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The same and the other at the same time maintain themselves in relationship and absolve themselves from this relation, remain absolutely separated. The idea of Infinity requires this separation. It was posited as the ultimate structure of being, as the production of its very infinitude. Society accomplishes it concretely. But is not to broach being on the level of separation to broach it in its fallenness? The positions we have outlined oppose the ancient privilege of unity which is affirmed from Parmenides to Spinoza and Hegel. Separation and interiority were held to be incomprehensible and irrational. The metaphysical knowledge which puts the same in touch with the other then would reflect this fallenness. Metaphysics would endeavor to suppress separation, to unite; the metaphysical being should absorb the being of the metaphysician. The de facto separation with which metaphysics begins would result from an illusion or a fault. As a stage the separated being traverses on the way of its return to its metaphysical source, a moment of a history that will be concluded by union, metaphysics would be an Odyssey, and its disquietude nostalgia. But the philosophy of unity has never been able to say whence came this accidental illusion and fall, inconceivable in the Infinite, the Absolute, and the Perfect.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9342-6_6

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