BEYOND TRAGEDY AND THE SACRED: EMMANUEL LEVINAS ON EVASION AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
JOHN CARUANA
A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial hlfilrnent of the requirernents for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought York University Toronto. Ontario
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by John Caruana
a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHtLOSOPHY
O Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNIVERSITY to lend or seIl copies of this dissertation, to the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this dissertation and to Iend or seIl copies of the film, and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this dissertation. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts frorn it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. ABSTRACT
Levinas argues that tragic descriptions - fkom the Greeks to Nietzsche and Heidegger - rarely dare to draw the fùll implications of asserting that being is tragic. At the same time that it accurately attests to the irremediable character of being. the tragic position proposes a remedy that presupposes the self s capacity for transformation and meaningfulness. Heidegger- for exarnple. holds that Dasein possesses as its highest possibility the capacity to embrace its finitude. For Levinas. however. the self is mired in a hopeless state of perpetzial ambivalence - oscillating between moments of enjoyment and a horror of being. If the self lacks the means to rectify its condition in being. what is the genuine source of meaningfülness and purpose in Our lives? Levinas attempts to respond to this question by inquiring into what he dubs the Desire for transcendence.
Though western phiIosophy has at times voiced this Desire - for example. Plato's notion of a -good beyond being' or Descartes's conception of the idea of the Infinite - ultimately. the philosophical tradition betrays the Good. because transcendence is almost always conceived in relation to anonymous being. For Levinas- the true -site' of the Good is the face or presence of the other human being that speaks to me directiy. The deepest level of the human drarna takes place in what he calls the "ethical intrigue" that binds the self to the Other. The Other's plea for me to address the ruins of being affects me immediatel y. Integrity or moral wholeness involves the mature capacity to accept bad conscience - which always bears the Other's imprint -as fundamental to being human.
The capacity to be responsible necessitates desacralization. Levinas awakens us to the importance of uprooting the sacred impulse at both the social and the individual level.
-iv- The sacred is the attempt to bypass the ethical intrigue for direct communion with a supposed supematural worId. The sacred experience, like the rragic position. ultimately promotes moral evasiveness by undennining the Other's cal1 to be responsible. ACKNO WLEDGMENTS
1 have incurred rnany debts in completing this dissertation. I am especially indebted to Lorraine Code whose critical feedback helped me to clari@ rny arguments and sharpen my presentation. Her professionalism and unfaihg support sustained my project, even when 1 was most inclined to abandon it. 1 count myself fortunate to have had her as rny supervisor. I am aIso indebted to David Jopling and Deborah Britzman. David offered detailed and constructive observations. especially conceniing Levinas's relationship to the philosophical tradition. Echoes of the conversations I shared with Deborah over coffee reverberate in much of this present work - in particdar. chapter four. I am also grateful to
Ji11 Kobbins for agreeing to read the entire dissertation. Her encouragement and questions are greatly appreciated.
I owe thanks to Stephen Levine for reading and commenting on an earlier drafi of chapter one. Many of the arguments that I develop in this work found their inspiration in conversations with several of my friends: Mark Blackell. Ainsworth Clarke. Kent EMS.
Joshua Ghisalberti, Jonathan Salem-Wiseman. and Samantha Webb. 1 am especiall>. gratefûl to Ainsworth and Kent for their ongoing intellectual stimulation.
Parts of chapters one and three originally appeared under the title "Levinas's
Concept of Proximity: Redeeming the Disaster of Being." in Infernarionu2 Srrtdies it7
Philosophy (30:1 [1998)] -33-46). 1 am grateful to the publisher for permission to reprint this material here. Finally 1 doubt 1 could have written this dissertation without the support of my wife. Teresa Sirnrn. Her companionship and intellectual engagement saw me through the many ups and downs of this process. TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...... iv-x-
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... vi-vii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... ix
Chapter
1. THE DISASTER OF BEING: BEYOND TRAGEDY...... 12
II. -DESIRE' AND CONSCIENCE: SEEKNG THEHIDDENGOOD ...... 53
III. THE ETHICAL iNTE2IGUE: REDEEMING THE DISASTER OF BErNG...... 99
IV. -GOD WRITES STRAIGHT WITH CROOKED LINES': FROM THE SACRED TO HOLINESS ...... 153
CONCLUSION ...... 211
NOTES ...... 214
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 243 ABBREVIATIONS
WORKS BY EMMANUEL LEVINAS
AE Autrement qzi 'être, ou au-delà de 1 'essence. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff- 1974.
ATr Alterity and Transcendence. Translated by Michael B. Smith. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
BI --Beyond Intentionality" In Philosophy in France Today. Edited by Alan Montefiore. Cambridge and London: Cambridge Universi5 Press. 1983.
BPW Emrnanztel Levirtas: Basic Philosophical Writings- Edi ted b>-Robert Bernasconi. Simon Critchley. and Adriaan T. Peperzak. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1996.
CP Collecred Philosophical Papers. Trandated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. 1986.
DD Leçon Talmudique ('-Désacralisation et désensorceIIement"). In L 'Autre dans la conscience juive: Le sacrée et le couple. Edited by Jean Halpérin and Georges Lévitte, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1973.
DE De I ëvasion. Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1982.
DEE De l 'exisrence ~ Z 'exisranr. 2nd ed. Paris: Vrin. 1978.
DEL "Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas." In Fuce to Fuce ~imirhLe~Ymts. Edited by Richard A. Cohen. Albany. N.Y.: State University of New York Press. 1986.
DF Diflcult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Translated bq' Séan Hand. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1990.
DL Dijficile liberté. Essais sur le judaïsme. 2nd. ed. Pans: AIbin Michel. 1976.
DMT Dieu, la mort et le temps (Paris: Livre de Poche. 1995).
DR "Diachrony and Representation" In TO.
DVI De Dieu qui vient à l 'idée. Paris: Vrin, 1 982. EDE En décoztvrant Ifexistence avec Husserl er Heidegger. 2nd ed. Pans: Vnn- 1967.
fiistence and Existents. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nij hoff. 1978.
Éthique et infini Dialogues avec Philippe Nerno. Paris: Fayard. 1982.
Ethics and Infini&- Conversations rsirh Philippe Nenzo. Translated by Richard Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. 1985.
Emmanuel Lévinas: Essai et entretiens. Interview by François Po irié. Paris: Babel. 1996,
EN Entre nous. Essais sur- le penser--&/ autre- Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1991.
EP -*Épreuvesd'une pensée," in L 'Herne 60 ( 199 1 ): 139- 153.
GCM Of God H%o Cornes ru Mirtd. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1998.
HAH Hzrmanisme de Z autre hornnle. Montpellier: Fata Morgana. 1972. rH Les Impréws de Ifhistoire. Edited by Pierre Hayat. Saint-Clement-la- Rivière: Fata Morgana, 1994.
The Le\*inas Reader, Edited by Sean Hand. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: BIackwell, 1989.
"Martin Heidegger and Ontology." Diacritics 26: 1 (1 996): 1 1-32.
Otheï-rvise tharz Being or Beyond Essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 198 1.
Outside the Subjecr. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Stanford. Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Proper Names. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Stanford?Calif.: Stanford University- Press. 1996.
PSD "De la prière sans demande. Note sztr ztne modalité drt jzrdaisme ." E~ztdes Philosophiques 38, no. 2 (1984): 157-163. -'Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerisrn" In Criticd Inquit?. 17 ( IWO): 63-7 1.
'Sécularisation et faim."In Cahier de l'Herne: Emmanuel Lérinus. Edited by Miguel Abensour and Catherine Chalier. (Paris: Livre de Poche [Editions de l'Herne], 199 1 ).
SMB Sur Maurice Blanchot. Montpellier: Fata Morgana. 1975.
TA Le remps er Z irutr-e. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1983.
Te1 Totalité er infini Essai sur Z 'exrérioriré. ïhe Hague: Martinus Nij ho ff, 1961.
Totality and Infine: An Essuy on Errerior*:. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Universit).. Press. 1 969.
In rhe Tinre ofthe Nations. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994.
Time und the Orher-. TransIated by Richard Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987.
TrO "The Trace of the Other." In Deconsrr-ztctiorî in Corîrcxt. Edited by Mark Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1986.
--Leçon Talmudique" ("La Tentation de la Tentation"). In Terîtarions Cr acrions de la cor7science juive. Editsd by Eliane Amado Lé--Valensi and Jean Halpérin. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 1 97 1 .
'-Useless Suffering." In The Provocarion of Levinas: Rethinking the Orher. Edited by Robert Bemasconi and David Wood. New York and London: Routledge. 1988. OTHER WORKS
DESCARTES
CSM II Descartes. René. Meditations on Fii-st Philosophy. In The Philusophical Wriiings of Descartes. Edited by J. Cottingham. R. Stoothoff. and D. Murdoch- Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge Universit). Press, 1985.
MARTIIU' HEIDEGGER
BT Heidegger. Martin. Being and Tirne. Translated by JOhn Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York and London: Harper and Ro~c-,1962.
SZ Geman pagination of Being and Time.
CDP Plato. The Collecteci Dialogries of Plaro. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. New York: Pantheon Books. 196 1. INTRODUCTION
Emmanuel Levinas is without doubt one of the most important figures in twentieth centq European thought. What draws scholars to his work is his profound conviction about the primacy of ethics. A student of Edmund Husserl and Martin
Heidegger. Levinas's thought turned from a reflection on being to a meditation on the significance of other human beings. Levinas was dismayed that traditional philosophy. including that of his two great mentors, conceives being as the ultimate horizon of reality. while neglecting the formative role of others in the constitution of moral consciousness.
In sharp opposition to the ego-centredness of the traditional position. Levinas maintains that responsibility for others constitutes the core of subjectivity. This is a daring and bold proposition. given that much of western philosophy - in keeping with the dominant political and cultural values of the west -identifies the essence of the self with persona1 fieedorn and self-sufficiency. Rejecting neither fieedom nor autonorny. Levinas shows how both are meaningful only in the context of responsibility for others. in particular. for the suffering and the destitute.
While there is no doubt that his anaIysis of the Other constitutes the most important feature of his philosophy, there is an unforninate tendency amongst certain scholars and critics who invoke Levinas's name to focus almost excIusively on his comments about the Other. We cannot, however, 1 contend, properly appreciate the significance of the Other unless we aiso grasp the nature of the self s predicament within being. 1 It is in Levinas's early work - the brilliant short essays of the 193 Os and the publications which appear irnrnediately after the Second World War -that we find the most vivid presentation of the self s dilemma. It is these early publications that I suspect go unread by those who refer ody to Levinas's thoughts on the Other. While Levinas was to later alter. even abandon. some of the themes found in his initial work. these writings remain indispensable for cornprehending the roIe played by the Other in his philosophy.
Once we grasp the nature of the crisis of the self. we will be in a rnuch better position to understand the self s relationship to the Other. For this reason. 1 wil1 begin this present study by exarnining some of the key features of his early thought.
The early Levinas. 1 will show in chapter one. underscores the self s profound ambivalence with regard to its being. "One possesses existence." Levinas observes in
1947, '-but is also possessed by it" (DEE 73. EE 47). The self represents a remarkable achievement within the hurly-burly (le remue-ménage)' of being or what Levinas cal 1s the il- a: it is an instant or a point of begiming that arrests the meaningless noise and disorder of being. But the self pays a tremendous cost for this power: the ability to create a place for itseIf within being simultaneously entails that the solitary instant that is the self must carry its existence along with it like an unwanted load. Free and yet burdened by its being. enjoying its existence and yet vulnerable to the arnbiguities of the il>* a. the self is an instant of great uncertainty. Because this ambivalence entails an intense suffenng it is systematically covered over by most religious and philosophical discourses. For
Levinas, however, it is imperative that we measure the full extent of our sufFering in being. By ignoring or downplaying the self s ambivalence towards its own being we fail to see what redeems it. that is, what finally fiees the self fiom the indecisiveness that hounds its velconstitution. Moreover, to avoid confronting the darkest depths of the self s situation in being is to be complicit with the ego's general evasiveness. The ego refuses to own the extent of its helplessness because to do so would be to admit that it is not the unconditional rnaster of its world. Yet. nothing short of this admission will help the self to transcend the existence that weighs down on it- and help it to become aware of the meaning of its ipseity. or radical uniqueness. For this reason. Levinas is intent on uncovering the subterfuges that the ego has recourse to in its flight from this awareness.
He shines a light into every possible nook and cranny in which the ego conceals itseif. In this way. he calls into question the ego's various efforts to convince itself and others that it is just one object arnongst many others. 'Everyone' and -no one.' the egoistic self is allergic to any accountability.
As well as challenging the ego's disinclination to ascertain the meaning of its ipseity Levinas criticizes those social, religious, and theoretical positions that simultaneously buttress and camouflage the ego's prevarications. Of these various positions that act in complicity with the self's evasions, he is particularly critical of the tragic perspective. The tragic view. for him, is an attitude, and specifically. an attitude taken towards our finitude. The tragic standpoint, Levinas shows us. expresses a fundamental contradiction: at the same time that it correctly articulates the arduous nature of human existence, its fiagility, its solitude, its moral uncertainties, the tragic outlook also tends to posit for itself the possibility of a heroic stance towards death. Everything is futile the tragedian maintains -everything except the hero's ability to choose his or her death. The tragic spirit adopts a similar attitude towards human fmitude. Existence might drag us down, Nietzsche teaches, but instead of conceiving the tenebrous dimension of
being as a mark of our fallen nature, or as a sign of our fundamental inadequacy. we can and should affirm it as part and parcel of who we are: "one wants nothing to be different. not forward. not backward, not in al1 etemity."j The tragic amorfati the ability to say
"yes" to Our finite and absurd condition expresses for Nietzsche the noblest of hurnan possibilities.
Levinas undercuts the tragic position by showing its disingenuousness. The
Achilles' heel of the tragic point of view is its inability to see that the possibility of af'firming one's own private death. or welcoming -as opposed to reacting or denying - the unconcern or moral neutrality of being, is an illusion at best. Levinas makes this quite clear with respect to the possibility of adopting an authentic stance towards one's
The unknown of death, which is not given straight off as nothingness but is correlative to an experience of the impossibility of nothingness, signifies not that death is a region from which no one has returned and consequently remains unknown as a matter of fact; the unknown of death signifies that the very relationship with death cannot take place in the light, that the subject is in relationship with what does not corne from itself. (TA 56, TO 69-70)
Up until the very last second before one dies, the self remains on this side of the Iife- death divide. Death eludes us entirely. Consequently, so long as it exists, the self is permanently lodged in being, glued to its being. Our predicament in being is such that we are never in a position to choose or to deny our existence. Radier, existence retains a permanent vice-like grip on the self. If there is no way to evade Our existence by rneans of being -that is, through choices, deliberations, actions. and so forth -then the heroic claim or imperative to embrace one's death is equally fùtile in disengaging the self f?om its being. "Death is never now. When death is here, 1 am no longer here." Hence, Levinas concludes: ''[rnly masterv. my virility, my heroism as a subject can be neither virility nor heroism in relation to death" (T4 59, TO 72)- Consciousness lacks the power to grasp death. By invoking the word 'death' the tragic thinker assures him or herself of at least knowing what it designates- But this word is highiy deceptive- The terrn 'death' is nothing more than a provisional and, in rnany ways. falsely comforting marker to describe an experience that remains essentialIy foreign to the mind.
By removing even this possibility - that is. to know death. or to have the power to affirrn my death - fiom the tragic arsenal. Levinas forces its expounders to undergo a final suffering that the human mind so desperately wishes to avoid. When the tragic self recognizes that there is no way to escape its being, it finds itself abandoned to what
Levinas describes as the extreme suffering of being. "In suffering." he writes in Time and the Other. "there is an absence of ail refiige. It is the fact of being directly exposed to being" (TA 55. TO 69). Existence exposes the self to an acute suffering. Forlorn of al1 hope. the self is reduced to a state of "crying and sobbing toward which suffering is inverted." If the name -death' signifies anything it is the "return" to a state of "infantile shaking of sobbing" (TA 60, TO 72). This desperate lament is the experience of the forsaken that is so powerfully expressed in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: "My heart is in anguish within me," bemoans the Psalrnist, "the terrors of death have fallen upon me" (Ps. 55:4).4 Such a cry could be uttered only by a self that has relinquished the egoistic hope of saving itself through its own effort.
To arrive at this point of absolute resignation -that the Psalmist expresses - is to yearn for a response from the Outside. To recognize the need for the Outside is to break with the tragic metaphysics of imrnanentism. The agonized '1' accepts that it cannot on ifsown lems find a resolution to the sufferïng of its existence. The Psalmist's '1' acknowledges its helpIessness and need for a transcendent Other: '-Hide not thy face from thy servant: for 1 am in distress? make haste to answer me" (Ps. 69:17)- Levinas calls this yearning, Désir - the hunger for the Good or the Infinite. This cry for the Good. he contends? emerges independently of oumaterial well-being. What is peculiar about
Desire is that even in the midst of plenty, even in enjoyment, 1 am bedevilled by a gnawing sense that something is amiss. Desire is not lack. but rather a restless feeling for a 'beyond.' a 'more- for which there is no proper measure. Desire's difference from ordinary need is fiirther attested by the fact that it is not 1 who initiate Desire. as much as
Desire seizes or questions me. Desire, Levinas will show. involves an election of oneself by a transcendent Other.
Rejecting the notion of a transcendent Good, tragic philosophers like Nietzsche and Heidegger have attempted to account for the questioning of Desire by adopting one form or another of the Socratic notion of daimon or conscience. The tragic philosophical tradition. however, wrongly imagines that the cntical voice of conscience is a variant or modality of consciousness. an attribute of the self. Levinas contesfis this claim by showing that the accusative voice of conscience is in fact an echo of - a testament to -the
Other. the real flesh-and-blood Other whose presence constantly surprises me. and calls me out of 1n~self.5
Levinas praises both Plato and Descartes for at least grapplling with the problem of a transcendent Good. His writings are filled with allusions to Plato's mythical figure.
Gyges. and Descartesk distressing hypothesis of an evil genius, both Plato and Descartes sense the need for transcendence; left to ourselves. Plato tells us' weinevitably succumb to the same moral callousness of Gyges, who treats the world as though it were a spectacle- one that does not have moral repercussions for himself. Relating to the world as though nothing in it can hold one accountable leads as Plato demonstrates in the
Republic and other dialogues. to the moral bankruptcy and psychiç: enslavement of tyrants
Iike Gyges. For Descartes. a universe without the Infinite is one wherein we would be unable to adjudicate between competing finite perspectives, unabl e to te11 if our present finite understanding is adequate. requires modification. or should be rejected outright.
Unable to make such discriminations, the mind obsesses over the itroubling thought or possibility that reality is purposefuIIy disordered, that perhaps we .are the dupe or victim of a rnalicious higher force intent on manipulating us. Though they both understand the reasons for at least contemplating the Good, ultimately, both Plato and Descartes misconstrue the nature of Desire because their respective concepti-ons of transcendence are constructed around impersonal categories and assumptions. They fail to see that it is precisely the anonymity and impersonality of being that contributes to the self s
stultifiing ambivalence. Whatever the Good or the Mnite is. Levinas argues. it must. at
the very Ieast. be able to address me personally.
Desire involves a receptive and patient hearing. What does the self hear, or more
precisely aii~~itto hem? For the Jewish Levinas, the desiring self yearns to hear the
Teaching or Law. Again, the Psalmist serves as our paradigmatic witness: "Trouble and
anguish have corne upon me. but thy cornrnandments are my delight" (Ps. 1 19: 133). As we will see in chapters two and three, this Desire for the Law that cm help the self to navigate through the absurd vanities and thicket of existence leads ultimately to the recognition of the personal Other. The transcendent. for Levinas. is not to be understood in the sense of another being outside the order of the universe. Rather. it is the encounter with the other person - first formulated by Levinas in terms of the "face-to-face." and later. as "proxirnity*-- that makes it possible for me to transcend the tragic ruins of being. The transcendence that characterizes the "ethical intrigue" -a phrase which designates the core of the human drama for Levinas - with other human beings introduces meaning and structure in a world that is never filly determinate. This is why
Levinas asserts the primacy of ethics over ontology. Without the ethical intervention of the Other. the universe is never free from the spectre of the evil genius, from the bewilderrnent of the il y a.
Levinas's response to the tragic view is not a philosophy of facile consolation. At the very heart of his thought - especially in its later formulations - lies a troubling paradox that he in no way attempts to make more palliative. The essence of being, he contends. is -'war."6 The idea that being is in ruins forms the backdrop to Levinas's philosophy. Yet he came to conclude that the ethical encounter - which he understands as the redeeming of fractured existence - is equally violent. As one commentator bluntly. but quite accurately, observes: "Levinasian ethics emerges fiom the debns of
~ar.''~"In the begiming was violence," Levinas writes. 'The revelation of the Torah. the revelation of the Other's face." he continues. "does not corne to a people. a self. as a result of a choice" (NTR 37). Ethics necessarily involves an imposition. How are we to understand this paradox. namely. that the violence of being can only be properly addressed by the violence of the ethical encounter? In chapter three. 1 will argue that this paradox has to be carefully circumscribed. The violence that 1 experience in the ethical intrigue - which manifests itself, in particular, in the forrn of a bad conscience - senres to tear me away fiom my participation in the moral callousness of being. The violence of transcendence therefore is redemptive. My formula for designating this parados in
Levinas's thought is to describe it as a movement fi-om the unredeenzed disusrer of being to the catastrophic redemption of ethics.
Finally. in chapter four. 1 will examine Levinas's controversial attack on the sacred. The sacred. for him. is an attempt to disengage ethics fkom religion. It invoIves the dubious desire to be one with the divine, to be in direct communion nith the supernatural world. Levinas calls into question the daim made on behalf of the sacred. namely, that it provides direct and immediate access to the gods or God. The sacred's promise of transcendence, he maintains uncategoricalIy. is a lie. It pretends to be an expression of Desire. Genuine transcendence, that is, the possibility to transform one's life is possible only in relation to the Other -whose privileged power to inspire Desire in me is bestowed by God. The impetus to by-pass the Other in order to fuse directly with
God betrays, for Levinas, the unethical nature of the sacred. The underlying psychology of the sacred, however, is not limited to overt religious practices. Levinas shows how- the mass enthusiasm or group psychology of the sacred reappears in the modem worId in various political and intellechial discourses.
The practice or expenence of the sacred obfuscates the importance of remaining vigilant with regard to one's own narcissistic propensities. Moral integrity is. for Levinas. an achievement and not a given. He would, therefore, reject Rousseau's daim that individuals possess a predisposition for pitié or compassion.8 Even more forcefùlly.
Levinas would repudiate the view that compassion stems from power and nobility as
Nietzsche maintains. In the GeneaZogy of MoraZs. Nietzsche appropriates the terms
'upright' and 'straightforward' - terrns that are often associated with the BibIical notion of righteousness or rightness - for his noble man:
Mile the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself (gennaios 'of noble descent' underlines the nuance 'upright' and probably also 'naïve'). the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward ~4th himself. His sou1 squints; his spirit loves hiding pIaces. secret paths and back doors. everything covert entices him as his world. . . -9
Nietzsche is certainly right to condernn the pious religiosity that poses as integrity. But from Levinas's point of view, Nietzsche is wrong to think that one's ability to be 'upright' and 'straightforward' derives fiom the self s own initiatives? the seIf s own stance towards its existence. For Levinas, moral integrity requires the active work of a vigilant and responsible self. but its inspiration and guidance cannot be conceived independently of the Other- In both the sacred and the tragic outlook. this notion of a difficult responsibility, inspired by the Other. is whoIly absent. CHAPTER I The Disaster of Being: Beyond Tragedy
i) introduction
One of the most disconcerting and at the sarne tirne liberating features of
Levinas's thought is his pronounced mistrust of the tragic outlook. It is not that Levinas rejects the view that existence is tragic. Rather. the problem for him is that tragic representation, be it dramatic or philosophic. is never tragic enough. From Levinas's point of view. the tragic artist or philosopher rarely dares to draw the full implications of asserting that being is tragic. Tragic descriptions - old and new - accurately attest to the irremediable character of being. but then propose responses to this state that presuppose the self s capacity for transformation and meaningfuhess. In other words. at the same time that it concludes that existence is irrevocably broken, the tragic position upholds the belief that the self contains within itself the means to address the rift in being. Such an approach is apparent, for instance, in Freud's analysis of the self. For Freud. the mature way to deal with the irreconcilable divisions between Eros and Necessity. or between the life and death drives, is for the self to patientIy avow the temble ambivalence produced by these ontological divisions. Once primary ambivalence becomes an integral part of my self-awareness. 1 minimize the risk of projecting my anxieties outward-1 Another version of this tragic affirmation of finitude occurs in Heidegger's analysis of '-authentic resoluteness" in Being and Time (SZ 308ff, BT 355fQ.z With Nietzsche, the response to existence takes on the form of tempering a Stoic attitude towards the tragedy of being with the comic's gesture: affirmation and laughter in the face of the abyss of being.3 Levinas maintains that al1 of these tragic expressions ncglect to acknowledge how deeply mired the self is in the desolate ruins and hopeless ambiguity of being. Just as there is nothing within the order of being to orient me in the world, similarly 1 lack within rnyseif a point of reference to give rneaning to an existence that is utterly indifferent to me. What justifies Levinas's grim view of being? In order to make sense of the disaster of '-pure being" [Z 'étre pur] (DE 90): we will need to trace the path that Levinas daims took him from 1) being in general to 2) beings, and then from beings to 3) the Other ('-lc~ voie qui mène de Z 'existence à 1 'existunr et de Iexisranr à autrui') (DL 375. DF 292).-' In this chapter. 1 wiII focus on the first two stages of this movement. Levinas3 philosophica~joumey begins in the late 1920s. when after completing the license in philosophy at the University of Strassbourg, he decided to continue his studies in Freiburg under the supervision of Edmund Husserl. In Freiburg. Levinas was also exposed to the teaching of Martin Heidegger. Husserl, at that point, was already an internationally accIaimed philosopherl and Heidegger was weIl on his way to surpassing Husserl in stature with the publication in 1927 of his ground breaking work. f3ei)zg und
Tinze. It is not surprising therefore that Levinas's concerns at this time were taken up by the questions posed by these two great thinkers. While Husserl's philosophy served as the subject of Levinas's dissertation, it was Heidegger's radical new thinking that would leave its indelible mark on Levinas's own philosophy -albeit (for the most part) negatively. Initialiy. Heidegger's influence manifested itself in the form of homage and discipleship. In his book on Husserl, for example, Levinas repeats some of Heidegger's criticisms of Husserlian phenomenology.5 But just a few years later. one could detect in Levinas's published work the stirrings of a critical stance towards Heidegger as well. If it was yet unclear by the late 1930s what direction Levinas's position on Heidegger was taking. there could be no doubt by the end of the war. Thus in 1947. while fÜIIy acknowledging his debt to Heidegger in his own intellectual development, Levinas also declares with more than a hint of acerbity, that his thought is "governed by a profound need to leave the climate of [Heidegger's] philosophy" (DEE 19-EE 19).6 As we will see. Levinas's meditation on being leads him to a very different understanding of the nature of being than we find in Heidegger's thought.
ii) 'Excendunce': The Need to Lemle Being The first major work in which we find Levinas attempting to articulate an independent position is the 1935 essay entitled "De Z 'évasion."7 In this early essay. we already see the seeds of certain ideas that would eventually become the trademarks of Levinas's mature thought. He begins the essay by recasting the problem of the philosophical ego. Instead of approaching the ego as a structure that is given from the start. Levinas prefers to speak of the ego in terms of a drumu (DE 73).8 Borrowing from the insights of modem Iiterature, Levinas arrives at a number of perspicacious observations conceming the essential drama of the self. The first thing that strikes him is how the self is motivated above al1 by the need ro leave being. Why this need to leave the order of being? Why is out being such a terrible "malaise" (DE 78)? What is it about our relationship to being, such that we want to quit its sphere? Levinas responds to these questions by showing that the self experiences its own being as a form of imprisonment. The self is transfixed to itself in a way that its being is experïenced as suffocating. We are "riveted" (rive3 to our being (DE 70.87). Every effort to disentangle ourselves, or to gain distance from our being, issues in impasse. A careful phenomenology of or meditation on the experience of the self reveals to us. according to Levinas. the "elementary tnith" of being as a "depth measured by its brutality and gravity-" The full force of being's weight is experienced in sufferïng. Hence. when we suffer.
[tlhe pleasant playfùlness of Iife loses its character of play. But this is not because the sufferings that threaten Iife render it unpleasant, But rather because at the heart of suffenng lies the impossibility of intempting it and the acute sentiment of being riveted. . . . What is crucial in this experience of being is not the discoveq of a new character of our existence [but] the very irremovableness of our presence. (DE 70)
Suffering makes us deeply aware of the existence that we each shoulder. In pain. we suddenly become cognizant of how our existence drags us along at every step.
Tt always seems to me." Baudelaire writes, "that 1 should be happy anywhere but where 1 am." Sunken by the weight of his existence. the poet's sou1 finaIIy explodes:
---Anyhere!Just so it is out of the world!"'9 At the core of the self is a powerful need to leave being. Levinas calls this specific need, the need of evasion [de I 'éi,asion].and coins a special term for it un besoin d'excendance (DE 73). For Levinas. excendance - literally. to climb out of (being) - is no ordinq need, for nothing can satis- this need. '0 The alleged object of this need - being - is not a lack. but an excess. Our being is impossible to leave. because this need to depart is not a deficiency or lack that can be filled.
. . . at the base of this need, there does not appear to be a lack of being. on the contrary, there is a plenitude. The need is not directed towards the complete satisfaction of limited being, but towards deliverance and of evasion [de I 'évasion].(DE 93) The need for (or ofJ evasion does not stem fiom the finitude of being. that is. from some
shortcoming of being. Rather, the need for evasion is the very manifestation of our being.
presenting itself as inordinate and excessive, and therefore, as impossible to address
adequatel y.
Instead of the usual pleasure that we experience in satiseing our needs. the self s
need to leave its being is experienced as nausea and sharne.11 Nausea is the paradigrnatic
experience of the self s relationship to being. When nauseated? we are at once disgusted
with ourselves. longing to disengage the self from existence. and. simuItaneously al1 too
painfully aware that there is nowhere to go that would relieve that nausea. There is in this
experience a 'restlessness" that cmonly be properly described as "desperate." Desperate and vulnerable. the self is utterly passive in relation to what is outside of its direct command. narnely, its existence. And already hinting at a major difference with
Heidegger. Levinas goes on to assert that the soul's despair does not concern its mortality.
To contemplate death, as a possibility. would mean that the self could stand back and reflect on itself. But with nausea no such distance is possible. Al1 that the self --discovers"
in this state is the sheer "nudity of being in its plenitude and in its irremissible presence"
(DE 90).
Along with nausea, the self experiences its being as shame. As with any other need. the self hopes to derive pleasure in the satisfaction of its need of escape. But this hope abruptly turns to shame in the inevitable failure to relieve oneself of one's being.
Pleasure conforms itself to the exigencies of need but [the need of escape] is unable to match what is required of it. And at the moment of its deception, when what should have been the moment of its triurnph. the sense of the self s failure is accentuated by shame. (DE 84)
Instead of attaining the pleasurable reward in our anticipated victory over the need to escape our being. we are left with the sharneful awareness of our failed objective. The recognition that there is afier al1 no place to leave the self is what makes us ashamed. The self feels -'naked not because it has done something wrong. nor because of its shoncomings. its finiteness. It would even be incorrect to claim that vie experience primordial shame as a result of our physical nakedness. Rather. the existential nakedness that Levinas is speaking of here refers to the inescapability of our seif-intimaci. To be
--naked." therefore. is the condition of our being: 'rhe necessity to flee in order to hidé is put into check by the impossibility of fleeing" (DE 87). 1 am a permanent and unwitting witness to rny own abortive endeavours to leave my being.17
iii) The 'Ily a ': The Rrtins of Being
A more in-depth analysis of these provocative ideas would have to wait until the end of the Second World War with the dual publication in 1947 of Existence and
Eristenrs (De ['existence à Z'exisiant) 13 and Time and the Of her. In Existence and
Eiistenfs. Levinas expands on his earlier analysis of the self s peculiar relationship to its being. In these texts, Heidegger serves as Levinas's principal interlocutor and target.
Levinas concedes that if he is to develop his own distinct philosophy that it must at the veïy least answer the challenging question posed by Heidegger: '-What is the event of
Being. Being in general, detached fiom beings which dominate it? What does its
generaIity mean?" (DEE 17. EE 18) Beginning with Parmenides. western philosophy has
embraced the terrns "being" and "essence" to designate the totality of reality. While not
completely rejecting the usehilness of such categories. Heidegger discerns behind the
traditional concept of being. a more general being (Sein).For Heidegger. being narnes the
undisclosed active essence without which beings (Seiendes) can not manifest themsehes.
Being is never present to consciousness as such. It withdraws or recedes into the
background at the same time that beings move to the fore. and present themselves in the world. Levinas does not dispute the idea that beings emerge against the background of
being. His own reflections on being, however, led him to believe that Heidegger's conception of being was masking a deeper and more obscure dimension of existence.
Levinas doubts that Heidegger has taken full account of the gravity of being. He
rephrases Heidegger's Seinsfage ((the question of being) as --existence without existents."
If Heidegger is correct in asserting a fundamental "ontological difference" between
beings and being. then being could only refer to being stripped of al1 determination. But
in developing an analysis of being without the properties that adhere to beings or existents. Levinas does not hdthe giving-character or generosity that Heidegger claims to discem in the most general definition of being. In a "Letter on Humanism." published only a year before Existence and Existents and Time and the Other, Heidegger takes issue with Jean-Paul Sartre's declaration that "nous sommes sur un plan où il y a seulernenf des hommes" (we are in a situation where there are nothing but human beings). 1 From the standpoint of the philosophy of Being and Time, Heidegger avers, Sartre's formulation would have to be altered to '-noussommes sur un plan où il y a principlernent Z 'Être" (we are in a situation where principally there is being), Ln reconstnicting Sartre's general pïïnciple of our situatedness, Heidegger draws attention to the %ere is" (il y a) of both statements. The Geman translation of the "there is." es gibt, cogently expresses for him the "essence" of being: narnely. the ir gives of being. "The self-giving into the open."
Heidegger States, --along ~6ththe open region itself. is Being itself.'. What intrigues
Heidegger is the "it" of the es gibt. The it 3s' without ever being filly present. and yet ir makes al1 presenting possibIe. The 'it' of the es gibt gives us discourses. histories. epochs. and worlds. For Heidegger. being in this most general sense is the horizon of al1 horizons. against which al1 beings emerge. Being even determines "whether and how God and the gods or history and nature come forward. . . ."l5
On the question of how to conceive being in its most general condition - being as pure happening - Levinas actually sides with Sartre.16 Like Sartre. Levinas understands being in general as "an impersonal and faceless power." He cites Sartre's quip against Heidegger approvingly: "when [Heidegger] first speaks of the opening ont0 being. 1 srnell alienation." Of which Levinas adds: "Sartre's flair does not deceive him.
The poetry of the peaceful path that nins through the fields does not simply reflect the splendour of Being beyond beings. That splendour brings with it more somber and pitiless images" (BP W 3 1). Instead of conceiving of being as the event of the giving of worlds and epochs. Levinas discerns in it the dissolution of worlds and identities. Why is
Levinas so perturbed by being?
In order to conceive of "existence without existents," Levinas invites us to
imagine the negation of al1 beings, But the thoughr of such a destruction can only be
feigned- Not because we never undergo the experience associated with this negation. We
in fact do- He assures us that it is not simply "a matter of an imagined experience" (TA
27. TO 48). When he States that the complete negation of being cannot be thought as such
he means that such a negation eludes consciousness. Throughout his entire work. Levinas
is fond of repeating Henri Bergson's discovery that consciousness is unable to
contemplate the complete negation of being (cf. DEE 103. EE 63). 17 Bergson maintains
that consciousness can destroy beings. but only so long as it substitutes other esistents in
their place. Consciousness cm not repudiate the totality of beings. Every tirne .
consciousness deliberately sets out to negate al1 beings it fails. For Bergson. and Levinas
is in agreement with him, the idea of an absolute nothingness is illusor).. If then
consciousness lacks the power to negate the totality of being. how are we to understand
"existence without existents"?
With the help of Bergson, and with his own phenomenological dissection of
certain fundamental human dispositions, Levinas manages to convey a vivid picture of
existence without existents. By insisting that we pursue this experiment, Levinas is
compelling us to experience for ourselves what consciousness undergoes (as opposed to conceives, or grasps) whenever it is confionted with the negation of beings. How are we going to approach thk existing without existents? Let us imagine al1 things. being and persons. returning to nothingness. Will we encounter pure nothingness [le pur néanf]?What remains after this imaginaq destruction of everything is not something. but the fact that there is [il y a]. (TA 25-26. TO 46 [tram. mod.]) 18
The negation of al1 beings does not result in non-being. The attempt to negate beings results in the retm of being. Even if entities are no longer. existence persists. This diffuse being that returns - lacking any determination - is prior to the traditional metaphysical distinction between being and non-being. Levinas designates this "pure being-' that returns when beings are negated as the ily a. The negation of beings creates a void that is then filIed by pure existence. though not in the forrn of a positive content. The il y u is an absent presence. Being rems like a --density of the void. like a murmur of silence" (DEE 104. EE 63-64).19 What characterizes pure being. above all. is its complete absence of determinacy.
Being cannot be specified? and does not speci@ anything. It is not a quality which an object supports. nor what supports qualities. . . . Are mre not. then. obliged to see in the very difficulty we have of understanding the category according to which Being belongs to a being the mark of the impersonal character of Being in general? (DEE 17-8. EE 18)
The impersonal or anonymous nature of pure being stems hmthe fact that the il _i+ais
"neither subject nor substantive'? (TA 26, TO 46-7)- It cornes fiom no specific place. and it aims at nothing in particular. The il y a is not a movement. a pattern. or a rhdvthrn.
Existence without existents is more accurately imagined. Levinas suggests. in the same way as the "points swarrning in darkness lack a perspective" (DEE 1 1 1. EE 66). The ego is "submerged by the night. invaded, depersonalized, stifled by it" (DEE 95. EE 58). But this "night" that Levinas mentions here is a darkness that can equally invade the self in day-light: the "infiltration of night into day" (NTR 189). The night that we normally think of, the night of our starry heavens, is still determined. There are stars and planets whose shapes 1 cm make out. They are determined because 1 have narnes for them. But the
-'night7' of the ily a is without narne or delimitation. The "night'' that can assai1 me even in the fiill-light of day is thoroughly unnerving because my mind has no way of locating it in space or time.20
So whereas the later Heidegger's es gibt connotes generosity. -'grace-" and
--originary thanking."zl Levinas's il y a evokes menace and disorientation. A similar distance separates the affective response of the ily a from the early Heidegger's description of the attunement that corresponds to Dasein's fundamental experience of being. Before his Kehre. Heidegger rnaintained that arzviety reveals the nothing or nullity upon which Dasein exists. It is through our moods and, in particular. the experience of
Angst (anxiety, dread) that world discloses itself to us. Primordial angst awakens in
Dasein the groundIessness of its being, the Nothing. Dasein is stnichired such that its being is always being-towards-death. This irreversible movement towards death ensures that Dasein is not condemned to live in irnmediacy, as is the case with beings other than
Dasein. Instead, this opening into nothingness -of which anxiety is the primordial attunement - makes the future possible. Dasein can in turn respond authentically to its groundless being, or flee into the distractions that occupy dm Man. Angst thus reveuls to
Dasein the urgency of adopting a resolute stance towards its being. This entails. above all. affirming one's death. In his 1929 essay, "What is Metaphysics?" Heidegger even associates the aminement of angst with that of wonder: "'Only because the nothing is manifest in the ground of Dasein cm the total strangeness of beings overwhelm us . . .
[and] when the strangeness of beings oppresses us does it arouse and evoke wonder.'-??
Levinas. however. fails to be persuaded by Heidegger's view that anxiety before being evokes wonder. Instead of angst or astonishrnent, the imrnediate affective response to being. for the young Levinas, is horror. The il y a induces terror in the self. Before being. 1 experience neither anticipatory anxiety. nor astonishrnent. Circurnventing consciousness altogether. and invading me through my very pores. existence ovenvhelms and seizes me. Like a bad case of insomnia, my usual strategies of attaining rest and reprieve are futile in quieting the extreme restlessness that 1experience. In this state of hyper-arousal. where the distinction between outside and inside no longer holds. it is even uncertain that a subject persists. As Levinas frighteningly observes: '-It is not that there is mi. vigilance in the night: in insomnia it is the night ifselfthai waiches" (DEE 1 1 1. EE 66
[rny emphasis]).
Levinas emphatically states that to even pose the question of 'what is being?' is to fail to grasp the senselessness or menacing character of being. Preserving the strangeness of being. Levinas depicts pure existence as that which is -'essentially alien" and which
"strikes against us." We "undergo its suffocating embrace like the night" that has lost its character as an object of my perception?and has now devolved into the night that nights.
In this "night" of being, Levinas submits, there is "a pain in Being" (DEE 38: EE 23). The
English translator of Existence and Existents chose to translate this last passage as "a pain in Being." But the French suggests another possible rendition -one that is more disquieting. The original reads: "II est le mal d'étre7' (DEE 28). Thus another equally justified translation is: "It is the evil of Being." Levinas has already explicitly stated on the last page of the introductory chapter of fiistence and Existenrs that being is evil in its very positivil (DEE 20. EE 20). The il y a is evil in the sense that it entails an extreme sufferir@ He would repeat this same idea in one of the lectures that make up Time and the Other. where he specifies that "Being is evil not because it is finite but because it is without limits" (TA 29, TO 5 1)- Levinas's definition of evil thus breaks with the influential account of evil offered in the neo-PIatonist tradition. namely. that evil is the privation of being. Excessive and inordinate. indeterminate being is evil. for Levinas. because it annihilates indiscriminateIy.
il.) The Birth of the Ego: Contracring Exis~ence
Writing over three centuries ago, the very possibility of having a self struck Pascal as nothinp short than miraculous. How can something as contingent and fragile as the ego appear arnidst the infinite neutral expanse of being? How can it retain even the most rudimentary state of cohesiveness under the crushing weight of indifferent being?
When 1 consider the bnef span of my life absorbed into an etemity which comes before and after. . .the small space 1 occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which 1 know nothing and which know nothing of me, 1take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose comrnand and act were the time and place alloned to It is these very same questions that preoccupy Levinas in the 1940s. Like Pascal, Levinas is impressed by the emergence of the self in the hostile environment of indeterminate being.
What Levinas had previously characterized as the self being riveted to its being he describes in 1947 as the "contracting" of pure existence on the part of the self. The self
(as an existenf)"already exercises over being the domination a subject exercises over its attributes. It exercises it in an instant" (DEE 16, EE 17).25 The self. positing itself as an instant. is a contingent "accomplishment" (DEE 130: EE 76): a temporary victory over pure existence. Levinas descnbes the emergence of beings as an accomplishrnent because indeterminate being is in effect hostile to the presence of separate. delimited beings. The ego must therefore claim a space within pure existence as its own.
Levinas refers to this momentous act in which the seIf establishes itself as an instant in the i1y a as the "h~rposrasis."The hypostasis represents a radical change within being: it '-constitutes a veritable inversion at the heart of anonqmous being" (Pl3 1. TO
5 1-2). Levinas explains that this technical term, borrowed from the philosophy of late antiquity and the medieval period, accurately designates an event that is at once a verbal process and a substantive. The ego is an active principle in the sense that it represents the power of beginning - a beginning that is continuously renewed - within what othenvise has no start or finish' namely, the il y a. But the self is also a substantive because unlike indefinite being, the self has a name. It can thus be located within the manifold of indefinite being. The hypostasis, Levinas writes, "signifies the suspension of the anonyrnous there is, the apparition of a private domain, of a noun" (DEE 14 1, EE 82-
3). The most notable feature of the birth of the self is that now. aiongside anonjmous existence. there appears the possibility of "beings capable of bearing names" (DEE 169.
