desire – Page 8 – objet (a)

what psychic price normative gender?

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

the triadic structure for thinking about desire has implications for thinking gender beyond complementarity and reducing the risk of heterosexist bias implied by the doctrine of complementarity.

I’m no great fan of the phallus … I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire. Nor do I accept the view that would posit the phallus as the primary or originary moment of desire, such that all desire either extends through identification or mimetic reflection of the paternal signifier. I understand that progressive Lacanians are quick to distinguish between the phallus and the penis and claim that the “paternal” is a metaphor only.

What they do not explain is the way the very distinction that is said to make “phallus” and “paternal” safe for use continues to rely upon and reinstitute the correspondences, penis/phallus and paternal/maternal that the distinctions are said to overcome.

I believe in the power of subversive resignification to an extent and applaud efforts to disseminate the phallus and to cultivate, for instance, dyke dads and the like. But it would be a mistake, I believe, to privilege either the penis or paternity as the terms to be most widely and radically resignified. Why those terms rather than some others? The “other” to these terms is, of course, the question interrogated here, and Benjamin has helped us to imagine, theoretically, a psychic landscape in which the phallus does not control the circuit of psychic effects. But are we equipped to rethink the problem of triangulation now that we understand the risks to phallic reduction (136).

The turn to the preoedipal has been, of course, to rethink desire in relation to the maternal, but such a turn engages us, unwittingly, in the resurrection of the dyad: not the phallus, but the maternal, for the two options available are “dad” and “mom.” But are there other kinds of descriptions that might complicate what happens at the level of desire and, indeed, at the level of gender and kinship? 136

[…] I do think however, that (a) triangulation might be profitably rethought beyond oedipalization or, indeed, as part of the very postoedipal displacement of the oedipal; (b) certain assumptions about the primacy of gender dimorphism limit the radicalism of Benjamin’s critique; and (c) that the model of overinclusiveness cannot quite become the condition for recognizing difference that Benjamin maintains because it resists the notion of a self that is ek-statically [standing outside of oneself] involved in the Other, decentered, through its identifications which neither exludes nor includes the Other in question.

Postoedipal Triangulation

Were we right to presume the binary of man and woman when so many gendered lives cannot assume that binary? Were we right to see the relation as a binary when the reference to the tertiary is what permitted us to see the homosexual aims that run through heterosexual relationality. … At what psychic price does normative gender become established? 144

How is it that presuming complementarity presumes a self-referential heterosexual that is not definitionally crossed by homosexual aims? If we could not ask these questions in the past, do they not now form part of the theoretical challenge for a psychoanalysis concerned with the politics of gender and sexuality, at once feminist and queer?

houlgate difference between Kant and Hegel

Houlgate, Stephen. “G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): Thinking Philosophically Without Begging the Question” in The classics of Western philosophy: a reader’s guide. Gracia, Jorge. J.E. and Gregory M. Reichberg, Bernard N. Schumacher Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Hegel maintains that the categories contain the objective structure not just of the objects of human experience (Kant’s position), but of being itself. This, of course, is a belief that Kant does not share. For Kant the categories allow us to understand as objective what we perceive, and so constitute the conditions of objective experience. They do not, however disclose the intrinsic character of things themselves. Hegel goes beyond Kant, therefore, by retaining the metaphysical idea — embaced by Spinoza and Liebniz — “that thinking grasps what things are IN-THEMSELVES”

The project of the Phenomenology is thus clear: it does not provide a logical-metaphysical account of the nature of being, but shows how the assumptions and certainties of consciousness lead by themselves to the standpoint of absolute knowing.

Note that phenomenology as Hegel conceives it, is not epistemology: it does not try to justify the claims of ordinary consciousness itself (and so is not interested in determining, for example, whether or not the colors we see are really there). Nor is phenomenology to be confused with transcendental philosophy (as practiced by Kant and Fichte): it does not aim to uncover the epistemic conditions of ordinary consciousness. Phenomenology is a new discipline that seeks to understand the perspective of consciousness on its own terms,whatever its conditions may be and whether or not its claims are justified.

