinished, but which always unfolds before us anew, precisely so that we can take it upon ourselves, add to it, enrich it, introduce it into the universe as our own, take possession of it, and impose our seal upon it. For this, action is necessary: and it is through action that, in the moment, we can insert our will into the world and transform our possibility into reality. Thus, we have a very strong feeling that only action engages us, this action that attaches us to the present, obliges us to surpass the horizon of our subjective life, to bear witness to it before others, and that subjects us to reality before allowing us to modify it. In the instant, there is nothing more than this action itself, which can be said to be ourselves: the nature of an action is that it can never be past or future. And yet, it is a point of junction between the future and the past, and its proper role is to constantly convert one into the other.

VI. The Past.

The same action that engages us in the future is therefore the creator of our past, of that past which is entirely within us, even when it is buried in oblivion, and which can be said to be both our spiritual present and the very being that we have given ourselves. In relation to the perceived present in which my action constantly introduces itself, it can indeed be said that the past, like the future, is a form of absence. But there is a singular difference between these two types of absence: the future appeared to me as a multiplicity of possibilities that could coexist in my thought because something was missing for them to be, whereas, when they received it through an effect of either necessity or freedom, they excluded each other: each of them could only be realized at the expense of all the others. Such is the operation that takes place in the instant. But in occurring, it alters the nature of the possible: it determines and completes it. The past is now for me the accomplished, that is to say, it is unique and irrevocable. It immediately detaches itself from the act that created it and possesses a character that is both strange and ambiguous: for it seems to have eluded me in such a way that I can no longer obtain a sensory enjoyment from it, and it is like a good that I have definitively lost. But at the same time, it is so closely linked to me, it adheres so rigorously to my substance that I cannot repudiate it as mine, nor banish the memory of it, which imposes itself on me and oppresses me like a burden that I would like to and yet cannot reject.

Thus, we see that the past always reveals itself to consciousness through the feeling of regret, and the word “regret” itself has a double meaning, which is particularly instructive, because it designates both the state of a consciousness that would like to relive a happiness that has fled from it, and the state of a consciousness that would like to abolish from its life an event that is now indelible. There are troubled souls for whom the past is synonymous with remorse. And there is undoubtedly no one who can endure the sight of their entire past without feeling a sort of shame.

But this dual attitude of the being toward its past, that we suffer both from not being able to resurrect it and from not being able to annihilate it, shows us its true nature and the use we must make of it. By forcing us to recognize that the past is incapable of being reborn, it compels us to accept it as past, to find in it a form of purified reality that does not shake our body like sensory reality but can be said to offer the most delicate and pliable material to the activity of the mind. We can penetrate the value of the gifts that life brings us, the meaning of the actions we have performed, the happiness we have experienced, and the depth of the sentiment that united us with those we have loved, only when memory delivers them from that bodily form in which their essence sometimes remained hidden. It is the weakness of our bodies that mourns having lost them. But our minds have gathered them in a possession that will never perish. What then can be said of the sadness we feel at not being able to erase in this past what our present will rejects today? We always find within ourselves everything we have done; only, since it is vain to lament an act that we would not only want to be unremembered but also never to have happened, it means that we must make even more salutary use of its memory. Just as the past we regret losing ceases to distress us if we no longer want it to reappear in the same transient state in which it was once given to us, and if we accept that it leads us into a spiritual world where every possession has become permanent, similarly, the past we regret having contributed to should no longer overwhelm us if we cease to consider it in its materiality that has dissipated and that takes away from us any hold on it. But then we must not try to banish the memory of it, and in fact, that memory must persist in us as the testimony of our misery, of the perils to which our freedom is always exposed, of the threat that still weighs upon us, now that such an action has inscribed itself, so to speak, within us, and finally, of the conversion that its mere thought is enough to produce in our consciousness, and that perhaps would not have occurred if we could have abandoned ourselves to our natural impulses without experiencing their failure. Such an experience increases our strength and our enlightenment to the extent that we consider it as belonging to a living past over which our gaze now disposes, that is to say, to the extent that it ceases to be for us a fixed thing that appears irreparable and that we would still want to abolish.

Conclusion.

We can see, therefore, that the psychological experience of time is not the experience of a current in which we would be carried along with the whole universe. It is first and foremost the experience of a present where we are established and which we cannot leave. And we give it the name “instant” when we want to show that it is in it that the constant transformation of our possible existence into an actual existence takes place. The experience of time is the experience of the act through which we never cease to make ourselves. It is easy to understand that by considering what passes through the instant rather than the act itself that takes place in it, we can distinguish between different instants and even order them along a line stretched between the past and the future, where each one would appear as a point of universal becoming. But the instant is not in becoming, since becoming precisely occurs in the instant. It must remain unchanged in order to become the very agent of change. But this change is only possible because there is heterogeneity between two forms of being, between that unknown, incomplete, and constantly offered being which we call the future, and that being which we have appropriated through action, which has become today our past, which adheres to our self and is, so to speak, entrusted to it, not as an image that deceives it, nor as a burden that crushes it, but as a light, a strength, and a nourishment that it carries within its secret self and is free to dispose of.

It is a curious observation that the future always appears to us as ahead, even though every future is destined to become a day of the past, and that beyond the farthest future, there is still the past into which it will fall back. But we almost always consider this past as a servitude because we want to make it an object that is now exempt from the action of the will. However, this past, which is our creation, has no existence other than in our mind, which now supports its entire reality. Every act I perform is initially only an attempt to which the universe must provide its response. But it is only in the past that I possess it, when it has become the present of my mind: it is the past that sets it free and finally gives it the free disposal of itself. Yet it would be biased to dissociate the past from the future, without which it would not have become my own past, and from the instant in which the act by which I create it and the act by which I contemplate it occur indivisibly. Thus, the psychological experience of time appears to me as the experience of the creation of myself through a dissociation carried out in the instant between what I can be and what I have deserved to be 9.

Part Three: Essence and Existence

Chapter IX. Spiritual Existence and Material Existence

I. General Principle.

    • There are words that, at certain times, enjoy a kind of privilege and crystallize philosophical reflection around them: such is the word existence today. They become the focus of a new perspective we take on reality, and they give us the illusion of a sort of revolution in human thought, even though man has always known them, but to place them in a different perspective, with another word as the focal point.
    • The word existence designates the very actuality of our self, as it is present in the world and, as they say, engaged in a situation. One may think that it is from such an experience that all philosophy departs. However, in the past, philosophy scrutinized its foundation and meaning. It questioned less its nature than its usage. Today, it is its nature that attracts attention, and we seek to penetrate what it brings to us rather than what it demands from us, and what it is rather than what it could be.
    • Yet the two questions cannot be distinguished. For existence and possibility are inseparable, not only in the sense that existence is the realization of a possibility, but in another, deeper sense: existence itself is first and foremost a possibility, or strictly speaking, it is the existence of a possibility. To inquire about existence is therefore to inquire about this possibility, about its origin and implementation. The tragedy of existence, which is so emphasized today, arises not from the misfortunes imposed upon us, but from the ambiguity of a destiny we know in advance is and is not in our hands.
    • But can one accept that we can have the experience of a possibility, when it was once thought that there is no experience other than that of a fact or given? Yet, there is no man who can escape from this experience. Everything that constitutes my being: my body, my past, the circumstances in which I find myself, the events that befall me, is nothing but the material of a possible activity that, through the use it makes of it, for better or worse, gradually forms the fabric of my real being.
    • But in the consciousness I have of my existence, what matters much less is the anonymity of an existence, which I subsequently discover is mine, than the very presence of this self, which cannot assert itself without simultaneously affirming its existence. This calls for three observations: the first is that consciousness, which I believe is always the affirmation of an object, is first and foremost the affirmation of itself, and it is the affirmation of itself included in the affirmation of every object that is the affirmation of my existence; the second is that existence, insofar as it is primarily self-affirmation, is subjective in its very principle; the third is that by saying that the self exists, I place the self in an existence that surpasses it, ideally positing a universal and hypothetical existence in which the self as such only participates.
    • It is the universality of existence as it is merely thought, considered in relation to the individuality of the self as it is experienced or lived, that gives rise to all the problems of philosophy. This universalized existence is the Being-in-itself that always transcends us, and within which I arise or emerge as a separate existence. But everything that is not me is an object to which my thought applies. And that is why the Being-in-itself is often considered the absolute object.
    • But neither the existence that I experience, and which is the existence of the self, allows me, within the limitation it imposes on me, to conclude to a non-subjective existence that limits it (although its subjectivity is no longer mine), nor does the very expression of “in itself” that I use to qualify it evoke an object (since no object is anything except in relation to the self), but only an existence that is self-contained and self-sufficient. Yet only consciousness provides us with the model of such an existence, if we consider the act from which it proceeds, not the content that fills it.
    • Hence, a first suggestion arises that would lead us to make existence an act of freedom exercised through the analysis and implementation of the possibilities inherent in it, between which it continuously chooses; to consider Being, in its universality, as the supreme act from which existence borrows both the possibilities that belong to it in its own right and the power that actualizes them; and to consider the object as the effect of this actualization, that is, as the result of the encounter between the act I perform and everything that, in the Absolute, surpasses it and yet responds to it.

II. Consciousness of Existence.

    • It is impossible to confuse existence, as well as the Being in which it is rooted, with pure subjectivity. That would be as futile as attempting to reduce it to absolute objectivity: it is well known that the two terms subjective and objective only have meaning in their correlation. And this correlation is very evident in the consciousness we have of existence. For no one can detach their existence from the consciousness of their existence; otherwise, it would not be their existence, it would be as if it were nothing to them. And no one can even think of dissociating it from the body that introduces this existence into the world, without which it would remain a possibility that would not be the possibility of anything and would be nothing to others.
    • Moreover, the very distinction we make between consciousness and the body (or the world), considering one as a spiritual existence and the other as a material existence, and then wondering how they can unite, is a late distinction that is itself a product of reflection. For when I utter the word “me,” the consciousness I have of it is inseparable not only from the affections of my body and the movements it performs but also from the representation I have of the world and the changes that occur within it. In this complex of interdependent elements, I would be hard-pressed to say where spirituality begins and materiality ends: the dividing line that separates them is a variable line that lies between what I am capable of assuming and what I am obliged to undergo. Much has been discussed about the relationship between the soul and the body, but the problem is to know how I manage to distinguish them rather than how I manage to unite them.
    • Naturally, I consider the stone that is there and imposes its resistance on me against my will, the limb where I suffer a pain that I vainly try to expel from myself, as existences that I cannot deny because they always present themselves to me as constraints. And if I know nothing about this stone except through the representation it gives me, nor about the limb where I suffer except through the affection it obliges me to feel, it is because existence belongs to the object not insofar as it distinguishes itself from me and I have no control over it, but insofar as it resonates within my subjectivity and expresses its passivity.
    • However, we can only speak of passivity in relation to an activity that defines its limits. Yet, I face the greatest difficulties when it comes to attributing existence to this very activity over which I alone have control, at least as long as I consider the object as the very model of existence, inasmuch as it compels me and compels all others, along with me, to recognize its presence and affirm it.
    • The same cannot be said of this internal activity that not only eludes all gaze and constitutes my own secret but also only subsists through its very accomplishment, which can always be denied by another or interrupted by me. However, it is necessary and sufficient for it to come into play for me to begin saying “me,” that is, to become the creator of an existence that is mine, which is recognized by the fact that it is born, grows, and dies with this very activity, and that there is nothing without it that imposes itself on me and resists me, that is, no object that can properly be said to exist.
    • Thus, the origin of all existence lies in an activity exercised by a subject, which gives itself existence by exercising it, so that we extend existence to the object only because, by constantly marking the limits of our own subjectivity, it appears to be superior in power and imposes its law upon it. But then, we do nothing more than renounce ourselves along with all the characteristics of this existence, which can only be discovered where it is our own, to place above it not another existence that limits us, but the very outline of these limits as precisely depicted by the representation of the object.
    • Shall we then say that, knowing nothing about the object as it is in itself beyond representation, and since even the expression “in itself” has no meaning, because the very property by which the object is defined is that it has presented itself to us from the outside, or as we inaccurately say, represented, we have no other choice but to consider its existence as residing in an activity that is foreign to us and that, when it comes into contact with ours, compels ours to yield before a presence that is not its own and that we call the presence of an object? Thus, Kant’s thing-in-itself, which cannot be a thing, or Fichte’s clash, evoke nothing more than an activity that we do not exercise but can only undergo.
    • But this idea of an activity that is external to us undoubtedly involves a contradiction. For the very idea of externality is characteristic of the object and even of spatiality. Not only is any activity, wherever it is exercised, inherently internal and subjective, but activity itself can only be indivisible or infinite, and if we speak of a plurality of activities, it is due to the differences that their limitations can introduce between them. Even more than the notion of being, of which it constitutes the essence, it is true of the notion of activity that it is univocal. And thus, the activity that we consider as the origin of objectivity is not external to us; it is internal to us, or rather, we are internal to it, since it is that absolute interiority in which our self participates and to which it is never equal.

III. Material Existence.

  1. — Therefore, the appearance of the object fills the interval that separates absolute activity from participated activity. If this interval is not an empty interval, if it is a represented object that fills it, it is precisely because the activity from which it proceeds and surpasses us is an activity from which we are inseparable, even as it surpasses us. It is because we are unable to reject it that it imposes the presence of the world upon us and compels us to live [160] in this world. Such an observation is sufficient to show why a world is always given to the mind and why consciousness dissipates as soon as the world is lacking: it is because Being is one that consciousness itself is nothing if it is not consciousness of the world.

  2. — The multiplicity of objects that fill the world presents no difficulty if we consent to recognize, on the one hand, that the participation of my own activity in absolute activity, which continues without ceasing, always presents itself in a different form; on the other hand, that the Absolute itself never ceases to provide it; finally, that if the Absolute is participated in or participable to infinity, each act of participation itself generates inexhaustible determinations.

  3. — However, the world necessarily appears to me at every instant as a given whole. For the same act is the origin of all given presences. Now this character that the world has of being given spatializes it, so that space always evokes a sort of reservoir where all the given can take place. Yet if the world were given all at once, it would not be distinguished from the very act that gives it to us: it is only in relation to an imperfect and unfinished act that there is something given, which forces the given to take on the aspect of a succession. Thus, space-time becomes the unique form under which the world can be apprehended by each consciousness as a given world.

  4. — That the world is given, that it is defined by the space and time in which all objects are required to appear simultaneously as present and as ordered, these are the characteristics that allow it to be characterized as properly material. The word “object” indeed expresses its independence from us as well as its relationship with us. But the word “matter” better expresses this kind of indeterminacy that belongs to the world insofar precisely as it is nothing more than what is outside of us and surpasses us, but contains us precisely through our limitation, and where analysis is capable of recognizing and discerning, according to the direction of our attention and interest, an infinity of different objects.

  5. — From this, one can easily deduce the characteristics of material existence and their apparent contradiction. For matter is what [161] is not me and is incapable of ever saying “me.” But at the same time, it can be posited in relation to me, that is, as a phenomenon. It is what limits the action of the self and always opposes resistance to sight or touch; it is always opaque and impenetrable to it. And yet, it is the only thing that can be known, as if the mind, like sight and touch, can only grasp the obstacle itself that stops it and on which, so to speak, it comes to rest.

  6. — But it is indeed wrong to consider matter as having by itself a sort of subsistence and immutability in opposition to the spirit, which would be essentially fragile and variable, and which would require a kind of consolidation from the very knowledge it acquires of things. For the material world is nothing more than a perspective that we have on the totality of reality; and there are multiple perspectives on it depending on the focal point we adopt; and it constantly changes as we try to represent it with our senses, or with increasingly perfected instruments, or with the concepts of our reason. Of these representations, which one is true? This question has no meaning, for they are all true depending on the reference point we have chosen, such that matter itself is nothing more than the possibility of all of them and the very law that unites them.

  7. — However, how could matter not always exceed the representation that the self is capable of giving us? But it is precisely this exceeding that defines it: we mean nothing more when we speak of its objectivity or its externality. We want to say that it always provides new and increasingly precise and rich representations, and that it is irreducible to any of them as well as to their sum, at least if such a sum can never be summed. It is both the origin and the limit of all real and possible perspectives that can ever be taken on it: it is their infinity itself, indivisibly actual and virtual.

  8. — Nothing would be more vain or more idolatrous than to think that behind these different perspectives there exists at least one absolute object that supports them all: it would be the object in itself as such. But the object, by definition, cannot have a “in itself.” [162] Far from saying that matter has more stability than consciousness, since it is engaged with it and by it in time, it must be said that the property of matter is precisely to never have an existence other than in the instant, that is, to always be evanescent, whereas the property of consciousness is, on the contrary, to transcend time, to give a spiritual existence to both the past and the future, in order to continually convert them into each other through the thin barrier of the instant.

IV. Spiritual Existence.

  1. — However, material existence cannot be reduced to a superficial appearance that would have behind it an immense thickness, such that by penetrating it further, we would reveal increasingly profound appearances. For we must not forget that it still serves as a testimony or expression of our own subjective existence, of the very existence that we live and internally assume, but which is only realized by becoming incarnate. Until then, this existence remains a pure possibility: by limiting itself or determining itself, it becomes actualized.

  2. — Although it is tempting to imagine that there are everywhere in the world, as Leibniz thought, centers of spiritual existence, of which each body is the manifestation, and that all material existence can then be considered as a testimony, nevertheless, we must not forget that there is in matter a residue of impermeability or, if you will, insignificance, without which its limiting character would be abolished: it would not become for us that purely spectacular object common to all consciousnesses and through which they communicate; and we would not understand how it triumphs and obeys its own laws as soon as the spirit withdraws from it.

  3. — But from the moment it becomes expression or sign, material existence, which, by its independence from us, repressed the existence of the self and made it appear fragile and inconsistent, attests itself that it is the spiritual existence that delivers existence to us in its primitive and authentic form, with material existence now representing only a derived and foreign form, which reveals the insufficiency of the former, the point where it comes to an end and where everything [163] that it is not, but to which it is nevertheless linked, reveals itself to it in the guise of the phenomenon.

  4. — It can be said that the proper characteristic of philosophical reflection, in opposition to the immediate affirmation of common sense, is to effect this conversion by which we consider the spirit, and not the thing, as being for us the origin and model of existence, with the existence of the thing not being denied by the spirit itself, as idealism has always tended to do, but on the contrary posited by the spirit as an object that, true, is its object, but precisely because it does not coincide with it, can only be represented. Therefore, it is the characteristic of spiritual existence to be produced by the very act that thinks material existence.

  5. — But does it not seem possible, nevertheless, to consider spiritual existence and material existence as two opposites, with one being the negation of the other? We are so strongly inclined to consider material existence, the one revealed by the exercise of sight and touch, as the only evident existence, that unable to imagine an authentic existence that is the existence of an act that we must accomplish rather than the existence of a thing that can be represented, we think that the spirit can only be defined negatively, and we can say nothing more about it except that it is “immaterial.” But this is a negativity that is only apparent; for the spirit denies matter to signify that it is not itself an object; but it is much more and not much less: it is an actuality that continually produces itself, with respect to which matter is an external and distant thing, and which can only appear to it.

  6. — However, it is only in words that common consciousness considers material existence as enjoying an ontological privilege over spiritual existence. For as soon as life takes on a character of crisis for us, and in all moments of leisure when our own self suddenly becomes present to us, the spectacle of things immediately recedes and the world becomes like a backdrop to us. It still provides us with opportunities, pretexts, obstacles, or instruments that test our spiritual existence and compel it to be born and bear fruit, but they disappear after having served. What remains of all the material events of our life when we cast a glance backward, except for that spiritual being that we have become and which they have gradually prepared for the advent of?

  7. — Should we then judge that this material existence (of the body and of the world) is a useless existence and dream of a pure spirit that the fall has corrupted? But this fall and the very corruption of our nature are linked, like the Incarnation itself, to the entire economy of creation. It is because there is, strictly speaking, no spiritual “nature”: or, which amounts to the same thing, it is a nature that we must acquire at every moment. Now, this rediscovered idea is that the spirit is nothing more than a possibility toward us that depends on us to realize. We achieve it through time, where our activity takes its course, and through matter, where we encounter resistances that we must overcome but which oblige us to go beyond ourselves, to come into contact with everything that is not us in order to form with other beings a single universe. This shows to what extent material existence surpasses that merely phenomenal existence to which idealism sought to reduce it.

  8. — It is now clear how spiritual existence distinguishes itself from subjective existence. It would be quite justly called trans-subjective if subjectivity were always presented to us with an individual character and properly reduced to the states that we feel. But individuality is freedom itself insofar as it determines itself, that is, gives itself a body. And the states always express a reflection of the body in consciousness, that is, the boundaries of freedom. Now, it is in the exercise of freedom that spiritual existence apprehends, so to speak, its pure essence.

V. Essence and Existence.

  1. — If we only apply existence to temporal becoming and bodily incarnation, there is a necessary identity between existence and materiality: in this thesis, which is the materialist thesis, essence, conceived as a purely mental thing, is itself nonexistent. At most, we can say that the retrospective thought of the thing allows us to hypostasize its possibility. But as soon as we objectify this possibility, the passage from essence to existence becomes the mysterious transfer of a spiritual object, devoid of reality, to the very reality of this object once it has lost its spirituality.

  2. — It will be argued that essence, possibility, and thought are not devoid of existence, but they only have a diminished form of existence, which finds its expression and fulfillment in material existence. However, besides the fact that existence is undoubtedly univocal and that there may be differences in nature and even in greatness and degree among the objects to which existence can be applied, but not in the existence itself to which they are applied, it should be noted that if there is an authentic existence of essence, possibility, or thought, it is this existence that we call properly spiritual existence.

  3. — Therefore, its relationship with material existence becomes clear. And we understand why the spirit cannot remain in its state of purity or why it is not the same before or after being incarnated. Because, before being incarnated, it is not essence, as one might believe, but only the possibility of essence. Essence is not determined before freedom is exercised, that is, before participation begins. In this period that is, so to speak, prior to incarnation, it would be appropriate to affirm that we do not have an essence, or rather, that our essence is only our freedom. But our freedom cannot, in order to preserve its purity, refuse to engage, that is, to act as freedom. A freedom that never exercises itself would not be the possibility of anything, and it would be as if it were nothing. However, by determining itself, it takes on a concrete form, it enters objective and material existence where it seems, nevertheless, to come to an end. But it only dies to be resurrected. However, its resurrection is no longer a material resurrection; it is a spiritual resurrection, but in which its possibility has precisely changed into its essence.

  4. — This means that there is no essence of material things. They are reduced to pure existence and even to existence as appearance for consciousness, although this appearance hides a richness that we will never succeed in fully actualizing. One could still argue that the essence of material things is the very act that thinks or wills them: that is to say, their essence is a spiritual existence. And thus, we understand the meaning that must be attributed to the idea, which is spiritual insofar as it is an act of thought and yet objective, insofar as it is an act by which the thing is thought, and precisely thought as a thing. We will conclude by saying that spiritual existence, of which we have no other [166] experience than an inner experience, itself has three distinct forms, but it is impossible to dissociate them: it is first the experience of freedom, but which, by exercising itself, must appear to itself as a mere possibility before acquiring, by traversing the material world to then free itself from it, the essence itself that it wanted not only to have but to be.

  5. — There is no danger to fear that by transforming from possibility into essence, freedom will become chained and, consequently, abolished. This would only be true if it were required to remain imprisoned in the world of material determinations. But it frees itself from it, not in order to become a spiritual thing, which properly makes no sense, but to unite its possibility with its essence in the very act by which, by implementing the former, it produces the latter. This essence as such is never suffered: it is myself insofar as I will myself to be what I am or cannot distinguish what I am from what I indeed want to be. This is undoubtedly the highest consciousness that I can have of existence.

  6. — We see how material existence, far from being debased, is remarkably elevated from the moment we make it not a decline of spiritual existence but the instrument by which it is realized. It is through matter, insofar as it is given to us, and even imposed upon us, that we manage to surpass the limits of our individual subjectivity, to actualize our own possibility, that is, to create our spiritual being, and through the communication it obtains with everything that surpasses it, to penetrate the secrets of absolute spirit. But it was necessary to turn outward in order to learn how to constantly expand and deepen our own inner self and not to complain about the flow of things that must appear and disappear in order to enrich us and for us to spiritualize them.

  7. — In knowledge already, we witness this transmutation or transfiguration of material existence. But it would be a mistake to think that spiritual existence is nothing more: one would then agree with those who argue that it is only a mere reflection of things. However, the spirit is not reduced to the spectacle of the real or to the memory we have preserved of it. Through this spectacle, through these memories, what it seeks to attain is the meaning of everything that is. And this meaning is nothing other than in itself, for itself, in relation to itself. It resides precisely in this secret essence that it continues to produce through the exercise of its own activity and through which it continues to create itself, that is, to surpass itself. It is to such an essence that today we give the name value.

  8. — It is not surprising now, since the spirit is freedom, but a freedom that, on the scale of participation, is always limited and engaged, that the life of the spirit is constantly expressed by a choice between two forms of existence that are proposed to it, one of which comes, in a way, from the outside and imposes itself upon it despite itself, and the other exists only through an act that it accomplishes and that, if it were to cease, would immediately annihilate it. However, even in this option in favor of material existence, where it seems that the spirit abdicates, it is still the one who chooses: thus it still testifies to its presence where it seems to desert 10.

Chapter X. Analysis of Being and Dissociation of Essence and Existence

I

The two notions of essence and existence seemed to belong to the distant and outdated past, like a legacy of verbal disputes in scholasticism that a philosophy based on the findings of experience and science had definitively dismissed. And yet, they have both resurfaced as fundamental themes of a new philosophy that claims to break with the past and inaugurate a method of thought that seeks nothing more than immediate contact with the concrete as such.

Such an observation inclines us to think that we are witnessing an authentic metaphysical rebirth today, which cannot help but rediscover the objects of meditation of eternal philosophy, but precisely because it truly rediscovers them, it imagines that it is discovering them for the first time and that no one had known anything about them before. This is certainly not a reproach we address to today’s philosophers: their very injustice is the mark of their vitality. For thought is nothing if it does not begin anew for every person each morning, if it is not aware of being always its own origin, if it does not repudiate all precedent as well as all models, and if, by being born in us and from us, it does not make us witness the birth of the world as if it had produced it itself. It should not be claimed here that contemporary philosophy does not have such ambition and that it only seeks to apprehend reality as it is, for that would mean that it had missed it before, nor that it only responds to the demands of the present moment, for it is in the present that the encounter with eternity arises; whereas the one who escapes the present necessarily loses himself in time, that is, in dreams of the past or in the chimera of the future.

II

In examining the relationship between essence and existence, we will also disregard the history of these two notions and even the new meaning that one would like to give them, which already inaugurates another tradition. We will only ask the reader for the effort of personal meditation and inner purification, which consists of constantly placing oneself in the presence of raw experience. And by such experience, we mean one that is freed as much as possible from any preconceived idea and acquired knowledge, one that remains present within all the particular experiences it supports and diversifies. Descartes gave this experience the already elaborated and reflective form of “I think”; but perhaps in its most primitive form, it is reduced to a total and indeterminate experience that can be expressed by a proposition like this: “there is something.” Furthermore, the two parts of the affirmation are only distinguished from each other by the necessities of language, for no difference can be established between the affirmation “there is” and what it affirms, namely “something.” No analysis has yet taken place, but all analyses are imminent, and they are already indicated and even outlined as possibilities in every statement relating to this common matrix, which always remains present to them and without which they would not find exercise. We are therefore here at a point prior to the distinction between the affirming and the affirmed, and it is such that instead of being the result of their synthesis, it is the origin of their distinction. It is therefore a whole that is still nothing and that can only be called a whole potentially in order to evoke in advance all the possibilities it includes and that analysis alone will be capable of bringing forth. But perhaps it is preferable to say that it is pure affirmation, in the sense that the word indivisibly designates both the act that affirms and the object affirmed: it is only later that one will distinguish the one who affirms from that which he affirms, without forgetting that the one who affirms affirms himself, and that there is a reciprocity between the two aspects of affirmation, if it is true, although idealism has sometimes ignored it, that not only does the affirmed need the affirming in order to be affirmed, but conversely, the affirming needs the affirmed to affirm itself as affirming.