EE 98).'6
The self represents an initial attempt to make a claim for itseIf within the anonymity of being. It does so by contracting its existence. And herein begins the entire
--drarna'-of the self. If sleeplessness characterizes the il y a. consciousness represents the suspension of the -3nsomnia of anonymous being" (DEE 1 10. EE 65). Consciousness offers the capacity to find refuge from the deafening silence of being. Levinas Iikens consciousness to the luxqthat Penelope affords herself every evening when she retires and undoes the work accomplished earlier in the day (DEE 1 10. EE 64-5). In this manner the self is provisionally sheltered fiom the menacing presence of impersonal being. With consciousness arises the possibility to forget and to sleep. for the self can now withdraw from the hurly-burly of nameless being. Levinas also illustrates this dimension of the self. by drawing on the Biblical character Jonah.
[He is] the hero of impossible escapes, invoker of nothingness and death. observes in the midst of the raging elements the failure of his flight and the fatality of his mission, he climbs down into the hold of the ship and goes to sleep. (DEE 1 15. EE 67)
During a temble storrn at sea, Jonah retreats into a small corner in the ship's interior. whereupon he promptly falls asleep. Later, when he is in danger of drowning. he is swallowed whole by a large fish? and miraculously survives in the creature's belly (Jon. 1 :1 7). Finally. he is shown escaping the blistering rays of a hot aftemoon by constructing
a temporary booth that is itself shielded by the leaves of a climbing gourd (Jon. 4:4-6).
For Levinas the possibility to sleep, to take refuge fiom the bustling and
murmuring of the ily a signifies above al1 - as the figure of Jonah attests to - the self s
power to make a place for itself. Sleeping, for exarnple, entails a Zimicing of pure being to
one place, one position. Now this place is not an "indifferent -somewhere."' it is a base. a
refuge. a home (DEE 1 19. EE 69). The most primordial base is the body. Before the self
can occupy an actual physical place, it mut first occupy a delimited body. The body is
our first point of reference. The "place" of the body even precedes geornetrical space.
With the body, there is now a "here" [ici].The 'here' of the self is the condition for al1
knowing. Finally. alluding to Merleau-Ponty, Levinas maintains that the bod). is the -'very advent of consciousness" (DEE 122, EE 71).
Levinas's reflections on the hypostasis in Exisrence and Exisrenis serve as a preparatory study for his later presentation of the self in Totalie und infinih. In this important test which synthesizes two decades of reflection on the phenomenology of the self. Levinas depicts the ego as primarily autochthonous. He succinctly summarizes the ego's natural way in the world as follows:
The way of the 1 against the 'other' of the world consists in sojourning. in idenrlfiing oneselfby existing here at home with oneself [chez soi]. In a worId in which is from the first other the I is nonetheless autochthonous. It is the very reversion of this alteration. It finds in the worrd a site [lieu]and a home [maison]. Dwelling is the very mode of rnaintuining oneseZf[se fenir],not as the farnous serpent grasping itself by biting onto its tail, but as the body that on the earth exterior to it, holds iiselfup [se tient] and can. . . . The site, a medium [Le lieu. milieu]. affords means. Everything is here. Everything belongs to me: everything is caught up in advance with the primordial occupying a site, everything com- prehended, (Tel 7, TI 3 7-3 8)
In its natural state. the ego sojourns in the world. using its base as its starting place,
Dwelling is the site of identification. The home is where the naiural elements that the ego
finds on its sojourn are transformed into food (in the physical and psychical sense).
Through labour and effort the self can integrate the foreign character of entities with itself. From the point of view of the self. the "othemess"27 of the world is at worst an obstacle to be overcome. This analysis of the self s relationship to the otherness of its environment overlaps with the Hegelian premise that substance. initially foreign to hurnan Geist. can over time be assimilated by the ego.
In Totalip and Infini&. Levinas describes the ego's world as a nzilierr or medium.
This medium that 1 am rooted in- and that initially belongs to no one. consists of what
Levinas calls the "elementar': earth, wind, sea. and sky. The natural elements are the most primitive form of determination in being. Levinas almost seems to suggest that the>- are not yet quite entities, describing them at one point as "content without form" (TeI 104-
TI 13 1) - a level of reality mid-way between the il y a and determinate being. 1 overcome the initial foreignness and facelessness of the elements by means of the domicile. From the security and protection that my home affords me. 1 can safely roam my environment, in order to pursue and to exploit the elements. Though they might appear initially strange to me, there are no elements, at ieast it would appear to me. that 1 cannot with patience and effort work over in such a way as to identiQ with thed8 In this phenomenological anaiysis of the ego in its natural world. Levinas emphasizes that enjoyment precedes praxis and representation. Enjoyment is the capaciq- to rediscover oneself in the foreignness of the world. Even before I use tools and manipulate the elements of the worId, I experience this assimilation of nature's otherness as enjoyment. as the love of life.29 The ego Zivesfiorn (vivre de) the world (Tel 82ff. TI
1 IOff).The world is not first an object that stands outside of me: 'The world 1 constitute norwishes nre and bathes me." Even when 1 have developed tools or utensils. the more basic experience for me is not the grasping and apprehension involved in such activities. but again the enjoyment that they afford me- The more 1 work over the elements. the more control 1 gain over my environment. The elements acquire names and an identit>.for nre.
The --world of perception is . . . a world where things have an identity." and this creates stabilit>*.as well as enhances my enjo-ment of life. (Tel 1 13. TL 139) Against idealism.
Levinas rejects the view that the subject constitutes the worId a priori. Before being a constituting subject, the subject is a dwelling subject. The home. and the enjoyment it affords me. is the condition for representation. Language and representation add to mu enjoyment.30
The enjopent of the self that 1 discussed above has a ver). important dimension that needs to now be specified. In labouring over the natural elements. identiijing with them in order to make them part of itself, the seif simultaneously nurtures and conditions an interioriiy. The enjoyment that makes an interior Iife possible (Tel 23-52. 8 1-94. TI
53-8 1. 109-2 I ) also constitutes the very source of the will (Te130. TI 58-9). Having an interior life underw-rites my singularity and sovereignty: my capacity to enjoy the products of my labour ensures rny individuation and my independence from things and other people. Mera long and arduous day, 1 can - in Baudelaire's words -finally retreat to my flat. saved temporarily from this "Horrible life! Homble city!" At one in the morning. wïth key in hand. 1 relish the moment before tuming the key. knowing that soon I will savour my '%olitude and strengthen the barricades that . . . separate me from the world."jI
This interior space. which Levinas calls ipseist, is characterized above al1 by a radical separation. Levinas's ipséiré is a translation of Franz Rosenzweig's die ~elbsrheii.5~
Rosenzweig intends this term as a direct challenge to Hegel's daim that the particular or the individual is subsumable by the concept or universal. For Rosenzweig. the unique individual -the one who bears a proper narne - cannot be recuperated by a larger totaIity. Thc: unique interiority of the individuaI cannot be breached by an encompassing structure.
For Levinas. ipseity entails that hurnan beings are by "nature" atheists. and more radicaIIy, that this was God's intention in creating them.
One can cal1 atheism this separation so complete that the separated being maintains itself in existence al1 by itself. . . . One lives outside God. at home with oneself; one is an 1, an egoism. The soul, the dimension of the psychic. being an accomplishment of separation, is naturally atheist. . . . It is certainly a great glory for the creator to have set up a being capable of atheism. a being which. without having been causa sui, has an independent view and word and is at home with itself. (Tel 29-30. TI 58-59)
More so perhaps than either Jonah or Penelope, it is Plato's mythical figure. Gyges.j3 who illustrates, for Levinas, the full implications of the hypostasis. As the paradigmatic atheist self. Gyges has the power to see without in tuni being seen. Gyges's abiliq- to retreat into himself without having his intentions revealed (symbolized b3the magical
&g that rnakes him invisible) is the "secret of the inward subject" (OB 145). indeed. "the very condition of man" (Te1 148?TI 173). No one cmpeek into Gyges's Enterior world in order to detect his motives. his interiority remains uniquely his own. Our hidden interiority is perhaps the most remarkable feature of our selkood. It ensures that no one can ever fiilly determine us, not even God- Like Gyges, we always have tWe option of dissirnulating publicly while preserving our interna1 sovereignty. Gyges roeserves the right to assert his sovereignty - even if this means denying God. Gyges's freecdom is ensured by the distance that separates him from the world - and from God who cannot compel him to recognize Him without jeopardizing his fiee will. Gyges treats the . world Iike a spectacle- the world is literally his stage. Without this radical separation. - without the possibility of re-presenting the worid, to make it more manageable. "there would have been," Levinas ernphasizes, -'only being" (Tel 3 1, TI 60).
v) The Shadow of rhe Seg The Return of the 'Ily a'
The hypostasis. the bifi of the ego, suspends the anarchic bustIe adsufarming of the il y a. It opens the self to a larger horizon that affords it the possibilitqv of nurturing and protecting the pnvacy of its narne. But the hypostasis ako cornes at a - serious cost.
Existing is mastered by the existent that is identical to itsetf - that is to say. alone. But identity is not only a departure from self; ir is also a reuurn to se& . . . The price paid [la rançon] for the existent's position lies in the very fact that it cannot detach itself fiom itself. (TA 36, TO 55 [my emphasis])
Mastery over the il y a is acquired by contracting existence, thus making it possible to temporarily halt the violent intrusion of the il y a- But mastery also implies that the self assumes the .'weight of existence'' (DE132, EE 77). The hypostasis therefore entails both a releasr fiom anonymous existence and a fürther binding to existence. The irreconcilabIe contradiction of the hypostasis is that while promising freedom it also harbingers the "return of the il y a" (DEE 142, EE 84). For Levinas. herein lies what is tnily precarious about the self. The solitude of the ego does not simply stem fiom the fact of its isolation: it is a "dual solitude." As he maintains in De 1 'évasion,no matter how much 1 try. my self cannot dodge rny existence. My existence. therefore. is an "orher rhaiz me [thatj acconpunies rhe ego like a shadow" (DEE 15 1. EE 88 [my emphasis]). And so even after 1 have safely retreated to my flat, 1 am still - to cite Baudelaire again -
"[dlissatisfied with everything. dissatisfied with rny~elf."3~
The return of the ily a is manifested in the form of fatigue [lufatigue] and indolence [lapar-esse], which. Levinas daims. are in their very "occurrence. positions taken with regard to existence." What do these positions or moods express? What they signal above al1 is a refusal. and, more precisely, a refusal of existence. Weariness is a refusal to shoulder the weight of one's existence anyrnore. It is not merely the apathy one might feel after having exhausted the novelty of an object or another human being.
Unable to leave myself. 1 am above al1 else worn dom by my presence. Tired of myself.
In weariness as with nausea, the self yearns to escape existence itself, and not only one of its landscapes. in a Ionging for more beautifûl skies. An evasion without an itinerary and without an end. is not trying to come ashore somewhere. Like for Baudelaire's tnie travelers, it is a matter of parting for the sake of parting. (DEE 32, EE 25)
Like fatigue, indolence35 is an attitude, or a position taken up vis-à-vis existence.
Indolence expresses an aversion to effort that needs to be specified. Existentid indolence is not to be confused with laziness, which is still pleasure, another facet of my capacity to enjoy life. As an aversion to existence, indolence has to do with the difficul~of begiming an action. Rimbaud. Levinas informs us, captures the horridness of indolence when he writes of the '"the seated"': "'Oh, don7tmake them get up! That-s disaster . . .'-'
(DEE 33, EE 26). There is an "irihibition" that precedes every effort, every act. This is not the inhibition that pertains to a previous thought. or to an unresolved conflict. This inhibition is essential to the relationship between my self and my existence. Indolence is
'-a recoil before action," a "hesitation before existence" itself (DEE 37. EE 27-28). More so than uith any other state. indolence communicates an unwillingness on the part of the self to resume its existence. If the self is? as Levinas States. a point of commencement within indeterminate being, then this beginning is not without vacillation.
1 think that both 'faripe' and 'paresse' are rneant to be contrasted to Heidegger's notion of "inauthenticity." Levinas explicitly critiques Heidegger's notion of inauthentic existence when he writes:
Our existence in the world, with its desires and everyday agitation. is then not an immense fiaud, a fa11 into inauthenticity, an evasion of our deepest destiny. It is but the amplification of th~rresistance againsf anonymozrs and fatefil being. . . . (DEE 80, EE 5 1 [my emphasis]) Heidegger argues that the self can choose, as the most important decision of its life. to
take on its existence authentically, that is, to embrace its being resolutely. and without
hesitation. Levinas. however. is making a very different claim about the self. namely. that
the self is uncertain and uncomrnitted to its existence. In other words, the self. by its very
nature. cannot choose to avow or disavow its existence. The self s relationship to its
existence is arnbivaIent pnor to the possibility of choosing to be authentic. It is existence
itself. its excessive nature. and not the fear of death. as Heidegger insists. that drap the
self dom. The contract the self establishes with its existence means that while it partially
masters its existence. the self is "dso possessed by ir'' (DEE 73. EE 46-7).
Even in enjoyment, the il y a does not cease to be disturbing: '-[for] to possess by
enjoying is also to be possessed and to be delivered to the fathomless depth. the disquieting future of the element" (Te1 132, TI 158). There is a profound arnbiguity that
inheres in the natural elements that no amount of strength or rnastery can finally dispel.
At one moment. the elements can be the fruits of my appetite. and at another. the same eIements besiege my i~ercore. Their strange powers cast a spell on humans. Fascinated
- that is captivated and horrified at the sarne time - by the elements, humans dei@ them. projecting ont0 them the presence of mysterious forces that require appeasing. This way of relating to the impersonal elements represents, as Levinas notes. the very structure of the mythical outlook (Te1 1 16, TI 142). The pagan who appeals to his or her gods hopes to gain some control over the utter uncertainty of the elements. But the gods remain silent. forcing the pagan to develop even more sophisticated stratagems to appease them. The gods it is soon tenifiingly recognized are themselves beholden to some darker primordial force -the gods, no less than mortals. are helpless before the elemental powers.36
Both Plato and Descartes recognize this probiem in their own ways. PIato notes in the Repztblic - and Levinas would undoubtedly agree - that no human --wants to be deceived in the most important part of him and about the most important things: that is when he is most temfied of fal~ehood."3~Nothing temfies us more Plato suggests than to feei that we are the mere playthings of a force or set of forces unresponsive to Our appeaIs and prayers. Plato intuits that intellectual and moral enlightenment necessitates a break with this feature of pagan thought; otherwise hurnanity succumbs to an irredeemable resignation and despair. Descartes deveiops a related concern in the First Meditation with his famous postuIation of an evil genius. While the second stage of doubting in the opening Meditation. the impossibility of discerning whether 1 am awake or dreaming. does not threaten non-corporeal or abstract tmths -that two and three equal five. for example -the third level of doubting gives way to a truly horrific thought: what if the self is the duped victim of a malignant demon. Descartes describes the corresponding phenomenology of this hypothesis as "a deep whirlpool which turnbles me around so that
1 cm neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top."j8 But whereas Descartes daims that the hypothesis of an evil demon is ultimately dissipated by the recognition that existence is "self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind1"39 others. both in his time and subsequently. have been less 0ptimistic.~0 In an original analysis that bnngs together Gyges and the malin génie. Levinas
compels us to see the nightmarish dimension of the solipsistic self. Interiority. as we have
seen. is not an illusion for ~evinas.~'The capacity to withdraw into oneself as a way to
preserve one3 singularity is essential to the self. This advantage. however. also represents
the very bane of the self. Relating to the world as spectacle means encountering it as
silence. Like Narcissus who is doomed to hear his questions and prayers repeated in
Echo's hollow voice. Gyges is condemned to a "world absolutely silent that would not
come to us from the word." This is a world that betrays the constant presence or
"suspicion of an evil genius" (Te163. TI 90)- The ambiguity of the phenornenal. the inchoate surfacing of the elernental, constantly threatens the moment- reprieve granted by the hypostasis. In spite of its extreme impersonality, the elemental often manifests itself as 'ihough [it denved] from a mocking intention.'' The attempt to read the elements serniotically. to incorporate them into an identifiable or familiar register. may succeed to a point. but inevitably these "signs" come across as a bewitching '-silence that terrifies"
(Tel 64. TI 9 1).
It is the situation created by those densive beings cornmunicating across a labyrinth of innuendoes which Shakespeare and Goethe have appear in their scenes of sorcerers where speech is antilanguage and where to respond would be to cover oneself with ridicule. (Tel 64, TI 92)
Levinas. unsurprisingly, does not share Descartes's confidence in having resolved the radical doubting instituted by the demon hypothesis. Descartes? Levinas maintains, introduces an "arbitrary halt" in his recourse to the cogito. But the cogito - or to be more precise. the power of clarity and distinctness that Descartes attributes to it - carmot on its own terms put an end to the demonic character of the elemental. Despite his intentions.
Descartes shows precisely what is at stake with the solitary self when he puts forth the possibility of the eviI genius. The unresponsiveness of the elemental entails that the
"atheistic subject." that is. the self at the level of the hypostasis, inevitably "enters into a movement unto the abyss. vertiginously sweeping along the subject incapable of stopping itself' (Te166. TI 93). The descent that Levinas here describes is of course that of the self slipping into the oblivion of the il y a. In a universe that is closed in on itself. where even the gods are beholden to the forces of necessity and being. the self risks Iîpsing into a state &in to autisrn or psychosis.
Contemporq literature dso testifies to the perilous condition of the solitan consciousness threatened by a world that is unceasingly ambiguous. One noteworthy instance of this literature is Robbe-Grillet's novel, La ~a/ozrsie.42The opening and closing sentences frarne the inauspicious. impersonal perspective that dominates the entire story. In the very first line. we hem the disembodied voice of the narrator - who rernains narneless and faceless throughout the novel43 - describing the appearance of a shadow that is cast on a veranda pillar. The novel's final line repeats and extends the sarne inhuman perspective: the silhouetted presence of the narrator is eventually blotted out by the simultaneous arriva1 of a pitch dark night and the repetitive shrill of crickets.
This darkness - reminiscent of Levinas's and Blanchot's Night - actively voids everything in its midst: "New the dark night and the deafening racket of the crickets again engulf the garden and the veranda, al1 around the house."44 Robbe-Grillet's meticulous depictions of elementq phenomena Iike light, shadows, and ambient sounds. captures the inhospitable environment of the elementai. These depictions. aIong with the novel's truncated temporal representation, powerfùily convey the fading or eclipsing of human agency. In La Jaloztsie. tirne is designated almost exclusively with the word 'maintenan[.'
By ridding the narrative of any trace of the human power to meaningfùlly integrate the temporal modalities of past, present, and fùture, the author foregrounds the immediacy and density of the faceless elements that perpetuaily surround us. that we -1ive from.' and that we even enjoy - until. that is, that moment when wiArhno advance warning. these very same elements manage to overwhelm and eventually eclipse the representational ego.
La Juloztsie folIows a simple plot-line. The narrator's neighbour. Franck. spends increasingly more time with the narrator's wife, 'A..,'. We see Franck and -A...' interacting through the narrator's eyes. But his perception is constantly distorted by the medium through which he observes hem, such as a sun-bleached window pane. The distorting effect of the medium through which the narrator sees the world reflects the precariousness of his psychic stability. Robbe-Grillet's descriptive use of one particular medium is especially effective in conveying the narrator's agitated mental state. .4t various key points in the novel, the narrator hides invisibly behind a set of sun blinds. The title of the novel play on a double-meaning that is central to understanding the story.
Jalousie means both 'jealousy' and 'slatted blinds.' The blinds serve as a clever metaphor for the peds of the solipsistic psyche. The blinds af3ord the narrator a powerfûl means to monitor and control his environment: Iike Gyges's ring. the blinds make it possible for the narrator to see without being seen hirnself. At the same time, however, the obstructed and splintered perspective produced by the slatted blinds reflect his suspicious and doubtfiil mind. It does not take long before his doubts -conceming his wife's fidelity - trigger a state of delusional jealousy and paranoia that is not unlike the hyper-doubting suffered by Descartes's solitary cogito. Though there are other characters in his world. the narrator never speaks to them directly, preferring instead to keep them at a safe distance.
As with Gyges. he treats the world as though it were his own private stage. Ironically. again Iike Plato's character. the more the narrator of La Jalousie assumes the position of a masterful voyeur and insists on being the sole arbiter of reality. the more enslaved he becomes to his limited purview.45 With nothing to challenge or ground his limited perspective, Robbe-Grillet shows how the solipsistic self -the lone cogito -becomes increasingly possessed by the vagaries of the inhuman world: each new- sound or motion in his irnmediate environment becomes invested with exaggerated significance. The self s detachment from the human world is inversely related to its fixation with the impersonal universe.
More recently Maurice Blanchot gives us a temfying portrayal of the self s position in the arnbiguity and chaotic turmoil of indeteminate being. His eerie narrative style rnimics the subjectless state of the iIy a.
this child - is he seven years old, or eight perhaps? -standing by the window. drawing the curtain and, through the pane, looking. What he sees: the garden, the wintry trees, the wall of a house. Though he sees, no doubt in a child's way, his play space, he grows weary and slowly looks up toward the ordinq*sky. with clouds, gray light - pallid daylight without depth. What happens then: the sky, the same sky' suddenly open. absolutely black and absolutely empty, revealing . . . such an absence that al1 has since always and forevermore been lost therein -so lost that therein is affirmed and dissolved the vertiginous knowledge that nothing is what there is, and first of al1 nothing beyond. . . .46
Blanchot entitles this narrative "A primal scene?" This originary scene depicts the very
point at which the ego arises in order to master the ily a. The child in BIanchot's '-scene"
is akin to Levinas's incipient self. The primal scene is an allegory for the birth of
consciousness. From a position of reIative security. the child peers out of a windou- that
frames the outside world, and which for a moment at least afFords him the possibili~.of
affixing names to the various objects in his environment: "the garden." the ';trees." the
"wall of a house." But the child's position is also plagued by the haunting presence of the retum of indefinite being. The initial enjoyment of the elemental. of the sublime pleasures that they offer (clear blue water, the glistening sunlight, and so forth) give way - for no apparent reason -to the vertiginous unraveling of the self s position and its temporary
hold over the ily a. Nothing cm account for this ambiguity. nie self is not intempted in
its enjoyment by external circurnstances - it is, after dl. 'the sky. the sunte sky
[Blanchot's emphasis]." But now the same natural scene manifests itself as something that threatens to dissolve the self -along with its power to name and to represent reaIity
- in the anonymous flux of being-
vi) Be-vond Tragedy Blanchot's depiction of the self puts into question our faith in reason's capacity to
successfûlly synthesize the manifold of being. He cails this fundamental ambiguity of
existence, the "disaster" of being. In The Wriring of the Disaster, he exploits the rich
etymology of the word désastre: to exist or live without a guiding star. The disaster (from
the Italian disasiro, originally meaning 'no star') is the worse possible prognosis in
augury. signieing that one is bom either under an unlucky star or without a star with
which to plan a course of life. For Blanchot, the disaster is dreadfül. efiqanr payer is
to clear a path; hence, ef-fiayant literally means to be without path or direction), The
disaster is absolutely terrieing because there is no beacon or point of reference by which
to orient life. How do we best characterize the self s situation in the disasfer-?Is the terrn
"tragic" adequate to describe the self s predicament?47
When Levinas notes that expressions such as the "'world in pieces"' and the
'--world tmed upside down,???no matter how hackneyed or naive they might sound,
nevertheless express something that is "authentic" (DEE 25, EE 2 1). it sounds as though
he is confirming the tragic vision. But that is so only if we hear this statement within a
Greek register. Levinas. on the other hand, speaks from the perspective of a Jewish eschatology (cf. Tel x-xi, TI 22-3). What these expressions bear witness to. for Levinas. are the "things we run up against in the twilight of a world, things which reawaken the ancient obsession with an end of the world." And what is the nature of this "end," of these limits of existence? Levinas responds: "where the continual play of our relations with the world is intempted we find neither death nor the 'pure ego,' as we might mistakenly believe, but the anonyrnous state of being" (DEE 26, EE 21 [trans. mod.]).
The disaster signifies that there is "no exit" to speak of, no place within being that can finally put an end to the distressing ambiguity of being. Even in its more determinate
States, being retains an oddity that cm, at any moment, empt and threaten to shaner the boundaries of my self. The natural elernents can either be the source of enjoyment. or an anonymous force that threatens to engulf me. There is nothing either in my capacities. or in being itself. that can heIp permanently to fix this ambiguity.
Levinas undertakes to explain why the horror of being itself is 'beyond' the tragice4*Whether one thinks of tragedy in its ancient or contemporary guise - of which the account of human finitude in Heidegger's Being and Tirne is a paradigrnatic expression (DEE 19-20, EE 19. EDE 89, BP W 18) -tragedy. according to Levinas. does not fully express the irremissible depths of being. Tragedy contains within it a ruse. Some of the great tragedies of western literature sustain the illusion that despite the severe limitations imposed on hurnan beings there remains one final possibility for attaining meaning within what is an otherwise absurd existence. This final recourse is the possibility of affirrning my own death. "Prior to death," Levinas remarks in Time und the
Olher. "there is always a last chance, this is what heroes seize. . . . The hero is the one who always giimpses a Iast chance. . ." (TA 61, TO 73). Thus? despite its underlying message that fate always triumphs over human freedom, tragedy offers, at the last possible moment, the opportunity orpossibility of discovering a final purpose for the self in choosing self-annihilation. Levinas cites JuIiet's stoic affirmation of death - "1 keep the power to die" -as en emblernatic expression of this tragic subtefige. Hence. aiong with the belief that fate prevails over individual fieedom, tragedy contains at least this one moment of unconditional fieedorn: "for through the death assumed at the moment of the alleged victory of fate the individual escapes fate" (TA 29, TO 50 [my emphasis]).
What does tragedy conceal through this ruse? For Levinas, the horror of existence lies precisely in recognizing the fitility of all (the selfls) possibilities. including the possibility of choosing suicide. or affirming one's being-towards-death. Non-being or negation is not a genuine response to the meaninglessness of being. In Exisfence und fiistents and Time and the Other, Levinas makes explicit a conclusion that was first broached in De Z 'évasion (73,90), namely. the possibility of destroying beings does not satisfj the need to exit being. The options of death, suicide, and war - the escape-routes of tragic reason -are fbtile with respect to the inexorability of being. Not only does the negation of being not result in the desired exit fiom being. but it actually deepem the cnsis of the self. The negation of beings effectuates the return of being in its most dispersed manner. that is, as an ominous and impersonal being that threatens to permanently asphyxiate the self. Four decades after the publication of De 1 ëvusion.
Levinas would reiterate the same troubled concem with anonymous being:
Everything that daims to come fiom elsewhere, even the marvels of which essence itself is capable, even the surprising possibilities of renewal by technology and magic, even the perfections of gods peopling the heights of this world. and their immortality and the immortality they promise mortals -al1 this does not deaden the heartrending bustling of the there is [il y a] recommencing behind every negation. (AE 230, OB 183). From Levinas's point of vie- the conclusion is inevitable: there is no way out of being
within being,
There are some tragedies, however, that in a rare moment of insight abandon the
ruse that offers the hero one final opportunity. Hamlet is one such exception. Levinas
extoIs Shakespeare's portrait of his melancholic prince. Unlike the typical tragic hero,
Hamlet appreciates the utter senselessness of his situation: he glimpses the darker realm
obscured by the opposition of being and non-being. In this tenebrous realm there are no
final options. "no exits." no escape clauses. Thus, in Time and the Other. Levinas notes-
that Harnlet is "beyond trage* or the trugedy of fragedy [for Hamlet] understands that
the -net to be' is perhaps impossible and he can no longer master the absurd, even by
suicide" (TA 29. TO 50 [my emphasis]). Hamlet "recoils before the 'not to be."' because
he recognizes that after every negation, being retums in the form of dreams and specters
that haunt the living (DEE 100, EE 62).49 In Levinas's reading of this play. Hamlet
knows that the question is no! '20 be. or not to be." Neither being nor non-being can
resohe Hamlet's predicament. Being persists.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coilS0
Thus with a few exceptions, Levinas argues, the tragic conception of life fails to appreciate the extent to which existence requires justl'Jkation. In and of itself. existence is without meaning or orientation. There is nothing within the principle of being. including its own negation, that can grant life a purpose. The problem of being simply cannot be resolved ontologically. En the words of the later Levinas, the fundamental arnbiguity of existence must be resolved othenvise thon being. That being in-itself is disastrous and that it requires justification is most forcefully expressed, for Levinas, in the Jewish scriptures. Udike the western comic-tragedy. Judaism questions the very Zegitimacy of being. What Judaism appreciates in a way that western philosophy does not is that being must be judged if it is not to detennine our fate. As Rosenzweig noted before Levinas, the tragedian mistakes the unredeemed world for a permanent state of affairs. in so doing, the tragic thinker. unlike the Hebreu- prophets-
fails to see that the ?vorld is not yet finished . . . . [that] [tlhe tears are not 'et -m-iped from ever). countenance."'5l Levinas's philosophy closely parallels the prophet's distrust
of the drama of being. This drarna is accentuated not so that we might find a way to makc
Our peace with it. If the drarna of existence is brought to the fore. it is in order that we might refuse Our complicity with the excesses of being. For this reason. Levinas rejects al1
expressions of tragic resignation in the face of inexorable being. As early as 1935. he voices his deep-seated ethical repudiation of the tragic viewpoint: --Anicivilization that accepts being. the tragic despair that it entails, as well as the crimes that such acceptance justifies. merits the label 'barbarous"' (DE 98).52 When is the drarna of being finally brought into question? It is only in the encounter with what transcends being that "[njothing is theater any more: the drama is no
longer a garne. Everything is grave" (CP 136). Without the intervention of something that is genuinely transcendent, the self could never escape the ever-present horrors of being. As we will see in the following chapters, a genuine orientation in being cannot be generated through self-affirmation, as Nietzsche suggests. Rather. "it is [only] the other that cmsay yes" (Te166, TI 93). vii) Imper$ect Creation
Levinas is, to say the least, a difficult writer. His writing is extremely dense and
complex. One interpreter refers to the "sheer strangeness of Levinas3 prose."j3 Another
observes that Levinas's opaque style leaves the reader with the disconcerting "impression
of no longer knowing where rhey are."54 Levinas himself describes his text as "strange"
(OB 183). clumsy (,4E 23. OB 19), and even '-barbarous" (OB 178)? Fully aware of the
problerns that his styIe poses for the reader. Levinas fiequently makes recourse to
passages from literary sources in order to shed light on a philosophical problem. Being
Jewish. it is not surprising therefore that Levinas makes fiequent allusions to the Bible.
On more than one occasion he underscores his prïmary reason for appealing to scnptures:
his use of scriptures is not meant as proof for a philosophical argument but rather as a
way to illustrate it.56
At the same time, it cannot be denied that BibIical scriptures cary a special
pnvilege for Levinas that is not always granted to other forms of literature. He recognizes
that this prïvilege cannot be assumed and must be carefùlly and rigorously qualified. The
insights found in the scriptures - and as we will see. in some literature - bear witness.
for him. to the tnith57 of ethics in a more fundamental mariner than is expressed in ads
While attesting to the heuristic value of non-religious literature. he nevertheless feeIs cornpelled to speak of the "incomparable prophetic excellence of the Book of Books-'
(Eel 1 16: EI 1 17). If scriptures, in Levinas's work, are rneant neither as philosophical
proofs nor as mere illustrations, how are we to understand their role? Levinas is very carefùl to distance himself from the sort of dogmatism that too often taints the work of religious writers. Instead- what he looks for in the scriptures is "a vision of the human which is meaningfd today" (BV 155). In this respect, what he says in relation to the w~tingof one of his most chenshed religious figures59 can equally be said of Levinas.
The way that the notions used are referred back to Scripture, to the tests from the Bible. Talmud or Kabbalah, invites us to search behind the outdated cosmolog- the. express for a spintual meaning, and thus to get back to permanent problems. to return to a concrete experience and to questions that are stiIl alive. (Ibid.)
Using these guidelines. 1 will now examine how certain scriptures cm help to increase our appreciation of Levinas's questioning of the tragic representation of existence.
The suffocating ernbrace of the "night" of the il y a has few predecessors in the literature of western philosophy.60 Levinas makes it very clear that the il 1. o is pnor eïen to the movement of Heideggerean concealment and unconcealment. Rather. this Other
Night. as Blanchot calls it- that is the ily a, displays a more substantial affinity with the chaos rnentioned in the creation stoly at the beginning of Genesis. The equation that
Levinas establishes between evil or chaos and indeterminate being has its principal source in the Bible.6' This chaos is what 1 designate as the unredeemed disaster that is pure being. It is this chaos before creation6' -a chaos that returns whenever individuated beings are negated - that Levinas refers to when. for example, in Humanisme de l'azme homme. he notes in passing that "al1 being is in shipwreck" (CP 147).63 The shipwreck. or disaster of being. is the imperfect creation that Genesis gives witness to in its opening verses. The French Jewish theologian, André Neher, notes in The Exile of the Woi-d that
the idea of creation unfolding in an uninterrupted logical manner betrays a primariIy
Johannine interpretation of the creation. The advantage of the Christian conception of
creation -and where it is congruous with the Jewish position - is to attest to the
contingent character of the cosmos: the universe is dependenf on a creator. But the
dominant Christian analysis of creation is marred by its association with the Greek
concept of the Logos. Neher cites the famous opening of the Gospel of John as having
been responsible for reinforcing the image of an ideal. flawIess creation. There is a long-
standing tradition within Judaism, however, that contests this idealized view of the
creation. Neher invokes a number of instances. like the following ons. that challenge the
view of creation as a pristine event:
. . according to [one] rabbinical cornrnentary (Ge. Rabbah 9:4), the world did not spring forth a11 at once out of the hand of God. Twenty-six attempts preceded the present Genesis, al1 of which were doomed to failure. The world of man came out of the chaotic midst of this earlier wreckage, but it has itself no guarantee. It. too. remains exposed to the risk of failure and of a return to nothingness. 'If on111 it'll hold,' cries God in creating the world, and this hope accompanies the subsequent history of the world and of hurnanity, emphasizing from the start that this history bears the mark of essential insecuriw.64
This -'mark of essential insecurity" is what Levinas calls the ily a. The il y u is the silent darkness that precedes the creation. It is the mstling void over which God's breath or spirit hovers in an attempt to create beings and introduce order. By contrast to the Greek conception of cosmology, this account not only contests the etemity of the cosmos. but equally underscores its absoIute contingency and fragility. The vital moments or stages of the beginning of the creation are remarkably
condensed in the opening verses of Genesis. A recent translation of the Torah by the
Jewish scholar, Everett Fox, manages to preserve the subtle peculixities of the original
Hebrew. The first five verses of Genesis in Fox's translation read as follows:
At the beginning of God's creating of the heaven and the earth, when the earth was wiId and waste [tohu wu-bohu], darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing- spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters - God said: Let there be light !" And there was light. God saw the light: that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light: Day! and the darkness he called: Nipht!65
The very moment of creation is preceded by a void or w+ldemess (roh1r).66This state of
formlessness is in turn described as a primordial "darkness." The creation only begins
with the hovering breath of God that introduces the Word - "God says.'' The very first
thing that God speaks into existence is the light, And here we find another important
feature that is essential not only for Levinas, but for other Jewish thinkers as well. such as
Rosenzweig and Martin Buber, namely, that speech is prior to disclosure. prior to the
openinç of being as lighting.67 From the light that God isays" into existence. emerges
earthly day and night. This separation establishes the first of a series of individuations.
Separate entities emerge against the backdrop of the void. Finally, the first few lines of
the creation narrative show that God reserves the name --good" onIy for this
individuation, and not for what cornes before, namely, the indistinct chaos or primordia1
The creation, however, as one Midrash teaches, remains incomplete: "Almost everything that was created during the six days of creation needs finishing - even man needs finishing."69 ïhere are rnuiy allusions in the Tanakh that attest to the
precariousness of the unfinished state of the creation, and to the ever-present possibility
of a return to the chaos that precedes the emergence of beings. The Hebrew term for
chaos in Genesis 1: 1 is tohu. This term signifies not only formlessness and chaos but also
"wasteland" and '-~ilderness."~oTohu cm mean a "solitary place" that cannot sustain
individual life for any significant period of tirne. Thus, fohu is sometimes used in the
Bible to describe the uninhabited character of the desert- The desert is the site of the ily a: a place of dreadfûl solitude and desolation, One lives in the desert prier to the revealed word of the Other. The Deuteronomist attests to this idea when he writes that "[God]
found [Jacob] in a wilderness Iand, in a waste [tohu], a howling desert- (Deut. 32: 10).
This passage might be read as alluding to the moment prior to Jacob's decisive confrontation with the divine angel, a conflict that crippled Jacob and perrnanently marked the radical transformation of his identity. Jacob becomes Isrcrel: one who stniggles with God (Gen. 3223-33. Hos. l2:4).'1 The desen. here. as in other parts of the scriptures, designates existence prior to the encounter with the Other. It is of course- also in the desert that the Hebrews find themselves after their exodus fiom Egypt. a place that they must traverse before establishing a just society in the promised land.
As these last exarnples show, the desert is an ambiguous place. a place of rudimentary determination. It is in the desert, with its resounding silence and its desolation, that one cm most appreciate the necessity to leave being. and to begin anew.
"A silence of that order," observes the Jewish Egyptian poet. Edmond Jabès. "makes you feel the nearness of death so deeply that it becomes dificult to bear any more of it. Only the nomads can withstand being squeezed in such a vice, because they were bom in the desert."72 It is not. therefore. by chance that the Law (that is, the Torah) is revealed in the desert. For the desert is a terrain of extreme vigilance, of insornnia. where one is most likely to be attentive to the spoken word.73 Yet once revelation occurs. the Law commands one to leave the desert. No one ought to take root here. for the desert is meant only as a transitional space. We must eschew the terrible fascination with the muted void that precedes creation and individuation.74 To ignore the Revelation. the command to exit the desert. is to risk never leaving ''this place of desolation and death." To refuse the
Revelation means that one will never "be able to begin history. to break the block of being stupidly sufficient unto itself - . ." that threatens to obliterate the human spirit (h'TR
39)-
Those who do make the desert their home might be tempted to make compromises with pure being. For in the absence of the revealed word. idols are worshipped. and the seeds of tyranny are sown by those who succurnb to the "pagan" desire for -'enrootedness in the earth" (Te1 17. TI 47). In Levinas's Judaism, the id01 is a fetish that substitutes for the Company of other hurnan beings, in other words, the id01 is a denial of one's responsibility for others. Heidegger's analysis of death as my "own most possibility" (SZ.
BT $52) - as well as other tragic attempts to locate a meaning in death - constitutes such a fetish in Levinas's eyes. To search for a rneaning to my death - for exarnple. to see in it an authentic possibility, or the confirmation of my fieedom - is for Levinas an example of establishing idoIs in the wasteland of pre-revealed existence.75 For Levinas. however, the mesignificance of revelation lies -as we will see shortly - in the cal1 that cornes to me fiom the Other to abandon the tragic barremess and solitude of the lifeless desert, CHAPTER II
'Desire' and Conscience: Seeking the Hidden Good
i) Inrroducrion
In Toiale and Infiniv. Levinas calls the powerful urge to escape being. Desire
(Désir).' Why '-Desire"? Once again it might be helpful to recall Levinas' s tendency to appropriate and subsequently inflect the traditional vocabulary of western thought? The
Latin desiderare refers to the quest or yearning for the absent Star that cm guide our existence -de-sidus literally means 'away from the star,' thus, 'to cease to ses.. and. therefore? by extension. 'to seek.'j Considered fiom the perspective of Levinas's overall thought. Desire can be interpreted as humanity's aspiration for the Good (le Bien) despi~c. the conspicuous absence of its sign - Blanchot's dés-astre (cf. DhT 165)."espite the fact that there are no visibIe signs of the Star or Good to shed light on the meaning of our existence. we nonetheless seek it, As such, Desire is not to be confüsed with need. because unlike need? Desire is obstinate (CP 56-7, Tel 3-5. 89. TI 33-5. 1 1 7). Need has its corresponding measure; given the nght conditions, it can always be satisfied. As an expression of transcendence, Desire, on the other hand, is inordinate. Nothing within the order of things cm satisS it.5 Hence, one does not desire the Good because of lack. as
Anstophanes declares in the Symposium.6 Levinas's Desire is not correlated to privation. but to excess. Levinas's reader inevitabIy encounters a constellation of terms in his work that highlight the excessive character of Desire: the 'bextraordinary" (CP 96. OB 16. 14 1). the "*extravagantz'(DF 269. CP 72). the bbexceptionai"(OB 17-1 8). and '-exaggeration"
(CP 103.' The Desire to leave being persists even afier al1 of my imrnediate material needs have been satisfied.
As Levinas sees it. there is nothing sharnehl or dubious about the Desire for transcendence. Indeed. in refùsing to give being the Iast word. the final claim on what constitutes the '-rea1'- or "tnith." Desire also expresses the ethical. In order to underscore the transcendental and ethical nature of Desire. Levinas revives the term -'metaphysics."
Desire is metaphysical (Tel 3f. TI 330. The aspiration -of which the philosophies of
Plato and Descartes are exemplary - for a tmth beyond physis. the natural universe. is in
Levinas's mind a noble yearning. Levinas has not missed the central point behind the criticism that is often levelled against metaphysical thinking, namely. the dubiousness of positing another realm behind the phenomenal world. He too shares the suspicion of- traditional metaphysics found in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. But the critique of metaphysics does not. for him. exhaust its significance (Cf. EL 12 1 ). We can discem in Levinas's own thought a distinction between a metaphysical aspiration and the object arrived at by such a search. Levinas can therefore reject Plato's particular conceptualization of metaphysical objects - the Forms and the Good (the Form of
Forms) -as ultimately questionable, while at the same time admiring the inspiration that motivates Plato to seek an outside to phenomenal reality. This inspiration is drawn from the recognition of the implications involved in affîrming an immanent universe. where being remains the exclusive horizon of reality. A universe without the possibilit)- of transcendence, as both Plato and Descartes adamantly insist. issues in moral and epistemological anarchy.
In this chapter. 1 will briefly sketch out Plato's and Descartes's respective views of the ~ood.8I wilI then discuss what Levinas values in these two versions of the Good. as well as what he perceives to be their inherent limitations. As a result. we wï11 be in a better position to grasp the significance of the Jewish articulation of the Good that subtends Levinas's thought. Levinas identifies the Good with the *-face"(a terrn which has to be understood in its proper context) of the Other. The face is the locus of Desire, the response to the disaster of existence. Finally, 1will look at Nietzsche's and
Heidegger's use of the Socratic daimon as an alternative to Levinas's concept of Desire.