Phenomenology examines not what being is absolutely, but the way being is understood by, and so appears to, consciousness. Similary phenomenology does not try to establish definitively what knowledge or mind is (and so is not philosophy of mind), but studies the way knowledge is understood by, and so appears to, consciousness.

There is, however, another, more positive nuance to Hegel’s phrase, The Phenomenology also shows how absolute knowing is gradually caused to emerge or “appear” by the certainties of consciousness itself. Hegel’s book thus examines both how knowledge appears to consciousness and how that very appearance leads logically and immanently to the appearance on the scene of absolute knowing.

mutual recognition

Houlgate, Stephen. “G.W.F. Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit.” The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy. Eds. Solomon, Robert C. and David Sherman, 2003. 8-29. Print.

On what makes self-consciousness social

page 16: For Kojeve, what drives self-consciousness to become social is its desire to assimilate (as well as be desired by) another’s desire; for Hegel, by contrast, what renders self-consciousness social is its acceptance of the other as an independent source of recognition for itself.

page 17According to Kojève, the direct consequence of desire’s entrance into social relations is struggle and conflict. Each desire, Kojève insists, “wants to negate, to assimilate, to make its own, to subjugate, the other Desire as Desire.” Furthermore, each seeks to have its exclusive right to satisfaction recognized by all desires. This “fight” or struggle in turn leads to the creation of masters and slaves. Human social and historical existence is thus distinguished principally by fighting, slavery and work. For Kojève’s Hegel there is a point at which historical development stops: namely, when a community of mutual recognition is produced that puts an end to struggle and domination. … Nevertheless, what has prevailed throughout history prior to this point is nothing but struggle and domination, because these are generated by the very desire that gives rise to social interaction in the first place.

Achieving self-consciousness as we have seen, requires that I relate to myself in relating to that which is other than me. This means that I must relate to another self-consciousness that recognizes me alone. Self-consciousness must, therefore, be social and intersubjective. We now know that by itself recognition accorded to me by the other is not sufficient to enable me to be concretely self-conscious. To attain that end I must be recognized by another that I recognize in turn as a free and independent other. Genuine self-consciousness thus requires not just recognition of my identity by the other, but mutual recognition by each of us of the other. Self-consciousness must be a “double movement of the two self-consciousnesses” working freely together. In such a movement, Hegel writes, “each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same. Action by one side only, would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both.”

Mutual recognition, for Hegel, requires the uncoerced cooperation of the two (or more) self-consciousnesses involved. Indeed, not only must the two self-consciousnesses freely recognize one another; in fact, they must both recognize that their mutual recognition and cooperation is needed for either to be concretely and objectively self-conscious. In Hegel’s own words, they must “recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.”

Genuine self-consciousness involves much more than mere desire (though it must also incorporate desire). Whereas desire “seizes upon and negates the object,” genuine self-consciousness requires recognition from the other, which in turn entails “allowing the other to be what it is” and “letting the other go free.” Self-consciousness would like to know only itself in the other and be the sole object of the other’s recognition. Such self-certainty can be achieved, however, only “through membership or partnership with Other.” For one person to have a concrete and objective understanding of himself, he must join together with somebody else.

as beings who are by necessity conscious of what is other than ourselves, we can achieve certainty of ourselves only when we are recognized by another whom we recognize as free in turn. This conception of mutual recognition, I contend, lies at the heart of Hegel’s whole social and political philosophy. (20)

Žižek subjectivity

houlgate on kojève

Houlgate, S. G. W. F. Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit.

Houlgate opines on page 13:

In my view, however, Kojève seriously distorts Hegel’s account of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology by conflating the idea that desire is the activity of negation with the further idea that the subject of desire is essentially “empty.” According to Kojève, the desiring subject is “an emptiness (vide) greedy for content; an emptiness that wants to be filled by what is full”; that is to say, “desire is absence of being” that seeks to fill itself “with a natural, biological content.” To my mind, this distinctively Kojèvian conception of desire finds no place in Hegel’s account. Desire does, indeed, negate the object. Yet it does so not to fill a void in the subject, but rather to confirm and enhance the subject’s sense of self: desire, Hegel writes, is simply the movement of consciousness whereby its “identity of itself with itself becomes explicit for it.” Pace Kojève, the desiring self in the Phenomenology does not lack a sense of its own being. If anything, it is rather too full of itself, for it regards everything around it as there for it alone. In so doing, desire considers the other to be nothing but an opportunity for desire itself to negate it. Desire is thus for Hegel “certain of the nothingness of this other,” but it is by no means clear that desire takes itself to be sheer “absence” or “emptiness.”

houlgate phenomenology desire

Houlgate, Stephen. “G.W.F. Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit.” Solomon, Robert C. and David Sherman eds. The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. Print.

