Proximity (n.) is a being caught up in fraternity — signifyingness.
Proximity (n.) is narrower, more constrictive, than contiguity — older than every past present.
Proximity (n.) that draws ever closer forgets reciprocity, like a love that expects no return.
Proximity (n.) as philosophy has always conceived it is merely a distance diminished, an exteriority conjured.
Proximity (n.) is a response without a question — fraternity before essence and before death, meaningful despite being and nothingness.
Proximity (n.) of the other is the immediacy of my enjoyment opened up for the other — the taste in my mouth altered by contact.
Proximity (n.) is not a narrowing interval between two points; its absolute and proper meaning presupposes "humanity."
Proximity (n.) is not the shortest distance through space but alterity become nearness — an initial directness that comes as the call of the other's face.
Proximity (n.) is a responsibility with regard to men we do not even know — older than the a priori.
Proximity (n.) is an arrhythmia in time — a non-coinciding refractory to the reminiscence that synchronizes a past.
Proximity (n.) is responsibility for the other — and might just as well be called humanity, or subjectivity, or self.
Proximity (n.) is never close enough: as responsible, I am never finished emptying myself of myself — the glory of a long desire.
Proximity (n.) goes from soul to soul, outside any manifestation as a phenomenon — for Plato, the approach of the other is beyond experience, like a dying.
Proximity (n.) is better to me than all interiorization and all symbiosis — the newness of love as opposed to hunger, desire as opposed to need.
Proximity (n.) does not enter the common time of clocks that makes meetings possible; it is a disturbance of rememberable time.
Proximity (n.) is by itself a signification — not spatial nearness visible to a third party, but the point where the intentional turns ethical.
Proximity (n.) and association with God are not poor approximations of knowledge but meanings with their own sovereign positivity — sociality together with transcendence.
Proximity (n.) is not consciousness of proximity but obsession — a counterconsciousness that strips consciousness of its initiative and puts me in accusation before any wrongdoing.