For tragic philosophers Iike Nietzsche and Heidegge. there is no need to appeal to a trascendent Good. The inspiration for self-overcoming cornes from the cal1 of conscience which saves the self from sinking into an existential morass. But as we will see, al1 the critical powers that are imputed to the daimonic voice are in fact derived from the Other.
ii) 'Desire ' in PZaro and Descaries
In order to appreciate Plato's conception of the Good, at least as it is expressed in its most renowned version - the account found in the Republic - we need to return to the figure of Gyges. For it is precisely the challenge posed by Glaucon's story of Gyges that spurs Socrates to present his vision of the Good. Playing devil's advocate, GIaucon
introduces the story of the Lydian shepherd in response to Thrasqmachus's disappointing
presentation of the sophist account of justice. While he is generally sympathetic towards
Socrates. Glaucon nevertheless expresses concern that the sophist view has not received a
fair hearing. In Glaucon's mind. Thrasymachus was forced to capitulate too s00n.9
Glaucon thus takes it upon himself to make a new case for the sophists. If Socrates can
respond successfülly to the ethicai predicament posed by Gyges's character then Glaucon
concedes that he will gladly embrace Socrates's position.10
Gyges personifies the picture of human nature that sorne sophists maintain reveals
the ignoble tmth of rnorality. Gyges is the Iaw-abiding shepherd who. given the right
opportunity. transforms himself into a tyrant. In this particular context. Plato's use of
Gyges as his key moral antagonist is probabiy not fortuitous. For it cannot be insignificant that the key term used by Plato in the Republic to designate the antithesis of the just man
- viz. turunnos. a -usurper with supreme power' - is actually a term borrowed from the
Lydians. who first employed it to descnbe the violent rise to power of one of their most
~O~O~~OUSkings - none other than Gyges.11 Thus Glaucon's test case is more than just a hypothetical possibility. for the historical Gyges demonstrates that the ordinary citizen can indeed become a tyrant. 12
Glaucon's story is meant to defend the position that our principal motivation for behaving justly is fear of social disapproval. Once we remove the possibility for others to monitor and judge us, we, like Gyges, might be less disinclined to adopt immoral means to advance our selfish interests. As an ordinary shepherd. Gyges is the last person one would suspect of injustice. Yet. once he discovers the magical ring that gives hirn the power to make hirnsetf invisible, no longer fearhl of how others might judge him+he plunges headlong into a life of evil. If people appear in general to behave in accordance with the laws of the polis- then! according to Glaucon's theory. this can readily be accounted for by a tacit social agreement or contract that rewards 'just' conduct and punishes -unjust' behaviour. The figure of Gyges Iends some validiv to this argument because nothing holds him back once he discovers a way to evade the careh1 scrutin). of his fellow citizens. Not only does Gyges escape punishrnent. but it would seem that he is also abundantly happy because he is in a position to maximize his private interests.
Glaucon challenges Socrates to demonstrate an alternative view of human nature to the one exemplified by the duplicitous Gyges. This alternative conception would have to demonstrate why the just self would eschew immoral practices ei7en17he or she possessed the invisible-making ring. Plato does not deny that many individuals conduct their iives in a Gyges-like marner. Glaucon's theory of human psychology is accurate to a point. Every individual possesses the power to hide behind a veil of deceit. Plato. however. will argue that such a life is really not the best possible life. and certainly not the happiest life (eudaimonia).l3The thmst of his argument will be to show that
Thrasymachus's glamonzation of the unjust individual is unfounded. Plato crafis his defence so as to demonstrate the psychological and philosophical incoherence entaited by a repudiation of the Good. Denial or neglect of the Good Ieads to disastrous consequences. A life without the Good is not merely a hollow life - it is unfit for humans. Thus in the Philebrrs. Plato writes that such a life wouid "not [be that] of a human being but of. . . one of those creatures of the ocean whose bodies are incased in shells."l4
It is important to note that both Herodotus's and Plato's depictions of Gyges highlight the peds of the shell-likeis or spectator position that he assumes: Gyges manages to conceal himself in such a way that he cmsee. without himself being seen. In
Plato's version. Gyges discovers his new-found powers in a subterranean shell or chasm.
Inside the chasm. he sees another shell -a large hollow bronze horse. When he approaches the horse he discovers that it is fitted with windows. The stoq is structured much like a Chinese box. so that Gyges's scoptophilic curiosity is intensified with the discovery of each new container. The centre-piece? of course. is the golden ring wom by the naked corpse. that is. the corporeal shell. that Gyges finds -and subsequently removes - afier peering through the windows. Gyges. in other words. is always looking out from or looking into shells. In Herodotus's version, Gyges's murder of the king is precipitated by his agreement to peer secretly at the nude body of the Lydian queen. When
Plato retells the myth. it is precisely Gyges's voyeuristic inclination. the mapical power to make himself invisibIe. to hide behind windows, that he emphasizes. On the one hand. the ability to be positioned as an uncommitted observer undennites his freedom. Because no one can see him. Gyges is freed fiom the need to conform to the expectations of others. From the safety of his hidden position, his unquestioned source of freedom. Gyges can look out ont0 the world without cornmitment. On the other hand. however. the power to stand back from the world -and here we must keep in mind Levinas's discussion of the hypostasis - concomitantly reveals the self3 fettered state.
The tyrant's Iife appears enviable to outsiders; there are no limitations. it seems. to what earthly goods he can enjoy. But the tyrant's contentment is only surface-deep. He pays a tremendous price for his voyeuristic detachment from others. The badges of power and status that tyrants like Gyges Wear are ultimately insignificant. For beneath his apparent contentment lies a perpetually dissonant soul: both the rational part of his sou1 and his spiritedness are enslaved to the appetites. In a universe with no Good. or one in which the Good is neglected. the outcome of the self-interested individual is far from happy- Plato has Socrates show that self-interested actions not only harm the community but also the perpetrator of such actions. Unaware of the fiil1 range of human possibilities. the life of the individual who pays no heed to the Good is drawn to the lowest level of human nature. its beastly dimension. The Yawless unnatural desires" that were initialIy held in check by social pressure eventually overtake the ty~ant.'~Because the refusal to be sharned or held accountablel7 places the tyrant outside of society. nothing stands in the way of acting on base or anti-social desires (which othemise remain repressed). We must resist being "overawed by the sight of the tyrant"l8 and his cronies. Socrates wams. for they are "haunted by fear."lg The tyrant lives in constant fear that others want to wench power away from him. Instability and paranoia are thus proportionally related to his increased thirst for power. Behind the seductive veneer of the Thrasymachean universe lies a world whose protagonists are condemned to the etemal recurrence of the elemental.
With no Good to orient him. the tyrannical personality lacks a transcendent standard by which to order even the most rudirnentary pleasures. Unable to distinguish between necessary and unnecessq needs, he lives at constant risk of injuring hirnself.20
Careful consideration. however, will show us that not only is there some degree of order in reality. but that this order seeks its proper excellence or perfection (urere). If one seeks genuine happiness then one has an obligation to thematize - that is. to explicate what eludes our everyday perceptions -the ordering pnnciple behind appearances.2 1 An understanding of the Good is indispensable for helping us to prioritize the myriad of terrestrial goods available to us. such as honour. wealth. and liberty. Plato arrives at these conclusions afier disceming something which surpasses even being itself (epekeina les ozrsins).2~Such a dificult idea. he confesses, can only be approached analogously - the
Sun as the "child of the Good."23 Diffîcult as it may be. with patience and the proper education, we. like the liberated prisoner in the cave. cm gradually elevate out- minds to behold the Good. and then use this vision to reform our lives and the world accordingly.
So strong is his faith in the steering power of the Good. that at the end of Book X. Plato has Socrates confidently decIare that regardIess of whether or not one has access to
Gyges's ring. an awareness of the Good necessarily leads to just conduct.24
Synchronizing the three levels of the sou1 (as well as the three major classes of the polis) with the guiding light of the Good results in justice, just as exercising the various parts of the body according to their proper proportions results in good health. A harmonious psyche is just, In short. then' this is how Plato interprets Socrates's well-known maxim that virtue is knowledge.
At first sight. it would seem that the problem articulated by Plato regarding the
Good is completely unrelated to the questions that occupy Descartes in the Meditafions.
After all. nowhere in his most farnous work does Descartes explicitly address the problem of the Good. But a closer reading suggests. or so Levinas maintains. that Descartes is also preoccupied with the Good. The very fact that he senses the need for God's existence in the context of having to answer for the possibility of an evil genius demonstrates. for
Levinas. an awareness of the sarne concems that prompt Plato to reflect on the Good.
Without the Good- the possibility of objective science. as much as universal justice. is jeopardised. In Levinas's reading, Descartes, like Plato, recognizes and declares the necessity of an absolute pointZ5 of reference to stabilize his epistemological enterprise.
Descartes takes the Pyrrhonist challenge seriously enough to ponder the conssquences of the impossibility of attaining knowledge of the world, our selves. and other minds.
Thus. at the begiming of the Third Meditafion. Descartes concedes that neither the discovery of the cogiro, nor the idea of extension, is sufficient to offer us the degree of confidence necessary to know the concrete and physical objects of extemal reality. Even if I could be certain that 1 exist, how do 1 know that the contents of my mind are not plagued by perpetual confÙsion?26 After dl, the certainty of my existence does not eIiminate the possibility of a "deceiving God" -however Wight" this supposition rnight be.Z7 In other words, how certain can I be that my mind does in fact have the power to perceive some ideas "cIearly and distinctly" -the sole criterion 1 possess for determining whether an idea or perception present before the tribunal of rny mind is either confùsed or
~erta.in?~gIt is in this context that Descartes undertakes to prove God's existence. Such a proof will offer suffîcient insurance against the possibility that 1 am ahvays deceived by my perceptions - as claimed by radical scepticism. If, however. my mind is not inherently defective, which it might be if it were the product ofa god inlent on deceiving me. then 1 can rest assured that 1 am only penodically misled, that is- whenever (and only at such times as) 1 fail to attend to ideational evidence with the rigour required of the
--clear and distinct'. rule. This scenario represents the position of moderate scepticism and characterizes the form of scientific hquiry endorsed by Descartes.
In formulating his proof for God's existence, Descartes is led to the discovery of the idea of the Infinite (l'Infini)within the cogito. As a finite and imperfect creature. 1 could not possibly have manufactured or conceived such an idea by myself. since the cause of such an idea must. in principle. possess the sarne degree of perfection as its effect.z9 It follows. Descartes holds, that the idea of the Infinite was put into me by its only possible cause, God. 1 never willed this idea to be. Rather. reason tells me that it was implanted in my mind by God pnor to my capacity to affirm or reject those ideas that pass before my mind.30 Armed with this conclusion, as well as the second proof for the existence of God. presented in the Fi$h Medifation, Descartes believes he has sounded the death-knell for radical skepticism. From Levinas's point of view, Plato's vision of what transcends being represents his wisest formulation. Levinas is particularly drawn to Plato's uncornpromising stance towards the necessity for the Good. Unless the totality of being is surpassed by the Good. there is no ultimate way to determine right fiom wrong. al1 moral questions must remain a matter of nomos (convention). Levinas is attracted to Descartes's conception of the
Infinite for the sarne reasons that draw hirn to Plato's Good. For Descartes is also emphatic on the necessity to measure his self against that which surpasses him, namely. the Infinite.
For how could 1 understand that 1 doubted or desired -that is. lacked something -and that I was not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison?~I
Overshadowed by the Infinite, aware of itself as "incomplete and dependent on another."j2 the finite self senses that it must transcend its finite and unquestioning stance towards reality.
iii) The Good afrer the 'Death of God '
An articulation of the Good or the idea of the Infinite that transcends finite experience is no less urgent today for Levinas, than it was for Plato some twenty-four centuries ago. or more recently for Descartes. But how can we today continue to believe or aspire to something as seemingly nebulous as the Good or the Infinite, especially after the violent irrationalism witnessed in our own supposedly enlightened century? To a certain extent, Levinas sympathizes with the general disillusionrnent show towards conventional conceptions of the Good. The idea of the Good, for example. that is associated with a God who rewards the just and punishes evil-doers is in the context of
Auschwitz hardly tenable. if not vulgar; for such a conception of the Good implies that the Jews and others who were murdered in the camps deserved tc die. If that is what we mean by '-God" or the "Good-"33 then one cm certainly appreciate the cynical reaction - cornmon today - to a belief in a supposed goodness that transcends lived experience.
That this view of the Good or God - the onto-theological God who resides behind rea1it)-
- has become for many "increasingly impossible" (DF 280) and suspect is. in Levinas's mind. a blessing.j"he "death of God" (that is, the onto-theological God) exposes the infantile psycholow that characterizes certain traditional religious and metaphysical discourses. Afier the Holocaust we must live and think "without any shadow of a consoling theodicy" (US 164). As a 'justification of the neighbour's pain." theodicy conceals the suffering of others. Hence al1 theodicies are complicit with immorality (CS
163).
But while Levinas is quite pleased to do away with certain representations of the
Good. he is nevertheless adamant that we require some conception of Desire or ethical transcendence. For to abandon the idea completely that there is no Good or God with which to judge the universe is. again, in the face of Auschwitz, to flirt with a dangerous kind of moral and cultural resignation. Levinas does not shy away from putting this in the strongest tems imaginable. To reject the Good is tantamount -and here he invokes the celebrated comment of the Canadian-Mewish philosopher? Emile Fackenheim - to completing what the Nazis themselves failed to accomplish (US 182-3). namelu. the eradication of the Law -the Judaic identification of the divine with social justice.jj
What does it mean to take the cornplate denial of the Good seriousiy? To relinquish the principle of the Good is to '-abandon the world to useless sufferîng. leaving it to politicai fatality - or the drïfting -of the blirrid forces which inflict misfortune on the weak and conquered" (US 164).
Aware at some IeveI of this discouraging consequence, most critics of the Good.
Levinas contends. surreptitiously rein~roducea secularized version of the G00d.~~Of the thinker who denounces the very idea af the Good as outmoded, but continues to make critical pronouncements regarding injustice and the hope for a better world- Levinas poignantly asks:
But with what lesser demon or- strange magician have you therefore filled your heaven. you who daim that it iis empty? And why, under an empty sky. do you continue to hope for a good amd sensible world? (DF 143)
Perhaps the most popular contender im the secular age for this Yesser demon" is the idea of progress. Most progressivist ideologgies share in cornmon the view that the ve- seed of amelioration resides within the dialectical movement of history. Since the Enlightenrnent- a new theodicy has arisen. one that cemtres around the gradua1 discoven and application of supposedly universal economic, ps~chological,and historical 'laws.' This carnouflaged version of the Good that secretiy infoms progressivist ideas, repeats the same fundamental errors that plague onto-theological discourses. The idea of the inexorable triurnph of rationality substitutes for the idea of a supreme Being who actively directs the course of history according to some preconceived plan. Far fiom breaking with tradition. the older theodicy persists "in watered-down form at the core of atheist progressivisrn"
(US 161)Y
But the events of the twentieth centqshow that it is hardly tenable to "espect justice fiom history." History's "anonymous unfolding," Levinas asserts. "when morality does not corne along to guide it. is a series of crimes that are set off like a chain reaction'.
(DF227). By itself. reason is no guarantor of moral propriety and justice. -'The bare intelIect," he continues, --cm scale great heights, but cannot endure there" (Ibid.).
RepeatedIy. history demonstrates that unaided reason "succumbs to the idolatq of rn>.ths that tempt. betray and shackle it" (DF 274). To place one's trust in reason alone reveals an unpardonable naiveté, We need not go fiirther than Nazi Germany to realize that rationalit'. can readily be put into the service of morally perverse ends. The close relationship between science and the senseless murder of millions demonstrates that reason can comfonably coexist with evi1.38 Far fiom justi@ing the rejection of the Good. the calculative rationality and efficiency that undergirded the administrative and scientific institutions of fascist Germany ought to persuade us of the need for a Good that orients reason. For only from a position of the Good -an absolute stance taken with respect to being - are we -*ableto judge civilization on the basis of ethics" (CP 101). With nothing to check it, rationality remains morally indifferent like being. A common conclusion repeated throughout Levinas3 enùre corpus is that only the Good can offset the ethical inertia of reason.
In insisting on the Good, Levinas should not be misinterpreted as wanting to revive antiquated rnetaphysical models, While Levinas praises both Plato and Descartes for at leas recognizing the urgency of imagining a beyond that challenges Our finite understanding. he ukimately rejects their respective representations of transcendence.
Neither Plato nor Descartes can properly situate the 'site' that breaks with the phenomenal order. The absolute point outside of the finite that Plato and Descartes so desperately seek cannot be properly accounted for by the ontological framework the' employ. Epistemological differences aside, the respective ontologies of Plato and
Descartes share a nurnber of general assurnptions, which on doser obsewation reveal a deficient understanding of the Good within their metaphysics. Before examining the
Jewish conception ofthe Good that Levinas endorses. it will be helpful to underscore tnu features of the traditional misunderstanding of the Good.
First. it is not by chance that both Plato and Descartes rely heavily on visual metaphors in their respective accounts of transcendence. These metaphors- as we will see. caqa tremendous rhetorical force. Plato's dependence on ocular and heliotropic metaphors in his analysis of the Good is by now quite well known. His key metaphor for describing the Good is the Sun. Plato, of course, knew not to confuse the actual physical
Sun with the Good. The idea of the sun serves to illustrate the purpose and role of the
Good. Just as the Sun is the source of light by which we cm discem things in the world. so the Good illuminates the Foms for the "mind's eye."39 The pristine light of the Good
permits the eye of the sou1 to perceive the Fonns, the basis for tnie intelligibility and
knowledge. as opposed to the tenebrous opinions and illusions associated with the senses.
Descartes's presentation of the Infinite is also constructed around light and ocular-
based metaphors. In his attempt to ground the cogito, to ensure that the minci is not
inherently flawed, Descartes invokes the idea of a "naturai light." This notion plays a
paramount role in the development of Descartes's argument.
Whatever is revealed to me by the natural light - for example that from the fact that I am doubting it foliows that 1 exist. and so on -carmot in any way be open to doubt. This is because there cannot be another faculty both as tnisturorthy as the natural Iight and also capable of showing me that such things are not true.JO
Thus the fact or truth of the cogito rests ultimately on the natural Iight of reason. But
Descartes still needs some guarantee for the cogito's supposed power of apperception41 to distinguish clear and distinct ideas from tenuous ideas produced by either sensation or the imagination. Ideas that are generated by these latter faculties are impure according to
Descartes because they are mingled with the raw physical information provided for by the sense organs - as such they are inherently untrustworthy.4~In order to certie the reliableness of the apperceptive fünction of the cogito, Descartes readily acknowledges the need for a proof of God's existence: "For if 1 do not know this. it seems that I can never be quite certain about anything el~e."'~3And here again, he must invoke the idea of the light of nature as his final arbiter. That the cogito possesses the idea of a being who is more perfect than it is "evident by the natural light" of the mind.44 Because of the natural light both the cogito and the existence of God (who exists because only He can account for the idea of the Infinite within me) are incontrovertible tniths.45
Both Plato's view of the Good, conceptually modelled afier the life-giving power of the Sun, and Descartes's "natural light," illuminating the i~ersancnim of the cogito. do not so much demonstrate transcendence as they induce the illusion of transcendence.
The heliotropic and ocular metaphors are meant to foster an illusion of immediacy, as well as to capitalize on a common religious association of Iight with salvation or liberati0n.~6The metaphoric appeai to light serves a similar fünction for both philosophers, namely, to convey the idea of a lifting up of the soul or mind from the
"twilight world of change and decay."47 A brighter, purer light thus corresponds to a higher spiritual eIevation. But the appeal to light as psychic illumination, as the anchor of absolute objectivity, is highly deceptive. For as Levinas emphatically points out. the luminosity and radiance produced by a light source is in itself no less ambiguous than the opacity and obscurity of brute physical stuff. '7n driving out darkness." Levinas notes-
"the light does not arrest the incessant play of the there is (ilya).', The plenitude of light
"remains an indeterminate density which has no meaning of itself pnor to discourse."
Light is no less a "void" of "infinite spaces" than that which it illuminates (Tel 165. TI
190). The presence of light cannot guarantee an end to the radical doubt initiated either by the problern of the evil demon or by the murderous 'unnatural' urges that tonnent the tyrant's soul. The lucidity of consciousness -even if Descartes tries to convince hirnself
othewise - is "no more certain of remaining awake" (DF 206). The light of reason can
dernystie one set of circumstances only to fa11 prey to another myth. another dream. --We
are powerless." Levinas writes, "to break out of this infinity of falsehood" (Ibid.). A space or object that is illuminated by the mind's light is not necessarily less of a hazard for the self than its darkened counterpart. In developing this line of crïticism, Levinas rnay have
Pascal in mind. While he is just as appreciative as his contemporary. Descartes. of the benefits to be derived fiom geornetrical and mathematical analysis. Pascal knon-s that the clarity and illumination clairned by the emerging non-Aristotelian sciences cannot adequately address the human predicament. For even if we tum "an eternal lamp to light up the universe," we wouId only behold that "nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere."4* Only the heart possesses the 'tertainty . . . as to whether man was created by a good God. an evil demon. or just by chance. . . .O49 By contrast. rational inquiry issues in scepticism whenever it sets out to grasp the first or ultirnate principles. However useful geometry may be as a mode1 for understanding the universe. it barely conceals the "eternaI silence of these idinite spaces [which] fills me with dread."jO Levinas, in tum, echoes a Pascalian sentiment when he asserts in Totuli~. und /nfiniry that the radiance of light can only be the source of a momentary "forgetting
[of] the hcrror of [the] interminable return" of the elemental (Tel 165. TI 190-1); the self basks in the intense glow and nourishing wannth of the hot Sun. But since light belongs to the elemental - the nonpossessable medium that envelops the self - it is by its very ambiguity constitutive of the disaster of being. Though it is better than the darkness of disordered being. light does not put a final end to the "retum of the mythical gods" that prey on the self s deepest fears. And if light by itself cannot accomplish a firm break with anonymous being, generate a new beginning, neither can its perceptual correlate. vision.
Neither light nor vision can effect genuine transcendence (Tel 165. Ti 191).51
As we saw in the fira chapter. it is precisely the impersonality of being. its indifference to the self- that threatens the self s very identity. The self experiences the indifference of being as suffocation. Yet, the solution offered by Plato and Descartes to the problem of the finite self s predicarnent is wholly impersonal. This represents the second major shortcoming with traditional metaphysics. Ideas and pnnciples. however sublime or noble. lack the transfomative power hoped for by rnetaphysicians. Impersonal principles are too abstract and general to solicit my finite being. Plato conceived of the
Good in such a way that it fails to impose itself on me in the manner that he otherwise desires. His Good rnay have its aesthetic merits (the erotic yeaming for the Beautiful in the Svmposiztm) and even an intellectual appeal (an inquiry into the Form of Forms in the
Republic). but it lacks the moral weight or means necessary to sever the self fiom its being. to decenter the ego's narcissism. From Levinas's point of view. the unspoiled light of Plato's Good. shining on the justly ruled polis, is not immune to being's unrelenting power to eradicate every possible exit route fiom itself. In contrast to Plato's version of the Good, genuine "[g]oodness," Levinas states, "does not radiate over the anonymity of a collectivity presenting itself panoramicdly, to be absorbed into it" (Tel 282. TI 305). Conceived as an impersonal force, nothing prevents the Platonic Good fiom being smothered by the general callousness of being. This criticism applies equally to Descartes who reduces the problem of transcendence to a rnatter of proof. to an exercise in rational calculus. The abstraction and anonymity of an ontological principle or proof would be impotent in helping me to detach myself fiom being's tremendous exertion. What Levinas says with respect to those who claim that art is transcendent holds equally true of philosophical formulations concerning transcendence: the art work might captivate us --by its grace . . . but does not reveal itself' as the Infinite. The essence of the art ~vork remains. in the final instance, "indifference, cold splendor. and siIence" (Te1 167. TI
193)-51 By contrast. an adequate conception of transcendence must be able to implicrrfr nze pet-sonalZy. Only that which personally addresses me from a -place' outside of being has the power to help me in tum to transcend being, to unbind me from its crippIing grip.
As expounders of the Good, the respective ideas of PIato and Descartes --should have served as a foundation for a pluralist philosophy" (Tel 53. TI 80). By a '-pluralist philosophy" Levinas means a philosophy that challenges the totaking propensity of being. Yet in this endeavour, Platonic and Cartesian metaphysics have failed because their central categories do not seriously challenge the impersonal and anonymous warp of being. The foundation of a pluralist phiIosophy. which voices a genuine expression of
Desire. must be sought elsewhere. il.) Evading Being
If the "shimmer of infinity . . .can no longer be stated in terms of consciousness. in metaphors refemng to Iight and the sensible" (TI 207): then what categories can do justice do Desire? How do we escape the fate suffered by Gyges? What finally puts an end - even if provisionally -to the mocking insinceriq of the elemental. to the problem of the evil genius? What Star or Good cm help us to orient our lives in the desert of being? If the self is by nature independent. even of God, and if by its very definition the self is inextricably bound to neutral being, how is transcendence to be accomplished?
The answer to these questions dovetails with the answer to the question of how Desire is expressed. This answer for Levinas reveals the meaning of existence for the self.
De Z 'évasion provides us with an earIy hint as to how Levinas will later approach the question of transcendence. From the perspective of his later philosophy. the title of this first notable publication. De Z 'évasion, takes on a special significance. for it foreshadows the two distinct forms of 'going out' (évader)of being that are outlined in his wrïtings of the 1950s and 1960s. In French. évasion cames two distinct connotations of the Latin evadare. or 'going out of.' One of its meanings is similar to English
'evasion,' signiQing 'escapism' and 'avoidance.' It is this particular connotation of the word évasion - which he specifies at one point as a "deceptive evasion" (évasion rrompezise) (DE 83) -that primarily occupies Levinas in his 1935 essay. But évasion also carries a very different meaning, one closely associated with its verb, évader. signiGing 'to leave a difficult situation' (in a nonevasive mariner). Levinas brïefly alludes to this sense of évasion at the vex-y end of his 1935 publication:
The only path that is henceforth available in order to satisQ the legitimate exigencies of idealism, without however succumbing to its errancy. is to rneasue, without fear, the whole weight and omnipresence of being. . . . It is necessary to Ieave being by a new path even at the risk of overtuniing certain ideas which seem self-evident because they belong to cornmon sense and popular wisdom. (DE 99 [rny emphasis])
Levinas will dedicate the rest of bis career to elucidating this difficult "new path" or expression of metaphysical Desire; a responsible or nonevasive way of leaving being5j
Two decades afier the publication of De Z 'évasion, Levinas illustrates the evasive
(escapist) mode of 'leaving' by identiMng it with the character of Odysseus. Homer's wamor sets off on a long circuitous adventure that eventually retums him home afier a twenty year absence. In Levinas's interpretation, Odysseus emblematicaily represents the ego. manipulating its environment, not simply to survive, but in order to enhance its powers as well. Levinas discerns the same Odyssean pattern - of cunning and self- expansion - in western thought as a whole.
It is as though the subjective life in the form of consciousness consisted in being itself losing itself and finding itself again so as to possess itseIfby showing itself. proposing itself as a theme, exposing itself in truth. . . . Anything unknown that can occur to it is in advance disclosed, open, manifest, is cast in the mould of the known, and cannot be a complete surprise. For the philosophical tradition of the West, al1 spirituality lies in consciousness, thematic exposition of being. knowing. (OB 93)
In characterizing western consciousness as cunning and mastery, Levinas should not be rnisinterpreted as repudiating this mode1 of consciousness. Odysseus~spropensity to irnmerse or lose himself in his surroundings so as to manipulate objects more effectively, accurately reflects the very structure of consciousness. The German 'BegrzjJ' as well as
the French and English 'concept.' betray the idea of a "greedy and hegemonic ego" (BPW
152). The respective roots of Begr~flandconcept share the same meaning: to grasp or
seize with one's hand. For Levinas, such "metaphors are fo 6e taken seriouslJzand
ZiteralZy [because they] beIong to the phenomenologv of immanence" (BP W 152). To
know or to conceive is literally to possess something, to transform that which is initiall'.
strange into something that is properly mine. But the phenomenology of immanence conceals a pnor scene.54
The other mode of leaving being - évasion in the sense of refusing to make compromises with the predicament of being, or the "new path" that Levinas speaks of at the end of De Z ëvasion - is represented by Abraham, The very first word addressed to the Mesopotarnian. Abram. is Lekh (Go!) (Gen. 12: 1).55 Abram is not told of his final destination- or how he must get there: his only directive is va-yelekh. which according to
Buber can be translated word-for-word as '-go-you-forth."j6 With this spoken commandment. one that comes to him directly and personally from a hitherto unfamiliar
God. Abram sets off on an unknown trajectory. A kind of anti-Odysseus. Abram leaves behind his native home. never to retum again. Amving in a new land. Abram finds himself a stranger amongst a foreign people. Rather than consolidating his former self.
Abram sheds his identity, and takes on a new name, ~braham.5~By contrasr, Odysseus evades the possibility of becoming a stranger to himseK Instead. through adventure and accommodation, he treats each new obstacle as another challenge or potential gain for himself. Odysseus struggles to preserve and enhance his identity. Abraham, on the other hand. responds to the cal1 to leave being (his native land, his personai and social identic) by risking everything, including his very identity. He eschews the seductive logic of recompense and recuperation that drives Odysseus.
How cm we best understand the difference between these two different ways of leaving. between Odysseus's crafty evasiveness and Abraham's Desire or openness to the possibility of self-transformation? Given the pull of being. what has the power to break with it? If nothing within the self cm accomplish this break. not even the self s choice to die. what finally succeeds? The story of Abraham attests to some insight concerning the possibility of genuine transcendence that is conspicuously absent in the Greek narrative.
The divergent attitudes towards existence shoun by Odysseus and Abraham are the result of different existential conceptions concerning the relationship between the self and the universe. as well as. the relationship between the self and divinity.S8 Greek man or woman lives within a self-enclosed or immanent universe.59 The pagan's60 experience of time mirrors the cyclical patterns observed in natural forces. The peremial cycles of the seasons. the circular movements of celestial objects, birth and death. suggest to the pagan the eternality of the cosmos. Nothing escapes the inexorable Fates (Moii-ue)that control the natural rhythms and cycles of generation and destruction. For the Homeric individual. even the gods are poweriess before the Fates. Thus Homer has Athena acknowledge that "death is a thing that cornes to al1 alike. Not even the gods can fend it away fiom a man they love, when once the destructive doom [rnoir] of levelling death has fastened upon him."61 Not surprisingly. the pagan's temporal understanding fosters a general sense of deep-seated pessimisrn. For this reason, Rosermveig wiIl argue that the most conspicuous feature of the pagan or tragic hero is his or her relative silence.62
The self lacks al1 bridges and connections; it is tunied in upon itself exclusively. And this in turn drenches divine and worldly things with that pecuIiar darkness in which the tragic hero moves. [To corne to grips with guilt and fate] would [mean] hav[ing] to break their silence . - . [and] stepping out of the walls of their self. and they would rather suffer in silence than do this.63
The prayers of the hermetic tragic self remain unanswered. With no reason to hope. he or she remains imprisoned in "the icy solitude'? of his ~0~1.6~
By contrast, the Hebraic individual is acutely aware of the divine as radically separate fiom nature and the cosmos. The Greek view that even the gods are constrained bj- the Fates contrasts sharpIy with the Psalmist's conviction that '-[olur God is a God of saIvation: and to GOD. the Lord, belongs escape fiom deaùi" (Ps. 68:20).The author of the Song of Songs similarly asserts that the love that God has for human beings (and that human beings cm show for one other) transcends even death (Song of Sol. 8:6).For the
Jews. God is transcendent in a unique way that needs to be distinguished from various other conceptions of transcendent 'beings.'65 As we saw above. begiming mith Plato. the philosophical tradition has at various points made a concerted effort to contemplate the
Good beyond being. These attempts, however, have failed on two accounts: 1) a failure to conceive of the Good in non-ontological terms, and 2) a failure properly to conceive how the Good personally unbinds me fiom the contract of my identity with being. The Jewish configuration of the Good successfully addresses both of these concems. The Torah discourages an intellectual or theoretical approach to the Infinite. or
what surpasses the realm of creation. Direct representation of the infinite or Good is
expressly forbidden. for that would mean indulging the self s primitive fantasy that it is
beholden to no one. The Iesson that is cornmunicated by this prohibition is the realization
of the inherent limitation of consciousness with respect to knowing the Good. The Good
is invisible. outside of our scope, outside of representation. It is oniy by an "abuse of
language" that the Good is even narned 'Gad' (CP 136). The proliferation of names for
God in the Tanakh - for example, Elohim, EI Shaddai. and Eloah - attests nat 10 a
confusion regarding the divine but to a recognition of the Good's ultimate
unknowabIeness. When Moses asks for God's narne. he follows a cornmon practice in the
ancient world. To know the name of a person or deity is to know his or her essence. One
can then employ conjuration to manipulate the bearer of the narne.66 But Moses's request
is promptly foiled when he receives the virtually nonsensical answer. Ehyeh--4sher-
Ehjah. -1will br-rhere hoil~soeverI will be-there' (Exod. 3: 14).67 Because the Platonic
Good and the Cartesian Infinite are conceived as objects of inquiry. they ultimately flatter
the rational ego. The Jewish Good deliberately thwarts consciousness and its sovereign
pretensions.
The Hebraic narrative reveals a deep-felt awareness of the pitfalls of the ego's scopophilia. The wish to fix the Infinite with one's gaze is fnistrated at ever). tum. While wandering the desert the Jews experienced recurrent hstration. Repeatedly the narrative speaks of a collective murmuring and gnimbling (Exod. 14: 10- 14. 15:22-27). testimony of the human need to possess certainty; but this fdse desire is foiled time and again. The transcendent simply cannot be had in the fom of an object. If the Good is to be
'experienced' it is clear that it is something to be reckoned with. It will not present itself as an object for intentional consciousness. The true nature of the sin involved in the golden calf episode (Exod. 32: 1-33:6) was not that the Jews had chosen another god to worship. The text. according to Buber, suggests othenvise.68 Their transgression lap in the conceit of giving God a physical (and, thus. knowable) fom -that is. reducing God to an object that cm be readily grasped, initially by one's hands and, subsequently- as an internaiized object for consciousness.
Instead of vision, the Hebrew scriptures turn to speech as the proper means to relate to the Infinite. This bnngs us to the second way in which Jewish thought departs from the western metaphysical tradition: the self is personally addressed in such a manner that it transcends the yoke of being. But we must be careful to differentiate the role of speech from the dominant view of language found in western thought. Afier all. speech also assumes an important position in a long line of prestigious texts in the western canon
- from Socrates to Heidegger. A closer examination of the tradition reveals. however. that what is meant by 'speech' is actually something closer to vision. In the case of Plato. for exarnple. the purpose of the dialectic -the going back and forth with words between student and teacher - is to turn the eye of the sou1 around fiom its initial preoccupation with the realm of shadows. The goal in other words is to promote a better 'seeing' of the
Forms and later the Good. Levinas is cognizant of how philosophers have persistently subordinated speech to vision by treating language as a kind of '"seeing one another' between humans" -thus. reducing speech to the representational power of the ego (DR
99-100).
Before Levinas, it was Rosenzweig who articutated the major difference in the understanding of speech between the ego-centred thinking of "old philosophy" - by which he means Greek tragic thought and philosophy - and a "new [Jewish-inspired] thinking" that privileges the Other's speech. In the "new thinking," speech is first and foremost the addressing of a unique self by an irreducible Thou. As understood in a
Jewish context.
[speech] needs another person and takes time seriously - actually these hvo things are identical- In the old philosophy, 'thinking' means thinking for no one else (and here . . . you may substitute 'everyone' or the well-known -al1 the world' for -no one'), But 'speaking' means speaking to someone and thinking for someone. And this someone is always a quite definite someone. and he has not merely eus. like -al1 the world,' but also a mouth.69
In the '-old thinking." dialogue is put into the service of unveiling timeless tmths. In the
--new thinking." however. the tranformative force of speech is restored: speech disrupts the illusion of timeIessness and irnmediacy that vision-centred ontologies promote. When
I am addressed by someone, the words that leave the mouth of the one who addresses me enter my space long before 1 cm master his or her discourse. That is. before 1 am in a position to grasp his or her words as objects of contemplation I hear them - more precisely, 1 am affecred by them - as a demand or plea to listen and to respond. This affective intrusion or disruption takes place pnor to the ego's work of assimilation and representation. In Judaism the encounter with the invisible Good takes place almost exclusively at the level of the intersubjective. The absent Star compeIs men and women to seek orientation arnongst thern~elves.~0"The transcendence of God," Levinas writes in one of his Talmudic commentaries, "is his actual effacement, but this obligates us to meny (BI7
125). Buber tells a story that humorously illustrates this central Jewish idea.
There is a tale that a man inspired by God once went out from the creaturely realms into the vast waste. There he wandered till he came to the gates of the rnystery. He knocked. From within came the cry: "What do you want here?" He said. '-1 have proclaimed your praise in the ears of mortals. but they were deaf to me. So I corne to you that you yourself rnay hear me and reply." "Tum back." came the cry from within. "Here is no ear for you. I have sunk my hearing in the deafness of mortaIs.71
It is in our dealings with each other, in the junctures and disjunctions that punctuate eaeryday interrelatedness, "in the grop[ing] past one another," as Buber goes on to Say. that we are ~c.ithin--reach [ofl the eternat partner." The Desire for the eternal partner is netrer fully consurnmated in the way that needs are satisfied. The Desire for the Other remains forever what Buber aptly calls a "mismeeting" (~er~e~nzin~).~)
According to Rosenzweig, the narrative progression from Adam to Abraham in the book of Genesis foIlows the movement from the tragic ego's self-absorption to its ethical election by the Other, from a rigid identification with nature that issues in fatalism to an awareness of the distance that separates the self from the world and others. The
Other thus gradually reveals to the self its proper orientation in life. Adam and his fmiIy live in the same dream-time inhabited by the pagan ego. They inhabit the same tragically silent universe of Greek man and woman. They too are tempted by the constant possibility for self-withdrawal and invisibility that seduces Gyges. Prior to being "cursed with the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve are like Gyges wichout shame (Gen.
225). Similarly. their first encounter with the limits of their freedom is consonant with
Gyges's evasiveness. Called out by narne, afler having transgressed agaiinst God' Adam hides from the "face of WWH(Gen. 3:8), carnouflaging himself witln the dense brush of the Garden. When God asks. "Where are you?" (Gen. 3 :9), the dissemnbling and evasiveness that characterize the tragic self begin. Asked if he has eaten From the forbidden tree. Adam retorts elusively: "The woman . . . she gave me frorn the tree. and so 1 ate-' (Gen. 3: 12). As if to Say: 'but 1 had nothing to do with it. She made me do it.' To which Eve. in the sarne equivocal manner, responds? 'it was not me. it was the Snake. it made me do it.''j And so on. Rosenzweig's succinct gloss brings out the original profundity of the parable.
The quest for the Thou remains a mere request. Man hides. he dloes not respond. he remains speechless. he remains the Self as we know it. The rb-esponses which God finally elicits from hirn are not responses. The divine quest for the Thou receives no -1' for an answer, no . . . '1 have done it.' Instead of an 1 the responding mouth brings forth a He-She-lt. 74
Both Adam and Eve behave as though what is essential to their nature Gs their membership in an anonymous or generic class: he, she, it. Every pronominal position is uttered. except the personalized '1 alone,' or 'me and no one else.' The first human couple assume the same furtive attitude that Buber discems in the 1-it cornportment. that is. treating oneself as an anonyrnous entity: "Be calm. . .nothing is directed at you. you are not meant. . .nothing is required of you, you are not addressed, al1 is Adam and Eve thus play the same "double garne" that Levinas attributes to Gyges: .- -'a presence to the others and an absence, speaking to 'others' and evading speech. , ,
(Tel 148. TI 173). By responding to God, they implicitly acknowledge the power of being addressed by an infinitely greater Other. But because this represents an affiont to their sovereignv. they transform themselves into unaccountabIe objects - he. she. it - in order to hide from God's face. Before the Other, narned and exposed. held accountable, human beings feel asharned. The story thus reveals the superïority of the Other over the self. The Other - and only the Other - has the power to make me aware of the brute selfishness of my will. But the story also reveals that the self is not a slave to the Good.
Human beings are fiee. Free to respond to the cal1 that cornes from the Other. The failure to respond. however. has profound consequences.
These consequences are made explicit in the story of Adam and Eve's first-born.
Cain. Even more evasive than his parents. Cain conducts his life as though he Lvere the sovereign centre of a self-enclosed universe -that is, Cain construes his universe as lacking any outside point that could make demands on him. Like Gyges. Cain esemplifies the hypostasis. Both figures have the power to manipulate their environment in such a cvay as to carve out a space for themselves in order to satis@ their needs. As a shepherd. the solitary Gyges roams the open fields, while Cain works the soi1 in order to forge instruments that will further extend his independence? Both sustain the necessary separation that provisionally shields them fiom disordered being (îlya). But an exclusive occupation with the economic dimension of life inevitably fosters an alignment with the moral indifference of being. By itself, the hypostasis or separation of the self from general being affirms and supports the disaster -in its refusal to take a critical stance towards existence. The ego participates -through apathy or exclusive self-concern -in the destmctive momentum of the il y a. Thus in his own reference to Gyges. Rosenzweig notes that the "cloak of invisibility and Gyges' ring are . . . in the last analysis . . . disastrous because they sunder every contact with the ~orld."7~Alone in a field. fiee from the reproachful gaze of others. the Biblical Gyges, Cain. slays his ounger brother.
We are scandalized by Cain's callous response when God asks him to account for his brother's absence: "am 1 rny brother's keeper?" But fiorn Cain-s point of view. his rebuttal is perfectly n~rural.7~The '1' of the tragic self corresponds to the alimentatk-e self. ident@ing w-ith its surroundings in order to satis@ its basic urges and needs. Where in the universe is it stated that this self is responsible for others? The Hebrew author of this story. .JS79 does not need a Darwinist to teach him or her the cold facts of existence. the complete indifference of the universe for human life. Indeed, J is in some respects more of a realist [han most agnostics or atheists, who appeal to abstract principles - like the categorical imperative -to account for ethics. For if nothing in the physical universe voices an objection to the violent preying that animals exhibit, why should we assume that it is any different for human creatures? J knows that from a strictly naturalist perspective there is no bais for ethics. In the state of nature, eve~thingis fair game.
And now we can better appreciate Levinas's decided position on the Good.
Sociality can never grow or deveIop out of the barrenness of being. The mocking insincerit). that temfies the sou1 has to be suspended prior to the establishment of moral
codes and institutions of justice. As we saw in the fust chapter. neither the self, nor
nature. can disenchant or expunge the vagaries of being that hound the soul. The view
that argues othewise projects the unnaturalness of ethicdity back ont0 the natural
universe. Social contract theones perpetrate this very deception by maintaining that the
social bond is established through (ideally) the voluntary censent of its members. But the
agreement. for example. to transfer my sovereign wiI1 over to the state for the sake of
relative order and peace should not be confuçed with the source of justice. Levinas does
not dispute the argument that peace and order are instantiated through the rational
calculations of. for example. political diplomacy. Traditional political theory. however.
elides the terror of the elemental in the state of nature. The application of reason
necessary for setting up a political orderpresupposes the disenchantment of the natural
world.
The gifi of disenchantment can only be conferred by that which transcends king.
Only the Other has the power to Save me fkm the spectres and anarchy of facades. --The
ambivalence of apparition,'' according to Levinas, is finally '-surmounted by expression.
the presentation of the Other to me, the primordial event ofsignification" (Tel 64. TI 92).
The encounter with the Other "signifies the shaking of the natural" (GKM164).
Humanity. and specifically the other human being. constitmtes a fundamental break with the indifference of being. Sociality is neither natural, nor given. It is the approaching
Other who introduces a "primary frankness" where previously onIy anonynity and unconcem reigned. By addressing me, "a sense -an orientation - is given to every phenomenon" (Tel 71, TI 98)- The Other compels me to reassess my Iimited perspective.
The words we exchange function to fix the equivocation of appearances. The process of narning, positing themes. and offering definitions, pdually dissipates the despotic aura that enshrouds silent nature. This prior 'scene' establishes the necessary conditions from which comrnunity and science can then deveiop.