According to Hegel, I cannot fully understand who I am, if I remain alone by myself with only the objects of nature to attend to. I gain a proper consciousness of myself only when my self-understanding is recognized and confirmed by others.

The Phenomenology describes … the development of consciousness from its most primitive or naive form which Hegel names “sensuous certainty” to its most mature form: self-knowing spirit or “absolute knowing.”

Sensuous certainty: form of consciousness that takes itself to be aware of the simple immediate presence of things, eschewing all mediating categories and is certain in its own mind that what it has before it is nothing but this, here, now in all its simplicity.

Perception: the more developed standpoint of perception is logically implicit in that of sense certainty, and those wedded to immediate sensuous certainty should acknowledge that the objects they relate to are more complex than they first think. Hegel argues that perception grasps its object as a complex unity of many “nows” and many “heres,” but that it cannot decide whether the true nature of the object lies more in its unity or in its multiplicity. Perception ends up distinguishing between the manifold character and the inner unity of the object. As soon as it regards its object as having an inner unity, however, it ceases to be mere perception and becomes understanding.

Understanding: then learns that inner unity of the thing actually consists in lawfulness, reason, and life. When this happens, Hegel claims, understanding proves to be not just consciousness of objects, but also self-consciousness — because it finds in its objects the very qualities that constitute its own nature.

Prior to its mutation into self-consciousness, understanding already incorporates an element of self-understanding: it knows that it is precisely the understanding, rather than mere perception of objects.

Yet only when it encounters in the objects themselves nothing but qualities belonging to itself does it come to be self-consciousness in the full sense, that is, consciousness of itself above all else.

Hegel points out that understanding always takes itself to be conscious of what is other than it and does not realize that it is self-conscious. It is we phenomenologists, not understanding itself, who recognize that understanding is in fact conscious of itself. In Hegel’s own words, “it is only for us that this truth exists, not yet for consciousness.” Nevertheless, in understanding something else to be rational and law-like, understanding is, indeed, “communing directly with itself, enjoying only itself” … Hegel’s next task is to examine what is involved in being explicitly self-conscious, or “what consciousness knows in knowing itself.”

We become explicitly self-conscious when we make our selves and our own identity the explicit and all consuming object of our concern, when we become wholly and overtly absorbed by ourselves.

1. consciousness comes to be wholly absorbed by itself while remaining conscious of what is other than it. When consciousness wakes up to the fact that it is primarily conscious of and concerned with itself, the objects of perception and understanding do not suddenly disappear from view. ON the contrary, they remain before us as the external objects in relation to which we are principally conscious of ourselves. For Hegel, self-consciousness is thus not exclusively consciousness of oneself; it is a relation to something other than me in which I relate to myself above all.

This is not to deny that, like Descartes in the Mediations, I can “shut my eyes, stop my ears, withdraw all my senses” and “converse with myself” in total separation from things. What can be reached through Cartesian doubt, however, is no more than abstract self-consciousness, because such doubt abstracts from the conditions under which alone concrete, all-embracing self-consciousness is possible: namely, consciousness of an external world in relation to which we find ourselves. … Hegel acknowledges that such abstract self-consciousness is possible and is an important moment of true, concrete self-consciousness. He claims, however, that true self-consciousness itself does not merely abstract from but (to borrow Kant’s term) “accompanies” our consciousness of objects.