But in this effort of analysis that we undertake to anticipate all the distinctions of analysis, we will not overlook the fact that affirmation has meaning for us only in relation to the negation it excludes. And although negation is always subsequent to the affirmation it supposes and denies, we are witnessing here a curious reversal that forces us, as if negation could have preceded affirmation, to define the latter as the negation of negation. But this means that the fundamental experience we are trying to describe, which is enveloped by all the others, is the experience of the impossibility for us to say, “there is nothing”; it is the necessity to say, not that being is, but that nothingness is not. These propositions seem to have a tautological character only because they are propositions, that is, they borrow their means of expression from analysis. But if they mark, from the dawn of Greek thought, a kind of summit of metaphysical speculation from which one can only descend afterwards, it is because they define an experience that is both initial, constant, and irremissible, an experience that is forgotten because it is impossible to disengage from it, and that all our thoughts, all our actions, and all the events of our life only unfold.

III

One might argue that this experience itself is confused and belongs to feeling rather than intellect. But we still do not know what the difference is between intellect and feeling. Both are contained in it, and it can be expressed sometimes in the language of one and sometimes in the language of the other, once they have been distinguished, precisely because if such an experience is indivisible, there is not one of its modes that, from a particular perspective, does not express it entirely. Such is the reason why being reveals itself to us both through the most immediate feeling, which is that of a presence circumscribed and qualified by all particular presences, and through the simplest concept, which is that of an act limited and consequently determined by all other concepts.

But the distinction between presence and act has not yet occurred, and when it does occur, it will not undermine their common origin or the coincidence between the two terms that is found in the act of presence by which presence is precisely accomplished.

IV

The presence of being anticipates and supports the very discovery of the presence of the self to being. The self is not the entirety of being, and that is why we simply say that it is part of it. Therefore, any metaphysical attitude that would think it can grasp being from the outside and contemplate it as an object must be excluded. For how could the self itself be external to being? The heart of metaphysics lies in the necessity for us to posit Total Being in conjunction with our own being, so that if the latter only subsists by means of the former, it is the latter that reveals the former to us. This is the reason why presence is always dual and even in a certain sense ambiguous: because, just as the presence of the self to being establishes the being of the self, the presence of being to the self establishes the affirmation of being itself.

However, these observations can give rise to two consequences that experience verifies: first, on the one hand, the discovery of the self is a late discovery that always needs to be further deepened, and on the other hand, the demarcation line between the self and the non-self is uncertain and variable, as it always needs to be traced anew in an omnipresence that exceeds it and from which it is impossible to detach; second, which is more paradoxical, if it is only in the self that we reach the very interiority of being, what it is in itself and not only in relation to us, that is, as a phenomenon, then it is understood that being should not only be conceived in the negative form of a non-self, but also in the positive form of a in-itself or, simply, a self. This is confirmed indeed by experience wherever we deal with a being that is not only for us but is also for-itself, and that we precisely call another self.

And we will give the same answer here to two objections arising from idealism, in which it is alleged both that the self cannot transcend its own existence in order to posit the absolute being itself, and that, consequently, it is contradictory to admit that it can affirm a self other than its own. The first thesis would be valid only if the self were obliged to posit Being outside of itself instead of inscribing itself within it, participating in its nature, and founding in its absoluteness the absoluteness of its own relativity. Thus, this form of idealism, which would reject being into an in-itself inaccessible to the self, must also be excluded, for it would reject the self outside of being and even forbid its naming, as well as the other form of idealism that would seek to confuse the self with the entirety of being without being able to explain either why it is obliged to limit itself or how it is possible for it to surpass itself. As for the second thesis that we are forever confined to solitude, it evades, in the negative, the problem of the existence of another self instead of seeking to resolve it. This is probably because it would reduce the other self to be nothing more than an object of representation, although experience reveals to us both objects that we represent to ourselves and beings with whom we communicate. But it is easy to understand that if being is outside the self, it is impossible for any self to make contact with another self; they are like islands precisely because none of them has contact with Being, whereas if they are both immersed in the same being, it is possible for the existence of each to consist, on the contrary, of its relations with all the others, without excluding them.

V

We now come to the distinction between subject and object, which is often considered primitive, whereas being encompasses both in a reciprocal and shared presence, and the double distinction between the affirming and the affirmed, between the being of the self and the being of the whole, precedes and surpasses it at the same time. For the distinction between subject and object only relates to an opposition between the self and a non-self to which we cannot attribute any value as a self, but which, remaining in the state of non-self, is constituted precisely in its relations with the self and then takes on the character of an object for it. Therefore, on the one hand, the object must have a character of externality for the self and even be defined by its very externality (which undoubtedly allows for the deduction of the notion of spatiality), and on the other hand, it must be for the self only an appearance, or a phenomenon, or as we say, a mere representation. It follows that it cannot be reduced either to pure subjectivity, for it exists for the self without being an state that the self attributes to itself, nor can it be a mere surface film of being, for it has an immense background that allows the knowledge we have of it to endlessly enrich itself without ever being able to surpass the horizon of representation. Now, the peculiarity of objects is to form a world that is incapable of subsisting on its own and that is correlative to the appearance of the self insofar as the latter participates in a being that surpasses it, but in such a way that this very being, by changing for it into an external world, becomes a pure spectacle for it; this is the world that is before our eyes, and it should not be surprising that its appearance keeps changing, becoming impoverished or enriched according to the alternatives of participation, for it is both its image and its measure.

VI

There is another distinction, more subtle than that of subject and object, but which is also enveloped in this primitive experience of being that we speak of, and which we have defined as the matrix of all our analyses: the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. At first glance, it seems that the concrete refers to a given totality, and that the essence of abstraction is indeed to remove from attention all its particular characteristics except one, which becomes the privileged object of our gaze. But again, this is only the appearance of an abstraction. For everyone knows that the characteristic retained by attention is not only more important and profound than all the others, but also that it is not a particular characteristic lost among the others, that it is neither given nor visible, and that it can finally receive a general application precisely because it merges with the very operation that discerns and thinks it. This means that the whole is simultaneously given and thought. Not that the thought can be considered as given, since it is the very act by which there is something given to me, but it is in the original whole that the given and the thought oppose each other, not only as a result of analysis but as the very condition of its play. Therefore, if the concrete is precisely the whole as it is given, and if, in this very aspect by which it is given, being and the concrete are one and the same, yet this whole itself can be considered from another aspect, not as it can be dissociated into elements, but as it is inseparable from its own possibility, that is, from an operation that internally generates it by progressively determining itself with increasing precision until it expires and concludes in the apprehension of a given reality. This means that the opposition between the mind and things is immanent to the fundamental experience, and that there is no particular given without a universal power that gives it.

VII

However, of all the distinctions that we can make within the totality of being and through which the architecture of the conceptual world is constituted, there is none that is more traditional, more current, deeper, but also more obscure than that of essence and existence. Being precedes and contains both of them; and it is because they are obtained within it through analysis that they cannot be detached from it, nor can they be detached from each other: they are correlative, and the problem is not to know how they can be united, but how they can be separated. At most, one can say that the word “essence” is used to designate that without which being would not be the being of anything, and the word “existence” is used to designate that without which being would be nothing.

The difference between these two formulations is nevertheless instructive. Because the first one shows that being has a content, that is, certain characteristics or determinations that must be posited with it and by it, since otherwise one could not distinguish being from nothingness, as claimed by all those who argue against pure being and who say that it is an empty word as long as it is not qualified. However, if we suppose that that of which being is being can be isolated, and it can only be so through thought, then we have its essence, and we will ask how it can acquire existence. It is therefore in the totality of being that the separation is made between the act that posits or affirms it and the object of this position or affirmation itself. And there is no difficulty in recognizing the universal character of the position and affirmation as such, and the divided and particular character of any object that is posited or affirmed. Hence, we must draw this paradoxical consequence, that being adds nothing to the essence which is, on the contrary, an aspect or a form that it contains along with an infinity of others.

Conversely, the second formulation, that existence is that without which being would be nothing, prohibits us from realizing separate essences. Essences do not belong to an intermediate world between being and non-being: such a world is contradictory, and since they are not a pure nothingness, there is therefore, so to speak, an existence of essences. But this existence resides either in the unity [175] of undivided being, where they are only possibilities in relation to particular beings, or in those beings themselves where each possibility is actualized in a distinct form. Hence, we should not be surprised that being, insofar as it is prior to the opposition of essence and existence, contains within itself the totality of essences, and that it is nothing more (or that this totality of essences forms its existence), nor that, as soon as analysis begins, the distinction of essences seems to anticipate and condition the appearance of separate existences.

However, these preliminary remarks are only intended to fix the vocabulary. But what matters is to know how the dissociation between these two terms occurs and what its meaning is both in the constitution of our own self and in the meaning we can give to the universe in which we are called to live.

VIII

We can examine the origin of the distinction between essence and existence only in the consciousness that we have of our own being, and this for a twofold reason: first, because consciousness not only implies, but also creates this distinction as the very condition of its possibility; second, because when we try to apply this distinction to things, it is still the result of an operation of consciousness that seeks to grasp it in its objectified form and no longer in its genesis. In other words, the transition from essence to existence or from existence to essence is realized and experienced by the consciousness that the self has of itself; it is only by analogy that we seek to find it in things, but only from the moment we consider them themselves as objects of which we are conscious.

When I speak of consciousness, it seems that it is nothing more than the act by which I grasp a being that is myself. Only things are not so simple. For if it were so, the self would be just an object among many others. Consciousness is connected to the self by much deeper roots: it is by grasping it as myself that it brings into being the very being of the self. This being was nothing before, or at least if it was something (which undoubtedly means if it was like a possible object in another consciousness than mine) it was nothing like me. The act of consciousness is therefore the [176] first revelation that I have not only of a being that is myself, but of a being that resides in its own accomplishment. It is by meditating on this accomplishment that I come to distinguish essence from existence.

Because it is through the accomplishment of such an act that I enter into existence myself. But then I ask, what is this self of which I now say that it exists? Should I say that there is nothing more to it than the very act by which it becomes, as Descartes said of that being that thinks and is nothing outside of that very thought that it exercises? However, it is precisely this very act that must be analyzed: we cannot content ourselves with observing it in its actuality, that is, in its present and timeless operation. We invincibly ask where it proceeds from and what it produces. From this moment on, we engage our very being in time. Now, without time, the distinction between essence and existence could not be realized. On the contrary, as soon as our existence is engaged in time, it is immediately seen that it can either be defined as the realization of a previously posited essence, or define essence as its effect, as the product of the very act that creates it. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the transition from essence to existence, of which the self gives us the experience, can be accomplished in two different senses and give rise to these two contrary theories: the classical theory that essence precedes existence and founds it, and the theory that the moderns often oppose to it, that existence precedes essence and constitutes it. But perhaps in both cases it is not the same essence. However, if essence is eternal, the confrontation between the two different aspects that it receives in time before having crossed the instant and after having crossed it will allow us to shed some light on the problem of the insertion of our self into being and the formation of our personal life.

IX

The consciousness that the self has of itself is in no way like a light that illuminates a thing. It is interrogative. I know that I am and I do not know who I am. The consciousness that I have of myself is both light and darkness, not because the self is a mysterious being that it is the function of consciousness to reveal behind the veil that covers it, but because it is a being that [177] is not yet born and to which consciousness alone is capable of giving the existence it lacks. In order to bring it into being, it must have time at its disposal and it must itself be a possible being before becoming an accomplished being. Moreover, this accomplished being remains until death an always future being; and as for my present life, what can I say about death itself, except that it opens up an absolute future before me? The self of which I am conscious is therefore not only a possible self, but a self whose current existence is that of a possibility. Thus, existence is not the realization of an essence, but it precedes the essence by which it is precisely determined.

This relationship, however, needs to be further explored. First of all, it should be noted that instead of moving, as is almost always done, from a possibility that would be foreign to existence to an existence that, by actualizing it, would annihilate it as possibility, we start here from an existence of possibility as such. This expression undoubtedly has a paradoxical character, and yet it alone allows us to posit a possibility that is not a pure nothingness and an existence that is not that of a thing, but that of a life, that is, which has a future before it. Now, this existence is the existence of freedom. And undoubtedly, in freedom, one will find the most profound characteristics by which existence can be defined, namely, first, this indeterminacy that means that, being nothing more than existence, it is capable of receiving the most different modalities, of becoming the existence of one form of being or another indifferently; second, this power to assume itself, which, by engaging it in time, obliges it to make itself, which is the only means by which it can coincide exactly with what it is. Existence is therefore nothing more than a power of self-determination. But we are so accustomed to considering existence as belonging only to things that it seems strange to attribute it to a mere power. However, how could this simple power not be superior in dignity to the things that always limit it and that never express more than a part of its richness? How could it not have this interiority and self-disposition that precisely define the absoluteness of existence, whereas things are all external and relative, that is, they only make sense as phenomena and for a consciousness that opposes them and perceives them? Finally, how can we deny that from this very power we have a daily experience, which is undoubtedly not a separate experience, but the experience of the very use we make of it by constantly imprinting a modification [178] on things? It distorts and mutilates the experience we have of life to want it to be only the experience of things when it is the experience of a spiritual activity that apprehends them and constantly seeks to manifest or incarnate itself in them.

X

When we say that existence is that of freedom and that this freedom is nothing more than the possibility of the being that we will one day be, we do not yet specify enough the relationship between this freedom and this possibility. Because freedom is an initiative that we constantly put into action. It is therefore a possibility insofar as it depends on us, in a very general way, to leave it in a state of pure possibility or to actualize it. This alternative is characteristic of freedom as such. One can conceive of a freedom as it were folded in on itself, awaiting an option that never occurs; but one cannot conceive of any freedom except in relation to this eventual option that it always carries within it, in a sort of expectation capable of exploding at any moment. Until then, it is not, as one believes, devoid of existence; it is existence itself, taken as it were at its source: besides, not choosing is still a choice. But when the true option takes place, it is no longer a simple option between acting and not acting; for action itself entails different paths, that is, it prolongs the duality of affirmation and negation into a plurality of affirmations among which the option, in order to be completed, will have to take sides. Negation is unique in that it consists in the refusal of a determination. Affirmation encompasses an infinity of possible determinations offered to the choice of freedom.

Thus, when we say that freedom is the being of our possibility, we cannot ignore that it contains within itself the infinity of possibilities. No one can doubt, moreover, that the word “possibility” only has meaning in the plural, and even that it expresses the infinity of plurality. However, two observations are still necessary to specify the origin and nature of possibility. The first is intended to recall that the idea of possibility is linked to the idea of the future. The future is the realm of possibilities, not only because of its indeterminacy that causes it to escape knowledge before changing into the present, but also because it is the career open to freedom so that it can carve out a path for itself in being that depends on it alone. Thus, the future precedes [179] the past as the possible precedes the actualized. Secondly, it can be said that possibility can only be represented by the imagination. The being of a representation itself is only the being of a possibility. And no product of the imagination is ever more than a sketch that is completed only in the creation of its object. But the thought of possibilities in turn is nothing more than the bursting forth of freedom, which can become conscious of itself, of its own power of choice, only by unfolding before it an infinity of possible determinations that at every moment oblige it to decide and consequently to engage itself.

XI

This does not yet tell us the meaning of possibility as such. But if possibility creates the future as the very condition of its existence as possibility, and allows freedom to exercise itself by choosing and realizing it, then freedom must be capable of discovering within itself, through analysis, the infinity of possibilities. This undoubtedly implies that freedom itself is inseparable from the absolute that establishes its independence and yet continues to provide for it. Freedom is always a first beginning of itself and the world. But this first beginning is both a rupture with regard to the absolute and a presence of the absolute at every point. What does this mean, if not that freedom is a participation in the creative act, which presupposes and divides or multiplies it, but can never equal it? This creative act, more precisely called pure act because it is creator of itself before being creator of the world (but is there a world other than for particular consciousnesses?), is only in potentiality in each freedom, which actualizes it only in an imperfect and partial manner. One could say that it never actualizes elsewhere, that is, it has no separate existence. But that would be to forget that in it there can be no distinction between potentiality and actuality, that is to say, that everything is act, that the distinction between these two terms is the result of participation, which precisely constitutes particular freedoms, and that in each freedom, the transition from potentiality to actuality still depends on its perfect effectiveness, which the self only captures and to which it sometimes gives and sometimes refuses a consent that is always commensurate with it.

Thus, the infinity of pure act still adheres to freedom in the form of a presence that surpasses it, in which freedom continues to discern possibilities that it can adopt and seek to realize in order to make them its own. This explains why freedom can have the illusion of finding them within itself through analysis, even though they only express its connection with the absolute, precisely insofar as the absolute exceeds it. It also explains why these possibilities are only possibilities for me, with which I do not identify, and which must necessarily take on a representative form, since I only represent what is not myself. Finally, I can only make them mine by realizing them, that is, by making them not only a part of my thought but also of my life, in a world of which I am a part and where every action I undertake has consequences that leave their mark on both the world and myself.

XII

Should possibility now be identified with essence? This is the belief of all those who think that it is in the actualization of possibility that existence is constituted. But here some distinctions are necessary.

  1. First of all, these essence-possibilities do not exist in the absolute prior to the particular existences that assume them. They precisely express the relations of these existences with the absolute from which they arise and without which they would be nothing. They are born from the absolute itself, insofar as it is beyond freedom and yet still establishes all its acquisitions. They can indeed be inscribed in the absolute itself, provided, it is true, that the absolute is considered not in itself but as participable. Because they may not be participated in. That is why they appear as objective, that is, irreducible to the act of the subject who thinks them, and yet as virtual, since it is the act of the subject that produces their distinction within the immensity of pure being. In this sense, existence precedes essence, not because it creates it, but because without existence, there would be nothing in the absolute that would deserve the name of possibility, let alone all these different possibilities that allow freedom to exercise itself and existence to be realized. There is, therefore, a world of essence-possibilities that is intermediate between absolute being and relative being, which is eternal in the sense that it is always available to consciousness, which nevertheless brings it forth from its very exercise and by virtue of its pure relation to it, from the absolute in which it is rooted.

  2. These essence-possibilities themselves have the characteristic that traditional philosophy attributes to the idea. First of all, they are indeed objects of thought, and they are nothing other than that for thought, although it is subsequently up to the will to seize them in order to bring them into the world and embody them in action. Up to that point, they can only be contemplated. Like ideas, they have a character of generality: it is the same eternal idea to which an individual and the plurality of individuals will try to give substance through all the processes of their existence, without ever coinciding with it. It is from this non-coincidence that the progress of the human spirit and its works, which always begin anew, result. This proves that the idea is not abstract like the concept, which arises from a comparison between particular beings, but rather that it carries within itself a concrete richness or, if one wishes, a dynamic power from which all particular beings derive everything they can acquire, but without being able to exhaust it.

  3. These essence-possibilities can be said to be both above and below existence. Above, because they are eminently contained in the absolute in which existence participates. They are not contained in it in a static way, as parts are contained in a whole of which they constitute the sum. Because there is no other absolute than an absolute act, but which reveals itself as an infinity of possibilities with regard to all individuals who borrow from it the power to be, that is, to become. And if it is argued that there is no downward dialectic, that is, that we have no means of passing from the absolute act to existences that participate in it and which, without dividing it, nevertheless establish their independence in it, at least to some extent, there is certainly an upward dialectic that compels us, starting from existence as it is given to us, to establish its condition of possibility in an absolute without which it would be unable to sustain itself. But such a “possibilization” of the absolute, which gives rise to essences that must first present themselves to our thought before our will undertakes to embody them, seems to place essence itself below existence. This is because, if it exists potentially in the absolute, it is nevertheless existence that disengages it from the absolute in order to put it into operation, that is, to accomplish itself.

XIII

The genesis of essence-possibilities can be explained in another way. If the initial fact is not the relationship that seems to establish a kind of equality between the terms it unites, but rather participation, which gives one of them a kind of privilege over the other, which limits it, it can be said that the proper characteristic of essence-possibilities is to express all the ways in which the absolute as such is capable of being participated in. It is immediately evident that there is properly an infinity of these ways, and that one would even have to distinguish among them those that could be called the means of participation in general, which impose themselves with a necessary character on every finite being before it has become a finite being different from all others. Perhaps it must be said that these are the essence-possibilities that traditional philosophy has always tried to describe under the name of categories. It can also be said that they are the primitive species of affirmation or the conditions of possibility of experience in general. In order for their enumeration not to have a purely fortuitous and empirical character, they must be defined as the means of insertion of finite being into an infinite that remains present to it, but in which it individualizes itself. The list of these categories undoubtedly begins with the distinction and correlation of space, by which the world is given to us as a given world, and time, by which each individual accomplishes itself in the world; with multiplicity or number, which distinguishes the particular forms of existence; and with causality, which chains them together. All philosophies thus attempt to establish a systematic table of categories, but it must be an open table, where the categories are gradually specified, so to speak, because it is undoubtedly impossible to enumerate all the conditions that must be satisfied for a concrete being, that is, a being enjoying the freedom by which it creates itself what it is, to succeed in finding a place in the world. It should be noted that the categories correspond well to the conception we have formed of these essences, which are not separate things, but mere possibilities. For example, space is the possibility of any given reality, time is the possibility of its genesis, multiplicity is the possibility of its independence, causality is the possibility of its interdependence, and so on. And therefore, these categories, far from expressing constraints that weigh upon freedom, are the instruments that freedom has created itself in order to be able to exercise itself and the paths in which it engages as soon as it begins to act.

XIV

As there are essences that express, in an absolute sense, the conditions of possibility for freedom in general, but are nothing without the relations that this freedom maintains with the absolute from which it draws the very means that enable it to be realized, there are also essences that express the conditions of possibility for each freedom considered in its concrete exercise, or even in the choice it is constantly required to make. And perhaps it will be easier to recognize here the traditional sense of the word “essence” than in the categories, which are often considered mere forms of knowledge but which seem to us to precisely deserve the name of essences, at least insofar as essence is defined by its double character of generality and possibility, which make it, so to speak, the vehicle of participation. But now freedom enters into play within the framework of categories, from which it cannot be stripped, thinking to strengthen it without annihilating it. It itself is now a living and active possibility that can only be exercised by bursting into particular possibilities that it will henceforth have to choose, and which are, in a way, ahead of freedom, in the sense that freedom chooses among them and acts to actualize them, whereas the possibilities included in the categories are behind, in the sense that freedom requires them as the very conditions that enable it to act and choose. It could be argued, no doubt, that such possibilities are determined exclusively by the situation in which each freedom finds itself placed within this experience subject to the categories, of which it itself is the only means of its own participation in the absolute. This would mean that it is this situation that determines all the movements of freedom. This is the thesis called “deterministic,” in which freedom is abolished and possibility with it; in a curious reversal, the effect of participation engulfs the act that produces it. But leaving aside the problem of determining to what extent the situation itself is the expression of freedom and not its limitation, we all act as if, in the very situation offered to it, freedom possessed a margin of indeterminacy. Now it is this margin of indeterminacy that is filled by possibilities [184] among which we must choose the one that will become ours, that will become us.

But this possibility, insofar as it does not yet take on existence, can only be an essence. It is a discerned and shaped essence by us within that absolute to which we are united, and which, in relation to us, once our existence is posited, reveals itself to us only as an infinity of possibility. Thus, this essence is not, in itself, the arbitrary product of an unconditional freedom. For if freedom does not draw it from nothingness, but once again from its relation to the absolute, which contains all possibilities in an undivided state, it must both be adapted to the actual situation in which freedom finds itself placed and yet allow it to break free from this situation in order, precisely, to surpass it. It is this double relationship of freedom with the absolute, from which it cannot detach itself without being annihilated by becoming enslaved to determinations, and with a situation from which it cannot detach itself without being annihilated again, but this time in indeterminacy, that properly constitutes what we call value. How, indeed, could freedom emerge from indeterminacy and move from potential to actuality other than through the attraction exerted on it by value? Thus, value-essences are still like category-essences, essences-possibilities. However, while category-essences opened up all paths of freedom, value-essences assign it a choice to be made among these paths. Instead of delineating the schemas of free action, they constitute its motives. But like categories, they have a character of generality, for they must, like categories, be actualized here and now. And just as categories expressed in finite being its theoretical relationship with the absolute, values express its practical relationship with it: they command the play of its various faculties. For each of these faculties expresses a certain perspective on the absolute, and the classification of these faculties establishes the classification of values, as can be seen in the distinction between the true, the beautiful, and the good, which in turn specify themselves into particular values without this specification ever being suspended or confined within a closed system. Similarly, one could undoubtedly establish a correspondence between the table of categories and the table of values, as if each category were charged with providing the field of application for a value. Moreover, because the characteristic of value is to express the relationship of the absolute with active freedom, each value generates an imperative within consciousness. And just as, contrary to common opinion, the category, instead of being an abstraction, is a power of determination with inexhaustible right (geometry will never exhaust space, nor arithmetic number, nor history time, nor physics causality), likewise value surpasses the resources of the will to such an extent that it will never fully embody it. This is because essence always proceeds from the absolute, which existence always seeks to rejoin.

XV

It is now important to show what the “individual essences” consist of, which cannot be confused with either category-essences or value-essences. They are no longer essences-possibilities; they are real essences or essences that come after the actualization of possibility by existence. If, indeed, we agree to call freedom existence insofar as it is exercised, then we will say that the very role of this freedom is first to bring forth in the absolute all the possibilities that are the conditions and means of its own exercise. Yet these possibilities need to be realized, and they can only be realized in the world of things where they cease to be virtualities of individual consciousness, where they have to overcome external resistances, enter into composition with certain factual conditions, with other possibilities that also seek to be actualized, take their place in the succession of causes and effects, and thus create a field of objectivity common to all consciousnesses, through which they now act upon each other. There is a unity of being that is the unity of all possibilities considered in their very foundation before they actualize, but which finds its expression in the unity of the world where they actualize, where individual existences distinguish and oppose each other, where each of them forges its own individuality and becomes, in a way, the worker of its destiny.