The hubris expressed in contract theories is in this respect no different from that shown by Cain. -'The sober coldness of Cain," Levinas writes. "consists in conceiving responsibility as proceeding fiom fieedorn or in tenns of a contract" (CP 167). Levinas's comment seems to suggest that 'Am I my brother's keeper?' can be rephrased as 'Did I agree to look afier my brother?' As the very first contractarian. Cain does not mind the imposition placed on him of assuming some responsibility for others. so long. that is. as he has consented to it. In a passage fiom Otherwise than Being that relates to this observation. Levinas notes, the "responsibility for the other cm not have begun in my commitment. in my decision" (OB 10). Cain's arrogance seerns to have no end- for he also claims to be the source of the Law. But the self is morally helpless. By itself it lacks the necessary leverage to counteract the crushing weight of being's moral indifference.
That leverage can only corne from the instruction or teaching of a Law commanded from the outside.
The Cain story draws our attention to how the illusion of an immanent universe is from the start disrupted by the Good. Prior to his being-in-the-world, and prior to the work of intentional consciousness, Cain's self-absorption is intempted by the commanding Good The begiming of the story recounts Cain's envy of his brother. God receives Abel's sacrifice with appreciation but rebuKs Cain's contribution. As a result.
Cain "became exceedingly upset and his face fell" (Gen. 45). God asks Cain to account for his sulkiness. No answer follows. Cain seethes in bitter envy. God then wms Cain about his potential for evil. (While it is God who addresses Cain. we ought not to forget the Biblical correlation between God and the other human being. Thus. we can readily imagine Abel or some other person speaking in God's place.) Cain is made aware bjt the
Other that he owns his violent passions. He must avow them. He must be responsible for them. othewise he risks projecting the disavowed affect ont0 the extemal world. The
Other demands sincerity. Cain, however, prefers to hide behind the equivocality of being.
The Other disturbs Cain's self-contentedness, and instructs him thus: "if you do not intend good. at the entrance is sin, a crouching-demon, toward you his lust - but you can mle over hirn" (Gen 4:7). It is the presence of the Other that cues the self. warns it of its false invulnerability. and finally its obligation to respond. The Other introduces meaninf and purpose in the world where none was to be found before.
The Other commands without enslaving the self. The self is free to respond or not.
Cain of course chooses to be deaf to the Other. Reksing to respond, he makes himself invisible; he is accountable to no one. And in this way he demonstrates an affinity uith the tragic personalities of Greek poetry and drama. Agamemnon, for instance. blames the spirit Delusion [Ate] for his notorious impetuousness. [Some have] found fault with me . . . yet I am not responsible but Zeus is- and Destiny and Erinys the mis-waiking who . . . caught my heart in the savage delusion. . . . Yet what could 1 do?" [It is] Delusion [Ate] . . . the elder daughter of Zeus, the accursed who deludes all.80
Similady. Cain is unable or, perhaps it is more accurate to Say, unwilling to see his
intense envy as an integral part of himself. Unwilling to take responsibility for his entire self. we might imagine Cain privately rationalizing his actions much as Agamemnon disowns his temperament: '1 am not at fault?it was Jealousy.' In the world of tragic or evasive personalities. the possibility for social justice is remote.
i.1 The Fuce as the Srar of Desire
For Levinas' "[nleither things, nor the perceived world, nor the scientific world enable us to rejoin the noms of the absolute. [For] as cultural works. they are steeped in history" (CP 1O 1). If the source of ethicality were immanent - present within me. in nature. in culture. or in history - then it would be instantly recuperated by the totalizing movement of being, or obliterated in the flux of indeterminate being (the ily a). The
Good, as Levinas conceives of it, is mly absolute, because it "'absolves' itself from the relation in which it presents itself" (TI 50). As we saw above. the absolute is the Other's face or presence - the Hebrew pnim.81 The Other's face is the star8' of Desire. It is the
'site-83 at which the Good enters the world and shatters the apathy and nonchalance of human egos. Only the face has the power to address me, to isolate my singularity. to cal1 me out of my tendency to hide or ident* with rny surroundings. The face -'break[s] the bad silence which harbors Gyges's secrecy" (CP, 170)-In the absence of the Other. that
is. where immanence prevails, "everything is absorbed, sunken into. walled in being .. . "
(OB 182). The temptation of Gyges -his desire to establish a shell-like insularity - is challenged by the Other's face who "forbids the reclusion and reentry into the shell of the self' (OB 183).
On more than one occasion, Levinas has acknowledged that the term -face' lends itself to possible misinterpretation. The face is certainly a pllenomenal object uith distinct shapes and features. But the ontological dimension of the face. its plasticity. is always preceded by its ethical '-signification."84 The face of the other human being does not first appear on my horizon. Before appearing as an object or theme for consciousness. the
Other's face cornmands. "The eye" of my interlocutor, Levinas writes. '-does not shine: it speaks" (Tel 38. TI 66).Before receiving the face of the Other as one more phenomenal object for me. the face disrupts my experience -the continuum of being - by its sheer nudity. As the most vulnerable part of the human being -the pnmq site by which we receive others, the target of the objectieng gaze - it cornmands through its utter helplessness. Despite its nakedness, or more precisely because of its nakedness. the face of the Other possesses the power to cornmand me.
In attempting IO elucidate the ethicality of the face. Levinas makes a helpfül distinction between 'envisage' (envisager, originally, 'to face another human being') and
'disfigure' (dévisager).The former signifies the transcendent power of the Other's face. its power to contest rny narcissism, while the latter reminds us of how we transform the face of our interlocutor into an object, that is, we deface it:
we often envisage by disfiguring. One knows the colour of your eyes. the shape of your nose, etc., by looking at you as an image. But when 1 Say "good day" to you, I have blessed you before knowing you. 1 concern myself with your life, 1 have at that moment entered your life beyond ordinary knowledge. (EL 107-8)
Keeping this distinction in mind we must not be misled by those passages in Levinas's work that appear to conflate the two 'dimensions' of the face: the face as the trace of the
Good and the face as icon. A reader might be puzzied to corne across such claims as ethics is a %sion" (Te1xii, TI 23). What seems at first to be a careless choice of wording. on further reflection reveals Levinas's subtle reintroduction of the face into phiiosophical discourse - precisely the discourse that wants nothing to do with the face; philosophers prefer to --substitutCe] ideas for persons" (Tel 60, TI 88)- In associating ethics with vision,
Levinas exposes how the privileged mode of philosophical attunement, that is. sight or vision. unsuspectingly harbours a truth which philosophy cannot otherwise acknowledge. namely. the priority of the ethical over ontology. When Levinas says that the face is vision he rneans to return sight (la vision) to ethics, that is to Say, the face (le visage) whose gaze is always aimed (viser) at rne.85 The illumination or vision of the human spirit does not denve fiom resplendent being, nor as Heidegger says, from the disclosure or unconcealment of being, but rather from the speaking face of the Other whose questioning words and look introduce purpose and clarity into the world. A similar transposition of meanings is at work when Levinas says that "ethics is an optic" (Tel xii.
5 1, TI 23, 78, DF 17, 159,202, DL 33,223,382). Again, the privilege that is accorded to vision and sight (1 'optique)is returned to the Other's face (Greek: opon),to the critical gaze of his or her eyes (Greek: op).
The "Other" is not synonymous with every person other than myself. The Other is the one who stands the furthest removed from natural and social power. In the Bible's language, the Other is the widow, the orphan, or the stranger (Deut. 10: 18). The Other is thus the one who suffers as a result of illness, economics. or political status. Only the
Other's presence. his or her face, has the power to moralIy command. Levinas specifies that the Other's paradoxical power to command -paradoxical. because the Other's power stems fiom an absence of worldly power -means that the face of the vulnerablc always manifests itself fiom a "height." To recognize the Other's face that "supplicates and demands" is to "recognize a hunger . . . it is to give to the master, to him whom approaches as 'You' in a dimension of height7' (Tel48, TI 75).86 There is. therefore. a marked asymmetry between my self and the Other. The "essence" of language. Levinas observes.
resides in the irreversibility of the relation between me and the other. . . . For language can be spoken only if the interlocutor is the commencement of his discourse, if, consequently, he remains beyond the system, if he is not on the same plane as myself: The interiocutor is not a Thou, he is a You [Vous].(Tel 75, TI 1O 1)
Rather than the mutual relationship we find in Buber's 1-Thou, Levinas emphasizes the superionty or height of the Other in reIation to me. The Other is encountered as Sie or
Vous and never as du or tu. As far as ethics is concerned, that is, as far as moral guidance is concemed, the vulnerable Other has everything to teach me, whereas I have very little to offer him or her.8' Only the Other, therefore, can present him or herself as Teacher
(Te122,71-3- 146. TI 51.98-101, 171).88
vi) Conscience and Desire
Does our predicament within being, constrain us to recognize and to accept that only the Other cmanswer to Desire? Does the Other represent our sole hope in transcending the immense burden of being? 1s the self so lacking in moral direction that left to itself it will succumb to the moral indifference of being? Cm the self not Save itself? Levinas is not alons in appreciating the predicament of the self and the irrational forces that weigh down on it. Nietzsche. amongst others. also endeavours to present a non-romantic picture of the complex difficulties and hardship that the self confronts in its efforts to nâvigate the rnaze of existence. Al1 genuine philosophy, Nietzsche compeIs us to see, must begin from the self3 concrete existentid condition. and not from some imagined ideal of selfhood.
In "Schopenhauer as Educator," the reader might be lefi with the remarkable impression that Nietzsche also has an awareness of the Other's privileged status as teacher. EmpIoying terms that are uncannily sirnilar to Levinas's, Nietzsche rernarks that
"your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you, but imeasurably higb above you. or at least above that which you usually take yourself to be." And who or what presents itself to you from such heights? Nietzsche responds that it is your "tnie educators and formative teachers [who] reveal to you what the true basic material of your being is . . . .
[only] your educators can be . . .your liberators."89 Now Nietzsche. of course. rneans
"teacher" in a special sense: one who has accumulated the necessax-y cultural capital and psychological acumen to rise above group identification or "herd morality." Whereas
Levinas extends the title of 'Yeacher" to - and in a sense, especiaIly so - the person who is disadvantaged relative to me (for example. the foreigner. the homeless person).
The Other speaks from a height, for Levinas, not because of the cultural knowledge that he or she might irnpart to me (the sense in which Nietzsche rneans '~eacher"in this context). but rather the ethical shock that he or she cm apply to me. his or her ability to awaken me to the potential violence of my self-regard. Nevertheless. despite his different conception of the other-as-teacher, it seems at least in this passage that Nietzsche. like
Levinas. appreciates the necessity of others given the self s predicament.
But Nietzsche's sparse comments about the significance of the other-as-teacher must dtimately be appraked in relation to his general view of the self-other relationsliip.
His insight concerning the other-as-teacher in the Schopenhauer essay is eclipsed b!- his more frequently articulated distrust of others as potential contaminators of a healthy will.
Like Rousseau who \vil1 not allow his young Emile to interact with others in his formative years for fear of perverting his love of self (amour de soi).90 Nietzsche's ubermemch must first corne to know himself. to know his true needs. his limits, before he can rejoin the Company of others. Ultimately, for Nietzsche, one's ability to live consonantly with a non-reactive will-to-power rests on the self s own ability to overcome itself. which in large part means to become as self-reliant as possible. To accomplish this ideal. Nietzsche leans not on the Other but on something which he perceives to be far more intirnate with the self. What finally breaks the spell of the -'bewilderment in which one usually wanders as in a dark cloud''9l is the daimonic voice that accompanies each self. reminding the self of its singularity and finitude. So while Nietzsche notes the fiitility and befuddlement of the self, and as a result the need of others as teachers, in the same essay he simultaneously distances hùnself from this insight by drawing on the daimon's power to awaken the self from its conformist slurnber: '--Be your self! Al1 you are now doing. thinking. desiring, is not you yourseIf.'"9~
The tendency to ascribe to an agent related to the self - like the daimon - the power to Save the self from the weight of its existence has a long histo~in western thought. In the case of the daimon, Socrates transformed what was originally a popular notion in Greek religious folklore into an important instrument for philosoph>~.9j
Following Socrates, PIato preserves the idea that each individual is assigned a daimon to be its "guardian."94 Heeding one's daimon is essential if one is to live up to the
Apollonion ideal that states that wisdom entails knowing one's limits. The philosopher-s daimon goads his natural complacency7 stirs him to question received opinions. to be wary of the group, and finally, to monitor vigilantly the possible eruption of excessive passions. Rather than prescribe a course of action, the voice of the daimon "dissuades'- one from carrying out an intent.95 The Socratic daimon is thus one of the earliest formulations of the concept of 'conscience': the daimon already expresses the later idea that conscience (con-scientia) is a doubled consciousness -each sou1 possesses a conscious witness of the contents of its consciousness.
The idea of the daimon undergoes several successfiil permutations in later philosophy. We have already mentioned Nietzsche. More recently the dairnon reappears in Heidegger's analysis of the cal1 of conscience in Being and ~ime.~6The caller behind the voice. Heidegger tells us, is not a person. The 'who' of conscience answers to
'nobody' (SZ 278. BT 323). Rather than a persona1 voice that cakHeidegger writes. it is more accurate to Say that an "it calls me" (SZ 277, BT 322 [my emphasis]). As Heidegger understands it. conscience is a call that summons Dasein to hlfil its ownrnost potentiality as that being which lacks a strict identity and must therefore shape its own destiny. Just as with Socrates's and Nietzsche's respective daimones, the message delivered by Dasein's conscience does not prescribe any particular course of action. It lacks al1 content. It is silent. But the silence of the call is experienced as angst-provoking. as uncanniness. This disquieting silence has the effect of shaking up Dasein, making it aware of its tendency to flee. Conscience. ultimately, "manifests itself as the cd1 of care" (SZ 277. BT 322). And if Dasein's being, as Heidegger argues at the end of the first division of Being und Tirne. is itself fundarnentally solicitude -as demonstrated, for exarnple in my concemed being- with (Mitsein) others or ready-to-hand things -it follows that ';we need not resort to powers with a character other than that of Dasein" (SZ 278, BT 323) to account for that which calls Dasein back to itself. The caller is Dasein itself. Heidegger's enigmatic claim that the call is said to come Ccfromme and yetfiom beyond me and over me" (SZ 278. BT 320). cm thus be interpreted to mean that our relation to conscience is like Our relation to
drearns. The voice of conscience is like my drearn(s) in that it emerges from me. and yet
is beyond me because my dream(s) elude my conscious control. The point here is that
while the voice of conscience is uncanny it nevertheless remains an intimate feamre of
my selfhood. and not something extemal to my being. Heidegger would thus reject Kant's daim that we are morally constrained to hear the voice of conscience as "the bidding of another person."97
There is a powerfül tendency in philosophical discourse to view the impetus for change and transformation in our lives as deriving from the self or something related to it.
Tragic thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger employ the sarne questionable tact. At the same time that he diagnoses the self as condemned to existential paralysis. stultified by the --spint of gravity."g* Nietzsche locates the key for coping with this dilemma ivirhin the self s reach. in the daimonic voice. Similady, Heidegger plays up the faIlen nature of
Dasein and then insists on the heroic possibility for self-overcoming or authentici~.- a possibility that is initiated by Dasein's conscience. In his own analysis of the possibility for transformation. Levinas emphasizes that the key to Desire. for redemption. is not to be found in the self. Like Socrates, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Levinas knows that change cornes about through questioning. But unlike the tragic philosophers. Levinas maintains that Iife-altering questions are posed neither by the self nor a guardian spirit, like the daimon. The tragic philosophical tradition misconstrues Desire because when it does contemplate the question of transcendence or overcoming (to use Nietzsche's term for the transformation of the self) it does so with reference to the self. But the Desire for the
Infinite, for the Good, is 'hot at al1 a situation in which one poses the question: it is the
question that takes ho td of you: there you are brought into questiony (DS/I 1 36-7. GCM
85). If the questioning of Desire seizes me, if it can truly surprise me, then this speaks of
its radical alterity. the fact that the question cornes to me from outside my immediate
horizon.
The idea of the daimon or conscience as an alter-ego does no more justice to the
problem of the self s predicament in being than PIato's conception of the impersonal
Good or Descartes's naturd light of reason. The ApolIonion decree - "Know thy self'
- that inspires philosophy from Socrates onwards counsels that the key for unlocking the enigma of existence lies within the self. For Levinas, however. that promise is an echv of the self s vanity. its unwilhgness to acknowledge its fettered state within being. A genuine conception of the Other would have to resist the ternptation of positing "an 1 behind the I" (TI 272) -the doubled consciousness of con-scienria- the daimon who silently watches over me, Levinas. it is tme, also af'ftrms that "the unsatisfiedness of conscience . . . coincides with Desire" (EDE 177, CP 59 [tram, mod.]). However. he cm identi- conscience with Desire because, as we will see shortly. he has a very different answer to the question 'whose voice speaks in conscience?'
Levinas unrnasks the vain pretensions of the philosopher's recouse to the daimonic voice within him- Read through a Levinasian prism, it remains unclear how
Heidegger's depersonalized conscience (the "if' that speaks) has the power to draw me out of myself. The true 'origins' of the special properties that are. from Socrates to
Heidegger. imputed to the daimon -the power to individualize the self. the power to
orient it, to awaken it fiom the dream of life -denve fiom the haunting shadows cast by
the Other ont0 the ego's shell. The sense of the inwardness of conscience. the sense that it
is a voice that speaks to me fiom within me
is not a secret place somewhere in me: it is that reverting in which the eminently extenor. precisely in virtue of this eminent exterio&-.. .concems me and circurnscribes me and orders me by my own voice. The command is stated by the mouth of him it comrnands. (OB 147)
Instead of the Apollonion imperative to understand oneself - supplemented and aided by
the daimon's critical voice -that has guided western philosophy since Socrates. Levinas,
following the spirit of classical Judaism, substitutes the "fear of the Lord is the beginning
of knowledge" (Prov. 1:7). For Levinas. it is the fear of God's "countenance" - u-hich is
inseparable from the questioning face of the approaching neighbour (DL7 237.264-6.
GCM 149. 176-7. B Ff 96) -that answers Desire. It is the divinely-invested power of the
Other's shaming gaze, his or her accusatory words that leave deep. and often permanent.
incisions on the ego's protective shield. Attesting once more to the height of the Other.
Levinas argues that it is his or her voice that "conmand[s] me by my own mouth" (Ibid.).
The extent of the ego's conceit -and western philosophy has been only too eager to defend and perpetrate this deceit - is revealed in the manner that it rationalizes the
Other's critical voice as its own. CHAPTER III
The=Ethical Intrigue: Redeeminig the Disaster of Being
i) Introduction
In the previous chapter. 1 examined the temptationI and perils of being for
oneself-2 Levinas's interpretation of Gyges and the problem of the evil genius show us that despite the promise of untold pieaslare, cornfort, mid self-contentedness. hesecret uish to insulate oneself fiom the judgeirnent of ohers has the unexpected consequence OF sinking one hrther into the senseIessne2ss of being. In the absence of the Other. the 1 suffers an interminable bondage to the elemental. In his analysis of the ambiguity that pervades the ontological realm. and that seduces Gyges, as well as the Cartesian cogito.
Levinas frequently refers to the "drama" or "intrigue" of being. According to Levinas. traditional philosophy is so preoccupierd with the ontological intrigue - the relationship between self. being. and nothingness -that it virtually ignores another. more important drarna. namely, the "ethical intrigue" (bl 'intrigue éthique [DMT233]).The theatrical metaphors that Levinas employs in his discussion of the ethical encounter - -intrigue.'
'drama.' 'plot,' and 'scene' - afford ms the possibility to better appreciate his vision of the complex intertwining of hurnanity, reality (Creation), and the divine (God).
1 will use the theme of the ethical intrigue to explore an important shifi that takes place in Levinas's thinking fiom Totalàily and Infiniry to Othemise than Being. The principal shift in emphasis between Levinas's two most important texts concems the
-99- representation of the Other's alterity or excessiveness. While the idea of the Other as
Infinite is preserved in Otherwise thBeing, this text paints the Other's surplus with a noticeably different bmsh than the work that precedes it, The author of Toralip nnd
Infinify is apt to portray the excessiveness of Desire as a superlative donation from the
Otner: his or her gift of alterity releases me From the grip of anonymous being. The Other presents "himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the 1, but as the primordial phenornenon of gentleness" (Ti 150). Despite referring, at one point. to the Other's excessiveness as a '~raurnatismof astonishment" (Te146, TI 73). Levinas insists that the presentation of the Other's face is "preeminently nonviolence" (TI 203)- By contrast,
Orhenvise [han Being foregrounds the traumatic intensity of the Other's vehernence. In this Iater text. Levinas shows the Other as the one who denounces me, from the start. as guilty. The presumption that 1 am innocent before being found guilty has no basis in the eyes of the Other. The violence implied by this accusation is only hinted at in Tora& umi lnfini07.3 If Levinas is reluctant in Torality and Infiniv to describe the Other's accusations as violent. he goes out of his way in Otherwise than Being to underscore the Other's inclemency in the ethical intrigue. The Other is the persecutor par excellence. Henceforth. the Other's excessiveness refers not to his or her alleged generosity but rather to the
Other's unrelenting accusation^.^
How cm we reconcile these two faces of the Other: the ethical and the violent?
The violence of the ethical intrigue, 1 argue, redeems the indiscriminate violence that permeates the tragic-comic drama of being. My presentation will focus on three closely related terms5 that serve as key concepts of Othenvise than Being: intrigue (intripe).6 proximity @roximite3. and integrity or straighdorwardness (droiture).' First. 1examine what Levinas means by the "intrigue" or hot that is established between self and Other.
My discussion then tums to his analysis of how the proximity of the Other redeems the disaster of existence. Finally 1 employ both proximity and intrigue to understand what role God pIays for Levinas in the ethical intrigue.
ii) The Intrigue Of Being
Before Othenvise than Being, Levinas did not hesitate to describe the ethical encounter as an experience. In his 2957 essay "Philosophy and the ldea of Znfinity-S.for example. Levinas adamantly insists that the "idea of infinity . . . alone deserves the name experience. . . ." (CP 56). The encounter with the Other, he goes on to say represents an
--experience in the strongest sense of the term" (CP 59). But the claim that ethicality is an experience cm hardly be reconciled with Levinas's long-standing critique of phenomenology. The dominant theme of al1 of Levinas's writings after the Second World
War is that the approaching Other completely circumvents the controlling grasp of consciousness. As early as 1947, he explicitly draws our attention to what he perceives as the inherent biases of conventional phenomenology in its understanding of the ethical.
Phenomenological description, which by definition cannot leave the sphere of light, that is, man alone shut up in his solitude, anxiety and death as an end. whatever analyses of the relationship with the other, it may contribute: will not suffice. Qua phenomenology it remains within the world of light. the world of solitary ego which has no relationship with the other qua other. for whom the other is another me. an alter ego known by sympathy. that is. by a retum to oneself. (EE 85)
A fundamental postulate of classical phenomenology is that every experience - such as the aesthetic, the moral. or the cognitive - is potentially recoverable and representable by the ego. Whatever manifests itself within the light or clearïng of being presents itself at the sarne timejor the ego. An 'ethical experience' would, therefore. imply that ethicality confomis to the ego's power to convert the foreign into the farniliar. to illuminate the unknown. Thus. from the point of view of phenomenology. an experience of the Other can always -at least in theory -be reassembled by the ego for its own purposes.
Levinas. on the other band‘ regards the phenomenological approach to the Other - reducing the Other to the statuç of an alter ego - as seriously flawed. By reducing the
Other to a feature of the ego. phenomenology mirrors the ego's deeply entrenched narcissism. What Levinas's philosophy seems to suggest, even in 1937. is that there is. properly speaking. no experience of the Other.
Given his obvious awareness of the limitations of phenomenology in understanding the Other. how cm we account for Levinas's concomitant daim that ethics constitutes an experience? Perhaps the only way to make sense of this seeming contradiction is IO keep in mind Levinas's fiequent practice of rec~~guringtraditional concepts for the sake of reversing the traditional privileging of ontology over ethics.
Levinas offers just such an explanation in TotalQ and Infinity. In this text. he justifies his reasons for employing the term 'experience' in co~ectionto ethics.
The relation with infinity cannot, to be sure, be stated in tems of experience, for infinity overflows the thought that thinks it. The relation with infinity will have to be stated in terrns other than those of objective experience: but if experience means a relation with the absolutely other, that isTwith what overflows thought. the relation with infinity accompIishes experience in the fullest sense of the word. (TI 25)
In his essay, "Signature,"g Levinas merclarifies his idiosyncratic deployrnent of the concept of experience.
The fundamental experience which objective experience itself presupposes is the experience of the Other. It is experiencepar excellence. , . . The disproportion between the Other and the self is precisely moral consciousness. Mora1 consciousness is not an expenence of values. but an access to external being. . . . (DF 293)
It should be apparent from such statements that the notion of experience that Levinas has in mind is one that has been stripped of its familiar connotations. An -ethical experience.' for Levinas. does not refer to an ordinary sense perception or affection. By 'ethical experience' Levinas actually seems to mean something like anti-experience. Thus. an
-experiencemof the Other might be thought of as a sort of surcharged affe~tion.~one that overwhelms the sensory organs, or one that shorts the circuitry of cognition: making it impossible for the mind to integrate the event - in this case. contact with the Other - as a memor). as a representation of the past that cmbe called up on dernand.
Over tirne. however, Levinas concludes that the concept of experience. even one that has been completely recontextualized, is simply inappropriate in the context of the problem of ethics. The notion of experience is too embedded within an ontological framework for it to be usefùl in descnbing the transcendent nature of the ethical. As the later Levinas writes. the idea of a "moral experience . . . supposes a subject who is there"
(GCM 90). But it is precisely this active ego that is under question, or momentarily suspended. in the presence of the Other. As a result, Levinas decides to purge his philosophy of its residual ontologicai accoutrements. Thus in a retrospective assessrnent of his earlier methodology. he expresses the following dissatisfaction with his reliance on ontoiogical categories Iike 'experience':
The ontological language which Totality and Infiniiy still uses in order to exclude the purely psychological significance of the proposed analyses is henceforth avoided. And the analyses themselves refer [no longer] to the experience in which a subject always thematizes what he equals. . . . (DF 295)
But if contact with the Other does not constitute an experience. then what esactl~is it?
Are we to resign ourselves to the silence and wonder that Wittgenstein recommends when we corne up against the limits of language?'o Levinas would certainly agree with
Wittgenstein that the events that transpire at the outer reaches of our experiences demand of us estreme care and caution in our explanations or accounts of them. He would. however. reject the mystical implications behind Wittgenstein's exaltation of reticence.
Quiet astonishment is no[ an appropriate response to the ethical.
For Levinas. we rntist strive to express the ethical - even at the risk of sounding
-'strange" (OB 183). Thus. in a 1976 lecture, Levinas States that "there is no experience of the ethical; there is [only] an intrigue" (DMT 233). The term 'intrigue.' however. only seems to complicate matters. How does 'intrigue' add to our understanding of the ethical?
As 1 have tried to emphasize throughout this study, Levinas often chooses a term because its semantic richness lends itself to conveying the multiple shades of meaning required to represent a complex idea or phenornenon. The term 'intrigue,' much more than -experïence.' l serves such a purpose for the later Levinas. in his effort to communicate the general pararneters of the ethical meeting with the Other.
First. like the English use of 'intrigue,' the French intrigue connotes a dramatic plot. Levinas's entire work is replete with alhsions to renowned dramatists like Racine.
Corneille. and Shakespeare-l* But in addition to his muent references to the classical playwrights and their insights into the human condition Levinas has long been fascinated by what he refers to as the "drarna of existence." This pregnant phrase. as we will see. appears in virtually every period of his oeuvre. We have already corne across this expression in Our earlier discussion of De 2 'évasion.In this 1935 essay. he avers that the identity or attachrnent of the self to its existence 'Yakes on a dramatic form" (DE 73). As we saw in the first chapter. this identity is described at this time as an enchainrnent. After the Second World War, Levinas continues to develop this observation. The central argument of both Existence and Existents and Time and the Other- is that no matter hou- hard it tries. the self cannot release itself ffom the contract that binds it to its being. The self finds itself in the same unenviable position as Faust, who signs away his soul for the most remarkable of powers, only to discover that the contract with Mephistopheles entails a forrn of indenture whose terms are so rigid that even death cannot breach it.13 But this cornparison with Faust. however, has to be carefully qualified. because the self s contract with existence is not a "decision taken pnor to the drarna, before the curtain rises" (DEE
26. EE 2 1). In Goethe's story, it is Faust who ultimately consents to accepting the diabolical promise of unlimited knowledge in exchange for his soul. The self in general. on the other hand, at least as Levinas describes it in the penod irnrnediately following the
War. is immersed in the drama of being to such an extent that it is never in a position to assume or deny its wearisome existence.
For both the early and the Iater Levinas it is imperative that the urgency of this drama be properly gauged- The drama warrants a serious response in view of the totalizing and indifferent propensities of being. One can hear the onerous character of being in language: "[t]he Being of beings and of worlds. however different among themselves they may be, weaves among incomparables a common fate: it puts them in conjunction.. .." Every profündity, every novel saying, is eventually woven back into the web of being. "Our languages," Levinas continues, "woven about the verb to be would not only reflect this undethronable royalty, stronger than that of the gods: they would be the very purple of this royalty" (AE 4, OB 4; cf. BP W 83). This "undethronable royalty'' is akin to what the Greek religious poets called Moirae, to what their Roman courtterparts referred to as the Parcae. and to what in Greek philosophy was given the name Anmke
(Necessity). There is a "fate that reigns in essence, in that its fragments and modalities. despite their diversity, belong to one another, that is, do not escape the sarne Order. as though the bits of the thread çut by the Parcae were then knotted together again" (.4 E 9.
OB 8 [trans. mod.]). The Parcae are responsible for spinning and cutting the thread that corresponds to an individual's life span. In cartying out this task, the Parcae are guided by nothing more than sheer whim. From our human perspective, it would appear that being. like the Parcae, metes out its life and death sentences with the same indurate nonchalance as the faceless executioner. 14 Levinas contends that western philosophy has never successfully extricated itself
from the problem of fatalism, despite the fact that it presents itself in opposition to
mythological thinking. As long as philosophy ïnsists on the exciusivity of being. then the
spectre of fatalism hangs over it indefinitely. Yet this spectre has hardly deterred
philosophy fiom asserting the supremacy of being. Consequently. Levinas suggests.
philosophy seems to suffer from a refusa1 to face up to the implications of its own
assertions. Even the rnost sober-minded philosophers - like Hobbes. Spinoza and
Nietzsche15 - fail to notice the consequences of their own thought about the nature of
being. But we must be precise as to the nature of the disagreement between Levinas and
modern philosophy. Levinas does not take issue with the picture of being that modem
philosophy paints. Spinoza's notion of the conatus essendi. for example. presents us.
according to Levinas. with a forthright assessrnent of the drama of being. In the Erhics.
Spinoza stipulates that "[elach thing. in so far as it is in itself. endeavours to persist in its
o~nbeing. . . . The conatzcs with which each thing endeavours to persist in its oan being
is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itseK"16 As far as Levinas is concemed.
Spinoza's depiction of being as moving simultaneously along the two parallel axes of
pre~e~ationand enhancement is fûndarnentally sound. He also consents to the claim
established by modem philosophy that "[b]eing0 s interest takes dramaric form in egoisms
struggling with one another. each against all, in the multiplicity of allergic egoisms which are at war with one another and are thus togethery' (AE 4, OB 4 [rny emphasis]). The classical expression of this view is Hobbes's bellurn omnium confraomnes, the \var of al1 against all. "War," Levinas concurs. is at the very heart of 'rhe drama of essence's interest" (AE 5. OB 4).
The problem with modem philosophy, however: for Levinas. is that the various moral. social. and aesthetic solutions it puts forth to address the conflicts inherent in the drama of being are radicaIIy in~~cient.The phiiosophers of power, like Spinoza and
Nietzsche. endeavour to present an alternative account of morality and politics - in opposition to the transcendental explanations proffered by certain philosopheri and theologians -that begins and ends with being According to the theorists of power- order. and community derive fiom each being's recognition that its own self-interest is best served when it is integrated into a Iarger web of other self-interested beings.
Consequently. the exponents of such views argue that there is no need to appeal to a conception of a transcendental good in order to account for peace and stability. Spinoza. for example. holds that we need not resort to any principle other than the conalus to conceive of a good: "we do not endeavour, wilI. seek after or desire because we judge a thing to be good. On the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavour. will. seek afier and desire it."17 Similarly, Nietzsche argues that al1 human values can be accounted for as the consequence or product of a modified will. The morali~of the West
-which preaches tolerance and love of the neighbour - is neither the result of a divine ordination nor the concrete expression of a transcendental principle Iike Kant's categorical imperative. A genealogical analysis of ethics, Nietzsche contends. demonstrates that moral principles always rest on some degree of power. Claims about seIfless mords ought, therefore, to be treated with suspicion. For Nietzsche. moral
attitudes like pity conceal a reactive will-to-power, that is, an inward self-serving will that
presents itself to the world as selfless. If values, therefore. are not bound by any principle
outside the will. then it is possible to conceive and to adapt values so that they might
conform to Our own desires. Armed with this knowledge. the geneaiogical thinker strives
to sow the seeds for a non-reactive system of valuation. The challenge posed by
existence. for philosophers like Spinoza and Nietzsche. need not entai1 renouncing being or the interests of the ego. The key to estabiishing a moral order that can offset the excesses of being involves nothing more than modulating the ego3 interests so that they overlap with a larger network of interests or desires.
The view that egotistical calculations or compromises with being are sufficient for a life-enhancing morality is. for Levinas, a kind of deus ex machina that substitutes for. or masks over. a deeper non-oniological tmtk. Do these various calculations. Levinas asks rhetorically. actually "dramatize the otherwise than being?" (.4E 5. OB 4). In other words. are these compromises with power and being that modem philosophy speaks of really sufficient to Save the self from the pressing weight of its existence? Or --must [we] ask if even the difference between what separates essence in war from essence in peace does not presuppose" the Good (AE 5, OB 5). Despite the claims of its adherents. the philosophy of being cannot, for Levinas. adequately provide for a means to address the fatal interestsi* of being. The problem is that these remedies presuppose the redemption of being. An accommodation with being for the purpose of establishing a more peaceful world makes sense only after being has been redeemed. As long as philosophy does not
acknowledge the source of this redemption we will always remain in danger of
succurnbing to the logic of finality or fatalism that being fosters. By legitimising the
interests of being, phiIosophy, according to Levinas, demonstrates certain affinities with the tragic drarnatic structures that underpin mythology.l9
If Nietzsche is correct in arguing that exploitation "belongs to the nature of the living being . . . . [and that furthermore] it is the fundamental fact of al1 history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!."20 then, indeed, we must be honest to admit that no permutation of being could be responsible for "the little humanit). that adonis the world"
(AE 233, OB 185). Being cannot be the springboard for what we value most in Iife - like peace, tolerance, respect - for the simple reason that being is too callous. too unresponsive to the frailties of human beings, and, in particular. to the most vulnerable in society We ought not to conclude from Levinas's assessment of being that the resources of being, such as power or nature, should not, or cannot. be used in the service of goodness. Levinas is not a utopian thinker, that is, he does not renounce the realm of being for the sake of some higher spiritml truth. The upshot of Levinas's critique is that it is legitimate to appeal to a theory of calculations and compromises with power. but onb: afier a moral stance has been taken with respect to being. Before then. we live at the mercy of the inhurnanity of being.
Another strategy that philosophers have adopted to conceal the problem of the fatefulness of being is to suggest that the totalizing propensity of being or fate is disrupted by non-being. Hegel. of course. is the most influentid exponent of this view-. Hegel
presents a theory of sublation [Aufhebungj to explain why he believes that the human
spint is not a hapless victirn of fate; why individual minds and cultures do not slip into a
state of perpetual sclerosis. The negation of being, for Hegel, ensures that arcane foms of
understanding and social relations give way to increasingly more progressive mental
structures as well as more just political orders. But for Levinas, the negation of being is
no more a legitimate remedy than the affiation of being proposed by thinkers like
Spinoza and Nietzsche. As we have already seen in the fîrst chapter. rather than
generating a dialectical recovery or sublation of the ruins of the past into a new and
higher equilibrium. the negation of being prompts the swarming and deafening bustle of the il- a. In Otherwise than Being. Levinas repeats the sarne conclusion that he had anived at in bis earlier work: the negation of being does not liberate us from fate. but senresto seal our fate in being. Whereas Hegel's modern individual, standing at the threshold of the end of history, can take solace in the new world to corne after the
"slaughterhouse of history?" Levinas's post-Holocaust individual hears only the chi1hg,
inconsolable whirnpering of its survivors: "[t]he void that holiows out is immediately
filled with the mute and anonymous rustling of the there is [il y a]. as the place left vacant by one who died is filled with the murmur of the attendants" (AE 3. OB 3). This point extends Levinas's earlier insight that even the certainty of one's death does nothing to alleviate the "horror" or "perpetuity of the drama of existence, necessity of forever taking on its burden" (EE 63).The despair that is implied in these statements do not mean that hope is illusory for him. Far fiom it. His point is simply that hope is not generated from being or its correlative. negativity. It is by a sleight of hand that philosophy claims to find redemption either in being or non-being. Despite the rebellious stance that philosophy takes towards the hopelessness of mythology, Levinas rernains unconvinced that philosophy has offered a genuine response to the problem of fatalism and impersonality in the drama of existence.
Levinas also assesses Heidegger's thinking in relation to the question of the intrigue or drama of existence. In his very first essay on Heidegger. Levinas reminds us that at the centre of the Heideggerean drama of being is a demand for Dasein to adopt a resolute stance towards its existence. Thus Levinas comrnents that the "passage from implicit and inauthentic understanding to explicit and authentic understanding comprises the fundamental drama of human existence" for Heidegger (MHO 16. cf. 26)." This early article does not yet hint at the critical position that Levinas will later assume towards
Heidegger. That stance is quite apparent, however, when four decades later Levinas notes in a seminar that occidental philosophy is an "intrigue of knowledge. an adventure of experience between the clear and the obscure" (DMT241).The reference to the "clear and the obscure." no doubt, ailudes to Heidegger's view of truth as alerheiu. or the unconcealment of being. Near the end of this lecture, Levinas specifies that "philosophy is not only knowledge of the immanent, but is itself immanence. The notion of experience refers back to the unity of apperception; it is inseparable fiom presence and tied to the notion of gathering (in the Heideggerean sense of Sammeln)" (DMT 244). In Levinas's opinion, Heidegger's position that the crux of subjectivity concems Dasein and the
-1 12- manifestations of being does not really pose a challenge to the tradition. The fundamental question of the Heideggerean drama amounts to "one question: what does being signify?"
(DMT 68). This exclusive concern with being means that Heidegger's philosophy -with its view that nothïngness or being-towards-death holds the key to the meaning of human heing - is fundamentally in line with the tragic-comic vision. The implications of this vision of the drama of human existence are, for Levinas, rarely appreciated:
Nothing is more comical than the concem that a being destined to destruction takes for itself. as absurd as him who questions the stars, whose verdict is without appeal. in view of action. Nothing more comical, or nothing more tragic- II belongs to the same man to be a tragic and a comic figure. (CP 138)
The tragic-comic understanding of life is disingenuous. because it shirks the grave implications of its own assumptions. One after the other, the representatives of the tragic- cornic vision recount the severity and the absurdity of the drama of being only to introduce. at the last possible instant, an escape clause that is meant to relieve the seif of the burden of its existence. The virtue and strength of Levinas's philosophy lies in his unyielding effort to expose this subterfuge of the tragic-comic position. We must resist the temptation of imagining that the conditions that are responsible for the most meaningful features of our existence -whether it be friendship, Iove. or forgiveness - can be supplied by impersonal or anonymous being. Consequently, we must ask a very different question fiom the one posed by the philosophers of power and the author of
Being and Time: "Are there not 'things' ['choses'] that happen within this being of ours,"
Levinas inquires, 'rhat do not primarily concem Our being?" (DMT 69). To "pose the radical question" that life demands of us necessitates "asking oneself if the humanity of man' if meaning itself, cm be reduced to the intrigue of being qua being" (DMT 74 [my emphasis1)- For Levinas. the tragic drama or "intrigue of being" simply cmot do justice to the transcendent character of the defining and pivota1 moments of our lives. Instead, he requires us to be vigilant in ow efforts to trace the path to another intrigue. one that cuts deeper into the hem of what it means to be hurnan.
Quite early in his intellectual career, Levinas perceived the tremendous hazards involved in the failure to take stock of the significance of this "other scene"z2 or intrigue.
In the immediate wake of Hitler's rise to power, the young Levinas discusses these risks in relation to liberalism and the ideological challenges that confiont it. Despite its man? hard-earned triumphs. Iiberalism harbours a blind-spot that, if left unchecked. will lead to the erosion and possible destruction of those political orders founded on its philosophical principles. Because it has disconnected itself fiom the moral inspiration that had originally nourished it, liberalism, Levinas ardentIy contends. fails to grasp the seductive pull of the elemental on the human psyche. As a result, liberals have failed to appreciate that "Hitlerism is more than a contagion or a madness; it is an awakening of elementary feelings" (IH 27, RH64). Fascisrn, in general, and Nazism, in particular. represents a reaffirmation of the ccineluctableoriginal chah uiat is unique to our bodies" (RH 69). The political and philosophical expression of an extreme irnrnanentism, Hitlerism is founded on a value system centred around the veneration of impulse, body. nature. and power. The racism that Hitlerism promotes is not an aberration, as liberal thinkers might reason to themselves. but a primitive temptation intrinsic to the self (71).23 Levinas interprets the fascist motifs of national purity, enrootedness, and Volkgeist. as signs of a disturbing pagan renewal. In an article that appeared during the same period as "Reflections on
Hitferism," Levinas observes that what distinguishes paganism is not so much its polytheism. as the fact that its gods can ody be conceived withïn the horizon of being. As a result. paganism, Levinas notes, "is a radical impotence to leave the worid."14 By locating the divine in the world, paganism forfeits al1 possibility of social justice. If the gods are in nature. then who can hurnanity appeal to in its struggles with nature? Who do the oppressed and disenfranchised petition if the gods are aliied with the forces of power?
The only effective response to the sort of paganism that infuses National Socialism is one that takes full measure of its powerfùl allure so that it can Setter resist it.
For the young Jewish philosopher, the first concrete historical expression of the break with the pagan mind-set took the form of the Judeo-Christian worid-view. Judaisrn. he observes. "bears this magnificent message":
Remorse -the painhi expression of a radical powerlessness to redeem the irreparable - heraids the repentance that generates the pardon that redeems. Man Ends something in the present with which he can modiQ or efface the past. Time loses its very irreversibility. It collapses at the feet of man liked a wounded beast. (IH 30, RH 65)
The epochal-making message that Judaism announces is the idea of repentance or remorse [le remords]. The epiphany of Judaism involves the humbling realization that the self lacks the resources to "repair the irreparable [réparer 1'irré'ble]" or the means to exit being. In contrast to Gyges or Cain who shun the dolorousness and anxiety that accornpany sharne and self-contrition, the remorsehl individual af'FIrms these expenences. This affirmation is a necessary pre-condition for a non-pagan relationship to time and nature. Through remorse, Judaism discovers the possibility of rnending the world. The world, according to Levinas's interpretation of Judaism, loses the numinous permanence it has for the pagan self. Judaism teaches that every aspect of nature manifests itself as created: that everything in nature is contingent and dependent. Thus. there is nothing in principle that cannot be redeemed or amended. In its own endeavour to undermine the tragic picture of the Moirae or Parcae' Christianity furthers the Jewish message by putting fonvard "a mystical drama [of the] Cross" (IH 3 1. RH 65).The salvation that the death and resurrection of Christ represent offers the believer the hope necessary to free him or herself fiom the iron-clad rigidity that is imposed by the pagan cyclical view of tirne.
