 Otherwise than Being involves an innovative discussion of signification. Given Levinas’ hermeneutic insight that language is not merely a system of words paired up with pre-existing, objective realities, but instead brings reality to light, language and time will have analogous functions. That is, both make meaning possible as the realization of our world. Indeed, while Heidegger had argued that being resonates in (poetic) language, as the verb “to be”, Levinas, as we have seen, had counter-argued for an otherwise than being that showed itself in ad-verbial meaning. Yet, if the relationship between language and being is fully encompassing, even in a sense mystical, as it is for Heidegger, then either Levinas’ otherwise than being looks like mere speculation, or it simply inheres in being or participates in its verb-like transcendence. Either way, fundamental ontology thereby proves primordial and weakens Levinas’ claims. Yet for the latter, transcendence in fact points to the temporality that, as we have seen, already differs from phenomenology’s totalizing flow or the way Heidegger’s being temporalizes through Da-sein (i.e., as out-ahead-of-itself toward its ownmost possibility; OBBE: 169–170, 178–182). The lapse of time between the pre-intentional sensuous moment and its intentionalization denotes the transcendence that Levinas also equates with “the Saying” (OBBE: 37–55). His discussion of the Saying correlates with his treatment of sincerity, introduced already in Existence and Existents. Otherwise than Being radicalizes his notion of sincerity, insisting that the structure of sensibility is always as if punctuated by sensuous lapses. It is thanks to such time lapses that we are open and able to communicate because, as we have seen, proximity is an affective mode that motivates dialogue. While all sensuous lapses are not necessarily openings to intersubjective communication, proximity and vulnerability are the loci of transcendence-in-immanence and the birth of signification (whether words are actually uttered or not). For Levinas, there is more in living affectivity than Heidegger’s conception of being speaking through language captured. This is clear the moment we understand signification originally as an affective proto-intentionality and not as some thought, already formulated, that the I thereupon chooses to communicate to another (OBBE: 43).