 Two dilemmas thus arise in Totality and Infinity. It is an open question whether they are laid to rest in Otherwise than Being. They concern first the dichotomy between what was traditionally called free will versus nature, and second the socio-cultural mediations between families and States. In the first case, it may be surprising that Levinas characterizes human existence in terms resembling those of physiological determinism, that is, in terms of drives and the interests attaching to them. For him, the problem of reconciling freedom and nature would above all be one of interrupting the activity of the drives, which is the bodily substrate of consciousness and contributes to its dynamic temporal unity. Understanding the will, then, does not begin with freedom so much as with something closer to conatus essendi or even to a will to power (i.e., with something “natural”). Levinas proves close to Kant here. For the latter, the motivation to disregard one’s interests in favor of the moral law lies in the unique affect called Achtung. Kant urged that Achtung be considered in its negative and positive aspects: negatively, as attention or freedom from sensuous distraction. In its positive sense, Achtung corresponds to reverentia, respect, understood as the freedom to grasp the law as something eminently worthy of adherence, despite its constraining quality. Moreover, 