From Hegel’s point of view Descartes overlooks the moment of other-relatedness that is essential to true consciousness of oneself. Yet there is nevertheless something to be learned from Descartes about true self-consciousness: for in remaining conscious of real, external objects, self-consciousness must also seek to negate those objects. Consciousness finds itself in what is other than it; but the very otherness of the objects I encounter inevitably prevents me from relating wholly to myself. In order to achieve unalloyed self-consciousness, therefore, I must regard the object before me as something that is not essentailly other than or independent of me after all, but there merely for me. I continue to consider the object to be real, and (unlike Descartes) do not declare it to be a figment of my imagination: but I deem it to offer no resistance to me and to yield to my ability to negate or consume it for my own satisfaction and self-enjoyment. Insofar as self-consciousness relates to itself through negating objects around it, it is, in Hegel’s word, desire (Begierde). Self-consciousness necessarily takes the form of desire, therefore, because Descartes is half-right: consciousness does enhance its sense of itself by negating the objects around it, but it directs its activity of negation at a realm of objects whose reality is not in doubt and that, consequently, forever remains to be negated.

Note that desire arises at this point in the Phenomenology not (or, rather, not just) because we are organic, embodied beings, but because of the very nature of self-consciousness itself. Concrete self-consciousness is not immediate self-awareness, but self-awareness mediated by and inseparable from the awareness of what is other. Self-consciousness is interested in itself above all, and yet, as a complex form of consciousness, it is necessarily related to external things.

If it is to attain an undiluted consciousness of itself, it must thus negate and destroy the other things in encounters. As this activity of negating what is other than itself, self-consciousness is desire. In Hegel’s own words, the origin of desire is thus the fact that “self-consciousness is … essentially the return from otherness.”

Note that what we desire, in Hegel’s view, is not the object as such, but rather, as Jean Hyppolite puts it, “the unity of the I with itself.” If Hegel is right, in seeking to enjoy the object, we are in fact seeking to enjoy ourselves.

introduction summary

When the question of practical philosophy, that is, bringing philosophy in a practical relationship with living, then it has always delved into the question of desire. Why? Butler adds, to live a philosophical life, is to ask the question, is the human individual capable of living a philosophical, hence moral life? Does ‘ought’ imply ‘can’. And if desire were just seen to be an irrational component with no inherent competency, then the moral project would founder. But, on the contrary, moral philosophy has

On Spinoza

Hegel is sceptical of the notion of metaphysical closure, Butler adds that Hegel charges Spinoza with erecting a metaphysical system that “excludes the negativity of self-consciousness, that aspect of human life that precludes its final assimilation into Being …” (10) And it is in Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s over-theistic mono-mania, that is Spinoza’s excluding of “consciousness’s own negativity” that we find hegel’s original contribution to the formulation of desire

A very nice summary of the Phenomenology

Spinoza’s metaphysics takes the point of view of the completed system as its starting point, but Hegel’s Phenomenology poses the question of how this system is known, and how the knower comes to know himeself as part of this system. In other words, Hegel wants to know how the movement of human knowledge, the negativity of self-consciousness, comes to be understood as necessary for the constitution of the system itself and further, how the necessity of human negativity confirms the impossiblity of that system’s completion and closure (12).

For Butler, no doubt heavily influenced by the French reading of Hegel, the negativity of self-consciousness is desire. Desire is the negative dialectic. Of which she poses the question to Hegel as to whether he is “guilty of silencing the power of the negative?” (14).

The deceptive pursuit of the Absolute is not a vain “running around in circles,” but a progressive cycle which reveals every deception as permitting some grander act of synthesis, an insight into yet more regions of interrelated reality (22).

Desire

Nothing just appears ex nihilo for Hegel, “‘Appearance’ is but one explicit or actual moment in the development of a phenomenon. In the Phenomenology, a given phenomenon appears in the context of a given configuration of the world. In the case of desire, we must ask, what kind of world makes desire possilbe? What must the world be like for desire to exist?” (24).

butler move from hegel

We are not mere dyads on our own, since our exchange is conditioned and mediated by language, by conventions, by a sedimentation of norms that are social in character and that exceed the perspective of those involved in the exchange (28)

Post-Hegelians like Adriana Cavarero ask “who are you” and thus try to suggest that Hegel’s dialectic of recognition gets it wrong when it envelopes the other within the “I.” Although as Butler points out, Hegel reveals the shortcomings of the Master and Slave dyad of recognition, requiring a further incorporation under the sphere of ethics or sittlich.., Butler is drawing parallels between Hegel’s ethical sphere and structure of normativity that underscores the ability for one to recognize an other.

