The Way of Love by Luce Irigaray - Introduction

In Western philosophy much has been made of philosophy as the love of wisdom, but what of the wisdom of love?

The way of love is an approach that seeks to join heart, body and mind, to bring back a sense of mysticism in philosophy, lost in time, to philosophy’s detriment. The way proposes that we read philosophy to stimulate, to cure, to return to dark existence with spirit a little more alive. It asks that we step away from a culture of monologue divorced from the real, to remit to a space where we less ‘speak about’ or ‘speak to’, from a presumption of a common universe, but rather we learn to ‘speak with’. In this way we are not so much surrounding ourselves inside-outside with a world of signifiers which separates us from the real and from all others. And it is not simply an exchange of signifiers between subjects, here, in flat, two-dimensional unity.

Objectivity describes a not-oneness, and the sensible and feelings, as subjectivities have their own descriptions, which are each worthy of our consideration and thought.  In order that we might not enact a reduction of objectivity into a sole subject, each must bring a meaning of one’s own into the dialogue, as we learn this practice, of how to ‘speak with’.

We require that we can say oneself to another without forcing upon the other one’s truth. From an interaction between subject and object a third arises, in the space generated by withdrawal that arises on the encounter with, and in, difference.

The notion of perfection of relation, as an absolute, is thus proposed here to never be completed, always becoming. The effort is expended to admitting and revealing diversity and alterity, without confusing the same as a horizon defined by death. In this same sweep, the subject-object relation eternally engaged has no past plenitude or ideal future. The vertical transcendence of the absolute – of Truth, or Idea, or Other, is substituted for a horizontal transcendence which calls for a different discourse, a completely revised logic, and a radical overhaul of the notion of perfection, itself. Mastery of nature and of the other is transformed into an elaboration of a shared universe, humanity instilling a fuller accomplishment, which is always under construction.

The unthinkable of thought is a traversing human identity, to overcome personal fullness to work together toward a more accomplished advent of spirit and humanity. To become beings capable of assuming the specificity of the real, without appropriating the other. By accepting an irrevocable split into two, within each of us, a decisive creation turns over, not to close itself up again a second time, but to recognise a forgotten difference, an irreducible difference, which separates human being itself without overcoming the division.

Never a completeness of the One, but a constitution of two worlds open and in relation to each other give birth to a third world as work in common and space-time, to be shared.

Traditional ontologies and essentialisms become liberated, transforming matter without abolishing it. Spirit becomes flesh, and flesh becomes word, interpenetrating and transmuting until that dichotomy between them no longer exists. We are two. We are one. We are One.

Ref: Irigaray, L. (2002). The Way of Love. London: Continuum. 1-12.