 Whereas in Existence and Existents, Levinas voiced “the profound need to leave the climate of [Heidegger’s] philosophy” (EE: 4), by 1961 he will have done so, albeit not without significantly reworking Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. As we have seen, Levinas envisages being as constant, neutral presence and, at times, like a Hobbesian state of nature. Derrida reminds us that this pre-Heideggerian conception is close to Kant’s notion of existence understood as conflictual intensities (1997 [1999: 49, 86]). That is why, in its natural expression, being takes on almost a mechanistic quality in Levinas. In social and institutional senses, being is conceived as the encompassing of individuals and communities by the State. On the latter depend security and property, life and death. But in the “Preface” to Totality and Infinity, Levinas compares the State with systematic philosophy: as the ‘organon’ of politics, the State manages commerce and conflicts, just as it declares wars. Similarly, Hegel’s idealist dialectics oversees and integrates sensibility and cognition, passing from the individual to the collective, and expressing the movement of Geist or Spirit, itself (TI: 21–23; 36–38; 87–88).