 Heidegger’s Da-sein confronted the question of being when it found itself brought before itself in anxiety (he-BT: §40). In contrast, Levinas proposed other ways by which the gap narrows between being itself and the beings that we are. Following his leitmotif of our recurrent urge to escape, Levinas examined the invariable disappointments following our attempts at transcending our existence: the aforementioned states of need and pleasure give way to a sobering up or disillusionment. In affective and physical states like shame and nausea, the bodily self is experienced as a substance trapped in its stifling existence and desperate for a way out. Commentator Jacques Rolland has explored Levinas’ return to the body, to concreteness, escape, and the way in which he deformalized even Heidegger’s hermeneutics (OE: 29–32). Rolland adds that this approach was inspired by Levinas’ critical meditation, published one year earlier (1934), on the materialist “blood and soil” philosophy popular with National Socialism (RPH). As regards stifling existence, when Levinas refers to being, it is as ongoing presence, rather than the event of disclosure that Heidegger described. It remains a matter of debate whether this interpretation of being constitutes a step back to an older metaphysics prior to Heidegger’s innovations, or not (Franck 2008: 31).