However, it would be a kind of paradox to consider existence as residing in freedom and essence as residing in its manifestation: it almost always happens, in fact, that this manifestation is confused with existence itself, and that under the name of essence, only an ideal model that freedom attempts to imitate is understood. But this model is nothing more than the possibility-essence transmuted into value-essence in order to enable freedom to act upon it. [186] By implementing it, freedom determines it. However, its manifestation remains discontinuous and phenomenal; it continually vanishes in time. It cannot be equated with individual essence, although it nevertheless contributes to its formation. We do not possess, in fact, the action we have just performed except in memory. This memory internalizes it; it incorporates it into ourselves. And in a sense, it must be said that all these accumulated memories actually form the true essence of the being that we are. Therefore, it is easy to understand that an essence can truly be ours only if, instead of being given to us, that is, imposed on us, it is the very product of our freedom. Yet essence cannot be reduced to an integration of memories. Not only do memories maintain too close a relationship with the temporal event they evoke and of which they represent, so to speak, the absence, but they are often regarded as things that the self contemplates and with which, consequently, it does not identify. However, just as the characteristic of memory is to spiritualize the event and detach us from it, the characteristic of essence is to detach us from memory itself, that is, from any reference to the event, and to leave only its pure significance, to constitute that unity of all memories that is not made up of their sum, since it seems rather that memories express and divide it, to reduce all the memories in which our past has been deposited to a living act now independent of time, and of which particular memories have never provided more than a mode of expression, that is, of realization. There lies our true essence, which may be thought to be formed only at death, but which, far from being able to be confused with a thing, even a spiritual one, delivers our being from everything that, still subsisting in it as given or as a state, could only be an obstacle or a means to it, in order to reduce it to the purely internal act that constitutes its existence.

The relationship between essence and existence is therefore more subtle than imagined. There is no pre-existing essence that the very purpose of existence is to actualize. What would be the purpose of this actualization? Before entering space and time, would not essence enjoy a purer existence, the very existence that each of us seeks to obtain through the tribulations of sensory existence? On the contrary, if it is nothing more than a possibility, it is we, in a sense, who bring it forth, among other possibilities, from the infinity of the absolute being so that through a personal choice, we make it our own and by implementing it in the world, we subject it to the test of our freedom. Thus, it is only after traversing the world, after confronting all the other possibilities in the process of actualization, and after shedding the procession of events that accompany it and that becoming gradually disperses, that our being can fulfill itself and our existence can acquire an essence.

But one will then appreciate the distance between the possibility that initially presented itself to us and the actuality we have given it, which has continually restricted and added to it, composed it with others, and even bent it in another direction to the point of making it unrecognizable. It can be said that value is the mediator between possibility and actuality, and without it, the transition from one to the other would never take place. But there is truly only one essence, in the sense that this word once had, and that is the “individual essence”: it is a realized possibility that has become ours. However, this possibility, insofar as it is animated by value, is an ever-present calling within the heart of freedom, but to which it can be unfaithful. We give the name of vocation to a certain proportion that is established between freedom and the situation in which our existence is engaged. This vocation can be said to express our “ideal essence”: it is understandable that we can miss it. It is in our freedom itself that it is the inner distance separating its power from its effect.

XVI

We have tried to reach the extreme point of the relation between essence and existence, where consciousness is capable of apprehending it and, in a sense, verifying it within itself, where existence resides in an act of freedom and essence in the determination it gives to itself. Thus, once again, we conform to this method that always seeks to reach being at its summit, in its most perfect and pure form, of which all other forms are steps. It is likely that when we apply the distinction between essence and existence to the relationship between species and individual, we do nothing more than anthropomorphize nature as a whole, or at least interpret it according to the model of our own conscious activity. Naturally, we consider any living being that develops itself as embodying the type [188] of its species: and this type is an idea that exists within us, and which we imagine also exists within the being as an unconscious model upon which it regulates its entire growth. It is therefore a possibility imposed upon it, and it is difficult to assume that it has chosen it for itself; and if it deviates from it, it is more a result of circumstances than of its own volition. Furthermore, how could essence here be posterior to existence, and how could one still speak of an individual essence, since there is no spiritual acquisition that can survive existence and the entire being of the individual is consumed with it? This is already observed in the life of our body, where existence must abolish itself and even abolish itself at every moment for our inner essence to be constituted.

Should we then think that living species are nothing more than the foundation, not only of human life but also of spiritual life? It would be easily understood, on the one hand, why we always seek in them the same transition from possibility to existence that appears in us as the law of our consciousness, and, on the other hand, why this transition is in us the result of a thought act and outside of us the result of a natural necessity. However, we can go beyond this simple description of fact and, by asking why living beings are distributed into species and why we ourselves have a body that places us within the human species, we come to understand how the act of participation, as an effect of our freedom, is necessarily surpassed by a nature in which all the conditional possibilities enclosed in absolute being must find individual actualization in order to serve it, so to speak, as support. One could then conceive of the distinction and classification of species as forming the object of a dialectic in which the advent of a spiritual existence would be both the reason for being and the end. Such an undertaking would require both a considerable advancement in our empirical knowledge and a highly developed elaboration of the laws of participation. It is sufficient to show that the essences in question can only have a specific character, not to consider them as mere schemas of individual resemblances, but as different paths that can open the access to this universe of individual existences, where freedom must actualize its own possibility. Therefore, there can be no question here of an individual essence or of the creation of essence by existence, unless we consider freedom itself as the original existence that establishes, along with the hierarchy [189] of specific essences, the conditions of this world of individual existences where it must incarnate.

XVII

As for material things themselves, we will say that they have no essence. There is no difficulty regarding manufactured products, whose essence is clearly seen to reside either in the thought of the one who created them, or in the purpose he pursued, or in the use for which he intended them. Here, the essence is still entirely spiritual; it has consciousness as its sole abode. It is universal in the sense that it is identified with an act that can be repeated endlessly, and it is the matter that individualizes it. The same can be said of particular objects that we distinguish in the world; they resemble manufactured objects, and they are always, in a certain way, made by the attention that circumscribes them and follows their articulations; they have an essence only because they are the constantly renewed focal points of our thought and action. If we now consider naked matter, we must say that not only does it have no essence and is even the negation of essence, but it also derives its existence only from our freedom itself, as soon as this freedom, recognizing the limits of its power, projects into it, through the diversity of its own operations, the infinite multiplicity of particular objects.

XVIII

The opposition between essence and existence is therefore the condition that allows Being to always be an act or an accomplishment. And the variable relation between the two terms allows us to understand the different meanings that the word “essence” can assume; for if existence poses no difficulty in the sense that it is always an actual participation in being, which, to the extent that it establishes the autonomy of the self, is defined as freedom, essence is always relative to how we employ this freedom, to its conditions or its effects. Let us not be surprised, first of all, when someone seeks to strip our existence of its modes to consider it in its purity, that we can say of this existence itself that it constitutes [190] our essence. In the same sense, we will say that our essence is to be free, or more accurately, that freedom is the point of coincidence of essence and existence, the point where we enter into existence by giving ourselves an essence. Just as being is univocal, existence, defined as a participation in being, implies an indeterminacy, but one that is capable of determining itself: this is the very definition of freedom. Thus, participation in being finds its expression, as Leibniz admirably saw, in the presence of an interiority in each point, which means the presence of a free initiative. Consequently, we can ask whether being, insofar as it is non-participatory, could still be considered as being, since it would not be the being of anything, and whether being, as participant, that is, insofar as it gives itself existence, does not oblige us, in order to distinguish it from the being in which it participates, to constitute its essence within it.

However, not every essence is my essence, although it always has some relation to it, which is precisely engendered by my freedom. Thus, essence is first and foremost any possibility discovered by me in being as the universal condition that allows my freedom to come into play. In this respect, categories, insofar as they express a necessary mode of affirmation, themselves deserve the name of essence. The mistake is only to think that the list of categories is a closed list and not an open list, which, as an intermediary between pure act and concrete existence, never completes its reunion with them. But for us to be able to act, not only must freedom have certain conceptual possibilities at its disposal, which it falls to intelligence to determine—these are the essence-categories—but it must also have certain dynamic possibilities that solicit the will and that the will always seeks to embody—these are the essence-values. However, for these possibilities to be embodied so that we can assume responsibility for them, our own individual essence is formed in a process of disembodiment that escapes becoming through a sort of continuous spiritualization and extinction of this temporal existence into which consciousness was initially forced to enter. Nevertheless, there always exists a distance between our real essence and our ideal essence, which never manage to coincide. How could it be otherwise, since our ideal essence expresses the absolute relationship that establishes itself between our freedom engaged in a particular situation and the absolute from which it draws, while our real essence also expresses this relationship, but only considered in its implementation? The entire nature is suspended on the ends of freedom; and the advent of freedom will first condition the appearance of the human species, which is also an essence or a universal possibility destined to assume a concrete and individual form to provide freedom with an instrument that serves, in a sense, as its vehicle, and then all other living species, which are also essences, that is, possibilities whose actualization is necessary for the existence of human beings and therefore for the play of freedom, and finally the material things themselves, which have no other essence than the designs that the mind is capable of forming upon them. This leads us to identify their essence, as shown by the most familiar language, sometimes with that sort of purity of their definition that is always adulterated by elements of foreign origin, and sometimes, which perhaps amounts to the same thing, with what we consider to be the best part of them, which can only be understood in relation to the most perfect use we are capable of making of them.

We can see how in such a conception, essence, which in common opinion seems to be the antipode and negation of freedom, is instead the means by which freedom is realized. Whether we consider freedom itself as forming our true essence, or whether essence expresses the possibilities that freedom reveals in absolute being as the conditions of its own exercise, or whether it is identified solely with those spiritual acquisitions of freedom without which it would itself be devoid of any effectiveness 11.

Part Four: Freedom and Participation

Chapter XI. Freedom as the First Term

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (Corinthians, III, 17.)

There seems to be an empirical origin of freedom. The child did not ask to be born. It is initially part of nature; it is engulfed in it. It is reduced to that instinctive spontaneity that heredity has deposited within it, and to that interplay of influences that the environment constantly exerts upon it. However, if we compare it to what it will become one day, it is only a mysterious possibility whose actualization is yet unknown. We see it gradually acquiring a representation of space and time, which previously dominated it and which it will now dominate in turn. Space and time, which were initially the paths of necessity, will become for it the paths of its freedom. It will rediscover, at every moment and in every place, the efficacy of that aspatial and atemporal act that needs space and time to be accomplished. The universe, which closed in on it, will open up before it. The plurality of causes that led to it will transform into a plurality of ends that proceed from it. It gradually suspends the course of fate that pressed upon it from all sides, in order to prescribe to the world a new order of which it is the creator and arbiter.

I. In the Couple Formed by Freedom and Necessity, Freedom is the First Term.

Freedom and necessity form a kind of couple whose terms can only be defined in relation to each other. Thus, one can indifferently define necessity as the negation of freedom, or freedom as the negation of necessity. No one believes themselves to be free [196] except in relation to a necessity that could chain them. No one is bound to necessity except in relation to a freedom that could set them free from it.

But it is not enough to recognize that each of these terms can be defined in fact as the negation of the other. The question is whether there is one term that is primary in right and that possesses the true character of positivity. In this respect, it is necessary to distinguish between the chronological order and the ontological order. For it is possible, even if freedom gradually emerges from necessity, that necessity presupposes and encompasses freedom as a limiting principle without which it would be nothing. It even happens that, where freedom acts, necessity is nothing more than the fixation of the effects it produces. Necessity would then be, in relation to freedom, its expression rather than its limit, the mark not of its failure but of its triumph. Freedom would have no other chains than those it has given to itself.

However, one must not forget that the self is not isolated from the world, nor coextensive with the world, and that the freedom that belongs to it is correlative to the necessity by which it undergoes the action of the world in which it is immersed and which surpasses it in all respects. Even then, freedom cannot be reduced to the purely negative power of not yielding to necessity, for this power is only effective if it is itself the reverse of a wholly positive power, which is the power to generate an action that the self is not obliged to undergo. The negation of necessity is only the effect and counterpart of an initiative that the self claims and already begins to exercise. How could it be otherwise if necessity is always hypothetical, or if it testifies to a conditional relationship, that is, the impossibility for a being to be self-sufficient, which obliges it to seek outside of itself the cause that determines it, whereas freedom, on the contrary, is categorical, that is, it expresses in each being the same possibility of being self-sufficient or of producing the reason for its actions? Therefore, if insufficiency only makes sense as the negation of sufficiency, which is the only positive aspect, necessity presupposes freedom and can only be defined by its limitation. Things could be expressed differently by saying that freedom belongs to the realm of action and necessity to the realm of suffering, but suffering presupposes action, from which it continually subtracts, while action cannot be the negation of suffering, to which it continually adds. Finally, one could also say that denying necessity is already a real action, whereas denying freedom is only an apparent action and even a refusal of action, so that it is enough, to verify necessity, to do nothing, whereas freedom asserts itself only by assuming the act of doing, and even, in principle, by doing everything.

It is remarkable that freedom can only be defined as a power to act: when we say that it gradually frees itself from the necessity in which it was initially encased, it means that there is an omnipresent and always active activity that remains external to us, that is, it assumes the character of necessity as long as we fail to bring it to light in our own consciousness or, in other words, to embrace it as our own.

II. Freedom Irreducible to the Spontaneity of Nature.

One could argue that for a being to be free, it is sufficient for its actions to appear to it as merely the expression and consequence of its nature. Then, the being, conscious of what it is but not of the causes that have made it what it is, considers itself free when it is capable of acting according to what it is. Because these causes can only be an object of knowledge and not of consciousness: they cannot prevent consciousness from considering what it is as an origin before which there is nothing. Self-consciousness is a first beginning; it is not the unilinear continuation of the realm of knowledge: insofar as it opens up to a future yet to be born, it seems that it is the one producing it.

However, this is only an appearance of freedom. We are only free from the moment we cease to identify ourselves with our nature, when we are capable of denying and surpassing it. Because our own nature is given to us, it is therefore external to the self that we want to be and resides in the responsibility it has towards itself. These causes that we call internal causes do not deserve this name; they truly belong to us only through the act that ratifies and assumes them. It is then useless to claim that they are within us and not outside of us. As long as these causes act by themselves and we are merely their theater, they are outside of us. For the essence of the self is precisely to separate from them and question whether it disavows their action or consents to it. Otherwise, we would be forced to consider the plant that develops according to the laws of its own seed, which subjects the nourishment it transforms and assimilates to the conditions of its own growth, and which would only be constrained whenever its own power of development is not favored but delayed or hindered by the forces pressing on it from all sides, as free.

III. Primacy of Being over Knowing.

It seems that being precedes knowing and establishes it. But we cannot help but consider knowing as a revelation of being, so that the characteristics of knowing seem to reproduce the very characteristics of being: we cannot help but objectify them. But one can wonder if the nature of knowing is not to give us an inverted image of being.

For there is only knowledge of the realized and the accomplished. To know is to learn to grasp what is given and can only be as it is; it is to introduce necessity into it from the start, first through the presence of the fact that is there, that imposes itself on me and that I cannot deny, and then through the reasons that make it what it is and that reside solely in the relations it maintains with the other parts of this given world from which knowledge forbids me to depart. Knowledge has as its object a spectacle whose elements occupy a determined place, a becoming whose events succeed each other according to an order that we restrict ourselves to observing. It is the defining task of knowledge to determine the relative situation of the parts within the whole. Thus, what is given in experience must appear as necessary in thought if it refuses to abdicate. The role of knowledge is to eliminate from things the action of this free initiative that makes these things capable of being other than they are.

However, it must be said that being is primary in relation to knowing; otherwise, knowledge would not be knowledge of anything. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that knowledge is an aspect of being that seeks only to embrace and represent all others: being precedes and envelops it at the same time; it exists in itself and not only for consciousness, towards which it is obliged to become a fact, a given, or an object. But if it is incapable of stepping outside itself, it is because it carries within itself what makes it be, or it is the act by which it brings itself into being, which brings us back to the very definition we [199] have given of freedom. We already verify this idea with regard to self-knowledge; such knowledge never reaches the phenomenon of freedom: and this phenomenon, far from revealing freedom itself, destroys it. Thus, one can transform the self into an object of knowledge only by substituting for it a representation that immediately enters the realm of necessity. And the entire world can be said to be suspended from a transcendent freedom, and the spectacle it presents to us is only an expression of our limitation, which it continually surpasses but always obliges us to contemplate from the outside.

By this, it is understood that knowing can indeed be defined as a negation of being, as happens in idealism that reduces being to representation, and that being can indeed be defined as a negation of knowing, as soon as it is considered as a being-in-itself that is beyond all representation. But the two negations are not on the same level. Although knowing seems to reveal to us from being all that we can positively affirm of it, so that being that escapes knowing is for us identical to nothingness, it is for us only a nothingness of knowledge, whereas being, on the contrary, is that sovereign positivity that knowing always expresses as a relative and limiting form.

However, should we not then say that, as knowing presupposes the being that precedes and establishes it, freedom, insofar as it expresses the possibility of being, also precedes and calls it? But this is only true of realized being, which itself only makes sense through knowledge. Freedom cannot be prior to being, for there is nothing that exists outside of it, even possibility, since there is a being of possibility as such. Therefore, it must be said of freedom that it is the heart or the very interiority of being.

Therefore, it is true that knowledge gives me an inverted image of being, as it transforms the in itself into a for someone, and thus interiority into exteriority, an act that posits itself as a posited object, or to express it in one word, freedom into necessity. The act, in its accomplishment, becomes for knowledge an accomplished fact, similar to life which, when it is over, leaves us facing death, which presupposes it and yet abolishes it, and where it is studied at leisure, but so to speak, in its opposite.

IV. The Mystery of Freedom.

It is not surprising, then, that freedom cannot be known and that it is, so to speak, an impenetrable mystery. But it is from this mystery that all light springs forth. To want to know it would be to suppose that it is itself an object, that is to say, a thing already accomplished, prior to the being that realizes it. However, it must never be forgotten that knowledge itself is the work of freedom: thus, it contradicts freedom only in its effect, but not in the operation that produces it. The knowledge that seemed to hinder freedom just now is the very proof of its power. Freedom tends to equalize itself with the universe, of which it initially suffered blind constraint; it internalizes it and therefore recreates it in a certain way through image or concept. The essence of knowledge is to unfold freedom in such a way as to enable it to reign over the world and not just over its own solitude.

Thus, freedom is like the sun that illuminates everything that exists in the world, but can only be made an illuminated object to the extent that it itself darkens and becomes an object among others.

In other words, freedom is not foreign to knowledge because it is its cause and not its object. And if knowledge cannot be turned against freedom to make it a thing, the act of knowledge reveals freedom in its very exercise. It could also be said that freedom and knowledge are two opposing expressions of the same unity of the mind. For freedom is the unity from which multiplicity proceeds, the unity of a source, whereas the unity of knowledge is a unity that resolves multiplicity but can only succeed in the abstraction of a concept, where the source ceases to spring forth. The first form of unity resides in a demand for production and the second in a demand for reduction.

Therefore, it is not an argument against freedom to say that it is unknown and even unknowable. It is above knowledge like the consciousness of an act is above the knowledge of a given. It may be tempting to say that it is obscure like all births, like all sources, or that, being pure indeterminacy, its obscurity is like the obscurity of the abyss. But if it escapes all determination, it is because it is the principle of all. The very consciousness of this indeterminacy is active and alive. It is accompanied by a kind of tremor. It is because we cannot avoid breaking it. And the emotion it gives us is inseparable from the responsibility with which it charges us within the Whole of Being, which it is responsible for shaping. It resides in this always imminent passage from possibility to actuality, which we feel depends on us alone.

V. Freedom and Consciousness.

If knowledge always testifies against freedom, conscience always testifies in its favor. Because knowledge always assumes something already present and realized, which I am obliged to introduce into the world, that is, into time, and therefore subject to the relationship of causality. Thus, arguments against freedom are always made. But one is conscious of being free; only conscience is not knowledge, and there is consciousness only of oneself, that is, of an act that I perform or of an initiative that I exercise and without which I would have no consciousness of anything, not even of the states that limit it and that I am obliged to undergo.

There is, therefore, the closest reciprocity between consciousness and freedom. There is no consciousness without freedom, nor freedom without consciousness. There is proportionality between the degrees of freedom and the degrees of consciousness. As soon as consciousness darkens, freedom yields, and the mechanism invades me. As soon as freedom falters, consciousness becomes useless; everything falls back into darkness for me.

One has a very false idea of consciousness when one imagines that it is a light that illuminates an inner being capable of subsisting without it. Consciousness produces both the being of the self and the light that envelops it. It is true that it is a hesitant, clumsy, and fallible activity, but one in which the echo of its own operation always resounds, giving rise to objects and ends everywhere through the very direction of its attention, always opening up new perspectives and paths before it. Consciousness is not, as one believes, the revelation of what we are; it is its genesis itself, which never ceases to pursue itself through an option that is always questioned and always exposed to repentance.

Thus, with the birth of consciousness, freedom begins, but with it also the existence of the self. Before that, one can think that nature lingers to gather all the conditions without which consciousness would find no place in the world. But it always arises through an autonomous and creative act, as if it emerged out of nothing.

VI. Freedom or the Self.

There is no act that I can claim as mine if it is not freedom that accomplishes it, no being that I can assume as mine if it is not the being that I have freely given myself. Yet I have not chosen to be born, nor to be born in a certain place or time, nor to be born with the body that is mine, or with these powers that I feel within me and that make me the very individual that I am. But all these characteristics belong to nature: they merely situate me as an object among many others. They cannot be confused with the power I have to say “myself,” which only begins to be exercised where I detach myself from this nature that I say is mine, either to consent to it and take pleasure in it, or to fight against it or reform it. And if it is desired that in all cases it is mine, that does not mean that it is me. It is that privileged situation to which I find myself bound, which is required to allow freedom to come into play, but precisely in order to use it or free myself from it by always surpassing it.

Everything in the self that pertains to nature, and which can be called its powers, is nothing without the freedom that disposes of it; where freedom is absent, the self dissipates and annihilates itself in its own matter, without it being able to emerge from anonymity, without there being anywhere a center of reference where someone can say “myself” or “I.” The self can never be posited first as a being about which one would then inquire whether it is free. Because freedom is not just someone’s freedom, but the being of that someone. Therefore, it has no support: any support ruins it; it is the self itself, but it cannot be hypostasized without contradiction.

Shall it be said that conduct is always the expression of character? But character itself is not independent of freedom; it is a kind of deposit that freedom constantly leaves in nature. It is not surprising, therefore, that freedom can sometimes solidarize with it and sometimes seek to break and surpass it. This is the reason why, if freedom is indivisible, I can say of my character that it is myself to the extent that I still want and choose to be faithful to it. “This is what I am” is the formula by which I attest that all my actions are sincere or authentic, that is, they express my character, prolong it, and bear witness to all the powers accumulated within it that have not yet found realization. But I can also feel enslaved by it; I sometimes blush at it and always seek to burst its limits. Freedom goes beyond it; it is the very activity that produces it and never ceases to add to it and reform it. For it is the constitutive form of activity of a spiritual being; and it can only be exercised, by founding the existence of the self, by drawing from that absolute ego, from that pure interiority with which it never equals itself due to the presence of a body that it is obliged to undergo and a world that continually limits it yet also provides for it.

VII. How Freedom Manifests as a Multiplicity of Different Possibilities.

To say that our activity is free is to say, first of all, that it has within itself the origin or principle of its own play, and secondly, that it detaches itself from reality to become itself a first beginning, that is, a creative power, and finally, that it bursts forth into an infinite multiplicity of possibilities among which it is up to it to choose. If I break through reflection the spontaneity of nature, if my freedom always implies a return to indeterminacy, this return only makes sense in order to confront me with an infinite potentiality that it carries within it like a universe in fusion.

Possibilities do not precede freedom; they are its work, they have existence only in it, and it is a matter of making them arise from its very exercise. It indeed involves a choice, but one that occurs within itself and not between external ends that are simply proposed to it.

Therefore, it is freedom that unites the one and the diverse. For nothing is more unified than freedom, which is the extreme pinnacle of consciousness and the self, that indivisible power we have to choose, to say yes or no, to consent or refuse, to engage or reject. Where freedom falters or ceases, it is the very unity of the self that dissolves. It would be futile to think that one could posit the unity of a thing, for that thing is nothing without me who posits it by opposing it to myself: it is essentially “other,” and as a given thing, it is an infinitely divisible matter that the mind can constantly decompose and recompose as it pleases. Freedom, on the other hand, is the indivisibility of an act that is nothing but an act, but is an act precisely because of the power it has to choose among the possibilities it carries within it and creates for itself in order to fulfill itself. It can be said that the very perfection of its unity is expressed through the choice between the pros and cons.

It is recalled that the characteristic of unity is to be the unity of a given diversity; otherwise, it would not be the unity of anything. But this unity of composition applies only to the domain of knowledge; it is only applicable to representation. In the domain of being, which is also the domain of action, unity does not presuppose diversity, it engenders it, not only as its effect but as the condition of its operation. And it can be thought that from freedom, insofar as it produces itself, derive both the infinite multiplicity of forms of possibility and, among them, the infinite multiplicity of forms of the real insofar as it depends on us to bring them into being. The theory of freedom is therefore also an ontogenesis. Freedom abounds in an infinity of possibilities, and sometimes one dreams of keeping the disposition of all of them, as if it were mutilating oneself to actualize one at the expense of all the others. It is only in this way that one thinks one loses nothing; but this is an effect sometimes of dilettantism, sometimes of greed and cowardice: it is a sign of powerlessness to think that there is more reality in what one imagines than in what one does. To want to be everything at once is to be able to be nothing; even the imagination can only represent to itself alternately all these possibilities that contradict each other and are proposed to the self, but are not integrated within it. By realizing them, I only diminish in appearance what I could be; I always add to what I am.

VIII. Freedom and Time.

The problem of freedom is connected to the problem of time, and perhaps they are inseparable. In the classical conception of time, which is linear and where the future succeeds the past that continues to generate it, it is difficult not to consider the past as carrying within it the reasons for what will be. For if it were otherwise, it seems that the future would be without cause and the past without effect, and the order of time, as Kant saw, would cease to be intelligible. Such an order thus becomes the schema of classical causality, as used by the scientist in the notion of energy or the theologian in the notion of sin. It is the accumulated weight of the past that discharges into the future. However, it is impossible for such an order not to be disrupted by the scientist when introducing a technical action that changes the course of events, or by the theologian when allowing an act of repentance to repair the consequences of sin. From this very act, if it uses materials borrowed from the past, it must be said that it gives them a new orientation which, as such, is a rupture and a new beginning and which, at the very moment it occurs, appears as a sort of irruption of the timeless into the temporal.

But things are easier to understand if, contrary to common opinion, we accept, as we proposed in our work “On Time and Eternity,” to reverse the order of time. Because if we do not consider the future as realized, that is, as already past, if we consider it as future, that is, as possible, it is evident that it is prior to the past, for it is always the future that becomes the past. The future is always yet to come. It is nothing more than a possibility that actualizes. And it is its actualization itself that causes it to fall into the past. The order that goes from the past to the future is the order of accomplished realizations, not of realizations that are being accomplished, the order according to which things are done, not the order according to which they are being done. It is retrospective, not prospective. It is the order in which knowledge unfolds, opposed to the order in which action occurs, the order of history that records in reverse the order of life. Being constantly emerges from the nothingness of the future to enter [206] into the past that realizes it. The future as such is the realm of freedom, that is, an act that always begins anew.

The analysis of time and the opposition between the past and the future leads to opposing necessity and freedom as inseparable faces. But only the distinction in time between two opposed orders, one being the order of knowledge and the other the order of being, leads to subordinating necessity to freedom and showing that the former assumes the latter which engenders it, instead of being reduced to it. Thus, according to the order I adopt to consider the course of time, depending on whether the future appears to me as arising from the past or the past from the future, time enslaves me or liberates me.

Because we can see that necessity can reign only where things succeed one another in time as a spectacular becoming, that is, in the eyes of one who considers time from the outside as the schema of knowledge. Then the realized order is an implacable order that imposes itself on consciousness and that reason explains as best it can. On the contrary, as soon as time is lived as our own, we are freed from its enslavement; for time is the means of our freedom, barely distinguishable from its exercise: the future becomes the realm of our action, populated by possibilities among which we must choose, and that we never cease to actualize, converting them into our very being.