Liberalism. Levinas reminds his readers, did not invent secularization. The propensity to demyth~logize~to rid the world of the oppressive gip of the sacred. even at the risk of inducing atheism, is present fiom the very begiming of the Jewish scriptures.
Levinas summarizes these views in Totaiity and Infinity when he writes:
The marvel of creation does not only consist in being a creation ex nihilo. but in that it resuIts in a being capable of receiving a revelation, Iearning that it is created, and putting itself in question. The miracle of creation lies in creating a moral being. And this implies precisely atheism, but at the same time, beyond atheism. shame for the arbitrariness of the fieedom that constitutes it. (TI 89)
It is the Biblical drarna of desacralization that modem philosophy presupposes in its pursuit of furthering human emancipation. The destruction of the idols that inspires this drarna is centred around a moral struggle against being. The -religious wars' of the Bible are waged against the evil that the earth itself. vomiting up its perverse elements -Nature -cannot endure. Idolatry is fought not on account of its errors, but on account of the moral degeneracy that accornpanies it, (DF 174 [my emphasis])
The moral degeneracy that Levinas refers to here is the tendency within paganism to place
the interests of nature and power over those of social justice.
As the exemplary modern critic of irrationalism and the fatalistic superstitions of
mythological thinking. liberalism is the secular heir of the Judeo-Christian message."
But with the passing of time. liberal thought no longer appreciates the "depths of the
effort required" to overcome the finality that being starnps on al1 living entities. The
liberal mind has forgotten the "seriousness of the obstacle" and to --undedine the onginality of the new order that has been promised and achieved" (IH 3 1. RH 65). It has
Iost touch with the "transcendent inspirationyythat originally motivated Judeo-Christianity to tear humanity from the "bedrock of natural existence" (IH 3 1. RH 65-66). In failing to grasp what is at stake in the denaturalization of humanity -the rupture with the oppressive values of the rnythological outlook - liberalism -'conjures away the dl-crntafk uspecis of [the Judeo-Christian] liberation" (LM 3 1, RH66 [my emphasis]). The principal reason why liberalisrn was caught completely off guard by the swifi and momentous rise of fascisrn in the first half of the century is more than apparent for the twenty-eight-year- old philosopher, The liberal belief that the advancement of reason is sufficient to abolish the presence of evil betrays the fact that modem liberaliçm is unable to recall the ethicul
- as opposed to the intellechial - imperative behind the drama of the Judeo-Christian conflict with the mythologicai world-view. It is this ethical dimension of the human intrigue that we will now explore in greater detail.
iii) The Intrigue of the Other
Levinas establishes for himself the role of translating the Judeo-Christian account of the ethical drama into the language of philosophy. His endeavour to sketch out the ethical intrigue that intempts the drarna of being reaches its apex in Orhel-wixe thnn
Being- in particular, in the second chapter of that work where he inserts his own thinking into an imaginary dialogue between Plato and ~eide~~er?~According to the
Heidegger of the 1920s. Plato was reaIly the first to appreciate the importance of the question of being for getting at the heart of the mystery of existence.Z7 Heidegger begins his magnum opus, Being and Time, with a quotation from Plato's Sophist. The epigrarn reads: --For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression -being.' We, however, who used to think vie understood it. have nom- become perplexed.'*~*The epigrarn chosen by Heidegger succinctly expresses the essential task that occupies him in Being and Time,namely, to reawaken in us the sarne puzzlement that
PIato supposedly experiences with respect to being. The goal of uncovering the ontological, as opposed to the ontic, nature of Sein, requires philosophers to forgo - as
Plato counsels -the comrnonsensical view of being. Aside from this epigram. Heidegger briefly alludes to another passage from the Sophirt in the introduction of Being and Tirne: "If we are to understand the problem of Being, our first philosophical step consists in not
'telling a story"' (SZ 6. BT 26)? That is, the drama of being can only pxoperly be recounted in a specific manner. The "question of Being," Heidegger adds immediately after citing this particular passage. "requires [the] right way of access" (7bid.).
Heidegger does not choose Plato's dialogue to open Being and Time merely because it serves him with a convenient epigram. In choosing the Sophisr, Heidegger pays homage to one of the foudational texts of occidental metaphysics.jO Plato's attempt to sketch out a metaphysical typology established the Sophisr as a central point of reference in the development of the western philosophicai vocabulq. As a former student of
Heidegger. Levinas. of course, can appreciate the sipificance of the opening epigrarn of
Being and Time.jl Hence it should corne as no surprise that Levinas also appeals to the
Sophisr at a crucial point in his own major work, Othenoise than Being. if we keep this in mind. we will be in a much better position to decipher Levinas's elliptical presentation in this important but difficult section of Othenvise than Being.
Just as Heidegger launches Being and Tirne with a reference to the Sophisr. similarly the beginning of the second chapter of Otherwise thm Being -which in effect represents the start of this text, since the first chapter is really a synopsis of the book3' - is filled with allusions and direct references to both Plato's Sophisr and Heidegger's
Being and Time. On closer examination, one discovers that these pages involve a critical conversation with Plato and Heidegger. As Adriaan Peperzak has noted, Levinas. like
Heidegger, returns to Plato's Sophist in order to appropriate its vocabuIaq for the purpose of tuming a new leaf for philosophy.33 But instead of begiming with Plato's reflections
on being (to on). as Heidegger does, Levinas draws prirnarily on the inspiration of two
other key terms in the Sophist: tauton (Same) and to heteron (Other).j4 As Levinas
employs these concepts. tauton (le Même) and to hetemn (I Autre) refer. respectively, to
the spheres of egoicity and afterity. The different intentions behind Levinas's and
Heidegger's invocation of the Sophist could not be sharper. While Heidegger enlists the authority of the Sophisf in order to express the concealed structures of the intrigue of being. Levinas wïll appeal to the same distinguished text to express the intrigue of the ethical. and to dethrone ontology from its received status as 'first philosophy.'jj
Levinas focuses his discussion on two questions that guide Heidegger for much of
Being and Time: "what shows itself, in truth, under the name of being? And who looks?"
(OB 23).36 According to Heidegger. Dasein poses the first question. 'what shows itself?' even before it explicitly recognizes the ontological difference between being and beings-
Heidegger calls this Dasein's pre-ontological understanding (SZ 15-1 7. BT 36-39). The second question that Heidegger poses concerns the 'who' who inquires into the being of what shows itself: "In which entities is the meaning of Being to be discemed? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take its departure?" (SZ 7. BT 26). This question Ieads Heidegger to the discovery that Dasein is that entity whose being is an issue (SZ 7, 13. BT 8.32). If fundamentai ontology is to successfully map out the problem of being. then it must begin its inquiry -the "nght way of access" - from Dasein's pre- ontological understanding of itself and its world. The rest of Being and Time is spent demonstrating how Dasein's seIf-questionhg cdls it back to its proper course- to the open clearing of being,
Levinas contends that Heidegger's questions demand "from the start" to be answered "in terms of being" (23). His questions, in other words, are ontologically biased: the manner in which Heidegger hesthe questions of the 'who?' and of the what?' of being - the starting point of fiindamentai ontology - can only validate the privileged status conferred ont0 Sein. Levinas is particularly critical of Heidegger's unquestioned assumption that the question 'who?' refers to an entity.
We have shown that the question 'what shows itself in truth?' questions the being that exhibits itself in terms of this being. The question 'who is Iooking? is also ontological. Who is this rvho? In this form the question asks that -the looker' be identified with one of the beings already known . . . the question -who?' asks about being. (OB 27)
If the question conceming 'what is?' is at the foundation of al1 thought and Ianguage then
Heidegger would be right in regarding being as "what is most intelligible." as the onI>- horizon worthy of our attention and meditation. "And yet." Levinas imrnediately interjects. 'rhis intelligibility is questionable." Pnor to the question of 'what is?.' there is. according to Levinas. a "question about the question" (OB 24). Heidegger's attention is solely focused on the question of being, that is, for him, the question is ultimately poscd by behg ifself:Being questions Dasein, for Heidegger. Levinas. on the other hand. hears a more penetrating question: a question that questions being. The question that Levinas attends to is in the form of an accusation: being is asked to account for itself.
Consequently, the "question about the question" that Levinas hears opens up a different path of research and inquiry: Are we certain, Levinas would have us ask, that the 'who' who hears the question is a 'what,' that is, another entity? And is the ho' who asks or
initiates the process of questioning the same one who hem it? Who questions Dasein's
immanence or being-in-the-world? Heidegger, of course, would Say that this 'who' is the
voice of conscience. And the source of the cal1 is being itself: 'The question of Being is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-Being which belongs to
Dasein itself' (SZ 15, BT 35).
But as we saw in the previous chapter, Heidegger's insistence that the source of this voice need not be understood as someone other than Dasein robs that voice of its personal and moral authority or force. How else are we to hear that question that supposedty tears us from Our involvement in the world 17not as a personal plea from a questioning or accusing other?
How is it that the 'what?', already steeped in being so as to open it up the more. becomes a demand and a prayer, a specid language inserting into the 'communication' of the given an appeal for help, for aid addressed to anothrr? (OB 24)
Failure to hear the question in its proper register has serious implications for Levinas. By reducing the 'who' who addresses me, in the midst of being. to an entity, philosophy risks pursuing an agenda that pnviieges ontological concems while ignoring ethical ones.j7
I-Ience. Levinas writes:
lfone is deaf to the petition [demonde] [that is, the demands made by the Other to the self] that sounds in questioning and even under the apparent silence of the thought that questions itself, [then] everyrhing in a question wiZ1 be oriented to [ontological] truth, and will corne from the essence of being. (OB 26 [my emphasis]) There is an entreaw - 'The question about the question" -at the basis of al1 questioning that is voiced by someone other than ~asein-38other than being altogether. To ignore this questioning plea is to resign oneself to the ubiqmitousness of being. To ignore the Other is to consign the self to a state of tragic immanencee. The first awakening of thought does not- as the Greeks and Heidegger suggest, stem tfiom the astonishment of the self before being. The mind is awakened by the questioning gaze of the Other.
Already in 1947. Levinas voices an unwavering conviction that the drama of human existence that Heidegger endorses is deeply flawed because its vision. like that of al1 tragic standpoints, is hopelessly solitary.
. . . from the start 1 repudiate the Heidegagerean concept that views solitude in the midst of a pnor relationship with the 0th-er. . . . The relationship with the Other is indeed posed by Heidegger as an ontological structure of Dasein. but practically it pZqs no role in the drama of being or in - the existential analytic. AII the analyses of Being and Theare worked out either - for the sake of impersonality of everyday iife or for the sake of solitary Dasein. (Ta40 [my emphasis])
However much Heidegger strives to undemine rthe unquestioned assumptions behind traditional metaphysics. he inevitably succurnbs~according to Levinas, to the same mistaken view of the seIf that seduces Plato. Phiilosophy, since Plato. assumes that '-the end of violence" -that is. the end of the probletrn of fatalism, of the destructive movement of being - is possible by means of ar special dialogue or mode of engagement that '-brings [together] opposed beings inclined tro do violence to each other." Henceforth. philosophy proposes to reconcile the problem of2 beings that are allergic to one another by
"find[ingJ a dialogue to make these beings enter - into dialogue" (GCM 142. cf. OS 16).
Plato claims to find this foundational dialogue vwithin the sou1 itself. Heidegger locates it in the silent solicitation of Dasein's conscience. For Plato, the question 'who?' refers back to the imprisoned soul that recognizes that something is arniss in its terrestrial life. It dams on this sou1 -or at lestt some such souls -that there is perhaps a greater truth behind the veil of sensory experiences. In the Sophist, Plato accounts for this awareness by drawing on the idea of the soul's silent conversation with being as it strives to recover or recollect the latent rneaning of its manifest experiences.39 The recollection of this knowledge cm be potentially employed in an effort to establish a political order that approximates the ideal of perfect justice. According to Levinas. this idea has been a mainstay of western philosophy ever since Plato first articulated it: "[flreedom will triumph when the soul's monologue will have reached universality, will have encompassed the totality of being . . ." (CP 49).
Levinas is persuaded that much of the philosophical tradition. Heidegger included. has blindly inherited Plato's monological mode1 of the soul. Plato's supposed dialogue - its structure is actually monological -of the sou1 with itself shares a disturbing affinity with Gyges's adventure: the soul's self-communication means that its "doors and windows [remain] closed" (TN 2). Neither Plato's idea of the self-conversing sou1 nor
Heidegger's picture of a self-questioning Dasein tap into the core of the human drarna - in particular. that point where humanity is released from the stifling grip of anonyrnous being. Both philosophers are bIind to the dilemma posed by the hopelessness of violence that is at the centre of the intrigue of being. For Levinas, the drama or dialogue that occupies thinkers like Plata and Heidegger - centred around the relationship between the sou1 (or Dasein) and being -presupposes a far more important intrigue that binds the self to the Other.
The silent coming and going from question to response- with which Plato characterized thought, already refers to a plot [une intrigue] in which is tied up [se noue] the node [noeud] of subjectivity by the other commanding the sarne" (AE 3 1. OB 23-40
Here then is the second sense in which Levinas uses the word 'intrigue' -one which is closely related to the first sense of intrigue as 'drama.' An intrigue - the Latin im-km-c means 'to entangle' - is a knot or a twisting (la torsion [Ibid.]). Levinas's original insight is to have caught sight of the fact that the key element of subjectivi~involves the intrigue or knot that fastens the Sarne to the Other. ïhe human being is '-the Gordion hot of this ambiguity of the idea of the uifinite" (DR 1 17), or the "interweaving of the Intinite with the finite" (Br 1 13). the juncture where the finite self and the infinite Other are
The motif of ethical entanglement is pervasive in Levinas's later writing. Entire passages are constructed around the theme of the bond between self and Other. In -Gad and Philosophy." for example. he speaks of "an imbroglio [that is] to be taken seriousl>.: this is a relation to . . . that which is without representation, without intentionali~.It is the latent birth. in the other [autrui], of religion . . ." (DVI 1 18, GCM 72 [my emphasis]).
The two key terms here are 'imbroglio? and 'religion.? An imbroglio. of course. is an intricate situation - in other words, another name for intrigue. Imbroglio also suggests an embarrassment; a quarrel or involvement with an oîher that one would rather have avoided. Levinas employs the term "religion" for similar reasons. Re-ligarc4 msans literally to rie rnorefirmZy. And like another related term, religion is an obZigafion.4~an
imposition that binds one to others. Levinas's use of the terrn 'religion' thus departs from
the ordinary meaning of the word. Religion, as Levinas conceives of it. refers to the
singular and insoluble cement that joins self to others. "We propose to call 'religion.'"
Levinas announces in ToraZity and Infinity. 'rhe bond that is established between the same
and the other without constituting a totality" (7''40).43 Finally. in the same section of
0thent.ise than Being that I have been discussing above, Levinas goes on to describe the
ethical intrigue as "an allegiance (une allégeance) of the sarne to the other" (A E 32. OB
25). Again the language that he employs is deliberate and carefully chosen. ~llegiancej"
originally referred to the feudai relation between a vassal and a lord. That the self is in a
relationship of allegiance with respect to the Other resonates with Levinas's con\-iction
that this relationship is asymmetrical: the self is beholden to the Other. who is master and
lord. Ethical subjectivity, therefore, involves neither a monologue. izor. a dialogue
between two individuals (AE 3 1-32' OB 25). In this intrigue' it is clear who has the upper
hand, Within the ethical drarna the self has no Say in the intrigue that ties it to the Other.
Not surprisingly. the allegiance or intrigue of the ethical is not something that the ego
welcornes. It is "imposed" on the self, and it is "preliminary to al1 consciousness" (AE 32.
OB 25). The Other's imposition in the ethical intrigue makes dialogue a possibility. There
is. of course. no guarantee that dialogue will take place. 1 cm always decide to evade the caIl of the Other. But before making this decision, 1 will have heard - for this is not in my control - the Other's call as a dernand directed at me. Levinas often describes the ethical intrigue with the neighbour as the Other- in the
Same (e-g. OB 25. 70. 1I 1). But he wams us to avoid reading the 'in' of this phrase as though it had ontological relevance. The 'in' of the drama of the Other in the Sarne does not. if we keep to the theatrical metaphor, refer to an actual scene or location within the stage of phenomenality. If the Other is transcendent he or she is so because the Other interrztpis the interests of being. Thus, the 'in' of the 'Other in the Sarne' speaks of a disturbance. a break-in: the Other's commandment "slips into me 'like a thief" (OB 148).
For the later Levinas, the subject is first and foremost a conscience. a iroub[ed conscioztsness. Traditional philosophy misconstrues subjectivity because it falseIy presumes that moral consciousness is a component of general consciousness. Heidegger, for instance. regards moral awareness as a modality of Dasein. By contrast- ethical subjectivity, for Levinas. is not stmctured in the same manner as consciousness.
Consciousness is in principle always correlative with the being it represents to itself. But the Other is a thorn in the side of consciousness. for the Other does not let him or herself be assimilated by the representational operations of the ego. Given that philosoph>-.since
Parmenides. is comrnitted to a project of completely filling the gap between being and rhought. it cannot acknowledge the problem of the Other; alterity for traditional philosophy is always conceived as that which is only provisionalZy unknown. "The logos as said." that captures the western imagination. "lets the 'who?' get lost in the -what?"'
(OB 27). This is a snare that has repeatedly entrapped philosophers.jj The philosophical tradition has always heard "what?" for the question "who?," and in this way it has reduced the Other to a moment of the Same. The "what," of course. impiies being and its manifestations. But the Other is not a manifestation to be experienced by the ego. The
Other in the Same entails a self that faces a presence which in principle cannot be represented. Before appearing. the Other disturbs in his or her nemess. The Other's
'power- stems from the fact that he or she cornes fiom eIsewhere than being. By reducing the Other to another character in the drama of being, an entity that 1 observe at a safe distance. without obIigation. philosophy not ody effaces the Other's alterit)-. but also colludes with the ego in its efforts to blunt the critical awareness he or she provokes in me.
The thread of fate - and the arbitrary violence it generates - is finally cut by the transcendence that the approaching Other initiates for the self. But if the word
-transcendence' is to have any genuine value it cannot be thought independently of the drama of being. The word 'transcendence,' therefore,
has to be put back into the signification of the whole plct [intrigzle] of the ethical or back into the divine comedy without which it could not have arisen. That comedy is enacted equivocdly between temple and theater, but in it the laughter sticks to one's throat when the neighbor approaches - that is, when his face. or his forsakemess, draws near. (DVI 1 15, GCM 14 1)
The drama that implicates the self and the Other is no longer a game (AE 5' OB 5- 6.56-
58. 1 17). In the presence of the Other, the play or game of being - the movement betw-een disclosure and concealment, the incessant oscillation between the destmctiveness and the expansion of being - loses its exclusivity: "[iln this intrigue. 1 am bound to others before being tied to my bodyy7(AE 96, OB 76 [trans. modified]). 1 am implicated or comected to others before being involved in the world. The "seriousness of the human intrigue." that is, the relationship I have with the Other. is -rhe opposite of the vanity of vanities" (EN 2 16) that so troubles the author of Ecclesiastes.46 In other words. the intrigue of the Other precedes even the cure [Sorge] that Heidegger takes to be primordial. In the ethical intrigue, the centrality of the everyday womes and anxieties that
Dasein undergoes in relation to itself and to its environment is displaced. The Other's power to dislocate the self from the drarna of being is precisely what Levinas means by transcendence.
One can argue in tum that this decentring is not unique to Levinas. Heidegger's theory of Dasein. for example. also paints a pichire of a decentred subject. But the open- endedness that Heidegger attributes to Dasein lacks the necessaq counter-force to ensure that Dasein does not collapse into itself. In sumrnarizing Heidegger's account of the ecstatic openness of Dasein. Levinas again heshis comentary with a reference to the drama of being: 'The ecstasy of ex-istence, according to Heidegger. animates consciousness, which is called to a role in the drama of openness by the primordial openness of the essence of being (Sein). Existence is also said to be the vision or speculation of this drama" (CP 145). As an alternative to the Heideggerean drarna of human existence' Levinas suggests a different way of thinking about the opemess of subjectivity: it is not a question of "being's essence that opens to show itself, and it is not consciousness that opens itself to the presence of the essence that has been opened and confided to it. Here openness is the denuding of the skin exposed to wounds and outrage"
(CP 145-6). We will now tum our attention to the significance of this denuding - for which Levinas reserves the name. "proximity" -that takes place at the heart of the ethical intrigue.
it') The Passivity of Proximit):
What finally severs the thread of fate, and makes it possible for the self to transcend nature and being. is the stronger tenaciv of another more enduring entanglement. another intrigue, one which Levinas will claim is -'more ancient" than being itself.
To conceive the othenvise than being we must try to articuIate the break-up [I 'éclaternenr]of a fate that reigns in essence. . . . The task is to conceive of the possibiliq of a break-out [un arrachement] of essence. (AE 9. OB 8)
Levinas's language is deliberately provocative. The process of disrupting the destructive force of being is itself violent. In this passage fiom Othenvise than Being. and in many others like it. Levinas ernploys evocative terms like éclatement (bursting. mptunng) and an-crchemen~(uprooting. wrenching out, tearhg away) to descnbe the processes thar unravel the tightIy-knit web of being. The uprooting of the self fkom being takes place in proximity.
The notion of proximity represents a subtle but important progression in Levinas's vocabulq. In Toraliry and Infinity, we are told that the face is the primary --site" of ethicality. In Othenvise than Being, however, Levinas employs "proximity" to name this site.47 Even though the notion of the face still plays a role in Othenvise than Being. the advantage of using "proximity" to describe the ethical encounter is that it no longer
connotes phenomenal States or attitudes, as the face did in the minds of some of Levinas's
readers. So fiom Othenvise thun Being onwards, the term proximity is meant to inciude
and expand on the concept of the face.48
Proximity with the Other is simultaneously constnied as distance and presence.
Both of these terms have to be carefully circurnscribed. When Levinas maintains that the
Other is distant. we rnust rid our minds of any spatial comotations. The Other is not
distant like the space that separates us fiom stars; the Other's distance from me cannot be
bridged. We must also be careful not to misconstrue the Other's presence as immanence.
The Other is not of this world. The presence that proximity suggests is concerned with the
fragile immediacy of contact and touch. Proximity, therefore. refers to the intimate but infiniteIy distant 'space' that separates me fiom the other person.
The tension between presence and distance that proximity simultaneously conveys finds its Biblical expression in the manner in which God is shoun to relate to human beings. This view of God's proximity is expressed, for instance. in the following passage from Exodus: "The people stood far off, and Moshe approached the fog where God was'-
(Exod. 20: 18). God's distance here is meant to resonate with the term --h~liness.''~~God's radical distance, however, is counter-balanced with the idea of his Shekinah. the rabbinical term adopted to descnbe the presence or revelation of God in the world. At
Sinai. God reveals himself to the Hebrews in order to pass down the teaching of the
Torah. The Jewish scriptures purposefully accentuate the irreconcilable tension between God's holiness or separateness and his gloryso or revelation. Ephraim Urbach succinctly
sumrnarizes this tension when he writes:
The banishment of magic and myth demanded the creation of a gulf between God and man. but nevertheless the believer wishes to feel God's proximity, to recognize His character and to conceive to some extent His relationship to man and the world. This dualism is found in Scripture, where the two elements are found side by side.51
Levinas's concept of proximity has to be heard with this double meaning in mind.
The tension inherent in proximity is painfùl. Distance incites yeaming. In a discussion of proximity in Othewise than Being, Levinas calls to mind the moumful words of the lover in the Song of Songs who repines: "1 am sick with love" (AE 18 1.
1 8 1 n5: OB 142. 198nS)? If distance can effect the suffering of wistfùlness. then neamess to the Other can wound deeply: "one discloses oneself by neglecvNtg orle S d-fences . . . exposing oneself to outrage, to insults and wounding" (OB 49). Only the
Other can get under my skin. His or her immediate demands and entreaties have the effect of undoing my sense of persona1 sovereignty. For this reason. Levinas asserts that the tension of proximity is an '-extreme passivity."
Proximity is a passivity for several related reasons. One sense in which Levinas rneans passivity refers to the condition of taking on something that is not freely assumed.
In the case of the ethical intrigue' what is not assumed by the self is the intense 'force' rxerted by the Other. This force is not physical. But what the Other lacks in corporeal muscle or political influence is made up by the relentless self-questioning that his or her vulnerable presence incites in me. In the midst of being, Levinas discovers a non- ontological potency that is 'stronger? than the greatest displays of material might. In --Un
Dieu Homme," Levinas writes that the "force of the transcendent truth is to be f~undin its hurnility" (EN 72). The "humiliated" Other, he continues, "upsets absoluteiy: he is not of this world. . . . To present oneself in this poverty of exiled is to intempt the coherence of the universe" (EN 7 1).53 To encounter the Other is to corne face to face with an acute defencelessness or fragility that unnerves me.
It is the Other's accusations that 1 do not assume in the passivity of prosimity. The principal accusation is heard as a prohibition: do no! kill me.
The face of the other, in its defenceless nakedness - is it not already . . . an asking? A beggar7sasking, miserable mortal. But at the sarne time it is an authority. . . sumrnoning me to respond. . . . It is an original obligation to which 1 am . . . ordered. . . . Thou shalt not kill.' (TN 1 10)
There is no other object like the defenceless Other in the physical universe that can simultaneously prompt my attention as well as my hostility. "Every love or every hatred of a neighbor." Levinas States unequivocally, "presupposes this prior vulnerabili~"(C'P
146-7). There is nothing more vulnerable than the eyes of the other person - eyes that implore me to respond. that make exorbitant demands on me. and that cal1 m?; self- concern into question. For this reason, %e Other is the only being that one can be tempted to kill" (DF 8).54 The significance of the command 'not to kill' could not be understood by me unless 1 had previously desired murder. But lest we imagine that the injunction pertains only to would-be murderers, Levinas reminds us that the prohibition also interdicts the desire to disfigure the Other:
-Thou shah not kill' . . . not only forbids the violence of murder: it also concems al1 the slow and invisible killing committed in our desires and vices, in al1 the innocent cruelties of natural Iife, in our indifference or 'good conscience'. . . . (TX 110-1)
It is in this passivity vis-à-vis the Other that 1 corne to discover the brutaiity of my wilL
The Other's fragility dominates my thoughts such that 1 cannot but be afEected by him or her. The accusing and questioning voices inside me -echoes of his or her proximity - are excessive. And yet at no point did 1 invite these accusations. This seems to suggest that 1 am always already susceptible55 to the Other. Hardly has consciousness moved to recover itself from the Other's accusatory rhetoric, to close the gap between itself and its intended abject- than it is overcome by doubt and self-admonishrnent. Thus. the passivity of proximis- is another name for bad conscience.
Levinas also characterizes the temporaliy of the ethical intrigue as a passivit:;.
The time of proximity, he informs us, is 'pre-original' or -an-archic.' Rather than thinking of the Infinite as something which comes to me fiom the future.56 the surprising and recurrent character of doubting and questioning suggests a cal1 that comes to me from a distant past. a time that is not mine. In the drama of proximity, the neighbour is al~vays
--the first one on the scene" (OB 1 1, 86, 87, 144). The intrigue that interests Levinas
'happens' in the pluperfect past (AE 13, OB 1 l), that is, prior even to the past: the 'had had.' This intrigue is more ancient than the physical universe, it is a '%me before time as implied in the idea of creation" (BPW 97). The passivity of the ethical subject refers to a subject that has Visen earlier than being and cognition, earlier than and on this side of them. in an immemorial time which a reminiscence could not recuperate as an a priori"
(OB 26). The prevailing view of the self-Other relationship that emerges after Total-) and Infinity locates this encounter in a past for which I have absolutely no memory. In contrast to the synchronizing machinery of the ego, Levinas describes the pre-original intrigue as 'diachronie.' for it cuts across or through57 the synchronic temporal order of worldly existence to put human time -in Hamlet's apt expression - "out of jointr.58
Proximity ensures that the totalizing propensities inherent in the temporal economy of being are never fülly consummated. If the Other eludes the ego's power of re-presentation then this is so because the Other's time predates the synchronic order of egoicity. that is- the ego's privileging of presence. imrnediacy, and simultaneity. The Infinite cannot be integrated into the universe of the known, or the Sarne, because the Other does not emerge from worldly tirne. When the Other does appear on my horizon. he or she qua
Other has already withdrawn, too late for me to CO-optor contain his or her alterity. In order that .'alterity upset the order?' of things and not become a part of that order. not participate in that order. it is necessary that the "hurnility of the manifestation (of the
Other) be already distanced" (EN 73). Consequently. it is always already too late for me to synchronize myself with the Other's time. Again. Levinas invokes the poignant prose of the Song of Songs to illustrate his thought: "1 opened . . . he had disappeared" (OB 88).
Finally. proximity is also an "extreme" passivity because it involves a peculiar suffering undergone by the subject that directs it, despite itself, to the service of the Other.
The word 'passivity' shares the same root as the word 'passion,' narnely, pati. meaning
'to suffer.' Thus. in the following passage, for example, Levinas uses the term "passion" as a synonym for "passivity": "This passion is absolute in that it takes hold without any a priori. The consciousness is affected, then. before fomiing an image of what is coming to it affected in spite of itself' (OB 102). In proximity with the Other. in this condition of being held virtually hostage by him or her, we fmd an acute suffering. This suffering.
Levinas insists, has an ethical significance. But one might irnmediately inteject with a reminder of Nietzsche's warning about deriving meaning fiom suffering. In the
Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche claims that the root of the ascetic ided -that is the -eround of the nihilism that afflicts the modem age - can be traced to the priestly endeavour to answer the question 'what is the meaning of my s~ffering'?5~The question is for Nietzsche inherently meaningless. There is no reasonable answer to the question other than -there is suffering.' The wish to find sorne justification for one's suffering is. for Nietzsche. symptomatic of a weak psychological constitution unable to accept the vicissitudes of mortal life. 1s Levinas's thought, therefore. the most recent version of a slavish hatred of life, of an attempt to project cosmological significance ont0 the meaninglessness of existentia1 suffenng?
Levinas is in fact quite familiar with these Nietzschean suspicions: --Intellectuals are today mistnistful of a philosophy of the one keeper of his brother . . . they would scornfully cal1 it humanist and even hagiographical" (OB 166). One might be tempted at first to imagine that Levinas's position on persona1 suffering is antithetical to Nietzsche's.
In fact. Levinas actualty concurs with Nietzsche's suspicions. For Levinas. my own persona1 suffering is meaningless. There is no intrinsic significance to the existential pangs that 1 experience in everyday life. But Levinas would add, persona1 suffering does not exhaust the meaning of suffering. The self does not only know a suffering for itself. but it equally undergoes 'a suffering for the suffenng . . . of someone else" (LS159.08
1 8) - and that for Levinas is signzjicanr because there is no rational explanation for such suffering. A genealopical analysis of this suffering for-an-other would be unable to find a historical or cultural basis to account for it. Nor would it be able to detect any psychological motives -such as extemal rewards, a secret desire for salvation. or the satisfaction of appeasing one's conscience -that might explain away this suffering that relates to the Other. In the war of a11 against all' suffering for another betrays the vep logic of the conutus of being. For Levinas, the passivity of proximity delivers me over to the suffering of the Other. Passivity establishes an unbreakable tie with the Other. a virtually obsessive concem for him or her: 'have I done enough for her?'. %as he enough to eat?'. 'how could 1 be so selfish?' This very "attention to the other" that manifests itself pnncipally in what we cal1 bad conscience, Levinas maintains. forms the very --bond of human subjectivityy (US 159).
Thus. within the ethical intrigue, and more precisely. in the suffering that the
Other induces in me, Levinas daims to find the secret meaning of ipseity. or the unique individual. The -1' discems that the meaning of its uniqueness lies not in its egoicih but in the fact that it is a "countercurrent to a conatus" (OB 55). The passivity of the ethical subject - the most profound level of the human self -represents a break with the striving and persevering of being. In proximity to the Other, the '1' discovers a dimension of itself that undermines its good conscience, and shows itself to be a refusal of the indifference inherent in being. The '1' is thus redeemed in the unassumed attention it shows for the Other. Levinas calls this the 'election' of the self by the Other. The self has been chosen for a purpose. The suffering undergone by the self at the hands of the Other. a suffering that is at the sarne time a concem for the Other, gives the self an ethical orientation that it otherwise lacks. By binding the self to it, the Other redeems the self and helps it to express "a goodness despite oneself' (OB 56).
Y) b'lolence and the Elhical Intrigue
The story of Jacob and Esau nicely illustrates the related concepts of intrigue and proximity. The human condition is mirrored by Jacoti's selfish clutching of his brother's heel as he enters the world. Jacob repeatedly lives up to the popular meaning of his name: heel. The name Yaakov (Jacob's Hebrew narne) is a play on words: meaning at once the heel of a foot- but also a 'supplanter.' that is, one who over-reaches or takes what is not his. (These ancient associations are. in other words, not unlike the double meaning behind the English 'heeL'60) Hence after having had his birthright stolen. Esau bemoans his brother's actions: "1s that why his narne was called Yaakov/Heel-Sneak? For he has non- sneaked against me twice: My firstbom-right he took, and now he has taken rny blessing!" (Gen. 27:36). hedwith his booty, Jacob, the 'heel,' leaves his parents' home in order to avoid his brother's wrath. But his evasions are constantly spoiled by the embittered face of Esau, in the same way that Macbeth's good conscience is disturbed by the ghostly remof Banquo's bloodied face. Why does Esau have such a powerful effect on his brother, even at a distance? The knot or intrigue that ties Jacob to Esau predates their rivalry. Like al1 human beings, the two brothers 'Yid themselves playing a role in a drama that has begun outside of them" (TI 202). The intrigue that binds them to one another is older than life itself; an idea that is strikingly expressed at the begiming of the narrative which tells us that both were already at odds with one another inside their mother's womb (Gen. 25:22).
The most formative experience of Jacob's Iife -his violent encounter with the angel - is constmcted around the proximity of the Other's face (panim).The narrative carefûlly juxtaposes the face of God with the person of Esau. Before struggling with the divine figure, Jacob's mind is beset by the image of the vexed face of his brother. Esau- whom he is on his way to meet in order to make peace with him: fearing the whole time. however, that Esau has never forgiven him for his earlier deceptions. Jacob instructs his servants to go on ahead- to notie his brother of his imminent arrival. In so doing hs reasons to himself that he "will wipe (the anger From) his face with the gifi that goes ahead of my face; afterward. when 1 see his face, perhaps he will lifi up my face!" (Gen.
3221). The crux of this story, and of the human drama in general. is centred around the tumultuous face-to-face encounter, or proximity to the Other. Jacob's divine confrontation is descnbed as follows:
Now a man wrestled with hirn until the coming up of dawn When he saw that he could not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; the socket of Yaakov's thigh had been dislocated as he wrestled with him- Then he said: Let me go. for dawn has corne up! But he said: 1 will not let you go unless you bless me. He said to him: What is your narne? And he said: Yaakov. Then he said: Not as Yaakov/Heel-Sneak shall your nmee be henceforth uttered. but rather as Y israeUGod-fighter, for you have fought with God and men. . . ,(Gen- 32: 25-29)
Jacob narnes the place of his near fatal encounter *th this mysterious man or angel.61
Penztel. which means the "face of God." Immediatdy after the enigmatic attack. Jacob
lifis up his eyes to see his brother and says to him: "1 have . . . seen your face. as one sees
the face of God" (Gen. 33: 10). underscoring the important link established in Judaism
between God as the Absolute Other and the irreducible alterity of the other human being.
The provocation that Jacob and Moses62 mdergo by a divine figure in the interval
between the light of phenomenal being and the nifit of the iZy a is impossible fully to
Something takespface between the Dusk in _ which the most ecstatic intentionality. which. however, never aims far enough, is Host (or is recollected) and the Dmw in which consciousness returns to itself, but already too late for the event which is moving away. The great 'experiences' of ouir Iife have properly speaking never been lived. Are not religions said to corne ta us fiom a past which was never a pure now? (BP W 72 [my emphasis])
It was in that internai berneen the dusk and the damn of existence, an intemal that corresponds to a time that canot be recollected, tkat Jacob was transforrned fiom a Heel:
Sneak - one who clings to being, as he had clung to his brother's heel -to Israel. one who stniggIes with the Unnameable, rather than evading a Thou who engages him.
Unlike Hegel's owi of Minerva, who has the iuxury of surveying and recuperating the past, it is '-dready too late'? for consciousness to recover the event that provokes it. It was at some point in the night between dusk and dam- an interim for which consciousness is at a loss to know - that Jacob stood before the Other. and was there wounded.
Religion. in Levinas's sense. is this wounding, or painhl swaddling of the self to the
Other.
vi) The Catastrophic 'Site And Non-Site 'of the Divine Other
Transcendence entails going outside being; it is, as the Septuagint name felicitously suggests. an exodus fiom being.6j Taking leave of being involves a decentring or reversal of the self. This jouney out of being is symbolically represented in the Torah as a passage through the desert. The ethical exodus is an exile that terminates not so rnuch in another place within being, but rather as Levinas States in Orhent-isc.thun
Being a "site and non-site" (Ziezr el non-lieu),a site that challenges the ego's place in being.64 This cataclysmic "place" disrupts the situating or spacing of being.
Why does Levinas paint such a stark picture of the ethical intrigue? Why does he resort to such obviously hyperbolic tenns as 'traumatic' and 'denucleation' to describe the drarnatic impact of the Other on the self? Would we be correct in suspecting that this thought arnounts to a "Buddhist ~udaisrn,'"f>that is, a Judaism that equates spiritual transformation with the eradication of the self! Would a Nietzschean be justified after al1 in detecting in Levinas's language an echo of the ascetic spirit that is bemired in the swampy terrain of ressentiment and the fear of life?
There is an undeniable violence that is directed at the ego within the ethical intrigue that we must explore fiirther. In his important essay. "God and PhiIosophy-"
Levinas describes in evocative terms the nature of my neighbour's intrusive and relentless calling into question of the pnvate region that 1 have carved out for myself within being.
While every object in the world can be safely transposed into my domain for assimilation- the same cannot be said of the other person. Over the stranger, Y have no powei-" - he or she is "not wholly in rny site" (TI 39). Instead, when the stranger approaches near. my finite self risks being utterly overwhelmed. Levinas depicts the '-sitet' of proximic as cutasfrophic. The encounter with the Other is more of an upheaval of the psyche than the intellectual "conversion" (episrrophe)66 of the sou1 that Socrates desires for his pupils.
In the following passage, Levinas describes the privileged relationship between the other human being and the Absolute Other, God- The infinite Other. he rnaintains. ruptures the finite container that is my ego.67
[The Infinite] designates the depth of an undergoing that no capacity comprehends. that no foundation any Ionger supports. where every process of investing fails and where the screws that fix the stem of inwardness burst- This putting in without a corresponding recollecting devastates its site like a devouring fire, ca~astrophyingits site [catastrophant le lieu], in the etymological sense of the word. . . . (DVI 1 10, CP 163 [my emphasis])
Why is Levinas drawing our attention to the etyrnology of "catastrophe" and what is its relationship to the site of this devastation? In a footnote to the above passage. he cites the following verse from the Book of Micah: For Io! the Lord 1s coming forth fiom His dwelling-place, He wLll corne down and stride Upon the heights of the earth, The rnountains shall melt under Him And the valleys burst open - Like wax before fire Like water cascading down a ~lope.~*
The Greek kalastrophe originalIy signified an overturning. Kara is a downward motion.
Strophe - fram strephein, to turn, to twist, to plait -originally denoted the rrtrwirîg ml-ay of the chorus in Greek tragedy hmone side of the orchestra to another side. a movement that signalled an ominous tum of events. In adopting the term "catastrophe.'-
Levinas. I believe. is not so much interested in its link to tragedy or Greek thought as he is in its IiteraL meming, namely. of 'overturning.' As it will become apparent.
"catastrophe" in the context of Levinas's work has to be understood primarily in a Jewish rather than a Greek rnanner- The idea of the catastrophic pIays an important role in Jewish
~criptures.6~The books of Micah, Job, and Lamentations. for instance. are profound meditations Dn the meaning of catastrophe.
What are we to make of those prophetic passages like the one from Micah that depict God coming forth or arising from His Place and wreaking havoc on the world? In the passage from Micah this site is the "Dwelling-place."70 The original Hebrew is maqyorn. a tem which according to the rabbinical tradition serves as one of the narnes of
GO^.^' Muqqom is the Place or Site of God: the Place that sustains al1 other places in the worid. and Gthout which there could be no world. As Place of the world. God contains it. but God qua Place surpasses the totality of physical space as we know it. In his reading of a Talmudic exegesis that addresses the significance of the catastrophic site, Levinas concurs with the ancient rabbis that in just times God remains in his abode -and his
Shekinah or nearness is felt in the world.72 But when injustice prevails. then God rises from His Place and departs fiom it. God's "departure" signifies an unsettling of the dominant order. The Biblical prophecy of God arising out of His Place. Levinas maintains. following the advice of the Talmudic Rabbis. cm be interpreted to mean the
'-reveIation of the other face. of the angry face of God, the face of strict justice. unnortncing catastrophes and the overthrow of established order . . ." (OS 133 [ml- emphasis]).
What Levinas thus accomplishes in his exegesis is to connect theophany. that is- the issue of how the divine manifests itself in being. with the ethical. The divine. for
Levinas. presents itself not as some special being behind the world - one that I rnust stnve to grasp intelIectually. Nor is the divine something that surpasses the ethical. as
Kierkegaard adarnantly insists. According to Levinas's Jewish understanding. the divine and the ethical, while not synonymous with each other, are nevertheless inseparable.
Thus. the divine reveals itself when the suffering of the Other person calls me to account for myself. This calling into question is traumatic, catastrophic, because it draws me out of my cornplicity with being.73 Human injustice is represented as the concealment of
God's face.74 as the absence of the divine Place that helps to overtum the disaster and to counter general indifference. God's presence or intervention in the world is strictly conditional on Our ability to respect the divine cornmandment to love one's neighbour.
For Levinas. this condition -of the continued presence of the divine Place - has to be understood as a cal1 for social justice. This is the rneaning behind Micah's apocalyptic prophecy. as well as Levinas's hyperbolic description of the catastrophic reversa1 of the ego that the Qther initiates.
The Other person - whose "image" as Other is closer to God than that of my ego7j - cornes out of his site (associated here with the Place of God) and drives me out of my domain. out of the comfort and security that is my ego. Ethical subjectivit>-entails a reversa1 or tuming inside out of the ego by the Other. The elected subject is the self that has had its inside exposed to the outside, no longer identical to itself. vulnerable. and passive vis-à-vis the Other. The self is catastrophically altered. Levinas succinctly surnmarizes this when he notes that the "openness of the ego exposed to the other is the break-up or turning inside out of inwardness" (DVI 12 1. CP 169). And this is the significance for Levinas of the journey to the promised land. This land is "not another landscape" (PN 44). The journey to the promised land is what Levinas calls the '-Bible's permanent saying." The condition of exile, "of being strangers and slaves in the Iand of
Egypt brings man close to his neighbour." In exile, "[n]o one is at home." And the
"rnemory of this servitude assembles humanity" (CP 149). This redemptive catastrophe. the tuming inside out of my ego: its deposition, is in response to the disaster. ruined being. It is only to a %asty and imprudent" mind (OB 116): Levinas contends. that the catastrophic upheaval of the ego would appear as unjust.76 Such a mind fails to appreciate the consequences of the absence of a violent reversal of the ego and its propensities. Without the traumatic persecution that the Other exercises -the guilt. for exarnple. that is induced by the homeless or the dying - "everyîhing [would be for the ego] absorbed? sunken into, walled in being" (OB 182). The '1' would succumb to the psychosis of being. the deafening murmur of the Nighh or il y a. The world would be beset by the evil genius, and every ego would be enthraIled by the brutal indifference shown by Gyges. Only the traumatizing provocation of the Other "breaks the secret of
Gyges" (OB 145). Hence. it is for this very reason that Levinas states unapologetically that the Good '-redeems the violence of its alterity, even ifthe sztbjecr has to sztffer through the augmentation of this ever more demanding violence" (OB 1 5, cf. 123 [my emphasis]). The Nietzscheans can rest assured that this thinking does not entai1 a renunciation of the self. The decentring of the subject that Levinas analyses. it is true- involves a "de-posing or desituating of rhe subject," but one "which nonetheless renznins an irreplaceable uniqueness. . ." (OB 48). The self remains after the catastrophic renewal.
