Separation and Discourse

Abstract

The idea of Infinity implies the separation of the same with regard to the other, but this separation cannot rest on an opposition to the other which would be purely anti-thetical. Thesis and antithesis, in repelling one another, call for one another. They appear in opposition to a synoptic gaze that encompasses them; they already form a totality which, by integrating the metaphysical transcendence expressed by the idea of infinity, relativized it. An absolute transcendence has to be produced as non-integrateable. If separation then is necessitated by the production of Infinity overflowing its idea and therefore separated from the I inhabited by this idea (the preeminently inadequate idea), this separation must be accomplished in the I in a way that would not only be correlative and reciprocal to the transcendence in which the infinite maintains itself with respect to its idea in me, it must not only be the logical rejoinder of that transcendence; the separation of the I with regard to the other must result from a positive movement. Correlation does not suffice as a category for transcendence.