But can it be said that the future, considered in itself, properly belongs to time? It only belongs to time when it is realized, that is, when it becomes [206] the past. Until then, it is only a timeless possibility, and the freedom that realizes it brings it into time without belonging to time itself. It is therefore the creator of time. And when we say that it is “first,” it is to show that it occupies no place in time where there is nothing first, but that it brings eternity down into time. It can do so thanks to the instant in which it acts, which has a dual function, as the “motionless point” where the “conversion of the future into the past” is constantly taking place, that is, the “genesis of time” itself.

Thus, it can be said that freedom is both temporal and timeless at the same time: temporal through its effects that it deposits in time, and timeless through the source from which it draws and which always surpasses them. One should not believe, as is often done, that freedom is a temporal activity that mingles itself with the fabric of becoming. Freedom is always above time, but our existence is suspended at every moment to this timeless freedom; there is not a single stage of its development that does not depend on it and that does not bear its mark, so to speak. The becoming of our life is the trace left in time by a freedom that never ceases to act: but it is, like the creative act, contemporaneous with its effects, without being born and dying with them. It is transcendent with respect to time, or rather there is a time that is its own and in which it always begins anew.

IX. The Transition from Nothingness to Being.

Freedom seems to imply the passage from nothingness to being. Because before it is exercised, there is nothing (or, at least, what freedom draws from nothingness was nothing); and freedom itself, which is only a power, as long as it does not act, is likewise as nothing. We conclude the existence of this power as soon as it has acted. But before it acts, how can it be distinguished from nothingness? Therefore, the passage from nothingness to being must be realized within it, or at least it must be a sort of intermediary between nothingness and being, capable of drawing from nothingness both what it is and what it does.

However, there is an insurmountable difficulty in this conception that arises precisely from the insertion of this opposition between nothingness and being into time. It is contradictory to posit a first time, a sort of “before” that would be occupied by nothingness, and a second time, a sort of “after,” where freedom, in acting, would introduce into this nothingness the very being of its effect. And the very notion of this power, which does not belong to being or nothingness but brings the second out of the first, is itself meaningless. Yet, it is in this elementary form that popular imagination represents the very act of creation. But everything changes if we realize that the words “nothingness” and “being” do not represent here a before and an after, but rather express both simultaneous aspects of the free act that are essential to its definition. For it is true to say at every instant that freedom is like pure nothingness, as long as one thinks that being is a reality or a thing, and that freedom is being itself if we accept the old adage that “to be is to act”; for then reality or the thing becomes only appearance or phenomenon.

We will not be stopped by the objection that the action of freedom is intermittent, and that freedom, when not acting or reduced to unemployment, is an inert power that seemingly cannot act otherwise than by abolishing itself. It would no longer be a power in name. But if freedom is [208] torn from time and identified with its very act, it is always present and active; it knows neither interruption nor failure. “For it is still an action for it to not act.” We can only look at it from two different aspects: in this sort of eternal and transcendent actuality where it always remains available, and in participation where it coexists with nature and can choose at every moment, in the presence of events, to exercise or relinquish itself.

X. Freedom as the First Beginning.

We can now say of freedom that it is a first beginning in the sense that it is the very origin of time, that is, an origin that is only origin, or the origin at every moment of everything that can occur in the moment. It is, if you will, this first beginning that always begins anew.

It escapes the law of time because it is itself a cause that is not the effect of anything. And even the effects it produces can always cease to be related to it because they belong to the world of time where events unfold in a successive order and where the past always appears as a sufficient cause for the future. But this is an illusion that shows that the entire process of becoming is only a projection of free action, that it expresses its power and its limitations, in such a way that even where this action is exerted, it establishes between events a necessary order of which it itself is the reason, and where it falters, a necessary order still, but one that depends only on the simple slope of time.

It is therefore evident that the first beginning of time is always present in the entire span of time, although it can be considered as always absent if time is considered self-sufficient.

Thus, we are far from Bergson’s thesis that freedom is always the expression and accumulation of the entire past, insofar as this very accumulation explains the novelty at every moment of creative impulse. On the contrary, free action is always a new beginning for us, never a continuation. It is a rupture, a conversion. The fact that life must start anew at every instant is an affirmation inseparable from our best resolutions, but it is difficult to maintain them, and soon the past once again enslaves us. The Ancients believed that if there was a new life after death, it could only arise after we had crossed the waves of Lethe. However, death cannot help but express to the fullest the experience of existence itself. And in existence, it is the nature of freedom to make us truly spiritual beings, that is, beings who, by freeing themselves from the bondage of the past, constantly produce their own reasons for action.

XI. Freedom, which is Spirit in Action, Creates its Own Reasons.

Freedom cannot be defined by indeterminacy or indifference, which is a negative definition that would reduce it to a pure state of equilibrium until an external solicitation, however weak it may be, tips the balance. It is essentially the power to determine oneself; and indifference, when it persists, is a mark of extreme weakness and perfect inner emptiness: it is a state from which we always seek liberation. It is very remarkable that the word “determination” can serve both to exclude the existence of freedom and to designate, on the contrary, its most specific act: we speak of a “determination of the will” or even “having determination” to evoke a power to act that comes from us and not from things. This is because freedom opposes determinism only as an activity determined by reasons to an activity determined by causes, or, which is the same thing, as an activity that proceeds from consciousness to an activity that proceeds from nature.

No act can be justified by pure freedom alone, but only by reasons that the self ratifies, in which it recognizes and commits itself. But then it seems that freedom ceases to be a first beginning. For it will be said that there are reasons above it that command and subject it. However, this is not the case, unless these reasons are materialized and turned into things. But if freedom is spirit in action, one cannot say that it is foreign to all reason, as the proponents of indifferent freedom do, nor that it obeys reasons, as the proponents of intellectualism do. It must be said that it is itself the creator of its own reasons or that it is an activity that justifies itself. Reason is not its model or rule. It is its effect and its fruit. Only an activity that has produced its own reasons is a free activity. For there is no freedom in an activity without reason, nor in an activity subject to reasons that it has not produced itself. And it is not objected that their origin lies then in an arbitrary power that dictates them, since on the contrary, this power ceases to be arbitrary precisely where it generates the criterion that judges it. The nature of reason is not changed by considering it not as the rule that expresses it, but as the act from which it proceeds. And it is useless to say that it could have been otherwise, since if it is freedom that brings it into being, it is so that it can recognize its validity and submit itself to its jurisdiction. There is a circle between being and reason for being that is undoubtedly characteristic of a first term, and where we see the self proving that it is free by drawing from itself the reasons that justify it. Thus, freedom simultaneously authenticates its own interiority to itself. There is nothing external that determines it. It becomes one with the spirit considered in its pure activity and in its perfect sufficiency 12.

Chapter XII. Metaphysics of Participation

I would like to thank the University of Padua, and especially Professor Stefanini, for kindly inviting me to give a presentation here on my philosophical perspective. I feel a strong emotion and joy to be in this land of Italy, which is connected to the land of France by ancient and venerable bonds, and where every French person aspires to come one day, as if to the cradle of light and the homeland of arts. I feel extremely honored to speak at such a famous university, which has had such a great reputation in history, following in the footsteps of many illustrious professors who have presented their own perspective on the same field before me. But will I not disappoint you by reiterating a thesis that you have already heard and become familiar with? And are there so many different views in philosophy that one can think and say anything, as if philosophy could never become a certain knowledge, that is, common to all?

But we know well that philosophy cannot be equated with knowledge that passes from one mind to another like an anonymous commodity, which can be acquired and made one’s own without engaging the being that we are and questioning its very essence. Knowledge always remains somewhat external to us: it extends our view of the world, it increases our power to act. But it tells us nothing about this personal being that is capable of saying “me” or “I” because this being is not an object that can be known among many others. It is not distinct from the inner act that brings it into being: it is born at every moment from the attention that we give to it. It is the secret center that gives the world its light and action its effectiveness. Now the essence of philosophy is to be, first and foremost, not a knowledge of things, but a reflection on this very center that illuminates everything that is. It is not an auxiliary of action that supports and multiplies it; it is a return to its very origin, where we seek to discover its possibility and its meaning. All knowledge aims to give us a representation of being, but in philosophy, we seek to reach being itself, which is never possible except at the point where the exact coincidence between the self and being is realized. And while knowledge aims to increase my power, the essence of philosophy is to grasp the very genesis of this power, at the very point where I dispose of it and assume it.

Hence, it seems, the inevitably personal character of philosophical inquiry. When I meet a scholar, they show me the universe itself. When I meet a philosopher, it is themselves, not in the details of their manifested life, but in the responsibility they have taken for themselves in relation to this universe where we are all placed. That is why they immediately transport us to the very core of everything we are capable of knowing and doing, to the very point from which knowledge and action both spring forth. They can only offer us a perspective on all reality, a perspective that contains the entirety of reality in principle, but it is a perspective that is theirs and, therefore, unique in the world. Thus, their very person is delivered to us. But it is not only delivered to us, like that of a painter, in the subjective landscape they present to us, which always reveals a new aspect of the world. For they do not reduce themselves to the pure gaze they cast upon things; they are beings who live, and their life is expressed not only through the image they create of the world but primarily through the self-awareness they possess, through the discovery of a possibility within them that they are responsible for actualizing, contributing through the same act to their own creation and to the creation of the world. Thus, philosophy is not just, as commonly believed, a speculative matter; to say that it is ontology is also to say that it places us at the heart of being and that it will show us the genesis of being itself, inviting us to participate in its production.

Hence the incomparable emotion that philosophical thought evokes in all those, even the most ignorant, who sense its meaning and scope. We expect from it a sort of revelation of the being that we are, grasped in the very act by which it becomes what it is. That is why the philosopher’s reflection has a character that is both rigorously universal and yet irreparably personal. But these two characteristics, instead of opposing each other, coincide. For every philosopher presents us with a thought in action, an image of the world that takes shape before them, and at the same time, a life that is being constituted, in which a particular being assumes their own being within the totality of being and contributes to determining their own destiny along with the destiny of the world. Philosophy is a kind of self-creation, in which we cannot hope to uncover the secret of being without uncovering our own secret. That is why there seem to be as many philosophies as there are philosophers, and why we are always anxious to hear another person reveal their own vision of the world and the drama of their existence. But there is, nonetheless, only one philosophy. And while self-reflection may confine us to a solitude that is impossible to violate, it is a solitude that belongs to all human beings. First and foremost, no philosophy is ever completed like a painter’s canvas, for it is continually called into question by the one who thinks and lives it until the last hour of their existence. Even then, retrospectively, it remains an act that we try to grasp in its movement but cannot fix in a state. Thus, none of us can look from the outside at another’s philosophical endeavor. We do not merely witness it; we reenact it from within, for our own sake. Because philosophy is the very consciousness that we acquire of being, not as it is, but as it gives itself being within us. It is, therefore, first and foremost a possibility, and no one can tell us how to discover it and put it into action without making the same discovery within themselves and facing the same task to fulfill. We are not the same as another, and yet we are the same. We also have our own perspective on the world, but it can be modified and broadened by the suggestions brought to us by another. We also find different possibilities within ourselves, but encounters with others continually multiply and influence them. We also bear the responsibility for an existence that belongs to us alone and that it is up to us to fulfill; but every other existence is an example, a test, and a support for ours. Whether we want it or not, our personal existence is constantly collaborating with it. Therefore, it is true to say, on the one hand, that each philosopher has their own perspective, expressing their deepest and most personal intimacy, which, however, contains the entire universe in potentiality, and on the other hand, that there is a universe of truth and existence in which each person participates according to their abilities, obliging us to converge the different perspectives we can take on it, instead of opposing them in order to destroy each other. But what is important to note is that the universality here is a concrete universality that does not reside in the common features by which human nature is defined, and to which the individual might add individuality and life. On the contrary, it is at the point where each person encounters within their consciousness this universal and omnipresent source from which they constantly draw the light that illuminates them and the activity that animates them that they delve most deeply into their most moving and personal activity. And it is precisely when a philosopher speaks only of themselves that I listen to them as if they were speaking only of myself.

Thus, philosophy appears to so many people as abstract precisely because it conceals the supreme modesty that every philosopher feels in fully revealing their most intimate and hidden essence. But they also experience an indescribable fear, thinking that what they discover of themselves may not be discovered by others in themselves in such a way that they suddenly see themselves as they have shown themselves, both solitary and exposed.

This kind of identification of philosophical thought with our innermost being invites us to ask ourselves whether each person carries their own philosophy within them from birth, and whether all the reflections of mature age have the sole purpose of testing and justifying it. There is no philosophical idea that can satisfy us unless it is a kind of return to ourselves, a revelation of ourselves to ourselves. But this secret seems buried within us like a lost memory. One can understand the role assigned by Plato to the myth of recollection and the affirmation of Plotinus, which Novalis would later take up, that the essence of philosophy is to lead us back to our true homeland.

It has been said of every philosopher, and perhaps it is true of every human being, that their conception of the world resides entirely in a youthful thought to which they always return and which they never cease to expand and deepen. They receive more light as they draw closer to it. The truth for them resides at the point where it merges with the utmost sincerity.

Therefore, it is good for each person to try to recall their very first experiences in which, surpassing the world of appearances and habits, they believed to perceive, as in a flash, the very essence of the life they had received, as if existence had suddenly illuminated itself for them before quickly reverting to the safety of daily tasks. It is these experiences that they must not let slip away; they must always rediscover them. And the one who has the most philosophy, and who often appears the most alien to other people, is also the one for whom these experiences persist when others have forgotten them, so that they never allow themselves to be completely taken over by the mechanics of social life that constantly seeks to draw them away.

Therefore, one cannot speak of their own philosophical perspective without speaking of themselves, but it is also by speaking of oneself that one believes to be closest to the selves of others. As far back as we go in our memory, it seems that we find a dual experience that, by lifting us from the common representation we could have of things, brings us the revelation of existence as a kind of ever-recurring miracle. And what is a miracle if not the very mystery of things revealed to us in full light for an instant?

Now, the first metaphysical experience by which our self, detaching itself from the surrounding environment, suddenly becomes present to itself, is the experience of the power it possesses to introduce a change in the world by its own initiative alone, however humble that may be—the power to move a finger. The wonder lies in the fact that an act of will, invisible and barely perceptible, can suddenly, by a simple click whose inner workings I do not know, bring forth a movement that seems to emerge from nothingness and return to it as soon as I decide to interrupt it. There lies the experience of a self that is different from any object I can see, alien to everything that is other, and that identifies itself with this extraordinary power it exerts over things, that is to say, that makes it a cause and that, in this causality it sets in motion, exhausts the essence of its being, to such an extent that it cannot be a cause of anything without being simultaneously a cause of itself. Then, the experience I have of the world ceases to fascinate me: the very change I produce in it is nothing more than an appearance or a sign; I am nothing more than this pure power to act, the manifestation of which always surprises me, but from which I only retain the disposition I have towards it, allowing me to sometimes use it and sometimes not to use it. But then, I am nothing yet except by this usage, which I believe is always possible. It is inevitable that, once we become attentive to such an experience, we repeat it several times, as if to test and verify its ever-present, ever-simple, and ever-mysterious nature. The mystery does not lie in the visible effect of which I am the sole cause, nor even in this extraordinary obedience that I can demand from a part of my body; it lies in this possibility of being the initial starting point of an event that is about to happen, which makes me the initial starting point of myself. This is the experience of freedom without which I would be merely a thing among things, that is, without which I could never say “I.” This initiative that makes me be cannot be considered as posterior to the consciousness I have of myself; it produces it. Here, I grasp being in its nascent state, in its pure inwardness to itself, before there is anything to limit it or determine it. It is inevitable that this process by which it constitutes itself produces a certain disturbance in the world. But this disturbance is what it can be; it will be up to science to know it. The revelation is elsewhere; it lies in the very act by which, by making myself be, I take my place in a world that immediately bears my imprint. It is an act where interiority and exteriority are linked to each other like the phenomenon to the being and which presents this double advantage, compared to Descartes' “I think, therefore I am,” of revealing to us the “I think” in its own genesis and allowing us, without leaving this very act, to inscribe ourselves in the world through the mark it impresses upon it.

The second experience is inseparable from this act by which I am capable of saying “I.” It is the act of taking possession, a sort of reflection upon it that becomes immediate, and through which the totality of being suddenly becomes actual for us. Indeed, we immediately see that this act that makes us be can only be accomplished in the present. No act can belong to the past or the future. This means that we have never left the present and we will never be able to leave it. It is pointless to say that this act was present in the past or may be present in the future, but is no longer or is not yet; what does the past consist of, except in a present act that evokes it, and the future, except in a present act that calls it? One cannot say that these are different presents spread out over time, for the present is univocal; we only multiply it to constantly force ourselves to exit it. There is no difference in the present that successive modes of our existence enter, only in the nature of these modes, which become present in turn. Time resides in the relationship we can establish at each moment between the present of memory and the present of perception, between the present of intention and the present of its fulfillment. But these distinctions only make sense in relation to us; they have no ontological value. Time is nothing more than the very act by which we constitute our own essence, by converting the present of desire into a present of possession and the present of possession into a present of memory. But desire, possession, and memory are only the three moments of a single existence that cannot be expressed otherwise in order to be ours, that is, an existence that we have ourselves conquered. None of these moments can ever be dissociated from the present in which it finds its place, and the time that connects them is nothing more than the wake of our existence in eternity.

These two experiences have never left us: and it can be said that, as soon as they are revived and reanimated, our philosophical thought regains its youth. The metaphysical doctrine we elaborate is nothing but the development and, so to speak, the blossoming of these experiences. First of all, they have allowed us to surpass phenomenism significantly, in which we had been nurtured. For if being reveals itself to me in the act that makes me be, it is being itself that I grasp in this initial self-beginning that leaves nothing behind it that can serve as its support. It is the nature of the act of being to transcend all phenomena; it is itself the phenomenon of nothing. Metaphysics thus finds here a contact with the absolute that could not be given to it otherwise. But this absolute, far from tearing us away from the world in which we live, as metaphysics is asked to do when it takes the experience of phenomena as its starting point, always finds an expression and always leaves a trace in the very things we see, which bring us the reflection of both our power and our limitations. One does not proceed from things to the hypothetical act that founds them, under penalty of seeing the things themselves dissolve in the explanation given of them or become a kind of scandal to reason. One must proceed from the categorical act, which is synonymous with our own presence to ourselves, to the conditions in which it will be exercised, which oblige it to outline the contour of things through the very limits against which it comes, so to speak, to die. [218] This is the enterprise that we attempted in our first book, which we titled The Dialectic of the Sensible World, where we sought to show how the figure of the world, even in the apparently irreducible diversity of its qualitative aspects, expresses nothing more than the different modes by which the real, insofar as it surpasses the power of the self, nonetheless continues to respond to the indivisible act by which the self is constituted.

But this duality between the act we perform and the data that respond to it raises another order of problems. For we must ask ourselves how this duality itself is possible and why each of our operations is correlative to data that can be said to limit it but also provide it with content and an object without which it would be nothing more than pure potentiality. Now, almost all men have the prejudice that the world they call inner or subjective is a world that does not exceed the limits of their individual self and that only the world they call external or objective is a world that surrounds them, contains them, and surpasses them. However, subjective or inner does not mean individual, any more than objective or external means universal. And just as our own body is situated in an infinitely larger world with which its own relations ceaselessly multiply and increase, so we can say that our mind too is inseparable from an infinite mind with which it constantly participates and from which it borrows all the resources it is capable of possessing. Only it is by metaphor that we say of our self that it is situated in the infinity of the mind as the body is situated in the infinity of space. And what is most important to show is how, within subjectivity itself, this relationship between the individual and the universal is realized and how it is the object of an experience comparable to that of the relationship between my own body and the universe.

First of all, it should be noted that what I call my body and what I call the universe belong to a single domain, which is the domain of exteriority. They cannot at all be assimilated to an inside and an outside. And what proves it, by a sort of inversion, is that when I reflect on the necessity of bringing them in some way into my consciousness in order to be able to speak of them, then I say of one and the other that they are representations, and there is no difficulty in thinking that one encompasses the other. It is this observation in particular that has made idealism possible. Now we would like to show that the same is true [219] regarding the relationship between the self and the infinite mind: for both belong to the common domain of interiority, and it is a domain that carries within it the dual character of unity and infinity, just like the domain of spatiality. And just as it is undoubtedly impossible to perceive my own body otherwise than by assigning it a place within the whole of space, it is also impossible to conceive a thought that is mine other than by considering it as a determination of a thought that is itself without limits. Otherwise, we would be unable to say that it has its own limits: for such an assertion assumes that we can circumscribe it within a thought that always exceeds it, just as we are obliged, in order to recognize the periphery of our body, to trace it in a medium that is always beyond. And just as we could not conceive the possibility of the movements of our body without positing the existence of this medium, we also could not conceive the impulse of our thought or the operations by which it constantly enriches itself without a thought without limits from which it continually draws and which never ceases to provide for it.

However, such symmetry cannot be accepted without dispute. For it seems that we have the immediate experience of the place occupied by our body in the universe. Whereas there is a sort of contradiction in admitting that my thought can have at the same time the experience of itself and of an infinite thought in which it is, so to speak, bathed. There is no proof that everything that has the right to be called thought is not aroused in me by an activity that is properly and exclusively my own. And beyond the operations it performs and what they can make me know, there is perhaps nothing that properly deserves the name of thought. Reflection of this kind leads not only to idealism but to solipsism as well. And in any case, it seems impossible to posit beyond my thought the infinity of thought except by a purely logical hypothesis, which is itself burdensome and unverifiable.

However, things are not so simple. For in the field of subjectivity, I can distinguish what is me from what is not me, although it is in relation to me in the same way that, in the field of objectivity, I distinguish the body that is mine from all the bodies that are related to it, although I cannot say that any of them is mine. All these bodies, along with mine, are included in the same domain, but my body affects me through the feeling of an immediate presence that makes it susceptible to pain, for example, and prevents me from separating from it or denying that it belongs to me, whereas all the other bodies are nothing more for me than images or representations that can detach themselves from me and always remain, to a certain extent, not only external but foreign. Now things happen in the same way in the vast realm of subjectivity. Here I find again the distinction between my body and the world in the form of a distinction between the actual and the possible. There is an actual or actualized thought that is mine, which is always in correlation with an operation that I perform in the moment and that belongs to me alone. And there are linked to me, though not identical to me, all these potentialities that I cannot say are nothing since I may actualize them one day. Among them, I can distinguish two species: those that have been actualized by me in the past and that I can resurrect when I desire. It is considered that these belong to me, although they are enveloped in the darkness of unconsciousness. And there are those that have not been actualized yet, that may never be, but I cannot say that they have no connection with me, since they are, so to speak, delivered to my mind to the extent that it is capable of expanding and enriching itself. Now things do not happen otherwise in the relationship between my sensory being and the world of objects: for all the objects that constitute it are not present to me at once; those that are become so only through an actual relation to the activity of my senses; but beyond this narrow sphere, there are those that I have already perceived, that I can rediscover and recognize as if they were part of my own domain and had acquired with me a certain familiarity, and there are all those that I have not yet perceived, that I may perceive one day or may never perceive, yet they are there, they are linked to my body and contribute to its sustenance, just as all possible thoughts support my actual thought, of which they constitute an aspect and without which they could not be exercised.

But in order to understand what this inner experience we describe consists of, we must free ourselves from all comparisons borrowed from space. We must repudiate in particular the relation of container to content, which is inseparable from the relation between my body and the environment in which it is placed. These are the images that, when applied to the domain of spiritual life, incline thought toward pantheism. But in reality, there is nothing in the mind that is object or state, there is nothing that is not act. It is absurd to want [221] an act to be contained within a larger act and to be a part of it, even though every act assumes a greater power of which it is only the disposition. Thus, of this act we can say not only that it assumes a logical possibility of which it is the actualization but also that it carries within it an actual possibility that each of us knows well that we can either retain or put into practice. The relation of the possible to the real is not only the object of logical meditation but of everyday experience. It is the dramatic experience we have of life. Life is a choice among possibilities that present themselves on all sides to our thought before the self seizes them and realizes them; but it is in realizing them that it realizes itself.

However, it has not been noticed that this distinction between the possible and the real only makes sense for us. The possible is still part of the real, but a real that is only possible in relation to us as long as it presents itself to us so that we make it our own. The distinction between the possible and the real is the very condition of free action. Furthermore, this act implies a multiplicity of possibilities that are undoubtedly objects of thought for us, just as the things that surround us are objects of representation; and they evoke in us an infinite activity that they bring down to our level and divide for us to enable us to make it our own, just as the objects of representation evoke the infinity of the world, which they continually fragment to proportion it to the limited capacity of our attention and the multiplicity of our needs. Finally, when we set in motion the very activity that is proper to us, the limits it encounters, and the passivity that is correlative to it, clearly indicate the presence of an activity that stops us, that has the same form as ours but that we merely undergo. And likewise, the totality of the world must be present to us in order for us to isolate our body in the midst of others and open a path for it among them.

We must go even further. For we cannot begin to act without perceiving that this act that comes from us appears to us as having infinite rights: it is only experience that shows us the boundaries against which it stumbles. It must be said, on the one hand, that these boundaries are constantly sought to be surpassed, so that there always remains in it a potential infinity, and, on the other hand, that everything that stops us reveals an activity that stops us, that has the same form as ours, but that we [222] content ourselves with undergoing. And it is easy to see that this conception finds a kind of verification in the purely external image by which I inscribe this body, which I say is mine, into the world. There is therefore the same solidarity between our body and the rest of the world, which supports and nourishes it, as between the act that establishes our personal existence and the absolute act on which it depends, and which continually provides for it. However, it must be observed that just as my body is unique in the world and radically distinct from all others because it is the only body in the world that affects me, so the act by which the self is constituted not only enjoys an independence that is its own and prevents me from confusing it with any other, but it also has absolute control over itself in the very sense that I can say it is mine. This is the very secret of participation, which I can say founds my freedom rather than abolishing it.

It is appropriate now, before showing how participation constitutes itself as a metaphysical experience at all times, to further explore the relationship we have established between the two notions of act and possibility. First of all, the act, like being, has appeared to us as both infinite and univocal. Regardless of the point where the act is accomplished, regardless of the individual who assumes it or the object to which it applies, like being, it always remains the same. Acts, like beings, differ from one another only by their determinations. But with respect to our own act, and in order for it to be accomplished, everything that surpasses it must appear in inner experience as an ocean of possibilities from which it constantly draws, that is to say, chooses, without ever being able to be engulfed by it. It is the choice between possibilities, the actualization of one of them, that will gradually constitute our own being.

However, it would be a particularly grave mistake to imagine the absolute in the form of an undetermined and infinite virtuality that it would be the task of particular beings to bring into existence according to their powers. For where would these particular beings themselves derive their existence from? Far from being able to confer it upon a possibility that does not possess it in advance, they must receive it from elsewhere. They have no power other than that of giving themselves a determined form of existence. Therefore, the absolute from which they proceed cannot be an absolute of possibility, which would undoubtedly be a kind of contradiction in terms; it is the absolute [223] itself of being, which only becomes an infinity of possibility in order to make itself participable by all particular beings. However, it must not be forgotten that each of them receives existence, which is the power to give oneself through a free act the being of one’s choice, from this very absolute. Moreover, at the moment of exercising this act, they borrow from the absolute not only the possibility they will actualize, but also the power to actualize it. This means that “it is only in relation to us that the absolute becomes the totality of possibility.”

