Irigaray: The Way of Love

“the book outlines another philosophy, in a way a philosophy of the feminine, where the values of intersubjectivity, of dialogue in difference, of attending to present life, in its concrete and sensible aspects, will be recognized and raised to the level of wisdom” [vii]
“until today, what we have found is, at best, to integrate the other: in our country, our culture, our house.”
“That does not yet signify meeting with the other, speaking with the other, loving with the other.”
“The book is in search of gestures, including gestures in language, which could help on the way to nearness, and in order to cultivate it.”
“This implies another relation with language, a relation which favors the act of speech in the present, and not language already existing and codified.”
“And such an experience of speech, which is irreducible to any other, is related to an experience of listening-to”
“We have to listen to the present speaking of the other in its irreducible difference with a view to the way through which we could correspond to it in faithfulness to ourselves.”
“…Heidegger did not venture, those of the meeting with an other, another who is different while being the nearest to ourselves; the clearing for the advent of a dialogue or conversation between the two parts of humanity in the respect of their otherness to one another.”
“Such a human “Being” is always in becoming even if it exists, or ought to exist, in every instant.”
“a becoming oneself which does not stay in suspension in immutable truths or essences but which provides a faithfulness to oneself in becoming. Such faithfulness is indispensible for a meeting with the other, a dialoguing with the other, a loving with the other. Without it we fall back into fusion, or into couples of opposites whose relation will be governed by hierarchy, submission of one to the other, sadomasochism.”
“objective is to stage a relation of love and of dialogue between two subjects regardless of any object…”
“…to outline the frame of a loving encounter, particularly an encounter able to dialogue in difference, the most paradigmatic and universal difference being sexual difference.”
“the wisdom of which these technicians of the logos are enamored is sometimes a knowing how to die, but seldom the apprenticeship to a knowing how to live.”
“A learned professor from the Sorbonne proves to be a very mediocre life companion: a little boy in love and a lover of boys rather than women. It was already true at the time of Plato’s Banquet.
“Our rational tradition has been much concerned with ‘speaking about’ but has reduced ‘speaking with’ to a speaking together about the same things.”
“…diversity takes place not only between cultures but between subjects, and in a paradigmatic manner between man and woman.”
“…the ability to say oneself to the other without for all that forcing upon the other one’s truth. “
“what henceforth represents the absolute to be attained is the perfection of the relation-never accomplished. Without confusing it once, once again, with some horizon defined by death. Or submitting it to a past plenitude or an ideal future, which amounts partially to the same thing.”
”For the vertical transcendence of the absolute-of the Truth, of the Idea, of the Other-is in a way substituted a respect toward the horizontal transcendence of the other which calls for a different discourse, a different logic, a different relation to perfection. “
“The mastery of nature and of the world is transformed into the elaboration of a shared universe.”