According to the words of Phaedrus in the Symposium of Plato Love sometimes named Eros has
no parents no age no history and its origin remains unknown to anyone. Love whose destiny
is said to be unique amongst the gods and humans perhaps embodies desire for a conjunction
always in search of its happening. Love would represent a dynamism longing for the copula
incarnating the transcendence of our being. As such Love would remain the everlasting yearning
for the accomplishment of the ecstatic destiny of humanity. In this book Luce Irigaray -
philosopher linguist psychologist and psychoanalyst - proposes nothing less than a new way of
conceiving what a human being is as well as a means to ensure our individual and relational
development from birth. Unveiling the mystery of our origin is probably what most motivates our
quests and plans. And yet such a disclosure proves to be impossible. Indeed we were born as one
from a union between two and we are forever deprived of an origin of our own. Hence our
ceaseless search for roots: in our genealogy in the place where we were born in our culture
religion or language. But a human being cannot develop from its own roots as a tree does. As
humans we must take responsibility for our own being and existence without any given
continuity with our origin and background. How can we achieve that? First by cultivating our
breathing which is more than a means to come into the world and to exist breathing also
allows us to transcend mere survival to secure for ourselves a spiritual becoming. Taking on
our sexuate belonging is the second element which enables us to assume our natural existence.
Indeed this determination at once brings us energy and provides us with a structure which
contributes to our individuation and our relations with other living beings and the world. Our
sexuation can compensate for our absence of roots too by compelling us to unite with the other
sex so that we freely approach the copulative conjunction from which we were born that is the
mystery of our origin. This does not occur through a mere sexual instinct or drive but
requires us to cultivate desire and love with respect for our mutual difference(s). In this way
we can give rise to a new human being not only at a natural but also at an ontological level.
