1.  §8. Separation and Contradiction  The erotic reduction—Does anyone love me?— leads me outside myself looking for assurance.  “This assurance can by definition only come upon me from an elsewhere that is definitively anterior, other, and foreign to me, an elsewhere that I lack and that defines me by this lack. There follows this principle: I am, therefore I am lacking.” (42)  The contradiction lies in the assurance of the ego coming from an elsewhere, an “originary alterity.”

2.  “I am neither the principle, nor at the origin, of myself.” (42)  Let’s prove it by a reductio: assuming I could love myself and assure myself. Isn’t this the ideal wisdom sought by the philosophers and popular wisdom as well?  What would this mean? How can my love of myself be performed? How can it be verified?  In short, it cannot, but let us examine the “fragile evidence.”

3.  First, how can I be doubled or split, which would seemingly be necessary for me to love myself?  The possibility of the split is absurd for three reasons:  1. I cannot precede myself.  2. I cannot exceed myself. (In order to overcome the vanity and become completely convinced this would be required.)  3. I cannot cross the distance required by loving.

4.  Objection: this impossibility is merely formal, “every man loves himself first, and infinitely” (thus says metaphysics).  Conatus in suo esse perseverandi (This is Spinoza’s “striving to persevere in one’s own being.”)  Objections:  1. Is this perseverance exclusively in the present? What about an orientation toward the future?  2. Isn’t this being rather elementary—the being of a dead person?

5.  For a human being, being doesn’t signify perseverance, but rather possibility. (In other words, possibility is greater than actuality.)  “A physical body, a being of the world, an object do not have to decide if they merit being…But I have to decide. Perhaps the atom, the rock, the sky, and the animal can, without anguish or scruple, persevere naturally in their being. I, however, cannot. In order to persevere in my being, I must first will to be, and, in order to do that, love to be.” (50)  So this being doesn’t assure me, it doesn’t respond the question, it doesn’t even hear it.

6.  A final experiment: Can the conatus assure me against the vanity of being?  The first hypothesis: I persevere by necessity.  Two objections:  (1) This would mean sinking into inhumanity and (2) anonymity.  The second hypothesis: I persevere freely.  Can I will to be?

7.  Although the love of self and perseverance in one’s being appear obvious in the natural attitude, under the erotic reduction they are illusory and useless.  “To have done with these illusions, we will establish once and for all the exact opposite thesis—no one can love himself”…because every man hates himself (53).  Again, suppose I can love myself infinitely. What does this mean?

8.  Doesn’t insisting on infinite self-love betray a “very clear consciousness of not possessing this serene love of myself”…I who after all “ooze with finitude.” (53)  If I truly loved myself completely then wouldn’t this be so obvious that the question—Does anyone out there love me?— would never even arise.

9.  Thus the claim of self-love leads to the following stages:  1. self-hatred: who has never found himself pathetic?  2. injustice: the paradox of the finite requiring the infinite  3. bad faith: lying to oneself that one is not unlovable  4. the verdict: there are no grounds for love

10.  Self-hatred “sets off a chain reaction with…the hatred of the other.” (58)  5. On the hatred of the other: As I find no source of self-love in myself I recognize the other as equally unworthy.  6. The other appears as a paradoxical phenomenon: as the first that I hate, but also as the possibility of an elsewhere for love.  7. But the other ends up hating me.  8. Thus, I hate other people; I hate the elsewhere.

11.  “Thus all love that begins as a love of every man for himself (impossible) ends up, by self- hatred (actual), in the hatred of the other (necessary).” (64)  This is not an exaggerated pessimism—we are concerned with the status of certainty— “Does anyone out there love me?”  The point of departure of self-love has been shown inane, so we will need to consider another point of departure.

12.  §15. Reducing Reciprocity  §16. Pure Assurance  §17. The Principle of Insufficient Reason  §18. The Advance  §19. Freedom as Intuition  §20. Signification as Face  §21. Signification as Oath

13.  Towards a new question: We need to look for another question—”much more original and radical”—to avoid the conclusion of the hatred of all for all (“because neither I nor any other can assure myself of anything but their hatred”).  Our question was too narrow and calculative, conditioned on reciprocity (commerce, exchange).  But reciprocity is an obstacle to love and must be rejected.

14.  The new question, an open possibility: “Can I love first?”  The only “proof of love” involves giving “without return or chance of recovery.” (71)  This is love without being (i.e., without being loved, without holding back, taking a risk, loving utterly).  Does this mean there’s no assurance?  One loses the assurance of being, but one gains the assurance of loving—“the pure and simple assurance of the precise fact that [one] loves.” (73)

15.  Where does the assurance come from?  From the inward elsewhere  “Assurance still comes to me, but no longer from an ontic elsewhere that would conserve me in my beingness; rather, it comes from an elsewhere that is more inward to me than myself….” (75)  Through my acts of love I become myself.

16.  How does the lover love first?  By suspending reciprocity and reason…”the lover makes love break out.”  The lover does not reject reason, but “when loving is at issue, reason is not sufficient: reason appears from this point forward as a principle of insufficient reason.” (79)  “The lover makes appear the one whom she love, not the reverse.” (80)  In praise of Don Juan over Sganarelle, who see two different phenomena

17.  But Don Juan can be followed only so far, since his erotic reduction turns into a mechanical seduction.  “In contrast, the reduction starts off in an advance that is definitive and without return....” (83)  And without end: the reduction requires ceaseless repetition that confirms the uniqueness and infinity of the other.  “The lover bears everything…believes everything… and hopes for everything.”

18.  An objection: assurance is still problematic.  The main response: even if I cannot be assured that someone loves me or that I love first, I can be assured in my decision to love.  “To decide to love in advance is enough to give me the assurance of the lover—the only assurance that I can aim for and hope for.” (91)  In loving to love or deciding to love I determine my self in freedom as a lover.

19.  This decision affects my consciousness with a tonality that pervades all of my experience.  This affective tonality yields an intuition—an intentional intuition, a saturating intuition— that awaits an appropriate signification.  In other words, in seeing myself as loving to love I look for a sign that fulfills this seeing as, this vague and superabundant intuition.  Note: This section, especially pp. 95-97, are indebted to Husserl’s account of intuition in Logical Investigations.

20.  In contrast to Husserl, “the point is no longer to validate a signification by an intuition, but rather an immanent and available intuition by a foreign and autonomous signification.” (97)  This signification must “make me experience the radical alterity of the other,” thus it cannot come from me but from “an exterior elsewhere by an advent” (98).  The face of the other  Note: This section is indebted to Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, where he writes that “the face is neither seen nor touched.”

21.  “This hypothesis remains: the other’s face holds me with the gaze that it lays upon me, by the counter-intentionality that its eyes exert, by a non-spectacle and a nonintuition, and thus perhaps by a signification.” (99)  The signification that arises from the face of the other is: “Thou shall not kill.”  “How could an ethical signification fix the resolutely erotic intuition of the lover—the vague intuition of loving to love?” (101)

22.  The face of the other provides a radically new phenomenon—one that is completely exterior to me.  The other gives itself as capable of not giving itself. It does not present itself as real or as a thing. (103)  It does not present itself at all, but announces: “Here I am.” This signification “allows my intuition to make the phenomenon of the other appear…[it] arises like an oath.” (104)  What manifests itself in the erotic reduction is “a crossed phenomenon.”