However, if instead of considering the relationship we have with this absolute, we focus on the relationship of this absolute with us, then we will witness “an extraordinary reversal” that the previous observations prepare and sufficiently justify: for the absolute must be defined not so much as the sum of all possibilities but as their origin and source. It is with respect to the absolute that the world, all things, and all beings that fill it appear as possibilities that actualize according to certain laws, which we can say are the conditions that allow consciousnesses to live and freedoms to come into play. This is undoubtedly the foundation of all cosmology: it testifies to this admirable gift by virtue of which God presents himself to all creatures as an infinite possibility, but which can lead humans to believe that it depends solely on their own powers to create it and implement it, forgetting the omnipresent source from which this double power proceeds within them. Atheism and the worship of humans are like a homage paid to this “actual” omnipotence to which humans are forever incapable of equaling, and which they continually capture and use to their own advantage, opening up a career in time that will have no end.

These are the foundations of the theory we have named the theory of participation, which is itself nothing more than the description and unfolding of a primitive experience through which the self discovers and constitutes itself. But this theory encounters several objections that we must now resolve. First, the act of participation evokes the idea of the relationship between part and whole, to such an extent that it seems that the principle from which the self constantly draws already contains everything that it is ever capable of acquiring. This would indeed lead us straight to pantheism. However, all the acts we can perform, all the states we can experience, all the thoughts we can form, all the objects we can perceive are within our reach. None of them exists in God, where it would suffice to isolate them in order to make them ours. God is only their supreme reason. All the determinations that fill our consciousness, or, if one prefers, all the particular modes of existence, and even the world that we have before our eyes, are constituted according to the direction of our attention and intention and by virtue of the general conditions that allow our finite being to distinguish itself from the infinite being and yet find in it all the resources it continually employs. There is nothing in God of what we see in ourselves; but there is also nothing in us that does not consist of a certain activity that comes from him, of which he has left us only the disposition.

Secondly, one may wonder how this activity can be shared, come from God, and yet be ours. If it is God alone who acts in us, pantheism is confirmed rather than refuted. Yet our everyday experience, both humble and lofty, can be invoked to observe that every activity we engage in is an activity that is always offered to us but always surpasses us, and one can say that it is only up to us to make use of it and direct it. Thus, it is always God who acts in us, but through an action that establishes our freedom instead of excluding it. How could it be otherwise if God can only be defined as the being who derives all his reasons for acting from himself, that is to say, who possesses sovereign freedom, such that what he communicates to us can only be the gift of freedom through which we are called to become what we are in turn? It is in this relationship between our own freedom and the freedom of God that the secret of creation resides. And no one doubts that it is precisely at the point where our freedom is exercised with the greatest perfection that our union with God is also the most perfect. It is a great idolatry to think that a spiritual creation can be similar to that of a craftsman who leaves behind an inert work in which only the mark of his action remains. On the contrary, in the relationship between divine freedom and our own, we have a kind of image in the relationship that each consciousness can have with another. There is only communication between them to the extent that each of them, instead of imposing its mark on the other and constraining it, awakens it to freedom itself. To undergo the influence of another person is also to discover through contact with them a freedom that they have taught us to discover at the depths of ourselves.

Thirdly, it will be observed that this freedom, far from making each of us, as some contemporary philosophers believe, a kind of God, at least in the domain where it is called to reign, and from making us at every moment an absolute first beginning of ourselves, reveals our close relationship with God even in the act by which we turn against him the power he has given us. It is in this possibility of taking the place of God, and consequently of denying and fighting against him, that the proof resides that our freedom itself partakes of its own sovereignty. But it is contradictory for it to be able to be exercised without him: not recognizing the principle from which it proceeds is also to corrupt its use. We do nothing, even in rebellion, except through the very activity that it lends us. And that is why the purest action is also the most docile, a simple gesture of welcome or openness to an omnipresent efficacy to which we always oppose a kind of screen, but which is always there, ready to respond if we so desire, to all the solicitations of the event. This seems to me to sufficiently prove that all the freedom we have at our disposal resides at every moment in the faculty to assume or decline a possibility that is offered to us. It lies entirely, with regard to existence itself and each of its modes, in an oscillation between consent and refusal.

Hence, one understands the rigorous connection and yet the infinite distance that separates the creative act from the derived act by which we are allowed to create ourselves as what we are. This distance is one we constantly try to bridge, but we never succeed. Each of the operations we perform elicits an echo that responds within our passivity. This once again shows that there is nothing we can produce and that nothing can appear to us in the world except through an approach that makes us participate in an infinite activity but always encounters a given that limits and completes it. The world measures and fills the interval that separates infinite activity from finite activity; therefore, it must always be a given world for us. But it is a given whose form is mobile and always correlative to the acts we perform; its configuration simultaneously expresses their nature and the extent to which they can be carried, that is, their effectiveness and their deficiency. It is this deficiency that all objects of experience, all inner states, both express and fulfill. Thus, the shape that the world takes in space and time can be discerned: in [226] space, where it presents itself to us from the outside and simultaneously as an external and actual immensity that we never manage to embrace, and in time, where it opens a path for all movements of the body or thoughts, such that it equally allows us to explore it in all its parts and give our inner life a development that has no end. In this way, one can imagine how a deduction of categories can be constituted and how the world of experience and science can become the instrument of our spiritual progress; and thus, it is always an obstacle that resists our own activity, a figure that expresses it, and a test that judges it.

If we were to summarize the essential features of this philosophy, we could say that it is the development of an experience, which is not the experience of something external to oneself, but the experience of one’s own self in which we discover the very characteristics of “this self of being” that the things we see never reveal to us except as appearance or phenomenon. However, the self can never be apprehended in a state but in an act by which it makes itself what it is. Yet, this act is never independent or isolated: just as there is an experience of the body within the space that supports and surrounds it, the experience of our own activity is also the experience we have of the personal disposition of an activity that surpasses and animates it. And just as the world that extends around the body we call our own because it affects us is only a world of representations, the activity that surpasses the activity we are capable of assuming is the totality of possible activity. However, if it is only possible in relation to the act we accomplish, it possesses within itself an actuality that provides this act with all the efficacy necessary for its fulfillment; and in relation to its eternal actuality, it is our own act that is initially a possibility destined to be realized or not in time. The participation of our own activity in absolute activity finds a sort of expression, and perhaps application, in this mysterious action that spirits exert on one another, which can be described as a mediation that resembles mutual creation. Therefore, if it is the infinite perfection of God that calls into existence an infinite multiplicity of individual consciousnesses destined to form a spiritual society among themselves and with Him, these ontological relationships find a means of realization in the appearance of a material world where each being encounters, at the limit of its operation, an object that it apprehends and that provides all beings with the vehicle of their action and the instrument through which they communicate 13.

Chapter XIII. The Narrow Path

I. Substitution of Being-Action for Being-Object.

For a human being, discovering their existence is the same as discovering their own subjectivity. Only through subjectivity does one have the power to say “I.” Otherwise, they would be an object that exists only in the consciousness of another, that is, an appearance or a phenomenon. But there is no greater emotion than the one such a discovery can bring. By ceasing to be a thing among things, one may believe that their own reality dissipates: there is nothing within them upon which their gaze can rest or that their hand can grasp. They appear to themselves only as a possible being, that is, inconsistent and uncertain, lacking determination and contour, and can only enter existence through an act they have the power to accomplish. Their inner being no longer possesses any of the characteristics that allowed it to be inscribed in the spectacle of the world; not only is there nothing within them that can be shown, but the very operation by which they seek self-knowledge finds nothing before it that it can apprehend because it cannot be distinguished from the operation by which they continue to become. Thus, it is understandable that the discovery of the self by oneself robs the self of all security. The knowledge of what I am is inseparable from the ignorance of what I can be, that is, what I will become. And what I can be, what I will be, is everything that I am: I reside entirely in a freedom I exercise, in a responsibility I assume. Undoubtedly, one can say that this potential being is like a sort of intermediary between being and non-being, belonging to nothingness before acting, and only through action does it attain being. However, it should not be understood in this way. For I cannot conceive of nothingness as a “before,” or being as an “after,” much less the transition from one to the other as a becoming. The only way for me to posit a being that is mine and that I can never detach from myself as an object is to posit it as identical to the act that posits it, that is, within an experience that does not involve time and, in a certain sense, abolishes it, as it is always current and constantly being done. It is true that from that moment on, the reality of the object in which I initially placed my trust recedes and fades away. I clearly see that the property of the object is only to appear to me, and inevitably, I wonder about the relationship I can establish between its appearance and its being. I cannot help but search to see if what it shows me is similar to what it is. Even the most naive consciousness questions this correspondence. Such is the truth that an external being can never be immediately apprehended as being, and being can only reside for me at the very point where I am, where instead of opposing it to know it, I identify with it to produce it. Being as being can only be grasped at its source or in its own genesis.

Access to metaphysics is therefore only possible through the substitution of actual being with object being. However, one can see the difference that exists between this thesis and traditional idealism. Too often, the act of the subject is understood as the act of knowledge, so that the subject is still constituted in relation to the object. The model of being is always provided by the object, but, by a twist of fate, being eludes us definitively: on the one hand, the object is reduced by the premises to the state of representation, and on the other hand, as the subject of representation itself eludes representation, it is impossible to say anything about it. However, the existence of the self does not reside in the act of knowledge that would subordinate it to a world of which it knows nothing unless it represents it. This existence is only the self’s because it is indiscernible from the very act by which it posits it as its own. Therefore, this act can be defined in a certain way as a creative act. However, this formulation should not be accepted without two important qualifications: the first is that it is not the creation of the representation of the world, that is, the world, because we know well that this representation comes from outside, that it is given to a certain extent, or that we create nothing more than the perspective in which we embrace it. Therefore, it is an entirely internal creation, [230] the creation of oneself by oneself, without which it would not be possible to say “I.” Yet, this creation cannot be regarded as a creation ex nihilo: this constitutes the second qualification. The self is only a first beginning insofar as, finding in itself the possibility of itself, it alone can actualize it. And this possibility is the very gift it has received from a power by which it can claim no other existence than the one it has given itself. It should be added that this possibility can only be what it is because it contains within itself a margin of indeterminacy between certain limits that make us individual and finite beings and define our situation or nature. But within these limits, we can make the best or the worst use of it, recognize in it a call addressed to us, a vocation proposed to us, or conversely leave it unused, divert it for our own benefit, or even betray or corrupt the very forces it gives us control over. That is why, in this incessant creation of ourselves that is the only existence that is truly ours, it seems both that we do everything and that we do nothing, that there is nothing that does not belong to us and that does not depend on an act of freedom, and yet the activity we exercise comes from a higher source than ourselves, and we limit ourselves to clearing a path for it within us, unable to engender or regenerate it. Therefore, one could say that the deepest act by which the self constitutes itself in its inviolable secret is an act of consent or refusal. Hence, this twofold consequence: on the one hand, the self, as a unique being distinct from all others and jealous of its own independence, has the illusion of asserting itself more profoundly through refusal than through consent, without realizing that through this “no,” it vainly tries to deny everything that makes it exist; on the other hand, in pure consent, one could reproach the self for abdicating and losing itself in a being that surpasses it, without realizing that consent is the only thing in the world that depends on it, and by giving it, it appropriates that to which it consents.

II. Solitude of Individual Subjectivity.

However, this primacy of the subject, and within the subject, of free action, was bound to have unexpected effects. If it is true that the self resides at [231] the point where freedom decides between yes and no, then it should be attributed absolute value, and one should say of humans what Descartes said of God, namely, elevate them above the limitations imposed by nature and the laws prescribed by intelligence, or define them exclusively through arbitrariness and gratuitousness. But then, one falls into an insoluble contradiction: this extreme sovereignty only serves to reveal the extreme impotence within us. In fact, being persists as the only true “in-itself,” an opaque, harsh, impenetrable “in-itself” in the presence of which the “for-itself” experiences its emptiness and, so to speak, its ineffectiveness, that is, its unreality. This being is the object in its pure state, detached from any relation to the subject, in the presence of which the subject, reduced to subjective solitude and armed with an unused omnipotence, finds itself confined in an insurmountable anguish, conscious of an existence unequal to the being that has been said to nauseate it without surprise. How could it be otherwise when we want both the freedom that belongs to us to be the same as the freedom that belongs to God, and yet it makes us feel the infinite distance separating our being from God’s being, so that our misery resides in the very ambition within us to become God while remaining assured that we will never attain it?

Things can be presented in another way. If the discovery of being only occurs within our own subjectivity, does it not render us irretrievably solitary? For the non-self can only be an object to us, but this object that is only represented to us is nonetheless being itself if we consider it in a sense independent of us in its properly absolute objectivity. Perhaps, however, the expression “absolute objectivity” is a contradiction. For if the object only has meaning in relation to a subject, the object called an object “in-itself” is nothing more than the object as it could appear not to a particular subject but to a subject in general. However, subjectivity is always individual. It is enclosed within the very limits it experiences and feels. What could the subjectivity of another be to me? I make it an object of thought for myself, but still an object, of which I know well that it never coincides with the reality it represents. The coincidence of subjectivity and being verifies itself in me alone. What can be said of freedom itself, which defines subjectivity in its very essence? What could an act of freedom that I do not accomplish be to me? My freedom, which is myself, is therefore confined to the pure disposition it has of itself. And one can say that the very power it attributes to itself prevents it from ever transcending its own limits.

However, around it, the vast domain of the object reigns. This object is foreign and blind to it; perhaps it is even necessary to say that, to the extent that it is heterogeneous to it, it is not indifferent but hostile to it. And it is the very force of this certainty by which the self identifies with its freedom that compels it to objectify everything around it, and perhaps even to consider this object as possessing the character of being, which it refuses to attribute to its own freedom because it is always inseparable from a possibility in which it is incapable of establishing itself. Therefore, no matter how much importance is attached to subjectivity and freedom, it seems that one cannot prevent the self from having a nostalgia for being, which can only be appeased if the immanence of the self paradoxically and contradictorily envelops the transcendence of the object within itself.

Thus, it seems that the subjective must inevitably remain individual. Subjectivity is a confinement for the self; no matter how much its field may expand, the self will never manage to surpass it; that would be a kind of suicide. Its very essence is to be devoted to absolute solitude. This is the source of its ambition, its powerlessness, and its despair. It is confined within itself as in a prison whose walls can continuously recede, but from which it will never escape. It is reduced to its own forces, to the mysterious possibilities it finds within itself, lost in a world that refuses it and will never come to its aid. It feels abandoned, and the feeling of this abandonment confirms its misery. It has been said at times that the path taken by idealism would inevitably lead to solipsism. But experience shows that solipsism cannot accommodate itself to either this indifference to the outside or this pure self-enjoyment, or this sovereignty over the spectacle of the world to which it could have laid claim in more tranquil times: the outside never ceases to press it and constrain it; it suffers in its flesh and in its soul, and it finds none of the resources that would allow it to suffice for itself. For the world that surrounds it pursues its destiny without casting a gaze upon it or lingering over the wounds it may inflict. The possibilities it finds within itself remain an enigma whose origin it does not know. How could it determine their use? And the solitude in which it engages is like a tunnel leading to death, which is like an [233] abyss, which, however, can be said to be in both senses of the word the only end for which life is made.

III. Subjectivity as a Received and Open Possibility for Everything that Can Be.

However, it is not certain that subjectivity can ever, through a process of rupture, open itself to an exteriority where it would find a kind of security—because how would it find security elsewhere than deep within itself?—nor is it certain that subjectivity always has an exclusively individual character: for it turns out precisely that the self is not a being whose subjectivity is complete. It is mixed with objectivity: and it is this objectivity within it that attaches it to a body and constantly limits and distracts it. In this way, it also continues to manifest itself and consequently, according to a term popularized by the Hegelians, to “alienate” itself. But if it is within itself that it must seek its true being, which frees it from the slavery to which things reduce it, will it not fall again into that illusory and almost ghostly existence from which it believed it had been liberated, and always remain in search of a being it does not possess, as if its very essence were to always want to go beyond itself without succeeding? This is precisely the misery to which the prejudice that being resides in objectivity reduces us. However, we know well that, from this object itself, we can never make our own anything other than the idea or the meaning, that it can never be for us an end in which consciousness rests and takes pleasure, but only a means that allows our spiritual powers to exercise themselves and our field of subjectivity to continually expand. Thus, the object is in a sense a mediator between our individual subjectivity and a subjectivity that is potentially universal, but into which it allows us to penetrate gradually. In fact, our own subjectivity is a subjectivity that can be said to always be open: it is always capable of acquiring more extent and depth. It is impossible to preassign limits to it that it would be forever impossible to exceed. This is because it is defined first and foremost by the possibility that it is in advance coextensive with everything that can be; it suffices for this to discover within it a movement that extends to infinity and in which infinity, without ever being attained by it, nevertheless continually sustains and supplies it.

Therefore, it is only within ourselves that we find being, which is not, like the object, a phenomenon, for then there would have to be an even more hidden inner realm of which it would only reveal the appearance to us. But this would only be possible, at least to a certain extent, if by interiority we understood only psychic states. Then, these states, far from being the phenomena of the soul, would be more accurately called epiphenomena of the body. For true interiority resides in an act, that is, in the actualization of a possibility whose disposition is given to us and which, at the moment we put it into action, engages us decisively and personally in Being, reducing to mere appearances both the objects of the external world and the states of the soul that depend on them. This is because the heart of subjectivity resides in the exercise of freedom. It is only with freedom that subjectivity takes on an ontological character. It resides in that indivisible point of consciousness where we can say yes or no in an absolute alternative, where the being that we are is the very being that at every instant we are capable of giving ourselves. This choice, which no other being can accomplish in our place, constitutes us in Being as a separate being and which, in a sense, is like the perpetual beginning of itself. And we immediately see that, in this pure power that is entrusted to us, no limitation can be introduced that would reduce this power to nothing, no matter how distant it is supposed to be. It is only there that our being comes into contact with the absolute. And it is not surprising that this power, insofar as it is foreign to all limitation and therefore to all determination, is like an infinity of possibility to which experience will always provide some new point of application.

However, we cannot doubt that we have received this power: this miracle of our independence is the most glaring attestation of our dependence. Without anything being able to detract from this indivisible sovereignty, which means that it is still exercised even when it refuses or abandons itself, it can only come into play in a situation that it has not created itself and that testifies to its solidarity with the entire universe. As for this infinite possibility that opens up before it, it is not its own work: it is only offered to it. And if it is freedom that establishes our being in the absolute, it is because it is nothing more than a certain disposition that we have of the very being that is given to us. Without this disposition, we would be nothing but a thing among things. Thus, of this freedom, it must be said both that it is ours and that it is not ours. It is ours since it is nothing other than by its very exercise; and it is not ours since it implies not only our own rooting in a being that surpasses us, but also the very gift of this power that comes from above and that allows us to make ourselves what we are. One cannot say whether one should admire more the fact of having received it or being capable of putting it into action. Without a doubt, there is no greater idea in philosophical speculation, nor a deeper feeling in religious consciousness, than through the meditation of this creative act which, before being a creation of the world, is like an eternal self-creation by oneself, but a creation of which it must be said that by continually calling into being existences that have the task of creating themselves, it still makes them participate in its very being, that is, in that pure act which constitutes it and from which all these acts proceed by which every freedom, at the very moment it separates from it, always borrows from it.

IV. Significance of Participation.

Thus, we are necessarily led to examine the significance of participation, which is undoubtedly the fundamental experience on which metaphysics as a whole is based. It is an experience that is not only primitive but constant, which is the experience of life itself, and all other experiences are nothing more than specifications of it. We find a kind of objective image of it in the representation of the world found in common consciousness, which materialism claims reduces everything to; namely, that each individual being possesses a body that is located in the world, and although it has a determined boundary itself, it remains in relation to everything around it and draws from it everything that allows it to subsist and grow.

However, this external experience is not sufficient for us. First, because it is external and can only provide us with an external view, that is, the appearance of being and not its essence, the essence that we have shown can only be reached through an internal act that allows us to say “I.” The effort of philosophical thought throughout history has been to return to this obvious but forgotten truth that being is interior to itself and not external to itself, which is contradictory. Such an observation would be enough to free us from phenomenalist objectivism, which is a doctrine of convenience and in which the fascination with the image continually leads us back. Furthermore, when we limit ourselves to identifying our self with our body by saying that it is part of the world, we only retain the content of the affirmation at the expense of the subject who affirms it. However, this subject enjoys a kind of preeminence in relation to the affirmation, not only because it is the one who judges its truth, but also because if it were not itself established in being, it could not say anything about any being. Finally, this very power it has to embrace a world that surpasses it and yet delimit a territory that is properly its own cannot be exercised without the consciousness it has, which continually puts the world it represents and the body that affects it in relation to itself, rejecting them.

Therefore, we are obliged to go beyond pure phenomenalism. This doctrine is only sustainable if the world and the body are already suspended from the consciousness that the self has of itself, without which we would have no knowledge of either the body or the world. But if the self is nothing more than the subject of knowledge, its existence thins to the point of being nothing more than an ideal, abstract, formal support for the universe that could not exist without it and only arises from its relation to it. It is then said to be a transcendental subject, as Kant does, but we know nothing about this subject itself and cannot say anything because we can know and say nothing other than about the object of which it is only the condition, which prevents it from ever becoming an object for itself. This would lead to two discouraging consequences: namely, that the world reveals to us only the superficial layer that is its phenomenon or appearance, and yet, of this being that is ourselves and that sustains the experience we have of the world, we can only affirm this form or this inner void that only the phenomenon or appearance could fill. However, the subject is not only the subject of representation; it is an activity that possesses being in the very operation it performs and by its mere exercise reveals the deep and internal identity between being and acting; it is to discover at the same time that a thing and an appearance are one. This discovery contradicts our natural inclination to think that being is merely a thing, as if the act itself had no other purpose than to reach things in which it would be consummated and perish. But it is only if being is an act that metaphysics finds its true foundation; only then does an experience of every moment introduce us into being, instead of banishing us from it, and the being itself into which we penetrate, instead of being an inert and inaccessible block, becomes for us a life, a spirit of which the world we see is even less the figure than the means and the instrument. Because of this inner and spiritual activity within us, we cannot say that its only object is to construct the representation of the world; on the one hand, it would be the most vain and sterile game, at least if this world were only an image to it and if acting were not primarily to make oneself be by making something other than oneself be; and on the other hand, how could one conceive that the self would have the possibility of going beyond itself and representing something other than itself if it did not plunge into the infinity of being, from which it simultaneously draws its own power to say “I” and the power to know in its relation to itself that which surpasses it and of which it will never have anything more than the representation?

Therefore, it is easy to understand the significance of participation. It is the relationship established within us between our purely individual subjectivity and a subjectivity that is potentially universal, between the finitude of our consciousness and the infinity from which it is nourished, between an imperfect intimacy constantly mixed with externality and the perfection of an intimacy that is never altered or tarnished by any object or image, between an ontological depth that is an abyss to us, whose bottom we will never touch, and a phenomenal surface that continues to hold us and with which we never lose contact, between the absolute freedom of creation and a personal initiative that finds in this absolute both the possibility it possesses and the very strength it needs to actualize it. It is easy to understand that the secret of the world resides in the relationship between the freedom of God and the freedom of man. There is no other creation that is worthy of the greatness and majesty of God than the communication that He continuously gives to other beings of His very being. This is an act that we ourselves have a kind of experience of in the gift we make of ourselves to the beings we love. But through this act, God brings them out of nothingness, whereas we assume their existence, which until then was an existence of separation in relation to us, and it becomes an existence of union.

However, what does it mean to bring a being out of nothingness to make it a true being, that is, one that carries within itself the power to become or the responsibility for itself, if not to constitute it as a free being? Such freedom can undoubtedly only be exercised according to certain conditions that relate it to other freedoms, require it to distinguish itself from them and cooperate with them, and demand the presence of a world conceived as the field in which they all act and never cease to oppose and unite with each other. But the important thing is to see that without the multiplicity of free beings and without this world in which they pursue their personal and common destinies, there would be only God. And it is easy to understand that any free being that isolates itself in separate or hostile solitude separates itself from other free beings and from God. Furthermore, it can turn against God Himself the power it has received from Him. Thus, we see that in the act it accomplishes, there is nothing that does not come from God, and yet this act, in the way it is used or the direction it takes, depends solely on it.

Creation and participation are thus intertwined, instead of contradicting each other. The essence of an act is to be first and foremost self-creator and not a creator of a thing; but the infinity of the divine act is not separate from boundless generosity; its very being resides in the eternal self-giving by which it continually invites participation. And this participation is conceivable only if each participant receives the possibility of actualizing itself, without which it would be nothing more than an inert thing, radically heterogeneous to the creative act. Hence the meaning of the formula that we are created creators. The act of participation is a kind of response to the incessant call made to it by the very act in which it participates; the act liberates it instead of subjecting it. In finding God, the self finds itself; in separating itself from Him, it loses itself. In itself, it is nothing more than the being of a possibility; but this possibility, it has received, it has only the disposition of it. There is nothing in it that it can realize other than by asking God for all the resources it will have to employ to succeed. But it remains master of their use: the power that belongs to it resides solely in consent or refusal, and in this sense, it remains the author of its own destiny; but there is no call that it cannot refuse to hear, even in the grace that solicits it.

V. Different Forms of Pantheism.

We now understand why there is a risk of pantheism in all metaphysical reflection. This risk is even greater as consciousness rises higher in the feeling of the omnipresence of God that supports and animates it, and as it deepens the idea of an absolute and indivisible being compared to which our own being reveals only our limitation and misery. However, paradoxically, pantheism, which seems to have its source in our humility, constantly fuels our pride. It is similar to the development of any concept that, when taken to the extreme, turns into its opposite. To say that we are nothing before God and that God is everything is to say both that we are in God and that God is in us, or that we ourselves are God. Beautiful expressions like “In God we live, move, and have our being” incline us towards pantheism if not properly interpreted. Therefore, what needs to be explained now is how our life, our movement, and even our very being can only occur in God, yet without ceasing to be ours.

Firstly, it is important to note that the preposition “in” can be misleading. It has only a metaphorical use. It evokes space and a relationship of container to content. However, if the relationship we have with God is purely spiritual, we are blinded and fascinated by the relationship our body has with the world. We constantly observe that the body is part of the world, that the boundary that delimits it gives it a specific place within a whole where it is situated, and that it is subject to the laws of this whole, which govern its existence. But we forget that our self has an independent existence only if it is not reduced to the body, if it is consciousness or spirit, that is, a center of initiative that enables it to act on the world and to give itself a secret existence for which it bears responsibility and guardianship. It is true that it cannot separate itself from the body or the world. And the simplest thing for it is to imagine that it was created as a body in the world and with the world. But then we understand how its relationship with the Creator becomes external to it, and how the creative act itself fades away in its creation. Thus materialism is born, which must be described as the doctrine according to which the world is self-sufficient, and which only retains the phenomenon of being and ignores its intimacy as revealed to us in the act of participation, where we witness from within the moving drama of constantly receiving an existence that, instead of exempting us from acting, imposes immense duties upon us because it can only be realized through us. However, from the very source of our existence, we must always be able to detach ourselves so that we can unite with it through an act that is ours and establishes our own being instead of abolishing it.