But it is a transforrned self. awakened to a world outside it, a world comprised of other human beings. to whom it must respond and attend.
This analysis of the ethical catastrophe may help us to understand what Levinas means when he states that the "absolutely other," God, is Wanscendent to the point of absence, to the point of his possible confùsion with the agitation of the rhere is [il y a]" (DU1 15. GCM 69, CP 165-6). From Levinas's perspective, the accomplishment of beings, inciuding of selves, is never absolutely guaranteed- Creation is a precarious act.
Human beings can easily return to the disastrous void of the ~i~ht.77'-1 will make your cities a wastelandt (Lev. 26:3 l), God warns the Israelites, Thus to disobey the command to love the neighbour (Lev. 19: 18) -in the Torah. there is no higher cornmandment - is intimately related to the threat of a return to the desert, to the ruins of being. There seems to be a blurring of the disastei of being with the ethical catastrophe. One way of understanding this possible confusion between the il y a and the Other is to recall that like
Jacob. one must be wounded by the disaster of the Night - an "[ilnsomnia in the bed of being" that obstructs me from retuming to myseif, fiom affirming my identity (PiV45) - as a precondition for the abiiity to recognize the significance of the transcendent power of the Other's face. Edith Wyschogrod expresses this idea when she writes that '-[tlhe ily a: untarned. remedy and poison, it renden the self receptive to alte~-it~.''~gOnly when the self realizes the futility of being through suffering can it appreciate that genuine redemptive change lies not within one's grasp, but rather in the challenge posed to its narcissism by the other hurnan being.
Levinas's later work suggests another equally valid way of understanding the possible confusion between the horror of indeteminate being and the persecutions of the divine. Perhaps the confusion is a reflection not only of the anguish that transpires in the self-Other intrigue. but also of an intrigue that includes the passion of God. In his final writings. Levinas teaches us to see that the intrigue does not just implicate the self and the Other. but that the ethical drama also involves the intertwining of the divine. or the
Absolutely Other. If we understand the relationship with the divine in this manner. then
God's dramatic proclamation cm also be legitimately heard as 'we will return to the wasteland.' Our actions reflect back on the divine as weIl.
The view of God that emerges fiom such a reading rnight be difficult for rnany. believers and non-believers alike, to fathom, because twenty centuries of Greek-inspired theological discourse have distorted our understanding of the divine. That discourse has been guided by philosophical principles that are intrinsically foreign to the Judeo-
Christian scriptures. Like the Protestant theologian Rudolph Bultmann,79 Levinas must constantly remind his readers that the dominant pichire of God that has been passed down to us barely resembles the God of Abraham and Moses. Repeatedly. Levinas stresses that his vision of God is "not the God airnighty being of creation, but the persecuted God of the prophets who is always in relation with man and whose difference fiom man is never indifference" (FFL 332).80 The idea of a persecuted or suffering God would undoubtedly strike many today as philosophically incoherent. But this is not surprising given. as Pau1
Fiddes has keenly observed, the extent to which philosophers and theologians alike have gone to divest their discourse of the slightest hint of apassible God.*I If God is said to be
"compassionate" or "wrathfül," we are immediately warned by the philosopher or theologian to understand these descriptive qualities in a pureiy intellectual way. The idea that God could suffer, could feel for His creation, seems unbecoming of God- But according to Levinas this is the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible. The passionless. abstract God of the philosophers, and of the theologians who follow them. is dead. In his
typicaily provocative manner, Levinas remarks that the God whom we imagined as an
absolute being 'œcornmittedsuicide at Auschwitz" (EL 135).82
But with the death of that onto-theological God there arises the possibility to re- envision the --drarnaof Holy History" [drame de I 'Histoire Sainte] (EN 1 1 5. LTS 162) that binds self. Other. and the divine. For Levinas, it is once again possible to hear the genuine meaning behind the Biblical claim that human beings are created in God's irnage.83 A persecuted God means a God who is inextricably linked to the suffering and patience of hurnanity. If we are called to be like God, this does not mean. as some critics of the
Enlightenment have held. that we should abandon Our modem goals of self-autonomy and individual rights. Rather these goals are given their proper orientation. their fullest meaning. when the self stnves to live up to the image in which it was created. Eve~ individual is called forth to emuiate God by directing one's life in solidarity with the
Other. that is. to help the Other to find a resolution or meaning to his or her suffering. and not to be caught up in the trivialities of one's own anxieties. It is only afrer the passage that passes through the anguish of other human beings and the suffering of God that the self can find a meaning for itself.
Perhaps. nowhere do we find a more vivid dramatization of the intrigue that interlaces self, Other, and God, than in the work of The Sou( of Life ((Nefesh ~ahapim)~~ of Rabbi Hayyim Volozhyn, a late eighteenth century Lithuanian Rabbi (1 759-1 82 1) - for whom the Franco-Lithuanian philosopher has on several occasions expressed great admiration-gs In his comrnentary on The Soul of Lfe? Levinas emphasizes the difficult path that takes one from the tragic disaster of being to the catastrophic redemption granted by the Other:
The existence of reality . . . is a sign of God's association with these worlds. which wouId return to nothingness or faIl into decline if God withdrew fiom them. The worlds owe their being to this divine energy of association which creates them and preserves them by continudly recreating them (PSD 159. LR 230)-
What Levinas admires most about Rabbi Hayyim Volozhyn's version of Judaism are not the cosmological speculations -which Levinas wams us not to take literally (TA,*113)
- but the painful recognition that the divine is itself dependent on huntan r-esponsibililj-.
The creation of the universe is fundamentally incomplete, it remains in ruins. By challenging and calling upon the solitary self, calling it out of its hiding place. the Other. with whom God stands in solidarity, obliges the ego to address the minous state of creation. to make the self "answerable for the universe" (TIV 125). The Other thus compels the ego to resist the pagan temptation to take root in one place. Through a catastrophic reversal. the self departs fiom its base and moves towards the other human being. For Levinas. this traumatic questioning of the self is the only Wray to redeem the disaster of anonyrnous being (Eel51). In another discussion of his Lithuanian compatriot-
Levinas affirms that the "worlds [that comprise creation] cannot continue to be. simply by vinue of the energy of their substance: they must be justified in their being. they need the ethical mediation of man." Thus, it is only in the "service" or dedication to the other human being, Levinas insists, that we can ever hope to realize the "edification of the worlds or the repairing of the ruins of creation" (TN 129 [my emphasis]). From the point of view of ipseity. service represents the apex of the ethical intrigue, the proper response to the disaster of existence, CHAPTER IV
'God Writes Straight with Crooked LinesT: From the Sacred to Holiness
i) Irîtrodzrcrion
The key actors in Levinas's ethical drarna as we saw in chapter three. involve not only the self and the Other, but also God. For this reason, the inter-human drarna is for hirn. ah-ays. properly speaking. an ethico-religious intrigue. Religion and ethics are so
intimately intertwined for Levinas, that any attempt to consider one apart from the other senously distorts Our understanding of both. To consider ethics apart from religion - in
Levinas's sense of the terrn. that is, as an adherence to the Good that personally addresses me' - undermines ethics by making it susceptible to the neutralizing tendencies of being. By marrying ethics with reason instead of the Goodomajor currents within western philosophy neglect or downplay the problem of anonymity and moral indi fference that reason shares with beinp in general. Equally fiawed, however. from Levinas's point of view. is any conception of religion that treats ethics as either unessential or secondary to the nature of the divine. He reserves the name 'sacredT to describe this particular attitude or form of spirituality.
Levinas is, to put it mildly, a foe of the sacred. In fact. his critique of the sacred is so scathing that it has even alienated scholars who are otfierwise syrnpathetic to his philosophy. One such scholar is the Amencan Christian theologian, David Tracy. Because of his general admiration for Levinas's philosophy- Tracy -and 1 suspect he is
not alone -states that he is puzzled and disappointed by "Levinas's consistent polemic
against the religious phenomena he variously names mysticism, the violence of the
sacred. and paganism.'Q Tracy voices particular concem over what he perceives to be
Levinasasoverly broad definition of the sacred. Levinas. it is tme. applies the category of
the sacred to such disparate re!igious and social phenomena as Roman paganism.
superstition and spiritism (NTR 146), utopian politics (DF 10 1). certain elements of
Christianity (DF49), Hasidism (DF 29), and even Heidegger's later philosophy (DF23 1 -
4). Finally. Tracy also worries that Levinas's understanding of the sacred might not be
anchored by the same detailed phenomenologicai analysis that underpins his views on other phenornena? Though Tracy does not explicitly state as much. one nevertheless senses that behind his polite and carefully worded criticisms lies the suspicion that
Levinas's depiction of the sacred is rooted more in prejudice than in philosophica1 rigour.
Levinas's treatment of the sacred, 1 will argue in this chapter. has to be assessed in its proper context. Othenvise his 6'polemic" against the sacred will be judged. in the hands of less charitable readers than Tracy, as a product of Jewish chauvinism - or as Levinas himself states, in anticipation of his critics, of "self-centered pride" (Th' 3). If Levinas's unflattering swipes against "pagans" and "mystics" are not properly contextualized we risk concluding that his criticisms specifically target individuals or groups outside the
Jewish tradition. The problem of the sacred, however, as Levinas understands it. affects al1 religions, including ludaism. His critique, however, does not stop at showing how the sacred consistentiy undermines religious life in generai. While the sacred is primarïly a
religious phenornenon. Levinas shows how one essential feature of the sacred -what he
calls '-participation"4 -continues to influence areas of modem life that are not religious
in the strict sense of the tenn.
If Levinas adopts an intransigent attitude toward the sacred, he does so primarily
because the sacred represents -to use a phrase from a title of one of his papers on this theme - the "temptation of temptations" that confronts every self. What tempts the self is the promise of an immediate escape from its identity. The sacred promises transcendence. in the sense of a direct and imrnediate experience of the absolute or the
Infinite. But sacred transcendence is, for Levinas. an illusion. In the language of Totali~p and hzfini~.the sacred promotes the false belief that Desire -the rnetaphysical yearning for the Good or the Infinite -can be consummated. The believer or participant in a sacred ritual or practice regards the rapture or ecstasy he or she expenences as confirmation of divine contact. Levinas, on the other hand, interprets these affective States as forms of esistential possession: the self is submerged in the arnbiguity of anonymous being. or. in Shakespeare's words, the enthralling but vapid "bubbies" of terrestrial esistence.5 Levinas is profoundly alarmed by such possession. for it signals an absence or suppression of the self. The absent or minimal self, in turn, precludes the possibility of an ethical reiationship with the Other. What the sacred signifies for Levinas cornes into sharper focus when it is contrasted with the 'holy' (le saint). Levinas repeatedIy reproves those scholars in both the sociology and philosophy of religion who, in his opinion. fail to differentiate the idea of holiness (la saintete3 frorn the category of the sacred (le sucrd.6
As the very antithesis of the sacred, holiness is meant to offset the more pernicious features of the sacred. in particular the moral evasiveness that. he maintains. accompanies sacred or mystical experïences. Holiness calls into question the direct union with the supernatural that is sou& afier by those who partake of the sacred. God is holy. for
Levinas. because He declines the self s advances, and instead redirects the self to the
Other- In contrast to the sacred?holiness makes one deeply aware of one3 individuated self- Through the process of desacralization that it inspires. holiness makes it possible to
'expenence' genuine directness or straightfonvardness (droirure). Divine directness is. therefore. paradoxically expressed through a 'detour' that repeIs the self away from God and instead retums the self back into the midst or the presence of others. It is only in relation to the Other -a relation that is made possible by holiness - that the self undergoes direct transformation or transcendence.
Levinas employs the special terrn droiture to describe the transcendent nature of
60th the Other and the responsible subject. The straightfonvardness (droiizii-e)of the
Other refers to the sovereign or unquestionable rectitude of his or fier commanding face or proximity. The Other's rectitude, in turn, can potentially inspire the uprightness
(droiture) or integrity of the elected subject. The task of assurning a position of moral uprightness vis-à-vis the Other represents, for Levinas, the pinnacle of human rnaturity and decency. To make oneself holy, that is, to become aware of one's self as a separate and finite being - without which it is impossible to respect the Other's distinctness - is the most difficult challenge that the self must confiont in its Iife. By contrast. the sacred. which involves the act of identifjhg or kingwith some absolute object -for example. one's idea of God or the divine. a rational principle, or even the nation -represents. for
Levinas. the most common. and potentially, the most dangerous means by which we evade this challenge.
ii) The IZZusor-y Diï-ectness Of Sacredness
The literature on the sacred reveals a slippely, ofien contradictory. ~oncept.~
Scholars differ widely as to the meaning and significance of the sacred. In The
Elemenrary Forms of the Religious Life, for example, Emile Durkheim presents the sacred as the basic object of al1 religious practices.g For Durkheim. the sacred does not correspond to some entity that exists independently of hurnan subjectivity. It is the product of a collective mind. Communities externalize what they value and fear the most ont0 a specially designated object. The goup bestows the status of sanctity ont0 this object as a means to preserve and secure its self-image. In this way, the sacred object, as a distinct emblem or signature, serves the function of cementing the group's identity as vieIl as distinguishing it fiom other communities. When stnpped of its mystery and aura. the sacred, for the agnostic Durkheim, is ultimately the principal expression of a community's love for itself; that is, the tme object of sacred worship turns out to be the clan itself? Rudolf Otto. by contrast, presents us with a different picture of the sacred in his important work, The Idecl of the HoZy.10 He too regards the sacred as the fundamental
building-block of every religion. But unlike Durkheim, the sacred. for Otto, resists al1
sociological reductions beca--use it is not humanly derived. Otto renarnes the sacred the
numinous - he also uses the termsi "supra-rational" and "non-rational" - in order to
emphasize its unhowability. The sacred is virtually impossible to teach or pin doun in
words: it can only be evokec3 in the mind.11 We would be wrong. however. to interpret
the numinous as something Gllusory or irrational. Though it does not conforrn to the
standards of reason. the sacred?for Otto, is far fFom being an illusion. Indeed, in its purest
form. an experience of the sacred brings us into contact with what is most real in
existence. wïth what he calls 'the idea of the hoIy.'
The differences beween these two accounts of the sacred could not be sharper:
Ono upholds the religious OE divine statu of the sacred. while the overall thmst of
Durkheim's analysis is to reduce the sacred to a social construction or mechanism -
albeit an important and necessary one.12 Despite these differences. most scholars do share
some basic assumptions aborut the nature of the sacred. At minimum. it is agreed that the
sacred involves the veneration of, or deep attachrnent to, 'rhings set apart and
forbidden."l3 A sacred object is one wliich has been deliberately removed fiom public
circulation or discourse. Comparative studies of religion suggest that any object cm be
consecrated as sacred: natural or artificial objects, human beings. and even ideas. l But
no matter what form it takes, the sacred, if it is to be considered as such: must be sui generis. A society can have several sacred objects which it worships. but no two can be alike. Again, Durkheim expresses the prevailing view when he writes: '-because [the consecrated object] is very particular: it is absolute."l5 Not surprïsingly, the sacred's absoluteness is associated with potentially volatile and strong affective responses. As another important scholar of the sacred, Gerhardus van der Leeuw observes. no matter what particular fom it takes, the "highi'' exceptional and extrernely impressive 'Other-"' that is the sacred infuses it with a sense of the "potent [that] is dangerous."l6
Of the many interpretations of the sacred that have been put forth in the past century. it is the work of the controversial philosopher and ethnologist. Lucien Lé\?-
Bruhl. that has impressed Levinas the most. Lévy-Bruhl sets out to understand the underlying psychological and cultural dynamics behind the sacred. or what in his oum special tenninology he caIls the "rnystical experience" (1 'expérience mysriqrre). In his study of the belief systems of preliterate peoples. he is particularly keen on understanding t!!e epistemology behind their firrn conviction that supernatual forces or spirits are responsible for every event or occurrence that unfolds around them. The boundaries between the material and the spiritual world are for preliterate society conspicuously blurred. This absence of strict delimitations between the visible and invisible realms expresses itself in an intriguing epistemology. Lévy-Bruhl points out that the preiiterate individual pays linle attention to natural causes to account for changes in his or her environment. Nothing is left to chance. If a tree falls on a man and kills hirn, the "fatal tree . . . [is regarded by the cornrnunity as] but [an] instrument" of some spirit3 animosity for the dead man. 18 Instead of natural causes, therefore, the men and women of these societies look to mystical causes to explain changing circumstances or new events. These invisible forces appear to govern virtually every aspect of their Iives and environment.
They "feel themselves," Lévy-Bruhl writes, "in irnmediate and constant touch with an invisible world which is no less real than the other."lg
The prevalence of the mystical experience in preliterate societies can give rise to views that we might be inclined to dismiss as absurd, For instance. members of the
Bororo tribe of northern BraziI -this is just one of many examples cited by Lby-Bwhl
- daim to be parrots. "It is not a name which they give themselves." he observes, --nor a relationship that they claim." The claim that is made is much stronger: "[wlhat they desire to express by it is an actual identity."Zo They are parrots. The French ethnologist is quick to wam his readers against dismissing these claims as "childish and almost pathologica1.'-1 We must be carehl, he cautions. not to impose Our occidental categories on what is clearly a different way of thinking. If we judge this thinking by our standards. we wiiI arrive at only one conclusion: the preliterate mind is ilIogica1. tntent on avoiding this conclusion. Lévy-Bruhl maintains that this thinking is not illogical, but rather
"prelogical." By "prelogical" he means that the preliterate person who claims to have a mystical experience is not hostile to logic as much as he or she is indifferent to it. In particular, the preliterate individual is indifferent to the law of contradiction. which states that 'A' carmot be at once 'A' and 'B.' According to Lévy-Bruhl the preliterate mind is perfectly capable of making logical distinctions. If it is pointed out to this individual. he or she will recognize that the conviction or daim to be simultaneously two distinct identities betrays a logical conriradiction. This recognition, however. does not diminish
the preliterate person's convic~tionin the least. As a result, Lévy-Bruhl concludes that pre-
logical and logical processes croexist within the preliterate psyche -the pre-logical.
howeve- generally take precedence over the Iogical whenever there is a conflict or
dispute between the thought processes.
Léw-Bruhl proposes hatwe adopt what he calls the "law of participation'- to help
us understand the mystical psyachology that undergirds pre-logical utterances. Unlike the
scientific mind. the preliterate autlook does not impose strict delimitations on the objects
of its environrnent. This fluid ontology permits the self to participate or mimeticaI1y
identity with any number of objects or forces - some visible and others inaccessible to the immediate senses. In the cavllective representations of the preliterate consciousness. he wites. in Les Fonctions mentarles,
objects. beings, phenornena can be. though in a way incomprehensible to us. both themselves and somethGng other than themselves . . . . [these entities can furthemore] give forth and . . . receive mystic powers, virtues. qualities [and] influences. which make tbemselves felt outside, without ceasing to remain where they are.22
The fact that there is no clear demarcation between the material and the immaterial world. and the fact that the preliterate :individual cmparticipate in both, seems to suggest that the structure of the preliterate self is equally fluid.23 In such an environrnent where the distinction between subject ana object is inchoate or, at best, undefined. it no longer seems implausible that someon~emight daim to be both A and B at the same time. What should be underscored here is the directness and the immediateness of the mystical experience. Sacred rites. Lévy-Bruhl shows, have as their main purpose to create direct and immediate access to the supematural world. In order to accomplish this goal. sacred rites rnake use of mimetic gestures or activities? like the wearing of masks:
To Wear a mask . - , is one of the most serious and weighty matters that there can be: it involves an immediate and direct contact, and even an intimate participation, with the beings of the unseen world. . . . For a brief moment, the individuality of the actor gives place to that spint he represents. or rather they are fused t0gether.2~
This understanding of the mimetic fùnction of sacred rites contrasts sharply with
Durkheim's theory of the syrnbolic representation of the sacred. For Léw-Bmhl. the rnask is not. as Durkheim maintains, a symbol of the sacred. Rather. in putting on the mask. the sacred participant identifies - literally merges -with the power that is associated with the supernatural presence or object. At its most basic levei. the sacred experience. for Lévy-Bruhl, is not mediated by symbols, but rather functions at the level of affective immediacy or identification.
According to Levinas. Lévy-Bmhl presents a more accurate understanding of the phenomenology of the sacred than we find in theorists like Durkheim. Commenting on what he takes to be the rnost innovative feature of Lévy-Bruhl's analysis of the sacred or mystical experience. Levinas writes, in Existence and Exisients: "What is new in the idea of participation which Lévy-Bruhl introduced [is] the destruction of categories which had hitherto been used to describe the feelings evoked by 'the sacred"' (DEE 98, EE 60).
Durkheim's analysis of the sacred, Levinas points out, wrongly assumes that the ego and the sacred object retain their separate and distinct identities. The French sociologist' s principaI error is to assume that "if the sacred breaks with profane being by the feelings that it arouses. these feelings remain those of a subject facing an object" (EE 60). Lé-
Bruhl's deeper insight, however, is to see that the daims associated with mystical expenences reveal a mdimentary ontological level in which the subject-object dichotomy has either yet to emerge or has been eradicated. As we saw in chapter one. a world without delimited beings or cohesive selves does not, in Levinas's mind. correspond to a pure nothingness. Rather. Levinas shows that existence shorn of any detemination or delineation results in the paralyzing return of difise being. or the il y ci. One can see then that Lévy-Bruhl's discussion of the participation of mystical experiences overlaps precisely with Levinas's conception of the il y a. "The disappearance of al1 things and of the 1." Levinas remarks. "leaves what cannot disappear. the sheer fact of being in which one participates. . . . Being rernains, like a field of forces, like a heavy atmosphere belonging to no one . . ." (DEE 95, EE 58). For Levinas, Lévy-Bruhl's notion of participation corresponds to the expenence of the dissoIution of the hypostatic self. of existence without existents.
Durkheim imagines that there is a subject that possesses certain feelings in the presence of the sacred object. Both Lévy-Bruhi and Levinas, however. concur that in the sacred experience there is no longer a self in possession of itself. but rather a self that is itself possessed by affective forces outside its control. The "heavy atrnosphere" of anonymous existence that remains in the absence of the subject-object polarity seizes the enervated self. In an essay in which he examines the philosophical implications of Léw- Bruhl's work Levinas htes: "niings transform themselves. from one thing to another. because [in participation] their forms count for Iittle compared to the nameless forces that cornmand hem" (EN 6 1-2). Possessed by the sacred object, the self is powerless to represent - and therefore to contain -the overwhelming affects that accompany the mystical expenence. instead, the self is taken over, inundated by intense feelings that include fear and awe. Lévy-Bruhl had dready shown that if prelogical thought does not observe basic logical principles this is so because its fom of relating to the world is primarily affective. The phenomenology of affect, in opposition to conceptual and representational thinking, is direct and irnmediate. It is the irnmediacy that belongs to such intense feelings as awe that creates the impression in the sacred worshipper of being in direct contact with the supernaturd world. Sumrnarizing Lévy-Bruhl's thesis. Levinas writes: "[ilf participation opens a dimension that leads to the supernatural. this supematural is not a simple replica . . . of this world . . . its supematuralness is dit-ecr& accessible through emotional experience . . ." (EN 61 [my emphasis]). As the subject recedes -along with its representational and intentional powers -during the sacred experience, what remains is the strange, horrific sense of being directly commanded by elemental powers. The sacred, in other words, depersonalizes the self.
The state of mind, or more precisely, the destmchued or unravelled mind that the il y a - the invisible forces that grip the self - effects can be sirnultaneously temfiing and enthralling. As van der Leeuw observes in his phenomenogical study of religion. the experience of the sacred is intensely ambivalent: Physicd shudderïng, ghostly horror, fear, sudden terro- reverence. humility, adoration. profound apprehension, enthusiasm - al1 these lie in nzrce within the awe experienced in the presence of Power. And because these attitudes show two main tendencies, one away from Power and the other towards it, we speak of the ambivalent nature of awe.25
The vertiginous experience of the self blending in with undifferentiated being can itself become an object of fascination, as the self merges with the exhilarating power of the ilj: u. Consequently, the il y a can give rise to the impression that one has entered into a nem- order: the feeIing or sense that one has been transported out of the profane. out of ordinq space and time. But is this truly an experience of transcendence? Levinas suspects that the sacred entails a confision of the absolute or divine wïth the elementary powers of the ily a. Hence. in "Desacra~izationand Disenchantment." he observes that the sacred '-adonis itself with the prestige of prestiges" (NTR 141). It is the "appearance"
(Ibid.) - or pretence -of the absolute. Hence, the claims of supernatural experiences that are made by those who undergo mystical experiences prompts a strong suspicion on the part of Levinas. 1s the sacred actually that door that leads directly to the divine.
Levinas wonders out loud. or is it in fact, nothing more than "a seething. subjective mass of forces. passions, and imaginings?" (DL 147, DF 102 [tram. mod.]). It is not difficult to guess how Levinas will answer this question. Genuine "[t]ranscendence]." he writes in
Toiality and Infinip. "is to be distinguished fiom a union with the transcendent by participation" (TI 77). The participation, or transient existence, of the sacred is a lie. for
Levinas. because nothing that stems fiom within being can filfil the promise to transport the self out of ordinary time and space. The sacred -and its associated experiences of rapture, ecstasy, enthusiasm. and mystery -sustains a powerfùl illusion of
transcendence,
iiij The Persistence of the Sacred in the Modern World
We would grossly underestimate the power of participation to assert itself on the
mind if we thought its allure was limited to preliterate society. Lévy-Bmhl succurnbed to this error in his early work. He initially believed that mystical participation was for al1
intents and purposes a distinctive feature of preliterate cultures- His early attachment to evolutionq theory led him to conclude in Les Fonctions mentales that the deveIopment of more technologically adept societies also coincided with the gradual atrophy of the pre- logical component of the mind - which according to Lévy-Bruhl represents the dominant cognitive tendency of preliterate consciousness. At the same time as the pre-
Iogical inclinations of the mind wore away in emergent technologica1 societies. the mind's logical potential becarne increasingly more pronounced, eventually supplanting the pre-logical processes alt0~ether.26To his credit. Lévy-Bmhl would in due time distance himseIf from this dubious evolutionary scheme. hstead, he came to the crucial realization that the mystical psychology that he discemed in preliterate peoples is equally
"present in every human rnind? The principle of participation. Lévy-Bruhl firmly concIudes in his posthumous Notebooks, does not imply that there are two types of consciousness - a preliterate and a modem mind - but rather, one universal mind that is capable of making logical discriminations and that is equally susceptible to the
epistemological fluidity that participation encourages.
In Levinas's case, it seems at first sight that he is undecided about what role
participation (of the sacred or mystical experience) plays in the modem world. At times.
he seems to suggest that the sacred ceases to be a factor for western cultures: i[idolatries] are perhaps no longer a danger for us, modem as we are . . ." (TN 57). On other occasions, however. he speaks of the continued presence of an "inexpugnabIe sacrïlazation," of a world that is not "sufficiently desacralized.?' one that necessitates a renewal of the demystification proce~s.~gThese two divergent positions are not the result of an insufficiently developed theory of the sacred, as Tracy seems to suspect. Rather.
Levinas's conflicting comments reflect what he takes to be the ambiguous status of the sacred in the modem world. On the one hand, the presence of the sacred in organized religion has dramatically receded in the West. The gods of the ancient world have long been destroyed in the occidental world. Since the majority of western citizens are either atheist. agnostic. or practising members of religions that descend fiom Jewis h monotheism.29 it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a return. for exarnple. to a wide- spread worshipping of the celestial bodies. Astronauts, Levinas observes in one of his essays on the sacred. may be esteemed as the new heroes or demi-gods of the present age
- especially in the minds of children and science-fiction aficionados - but modem science has made it virtually impossible to view the moon as anything more than a large rock (SF 28n4). Nevertheless, Levinas cautions that the dynamic of participation that is central to the sacred experience re-ernerges in the modern world in novel foms - including forms that are not overtiy religious - such as the "hiddem unconscious cults without hieratic rites: as [well as] ideologies [and certain social and political] fads . . ."
(Thr 57). 1 will now bnefly outline a few examples of modem forms of participation.
In the last chapter, 1 discussed the reasons why Levinas beliezves Gerrnan fascism represents a renewal of paganisrn- The Nazi glorification of nature and power, along with its obsession with biological purity, are for Levinas just a few of the- tehgsigns of a culture that has surrendered or abandoned itself to a fascination wihelcmental life.
EqualIy disturbing about fascism is the phenornenon of mass identification. The dynamic of participation or transient existence - the fusion of identities - is. however, one that fascism shares with other forms of modern political culture. Levinas points in particular to the phenornenon of state worship and the cult of personalities as other strong indicators of a recidivism in the psychology of mystical parti~i~ation.30Levinas. no doubt. has in mind the virtual apotheosis of state leaders like Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse Tung. The intense veneration of figures like StaIin and Mao - along with their estreme-right counterparts. Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco -on the part of millions of people suggests the influence of a sort of primitive wish, so cogently described in Freud's Grorrp
Psychology. to relinquish one's identity for the more potent identity . of the larger community and an authoritarian leader. The relations that bind indiv iduals in these groups. Freud writes. revolve around or "bondage."~ l This form of political structure, Freud was right to point out, is highly effective because itç members - having given up their autonomy and independence -are wlnerable to affective manipulation.
But manipulation is a small price to pay -or so it seems - when we keep in mind that in exchange for the collective power and security of the group one is fieed from the anxieties that accompany the private or distinct individual.
What these few examples reveal is that the mystical impetus. the desire to participate in the powerful difision of general being, can readily coexist with the rationality and scientific ordering of modem society. Despite the fact that modern institutions have curtailed the influence of the mythical through their rational structuring and organization of reaIity, the modem self, nonetheless, continues to be vulnerable to the problem of participation or mimetic identification. In Levinas's mind. Lévy-Bruhl was indeed right to question his earlier inclination to posit the presence of two types of mind
- the preliterate and the modem -and to see instead that there is really only one universal psyche with conceptual and mimetic capacities. Despite the cultural and scientific achievements of its nation, German anti-semitism showed how frighteningly simple it is for a people of a highly advanced society to yield to the more nefbous illusions that result from rnimetic psychology. Just as Lévy-Bruhl's preliterate individual suspects that some hostile spirit is behind every fortuitous circumstance, so too the anti- semite is convinced that every il1 or uncertainty in the world reveals the insidious imprint of the Jew. Once consciousness surrenders to the 'law of participation.' there is little that reasoning and education can do to counterbalance the affective distortions that result. In this respect too the preliterate mind is no different than the mind of modem group psychology.
In addition to the phenornena of state religion and the powerful appeal of authontarian leaders. Levinas detects disturbing sips of the sacred in forms of political discourse that appear to be quite antithetical to those 1 have described above. In particular.
Levinas is troubled by the presence of the sacred in utopian politics. Though he does not explicitly say so in "Place and Utopia" (in DF), 1 think that the principal object of his critique of utopianism is a particular current of radical idealism that runs through modem
French history. Utopianism, of course, has found adherents throughout the w-orld. But it has been especially pronounced in the turbulent political landscape of modem France: in the French Revolution of 1789, the nineteenth-century communal aspirations of the Saint-
Simonians and Fourierists, the student and worker insurgencies of May 1968. to name but a few esamples. In criticising utopianism, Levinas, of course. is not condemning the desire for a more just world - a goal which, as his own work makes evident- he too shares. What he is critical of, however, is the fact that at various moments. factions within these movements have demonstrated a zealousness that has threatened to make them indistinguishable from - if not worse thm -the very oppressors that they sought to overcome. Thus. though the French Revolution began with concrete ambitions and goals. it was eventualiy hi-jacked by the murderous fanaticism of disilhsioned participants who felt that reform was not proceeding quickly enough. This tendency towards extreme fervour never disappeared from French reformist politics. As recently as the late 1960s and the 1970s. it manifested itself in extreme-Lefi groups that had taken it upon themselves to kidnap representatives of the 'bourgeois' class, and then to t~ them in what was sornetimes calIed 'the peoples' court.' What these groups have in common is an urgent desire to effect immediate and wholesale political change. Levinas is very critical of this utopian desire because of its disturbing lack of patience and unwillingness to make compromises. -'[TOI move towards justice," he writes. "while denying with a global acr. the very conditions within which the ethical drama is played out is to embrace nothingness and. under pretext of saving everything. to Save nothing" (DF 10 1-2). Utopia is -‘net just vain in itself." he caustically remarks, "it is also dangerous in its consequences" (DF 10 1 ). Utopianism is dangerous, because in its desperate eagemess to transfom the social landscape. its adherents fa11 prey to a sweeping enthusiasm. which like the sacred or mystical experience suppresses or displaces the responsible agent. In his or her burning zeal to attain the Just Society, the utopian will sacrifice anyone and anything - as was demonstrated by the radical militantst virtual love affair with the guillotine during the reign of terror that gipped France in the final years of the French
Revolution - for the sake of the supreme ideal that he or she believes is directly at hand.
The depersonalizing dynarnics of participation are also present. according to
Levinas in various strands of conternporary thought. Levinas frequently condemns the popular revival of the mythico-poetic perspective in the twentieth century (cf. DF38). inspired by figures like Mircea Eliade and Car1 Jung. Even Lévy-Bruhl's ideas. Levinas larnents, have been unjustly arrogated for their own purposes by those who regard myth as a healthy antidote to the excesses of modernity (EN67).Now while Levinas often unfairly neglects to mention the complexities of this revival - ignoring. for exarnple. die fact that Jungians devote a good deal of attention to issues of psychological individuation
- his criticisms, nonetheless, in my view, raise some important concerns about the role of myth in contemporary intellectual life. He is right. 1 think. to be troubled by the fact that two miIlennia after both Jewish monotheists and Plato had successfulIy initiated a process of demythologizing western thought and religion -and consequently establishing the conditions for scientific and mord progress -there continue to be prominent thinkers. like Jung, who argue that hurnanity is governed by ineluctable
--rnythical forces" or "archetypes." in support of their view. proponents of the m>-thico- poetic position point to the recurrence of certain symbolic motifs and rites across di\-erse cultural settings. However. the longevity and ubiquity of mythical consciousness mereIy attests to the tenacity of the sacred, not its tmth value. The allure of mythology stems in part from an unquestioned attachrnent to the cyclical rnovements inherent in natural processes. For Levinas. the possibility for a society of autonomous and responsible agents is foreclosed unless humanity fkees itself from the potent image or illusion of an etemal circularity that nature casts on the mind. It would be impossible. for exarnple. to suggest that the murder of innocent people is an absolute wrong because nature itself makes no such discriminations. If anything, the random cycle of peremial generation and destruction or decay consolidates the impression that murder is just another essential part of the order of things. If by their very definition, archetypes are unalterable, then it remains unclear how we could possibly reconcile a conception of human autonomy and responsibility with the rnythical outlook.
As we saw in chapter two, a common feature of rnythological discourses is a persistent displacement of responsibility: the origin of excessive or violent actions is ofien assigned to spirits or gods that are believed to have possessed the self. In his study of the sacred ntuals of ancient Greece, E.R. Dodds avers that &-thepsychologica1 function
[of the cultic practices] was to satis@ and relieve the impulse to reject responsibility." an impulse which. he rightly underlines, "exists in al1 of us and can become under certain social conditions an irresistible craving."32 Indeed this craving to believe that there are invisible forces that determine Our behaviour and moral choices is not Iimited to the ancient bards and their contemporary admirers. Today, the new purveors of nzythos include. amongst others. a number of psychiatrists and neuro-biologists who would have us believe - or at least, according to the popular culture that lives off their findings - that genetics and brain-chemistry are destiny. Every human dysfunction and social rnisdeed. Our present culture assures us, has its corresponding gene - and. therefore. excuse. Evolution explains why men rape. AlcohoIics cannot be held fully accountable for their actions because they are genetically predisposed to drink. The nine-year-old who stabs his or her fellow-classrnate with a pencil apparently does so becazcse he or she suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. And so forth. In this way. our society breeds a culture of irresponsibility, where no one, or very few it seems, cm be held responsible for their actions. (And of course, by the same token, society washes its own hands of any responsibility or comection to those who transgress its laws.) In a slightly different
context, Sartre accurately labelled the tendency to explain away behaviour on the basis of
fixed mental complexes as "psychological determinism." This type of determinism. he
writes in Being and Nothingness, forms "the bais of al1 attitudes of excuse."jj While by
no stretch of the imagination could we conclude that disciplines like modem psychology or neuro-biology represent new forms of the sacred, the fact that many of their practitioners are intent on downplaying the role of the responsible self. suggests that their respective paradigrns share at least one troubling affinity -4th the sacred. I am not questioning the claim that individu& might be biologically predisposed to act in certain ways. There is a tendency. however. in our culture to interpret such facts as the real cause for someone's behaviour. But. as Sartre cogently argues. this is to confuse attributes with essences and causes. Psychological determinism reduces facticity (contingent features like one's birth-place. or the colour of one's eyes) to etched-in-stone identity - and in the process dirninishes the significance of having to take responsibility for one's entire self.
What is worse. for Levinas, is that the tendency to minimize the responsible self has aIso seduced contemporary philosophy. He is particularly critical of the later
Heidegger's turn to pre-Socratic thought with its emphasis on the elements and its pagan thernes of '-home" and "enrootedness."j4 While Levinas, as 1 have shoun in earlier chapters. is critical of many of the arguments found in Being and Time. he nevertheless readily refers to this text as one of 'cthe four or five" greatest in the philosophical canon (EI 37). praising it- in partïcular, for breaking new philosophicd ground. By contrast. he
has nothing but scom for what he takes to be the regressive tum taken by Heidegger in his
later thought. Heidegger's later work, he notes, ccexalts"the worst tendencies of western
thought
by showing in the most pathetic way its anti-religious essence become a religion in reverse. The lucid sobriety of those who cd1 thernselves friends of tmth and enemies of opinion would then have a mysterious prolongation! . . . Heidegger shows in what intoxication the lucid sobriety of philosophers is steeped. (EDE 171, CP53)
The later Heidegger. for Levinas, has dl but abandoned the idea of the human agent in
favour of a nebulous. almost, mystical, conception of being that determines epochal standards of tnith. We are no longer speakers of language - as Heidegger still held in
Being and Time. Instead, Ianguage for the later Heidegger is the house of being that speaks. it speaks to us. that is. it conditions and limits our values and perspectives. and in this way shapes our destinies. Thus in "Building Dwelling Thinking." he writes: "Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language. while in fact lungzrage remains the master of man.'*j5 Levinas also recognizes the power of discursive structures to condition human behaviour. What perturbs him, however, is a tendency to overstate - in this respect he sees an affinity here between the anti-humanism of the later Heidegger and the French structuralism of figures like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis ~lthusserj~- the effects of language and other social structures at the expense of human agency. at the expense of holding individuals and groups personally accountable for their actions.
Again, while it might be a bit of a stretch to categorize these intellectual movements - the Iater Heidegger and stnicturaiism - as having succumbed to the "petrifjhg effect of
myths" (CP 40). 1 think that we can nevertheless still appreciate Levinas's reservations
about the anti-humanist turn within contemporary thought: in particular. about how in an
effort to outline wider metaphysical and social influences to account for human
communication and action we cmreadily reduce the individual to a mere 'discursive
effect' - to use the language of structuralism-
il*) The Sacred as Mord Evasiveness
Why does the sacred persist? Why do we yearn for the anonqmity that participation can deliver - whether as individuals or in the impersonal theories we develop to account for hurnan behaviour? For Levinas, the force of participation endures because the intense ambivalence that the il y a exerts on the mind makes it an irresistible temptation. Rather than have to face up to the consequences of the disaster of existence
- namely, that indeterminate being provides us with no signposts that might help us to lead a purposefül lifej7 -our fears, Levinas contends, can drive us to establishine idols that we imagine cm arrest the incessant ambiguity of being. We associate idols primarily with human-made objects of veneration. such as totems or natural objects like the Sun.
But idolization is not restricted to physical objects, it also encompasses comples psychological states of mind like the ones Freud aptly calls "magical thinking"38 Levinas characterises certain forms of evasive rationakations in similar terms to Freud. Thus. he warns against the "magic of spiritualization, or intenorimion" (NTR 149). For Levinas. and this brings us to what is ultimately most dangerous about the sacred. both physical and psychological idolization constitutes ethical evasion.
The problem of the sacred extends much Merthan the mimetic religions of prernodern people.j9 or the misguided utopianism of modem politics. The sacred represents the fiindamental temptation of humanity in general. This is a lesson that
Shakespeare. Levinas suggests. intuitively grasps. 'The earth hath bubbles. as the water has . . .." Banquo utters, to describe the supematural scene that he and Macbeth stumble upon in the forest.40 "And these [that is, the sight of the monstrous spectacle of a witches' meeting 1." Banquo continues, "are of them ['bubbles'] ." Levinas cites the first line of this passage as an epigram for his paper on desacralization. These "bubbles of
Nothing [bzilles dzr Rien]," Levinas goes on to Say, are "bad secrets" (DD58, NTR 14 1 ).
Levinas's laconic comment does not spell out the significance of Shakespeare's words.
Why are these bubbles -bad secrets'? An important hint to understanding Levinas's appeal to Shakespeare. 1 would argue, is provided in an earlier reference to Macbeth in
Existence and Existents. In that text, Levinas writes: "The night gives a spectral allure to the objects that occupy it still. It is the 'hour of crime,' .hou of vice,' which also bear the mark of a supematural reality. Evil-doers are disturbing to themselves like phantoms"
(EL 6 1 ). The anonymous atmosphere of the ily a -manifesting itself in the sacred form of spectres -readily becomes the 'mysterious' backdrop against which, or within which. it is possible to conceal one's cruel intentions and deeds. In this night of nights. the unique self recedes, only to be replaced by a diffise "being [that] insinuates itself even in
nothingness" (DEE 100' EE 62). This undifferentiated being that engulfs or possesses the
self is what Banquo means by the "bubbles of the Earth."
It is the sober-minded Banquo who has enough sense and integrity to question and
ultimately to distance hirnself from the diabolical allure that meanwhile has taken
possession of Macbeth's psyche. Hence, Banquo utters
That [Macbeth] seems rapt withal; [and yet] to me [addressing the mirage of the witches] you speak n0t.4~
To disenchant the powerfu1 spell that is cast by the apparition. Banquo appeals to his
reasoning faculty in an effort to restore his separate identity. Questioning the vision of the
haggardI y necromancers, he asks
. . . 1' th' name of tnith, Are ye fantastical [?]42
And when the sorcerous spectacle finally ends, Banquo, turning to Macbeth. puzzles:
have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason pn~oner?~j
The forces that mle what Shakespeare describes as the "dark night [that] strangles [even]
the travelling larnp"44 will likely possess those who do not exercise the kind of self- vigilance shown by Banquo. Lacking the power to represent the il y a to itself conceptual ly, the self is overtaken by it. The sorcerous apparition simultaneousl y tem fies and enthrals Macbeth. It captivates Macbeth, in part, because the vision betrays traces of his own disavowed mental contents - for sureIy this vision does not mark the first time that he has contemplated the possibility of supplanting King Duncan. Despite the fact that the witches make no mention of murder, it is noteworthy that Macbeth infers murder as one of the possible meanings of their premonition: "My thought. whose murder yet is but fanta~tical-?'~~Shrouded by a supematural aura -and thus lending it an authority it wouid othenvise lack -the mysterious vision entices Macbeth to carry out his secret desire to become King. Macbeth can convince himself that sacred forces command him to carty out the murderous deeds that will make him king; or. at the veT least he can persuade himself that the deed is a done-deal, that he is destined to commit it. Memon- of the vision even serves to assuage the pangs of guilt that beset him once he crystallizes the intent to kill Duncan.46 The moral force behind his bad conscience is drowned out by
Macbeth's participation in the rumblings of that strange night. At the sarne time that the ghostly-night of the ily a is imputed the prestigious designations of the 'sacred' or
'mystery.' the responsible self has al1 but vacated the scene. The "[mlystery" of the sacred, Levinas writes. '3s the excuse used for many a crime" (DF 54). That is Macbeth's
-bad secret,' and the ignoble secret of the sacred in general.
