THIERRY DE DUVEfunction surges up on the mother’s side—indicates that the other thing the Revolution
failed to think through revolves around sexual difference. The reduction of universal love
to fraternity is the most obvious symptom of this; hence the hypothesis that, in order to
advance toward the exit from the religious, it is perhaps necessary, at the present time, to
‘‘gender’’ the postreligious virtualities of Christianity left unattended to by the Revolution.
Needless to say, I can only scratch the surface of this loaded issue. On the one hand, more
than the other monotheistic religions, theoretical Christianity explicitly makes room for
sexual difference at its very foundation; on the other hand, it does not fare any better in
the historical responsibility for the repression of the feminine. Here, Christianity must be
indicted as much as, if not more than, the Revolution. We shall not become post-Christian
simply by taking the virtualities of Christianity to the limit. A break must be made. But
where? The essential question seems to me to be deciding whether we must break with
the doctrine of the incarnation, which is the great invention of Christianity, or whether
we must break from within this doctrine. Will there be a way of rewriting it so that
women have a different place in it, and that the repression of the feminine is no longer
its consequence?
Whether to break with the doctrine of incarnation or not is a terribly delicate ques-
tion because, in due course, it entails taking up positions with regard to the respective
places of Judaism and Christianity in the matter of the exit from the religious. Given how
monstrously the Shoah denied Judaism a place at all, caution is called for. Gauchet can
be reproached for entertaining a teleological view of history that grants Christianity an
irreversible surpassing of Judaism on the way out of religion. I myself admit to following
in his footsteps when I base my optimism on his interpretation of Christianity as the
‘‘religion of the exit from religion.’’ But I see no reason to exclude other exits from
religion from being possible and desirable today, including one that takes as its point of
departure Judaism and its ethics. There is room here for reflective efforts whose premises
are divergent, but for which it would be premature to decide now that they will not one
day converge. Indications of such an alternative route are found in the reflections of Hans
Jonas about the concept of God after Auschwitz, or in the whole philosophical work of
Emmanuel Levinas.^5
As I embark on a third turn of the screw, which once again takes up the question of
the address to the other as articulating faith and freedom, this mention of Levinas is not
fortuitous. Levinas would say that otherness is the dimension of infinity revealed in the
other’s face. But it is one thing toenvisagethe other from within a religion of transcen-
dence, such as Judaism, and it is quite another thing to do so from within a religion of
incarnation, such as Christianity. For Levinas, the other is definitely not the other in the
third person, the other about whom one speaks, but rather the other who is presented to
me face to face. He is nevertheless not in the second person, as in the Christian act of
faith. The Levinasian other is not primarily the other to whom I address my words but,
first and foremost, the other who addresses me. The ‘‘me’’ starts by being a ‘‘you.’’ This
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