Don't we spend our lives in the unsatisfied search for the Other? Of the other that is finally another.

But the totally other does not have to wait for any expected Beyond, for a fantasized distance: thought will never stop turning in circles in that projected imaginary.

Above all, it is discovered so close, within reach, in what we have assimilated too placidly, lazily. The unheard of does not fall from a magical sky, but is extracted from what we trample on as carelessly as banal moments.

Nor is the opposite now another, because it no longer confronts the unknown: now it is posed ahead, "in front", diametrically aligned, and even dramatically erected; but already assigned, inert and ordered – the opposite is already understood with its other.

Hence, it is necessary, I believe, to proceed in reverse. Search for the other not in what is announced in the antipodes, in the role of the opposite, which is already complementary; but rather opening a distance within what we would believe to be similar, the closest, apparently the most related: to probe there what would secretly fissure a possible other.

In the same way, also, between “pleasure” and “enjoyment” –to which we believed to be associated.

Because it is by emerging from such a distance that Another –You– can be found.

Thinking of the other: is it not what can drive philosophy back and what makes us access existence in the first place?

François Jullien