can put one’s own thinking into question, and what happens to being/ Being and time when two thoughts embrace each other. He does not consider that the desire for touching one another can unveil to us what is to be thought, in particular about the relations between « Being » and « Time » and the being of man—about which « we are not yet thinking » (op.cit., p. 91; p. 17) and which is not even entrusted to silence, except a silence which is itself unthought and unthinkable according to our traditional mode of thinking—that such a touching can shake.
There is no doubt that Heidegger has perceived that « hands join each other when this gesture must lead man to the greatest simplicity » (op. cit., p. 90; p. 16). But does he think in that case of a return to the elemental of flesh or of a call for a divine which would already have underrated and forgotten it? Has not what is most to think today to combine these two aspects of our being with each other instead of leaping over the one into the other, and so deepening more and more a gulf between them through unsuitable words?
Heidegger writes that « thinking sustains and guides every gesture of the hand » (op.cit., p. 93; p. 23). But what thinking is then in question? A thinking in the neuter? Is the way of acting of the hand of a man and of the hand of a woman really the same—except through their subjection to rules and norms imposed by a culture with a « unique thinking »? Is not an unique way of thinking at work when our hands are viewed as behaving with a lack of differentiation and in a sexless manner? And does not their possibility of joining one another—in a gesture of self-affection or hetero-affection—keep on hold this mode of thinking and even question thinking itself? Have we then not to give up any conscious will to act in order to try to perceive something about a specifically human way of being and of dwelling? Is it not from the active passivity of such a self-experience that can be revealed to ourselves and to one another the unspeakable presence emerging from our own incarnation and its sharing with a being which is different from us through a touching, touching oneself and touching one another, which exceeds any meaning merely meta-physical and opens up the way towards another era of thinking?
The hands which touch, the hands which touch one other can unite in us animality and rationality and combine one with the other in a way different from ties of which an economy of representation is capable. So