Nevertheless, it is this immediate relationship, this dialogue between God and us within consciousness, that not only renders the world useless but also explains its appearance and allows us to understand its meaning. For the world is the means by which the mutual limitation of different consciousnesses is realized, and the possibility of their communication. It surpasses each of them and allows them to indefinitely enrich themselves. However, it is bound to be a world of appearances that cannot reduce true being, which always resides in invisible activity, to which the visible world serves as witness and the very condition of its exercise. Therefore, it is idolatry to say, “there is only the world,” because then we can no longer explain how the world of appearances manages to sustain itself, how it could have meaning, or how the very need to seek meaning in it arises within us. It would truly be absurd, without being able to comprehend the presence in it of that very faculty that allows us to judge it as absurd.

Thus, there is a form of pantheism that is nothing more than the negation of God or, equivalently, the identification of God with the whole, that is, with the world. If being is confused with the object, as we are naturally inclined to do, what can exist outside the world? The world and the whole are two expressions that are equivalent. However, there is a spirit that thinks the world, and it is difficult to incorporate it into the world other than through the body with which it is associated, as a center of perspective on the world without which there would be no world for it. If there is nothing outside the world, that is if the world is self-sufficient, one cannot avoid considering it not only as an object coextensive with space and omnipresent in an instant, but also as a living entity entirely involved in becoming, constantly transforming and being reborn indefinitely, as shown by examples of vegetation, animal growth, or even the progress of civilization. Consequently, we think there is an invisible yet immanent force animating it, manifesting itself in human consciousness, but producing all phenomena, even the humblest ones, and serving as the internal principle of an evolution without end. This is how the god of pantheism, like a deified nature, is often conceived. One can experience a kind of affective communion with it, as seen in many romantics. However, this life that permeates and uplifts the world cannot be confused with God because “there are only spirits and not the world” when it comes to God. It is the nature of the spirit to give itself existence instead of merely experiencing it, while the nature of the world is to serve it rather than enslave it. Strictly speaking, there is no pantheism of nature; naturalism is atheism.

It seems that a doctrine that posits being not in the world that appears to us or in the underlying life that animates it but rather in the very act of the Spirit, insofar as this act is its own origin and light, does not lead to the same result. If these are the characteristics by which being can be defined, reducing the world to being only an effect or a phenomenon in relation to it, then it is true that “the Spirit is God.” However, we are then exposed to another, perhaps more serious peril. Might not all particular existences be absorbed into this being-act in the same way they would be in the all-encompassing being, beyond which there are only modes that limit and determine it? Thus, a spiritual pantheism arises in which one attempts to derive all finite beings, as they depend on and derive all their reality from the concept of infinite substance reduced to absolute efficiency: all their determinations, as famously formulated, are negations. However, two observations must be made. First, in doing so, a kind of objectification of pure act is achieved in the form of a concept from which its content could be derived through analysis. Second, the existence of finite beings cannot be derived from it except superficially, as it itself presupposes a particular experience that always remains somewhat scandalous but reveals to me the finitude of being insofar as it implies an encompassing infinitude that cannot be thought of without it. In both cases, this primitive experience is forgotten, without which the system could not be sustained, and it reveals to me the connection between the act that enables me to say “I” and the absolute act from which it derives this power and which, through its very transcendence, allows it to be exercised. Above all, it is forgotten that it is through the initiative at our disposal that we ourselves gain access to the intimacy of being, to a being that is ours but inseparable from that absolute intimacy, free from all limitation, in which no distinction can be made between possibility and existence, and which is the very being of God. If it is not in the gift of our own being that we have discovered this being that is His, and from which our own being proceeds, then intelligence has no other being than the being of God, and we are forced to make God himself the supreme concept from which all particular existences must be derived by an inexorable necessity.

VI. The Narrow Path.

Thus, by wanting to grant everything to God, by asserting that there is no being that can exist other than as a part of God, we abolish His existence instead of making it evident and ever-present. God is hidden and not apparent. He is a source, not a sum. He is the God of souls, not bodies. He is neither the world that conceals Him more than it reveals Him, nor a concept that substitutes for Him like a name instead of apprehending Him as a being. He is an existence that means nothing to us except in its relation to our own existence, which continually provides it with the means to realize itself without ever abandoning or engulfing it. Pantheism finds its origin both in the idea of a total being, in which only its constitutive parts or successive moments are distinguished, and in the idea of a thinking being, in which only its operative forms are distinguished. But both conceptions stem from, the first, the representation of a world of things of which we are mere spectators, and the second, the idea of an intelligence that generates all its concepts. Neither of them takes into account the fundamental experience we describe, where the act that brings us into being is apprehended in its very exercise as the actualization of a possibility that we constantly receive along with the power to put it into practice. Neither of them questions the significance of this experience, in which our own being is apprehended at its own source as dependent in the origin of its own power and independent in the disposition left to it. Neither of them defines [243] the relationship between God and us as a properly spiritual relationship. For this relationship is neither a material relationship between a container and its content, nor a dynamic relationship between life and its modes, nor a logical relationship between intelligence and its concepts. It is an intimate and lived relationship between beings, in which one continually communicates to the other the possibility of self-creation, which must be said to be the highest and most beautiful form of creation that we can imagine. For every act of creation is an act of generosity and love. What is it for God to create an inert thing that is nothing other than the very will He has to draw it from nothingness and sustain it in existence, compared to the creation of another being, said to be made in His image, that is, as a spirit capable not of finding within itself sufficient resources, but only of using, according to its own choice, the resources that God continually supplies to it? The greatness of God shines forth in this view that to create, for Him, is to make us participants. Thus, it is to the extent that we are most closely united to God that we are also most free. As soon as we break this union, we fall back under the exclusive domination of the laws of nature.

The ambiguity of this metaphysical experience, to which all others are subordinated and which alone is capable of giving meaning to existence, admirably explains why there are two perils in which we risk succumbing at every moment: for what this experience reveals to us first is the intimacy of a being who is capable of saying “I,” who is therefore a subject-being for whom the rest of the world is phenomenon or appearance, and whose deepest subjectivity resides in the exercise of a freedom that only he can use. Shall we then say that this being is confined to its own solitude, from which it can never escape, and that if there is an infinite plurality of existences, none of them has the power to surpass its own boundaries or to communicate with any other? But we continually collide with these boundaries: the non-self ceaselessly affects us like a wound; thus our isolated life can only give us the feeling of our misery and produce in us despair. — However, we would not need to make so many futile efforts to try to break our own enclosure if, in the very experience of our own subjectivity, we consented to recognize the present presence of a being that surpasses us but from whom we borrow our own possibility and who continually [244] provides us with the very means to put it into practice. We do nothing other than in Him and through Him. Only, as soon as we fix our gaze on Him, we forget that everything we can do in Him and through Him, we do ourselves, in such a way that we incline toward pantheism without realizing that it is freedom that is the supreme gift that God has given us, that it is when we exercise it that we are united to Him, and when we resign it that we become separated from Him. To be free is to imitate God in the domain that is ours. And evil, which is the will to separation, far from being, as we sometimes believe, the testimony of our freedom, chains us instead to all the powers of instinct and nature. The consciousness of our freedom is the strongest proof we have of the existence of God, rather than appearing as a failure of His sovereignty.

Therefore, metaphysics is obliged to follow a narrow path. For the discovery of being in this intimacy of our own being, of which freedom is the pinnacle, threatens us with individualism and even solipsism that would lead us to hopeless pessimism. And the discovery, within this personal intimacy, of an overflowing source from which we derive what allows us to be everything we are, threatens us with the pantheism in which we sense that the self would be abolished and that, by confusing God with the whole, we would abolish God Himself as the light and providence of all spirits. But it is undoubtedly a great mistake to expect subjectivity to stop at the individual’s boundaries; for there is an individual insofar as he is not fully interior to himself, as his own boundaries expose him to externality. And it is no less an error to claim to give everything to God, including our own being: this deprives God of the creative power by which He has always been defined and which we continually experience in the very act that He allows us to accomplish, as a miraculous point of encounter where our supreme dependence is the foundation of our supreme independence.

But it is a point where it is impossible to establish oneself. And we continually oscillate between these two extremes, where sometimes we grant everything to ourselves and nothing to God, and sometimes everything to God and nothing to ourselves, without seeing that in the first case, there remains nothing in us but a power whose origin and use we cannot explain, and that in the second case, God no longer distinguishes Himself from His creation. But we can speak of our being and of the being of God only in the relationship that unites them, where [245] God Himself creates all particular beings by making them participate in His own creative power, so that they can always turn against Him the very forces He has given them. Thus, the mystery of man resides in the origin and use of freedom. And it is in the exercise of our freedom, which is a trial in which anguish and trust are always mixed, that we discover the meaning of this idea of possibility that pantheism has constantly ignored, which must be said to be the center of all metaphysical reflection and which reveals to us the very being that God gives us along with all the resources that enable us, by employing them, to fulfill ourselves 14.

Part Five: Wisdom as the Science of Spiritual Life

Chapter XIV. Wisdom as the Science of Spiritual Life

I. — There exists a traditional distinction that still dominates psychology today, and perhaps even philosophy as a whole. It is the distinction between intellect and will, or, if you will, between knowledge and action. Thus, philosophical reflection applies alternately to the determination of what is and the determination of what ought to be, and naturally distinguishes between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy. Just as in science, practice is not possible without theory, which provides it with the laws it implements. The role of the will is only to choose the ends that intelligence provides as means. And wisdom appears as a kind of more subtle and general technique that aims to give man happiness, not just power.

II. — It will be observed first that this distinction between will and intellect is not only verified through observation but also has a metaphysical foundation. For if man is merely a part of the universe, or, in a deeper sense, if he merely participates in that creative activity of which the universe is the visible form, it is easy to see that such a universe, insofar as it exceeds what we ourselves are capable of producing, can only be an object for us, that is to say, it must be apprehended through knowledge and, insofar as it can receive the mark of our action, it attests to the presence within us of an inner initiative whose course we alone can regulate.

III. — It is therefore natural to admit that we can only have an influence on things by learning the laws to which they obey. But then it is realized with admiration that man [250] is superior to these laws, not so much because he is capable of understanding them, but because he can use them and, so to speak, bend them in a way that serves his own purposes. Thus man has gradually become, according to Descartes' famous expression, the “master and possessor of nature.” Would wisdom, therefore, be this now assured mastery, this possession become available? No one thinks so. Science gives us a kind of intoxication of power. But wisdom consists in directing its use. Its task is therefore all the more difficult, as we see today, because this power has become even greater. Therefore, wisdom resides in a certain use of the will, which instead of allowing itself to undertake everything it can, never forgets that man is part of the universe and that by ceasing to proportion his action to his nature, he risks deranging or breaking it. Thus, the idea of wisdom has always been defined by the virtues of balance and moderation.

IV. — However, this cannot be enough for us. Wisdom must not be defined solely by virtues of negative appearance. Or rather, these virtues are only the mark and effect of its positive essence. It does not consist solely in a restraint that we must impose on our impulsive powers but in the fullest and most perfect exercise that we can give to our entire activity. It is not limited to resignation, which always accompanies a silent regret of not being able to go further. It can only be satisfied if it is assured of having established itself in a form of existence beyond which there is nothing and which, so to speak, gives it contact with the absolute at every moment and in every point. But this is a state that, instead of immobilizing it, never ceases to promote it, that is to say, to give it a movement that, in principle, extends to infinity. This implies the very discovery of spiritual life, which is the supreme principle of external or manifested life and which, far from engaging the opposition between intellect and will, transcends and abolishes it.

V. — It is quite difficult to contest that wisdom consists in a certain internal disposition of sensitivity and will, maintained consistently in the face of all events that may arise. But it is impossible to claim to direct them without knowing them. However, the knowledge we can take of them is very different from the knowledge of an object. And even reducing them to the state of an object would annihilate them. First of all, one cannot dissociate will from the sensitivity in which it takes root and on which it continues to resonate. But the knowledge of a feeling is the presence of that feeling in consciousness: it dies with it as soon as I stop experiencing it. I cannot detach myself from it to make it a spectacle. And common language uses the expression “knowing a feeling” to mean living it. The same goes for a voluntary act. It is by willing that I know myself as willing. And whoever seeks to observe themselves willing would leave nothing remaining of the act of willing in the pure consideration of the willed action. One cannot object that in all knowledge, there is the same difference between the knowing act and the known object, and that this difference itself is what establishes its possibility. What we want to show here is precisely that feeling and willing cannot be objectified without disappearing, whereas the essence of representation is to be realized only by objectifying itself, so that knowledge and objectification are two identical operations. On the contrary, feeling and action do not involve any other form of knowledge than the entirely internal operation that constitutes them. Hence the metaphysical value of self-awareness, which immediately reveals to me what makes me exist by accomplishing it, whereas knowledge is obliged to present me with something that always remains external to me and therefore to some extent foreign.

VI. — Therefore, there is only consciousness of my own activity and knowledge of an object. It would be as futile to try to transform my activity into an object, as certain branches of psychology do, as it would be to try to find in the object an activity that I do not exercise, as ancient metaphysics did. The duality of subject and object on which all knowledge is based corresponds to the duality of activity and passivity, which is constitutive of consciousness. Without it, my activity would be infinite, and I would be God. The activity that I deploy and call my will always finds an echo in my passivity, that is, in my sensitivity. The essence of wisdom seems to lie in regulating the ever-changing relationship between them. But it would be a grave mistake to think that my will here acts on my states to change their course as technique acts on an object to adapt it to my needs. For the states of my sensitivity are myself: they faithfully reflect the degrees and [252] level of my activity, instead of being a material to which it applies and disposes of at its whim. Therefore, if it is claimed that there is a duality of consciousness comparable to that of knowledge, there is the greatest difference between them: because the former, by giving me only the representation of the object, rejects it outside of myself, whereas the latter integrates the feeling into the consciousness I have of myself or rather makes the duality between feeling and willing a dialogue that is myself.

VII. — The properly human activity is the activity of the spirit. There is no higher activity on which it depends and which judges it. It is both creatively indivisible and self-judging. However, it is never pure: it is mixed with all the actions that come from the body, which continually obscure and enslave it. Wisdom seeks to emancipate it: it is a work of purification; it can do no more than restore the activity of the spirit to itself and make it reign alone over our life. Only then will our sensitivity become what it aspires to be. The effort of wisdom is reduced to this self-awareness and full exercise of activity. The states we experience follow and express it. Wisdom resides in the acquisition of an inner light that, by its mere radiance, engenders in us balance and happiness, and outside of us, the order that we seek to produce, which always needs to be maintained and is constantly called into question by our failures.

VIII. — We are, therefore, at the opposite pole of science, at least insofar as science is always the science of an object. However, wisdom is a kind of science, but one in which theory and practice cease to be distinguished: it is the science of spiritual life, that is, of acting spirit, a deeper and more secret science than all other sciences, the only one in which there is a necessary identity between knowing and doing. This identity is not a paradox, as is commonly believed: the impossibility we face here of opposing the subject to an object that differs from it (which is sufficient to demonstrate the limitation that the mere presence of the object imposes), highlights the ontological privilege that the spirit possesses in relation to itself, allowing it to be self-creator as well as the creator of its own reasons.

IX. — It cannot be otherwise because the essence of the spirit is to be value in action. Therefore, it is not enough to say that the spirit is the power to determine itself in the name of value. Thus, value must be another name for the spirit, which, in seeking to justify everything, is obliged to act in order to produce such justification and finds nothing above itself that justifies it. But if spiritual life is life itself insofar as it justifies itself, there is also no finer definition that can be given of wisdom. We are here far beyond all definitions that seek to reduce it to an act of acceptance, resignation, or merely moderation. It is a total demand in every moment, which, far from opposing heroism or sanctity, takes the form of one or the other depending on the situation or circumstances in which it must act.

X. — However, one cannot say that wisdom is the science of values because it is primarily the consciousness of the activity that produces them. And there is no human being who acts otherwise than by virtue of the attachment he feels to some value that he seeks to realize and without which he would remain inert. It may be alleged that one can be mistaken in the estimation one makes of it. It should rather be said that the estimation only expresses a particular perspective of one’s consciousness, still poorly liberated from animal nature but capable of acquiring greater depth and light. Such progress can make the values to which one initially entrusted oneself appear miserable. This is what Socrates saw admirably. No one ever acts except in accordance with the good that he knows. As soon as this knowledge changes, the person changes; they do not change otherwise. It is true that this thesis rallies all opponents of intellectualism against it, and this for two reasons: the first is that it seems that everyone believes they can say from experience that it is possible to know the good without doing it. But what kind of knowledge is this? One can know the good as an object and know that it is good because one has learned it or it has become a concept of one’s reason. But that is not knowing it as one must know spiritual things, that is, through that inner adherence that makes it our very activity, taking possession of itself and of the real end towards which it tends. The value in which I believe is the one that determines me and expresses the spiritual level I have reached. — The second reason is the opposite of the previous one: it will be said that the will seeks the good and that it always goes beyond the knowledge it has of it. But to want the knowledge to be in advance that of a thing already realized, that is, a mirage; after the fact, knowledge is only of an object. The true knowledge of the good resides in that inner disposition of the will, which, at the moment it seeks it, shows that it already holds it.

XI. — This analysis shows that wisdom resides at the point where, within each of us, freedom and necessity become one, where one could not act differently than one does, but because our activity has become spiritual, that is, it finds within itself those reasons for action that are indistinguishable from its essence itself. It should not be said, therefore, that wisdom is dependent on the will, understanding by will an arbitrary power that must subordinate itself to intelligence and does not always do so. For no one acts except according to what he sees. It is therefore important to know how to dispose not so much of one’s will as of one’s intelligence, which means of one’s attention. Now, in attention, intellect and will attest to their profound identity in a spiritual activity that encompasses and surpasses both. Thus their reciprocal action is explained, which means that attention must be defined as an act of the will, but one that generates knowledge, and knowledge as a light, but one that is necessary for the exercise of the will, without which it would not be distinguished from instinct. Likewise, if sensitivity is nothing more than an echo of the will in the passive part of ourselves, they cannot be separated from each other: their value lies in their meeting. It involves their reciprocity. For if the will is experienced as good only through sensitivity, it is sensitivity in turn that shakes the will and transforms it into love. Finally, if wisdom surpasses the duality of object and subject, then of freedom and necessity, and if it achieves this only by surpassing the duality of intellect and will in the act of attention, then the duality of will and sensitivity in the act of love, it can be said that it reaches its summit only where attention can no longer be distinguished from love, where it is attention that awakens love and where we are only attentive to what we love. If wisdom is the science of spiritual life, it is therefore because it always obliges us to understand and implement this living dialectic by which the different powers of the soul oppose each other only to unite. It is because it is first and foremost the discovery of their common source.

XII. — In the narrow sense of the word, knowledge is like illumination: it always implies a duality between light and its object. But wisdom is beyond knowledge, as light is beyond illumination. Therefore, it must be said that if there is a science of light, this science establishes and surpasses all others. For the essence of wisdom is to show us not only what things are, but the meaning they have, and not only in relation to ourselves as humans, but in relation to ourselves as spirits. It makes everything a sign or instrument of value. However, the world darkens for us as soon as our spiritual activity weakens. Then, we can only describe it, as the scientist does. But this description, however thorough it may be, where it claims to be sufficient, cannot prevent us from judging that this world as such is absurd. It is pointless to say that our will must apply itself to reform it. For on what grounds could it undertake such a reform if it did not carry within itself that requirement of value that must make it such that we can understand and love it? Wisdom is the awareness we have of value, and its presence cannot be distinguished from its effectiveness. The world that we have before our eyes is both its reflection and its shadow. This shadow will never disappear, without which the spirit, in its own triumph, would turn itself into a thing. But then freedom, value, and wisdom would all vanish at once. This explains quite well why spiritual life always appears as an inner and secret life, distinct from our manifested life, but such that wisdom accepts their duality only in order to overcome it 15.

Appendix

Appendix 1. Epitome metaphysicæ spiritualis

  1. — Materialism or spiritualism. — All discussions among humans, ranging from the domain of speculation, which belongs to philosophy, to the domain of practice, which belongs to politics, revolve around the choice that thought must make between materialism and spiritualism. Materialism has the testimony of the senses, which only give credit to what is seen and touched, and the testimony of science, which only wants to know about the object, that is, everything that mathematics measures and experience confirms. Thus, it seems to have already won the argument. Spiritualism invokes the testimony of consciousness in favor of an invisible and secret world that is thought to exist only for us, that offers neither resistance nor solidity, and dissipates as soon as it begins to form. Does such a world have less reality than the physical world? Is it nothing more than a world of appearances and reflections, a subjective perspective with our body as the focal point? Or should we say that true reality resides in it and that things, which only exist in it and in relation to it, should be called appearances or phenomena? Thus, two opposing doctrines are formed, one placing being on the side of the object and considering consciousness as an illusion, and the other placing being on the side of the mind and considering the object itself as a simulacrum.

  2. — Not going beyond experience. — We must attempt to resolve the problem posed by these two forms of reality. However, it can only be done within the limits of experience, so the solution that will be given must be necessarily accepted, provided that this experience is conducted properly. Reasoning will only intervene to reconcile the aspects of this experience, not to transcend them.

This means that when it comes to matter, we can only ask whether it exists by itself and can be considered the origin of the mind, or whether it presupposes and depends on the mind, by delving into the experience we have of the object as it is presented by the senses and analyzed by science. We should never assume that matter can be anything other than reality precisely as it is given to us. And even if we observe that this given reality is distorted, limited, and miserable, we cannot doubt that everything that surpasses it, regardless of its richness or mystery, is still a possible given. It is precisely this elastic characteristic of being given that allows it to be defined as material existence.

Likewise, when it comes to the mind, it will suffice to define it by delving into the experience of consciousness itself, without ever going beyond it. Thus, the mind will not be a transcendent thing that we should posit independently of any experience, because if it is transcendent to the experience of the object, it is not transcendent to the act of consciousness itself. It is this act that constitutes it, so it is never a given reality, but the act that gives it to us, whether this reality preexists the act itself or proceeds from it as an expression of its power or limitation. These distinctions should allow all forms of realism and idealism to accept such a definition of the mind without altering their fundamental theses.

  1. — The act and the given. — One may be surprised by this double assertion: not so much that matter is a given reality, but that every given reality is material, and that the mind is the act of consciousness through which all reality is given, but can never be given itself.

On the first point, it may be argued that matter is that which has an existence external to us, so it is never properly given, and that the given is instead the immediate states of consciousness, as Bergson has attempted to establish in a famous thesis that did not seem paradoxical. However, it can be argued, firstly, that this existence external to us is indeed an existence in space, which is given to us as other than ourselves, although in relation to us. All efforts to define an externality independent of the representation of space are doomed to be illusory and even contradictory. Secondly, it can be shown that no state of consciousness is a true given because, strictly speaking, consciousness does not know states. It is true that consciousness applies itself to an object that is given to it, either to think it, undergo it, or change it, but it is never anything more than the act that thinks, undergoes, or changes it.

On the second point, the objection is raised that even if the act is the proper operation of the mind, the mind cannot be identified with the act, but only with the being that acts. Furthermore, it is argued that every act we experience is itself an action of the body. However, these two objections are actually one. To demand that there be a being, even if invisible, whose act is the product, is to conceive all reality according to the model of a thing or a property of that thing, and to reject the testimony of experience that shows in everything an effect of an act that represents, creates, or modifies it. Moreover, it is futile to claim that these acts are multiple while matter is one, because the acts themselves are multiple like bodies and imply, like bodies, a unity that they never cease to divide, but which is the unity of a prior activity itself devoid of any determination. It is also erroneous to assert that matter is stable and the mind is fleeting, for one can argue the opposite, that it is matter that gets lost in becoming and that the mind is a power that is always at our disposal. Lastly, to argue that these acts presuppose a subject, which is precisely the body, and to think that by doing so the mind becomes unnecessary, is to commit a serious fallacy of equating a movement with an act, which goes against even the most common experience. No one would agree to identify an act with a movement or recognize anything more in their consciousness, even when using the term “state,” than an act being exercised or hindered.

  1. — Transcendence. — One might think that we thereby eliminate all transcendence. But that is not true. We would only like to give the word transcendence a meaning that could be accepted by all, both by those who claim it and by those who reject it. For there is a beyond of our current experience from which transcendence draws what limits it and allows it to enrich itself; it is the foundation of both all real experience and all possible experience. However, it is contradictory to imagine that it could ever be the object of a separate experience, such that it can indeed be said to be inaccessible, although it is from it that all experience participates and its very essence, inseparable from our experience at the moment it is constituted, is to be participated in. Now, no one contests this beyond of our experience that always gives rise to a new and deeper experience, and that always surpasses it. It is this very surpassing or rather the infinity of this surpassing, correlative to each particular experience; it is its source, which, by an illusion of perspective, we consider to be also its end.

However, the opposition of act and datum allows us to gain a certain experience of this transcendence itself that we have just defined as the beyond of all possible experience. Because, although act and datum are always inseparable, those who do not want to recognize any other domain than that of the datum will never include in being the act without which there would be no datum: such is the position of science and materialism. It is because the act is transcendent to any datum, even though it is the object of its own experience, which is that of its accomplishment. Here, transcendence is only that of a form of experience in relation to another: it is, so to speak, a transcendence. But all transcendence is relative to some datum. It is also easily understood that a datum, as a datum, is transcendent to nothing: it is the very definition of immanence.

But a possible datum is transcendent to any real datum because it is then nothing more than the power to actualize it. Hence, any form of idolatry consists in positing as transcendent an already actualized datum, that is to say, an imaginary thing, and there is no form of transcendence other than that of an act, and every act is transcendent to its effects. Therefore, I would say that I am transcendent to myself insofar as I am not reduced to my own states, that another being is transcendent to the experience I have of him, insofar as he constitutes himself by an internal act of which I grasp only the manifestation, finally, that there is an absolute transcendence inseparable from the experience of participation and that all particular forms of experience cease to immanentize.16

  1. — Univocity. — After opposing, within experience itself, the act and the datum, and recognizing in this opposition the classical opposition of transcendence and immanence, our reflection must consider these two terms as incapable of being dissociated and as constituting, by their union or prior to their dissociation, the unity of that other term to which we give the name of being, and which, if we tried to define it in a primitive and isolated manner, would appear to us as devoid of all content, that is, impossible to distinguish from nothingness.

  1. By alleging the unity of meaning of the word “being” and the absolute distinction between being and nothingness, which is that of affirmation and negation and prevents nothingness from being the object of any judgment other than a negative judgment, one will be obliged to agree that the act and the given are both understood within the same being, and thereby avoid the too frequent tendency to identify being with the given and to make the act itself a mere mode of transition between nothingness and being. The univocity of being compels us to attribute as much being to the act as to the datum, to the intelligible as to the sensible, to the idea as to the thing, to the possible as to the real: otherwise, we would be unable even to name them. They are different modes of being, each expressing a particular determination: this should compel the materialist himself to concede that there is a form of existence properly spiritual that he cannot think of denying, but only of subordinating and reducing.

  2. But the word “univocity” itself has another meaning: for it is not enough to say that being contains within its extension everything that can be affirmed. It is also the unity of understanding of everything that can be affirmed. For otherwise, how could one affirm the being of any of its determinations, that is, include them in its extension? This is why there is no act that does not imply a relation to a datum that it gives itself, no intelligible that does not imply a relation to a sensible to which it applies, no idea that does not imply a relation to the thing of which it is the idea, no possible that is not the possible of a real that it calls and to which it always refers.

  3. Finally, this solidarity between the act and the datum, which renders them necessary to each other, creates a reciprocity between these two terms, but a variable reciprocity, so that, depending on the degree of our inner tension, sometimes the act prevails and sometimes the datum, without however precluding their correspondence, which diversifies the datum infinitely as the act becomes more perfect and pure.