The sacred is ultimately dangerous for Levinas because it undermines the ethical relation. If there is only an effervescent self at hand, there is really no one present to greet the Other. no one to respond to the other person's questions or demands. And while there are times when it sounds as if Levinas condemns al1 sacred practices as unethical. 1 think that the subtler and more important point that he wishes to make is that such practices prornote ethical amnesia by placing the sacred object above moral concerns. "Certainly. no religion excludes the ethical," he notes, for "[elach one invokes it. but tends also to place what is specifically religious above it, and does not hesitate to 'Iiberate' the religious from moral obligations . . . " (BV5).By its very nature the sacred bypasses. and in extreme cases. abolishes, the conditions that are necessary for a responsible relationship with others (DL 28. DF 14). Aside from its divine pretensions. Levinas is perturbed by the fiequency with which the sacred is used as a vehicle for evading moral obligations. as well as for rationalking injustices. The prestige associated with the sacred serves as an effective cover for human cxuelty. The sacred, in the sense that Levinas employs this categoory. is the refusal to own the responsibility of one-s ipsei. or unique character. The experience of the sacred reflects an inability or unwillingness to accept the tmth that the Y is not unique like the Eiffel Tower or the Mona Lisa" (Tel 90. TI 1 17). It is not just one object amongst other types of objects. even if these should be distinct and special as the Mona Lisa. The uniqueness of the is far more radical: it Iacks its genus.
There is no general category or concept that can subsume ipseity. Only such an entity as ipseity is. for Levinas. worthy of the proper narne it receives.47 But such a privilege entails infinite obligations and responsibilities: a creature who can answer to a unique name is at same time an accountable being. For the very purpose or meaning of the structure of ipseity is to prepare it to encounter an equdly distinct Other: "The 1 is thus the mode in which the break-up of totality, which ieads to the presence of the absolutely other. is concretely accomplished" (Tel 90, TI 118). Ipseity makes it possible for an -1' to encounter a separate bYou.' The psychology of the sacred, however. denies al1 of this. Instead. those expenences that Levinas associates with the sacred promote the dissolution
of the self s boundaries: the self loses its identity in the sacred experience. But unless
there is a self who can assume hl1 responsibility for his or her proper name. there cmbe
no hope for moral bettement or progress in the world.
The disconcerting concIusion of Levinas's analysis seems to be that the sacred
cannot be entirely overcome because of the self s relationship to being. The analysis of
the il y a shows that the hypostatic self - separating itself from general being - is
constantly gripped by impersonal being. If modem Iife is increasingly governed by
rational structures that help to discourage the pre-representational psycholoo of
participation. we would be naïve to think that these structures represent an end to. or even
a permanent defence against. the perils of participation. Levinas's work points to
numerous areas of modern life, as we have seen ab-ove, that reveai the persistence of
mystical participation, that is. the apotheosis of the elementai. If the sacred persistentlj-
insinuates itself in our lives. then the onIy means to deal with it is to cultivate and to
sustain self-vigilance. This is where the idea of holiness plays a crucial role for Lwinas-
Y) Holiness as Desacralim f ion
According to Otto, the comrnon associatiom of morali~with holiness - for him. the purest fonn of the sacred -has obscured the essence of the meaning of the holy for
Jews and Christians. The Lutheran Otto, Iike his faxnous CO-religionist,Kierkegaard. is at pains to show the priority of the holy over the ethicai. Like the Danish philosopher. Otto is tembly troubled by the liberalization of religion in the modem world: the meaning of
God had becorne so diluted in the nineteenth century that he fears religion has become indistinguishable from ethics. The underlying message of The Idea of the Holy seems to be that there is no surer way to diminish the relevance of Christianity than to insist that the essence of God - His holiness - is synonyrnous with the commandment "Iove thy neighbour." If the expenence of the holy is identified with ethics. then God. Otto fears. will become redundant in the minds of people. The purpose of his book then is to disengage the holy from the ethical layer that is superimposed upon it. The '*ethical element." that is ofien identified with holiness (kadosh) in the scriptures. Otto maintains. was "not original and never constituted the whole meaning of the ~ord.''~*Once we strip away the secondary moral layer fiom the original essence of holiness as spoken about in the Hebrew scriptures. what remains, Otto would have us believe. is the rnysterizan fr-ernendzmand fascinans of the sacred.49 A genuine encounter with the holy sirnultaneously arouses the conflicting feelings of fear or repulsion (trenzendzrnz)and attraction (fascinans).In its original purity, morality, Otto repeatedly notes in the Idea of the Hob?.plays no part in the antipodal experience -of awe and fascination - of the holy.
Otto. it is true, believes that evaluation plays an ùiherent part in the experience of the holy. Thus, before the majesty or greatness (mujestas) of the holy. the faithhl experiences an acute feeling of dependence. Isaiah's lament -"1 am a man of unclean lips"50 - is, according to Otto' paradigrnatic of the self-depreciation that accompanies the experience of the holy. However. we would be wrong, he cautions. to interpret such
(de)valuations as instances of a moral judgement. These "outbursts of feeling." Otto
States ernphatically, are "not simply, and probably at first not at alI, moral depreciations. .
. ."si The feeling of self-depreciation that is associated with holy experîences can Zurer take on a moral sense. However, in its original state. holiness has very little. if anything. to do with morality,
Levinas would agee with Otto that the "Other" is not to be confused wïth the
-Wholly Other.' However. Otto's daim that the Hebrew idea of holiness is not originally connected to ethics will stnke not just Levinas, but most Jews. as simply wong. Thus. W.
Gunther Plaut, the author of a well-known comrnentary on the Torah. writes
[Otto] spoke only of holiness as an emotional experience, not of kedushah as aspiration and task to be approached through a disciphed life. In his zeal to give religion a unique character, Otto reduced the ethical component of holiness to a mere 'extra.' This is not the Jewish view of the subject.5'
Otto rnakes two fundamental errors. First, he underestimates. if not completely i, onores, the indissoluble link that the Hebrew scnptures establish between God's holiness and ethics. As Levinas remarks: "To Say of God that he is the God of the poor or the God of justice [as the Torah constantly repeats] involves a claim not on his attributes. but rather on his essence" (IN 182). Second, in separating the husk fiom its kernel, religion from ethics. Otto actually ends up with a conception of the holy that is indistinguishable from a pagan conception of the sacred. If Otto defines hoIiness as the numinous minus ethics then he has managed to impute ont0 the Jews the very sarne pagan view of the divine - as an impersonal power. as mystery, as a numinous force -that the authors of the
Tanakh are keen on undermining. Judaism explicitly condemns the religious experience that corresponds to Otto's version of the holy.
The conflation of holiness with the sacred conceals one of the most important contributions made by Judaisrn. For Levinas, it is imperative that we recognize the distinction between the sacred and the holy because it is precisely the latter idea that the
Jews recommend as an antidote to the ethical evasiveness that the sacred encourages. The
Hebrew notion of holiness is not merely different fiom sacredness. Holiness. for Levinas. refers to a special religious orientation that sets for itself the goal of extinguishing. or at the very least, minimizing. sacred impulses -the temptation to participate directly in the absolute. The teachings of the Torah, Levinas notes, treat the sacred as nothing less than idolatry. In the strongest language possibleyhe iterates that the Torah's dedication to holiness represents the "absolute opposite of idolatry" (Thi 58). If the prophets criticize the gods of the nations they do so not out of a competitive fear. What troubles the prophets is not that the foreign gods might one day supplant ùieir God. When Jeremiah. for example. denounces the idols as a source of 'terror' (Jer. 5038). he does not imply that the idols constitute an objective threat to God. Jeremiah and the other Biblical prophets do not perceive these gods as senous rivals for the simple reason that they interpret these gods, fiom the start, as fetishes. The "gods [are] made by hurnan hands." and because they are made of "wood and of Stone . . . [they] cannot see and cannot hear. and cannot eat and cannot smell" (Deut. 4: 28). If these idols are not a thxeat to their God. why then are they so harshly reviled by the Biblical prophets? If the prophets declare \var on idolatry- they do so "not on account of its errors" (DF 174). that is. nmt on account of the doctrinal differences that separate Jews fiom practitioners of other reaigions. Rather. the fierce condernnation of sacred practices stems fiom the Jewish convi~tionthat these practices contribute to a climate of moral indifference.
It is not. . Christianity. . .nor atheism, nor science, nor even the philosophical science [that threatens Judaism's ethical message]. Rather it is the chiidhooti crisis, the childhood illness, the adolescent illness which was con-tracted in the course of a contact that was too ~volousand imprudent. To be OH not to be. that is the question that comes at us today fiom a certain conception O f history that contests Judaism's oldest claim. (DF 198-9)
It is the worship of being -that is, the celebration of the impersonal power of nature, the numinous elements, and the awe-inspiring heavens -that causes ùle praphets so much distress. The idols are vilified because the "childhood ihess" that is the sacred - the alleged directness or oneness with the supernaturd -clouds the imagination. and can seme to either instigate or to camouflage social injustice.
The sacred. or direct contact with the absolute, is unconditionaliy prohibited by the Torah. Instead. the Torah teaches that the true nature of the divine is Radosh -that is. holy. Kadosh also means separateness. The holy, therefore, signifies the i dea of the infinite distance that separates finite individuals fiom God. Translating a Jewish religious insight into the nomenclature of Greek philosophy, Levinas States that the Biblical notion of holiness is synonyrnous with the 'absolute,' one of the names of God (BG' 1 19). But whereas the Greek mind is apt to conflate the absolute with being (on, ousia), the Jewish mind is extremely sensitive to the impossibility of conceiving God in this rnanner. AI1 attempts to render God visible are guilty of idolatry. Instead, Judaism is fkom the start concemed. as is demonstrated by its self-conscious use of language and rites. with presewing the tension between the Infinite and the finite. To ensure the continued awareness of this tension. the Torah gives a central place to Halakhah or Law? Six hundred and thirteen laws are revealed in the Torah. These laws occupy the physical heart of the Torah, that is. the middle books of the Torah (most of Exodus. all of Leviticus and
Numbers. and the first part of Deuteronomy). The final part of the Book of Leviticus contains the heart of the Torah's view on the holy. "Holy are you to be. for holy am 1.
YHWH Our God" (Lev. 18:2).54 The entire code is built around this injunction. The rituals that make up the Halakhic code are meant to promote an awareness of the boundaries that separate hurnanity, nature, and the divine. This emphasis on separateness serves to intempt the ego's reflexive identification not only with nature and God but with oneseIf as weI1.
In observing the centrai directive to be holy, two objectives are accomplished.
First, the process of sanctification -which in the Torah is often described in terms of ritual demarcations between pure and impure objects or actions - promotes an appreciation of the gap between one's mortal self and God. in this way. holiness intensifies self-awareness. Sanctification is intended to instill a strong sense of boundaries, and thus to facilitate the process of self-individuation. Kedushah. the process of making oneself holy, can be thought of as a process of reverse sacralization. Whereas the sacred encourages the loss of self, holiness accentuates self-consciousness. Before the holy one becomes increasingly aware of oneself as a separate and distinct being Second. if holiness heightens our awareness of the distance between self and the divine. it does so not merely to encourage respect for the 'wholly Other' -that is. the self learns not to confuse its identity with God as happens in the sacred -but more importantly. as this point is lost on Otto. the distance between self and God throws us back fnto the drarna of interpersonal affairs. If God prohibits direct representations of HimseIf. He does so in effect to foi1 the pervasive fantasy that the absolute can be known, and instead to reorient the self to its proper vocation. The God of Jewish rnonotheism. Levinas declares. -'does mt give Himself over to human fantasies" (DF 102). And with similar confidence.
Levinas asserts: "whatever [God's] ultirnate . . . meaning" may entail. He "appears to human consciousness . . . 'clothed' in values." This "clothing is not foreign to his nature or to his supra-nature. . . . Religious experience . . . cmonly be primady a moral experience" (NTR 15). There are numerous passages in the Jewish scriptures that attest to
Levinas's daims. In particular. I would point to the important nineteenth chapter of
Leviticus which begins with the commandment to sanctie one's self (1-2). and ends with the injunction against sorcery (3 1): the exhortation to honour the "face of the elderly" (32) and. finally. the commandment to Iove the stranger (33-34). In other words. puce Otto. holiness is in its very essence ethical- It forbids the sacred - represented by sorcery in the above passage - for the sake of developing an ethical awareness of others in generaI. and especially of those in Our midst who are in particular need or disenfianchised. Ethics thus lies at the heart of the uncornpromising cornrnandment to become holy after God. According to Levinas, this has been the guiding principle of Judaisrn ever since the introduction of the Torah. This principle explains why one Talmudic rabbi went so far as to advise that one should love the Torah more than God; advice that Levinas interprets as "protection againsl the madness of a direct contact with the sacred that is unmediated by reason" (DL 204, DF 144 [my ernphasis]). If Jews place so much emphasis on the letter of the Torah they do so consciously as a means to put in check the not so uncornmon hubris that wants to know or possess God. Levinas restores to Judaism the ethical intent behind the Talmudic dedication to @O~OUS study and interpretation. In other words, Biblical interpretation is itself conceived as an instrument of individuation, another rneans to foster self-awareness, and by extension to preserve a respectful distance from others. Not distance in the sense of aloohess, but rather the distance that presenres the other human being's alterity. The desacrilization that holiness demands - in this particuls case. the promotion of vigilance through study and reading -clears the way for the ethical. The process of imrnunizing the self against religious and psychological idolatry rnakes it possible to recognize the distinct face of the Other.
r.0 The Straight$onvardness of the Other
At the same time that it denounces the false desire to fuse directly with the divine.
Judaism insists that the divine, nevertheless, directly affects us. How do we understand this paradox? The first thing we need to note is that if God is direct. He is so in neither an ontological nor an epistemological sense. "The infinite who orders me." Levinas insists,
"is neither a cause acting straight on. nor a theme, already dominated . . . by fieedorn"
(OB 12). Levinas provides us with an important cIue for coming to terms with this paradox when he States that Godosdirectness involves a "detour" (OB 12) or '-strange mission" (DU1 15. GCM 69). This detour -as 1have already suggested in the previous .. section - involves the ethical impetus of God's holiness. In "God and Philosophy.
Levinas writes: '-goodness of the Good - of the Good that neither sleeps nor slumbers - inclines the movement it calls forth, to turn it away fkom the Good and orient it toward the other (autrui),and only thus toward the Good. This is an obliqueness that goes higher than rectitude" (DY11 14, GCM 69 [trans. mod.]). In its most condensed form. the detour through God's directness cm be surnmarized as foliows: the Infinite or Good redirects me
(the detour) towards the fiankness (or directness) of the Other.
There is no question that divine directness follows an oblique trajecton;: it begins with the deeply narcissistic wish to be one with the absolute or the supernatual - a reunion that one imagines to be intimate and direct -and it ends with what my ego finds the least desirable. namely. the critical and needy countenance of a stranger or neighbour.
*'The Desirable." that is. the Infinite or the Good, "cornmands me tu what is nondesirable. the undesirable pur excellence - to the other (autrui)" (DVI 1 13, GCM 68 [trans. mod.]).
Another way of stating the paradox of divine directness is that the infantile wish to fuse directly with the absolute -a wish that is undoubtedly fûelled by the travails and unending anxieties of everyday existence - gives way to what is tnily direct. to what alone can transforrn the self. fiee it from the meaningless ambiguity of diffuse being. namely. the Other. At one point in Otherwise than Being, Levinas describes the pecuiiar logic that is at work here by citing a wonderfully apt proverb that he has discovered as an epigam in one of Paul Claudel's collections of poetry: "God writes straight with crooked lines" (OB 147). This Portuguese proverb succinctly expresses Levinas's conviction that the pursuit of the sacred ignores the cries of the prophets who are inspired by the --voie of God in ifsextreme straightness through the appearance of the iortttrms puths it takes"
(ThT65 [my emphasis]). The directness of transcendence that every self yearns for -
Désir - finds its only truthful expression in the inter-human world. The yearning for the sacred. by contrast- represents a suspect desire to evade the tonurous. that is. the difficult paths or lines that connect me to others: the mystic desires only the most direct route to
God. In a concise passage from Totalw and Infinity, Levinas connects the prohibition of the sacred - the illusionaI directness of participation - with the transformative directness or straightfonvardness (droiture) of the Other's face.
The comprehension of God taken as participation in his sacred life. an allegedly direct comprehension, isimpossible, because participation is a denial of the divine and because nothing is more direct than the face to face, which is straightforwardness [droiture] itself. . . . There can be no 'knowledge' of God separated from the relationship with men. (Tel 5 1. TI 78)
The straight line between me and the Other's uprightness [droiiure].SS forbids me to participate in the sacred or mystical experïence; it "sobers" me (OS 94). "Al1 the rest." that is. al1 attempts to circumvent the ethical relation in the quest for the absolute. are-
Levinas firmly concludes, nothing but "a dream" (DF 102)-
The Portuguese maxim that Levinas invokes is even more apt when we consider
how it resonates with -and, at the same time provides us with a fiesh perspective with
which to understand - Descartes's insight that ''Godl in creating me, should have pIaced
this idea [of the infinite] in me, as it were, the mark of the crafisman stamped on this
work. . . .'-56 God '%=rites straight" or "stamps" the surface of my psyche with His "mark"
because His holiness -the demand for separation and individuation -reorients my attention to the straightfonvard questioning of the Other. The holiness of the Good deflects the self s desire for it. Instead, the self retums - dejected. with its wounded narcissism -to the scene of the Other. In this process. the Good "presenres its illeio. to the point of letting it be excluded from the analysis Save for the trace it leaves in words . .
." (-4E 158. OB 123). Illeity is Levinas's philosophical neologism for the holiness of God.
This detour at a face and this detour from this detour in the enigma of a trace we have called illeity. Illeity lies outside the 'thou' and the thematization of objects. A neologisrn formed with iI (fie) or ille, it indicates a way of concerning me without entering into conjunction with me. (AE 15, OB 12)
In redirecting me to the non-integratable alterity of the Other, the distance of the Infinite from the finite is kept intact. Though there is nothing to grasp on - no divine relic to touch. no icon to medibte on - what nevertheless forces its way into my psyche is a trace (or "mark" in Descartes's vocabulary) of the Infinite. What remains is the awkward sense that 'something,' not of rny own making, nor of this world, has displaced my present centre of attention. In Levinas's hands, Descartes's conception of the Infinite - the intriguing discovery of the idea of the Infinite that is thought by a finite cogito - now comes to mean the "idea of God that comes to mind [de Dieu qui vient à I 'idée]"in the
Other's presence. In the context of a discussion of Buber and Gabriel Marcel's work.
Levinas States that an "extra-ordinary relation" takes place between I and You: --the word
God is pronounced. as if it shed light upon the space in which the rectitude of the dialogue can take form. You par excellence. 'Eternal' you, offering itself to invocation rather than observation or experience: an invisible God" (AT 94). Levinas calls this invocation an an-archical trace, because its ongin escapes consciousness. The trace of the
M'holIy Other -that the other human being bears - recedes before I can actually master it as an experience.57
It might be tempting to think of the Other as a proxy for God. as a go-between or mediator between the seIf and God. Levinas, however, is emphatic that the Other ought not to be conceived in this manner. There is no mediation in the encounter with the Other: before him or her. 1 am directly challenged. The Other's face or proximity. therefore. is not a sign of a hidden God (OB 94). Moreover, the Other, like the self. is unaware of the role that has been assigned to him or her; the Other is unaware of the fact that he or she is caught in a drama that is not of his choosing. Consequently, the Other. no more than 1. has direct access to the Infinite that draws us together. So how can the Other have a direct impact on the self? While the Other is not God, he or she does share one essential feature with the divine. The Other's singular presence -the Hebrew panim - is also holy. The Other's fiagile alterity, as Levinas points out in a terse but suggestive note from
Ofhenvise than Being, "explains" Christ's prohibition, "NoZi me fangere" (AE 1591-28.
OB 1981128).Do not touch me. Keep your distance from me. Respect my distinctness. 1 am not you. It is with these silent but resounding words that the holy or separate Other commands me by his or her proximity or face. In other words, the Other's directness has nothing to do with the experiences of fusion or merger that are part and parcel of mystical participation. If the Other is immediate and direct he or she is so because the Other's proximity awakens in me a jolting awareness of his irreducible difference from me.
The force of the Other's commanding presence stems fiom his or her vulnerability which has the power to challenge my moral indifference. The Other's separateness or distinctness is "in the first instance a directness and a rectitude: a being-face-to-face, precisely as if he were exposed to some threat at point blank range, as if he were to be delivered to his death" (ATr 162-3). Elsewhere, Levinas writes: "'Before any particulai- expression . . . there lies an extreme rectitude. a point-blank rectitude the straightness of the arrow's flight or of the projectile that kills" (Bi109).5* The Other's presence hits me straight-on. The most irnmediate 'experience' that one can have involves the "straightest- shortest. and most direct movement" (AT 95) that connects the vulnerable, mortal face of the Other with the shame that I feel before him or her. Why do 1 feel shame? Levinas catches sight of an ethical 'phenomenon' which has hitherto eluded philosophical reflection. In facing the Other, 1 have a more direct experience of the Other's mortality - in his or her ageing skin, frailties -than the Other has of him or herself.59 What immense responsibility this entails. I discover the Other's vulnerable status as a mortal creature long before he or she sees it reflected in a mirror. This direct awareness of the
Other's fragility weighs down on me. It is "[als if the invisible death that the other faces were my business, as if that death concerned me" (AT 140).
vii) Challenging the Sacred in Mysficism, Philosophy, and Christiunih
Levinas, it needs to be pointed out, does not safeguard Judaism from his criticisms of the sacred. If he is a cntic of mysticism, he does not make an exception for Jewish mysticism. or ~asidisrn.~~Some interpreters - like Tracy - have argued that Levinas-s critique of the Hasid overlooks the ethicd elements in their mystical practices. Levinas is certainly aware of the ethical categories -Iike tikkun, or ethical repair - that are to be found in the Kabbalah, the most important body of Jewish mystical writings. However. what concerns him with Jewish mysticism - as with al1 forms of mysticism - is that the ecstatic experiences it can evoke cm lead to a forgetting of ethicality. This concern is not unique to Levinas. His critique of mysticism is shared by other Jewish intellectuals. In his own analysis of the quest for the sacred, Rosenzweig likens the mystic's desire to Gyges and his magical ring:
Magic cloak and Gyges' ring are . . . what the self appears to Wear if one regards it solely as the devout recipient of revelation. . . . The mystic rotates the magic ring on his finger in arrogant confidence, and at once he is alone with "his" God. and incomrnunicado to the world.61 But more than either Levinas or Rosenzweig. it is Buber's critique of mysticism that shows us what dangers &se when one fervently pursues the religious wish to unite with God. No one cm accuse Buber of being an uninformed critic of rnysticism. His life- long dedication to the study of Jewish and non-Jewish mysticism is reflected in an impressive body of scholarship on mystical practices. Buber's persona1 relationship to mysticism. however. underwent a major shifi when he was in his late thirties.6' At that time. Buber practised mystical meditation daily. These exercises were meant to induce a state of spiritual rapture. In the sumrner of 1914, Buber found himself at home. practising his mystical exercises. He was in the habit at this time of spending several hours at a time in a state of mystical ecstasy, and he had just come out of one of these trances when a young man paid him a visit. Buber was accustomed to such visits. for despite his age. he had alreadÿ developed a reputation as a spiritual mentor. On this particular occasion. as on previous ones, he felt that he sincerely performed his mentoring duties by listening to what the young man had to Say to him. Two months later. a &end of the oung man came to see Buber and reported that this fiend had died on the front shortly after volunteering to fight in the war. He proceeded to explain to Buber why his fkiend had corne to see hirn two months eadier. The young fellow had called on Buber for help regarding a
'-decision," which concemed his life. Buber imrnediately understood the real purpose behind the young man's visit. He had essentially given up on life; that is why he volunterred for the fiont. He certainly knew at some level that there was a higher probability that he would die there. He had corne to Buber in despair. but Buber had failed to hear his cry for help beneath the polite exchange of words.
This experience was an eye-opening one for Buber. The problem was not that
Buber had neglected to speak to the young man. Far fiom it; he did engage the man in a prolonged conversation. What was lacking, Buber later reflected. was something far more important. He was not fullypresent for his visitor. He did not encounter him as a full human being. He kept something back. In looking back at this event, Buber could see how his mystical experience had momentarily separated him from the exigencies of the world. It was at this point that he reaiized that the mystical desire to unite with the sacred godhead is potentially dangerous. The ecstatic self is incapable of hearing the Other's C jarring call. It was precisely at this point that Buber had an epiphany in which he reahzed that God reveals Himself in Our encounter with others - and, in particular. with those who suffer arnongst us.63 Buber's insight was to see that divine revelation is not a rare occurrence. something that only happens to prophets. He understood that friends. acquaintances. strangers. fiequently appear in our horizon as Other - that is. as vulnerable creatures who need irnmediate response. At such moments. we can find ourselves occupying the place of the prophet in testiwng to the Other's height: the fact. that their powerlessness has power over me. Buber also grasped the tremendous burden that this places on the self. For Levinas, the Other's demands can, as we saw- in chapter three. place us in a hostage-like situation. Not surprisingly, the egoistic dimension of selfhood would rather deny or downplay the significance of the Other's Saying. '-Each of us." Buber notes, '5s encased in an amour whose task is to ward off signs.-64 Given the burdensome character of the Other's signs, it is not surprising that society develops and maintains an "interlocking sterilized system" to ward off the Other's demands.65 Nor is it suprising that humanity in general is seduced by the potentially rapturous experience of the sacred. offering the self reprieve from the impositions of the Other.
The directness of the holy is expressed neither through a conceptual notion of
God. nor even in a belief in God. The directness is undergone paradoxically through the very prohibition or interdiction that holiness demands. My desire to grasp the absolute direct1y -as we saw in the case of mysticism -is foiled by 'ordinary' Others who place excessive demands on me. The directness that is so desperately sought afier in the sacred experience cm only be properly found in the ethical intrigue. The philosophical tradition has been by and large oblivious to this problem. Philosophy. it is true. has from its earliest yars also declared battle against idolatry. Anaxagoras's refusal. for example. to regard the Sun and the moon as deities - like the ancient Jews. he regarded them as objects composed of rock-like material much like our own earth - represents a necessary condition for the emergence of a scientific world-view. But philosophy has also never entirely distanced itself fiom idolatry. Myth, as Levinas notes in a book review. slips into philosophy Iike a "Trojan horse" (PN 8 1). In the Gzj? of Death, Jacques Demda goes so far as to argue that philosophy secretly incorporates an element of the orgiastic or sacred within itself.66 Throughout its long history, philosophy has demonstrated a fascination with the silent and faceless concept. The power of conceptual thought - however necessary for the progress of a scientific understanding of the w*orld- has also served to
blunt the self s ethical vocation to serve or respond to others.
Plato's depiction of Socrates's death provides us with a good example of how
philosophy and its conceptual apparatus overlooks the Other in its narcissistic obsession
with the salvation that reason promises the philosopher. The scene of Socrates's death in the Phaedo is a remarkable account beyond the reasons that are commonly stated in its praise: for instance. that it eloquently testifies to the courageous equanimity with which
Socrates approached his death. But Plato's narrative -even if he is not conscious of this
-also shows us the profound tension between the sacred desire for conceptual directness and the ethical intrusion of the Other. Plato's mentor awaits his glorious end. For a good part of this life, he has taught his foI1owers to appreciate that genuine philosophy is in fact a rehearsal for death.67 "True philosophers," Socrates proudly declares. "make dying their profession."68 The philosophical mind will corne to pasp the idea that death does not. as
Homer taught, entai1 that the pneuma -the vital 'breath' or 'wind' that animates the flesh during life -is reduced to an insignificant shade that drifts forever aimlessly in ~he dark and miserable depths of Hades. If Socrates rejects this view, he does so because the
Orphics offer him a far more appealing view of death.69 For the followers of Orphism. death represents the moment of the soul's liberation from the troubling arnbiguities of the flesh. release from the 'tomb' or 'prisonhouse' of the body. Socrates and Plato put a philosophical spin on this sacred notion. The philosopher need not wait for his actual biological death to release himself from the enings of the body. Through the dialectic. the sou1 can begin the process of reuniting with the Ideas. By reflecting on the timeless. that is, ZifeZess Ideas. the philosopher can acquire a kind of viaual immortaiity. Death in life.
Here philosophy is conceived as saivation through the perfect conceptwd objects fond in being. Plato. who otherwise condemns the mimesis or participation of mythological thinking and artistic representation, succurnbs to the sacred in his wish to directly grasp the absolute. impersonal 1deas.70 As Derrida notes in the Gift of Death. we probably still do not appreciate today how the foundation of western philosophy is rooted in this unquestioned - Derrida actually says, following the Czech philosopher. Jan Patocka.
"irresponsible"7~ -desire to Save oneself fiom the vagarïes of existence by uniting mith the impersonal and Iifeless Ideas.
What is especially notable about the Phaedo, in my mind. and why 1 think it confirms Levinas's suspicions that philosophical concepts have a tendency to be used as fetishes that substitute for other human beings (TI 88). is the appearance in the dialogue of the Other who intermpts Socrates's fantasy or yeaming for immortality. At the beginning and end of the Phaedo, we read about the irritation that his grieving wife.
Xanthippe, and his pupils, in particular Apollodorus, induce in ocr rat es.^^ What have they done to irk Socrates? They have interrupted his "swan-song" -his discourse on the philosophical meaning of death - with their "womanly" teane73Thus no matter how hard philosophers try to justiQ and carry out their imagined higher vocations -as thinkers, as practitioners of death -the Other re-emerges with his or her pressing demands. Thus in this awkward manner, God does affect me personally without at any point presenting Himself as such to me. Which is to Say that while direct representation of
God is dangerous - since it places the pursuit of the sacred above the concem for others
-the divine nevertheless directly impinges on me whenever my narcissism is challenged by the Other's needs. This divine impingement ofien transpires. as it did for Socrates. as an inconvenience or imposition of the Other; a disruption of the philosopher's narcissistic yearning to meet the Ideas with a 'Vanqui1 heof mind."74
Despite its kinship with Judaism, Christianity, like philosophy. has not thoroughly disengaged itself from the sacred. If the philosopher seeks salvation through Ideas. many
Christians use the notion of God for similar purposes. Nowhere perhaps is this powerfûl yearning for persona1 salvation more conspicuous than in Paul's writings. Whereas the
Jews prohibit direct representation of God, Paul believes that Christ sanctions the liftinr of this injunction: "Moses wore a veil over his face so that his peopie could not witness the glory of God: but with Christ, the veil is removed (2 Cor. 3: 12- 18). In this way.
Paul's message deliberately overtums the Torah's prohibition about keeping one3 distance from God. He views the Jewish adherence to the letter of the law-. the Halukhic code, as a dead-weight. an unnecessary obstacle that stands in the way of God's "spirit."
If the onerous "letter" of the law "kills," it is the "spirit" that gives life. that saves us (2
Cor. 3:6).75 Paul's rhetoric expresses an ardent passion to be one with God. to partake of
His mystery. Many Christians invoke Paul's rhetoric to justi@ the invalidation or repeal of the "old" covenant. Levinas forcefully responds to this appeal to Paul's oft-cited quip against the Jew: "What Christian theologians present as a stubborn attachrnent to the letter is in reaIity a refùsal of that which is too easily called spirit" (DF 49). Paul's
attempt to elevate the spirit of God over the mord law is not only antithetical to Judaism.
it can hardly, as Levinas reminds us, be reconciled with several of Jesus's own teachings.
Levinas remarks that he is ofien tempted in the Company of Christians to invoke a key
passage fiom the gospel of Matthew that reaffirms the inseparable link between the
ethical and the divine (EN 128). In this passage, Jesus declares that God's final judgement
of a person does not rest on an individual's belief in Him but rather on his or her
demonstrated ability to have cared for the poor' the stranger, the ill. and the prisorter
(Mat, 25:3 1-46). Elsewhere, Levinas cites two passages fkom John's First Letter (1 John
223.4: 12) (DF49) to make a similar point. The passage ùiat follows irnrnediateIy after 1
John 4: 13 - a passage that Levinas does not cite, though it makes his point more
effectively -concisely expresses the necessary relationship between God and ethics: "if
a man says. '1 love God,' while hating his brother, he is a lia. If he does not love the
brother whom he has seen. it cannot be that he loves God whom he has not seen. And
indeed this command cornes to us fiom Christ himself that he who loves God must love
his brother" (1 John 4: 19-2 1).
For many Christians, evangelists in particul= too much heed is paid to their own
persona1 salvation at the expense of ethical obligations towards others. This desire to
identie directly with the spirit borders on the sacred -and brings with it a host of problems, as we have seen above. Nothing stops us fiom conceiving the meaning of
'God' in isolation fkom ethics, but the consequences of doing so have frequently been disastrous. One cm, Levinas thus wrïtes, try to think 'God' or the 'holy' apart from
ethics. And countless "[rJeligions and theologies live f?om that abstraction, as do mystics
fiom that isolation." But then again, "so do religious wars" (OS 95). To be fair. of course.
it should be pointed out that not al1 Chnstians are salvation-oriented in their religious
practices. For instance, the German Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. explicitly breaks with
Paul's salvation-oriented Christianity in order to reaEm the ethical message of the
Jewish Jesus. Thus. in The Cost of Disclpleship, in the context of a discussion of
Matthew (5: 17-20), Bonhoeffer writes: Jesus "reject[s] the notion that men cm cleave to
hirn and be free from the law, for that spells enthusiasm. and so far from leading to Jesus.
means ~ibertarianisrn."~~Far fiom being an obstacle, Bonhoeffer maintains. the law - in
the Torah's sense of the necessity to respect the holy code that compels one to exercise
self-vigilance - is needed to avoid the pitfalls of sacred enthusiasm, of identifying too closeIy with the spirit.
viiu The Et hicd Subject :Integris, And Responsibili~
God writes straight ont0 my sou1 through the detour that carries me to the direct rectitude of the Other's face. But Levinas also discerns God's enigmatic imprint - whose trace is forever in retreat -in the uprightness of the ethical subject. The responsible subject who answers to the direct demands of the Other also demonstrates a straightforwardness or moral uprightness. Again, Levinas employs the word 'droirzire' to describe this directness. In one of his most important essays on Biblical interpretation.
"The Temptation of Temptation," he wrïtes:
To hear a voice speaking to you is ipso facto to accept obligation toward the one speaking. . . . [Moral] [c]onsciousness is the urgency of a destination leading to the other person and not an etemal return to self. . . . [Thw is an innocence wirhout naivete, an uprightness [droiture] without stupidity, an absolute uprightness [droiture absolue] which is also absolute self-crificisrn.read in the eyes of the one who is the goal of my upnghtness and whose look calls me into question. (TT 180, NTR 48 [my emphasis])
Levinas draws attention to the Biblical term for the upright comportment that the responsible self adapts in relation to the straightforwardness of the Other. This uprightness [droitzrre]," he informs us, "is called Temimut" (Ibid.) or tantint. The notion of tamim is one of a cluster of related terms that anchors the Bible's ethical sensibility.
Within this family of terms, two are particularly important: yasher (uprightness. rightness. straightness) and zedek (righteousness).77 Levinas's droiture incorporates the different nuances that are associated with this rich moral vocabulaty. Of al1 these words.
Levinas is especially drawn to the idea of tamim. He underscores its importance when in the sarne essay he notes that Ternimut is a "mode of knowing which reveals the deep structure of subjectivity" (TT 180, NTR 48). In Hebrew, tamim expresses simplicity. wholeheartedness, uprightness, sincerity, and integrity. To illustrate the significance of this word, Levinas cites a major passage from Deuteronomy in which tamim is presented as a commandment: "Wholehearted [ramiml shall you be with YHWH your God
(1 8: 13).7* The "strength" of this particular verse, Levinas continues,
as well as the originality of the notion of tamim, very similar to the notion of integrity - consists in its association with the preposition 'with' (im):'you shall be integral [honest or complete] with [the Lord].' The Talmud . . . links this verse with the interdiction to resort to astrology. (B V 21 ln1)
The context in which this commandment - 'wholehearted shall you be' - is uttered is important for understanding famim. The chapter in question, Deuteronomy 18. criticizes the practices of sorcery, divination, enchantment, and inquiring of the dead as
-'abominations of [the] nations" (18:9). In other words, rectitude and integrity. for the
Torah. entails the ability to resist the seduction of the sacred. One of the essential conditions for being a whole person involves eschewing those practices that promise immediate answers to life's uncertainties such as direct cornniunication with the supernatural world, or augury,
Levinas also reminds us that tamim is "the essence of Jacob" (NTR 48). This is a reference to Genesis 2527. where Jacob is described as Ish Tarn. an upright man. If Jacob is lauded for his integrity, it is not because he lives up to, or approximates. some abstract ideal of a perfectly just man. The writers of the Torah know too much about human nature to believe, as Plato does, that certain individuals could become -even if on['; as an approximation of such an ideal -"perfectly jus? or absolutely ~pright.~~Plato's just citizen cannot fail to do right if he has properly synchronized his psyche with the Form of
Justice. To know the Good is to be virtuous. The issue of integrity. for Plato, is. therefore. first and foremost an epistemological issue, or, as Levinas states in a related context. an
"uprightness of knowledge" (BV 1 18). For Plato, ignorance is the root of al1 misconduct.
The "philosophical" disposition of the just man, he writes in the Phaedo. %as no touch of meanness; pettiness of mind is quite incompatible with the constant attempt to grasp things divine or human as a whole and in their entirety"80 Integrity is synonymous with the ability to train one's mind on the kath ' auto, the directness or in-itself, of the Ideas.
The Biblical conception of moral wholeness or integrity -to which Levinas is heavily indebted - is conspicuously different from its counterpart in Plato's thought. 'Weither contact." Levinas observes, "nor vision impose themselves as archetypa1 gestures of uprightness [gestes archétypes de la droiture]" (Tel 147, TI 172 [trans. mod.]). In other words, neither the direct contact with the sacred object, nor the unmediated philosophical vision of the Ideas -the kath ' auto - is the bais for moral uprightness. Why? Aside from the absence of a conception of the Other, Plato's moral account of the sou1 also demonstrates a lack of awareness of the role played by fiee will in the development of moral character. For the Biblical authors, however, the person deemed to be fumirn is aware of his or her capacity to enact evil: "Jacob, the man of integrity . . . is also the man aware of evil. crafty and industrious" (NTR 48). Jacob is considered a whoIe person in the
Torah's sense not so much because of his good actions. If Jacob is praised as Ish Tan? - morally upright and direct with others - it is because he is painhlly cognizant of what the Other's face cornmunicates to him. Unlike Cain, for exarnple, Jacob does not disavow the moral authority that others exercise over him. He tolerates the explicit, as well as the silent. accusations that they level at him. In other words, he does not seek to assuage his bad conscience. Rather, he suffers it -and in so doing, accepts it as his exclusive moral
Accusing oneself in suffenng is undoubtedly the very turning back of the ego to itself. It is perhaps for this reason that the for-the-other -the most upright relation [rapport le plus droit] to the Other -is the rnost profound adventure of subjectivity, its ultimate intimacy. (En 1 16, US 163 [trans. mod.])
But here we rnust be careful, Levinas wams us, lest we become too selfishly enamoured
by the idea of rightness, thinking that it is enough that it "be narrated as an edifying
discourse" (Ibid.). We must, 1 think Levinas is arguing, avoid the temptation to rei@ our
bad conscience. to convince ourselves that our guilty thoughts are suficient to anest to
Our integrity. The final test of integrity lies, of course, in our ability to act responsibly in accordance with our burdened conscience.
If Jacob is tarnim, bis brother Esau, by contrast, is described as a man --whoknew the hunt, a man of the field" (Gen. 25:27). Though Esau is on the surface the 'better' man: respectfiil. obedient, knowledgeable, and practical, Jacob is ultimately the one who is held up as a paradigm of the complete person. We might be inclined to imagine that
Jacob's integrity is due to his piety. The Tanakh, however. is generaliy quite critical of the pious. Instead. it teaches that the person with integrity is more likely to be someone who - like al1 impefiect creatures -strays fiom time to time but, at least. has insight into his or her capacity for evil, as opposed to the person who consistent1y does the right things but enjoys a good conscience. Jacob, for al1 his flaws, and he certainly has his fair share. is the one who shudders at the depth of his selfish regard. He is genuinely pained by his actions. As we saw in chapter three, he is pIagued by the thought of having cheated his brother in the past.
Jacob's integrity does not stem fiom abstractuig the eidos or essential character of justice fiom its particular manifestations. Intellectual abstraction cannot Iead to the kind of moral "conver~ion'~that Plato seeks. At best, it leads to a contemplative reflection of
moral instances. Plato's approach -and that of most philosophy ever since -confuses
the source of rnorality with its reified image or conception. Moral integrity or
uprightness, for Levinas, entails an unquestioned direct response -this is what he means. therefore. when he writes of tamim as "an innocence without naivete, an uprightness without stupidity" - to the piercing look of the disappointed sibling. child. lover. or stranger; a look that can directly wound and touch us in a way that no abstract principle could possibly ever affect us. In Totaliîy and Infinity, Levinas points out that the kath ' auto or in-itseZfthat Plato attributes to the Forms belongs properly speaking to the
Other's face (TI 7 1). htegrity means allowing oneself to saerthe Other's rectitude. his or her extreme exposure or vulnerability. To be morally whole. for the Biblical authors. as for Levinas, is to accept the authority or height of the gaze that questions my self- absorption, that makes me aware of my capacity to be cruel. Only this gaze cmcut through the hardened sheI1 of the ego.
