A strange passage follows, in which Levinas turns to Heidegger’s notion of “thrownness” to elicit the notion of an existentless existence: “It is as if the existent appeared only in an existence that precedes it, as though existence were independent of the existent, and the existent that finds itself thrown there could never become master of existence” (p. 45). Thrown existent takes place, then, against a spectral, disrupting backdrop, which Levinas terms the “il y a.”

¶ 8:23 PM