Whereas The Phenomenology of Spirit moves from the scenario of the dyad toward a social theory of recognition, for Caverero it is necessary to ground the social in the dyadic encounter. She writes: “The “you” comes before the we, before the plural you and before the they.

Susceptibility to others that is unwilled, unchosen, that is a condition of our responsiveness to others, even a condition of our responsibility for them. It means, among other things, that this susceptibility designates a nonfreedom and, paradoxically, it is on the basis of this susceptibility over which we have no choice that we become responsible for others (87-88).

butler desire recognition

The norms by which I seek to make myself recognizable are not fully mine (35).

To revise recognition as an ethical project, we will need to see it as, in principle, unsatisfiable (43).

🙂 Butler maintains that going back to some of her earliest debates over the perils of seeking to come establish common principles on the identity of political subjects in order to engage in political action. At that time Butler discouraged attempts to discipline the feminist subject around a core set of features. But the debate has matured greatly since those early days. Now the political salience of fluid identities has been displaced by Butler who rejects the ontological moorings that would even lay claim to any claim of an ‘identity’ as an ontology of ‘identity’ is rejected. For Butler, it isn’t that identities are bad, or not useful, of course we have identities to a certain degree to function every day, however, in the realm of politics, of being addressed, of having to give an account in various state and other social institutional frames, immigration hearing, marriage ceremony, citizenship hearing, child adoption, job application, and other social arrangements and institutional settings that require one to give an account and stand in judgement of that account. Butler’s ethico-political project is to overturn and open up the the normative frames within which these institution function. The formation of the subject relies on a social ontology and for Butler this means that she underscores the importance of relations that humans depend upon in order for a human life to flourish. Relations with primary caregivers at the start of life, relations with other sentient life forms and the environment, all figure in to Butler’s project of a non-anthropocentric conception of the human

even a non-anthropocentric philosophical anthropology. The other way of saying this is that wherever the human is, it is always outside of itself in the non-human, or it is always distributed among beings, among human and non-human beings, chiasmically related through the idea of precarious life. So we can neither lodge the human in the self, nor ground the self in the human, but find instead the relations of exposure and responsibility that constitute the “being” of the human in a sociality outside itself, even outside its human-ness. (interview in 2009 Theory and Event)

… desire sets the limits and the conditions for the operation of recognition itself. Indeed, a certain desire to persist, we might say, following Spinoza, underwrites recognition, so that forms of recognition or, indeed, forms of judgment that seek to relinquish or destroy the desire to persist, the desire for life itself, undercut the very preconditions of recognition (44).

This failure to narrate fully may well indicate the way in which we are, from the start, ethically implicated in the lives of others. Although some would say that to be a split subject, or a subject whose access to itself is forever opaque, incapable of self-grounding, is precisely not to have the grounds for agency and the conditions for accountability, the way in which we are, from the start, interrupted by alterity may render us incapable of offering narrative closure for our lives. The purpose here is not to celebrate a certain notion of incoherence, but only to point out that our “incoherence” establishes the way in which we are constituted in relationality: implicated, beholden, derived, sustaind by a social world that is beyond us and before us (64).

butler lordship and bondage

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

We have seen that desire is a polyvalent structure, a movement to establish an identity coextensive with the world. Hegel’s discussion of labor begins to show us how the world of substance becomes recast as the world of the subject. Desire as a transformation of the natural world is simultaneously the transformation of its own natural self into an embodied freedom. And yet, these transformations cannot occur outside of an historically constituted intersubjectivity which mediates the relation to nature and to the self. True subjectivities come to flourish only in communities that provide for reciprocal recognition, for we do not come to ourselves through work alone, but through the acknowledging look of the Other who confirms us (58).

kojève

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.

Desire is thus a kind of negation that is not resolved into a more inclusive conception of being; desire indicates an ontological difference between consciousness and its world, which, for Kojève, cannot be overcome.

