Chapter 2: The Presence of the Absent

The perception of the transcendent thing as the presence of an absence needs to be confirmed. Yet it seems that only others are capable of properly ensuring the transcendence of the world, precisely because the givenness of others as such is expressly that of an absence that no presentation can ever fulfill. Fulfillment can only ever occur in the form of presentification. And by virtue of perceiving the world of others, my world presents itself for others, from a point of view that is external to me and that I can only presentify (while I perceive it from my own point of view). The objectivity thus acquired is obviously based on a presence for others that escapes me in principle, and consequently on the presence of an absence. This is how the world acquires a true ontological consistency.