The Face and Death
[Il volto e la morte – text published in the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung“, April 30th, 2021 and in Quodlibet]
It seems that in the new planetary order that is gaining form two things, apparently unrelated to each other, are destined to be completely removed: the face and death. We will endeavour to inquire if they are not somehow connected and what the meaning of their elimination is.
That the vision of one’s own face and the face of others is a decisive experience for man was already known to the ancients: ‘What is called “face”- writes Cicero – cannot exist in any animal except in man” and the Greeks defined the slave, who is not master of himself, aproposon, literally “without face”. Of course all living beings show themselves and communicate with each other, but only man makes the face the place of his recognition and his truth. Man is the animal that recognises his face in the mirror and mirrors and recognises himself in the face of the other. The face is, in this sense, both the similitas [similarity, likeness] and the similarity of the simultas [rivalry, enmity], the being together of men. A faceless man is necessarily alone.
This is why the face is the place of politics. If men had to communicate always and only information, always this or that thing, there would never be politics properly speaking, but only an exchange of messages. But since men must first communicate their openness to each other, recognise themselves in the face of another, the face is the very condition of politics, that on which is grounded everything that men say and exchange.