Quotes from Luce Irigaray

Traditional morality ... does not teach us how to let the other follow his or her own path, meet with whomever he or she desires, go where he or she wants.

letting be is as important as mastering. Our tradition has encouraged us to be effective, to make or fabricate but not to let be born or let be.

Breathing, according to me, corresponds to taking charge of one's own life.

Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through.

Breathing, according to me, corresponds to taking charge of one's own life.

Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.

Your silence exists as does my self gathering. But so does the almost absolute silence of the world's dawning. In such suspension, before every utterance on earth, there is a cloud, an almost immobile air. The plants already breathe, while we still ask ourselves how to speak to each other, without taking breath away from them.

Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through.

more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations...the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality" -luce irigaray

I love to you" is more unusual than "I love you," but respects the two more: I love to who you are, to what you do, without reducing you to an object of my love.

Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time?" - "When Our Lips Speak Together

Your body expresses yesterday in what it wants today. If you think: yesterday I was, tomorrow I shall be, you are thinking: I have died a little. Be what you are becoming, without clinging to what you might have been, what you might yet be. Never settle. Leave definitiveness to the undecided; we don't need it.

The human in what it is objectively ever since its beginning is two, two who are different. Each part of what constitutes the unity of the human species corresponds to a proper being and a proper Being, to an identity of one's own. In order to carry out the destiny of humanity, the man-human and the woman-human each have to fulfill what they are and at the same time realize the unity that they constitute.

Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason Socrates defined philosophy as thanatou mélétè (preparation for death; Plato, Phaedo, 81a). Indeed, without death there would hardly have been any philosophizing.

I am only astonished that, while so many women have intelligent things to say and so many men are still unknown, a publisher cared to print such a little book, and at such a price. That confirms what Schopenhauer reveals to us, among other truths: philosophy is a matter of death. A philosopher living and thinking life is a priori suspect in our philosophical culture.

Our [western] culture cuts us off from our natural roots, instead of contributing toward the cultivation of the natural beings we are. This tradition has, in this way, rendered us extraneous to our environment, extraneous to one another as living beings, en even extraneous to ourselves.

Kendini varolan? yenilemekle, betimlemekle ve yeniden üretmekle s?n?rlamamak, aksine henüz olmam?? olan? icat etmeyi ya da düÅŸlemeyi bilmek…

You give me being. But what I love is the fact that you give it to me. Staying there is of little matter to me. I like your giving me a mirror which is not made of ice. Your flowing into me, and me into you. Receiving you melting, molten, and giving that flow back to you. Without end." -- Luce Irigaray in 'Elemental Passions

Porque si hemos sido valorizadas únicamente dentro de una función de reproducción, aceptar el goce fuera de la función reproductiva significa inventar una sexualidad femenina diferente

Every desire has a relation to madness.