 Totality and Infinity unfolds around phenomenological descriptions of being, depicted initially as nature or forces in conflict (TI: 21–22). However, our being in-the-world also entails the enjoyment of natural elements and love of life (TI: 110–115). “We live from ‘good soup’, air, light, spectacles, work, ideas, sleep, etc.… These are not objects of representations. We live from them” (TI: 110). Levinas also reframes labor as the creation of a store of goods thanks to which the other can be welcomed (TI: 157–161, 205), rather than solely as the mastery or humanization of nature. Because we take joy in living and in creating a home, our lives are not firstly like Heidegger’s “care” (Sorge; TI: 112). Instead, we live nourished and can receive the other into our space. On the basis of these descriptions, transcendence as defined above comes to pass in several stages. First, the onset of the other—as the expression of the face—interrupts our free activity (and willing) and calls us to account for ourselves (TI: 198, 291), something Levinas calls “goodness” (TI:  200).[17]  Second, in thereby responding, the subject approached by the other engages in an act that opens the possibility of dialogue. The unfolding of dialogue expands the social relationship, and Levinas argues that social life preserves a residuum of the initial “ethical” encounter with the face. Intersubjective dialogue entails conversation, teaching, and at a more general level, literary or philosophical discourse (TI: 51, 57, 251–52, 295).