  1. — Negation of Parallelism. — This variable correspondence nevertheless reveals the extraordinary insufficiency of the doctrine of parallelism, which clearly shows that it is a poverty of thought. For there are not two worlds, one being a mere copy of the other, but a single world composed of articulated and interdependent elements.

The first error, and the most serious one, is to consider the psychological as a mere reflection of the physiological, such that nothing would change in our lives if there were only the body and all the traces within it that produce in consciousness the representation of the world. Because if the body itself is part of such a representation, it is its center that affects us, that is, reveals our limits and the sphere of our belonging, in such a way that what we represent to ourselves is what happens outside of it and not within it. It is nothing more than the reference point in relation to which this perspective we have of the world is created, and it is itself immanent to the world. Instead of the image of two parallel lines, we must substitute the image of a focal point from which an infinite number of rays extend to all points of the periphery.

The second error is to think that this correspondence between a series of bodily events and a series of conscious events is sufficient to create a representation of the world. Because apart from the fact that we would not know very well what this correspondence would consist of if the state of consciousness were not each time the consciousness of a particular state of the body, which we almost always ignore, how could parallelism as a whole be anything other than the invention of a consciousness superior to the two terms it compares, and which seeks in the world a privileged object, namely the body, to which it can be linked in order to account for the appearance of its states, that is, its own limitation?

Finally, the third error is precisely to consider thought and the body as two separate series, one of which would be a kind of fragile and useless emanation in relation to the other. Because the mind precedes the body as a possibility that becomes incarnate in the body: the represented object itself is only a possible object, if we oppose it to the real object, and even the imagined object and the recalled object, of which only memory disposes. However, the ontological distance that separates the mind from the body is not properly the distance between the possible and the real, but a power that allows us to constitute, through an act of freedom, our eternal essence from an actual given that serves as its test and instrument, but which constantly eludes and escapes us.

  1. — Reality of the Subjective. — The greatest and most common form of idolatry is to want the world of objects [262] to be the only reality. But we say it without believing it, or at least, the words allow us to say it and life prevents us from believing it. Because we live in a purely subjective world, and the world we call external is nothing but a spectacle, that is, an appearance, in relation to it. This spectacle collapses, this appearance dissipates as soon as our life is in one of those acute crises where our inner destiny is at stake. It constantly passes before our eyes without leaving traces anywhere else but in our memory. Nothing remains of it in death, that is, at the moment when we leave it behind and when our whole being, concentrated upon itself, no longer has the spectacle of anything and is no longer a spectacle for anyone.

Even in the course of my life, I can have no other experience of being than in the being that I am. Now, the being that I am is not my body, to which I am attached and which affects me, it is this possibility that I have of becoming, which always remains undetermined as long as I have not actualized it, and which compels me to constantly turn towards the future, freeing myself from the slavery of the given. Thus, the self is what I can be beyond what I am; but it is also everything I have experienced and already achieved, which remains in me in the form of memories that are, in a sense, disembodied. What does this self-consciousness consist of, which is identical to my own existence, if not in this perpetual oscillation of my attention between what I can be, or aspire to be, which solicits my action, and what I have ceased to be, which is also what I have become, and which is the only content within me that I can know? Thus, everyone can testify that their whole being is occupied by the double thought of their future and their past; and if it is objected that the nature of being is to remain in the present, it is not difficult to respond that it is not in the present of the given, where the world appears to us as a constantly vanishing spectacle, but in the present of the act, where the uninterrupted conversion of what I seek to make myself into what I have made myself takes place.

Thus, whichever way I turn my gaze, whether towards the object, which is nothing but representation, or towards the future, which is nothing but will, desire, or hope, or towards the past, which is nothing but memory or regret, I find no reality within me other than subjectivity. And it is the relation between these different modes of subjectivity that constitutes not only the idea of what I am, but of everything that can be.

  1. — Transindividual Subjectivity. — However, every subjective reality appears to me as having an individual character. That is why it also appears to me as fragile and, to a certain extent, illusory. Because I believe that true reality subsists in itself, that is, independently of its relation to me, and that is why I consider it to be universally valid. This dual property of existing in itself and being the same for everyone is what defines for us the notion of an object. But one of these characteristics is contradictory, and they are not inseparable from each other, as one might think, because: 1) the being that I posit “in itself” can never become an object for me; that word only has meaning in relation to me and as the term to which either intellect or will applies, and 2) what is universal is not necessarily objective, but can, on the contrary, be the common root of different individual subjectivities and precisely establish subjectivity within them.

First and foremost, we must recognize that there is a realm of subjectivity in which different consciousnesses are distinct and yet understand each other, just as there is a realm of space in which bodies are circumscribed and yet obey the same laws. The very unity of the world lies in being enveloped in the same light, whether material or spiritual, and it is to this testimony that the intellect appeals, just as the gaze does.

But there is more: subjectivity resides in a purely internal activity that is actualized through both operations and states, with states being, in a sense, the limits of operations. Now, this activity, insofar as it is present and unused, is only a potentiality for me: however, it is an infinite potentiality that encompasses everything that can be thought and everything that can be done. How could it be different in me than it is in others? All beings in the world share in its exercise, according to their abilities. And that is why they oppose each other, but in this very opposition, they communicate: not only do they draw from the same source, but each of them discovers within themselves the possibility that another actualizes and that differentiates them.

Thus, the “universal subjective” is not, as one might think, the abstract, which is a schematic object of thought obtained by eliminating differences; it is the concrete and undivided power from which all differences arise without ever exhausting it. And the dialogue between particular consciousnesses is only possible as a kind of manifested form of this inner dialogue that is constantly taking place in each of us between the infinite and the finite, and that is constitutive of consciousness itself.

  1. — The Existence of Power and Possibility. — However, the words power and possibility that we have just used may raise doubts. Because we always have in mind the criticisms that reduce power to a purely verbal explanation of an observed effect, and possibility to a retrospective view of the event by which we think we can anticipate it once it has occurred. Yet, it cannot be denied that I carry within me an activity that is not always employed and which must be acknowledged as an undetermined power as long as it is not actualized, nor can it be denied that I anticipate the future through thought by evoking possibilities that, to be realized, need the cooperation of circumstances or an act of will. Thus, power is the very being of activity considered as the reason for the effects it engenders, and possibility is the very being of thought considered as the reason for the objects to which it applies. And it is easy to see that power and possibility are considered diminished beings or mere illusions rather than beings, only by those who reduce being to what affects my body or to what is given in the field of my experience. But in relation to these affections or data, power or possibility enjoy an incomparable privilege. Not because they precede them in time and already contain them in a sort of virtual form, as it were: for they may not be in time at all, and it is only their implementation that temporalizes them. They are not things, but merely the entry of consciousness into play in its dual intellectual and volitional function. In analyzing itself, consciousness reduces itself to a bundle of powers: it becomes a crucible in which it finds nothing but possibilities that it constantly elaborates.

The reality of the psychological as such is always debated, without realizing that its reality is that of the perceived possibility, which only actualizes in the material world and through the mediation of the body. But through the psychological, the mind reveals its own activity, which is first to evoke the possible and then to seek to incarnate it in external and perishable things in order to test it and convert it into an inner and imperishable possession. These are memories that, detached from the events that gave birth to them, become powers that we always possess, which clearly demonstrates the correspondence between possibility in relation to the given and power in relation to the act that gives it. And who doubts that power is always superior to its use and that the possibility of a thing is its very essence, which its manifest appearance simultaneously conceals?

  1. — The Part and Participation. — So here we are transported into a purely spiritual world where we deal only with a possibility that transforms itself into memory. That is the only meaning we can give to life. This transmutation occurs through the world as it is given to us, but which we always repudiate by rightly saying that it is external to us. It continues to be present to us, but it is always appearing and always disappearing. We never do more than traverse it. It is nothing more than the instrument for the formation of our spiritual being.

However, since we ourselves are caught in this world by our limitations and by its constant presence that it imposes on us, since we have a body that binds us to it, without which different beings would cease to appear to one another and therefore cease to exist for one another and enter into a community founded [265] on reciprocal actions, there is no difficulty in considering the world as a whole of which we ourselves are a part. No one finds any difficulty in such a representation, and one would readily accept the idea that the world is the sum of its parts if the world could be considered as a complete whole, instead of being a whole that is constantly being made and is, in this sense, properly infinite, so that all beings find their place in it, although it can never be reduced to their sum.

However, the world and our body, which occupies its center, are nothing more than appearances or figures of the true being. This being can only be interior to itself; but to reduce this interiority to that of our individual consciousness is to reason as if the world were reduced to the body. There is the same relation between the characteristic operations of the self and the act that limits and divides them as between the space that envelops all bodies and the place occupied by my own body. And as I say of my body that it is part of the world, I must also say of every operation of my consciousness that it is a participation in the unconditional act on which it depends, along with all the operations that can be performed by all other consciousnesses. And if it is claimed that this comparison is illegitimate because the world that is beyond the body is a world that at least I perceive whereas an act that I do not perform is for me as if it were nothing, it will be answered that this is not quite true, first because this very gaze that I cast on the world surpasses the self, if not by its operation, at least by its object, and secondly because the infinity of possibilities that I constantly evoke and that divide the unity of pure act by putting it, so to speak, within our reach, cannot be considered as mine, since it is among these possibilities that I will precisely choose the possibility that I will make mine and that will henceforth form the very essence of my spiritual being.

  1. — Time. — It is time, it seems, that poses all the metaphysical problems, for these problems undoubtedly reduce to three: the problem of the relationship between the permanent and the variable, the problem of the origin of things, and the problem of the end towards which they tend. Now, it is not enough to say only that these problems presuppose time, but also that they are all enveloped in the problem of time, so that time itself can be considered as forming the unique problem of metaphysics.

However, it is impossible to consider time as having its own objective reality, for this reality cannot be posited without time itself destroying it. Therefore, it is understood that metaphysics cannot be considered as the science of the absolute object without also considering it as the science of eternity, in the sense that eternity is defined as the negation of time. But the advent of time then becomes impossible to understand. On the contrary, it is evident that if being is act and if the only act we have experience of is the act of participation, the genesis of time will appear inseparable from its very exercise. Not that, despite appearances, it can be said of the act, and even [266] of the act of participation, that it takes place in time, for the proper characteristic of any act is to be exercised in the present, and perhaps even to constitute the very presence of the present, so that the act considered in itself is omnipresent, that is, eternal, and that the act of participation, as an act, makes us enter into eternity ourselves; but the self is not exclusively act; it is a mixture of activity and passivity, and every act is correlative to a given for it. However, this given is always transcended, which means that the self creates for itself a future that is nothing more than a pure possibility until it is actualized in a new given that must in turn be transcended. However, the characteristic of this given is to be eminently transitory; it falls into the past where it would be nothing without the thought that resuscitates it, just as the possible is nothing but the thought that evokes it. However, in converting itself into memory, the possible has acquired the density it lacked: it adheres to our own self, which can no longer detach itself from it but disposes of it as it pleases.

This justifies a triple conclusion: 1) that time itself expresses a circulation of the self in eternity, since it is also through a present act that we think the possible, that we actualize it in a given, and that we make it live again through memory. 2) That time expresses a conversion, through a form of objectivity that makes us both dependent on and connected to the entire universe, not only of the undetermined possible into a determined memory, but also of the possible that was a question into a memory that is a possession, or even of the possible that was not yet ours into a memory that is us. 3) That time contains nothing more than a succession of data that in themselves are always vanishing. We cannot place in time either the possible, before it is realized, or the memory, after it is realized, but only the transition from one to the other. Those who regard time as the substance of things consider only the appearance of data in the moment as real. But in the moment, the fleeting coincidence of time and eternity also takes place; and participation needs time to make it a means of access to eternity.

  1. — Essence. — It is also time that allows us to define the relationship between essence and existence. For the nature of existence is to constantly realize the conversion of the possible into memory. Therefore, it is situated in the present like all that is real. But even in the present, existence is considered in two different aspects, depending on whether it is reduced to the succession of different situations in which it is engaged, and which together constitute destiny, or whether it is identified, on the contrary, with the act by which, within each situation, the possible is realized: then existence is identified with freedom.

So what should be understood by essence? It seems that the nature of essence is to be that which existence affirms and which constitutes its heart and unity. Therefore, essence must have a temporal character, and existence, to the extent that it involves time, must always appear as its expression or, even more precisely, its development. It is evident that the words expression and [267] development have no meaning if essence already contains, in a complete and condensed form, everything that existence will one day manifest in a partial and dispersed form. What matters, therefore, is to show how essence and existence assume a function with respect to each other that makes it impossible to posit either without reference to the other. And for this, it is not enough to say that essence needs existence to have reality because without existence it would be nothing, and that existence needs essence to have content because without essence it would be the existence of nothing. For this dual affirmation retains a verbal character as long as the genesis that justifies it is not described. But such a genesis clearly shows how essence and existence are inseparable in three ways, because:

  1. the nature of existence is to presuppose a possibility that it actualizes. Now, essence is first and foremost this possibility. But it does not precede existence, as is sometimes believed, since it would be contradictory to say that there is anything that preexists existence. It is awakened by existence itself, considered in its double form, both in its situation and in the act of freedom that responds to it so that it can be fulfilled. In this regard, essence is a pure possibility that is not yet our own essence, but which it will be our task to make our own: it is included in absolute being as it is itself the origin and, so to speak, the source of all possibilities.

  2. In order for it to become our own, we must take responsibility for it, accept to embody it, to give it a place in the world. But it will only deserve to be called our essence when it has detached itself from the action that has realized it, that is, from existence, and when it adheres to our spiritual being, not merely as the simple memory of the event, but as an inner “nature” that we have acquired through its means and that can no longer be disowned by us;

  3. When we seek the factor that causes the self to invent a certain possibility and to aspire to realize it and make it its own, this factor can only be its value. Thus, in this respect, essence regains ascendancy over existence, from which the preceding analysis seemed to have deprived it. For if it is existence that awakens essence as a pure possibility and if it is existence that, by realizing it, makes it its own, it is the required value of such a possibility that explains how this dual process can be accomplished. Therefore, the true essence is value, which shows why language always gives the word essence a laudatory character and why things deviate from their essence through the impurities that mingle with them, and why our actions themselves are often unfaithful to our essence, as if they failed to meet it by an effect of our impotence or our malice.

  1. — The World. — We can now answer the dual question of what the world consists of and why there is a world, a question that may seem frivolous to all those who believe that the experience of its presence should suffice for us. However, it is the proper function [268] of the spirit to justify the existence of the world. Otherwise, it would not deserve the name of spirit that is given to it. And it can only succeed because it is its own self-justification: which means that it is perpetually being born, or that it constantly gives itself being. But far from saying that the spirit is in the world and that it constitutes, so to speak, its subtlest point, far from saying that the world is the effect of an expansion of the spirit or a work that it produces, it must be said that the spirit makes the world appear as it acts, as the condition of its exercise and the expression of its limitation rather than its power. The world is a given, formed of objects with respect to which the spirit acknowledges its own passivity, which it can apprehend only through an act of perception whose distance from an act of creation is clearly seen, and which philosophical tradition defines by the opposition of form and matter. But if the spirit itself did not incarnate in a body, it would remain in a state of pure possibility; it would have no hold on the world; its existence would not make a mark in the fabric of events; it would remain confined within the limits of its own subjectivity; it would not appear and would not be the object of a judgment of existence by anyone.

Therefore, it is clear what the significance of the world consists in now: it expresses for the spirit that which limits it, but which therefore also always surpasses its own operation. Thus, there is a world only for a spirit. Each operation it performs must correspond to a content in the world that actualizes it. However, the nature of the spirit is to be entirely interior to itself, and it cannot be said that the activity of the spirit unfolds in the world as if the world completed the giving of reality that it lacks. The world is nothing more than its means and its instrument.

In reality, a spirit can find in another spirit both a response and nourishment: perhaps it must even be said that it is only in the discovery of another spirit and in reciprocal communication with it, in what it gives to it and what it receives from it, that each spirit finds both the end of its operation and its own confirmation in existence. And between spirits, the world is a witness: it is, with respect to each spirit, both exteriority and transcendence; and it seems that the nature of the spirit is only to overcome its resistance. It is for this reason that by incarnating itself in the world, the spirit actualizes all its powers. By actualizing them, it becomes present to other spirits. Therefore, it is the world that separates spirits from one another, that individualizes them, but it is also the world that unites them or tears them away from subjective solitude. Moreover, this world only has existence in the instant; it is always vanishing, which clearly shows that it is nothing except for and by the spirit, which is nevertheless obliged to traverse it in order to perform this circulation between the possible and memory and to realize this society among spirits, which are the two functions in which the very life of each spirit is consummated.

    • The spirit or the power to spiritualize everything. - We now see the error that would arise either, like materialism, in doubting the existence of the spirit, or, like dualism, in considering it as having an existence comparable to that of matter and capable of being opposed to it. For matter is reality, precisely to the extent that it is given to us and therefore imposes itself on us from the outside, while spirit is an act that is internally accomplished and is nothing outside of its own accomplishment. Therefore, it is easy to understand that materialism, precisely because it considers all reality as given, can deny the reality of the spirit which, indeed, is never given; and it is also understandable that dualism, precisely because it refuses to accept that all reality is a given reality, that is, material, makes the spirit a substance distinct from material substance and which can only be defined by negation: nothing can be said of it except that it is immaterial.

However, it is important to affirm, both against materialism, that everything that exists is not reducible to materiality, and against dualism, that the spirit does not enter with matter into the same category, which is that of substance. Moreover, it is better to avoid, it seems, the ambiguity of the word “substance” which is suitable neither for matter, if it is nothing more than a phenomenon, nor for spirit, if it is nothing more than an act and never a thing: this will at the same time prevent us from getting entangled in the problem of the unity or duality of substances and allow us to define matter and spirit not only by the contradiction that opposes them but by the connection that unites them.

For if we can only discover being at the point where we coincide with it, that is, in our consciousness, which is our own being, we see that it is only in relation to it that matter can make sense, as that which limits us and surpasses us at the same time: it is therefore being as it is posited by us, but as external to us, that is, insofar as it is for us only an appearance. Thus, on the scale of participation, there is a kind of double and inverse preeminence of spirit with respect to matter and of matter with respect to spirit; for on the one hand, spirit belongs to the world of being and matter to the world of appearing, such that where spirit ceases to act, matter itself must collapse, and on the other hand, matter is always manifested and spirit always secret, so that spirit remains in a state of possibility until matter enables it to fulfill itself. Thus, it seems that spirit never ceases to enrich itself through its successive contacts with matter; and how could it be otherwise, since matter defines the boundaries of its exercise and constantly brings it what it lacks? But this contribution is nothing as long as the spirit has not succeeded in penetrating it and making it its own. This explains the dual movement to which spirit is subject and which explains both the constitution of the material world and the creation of individual essence: namely, that it must always incarnate itself, otherwise it would be nothing more than pure potentiality, and always disembodied itself in order to spiritualize everything that is 17.

Appendix 2. The Relationship between Mind and World

The collection of works entitled “Philosophy of Mind” was founded in 1934 to oppose reigning materialism and to demonstrate, despite the testimony of the senses and the prejudice of common consciousness, first, that matter is nothing without the mind that thinks it, that defines its proper use and the meaning that can be attributed to it, and second, that the mind itself constitutes true reality, while matter is only the means through which it expresses itself and, if you will, its manifestation or phenomenon.

However, philosophers could agree on the nature of the mind and its very existence if they consented to delve into a certain inner experience without which external experience (the experience we have of things) would be unsustainable. Here are a number of propositions on which it seems that this agreement could be reached:

  1. The mind is not an object that can be seen, even through purely intellectual observation, but it is an act that can only be grasped in its very accomplishment: it is a “seer” and not a seen thing. Therefore, it is false to try to equate the mind and matter on the same level as two different objects whose classical analysis would show that they have opposite and even contrary characteristics. There is only an object for a mind that posits it and, in positing it, opposes it to itself. This applies even to the idea, that is, to the intelligible object, which cannot be confused with the mind itself, as it is rather the effect or product of the mind, where the operation is somewhat petrified. The mind considered as an act is not an object, however subtle it may be imagined, located among other objects; it is the power by which every object is apprehended, either within ourselves or in the spectacle that the world offers us.

  2. However, if the object were simply given to the mind as having its own reality, which the mind would merely accept, then the mind would be nothing but a mirror. But a mirror has no consciousness of the image reflected in it. Now, the mind is not only the power to transform the object into an image, but also to make that image accessible to consciousness. The original character of the spiritual act is, in its exercise, to produce indivisibly the consciousness I have of things and [271] the consciousness I have of myself. But so far, the consciousness I have of things and the consciousness I have of myself are not independent of each other; they cannot be separated. The consciousness I have of myself is only the consciousness I have of being conscious of things.

  3. That is not all. In this consciousness it has of things, the mind also experiences the ascendancy it has over them. For not only does their representation cease when it ceases to be active, but it cannot help but act upon them and modify them. It is the mind that animates and directs our will in the smallest of its undertakings. Thus, the world is both a spectacle that the mind gives to itself and a material that the mind constantly shapes to conform to its own requirements. The world is therefore, in a sense, the face of the mind, whether it is considered as an object of knowledge that the mind never finishes becoming aware of, or as a work of the mind that is always in progress and that the mind never finishes realizing.

  4. Knowledge and action equally attest to the limitation of our mind: for the nature of knowledge is to express the distance that separates us from a reality that surpasses us and of which we can only obtain a representation; and the nature of action is to express the distance that separates us from a reality upon which we have a grasp, but which we can only modify and not create. The world, insofar as it is an object of knowledge, is first an opaque given, but in which the mind gradually introduces a sort of transparency: it tends to dissolve into pure light at the limit. The world, insofar as it is an object of volition, is initially an obstacle that resists us, but that the mind transforms into a means at its service: it tends to become its pure operation at the limit. The world remains as long as it persists before the mind as a mass both obscure and rebellious. As such, the world fills the entire interval that separates the finite mind from the infinite mind: it is the world that separates them and it is through the world that they communicate.

  5. So far, we have only examined the relationship of the mind to the world. But the essence of the mind is even more clearly revealed in its relationship to time. The mind can be said to be the consciousness of time. For the world is wholly contained in the instant. The past and the future have reality only in the mind: they are pure thoughts. In the present where I live, everything that is given is material, but I detach myself from it by remembering what is no longer and by imagining what is not yet. And the mind is the relation that I continuously establish, through each cross-section of becoming, between the future, which is for me only a pure possibility, and the past, which is a reality not abolished but accomplished. Now, the possible and the accomplished are nothing except through a surpassing of the real, forward, to anticipate or produce it, and backward, to ensure its inner survival. Between the possible and the accomplished, which are two moments of the life of the mind, the world, as it is given, is only a place of passage that constantly vanishes and resurrects. It is also the place of a trial in which possibility is subjected to transformation into a thing before disappearing to be incorporated into the very substance of my spiritual being.

  6. Thus, the mind disposes of space and time as means that allow it to manifest itself, that is, to realize itself. But it does not enter into the fabric of the spatiotemporal universe. It pursues its own destiny through this universe, which is its image and its instrument. The universe never ceases to leave us, but the mind cannot do without it: it must incarnate itself in it before passing at every moment from virtuality to actuality.

  7. Therefore, it is understood that individual consciousness only participates in the life of the mind; for while each consciousness finds in the body the expression of its limits, it also finds in it the conditions for its ascension. The mind is the common center that illuminates and unites all consciousnesses. On the other hand, it is the body that separates them from one another, but the universe where the bodies are situated allows all consciousnesses to communicate with each other and each consciousness to infinitely enrich itself.

  8. It must be said that the mind is eternal as it is universal. And just as by saying that it is universal we do not mean that it is independent of all individual consciousnesses or that individual consciousnesses are its parts, but only that it dwells in each of them and is the activity that animates them, the light that illuminates them, and the bond that unites them, similarly, by saying that it is eternal, we do not mean that it is independent of time or that it has unlimited duration, but that it allows the self to think of time without becoming enslaved by it, that is, to always transcend what is, thanks to the conception of a possibility that it depends on to bring into being, and to not let anything be lost of what has been, thanks to the preservation of a memory that it depends on to transfigure. The mind, to the extent that it detaches itself from the material world and yet remains connected to it, moves entirely within the realm of possibility and memory because it is the passage from one to the other, or rather the conversion of one into the other: the place of this passage, the path of this conversion, is the world.

  9. At the point where this possibility and this memory, this future and this past come together, we have the eternity of the idea: and this eternity is realized in the present, but in a present that is the opposite of the instant. In the instant, we are dealing only with the intersection of the mind with becoming in a fleeting encounter, whereas in the present, we are dealing with the discovery by the mind of its true abode where there is nothing that is not at the same time an act it accomplishes and an inner possession that it continuously gives to itself.

  10. If the mind always appears to us as inseparable from the world, it is because the world represents, for a finite mind, the [273] totality of the real insofar as it has not yet succeeded in penetrating and reducing it. But if the mind is not a thing, it is because it resides entirely in the power we have to spiritualize the world as it is given to us. In this effort of spiritualization, the world disappears at every instant, but what remains in us is the very use we have made of it. It is through this use that we gradually constitute what we are. Thus, it is distorting the meaning of the mind to reduce it, as certain modern theories do, to a superstructure of the material world: that is to subordinate its existence and dignity to that of matter. On the contrary, the opposite must be done: and it should be more justly stated that the world is its infrastructure, to the extent that the world is the condition it calls for in order to realize its own possibility and to establish an existence that belongs to it in its own right; it is understood then that this world disappears once it has served. A much deeper view is found in traditional Christianity, which defines the city of God as the realm of the mind, that is, of the Holy Spirit, but where no one enters without having passed through the world, as shown by the example of God Himself in the mystery of the Incarnation 18.

Appendix 3. Mind in Service of the World or the World in Service of the Mind

1. Apparent Evidence of Materialism

Plato speaks of those terrible men who believe only in what they see and touch, rejecting as chimerical those things that are properly spiritual, which he calls ideas and considers them to be the true realities. Today, it is the same as in Plato’s time. Common consciousness continues to be influenced by the prestige of this material universe in which our bodies are engaged. Our bodies constantly impose their presence upon us: they are the witnesses of our existence, which would vanish as if lacking support without them. They are the seat of pleasure and pain. They house the organs of the senses, through which they explore the surroundings and communicate with everything that is. When the body dies, it is as if the world collapses for us. But the world continues on its path without us; and if all consciousness were to disappear, it would still continue to roll in infinite space and time like a blind and indifferent mass stirred by an inner movement of which no one would ever know.

This is the image of the universe that materialists have. They constantly evoke the testimony of experience in their favor. The reality revealed to their senses is the only reality they consider solid. Science teaches us every day to better understand it and make better use of it. What we call consciousness is merely a kind of reflection: we seek to make this reflection more faithful so that our actions become increasingly informed and powerful. But it would be a mistake to attribute to consciousness itself an existence it does not possess: when it is detached from its relationship with things, it is nothing more than a will-o'-the-wisp of the imagination. Therefore, the success of materialism is easily understood, since the things that are before us are the only ones that can be shown to everyone, as we constantly experience their constraint, and our senses and science unite to make them known to us, and our own life can only survive and grow through the increasingly close relationships we maintain with them.

