The first communication between human beings the one between the newborn and the mother
happens through touch. Strangely this first way of relating to each other has barely been
considered by our education and our culture which have favoured sight to the detriment of
touch. And yet touching and being touched means experiencing ourselves as living beings. For
lack of such a touch we do not perceive the limits nor the sensitive potential of our bodies.
Then we remain immersed in a natural or a cultural universe incapable of reaching our own
individuation and of knowing our fundamental difference from the other(s). Desire in
particular sexuate desire is a call for touching one another anew. But this touch requires us
to have gained our autonomy and to be able to open up to and commune with the other as
transcendent to ourselves while staying in ourselves. This book unveils and explores how touch
can act as a basic living mediation in love and more generally in our comprehensive individual
and collective human becoming. It also considers how touch can contribute to founding a culture
respectful of difference instead of subjecting them to an ideal of sameness. We need touch as
mediation to fulfil our humanity and to build a truly human thinking and world.
