 The phenomenology of eros opens a future of “election” within the family and perhaps beyond it. Despite the apparent heterosexism of his formulations, Levinas introduces abiding concern for singularity and uniqueness by defining the figure of paternity as the possibility of electing each son in his specificity, even as the latter may serve (and clash with) his brothers. Consistent with a model, the family is both figure and reality. It serves Levinas’ hermeneutic secularization of messianic future-time through the succession of generations. Interestingly, eros unfolds “phenomenologically” in much the same way as did the proto-experience of the “there is” (il y a). That is, it unfolds in a darkness overlooked by phenomenologies that rely on light and the universal evidence that light enables (TI: 256). There would consequently be a neglected underside to the phenomenological account of object-constitution, which precedes and accompanies intentionality’s encounter with objects. And that requires hermeneutics.