2. The Materialist Unfaithful to His Doctrine

Nevertheless, the triumph of materialism can never be more than an apparent triumph. The evidence on which it relies is itself illusory. No materialist is faithful to his doctrine or succeeds in putting it into practice. For this immense machinery of the world, which constitutes the only reality for him and which he constantly tries to reform, is meaningful to him only to the extent that it can act back upon human consciousness and bring it more light, strength, and happiness. Therefore, for him, the only thing that matters in the world is found in consciousness, and it has infinitely more value than the world itself, since the world is for it only a means and an instrument. Thus, it is not surprising to see the materialist often harbor an ideal that far surpasses all the satisfactions that the world can provide and be willing to sacrifice himself to hasten its realization, to which he himself will never bear witness.

This is true because there are certain constant requirements of human nature that always reappear and that one cannot transgress, even when one tries. It is impossible for any man to think that the material world is capable of sufficiency: whether I merely endure it or seek to impose my law upon it, in both cases the interests of my consciousness are at stake, and it is in relation to it that I judge the truth of each of my knowledge and the value of each of my actions. Therefore, consciousness must place itself above this world, of which it sets itself up as a judge. And if it cannot do without the world, the destiny of the world is only of interest to it to the extent that it is inseparable from its own destiny and contributes to its realization. Thus, despite all its denials, man recognizes himself as a spiritual being. This is an affirmation that is implied in each of his actions, even in the science he is capable of acquiring about the material universe, and in the very act by which he seeks to use it to improve his lot on earth.

It is certainly understandable that he may be fascinated by all the objects he encounters on his path, which initially appear as obstacles but eventually become his servants. But this is proof that he himself is not an object among all others. And first of all, he knows that he exists, whereas, as Pascal admirably puts it, the universe knows nothing of it. Now, it is this self-awareness that constitutes his true reality. He is nothing except by the pure power he has to say “I.” This “I” is not a thing. It is not only invisible and intangible because it is too subtle and tenuous for our senses to apprehend, but because it is always the one who sees and not the one who is seen, the one who touches and not the one who is touched, the one who knows and not the one who is known. And it is because it is the subject that knows all things that it cannot itself be a thing. The very difficulty we experience in knowing the self arises precisely from our inability to turn it into a thing. It is the focal point of light by which the world is illuminated but cannot be a part of what it illuminates. And since it cannot be found anywhere in this world it reveals to us, we end up denying its existence, forgetting that without it, this world would be nothing to us. Thus, the spirit seems to vanish in the very knowledge it generates, just as God, in the eyes of atheists, disappears in the very work of creation. These remarks suffice to show that our own existence, like the existence of God itself, is an intimate and secret existence, which is the essential character of a spiritual existence. And how could it be otherwise if it is evident that a true being can only exist in itself and for itself, and from the outside, no one can apprehend anything about it except its manifestation or phenomenon?

3. Freedom or Spirit in Action

However, it is not enough to say that the self is the one who sees and not the one who is seen, who knows and not the one who is known. It distinguishes itself from things in a much deeper way. For the essential character of things is to be inert, that is, to be what they are without having the power to modify or produce their state. They are subject to the principle of causality, which means that all the modifications they undergo and their very existence depend on certain other things that precede them and determine their appearance in the world with all the characteristics that belong to them. Thus, all the events that constitute the world are linked together by an invincible chain, which we call determinism. This means that each of them has its cause outside of itself, not within. However, this is no longer the case with our own self: it possesses a spiritual character because, in a certain way, it is causa sui. This means that it is freedom. The two words “spirit” and “freedom” have the same meaning. We cannot conceive of a spirit that is constrained by some external cause—it would then be reduced to the state of a thing—nor can we conceive of a freedom that operates in any other way than in the light of the spirit—it would not be distinguishable from blind spontaneity. The essence of a spirit is to act not by virtue of causes it is forced to endure but by virtue of reasons it constantly creates through its own exercise. These observations suffice to show that the spirit is not situated in the world nor subject to its law, which is the law of bodies, and that if it is itself inseparable from a body, it is because its limitation obliges it to become incarnate, so that the world of bodies can become the material of its action, the site of its effort, the means of its acquisitions, and the witness of its victory.

However, it is not enough to define the spirit by the freedom that places it above the world, even though it constantly undergoes a trial without which it would never emerge from rest. The essence of the spirit is always to be in action: for it, to act is to will that value reign in the world, to substitute the will of the good for mechanical causality, and the spirit itself could be defined as the causality of the good. What do we now understand by the good, if not an end that is such not only that our spirit can ratify and approve it—as if existence had meaning for us only if we constantly seek to bring it about—but also that it realizes a union among all spirits, none of which can truly be a spirit except through its union with all the others? This is undoubtedly the definition that must be given to love. Thus, we see that the essence of the life of the spirit is not to seek to know matter or dominate it, but to create communion among consciousnesses, to constantly awaken them to themselves, to elevate them to an increasingly lucid and pure existence, and to teach them that the world is not merely there, as is often believed, to become the servant of the body to which they are attached, but to be among them as a witness, a language, and the vehicle of their mutual relationships. Therefore, the essence of the spirit is to compel souls to overcome the solitude in which each of them is initially confined, to recognize that none can receive anything except by the gift it makes of itself, and finally that they can only unite in the common source from which each draws the particular existence given to it. This is undoubtedly the deepest meaning of the love of charity in which I access spiritual life only by imitating the work of God, that is, by constantly doing for others what God does for me.

4. A Common Source From Which All Minds Draw

It can be seen from this that the very essence of the mind is not to remain enclosed within the boundaries of individual consciousness, but on the contrary, to always go beyond. It is the power of transcendence itself. However, it can be said that this transcendence always occurs inwardly and never outwardly. Instead of opening up to an already constituted world that we should be content to describe and endure, it reveals to us deep within ourselves the presence of an infinite power that continues to give us existence, but as a possibility that depends on us to actualize, even though we can only succeed through its assistance. This is where the idea of a vocation arises, one that we must assume, that no one else can fulfill in our place, and that is always related to the situation in which we find ourselves in the world, to the current resources that have been given to us, to the opportunities we encounter on our path, and to the tasks that are constantly presented to us. This is the value that belongs to the individual in the world, making each being unique and irreplaceable: not so much by their physical or mental originality, but by what they are called to do, which justifies their nature and gives them meaning and worth. Spiritual life is not a renunciation of nature, but a transfiguration of it. No one can succeed in it except through this complete inner union with an omnipresent activity that continues to provide for them, from which both the light that illuminates them and the strength that sustains them arise. Without it, they are incapable of anything, and it only requires their consent, which they always have the power to refuse. If they refuse it, they find themselves reduced to themselves; in each of their steps, they feel their isolation, powerlessness, and misery. The world that unfolds before them resists and repels them; it constantly constrains and wounds them. And even when the self manages to submit this world to its designs, it still only obtains a fleeting and perishable satisfaction. On the contrary, if it consents to the inner grace that is always offered to it, an inner grace that can never fail it, but that it often fails, everything changes for them: they no longer experience isolation. Instead, solitude realizes for them the perfection of that absolute society, which is the society with God. They always feel within themselves an uplifting activity, as if it carries them, and all they need to do is let it act. The world before them ceases to be an obstacle that stops them because it is not in the world that they find their true end. All the failures they may experience, all the sufferings and hardships that befall them, gain meaning through the spiritual use they can make of them. Thus, we learn that it is beyond the world that the world finds its explanation and resolution, or, in other words, it is within ourselves and in the renunciation of our own will in favor of the action of pure spirit, which is the action of God within us, that the external and manifest world reveals its true meaning to us, which is to allow all individual beings to distinguish themselves and unite in the consciousness of their common origin and reciprocal duties.

Hence, it is evident that the world provides the various consciousnesses with the very conditions of their limitation and mutual communication. However, this can only be realized to the extent that each consciousness, ascending to its own source, rediscovers within itself the same source that springs forth for all. Therefore, only spiritual life can justify the advent of the world and enable us to understand how to make use of it. Far from denying it, the life of the spirit evokes the world in order to enable our powers to actualize and thus establish the appearance of all these personal beings whose own destiny is to become by the implementation of their freedom, but a freedom that encounters other freedoms before it, with which it is in solidarity and that are called, along with it, to find in the world the means of expression, that is, of realization, and beyond the world, that source of light and love without which they would forever be incapable of freeing themselves from their separation, darkness, and powerlessness. It is then understandable that one cannot be indifferent to the world: it is the witness and also the image of human activity. And it is also understandable that when a person looks at themselves in it as in a mirror, they recoil with a feeling of horror. But this horror itself is a sign that the world is incapable of satisfying them: it is because they compare it to the purity of the very source from which they constantly draw, but which they continuously divert from its course. For to a certain extent, the world is the work of humanity: humans are nothing more than a potentiality; they only ever possess powers they have received, but they are free to dispose of them. It is in this freedom that is granted to them that the secret of the world resides. However, humans often think that they can establish their independence only through the exercise of their own will, and thus, impulse and caprice make them slaves to their limitations. The highest point of consciousness is the miraculous point where not only does its most personal vocation take place within a universal order that it contributes to maintaining, but its most perfect activity becomes one with perfect docility towards an activity that comes from a higher source, an activity that is the very activity of God, indivisibly present and consented to deep within itself.

5. Time as the Pathway to Eternity

To conclude, it must now be shown how time is for the spirit the pathway to eternity. Believing, on the one hand, that there is nothing more than the world or that the world is self-sufficient, and on the other hand, considering our self as confined to a temporal existence constrained to flow like a stream between the two limits of birth and death, are essentially the same thing. But is it true that before entering the world, the self was nothing, and that after leaving it, it becomes nothing? Things seem to be a little less simple than that. It is difficult to deny that before incarnation, the self is like a possibility that has not yet found the conditions that allow it to actualize, and that after completing its journey in the world, it remains as an existence that has fulfilled itself. Death is a mystery that we experience, so to speak, at every moment: for at every moment, what we believed we possessed in the world leaves us, and only the memory of it remains within us. This indicates that all the events we have experienced, when they seem to fall into oblivion, acquire a spiritual form in our memory. It is a destiny from which they cannot escape. Where memory fails and does not provide us with any real recollection, they still persist within it as potential memories. They have passed through the world like fleeting shadows; they are now within ourselves as a permanent power that the slightest movement of attention is enough to awaken. They no longer belong to the world but to the self. They now form its substance. We should not complain, as is often done, about their unreality, as if they were digging a kind of void in our consciousness, revealing only the lack of what we have lost. Those who think this way do not know of any goods other than those that can be seen and touched. They are unaware that true possession belongs to the spirit and not the body, and that even material possessions can acquire significance only through solitary meditation, which makes them our own; only then do they receive the light that had previously eluded them. For it is the inevitable destiny of everything that exists to pass through the world before receiving a spiritual form in consciousness that immortalizes it. However, it should be realized that the memory, insofar as it restores to us the material image of the event, still attaches us to the earthly realm, which explains quite well the regret that almost always accompanies it. But the event itself was only the vehicle of its significance. It is the significance that has become imperishable, that adheres to ourselves, and that now forms the essence of our being. This clearly demonstrates, in the language of modern thinkers, how the purpose of our existence is to allow us to acquire an essence that belongs to us because it is the product of our freedom. Thus, the perishable undergoes a constant transmutation at every moment, storing itself in eternity. And it is as if we have the power to choose our eternal essence from the eternity of possibilities. Our life is fulfilled in the world, but its fulfillment surpasses the world; time is its instrument, but it leads to the timeless at every instant. Therefore, it seems that consciousness has only two possible attitudes: either it believes that there is no reality other than the reality of the world, such that our own reality is also the reality of our body, and the mind is concerned only with serving its interests; or it recognizes that true reality is that of the spirit itself, that is, an entirely inward activity that needs the world to test all its powers but can only truly possess itself when the world has passed 19.

Appendix 4. Testimony

There are privileged moments in life when it seems that the universe illuminates itself, when our life reveals its meaning to us, when we desire the very destiny that befalls us as if we had chosen it ourselves. Then the universe closes in on us: we become solitary and miserable again, groping in the darkness where everything becomes an obstacle to our steps. Wisdom lies in preserving the memory of these fleeting moments, in knowing how to bring them back to life, in making them the fabric of our daily existence, and, so to speak, the habitual dwelling place of our spirit.

There is no man who has not experienced such moments, but he quickly forgets them, like a fragile dream; for he allows himself to be captured almost immediately by material or selfish preoccupations that he can no longer traverse or overcome because he thinks he encounters in them the hard and resistant ground of reality. But the essence of a great philosophy is to retain and reunite these privileged moments, to show how they are open windows to a world of light whose horizon is infinite, whose parts are all interconnected, which is always offered to our thought and which, without ever dispelling the shadows of the cave, teaches us to recognize in each of them the luminous body of which it is the shadow.

Philosophical truth sometimes resembles the discovery of a child. But the adult discourages us from it, as if he himself had lost touch with primal existence and felt a kind of shame in rediscovering it. And yet, this contact, the philosopher must constantly resurrect it: he must become like a child to whom reality always reveals itself as if he had never seen it before, in an experience that he still keeps fresh and untarnished by any habit. But he has multiplied these contacts: he has recognized a continuity between them, which is the very unity of the mind, insofar as it adheres to the unity of Being and is no longer separate from it. And this unity, which is that of a constantly reborn act, is itself of immeasurable fecundity, as if there were no form of reality foreign to it or any form of possibility forbidden to it.

When a philosopher is asked to recount the history of his mind, nothing more can be demanded of him than to evoke these fundamental intuitions, which may have a date but are only of interest insofar as they have subsequently acquired a timeless character within him, where they have become the climate of his existence and formed that atmosphere of eternity in which his successive thoughts have been nourished.

Our first philosophical discovery, like that of all men, no doubt, once their reflection has begun to exercise itself, has been that of our own existence in the face of a universe that until then had exclusively held our attention, but as a pure spectacle. Now, the discovery of oneself is that extraordinary discovery of a being who participates in the being of the whole, but in such a way that this being is it instead of seeing it, that in speaking of it, one can say “I” or “me,” that one bears the burden of it, and that instead of looking at it from the outside, one makes it be from within. This discovery undoubtedly corresponds to the most intense emotion that man is capable of experiencing, and this emotion is always reborn with the same intensity as soon as self-awareness makes it present to itself again. Thus, as if my own being had to be radically distinguished from the spectacle before my eyes, the discovery of myself was not the discovery of an invisible object that I could contemplate with an inner gaze: it was the discovery of an available act that I could always accomplish by virtue of pure initiative, of a fiat that I was free to pronounce at any moment. And I only experienced the reality of this act in the changes that it could precisely introduce into the spectacle of the world: thereby, I placed myself above this spectacle. I could intervene in it, become a co-author of it. And in doing so, I proved my own effectiveness: I existed because, instead of being reduced to a potentiality confined within itself, which one might have thought impotent and illusory, I transformed it into an ability to act upon things external to me and to compel the world to bear witness to an existence that was mine only because I could dispose of it, but which was an existence only because I could inscribe it in the world through its effects. Thus, I delighted in endlessly repeating an experience such as moving my little finger, through which the miracle of my own existence kept renewing itself as often as I desired. However, no matter how astonishing the possibility of a movement in the world whose source is not in the world but in the secret initiative of the self may be, and although this is a problem that has occupied philosophical thought for centuries, it was easy to see that the most primitive and profound mystery resided precisely in this initiative that I exercised, and which was such that by exercising it, I introduced myself into being. It was the experience of my freedom.

As my first experience was one in which the spectacle of the world was not abolished, but abandoned in favor of an entirely inner act becoming aware of its pure availability and its pure exercise, the second experience was the one in which my life flowed and was not denied, but rooted in a present coextensive with Being, and where time itself established its own reality. Indeed, no one can doubt that the self is always present to itself. And it can never be torn from present existence without being simultaneously torn [283] from existence as a whole. Thus, there is an essential identity between the words “to be” and “to be present”: it is as present that being reveals itself to us, and there is nothing to which the word “to be” can apply that is not itself present. Of what is past, I say that it is no longer, although it was at the moment when it was present; of what is future, I say that it is not yet, although it may be someday, that is, at the moment when it enters into the present. And if I speak of a proper existence of the past as such, it is because it has become a present memory; if I speak of a proper existence of the future as such, it is because it is already a present thought or a present possibility. Thus, time is in the present and not the present in time: and what we call time, far from having an absolute or ontological character, is only a relation that is established between different forms of presence, between an expected (or desired) presence, a perceived presence, and a remembered presence.

A third experience, which should give full scope to the two previous ones, was the experience that Plato undoubtedly made very early on, namely, that the world in which we live is not the world of the things we see but the world of the thoughts we have. Each person lives and dies in the world of their thoughts rather than in the world of things: it is true that this world can expand infinitely; thus, each person is capable of recognizing things outside of themselves that resist them and become the support of their action, beings with whom they can unite and become the objects of their love. Consequently, their spiritual existence continually expands in the presence of a universe that never ceases to provide for them. For things mean nothing to them except as opportunities for their mind to act, that is, to exercise their powers and testify to their freedom in relation to other beings, who mean nothing to them except through the purely spiritual relations they maintain with them through things. But it seemed to us that Plato succumbed to a kind of idolatrous inclination when he believed he was reinforcing our thoughts by making them ideas, that is, objects still, accessible only to pure intelligence, and that it was a misunderstanding of the true function of things to reduce them to being nothing more than illusory and useless copies of ideas, whereas for us they were the double means by which each mind became capable of bringing its own possibilities into play, that is, of actualizing them, and of communicating with other minds in a universe that was the same for all.

However, these three experiences had to naturally articulate themselves into a system that was not just a dialectic of concepts, but a living dialectic where the very operations of thought could not be distinguished from the operations by which the self gradually constituted its being and its destiny. For if the self only discovers its own essence in the act by which it makes itself, and becomes spirit from being a body, this act is not an absolute beginning. Otherwise, we would be God and there would be no world before us against which we collide, but which never ceases to bring us some new revelation. We who are beings know well that we are not the whole [284] of being: we only participate in it. But this means that being is neither an object spread out before us in an experience, nor an object transcendent to all experience in which it would be forbidden for us to penetrate. We only reach being from within, in the being that we are, and this being can only be the disposition that we always maintain, of a potential being that we have received and whose exercise belongs to us, although it is infinitely surpassed by the boundless effectiveness from which it continually draws and which is rightfully coextensive with everything that is. This means that I cannot be separated from the totality of being in which I am situated. It is this totality that continually provides me with all the resources that enable me, by actualizing them, to make myself what I am. But to the extent that it surpasses me, although it always remains present to me, it must also unfold before me a spectacle, an immense given, which reveals in being what I am not, but which always remains in relation to me, without being me. It is precisely this spectacle, this given, that is generally called the world. And it is easy to understand that this world is for me only a world of appearances, but one that I never cease to explore and that, through the knowledge I obtain from it and the action by which I test it, allows my own self to expand and enrich indefinitely.

Therefore, it is not surprising that each power of the self seems to retain an abstract and formal character as long as it does not bring forth a particular given from my experience that is always related to it; in relation to this given, I remain passive and I am obliged to undergo it, but upon it, my act, so to speak, comes to a close as if seeking to embrace it. However, it must not be forgotten, on the one hand, that the multiplicity of these powers expresses all the conditions that allow a finite being to inscribe its own activity within an infinite Being that always surpasses it but with which it always remains united: they could be defined as the articulations of freedom. It must not be forgotten, on the other hand, that there is undoubtedly a correspondence between each operation it allows me to perform and the sensible given to which it applies, a correspondence that the ambition of philosophy has sought to discover in all periods of its history, as can be seen in the opposition between matter and form, and that neither Aristotle nor Kant have been able to justify. However, this justification becomes possible if the act of the mind always testifies to one of the essential steps by which the self constitutes itself, if the given expresses what it lacks in order to complete itself, and if thereby the sensible, instead of appearing as a sort of screen that comes between the real and us, receives the meaning and light that had until then been denied to it. This is the interpretive effort that we attempted at the beginning of our career in the Dialectic of the Sensible World.

Thus, there seems to be an intelligibility of the world, which is itself like an answer that reality gives to each consciousness by providing it with what it would be incapable of giving itself; which shows why the world becomes a mediator between different consciousnesses. Consequently, we discover at the same time the intelligibility of the world and the intelligibility of our own existence. For this world that fills space [285] perishes at every instant in time. Now, if our existence is essentially temporal, it nevertheless does not perish at every instant with the world except when it is reduced to the existence of the body. The characteristic of consciousness, in fact, is to involve in time everything that is external to it and possesses a character of objectivity in relation to it. But it cannot posit time itself without surpassing it. And in fact, it is wholly situated in the present, which does not mean in a vanishing instant, but in an ever-renewing actuality where the conversion of the future into the past eternally takes place. Thus, we have been led to maintain, despite the paradoxical nature of this thesis, that the future anticipates the past, as the possible anticipates the accomplished. Now, it is because our being is a potential being that it first engages in an indeterminate future, but which receives determination when it is actualized, that is, when it comes into contact with all the other existences in the world before falling back into a past where it acquires a henceforth spiritual and eternal form. Therefore, our life appears as a death at every moment, but as a death in which what no longer has material existence resurrects at every instant as a spiritual existence that we always possess. This doctrine only makes sense if we are first persuaded that the spirit is never a thing, but an act that continually creates itself through the elaboration and transfiguration of a matter that the world continually provides it. This is the attempt to explain our destiny that we attempted to undertake in the five volumes of our Dialectic of the Eternal Present, where we strive to show how our freedom, which is the power to give ourselves being, roots us in the interiority of pure being, how everything that surpasses it appears to us in the form of a world inseparable from it, which is not only the goal of knowledge and the material of action, but also the means by which different beings distinguish themselves from one another and yet communicate, how our own destiny is fulfilled in time where desire is transformed, through its impact with the world, into a possession that the past spiritualizes, how we experience death at every moment, which is not the end of life but a moment of life, namely the very moment when the body is transformed into spirit, which is the work of consciousness, and is only possible if, as we sought to show, it is not time that contains consciousness, but consciousness that engenders time20.

End

  1. “Being and Act.” Lecture given on June 11, 1935, in Marseille, before the members of the Society of Philosophical Studies, and which had been given a few days earlier in Cologne, with a number of variants under the auspices of the German Society of Philosophy and the Franco-German Institute. The text appeared in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, April 1936.↩

  2. “Réflexive Action and Creative Action.” Presentation given on May 23, 1936, in Paris at the French Society of Philosophy. Published in the Bulletin of the French Society of Philosophy, July-September 1936.↩

  3. “General Principles of any Philosophy of Participation.” Communication at the Descartes Congress, Paris, 1937. Published in the Proceedings of the Congress, IX, Hermann.↩

  4. “Remarks on the theme: Legitimacy and Significance of Metaphysics.” Communication to the First National Congress of French Philosophical Societies, Marseille, April 21-23, 1938. Published in the “Études Philosophiques,” 1938.↩

  5. “The Discovery of the Self”. This text is the presentation of two lectures given on March 2 and 3, 1938, under the auspices of the School of Higher Studies in Ghent. Published in the Annals of the School of Higher Studies, Ghent, 1939.↩

  6. “Metaphysics or the Science of Spiritual Intimacy.” Article published in the October 15, 1939 issue of the Revue internationale de Philosophie. This issue was entirely devoted to the “Philosophy of Spirit.”↩

  7. On this issue, as on that of univocity, one would not want to expose the reader to any misunderstanding. Just as univocity, as it must be understood, establishes, instead of abolishing, both the sovereignty of absolute being and the irreducible diversity of the modes of relative being, each of which expresses, according to a general law, the inalienable originality of an individual essence, so divine freedom, in its relationship to particular freedoms, is neither chained by the necessity to create them, nor transmuted into them, as would necessarily happen in a doctrine that could be called, if this expression were not contradictory, a pantheism of freedom. For, on the first point, it is evident that if this creation is a gift, the nature of the gift is, in order to exist at all, to express that perfect gratuity which is the very definition of freedom and which only the notion of a gift undoubtedly allows us to understand. In such a way that, if we can have an approximate notion of divine action only by considering its relation to creatures, we must nevertheless say that there is nothing in them that could necessitate the creative process, since their appearance in the world is the effect of God’s freedom and, so to speak, the testimony of the very perfection of this freedom. On the second point, if it is true that sovereign freedom demonstrates its absolute character by creating other freedoms that are in a sense analogous to its own, and if it is true, therefore, that each of them creates its own being and thus becomes an image of divine freedom, we cannot, however, draw from this the conclusion that the creative act has been communicated to the creature, which would now have control over it. For, unlike the creative act, we never derive our own being from nothingness, but from the mere possibility, which itself is a real possibility constantly offered to us by divine generosity and whose sole use is left to us. In such a way that, although it is impossible to undermine in us that initiative and choice which allow us to make ourselves into what we will one day become, it is on the condition, however, that we do not forget that we derive both the potential to actualize it and the very strength by which we act from God, but sometimes with Him and sometimes against Him.↩

  8. “From the Insertion of the Self into Being through the Distinction of Operation and Data.” Essay published in the Revue Uit Tidjdschrift voor Philosophie, November 1941, Louvain.↩

  9. “The Psychological Experience of Time.” Lecture given in Brussels under the auspices of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Belgium. The text was published in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, April 1941.↩

  10. “Existence spirituelle et existence matérielle.” Communication au Congrès international de Philosophie, Rome, 15-20 novembre 1946. Parue dans les Actes du Congrès, tome II, Castellani, Milan.↩

  11. “Analysis of Being and the Dissociation of Essence and Existence.” Essay published in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, July-October 1947.↩

  12. “Freedom as the first term.” Article published in the November-December 1949 issue of the journal Giornale di metafisica, Turin. This issue was dedicated to the problem of freedom.↩

  13. “Métaphysique de la participation.” Lecture delivered on April 20, 1950, at the University of Padua. Published in La mia prospettiva filosofica, Editoria Liviana, 1950.↩

  14. “The Narrow Path.” Essay published in the journal Uit Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, March 1951, Louvain.↩

  15. “La sagesse comme science de la vie spirituelle” (Wisdom as the Science of Spiritual Life). Communication at the Fifth Congress of French-Language Philosophy Societies, Bordeaux, September 14-17, 1950. Published in the “Actes du Congrès” (Proceedings of the Congress), Presses Universitaires de France.↩

  16. It is probable that in general one would prefer to place the transcendent on the side of the datum by maintaining that it is that which, in it, makes any act that seeks to equal it inadequate. But that means that it is not itself given, or rather that it is a possible datum that only an act that surpasses all the acts we are capable of accomplishing could transform into an actual datum. With regard to an act capable of actualizing all possible data, there would no longer be any given, since there would be nothing that would be capable of surpassing it. Therefore, it is always the transcendence of such an act that we have in mind: it would abolish immanence or be immanent to itself.

    Thus, just as it is illegitimate to speak of the infinite as an end when it is an origin, it is also illegitimate to speak of the transcendent as an object when it is a source.↩

  17. “Epitome metaphysicae spiritualis”. Article published in the July-September 1947 issue of the journal “Giornale di Metafisica,” Turin. This issue was devoted to the theme: “What is metaphysics?”↩

  18. “La relation de l’esprit et du monde” (The Relationship of Mind and the World). Communication at the First National Congress of Philosophy, Mendoza, Argentina, March-April 1949. Published in the Proceedings of the Congress, Volume II, National University of Cuyo.↩

  19. “The Spirit in the Service of the World and the World in the Service of the Spirit.” Text published in Città di Vita, January-February 1951, Florence.↩

  20. “Témoignage” [Testimony]. The last text that Louis Lavelle sent for printing. Contribution to issues 2 and 3 of the Revue des Études philosophiques [Review of Philosophical Studies]. Published in the Revue des Études philosophiques, April, September 1951.↩

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