Kojève’s formulation of desire as a permanent activity of negation permits a modern conception of desire freed from the implicit teleological claims of Hegel’s view in the Phenomenology. Kojève views desire as a … negative or negating intentionality without a preestablished teleological structure. … The dissolution of Hegel’s harmonious ontology, the scheme whereby negation is continuously superseded by a more encompassing version of being, allows for the formulation of desire as an expression of freedom. 69

Below is taken from Scott R. Stroud

Another important consideration that should lend credibility to Kojève’s externalist, social reading, although not to his ultimate materialist conclusions, is the issue of power in the master/slave dialectic. The important developments for the slave come in and through her reaction to the wielding of power by the master. Initially, however, one must recognize that the struggle was initiated over a desire for unilateral recognition by the other; in other words, each agent wanted power over the other to the extent that they could achieve unreciprocated recognition. This leads to the staking of lives qua transcending being, and to the life or death struggle for recognition. Kojève is accurate in his assessment of conflict relating to power; in this case, the power relates to external objects that a subject would like to exercise control over.

The other source of power in the struggle comes from the master, once the roles have been assigned. One agent becomes a slave because he yields to his natural instincts and desires; the master is able to risk his life long enough for the other’s desire to give way. In this regard, he earns the title of master because he was able to transcend his natural desires, such as those of self-preservation. The slave feels this external power exercised by the master and is forced to work and labor on the world to sate the master’s desires. Again, the externality of Hegel’s point is clear, in that the two self-consciousnesses are in a struggle that involves the status of both wills; the master’s will is that which ends up being sated with the unwilled action of the slave because of the massive power difference. The master is able to force the slave to serve him through the fear of death. It is through this experience, however, that the slave gains a realization of her being in the world; she realizes that she is a being-for-self and that the master’s power only goes so far. Indeed, in the later sections on stoicism and skepticism, the slave begins to exercise this putative freedom through mental activity.

aufhebung

Butler, Judith.Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Print.

… Hegel here characterizes the negativity of desire as the final, fully realized form of self-consciousness. To understand this correctly, we must not assume that negation is nothingness; on the contrary, as a differentiating relation that mediates the terms that initially counter each other, negation, understood in the sense of Aufhebung, cancels, preserves, and transcends the apparent differences it interrelates. As the final realization of self-consciousness, negation is a principle of absolute mediation, an infinitely capable subject that is its interrelations with all apparently different phenomena. 41

butler desire

Butler, Judith. Subjects of Desire. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.

Desire has been deemed philosophically dangerous precisely because of its propensity to blur clear vision and foster philosophical myopia, encouraging one to see only what one wants, and not what is. (3)

– moral subject must evince a moral intentionality, desire must be good, they must desire the good, ‘passionately wants what is right’ (4),

– if philosophy did not ‘evince a moral intentionality … philosophy would be left defenceless against the onset of nihilism and metaphysical dislocation.

… for desire, according to Hegel, is the incessant human effort to overcome external differences, a project to become self-sufficient subject for whom all things apparently different finally emerge as immanent features of the subject itself (6).

Enter Hegel’s 20th century French commentators, “desire increasingly becomes a principle of the ontological displacement of the human subject, and in its latest stages, in the work of Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault, desire comes to signify the impossibility of the coherent subject itself.” (6)

Twentieth-century French reflections on Hegel have, then, consistently looked to the notion of desire to discover possibilities for revising Hegel’s version of the autonomous human subject and the metaphysical doctrine of internal relations that conditions that subject (6).

How is it that desire, once conceived as the human instance of dialectical reason, becomes that which endangers dialectics, fractures the metaphysically integrated self, and disrupts the internal harmony of the subject and its ontological intimacy with the world? (7)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

Self-consciousness in general is Desire para 167

– consciousness must become other to itself in order to know itself, “The Hegelian subject cannot know itself instantaneously or immediately, but requires mediation to understand its own structure.

Insofar as desire is this principle of consciousness’ reflexivity, desire can be said to be satisfied when a relation to something external to consciousness is discovered to be constitutive of the subject itself … the Hegelian subject expands in the course of its adventure through alterity; it internalizes the world that it desires, and expands to encompass, to be, what it initially confronts as other to itself. The final satisfaction of desire is the discovery of substance as subject, the experience of the world as everywhere confirming that subject’s sense of immanent metaphysical place (8-9).