THIERRY DE DUVEis addressed, which is why it cannot be separated from a declaration. It presupposes
another, in the second person, facing me. Were my own freedom to be won at the expense
of the freedom of others, it would not have any ethical dimension. In the third person,
the freedom of the other has only a diminished ethical dimension. What doestheirfree-
dom cost me (the freedom of slaves, the oppressed, the wretched of the earth) so long as
I have not been confronted by them, in a face-to-face situation where their silent rebuke
forces me to address them?Yourfreedom alone is altogether ethical: the freedom of the
other in the second person. As soon as the dimension of the other as addressee is opened
up, this other is recognized at once in his or her uniqueness and in his or her humanity,
in other words, in the universality of his or her belonging to the human species. From
this twofold recognition, apparently, stems the de jure equality of all others, as asserted
by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the rush to conclude as much, there
was in fact something like a missed historical opportunity, the consequences of which—all
too obvious today—can be seen in the confusion of issues of human rights with humani-
tarianism. Since the French Revolution, the disentanglement of the political and the reli-
gious has been a task for the judicial domain, and the judicial domain establishes a subject
of law conceived in the first person, an ‘‘I’’ and not a ‘‘you.’’ In its translation of the
Christian maxim of faith into liberty, the French Revolution elided the address to the
other. I might venture to say that this elision lies at the root of the tragic misunderstand-
ing of political hope that has turned the two centuries separating us from the French
Revolution into the repetitious history of revolutions betrayed.
The address to the other is an initiative, a beginning, an irreversible opening of time.
Such, too, is one of the meanings of the wordrevolution. Its other meaning is ‘‘circular-
ity,’’ the hand of time rotating on itself, the initial openness closing in on the expected
result. In this sense, any revolution is, from the outset, a revolution betrayed, and every
hope is a promise I put into the other’s mouth, from which I now inevitably deduce that
it has not been fulfilled, at least not yet. Here initiative stems from expectation: addressing
the other is demanding his or her response, and even (as is usual in the hopes of ordinary
life), anticipating the desired response. Instead, we would need to devise an address that
is absolutely not a request, so that revolutions not be betrayed and hope be freed from
the cangue of ordinary expectations. There is something inhuman here, which verges on
saintliness—but who would deny that this is what Christianity has aspired to? True,
Christian hope veers toward the future—Christ’s second coming and the resurrection of
the body—yet it is a future that does not derive its meaning from the anticipation of the
event to come but, on the contrary, from the conviction that the decisive event has already
taken place. Compared with the various forms of political messianism that took off in the
wake of the French Revolution, Christian messianism turns out to be strangely more
‘‘realistic’’ and disenchanted: the Messiah came, and the world’s injustices are just the
same as before. Henceforth, the act of faith in Christ’s resurrection has to be renewed on
a daily basis, and herein lies the root of hope, which thus turns out to be nothing other
PAGE 658658.................16224$ CH33 10-13-06 12:37:33 PS