Since man is constitutively oriented to other persons who are distinct from him, he is induced, because he is a finite being, to understand himself as if he were an object in front of himself. in such alienation he thus disregards is own subjective nature. A self-consciousness, that thinks of itself describing itself as though it were something "else", unfortunately leads to apprehension of reality overwhelmed by the "unitarist postulate" (the postulate of objective unity) which links unity to perfection of being and plurality to its imperfection. this postulate is inadequate to the i-you structure, because no with self-consciousness and freedom can exist without another equal being of the same nature, and it has therefore to be replaced by...