![]() ![]() ![]() Already for Marx it was clear that “alle Naturkräfte aus- und einatmende Mensch” is an aspect of humanity that has been radically forgotten in the course of history.1 But why do we keep forgetting air in philosophy? Luce Irigaray once wrote: “I breathe, therefore I am.”2 Why are then we still evading this phenomenon, perhaps the only one that could bring us closer to our own becoming as ethical beings, towards a new form of mutual conversation, a conversation of humanity perhaps, as also implied in this becoming? It is from our bodies, impregnated as they are by the air we breathe, that we can perceive another being in pain, a being living at the edge of their body-self, a body of which “arithmetic of breathing” (J. ![]() We always realize too late that there was a life. While we all know and recognize radically the need of others (including animal others, and, in a way, even nature) to take in and give out breath, at each and every moment, we still reside in our life-worlds, in the grip of most elemental fears of losing the ground beneath our feet, constantly protecting ourselves and taking more than we possibly need (of ourselves, of nature) for ourselves, and causing others to sufocate by not getting their food of life – air. My aim in this presentation is to establish a platform for an ethics of otherness, ethics of breath/life, an ethics as a place for the future conversation of (mild) gestures – such as compassion, forbearance and care. ![]()
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