If integrity, or the capacity to be straighdorward towards others. has little do with knowledge, it has even less to with explicit religious belief or identity. The Psalrnist. for example, does not ask to be judged on the bais of his belief in God, but rather of his rightness of conduct -which is synonymous with his moral cornportment towards others: "The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me" (Ps. 7:8). Paraphasing the thought of Rosemveig, Levinas notes that the "separation of men into the religious and the non-religious does not get us very far" (DF 186). The mere fact that one believes in some divine power -whether it be the divine as conceived by a Jew. a Hindu, or a
Zoroastrian -is certainly no guarantee or mark of integrity. For Levinas. the true sign of integriiy is the un-Nietzschean ability to affirm one's bad conscience, or what arnounts to the same thing. to refüse to make moral compromises with the moral indifference of existence: "[tlo be a fülly conscious Jew, a fully conscious Christian. a hlly conscious cornmunist. is always to find yourself in an awkward position within being [se trorriTeren porte àfalu dam 1 'Êrre]" (DL 367, DF 264). As Alain Finkielkraut observes in an admirable passage. the 'me divide [or] fündarnental split" for Levinas, is not, as I have noted above. between believer and non-believer, but rather between those who are
--shaken" by fheir own potential for bmtality and those who are oblivious to it.81 The religious individual who regards his or her personal salvation -one's intimate participation with the divine -as the most urgent issue in life possesses. for Levinas. far less integrity than the atheist cornrnunist who adopts a responsible and heartfelt cornportment in his or her daily dealings with others. This second person - who suffers with his or her conscience - is in fact closer to the true meaning of the Jewish conception of God than the first one whose yearning for "consolation of the divine presence" is nothing more than an "infantile religious feeling" (DF 143). Buber expresses the same sentiment when he writes in his concise and fine words: '-[a] man can ward off with dl his strength the belief that 'God' is there, and [yet] he tastes [Him] in the strict sacrament of dialogue."82 ix) Bad Conscience and rhe Responsible Individual
1s Levinas's critique of the sacred motivated by religious prejudice as Tracy seems to suggest? As we have seen, Levinas does not exempt Judaism from his attack on the sacred. The idea of Israel that Levinas upholds, and its message of anti-idolatry is mot defined by opposition to Christianity, any more than it is defined as anti-Buddhism. anti-
Islam or anti-Brahrninism. Instead. it consists in promoting understanding between dl men who are tied to moraliv' (DF 109). In their battle against those practices or superstitions that foster and camouflage social injustice, the prophets of Israel do not make any ethnic or religious discriminations, in fact, it is the Israelites themselves who are more ofien than not the target of the prophets' fiercest condemnations of idolatry. The fight against the sacred is, for Levinas, a moral obligation - one that is to be folIowed by anyone who believes in the absoluteness of social justice. But this obIigation has to be carefully distinguished from certain forms of revolutionary politics. As we saw earlier. despite its messianic impulses, its desire for a more just world, utopianism, for Levinas. has more in cornrnon with the sacred than the refonnist outIook of the BibIical prophets.
We are now in a better position to understand this difference.
Along with its enthusiasrn for global and immediate change, what Levinas finds suspect about utopianism - and why it points to the persistence of the sacred - is the utopian's Gnostic tendency to dkown part of bis or her identity. That is, the radical utopian outlook tends to divide people into either wholly good (their own selves and the imagined fiiture utopia) or wholly evil (the present elites or holders of power). In this respect. Levinas's critique of utopianism is not uniike Sartre's observation that the anti-
Semite is driven by a Manichaean psychology: if there is evil and anxiety in the world, the anti-Semite imagines that it cannot possibly have anything to do with him or herself. instead. he or she concludes that it mut be the work of some external agent - in the anti-Semite3 case, the ubiquitous Jew.83 Levinas discems the sarne Manichaean psychology at work in the utopian mind as well. The utopian revolutionary confises or interprets -thus succumbing to the temptation of mystical participation - his or her existential awkwardness or anxiety within being as the work of imagined evil forces who control the world around him or her. In order to resolve this crisis. in order to relieve him or herself of anxiety, the revolutionary seeks a 'tioIent break with the course of things"
(DF 2 55).
The revolutionary psychology of modem utopianism is in keeping with sacred or mystical psychology. The underlying motivation behind the urgent wish for immediate. thoroughgoing social transformation, as well as the cal1 for a final end to violence and the seIfish "bourgeois" individual, is "the desire to ridu [oneselfl of al1 bad conscience" (DF
1 7 1). But -30anaesthetize this pain," that is, to purge oneself of one's bad conscience.
Levinas rightly warns, "brings the revolutionary to the fiontiers of fascism" (DF 155).g4
Genuine lasting social change requires a willingness to accept Our own complicity with institutional violence, and more importantly to recognize our own persona1 role in the ubiquitous violence -the exclusion of others fiom our circles, betrayal, envy, and so
-209- forth85 -that permeates the drama of everyday life (TN 1 10-1 1). Unwilling to take responsibility for his or her own violent gestures, for his or herfull self, the radical utopian instead hides behind - indeed, merges with -vague political slogans, calling for a 'universai brotherhood' or 'peaceful world community-' These notions are the equivalent of yesterday's sacred idols. However appealing they might sound, the tmth is that they also obscure the painstaking task of transforming our narcissistic selves into individuated and responsible subjects. It is unlikely that violence will ever disappear from the human drama. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility of a more progressive world. But such a world, for Levinas, necessitates a self with clearly defined boundaries, and iike Jacob, a self who accepts the pain or sharne that the Other instills directly into him or her, reminding the self of its beastly potentid. To have moral integrity is to refuse the facile seductiveness of direct participation, and to recognize instead that true transcendence - which is to say permanent change, as opposed to the ephemeral ecstasy that participation or mysticism makes possible -involves the capacity to foIlow the difficult path of what the Jews cal1 'making oneself holy': separation, individuation. straightfonvardness, and responsibiIiq. CONCLUSION
In order to understand why a conception of the tragic self must give way to an
appreciation of the relationship between the ethical subject and the Other- it was
necessary to retrace the path in Levinas's w-riting that takes us from the disaster of being
to the ethical intrigue. This path can be sunmarized as follows: The essence of ethical
subjectivity is a striving towards alterity, a rupturing of totality. This movement. Desire.
develops as a response to the disaster of indeterminate being, or what Levinas calls the il y a. The first moment of selfhood, the self qua ego, represents only a partial escape from the suffering of impersonal being. Only the self qua ethical subject - that is. the self elected by the Other -cm repair the disaster of being. In his mature work, Levinas describes subjectivity as the self3 catastrophic encounter with the Other: a trauma that effectively deposes the ego by piercing its shell, thus exposing the self to the foreignness of the other person. This exposure draws the ego -and more precisely ipseity - out of itself and into relation with the Other. Outside itself? with nowhere to hide. the self is compelled to respond, to take account of an Other who contests its fantasy of primacy. its
Gyges-like propensity to treat the world as its private stage. This unmediated response -
"responsibility" proper -represents, for Levinas, the very structure of subjectivity. It is precisely this responsibk dimension af selfhood that both the tragic outlook and the sacred experience endeavour to suppress. Levinas's criticisms of the tragic and the sacred are undoubtedly harsh in their
tone. If he adopts such a strong position against what he perceives to be the moral
indifference of certain discourses and practices it is because nothing less than truth is at stake for him. From his very first writings, he is propelled by a deep yearning to articulate
- despite this term's unfashionable place in twentieth-century philosophy -the tnith.
And if there is truth, then there are -as Plato also held throughout his life - appearances, illusions, and outright falsities. The task of al1 genuine philosophy and religion would be then, for Levinas, to continue to desacralize the world, to free the world of the illusion of truth -and not to retreat fiom this task, as some contemporary thinkers suggest. 1 "Real desacralization." he writes, "would attempt positively to separate the true from appearance . . ." (NTR 141). Levinas's view of truth will undoubtedly st&e some today as antiquated, perhaps even unjustified. But let us be clear as to what truth means for him. The -me' that he speaks of in the above passage is neither ontological nor epistemological in nature. The question of truth, for hirn, bears first and forernost on the domain of the ethical. Levinas, as 1 have endeavoured to explain in this study. argues for the absolute status of the Other. Given this starting point, the tone of his writing is. not surprisingly, harsh and polemical. His thinking necessarily clashes with the views of those who find the foundation for absolute truth elsewhere than in the ethical. and. of course, with those who contest the very idea of an unconditional truth.
As we saw earlier, the dividing line that demarcates truth from fdsity for Levinas does not -as his critics might suspect -cut across the boundary that separates Jews from non-Jews, nor is it the line that divides believers fiom non-believers.2 Any attempt to present Levinas's objections to the tragic or sacred in this way seriously distorts his thought. How can we best formulate Levinas's version of Plato's farnous divided line?
The line that separates a life that is oriented by tmth from one that is a victim of perpetual doxa. corresponds. for Levinas, to that boundary or division that distinguishes those individuals who are cornmitted to finding a purpose for their lives through personal and social responsibility -regurdless of their own religious, national. or political affiliations
- from those who embrace self-authenticity or their ovin salvation as the telos of life.
The opposition between truth and falsity, therefore. overlaps. for Levinas. ulth the opposition between the evasiveness of the tragic and sacred self. and the straightforwardness (duoirure)or integrity of the responsible subject. NOTES
Levinas is rarely consistent in his spelling of être. He arbitrarily switches back and fonh benveen its upper and lower-case versions, For the sake of consistency, 1 will render érre as -beingTthroughout this study. Because Levinas's étre often also alludes to Heidegger's Sein, 1 will employ 'being' for Sein as well. Context should make it clear as to whose conception of being I have in mind. t would. finally. remind the reader that Levinas's translators have adopted different conventions to render être. Unless otherwise noted. 1 have retained the translator's rendition in passages cited frorn Levinas's work.
- 7 - Levinas frequently associates this phrase with Maurice Blanchot, see. for example. EeI 40.
Friedrich Nietzsche. Ecce Homo, R?ÿis. Walter Kaufinann and R.J. Hol lingdale (New York: Random House, 1967). 258.
Unless otherwise noted. Bible references - with the exception of the five books of the Torah - are From the Revised Standard Version, All references to the Torah are cited fiom Everett Fos. The Five Books of Moses, vol. 1. The Schocken Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).
According to Levinas. subjectivity is fmand foremost an ethical moment. that is. conscience. and more precisely. bad conscience. Only secondady is the subject appropriately conceived of in terrns of the ontological category of consciousness.
-We do not need obscure fragments of Heraclitus to prove that being reveals itself as \var to philosophical thought . . ." (Tel ix, TI 2 1 ;cf. OB4).
Fabio Ciarernelli. Trainrcendonce et éthique: Essai sur L Winas. (Bnissels: Ousia. 1 989). 1 2.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile or On Educazion, ans. Allan Bloorn (New York: Basic Books. 1979): see. in particular, 22 1-27.
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy ofMorais. tram. Walter Kaufinann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, l967), 1 5 10,38.
CHAPTER 1
I It would be wrong, however, to say that Freud's thinking is unconditionally tragic. ln my view. the tragic dimension of his thought is offset by a Jewish undercurrent -that is concerned with questions of moral transcendence -that mns through much of his writing. Unfortunately. it would take me too far afield fiom my present concerns to develop this point Mer.
1 will discuss Levinas's critique of Heidegger's notion of authenticiry below.
Nietzsche gives us an abbreviated version of his cornic-tragic outlook when he writes: .*for me [knowledge] is a world of dangers and victories in which heroic feelings, too. find places to dance and play. 'Lre as a means ro knowledge' -with this principte in one's heart one can Iive not onIy boldly but even gaily. and laugh gaily. too." The Gay Science, ûans. Walter Kaufinann (New York: Randorn House. 1974). 2.55-
Throughout this study. 1 will follow the distinction that Levinas rnakes between --existence-- (eicfirence) as pure and undifferentiated being and "existents" (exisranrs). that is. individuated or substantiated beings.
Levinas's early work on Husserl is succinctly summarized by Adriaan T. Peperzak in Bqmnd: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. 1997). 38ff.
It is not a coincidence that Levinas's critique of Heidegger coincides with the period in which Heidegger becarne an officia! rnember of the National Socialist Party.
Al1 translations of rhis essay are my own.
In the third chapter, 1 will examine Levinas's juxtaposition of the "drama of existence.. with the *'ethical intrigue."
Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, îrans. Louise Varèse (New York: New Directions. 1970). 99- 100. Though Levinas does not directly cite Baudelaire in this essay, he no doubt has him in mind when he alludes to the "mal du siècle" literature that testifies to the strong need to exit being (DE 70).
Io Later. in Tl, Levinas calls this unique need "Desire." 1 will discuss this concept in the nest chapter.
I Levinas's use of these terms actually predate Jean-Paul Sartre's. with whom they are more popularly associated. See note 16 below.
I2 This intriguing and atypical view of self-generated sharne will be later displaced by the claim that the Other shames me.
"De l'existence à I'exisranr" should not have been translated as "Existence and Existents." The prepositions of the originaI title are integral to Levinas's principal thesis, narnely, that philosophy ought to trace the pathfrom general being ro entities- Furthemore, this trajectory, that is, fiorn being as an active principle to being as substantiation is meant to deliberately challenge the order of Heidegger's philosophical trajectory. Heidegger sought to sketch the movernent fiom beings [Seiendes] back to being [Sein]. moving fiom the things of this world to the "ground" or being of their presencing, Levinas. on the other hand. is keen to emphasize why beings need to leave being. l4 Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Hurnanism," in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings,ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977), 2 13fE
While it rernains methat Sartre and Levinas share the view that indeterminate being is ultimately absurd and excessive, Levinas was never tempted, unlike Sartre. to make this absurdity the starting point for a philosophy of existence- In La Nuée -which postdates Levinas's conception of nausea by three years - Sartre's protasonist, Antoine Roquentin, discovers that the -'essential thing" that nausea reveals is the radical "contingency" of existence. Contingency is "absolute" and "consequentlj.. the perfect free gifi" (Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander pew York: New Directions: 19641. 13 1)- For Levinas. nothing is 'revealed' to me in either nausea or anguish. These experiences merely reflect the horror of being. Far frorn making me aware of my fieedom, being, as manifested in nausea or anguish. zinderniitws the very possibiliry of fieedom,
In the fourth chapter of L 'Évolution créatrice, Bergson caries out a thought experiment that leads him to conclude that the concept of the "nothing" is a 'bseudo-idea" Epseudo-idée].Henri Bergson: Oeuvres, ed. Henri Gouhier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, I959), 730E As far as i am aware. Levinas's first invocation of Bergson's thought experirnent is in De l'évasion (95).
* The English translation omits the third sentence entirely.
l9 In El, Levinas gives us another usehl metaphor for understanding the iiy a. He observes that the ily a is "something resembling what one hears when one puts an empty shell close to the ear. as if the emptiness were full. as if the silence were a noise" (Eel38. El 48).
20 On the Wight,'* or the "other night," see Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze of Orphez,~,and Olhet- Lireran*Essqs, trans, Lydia Davis(Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 198 1). 102. Levinas himself equates Blanchot's "second night," (SMB 16, PN 133) -that is, the Night within the stellar night - with the il),a. Thus in a note in EE, Levinas cornments in regard to the opening of Blanchot's Thomas the Obscure: "The presence of absence, the night, the dissolution of the subject in the ni@, the horror of being. the return of being to the heart of every negative moment .. .are there admirably expressed" (DEE I03n 1. EE 631-1I ). See aIso, Levinas's comments on the "black Iight" in PN ( 137). Blanchot, Maurice.
21 See, for instance, the 1949 "PoNcript to 'What ir Metaphysics?"' in Pahmarks. ed. and trans. WiIliam McNeil (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)' 236-7.
22 Martin Heidegger, "What is Metaphysics?" in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. ed. and trans. David Farreli Krell (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977), 1 11. Reprinted in Pathmarks. 95.
23 Levinas is not positing evil as some distinct divine entity, a rival of Gad. As Catherine Chalier notes in La Persévérance du mal, Levinas does not regard evil as the dialectical opposite of the Good, but rather as that which obscures goodness (LuPersévérance du mal [Paris: Éditions du Cerf. 19871. 16). 24 Blaise Pascal. Pensées. tram. A. J. Krailsheirner (Harrnondsworth. Middlesex: Penguin Books. 1966). 568. AI1 references follow Lafima's numbering system.
25 Though Levinas does not explicitly state so, one suspects that the tem '-instant'' to describe the self is deliberately chosen by him in order to be contrasted to Heidegger's term 'ecstasis.' From Levinas's point of view, Dasein is not transcendent as the terms ecsfasismight suggest, Levinas is probably using the terni -instant' in its etymological sense: 'to hoId oneself up in,' Thus 'instant' ernphasizes the self s capacity or, better yet, stmggle to secure a place for itself within being. For a helpiÛI analysis of the idea of the "instant" in Levinas's early work see John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy ofEhks (New York: Routledge. 1995). 25-6.
26 Names and naming play an important role in Jewish thought. In Hebrew. ~hing?.and .-word9. are both conveyed by the sarne term, davar. Long before the "linguistic tum" in philosophy and literary theory, Jewish schoiars had a strong sense that words do not merely describe a reality, but more significantly, they constitute experiences and objects of reality. See Susan A. Handelman. The Slaers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic htterpreration in Modern Literary Theop-(A 1ban y. N .Y .: State University of New York Press, 1982), 3-4.
27 Levinas rnakes a crucial distinction between the other (l'aurre) and the Other (I :4urrui). The first refers to the othemess of objects that can be hlIy assimilated by the ego. The second refers to the alterity of the other person. This alterity resists al1 of the ego's atternpts to absorb it. We rnust keep in mind the poverty of language to express the alterity of the Other. Indeed Levinas warns us how easily the idea of the Other can be trivialized: "Perhaps because of current moraI maxims in which the word neighbor occurs. we have ceased to be surprised by al1 that is involved in proximiv and approach" (A& 5. OB 5).
28 It mut be kept in mind - as we will soon see -that this identification is always provisional.
29 This view contrasts sharply with Heidegger's in Being and Tirne. Levinas holds that enjoyment precedes even care [Sorge].
j0 The importance of enjoyment in Jewish thought and life cannot be oventated. Only a Fully integrated selF, that is, a properly nourished and nurtured self, can adequately meet the Other. A malnourished or psychologically impaired self is in no position to properly respond to the needs of others. There is in other words a responsibility in Judaism to take care of oneself. The difference with. for example. the Greek 'care of self is that in Judaism the enjoyment of self is not the end-point of life. büt the necessary condition for a higher purpose, namely, to be able to address others.
l Baudelaire. Paris Spleen. 1 5.
j2 In GCM (144-5: DVI 22 1-2), Levinas gives a lucid account of the significance of ipseity in Rosenzweig's thought.
35 Plato. The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, 2nd ed. (Harmondswonh, Middlesex: Penguin Books. 1974), 359c-360e.
34 Baudelaire, Paris Spleen, 1 6. 35 Llewelyn translates 'paresse ' by"dilatoriness-'' This translation has certain advantages over "indolence." because it foregrounds the ideai of delq which is integral to Levinas's anaiysis of -paresse-'
36 1 will discuss Levinas's view of ;the metaphysics of paganisrn in the third and founh chapter.
j7 Plato. Republic 382a.
René Descartes, Medirafions on Firsr Philosophy, in CSM 11 1 6.
j9 Descartes. .'Objections and RepIies," in CSM II 68.
40 In his study of modem skepticism, Richard Popkin argues that the great irony of Descartes-s magisterial attempt to put a final end to the recalcitrant presence of skepticism in western thought was that it actually served to revitalize Pyrrhonism. Of riII the reasons for doubting that Descartes puts forth. it is the sugestion of an evil demon that "discloses fiefull force of skepticism in the most strïking fashion, and unveils a basis for doubting apparently neven dreamed of before" (The Histor-y of Scepticism From Erasmr~s CO Spinoza [Berkeley: University of Ca1ifom:tia Press, 19791, 178).
41 The claim that interiority is an il: lusion is rnost farnously advanced by Nietzsche. Tating their cues from him, some contemporary philosop>hers maintain that interiority is a cornplex socially constructed illusion. Sorne of the now classic formulatiorns of this argument include Gilles Deleuze's NÏerzsche and Philosophi,. trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New Ymrk: Columbia University Press, 1983), and Michel Foucault's DÏscÏpline and Punissh, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). From Levinas's point of view. the philosophical claims of Nietzsche and his followen romanticize the possibility of a self without interiority. Without discounting the role of hiistory and society in shaping subjectivity. Levinas, nevertheless, remains convinced that intenority is an essential condition of selfhood. A self without interiority borders on psychosis.
42 Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie (Paris: Editions de Minuit- 1957): Jealozq. trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1957)
43 The entire story is narrated frorn .a third penon perspective.
44 Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie. 2 18;; JeaIol~iy,138.
45 In Book IX ofthe Republic. Plafo dernonstrates why the tyrant. far fiom enjoying his fieedom and privileges, is a slave to appearances as well as his divided appetites. I will continue to develop the comesctions between Gyges, the evil genius, and Levinas's conception of the self in the next chapter,
46 Maurice Blanchot, The Wriring ofthe Dismer, trans. Anne Srnock (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 72.
47 The writings of Blanchot clearly infonn Levinas's analysis of the senselessness of existence. The relationship between Levinas and Blancniot is quite cornplex, and, unfortunately, cannot be properly addressed here, For the purposes of this chapter, I am establishing an affinity benveen the two thinkers with regard to the question of the disaster. Thou@, it should be kept in mind that Blanchot and Levinas hold substantially different views concerning the possibility of redeeming the disaster.
48 Levinas's understanding of tragedy is heavily influenced by Franz Rosenzweig's analysis of tragic structures in The Star of Redemption, trans. William H. Hal10 (Boston: Beacon Press. 1972). Some of the affinities between these two philosophers wiIl be explored in the next chapter.
49 Many years later, Levinas provides us with more of a context for why he reads Hamlet-s famous unerance as an ethical problem rather than an ontological one: "it is the possibility of dreading injustice more than death" that reveals to us the tmth ofwhat it means to be a human being. And once again. Levinas concludes: "To be or not to be, is perhaps not the question par excellence" (D C=/ 265' GCM 177 [rrans. mod.]). Though Levinas does not give us explicit textual evidence for this daring comment, the passage in question nevertheless lends considerabIe credence to his interpretation,
But the dread of something afier death, The undiscover'd country, from whose boum No traveller returns. puzzles the will, ... Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us al1
Harnlet ends this famous soliloquy with an expression of his bad conscience: "be a11 my sins remember'd" (Shakespeare. Harnlef, Riverside, 3.1.78-83). Levinas reads this entire passage as Shakespeare's awareness that ethical jud-ment - adopting a moral stance with regard to Our being - precedes consciousness and action. The soliloquy therefore expresses the primacy of ethics over ontology.
Rosenzweig. The Sror of Redemprion, 2 19.
52 John Caputo expresses a very similar reservation with the ûagic outlook: "For despite its talk of Heraclitean play, the tragic does not allow suffering its play, which is to cut into and waste Iife, The tragic view. against its own rhetoric, is in fact not hard enough: it accepts, embraces, and makes Iight ofjust what it should resist. It is tolerant of that against which it shouId raise its voice in protest. It accepts just what it should de@. It lets violence ofTtoo easily. Its notion of the justice of strife is that of a weak-willed judge. It has no nerve for a real fight, which means to resist the wasteful effects of suffering" (Radical Hermeneutics: Repetirion. Deconstruction. and the Hermeneutic Project Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 19871,285). Writing in 1947, in the wake of the destruction and ruins of the war, Thomas Mann had the courage to observe that Nietzsche's tragic philosophy, and in particular, his views on evil seem at best anachronistic and at worse naive: "How bound in time, how theoretical too, how inexperïenced does Nietzsche's romanticizing about wickedness appear . . . today! We have learned to know it in al1 its miserableness" (Thomas Mann, "Nietzsche's Philosophy in the Light of Conternporary Events" [Washington: Library of Congress, 19471, cited in Philippa Foot, L6Nietzsche'sImmoralism," in Nierzsche, Genealogv, Moralir): ed Richard Schacht [University of California Press, 19941, 7). Mann's comments are particülarly poignant when one keeps in mind Nietzsche's early influence on him. 53 Colin Davis. Levinas: An Introdzction (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 1996). 57-
54 Gérard Bailhache. Le sujet chez Emmanuel Lévinrrc Fragilité et subjectiviré (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 34.
55 See also OB where Levinas accounts for the "clumsiness" of his exposition ( 19).
.'A phiIosophical truth cannot be based on the authotity of a verse. The verse must be phenornenoIogicaIIy justified- . . . It angers me when it is hsinuated that I prove by the verse, whereas . . . 1 illustrate by means of the verse . . ." (EL 13 1).
57 Levinas's conception of mith has no relation to the classical conception of mth as adequation. The idea of truth as corresponding to some purported ideal or objective essence has been the source of justified criticisms in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. Levinas is in complete agreement with this critique. Instead, tnrth, for Levinas, signifies an ethical evenr, namely, the dismption of the totalizing movement of being- See also the conclusion of this present study.
58 For Levinas. a work of an is not, as it is, for example with Heidegger, a site of mith. The only eenuine locus of tmth for Levinas is the face, or proximity of the Other. Speaking and invocarion sets the 6ther-s presence apart from al1 other objects. Art restricts itself to the plasticity of the face. which it shares with the phenomenal world. If art can be said to have a "face" it must, according to Levinas. be properly specified as a -'facade." And in art's concern with the facade is "constituted the beautifut. whose essence is indirerence, cold splendor. and silence. . . . [The facade] captivates by its grace as by ma@. but does not reveal itself' (Tel 167, TI 193). Beautifiil, or even sublime, as it may be. the art object lacks the power to awaken in humanity the necessity for justice.
59 This tigure is Rabbi Hayyirn Volozhyn. 1 will discuss the importance of this writer for Levinas in chapter three-
60 The few exceptions include Descartes's malin génie and the +.eternal silence" of Pascal's "intinite spaces" that fiIl the ego with dread (Pensées § 20 1).
61 Chalier's La Persévérance du mal is one of the few works on Levinas that examines the subtle religious complexities of the problem of the il y a in Levinas's writing. The interpretation that follows is heavily indebted to her work.
62 At a symposium held in Levinas's honour, Paul Ricoeur ponden whether or not Levinas would agree with him that the rohu bohu aliuded to in the creation narrative suggests that hurnanity is alwmri alrearj. confronted with the problem of evil (Bernard Dupuy, Emmanuel Levinas. and Paul Ricoeur. "Catastrophes naturelles et crimes de l'homme: Le scandale du mal," Les Nouveaux Cahiers, no. 85 [1986]. 9). 1 think that there is every reason to believe that Levinas would concur with Ricoeur on this fundamental point. Levinas has on more than one occasion referred to the paraIIel between his conception of the ily a and the creation story. For example, in a now farnous interview with Philippe Nemo, Levinas acknowledges that the il y a is the "absolute emptiness" present "before creation" (EI 48). In the Writing ofthe Disasrer. Blanchot interprets the il y a also as that which precedes the creation. This is a reading that Levinas speaks of approvingly, again, in the sarne interview with Nemo (El 50), and in PN where he explicitly equates the "biblical 'unforrned and void"' with Blanchot's Neurer, or impersonal being (9 1 ).
63 Other references to the shipwreck (naufrage) of being, include: EN 3 1, CP 30, AE 76, OB 59. PN 122; cf. DEE 33, EE 26,
64 André Neher. The Exile o/the Word From the Silence ofrhe Bible to the Silence ofAuschtvitz. mns. David Maisel (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 198 l), 60-
65 Fox's translation is modeled after the Buber-Rosenzweig translation of the Tanakh - cornpleted by Buber in 1962. Buber and Rosenzweig composed a nurnber of articles in which, together and separately, they discuss sorne of the principal problems involved in Biblical translation. These illurninating essays along with some of their correspondence have been collected in Scr@ture and Transforion.trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington and Indianapotis: Indiana University Press. 1994)-
66 The Jewish creation story must be distinguished from another important ancient account: Plato's Tirnaeus. On the surface it would seem that the Jewish God crafh the world from a pre-existing rnaterial like Plato's Demiurge, "Yet the role of the rohu wa bohu," as Yehezkel Kaufinann points out, "is quite un1 ike the part played by the primeval matter of pagan cosmogonies. God creates the cosmic phenornena of light, firmament, Sun, moon, and host of heaven by fiat alone. with no recourse to primeval stuff' (The Religion of Israel, trans. Moshe Greenberg [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 19601. 67).
67 "To put speech at the origin of tmth is to abandon the thesis that disclosure, which implies the solitude of vision, is the first work of tmth" (Tel 72, Tl 99). While Levinas prioritizes language over vision. he departs from thinkers like Buber by introducing a subtIe but important distinction between dialogue and the Other's speech. See note 88 in chapter two. The Logos or Word that the Gospel of John proclaims to be the essence of Creation must be distinguished from the Jewish understanding of the word of God. While New Testament scholars are still uncenain as to the exact connotation John had in mind when he ernployed the term Logos. the fact remains that because of the term's association with Greek philosophy, there has been a consistent tendency in Christian thought to conflate John's Logos with the philosophical principle of Reason. The confluence of Christian doctrine with Greek ontology was to have trernendous implications in the development of western thought. It was not until the nineteenth century that the implications of this confluence were appreciated. Building on Nietzsche's analyses of the rnarriage of Christian âheology with Greek philosophy, Heidegger atternpts to unearth what he calis the "onto-theo-logicai" bais of western metaphysics ("The Onto-theo- logical Constitution of Metaphysics," in Identity and Dzrerence, trans. Joan Starnbaugh [New York: Harper gL Row, 19691). A major obstacle in appreciating not only Levinas's philosophy but Jewish thought in general is the cornmon tendency for contemporary intellectuals to approach these texts with Greco-Christian presuppositions -this holds true not only for Christian-identified philosophers, but non-religious phiiosophers as well. For an excellent study of how Jewish thought is regularly misconsmed according to Greek and Christian ideas, see Susan A. Handelman, The S1ayer.s ofMoses: The Emergence ofriabbinic fnterpretation in Modern Literary Theory.
68 Rosenzweig offen this succinct sketch of the complex interrelatedness of speech, individuation, and the good: "[When] God 'separates' the chaos of attributes, and when the separation is accomplished. and the beginning of creation is cornpleted in the visibility of the individual attributes, then what had already become visible in the light rings for the first tirne as resounding, as word: the 'good"' (The Star of Redemption, 153).
69 Pesikto Rabbati 23~4,ed. M. Friedmann (Vienna, I880), cited in W. Gunther Plaut, ed. The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of Arnerican Hebrew Congregations, 198 1 ), 120.
70 On the different meanings of tohu and bohu, see WilIem A. VanGemeren. ed. The New /nternarional Dicrionaty of Old Testament Theology and fiegesis, vol, i (Grand Rapids: Zondennan Publishing House. 19971,606-9-
The timing of the encounter with the divine figure is also relevant. For the Genesis narrative signals the encounter by noting that Jacob had awakened in the night (Gen. 3223). in other words. the Night preceding earthly night. The theme of being attacked by the divine in the Night is repeated again with Moses (Exod. 424). The story of Job similarly attests to this expenence. Referring specifically to the mysterious attack on Moses, Buber writes: "We know from the life of the founders of religions . - - that there is such an 'event of the night'; the sudden collapse of the newly won certainty, the 'deadly factual' moment when the demon working with apparently unbounded authority appears in the worid where God had been in control but a moment before" (Moses: The Revelarion and the Covenanr mew York: Harper Touchbooks, 1958],58). These enigrnatic and violent meetings with the divine Other presage a profound religious or ethical conversion. I will examine Jacob's divine encounter in greater detail in chapter three.
72 Edmond Jabes, From the Desert to rhe Book: Di~iogueswith Marcel Cohen. trans. Pierre Ioris (Banytown. NY: Station Hill Press, 1990), 14. The desert trope is one that Levinas shares with other postmodem thinkers like Gilles Deleuze. However, it is important to emphasize that for Levinas the desen is at best only the beginning of subjective life, Unlike many posûnodem thinkers who endorse the ideal of nomadism, Levinas deems the nomadic spirit a form of ethical evasion. Indeed he makes an interesting distinction between the nomad and the émigré. Despite his or her movements, the nomad's identity is bound to the soi1 or terrain from which they derive sustenance, whereas the dmigré is primarily in search of a new community (EN 136). Like Socrates (see Phaednrs 230d), Levinas believes that the fullness of life can only be realized in the city with its established institutions and in the Company of others.
73 "lt is on the arid soi1 of the desert, where nothing is fixed, that the mie spirit descended into a test in order to be universally fblfilIed" (DF 137).
74 Peperzak succinctly describes the rnenacing and fascinating nature of the il y a when he writes that the "ily a burdens and bothers us, but at the same time seduces us by the magic of its invitations to self- abandonment and dispersion" (Beyond: The Philosophy ofEmmanuel Levinas, 196). In chapter four. I will analyse the religious and social implications of the phenomenoIogy of ambivalence that corresponds to the experience of the il y a.
75 For Levinas, death cm only have rneaning for the self insofar as it first relates to the Other's death and suffering. Thus in Entre Nous, Levinas avers that it is in the ''response to the nakedness of the face and its rnortality [that] takes place the concem for one's death, where the 'dying for him' and the 'of his death' has a priority in relation to [the possibility of my own] 'authentic' death" (EN 230). Levinas's view of the rneaning of the Other's death will be discussed in the fourth chapter. CHAPTER II
I 1 will preserve Levinas's practice of capitalizing this tem in order to avoid confusion with the popular meaning of 'desire.' The 'Good' (le Bien) and the 'Inhite' (l'Infini) will remain capitalized for similar reasons.
-7 Levinas's philosophy is often rnisinterpreted because of inattentiveness to his peculiar deployment of philosophical tenns. That Levinas fiequentIy appropriates terms from traditional philosophy attests. in large pan, to his respect and admiration for the n'gour of classical philosophy, He thus loathes the voguish attitude that speaks, for example, of the supposed "death of philosophy-" See, for example. the beginning ofL'No Identity," in CP 141. But Levinas is far ftom being an uncritical exponent of traditional philosophy. For while rnaintaining continuity with certain features of traditional thought, Levinas is. simultaneously, intent on unsettling its ossifying tendencies. Thus, when Levinas borrows terms fiom traditional texts we must keep in mind that they are ofien employed in a manner that betrays their original meaning. Rather than the implied meaning of key philosophical concepts, Levinas is in search ofthe rare "flashes" in the "history of philosophy" (OB 8). Quite often the key to grasping the significance of a term in Levinas's lexicon is connected to the term's etymology. As far as I am aware no one has yet addressed Levinas's fondness for etymology. Yet, his texts abound with etymological references and allusions. For instance, the phrase "in the etymological sense" (dans le sens etyrnologique) occurs repeatedIy in his writings. See. for exarnple: BP W 165, B l ' sii. Cf 163. DF 25.137.269.38 1, OB 108, PN 3,25, TI 40,80,162, TN 128, TO 107.
Eric Pamidge. Origins: A Short Elymological Dictionmy of Modern English (New York: Macmillan. 1959). 148.
1 am not suggesting that these two tenns -Désir and désastre - are meant to be deliberately contrasted by Levinas. He employed the term 'Désir' long before Blanchot tumed to the idea of the 'dés- astre-' The fact that these two concepts resonate with each other is, therefore, purely felicitous.
In a late interview, Levinas notes that "[tlhe God of ethical philosophy is not God the almighty being of creation, but the persecuted God of the prophets who is always in relation with man. . . . This is why 1 have med to think of God in terms of desire, a desire that cannot be fiilfilled or satisfied - in the etymological sense of saris, measure. 1 can never have enough in my relation to God, for he always exceeds my measure. . ." (DEL 32).
Plato' Symposium, in CDP 199c-20 1c. ln opposition to Aristophanes's account of Eros. Diotima reiays to Socrates that "Love never longs for either the half or the whole of anything except the good (Phaedo 205e).
These references represent only a srnall sample. Other related terms include "excitation." "exposure," "extradition," "e-normous" (Latin: enormis, ex-norma) (GCM 105), "extreme exposition" (GCA4 162). and a term coined at the begiming of his career, and which we have already commented on in the first chapter, "excendance." The comrnon prefix of al1 these terms ('ex-') designates the 'outside' of being. Thus, for example, "extravagant" Iiterally means to 'wander outside the bounds.' As welI as denoting the Good, these terms serve a perfomative hction in Levinas's writing: the very proliferation of these unusual terms is excesshe, meant to ovenvheim and to prevent the reader from identiwing too closely with the words of the text. Once uttered, words expressing Desire are reified, thus betraying the Good,
* As we will see, Levinas interprets Descartes's idea of the Infinite as a version of the Good.
Plato. Republic 358b-c.
By making fiequent allusions to this episode in the Repubiic, 1 believe that Levinas is signaling to his readers that he too. like Plato, is aware that his adherence to the Good will be met with skepticism and reserve. Indeed, the jamng first sentence of Totalify and InfTnity repeats Glaucon's apprehension about transcendental ethics: "Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality" (Te/ ix, TI 2 1). Cf. OB 155.
David Sacks, A Dictionmy of the Ancient Greek Worid (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995). 254. Gyges was the king of Lydia sornehe in the first half of the seventh century BCE.
IZ According to Herodotus7s version, Gyges was initially the bodyguard of King Candaules. Histories. Book 1. 8.
l3 Plato. Republic 3 53b-354a.
j4 PIato. Philebirs. in CDP, 21c-d.
l5 In keepinp with his reference to shell fish in the Philebus (see previous note). Plato reasons in the Timueirs that fish and other sea creatures occupy the depths of the earth -that is, the region furthest from the perfect Forms and the Good -as "a punishment of their outlandish ignorance" ([in CDP] 92c)- In Book X of the Republic, Plato describes the present status of the sou1 as sunk in the depths of the sea. incased by "barnacles" (Republic 61 1 Ic-612a). In the Phaedms, Plato refers to the soul's anachment to the body as being "fast bound therein as an oyster in its sheII" ([in CDP] 250c). Finally, the dark underground cave - in Plato's famous parable of the Republic -offers another rich metaphor to convey the impoverished shell-like personality that results fiorn a life without the Good.
l6 Plato. Republic 57 la-576b. Plato's ideas on the ïuinatural desires" -especially the argument that such desires are universal and manifest thernselves primarily in dream-life (571 c-572a) - sound remarkably sirniIar to Freud's theory of the primitive and amoral wishes that constitute the unconscious.
l7 William Desmond rnakes the interesting observation -one that is conguous with the reading of Plato that 1 am putting forth here -that Thrasymachus "advocates strategies for avoiding shame, that is being found out by others - he denies the gaze of a divine other," Phiiosopb and ifsOfhers: Wqsof Being and Mind (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 168.
Plato, Republic 576d. l9 Ibid. 578a 5784-579b.
*O Ibid. 558b-56 1 e.
21 See Socrates's autobiographical comments about how he came to appreciate the need for the Forms and the Good in the Phaedo (97- 10 1).
22 Piato. Republic 509b.
25 The **absolute'-is yer another term that Levinas draws from the history of philosophy and subsequently modifies. And again, it takes on a pecuIiar meaning in Levinas's work, closely approximating the term's etymology (fiom the Latin absoluere meaning 'to fiee fiom')- In Tutalitif and Infini&. Levinas writes. "[the absolute] absolves itself fiom the relation in which it presents itself' (50) [L jl bsolu s "absou! ' dans la relation où il se présente (Tel 20)]. Levinas's "absolute," therefore, marks the point where 1 am fieed or loosened fiom the gravitational pull of being.
26 René Descartes, Medilations on First Phihophy, in CSM II 25. The human incapacity to tolerate insinceris - what 1 believe is fündamentally at issue with the problem of the evil genius - is anticipated by Plato's fierce condemnation of the representation of the gods as changing and deceprive: "no man wants to be deceived in the most important part of him and about the most important things: that is when he is most terrified of falsehood." Plato goes on to have Socrates Say that there is nothing -'mysterious" about this. "All I'm taIking about," he continues, "is being deceived in one's own mind about realities: and so being the victim of falsehood . . .that is where men are least ready to put up with the presence of falsehood . . ." Republic 382a-b.
27 Descartes, CSM 11 25. One can appreciate why skeptics, both in Descartes's tirne and after. would hardly be persuaded by Descartes's clairn at the end of the Medi!arions that his doubts in the first two meditations were "exaggerated," and therefore of no real threat fiom the start (Ibid. 6 1). From the perspective of his critics, once Descartes had posited both the dream problem and the evil genius hypothesis he had irretrievabIy unlocked a philosophical Pandora's box that no amount of clear and distinct thinking could henceforth contain.
28 Ibid. 24.
29 Ibid, 28.
30 Ibid, 27-36.
j2Ibid. 35. 33 It is only "by an abuse of language" that we name the Good, "God (CP 136). No word - not even the narne "God" -adequately expresses the Good.
35 For many lewish philosophen, including Levinas, the Bible represents the .'forgotten origins-* of the "rights of man" (TN6).Thus, in his 1960 essay, "La Laïcité et la pensée d'Israël," Levinas maintains that earIy modem English formulations of individual tights draw direct inspiration fiom the Biblical prestige accorded to the stranger, especialty the idea that the stranger walks in proximity to God and, therefore. deserves the utmost respect and protection fiom the host community (IN 177-196).
36 The rnost influential Jewish historîan of this century, Gershorn Scholern. aptly describes this tendency: "The secularizing talk of the 'sancrïty of life' [for example] is a squaring of the circle. It smuggies an absolute value into a world which could never have fonned it out of its own resources. a value pointing surreptitiously to a theology of Creation which is, afier all, disavowed by a purely rationalistic view of the world." On Javs and Judaism in Crisis: Selected Essays, ed. Werner J. Damhauser ('New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 290.
j7 Theodor de Boer extends Levinas's cnticisms to contemporary ethical models that are built on purely rational or pragmatic foundations. De Boer singles out Jurgen Habermas's communicative action theos, as an example of how secular models surreptitiously presuppose some conception of the Good. al1 the while denying it. In Habermas's daim that a principle of consensus acts as the ultimate guaranror of domination-fi-ee communication he has, according to de Boer, "moved in an almost imperceptible way from ontology to 'metaphysics.' 1s the striving for consensus really . . ,a presupposition that people always make when they speak. Or should we say instead that the experience of the Good is presupposed here. . . . Habermas says that consensus is a kind of agreement that binds us together beforehand. [But such a] cornmitment which is present beforehand . . . cannot be found in the abstract anthropological fact that Lve speak a language. It is . . . a trace of the Good . . ." (Foundations of a Critical Ps~d~ologr.,tram Theodore Plantinga [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 19831, 179-80).
j8 In Didecric ofEniightenrnenr (bans. John Curnming pew York: Continuum. 19721). Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer portray a nightmarish vision of the consequences of instrumental reasoning.
40 Descartes. CSM II 27.
41 That is, the mind's ability to make itself the object of iü attentive gaze. Though Descartes does not use this term - it is more commonly associated with Leibniz and, later. Kant - in the Meditalions. he is certainly aware of the mind's self-reflexiveness.
42 Ibid. 54ff.
43 Ibid. 25. 44 Ibid. 32. The concept of a 'hatural light" has its imrnediate roots in Scholastic thought. The idea also plays an important role for Augustine, But it has its earliest roots in Plato himself. Descartes's use of the narural light of reason closely parallels Plato's analogy between the sunlight that illuminates objects for the physical eye, and the illumination of the sou1 for the eye of the mind. For an excellent overview of the history of this concept, see John Morris, "Descartes's Natural Light," in René Descartes: Crifical Assessments, ed Georges J. D. Moyal, vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 1991).
45 The problem 1 have just outlined has corne to be famously ho- as the Tartesian Circle: Descartes's cntics pointed out a circular argument in his presentation of the first proof for God's existence. Descartes maintains that he requires a proof of God's existence in order to ensure that he can rely on the criteria of clear and distinct thinking. But al1 proofs require clear and distinct ideas. Hence the circular reasoning charged by his critics.
46 For a lenghy discussion of the shared rhetorical structure of Plato's and Descanes.~ metaphysics. see Jacques Derrida's "White MythoIogy: Metaphor in the Text of PhiIosophy." Murgins of Phifosoph?~.trans, AIan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), especially, 266R Cf."Cogito and the History of Madness." in Writing and D~rerence(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1978). 59.
47 Plato, Republic 508d.
48 Pascal, Pensées 9 199.
49 Ibid. 5131.
so Ibid. $20 1.
Levinas credits Plato for grasping that the corporeal vision of distant heights does not constitute transcendence - he draws attention to the passage in the Republic (529a-530c) where Socrates teases Glaucon for conflating the vision of the physicaI heavens with transcendence (Te/ 165: TI 19 I ). While Plato avoids the error of Glaucon's comrnonsensical view, his own conception of transcendence is equalIy suspect, for it confuses the mind's vision of the impersonal Good with transcendence.
52 Levinas does not deny the importance of art in people's lives. He does however cal1 into question the identification of the sublime with transcendence.
53 It is important to note, however, that afier DE, Levinas will carefully qualiQ the nature of this exit fiom being. In DE, the reader is lefi with the impression that transcendence requires a cornplete break with being. Levinas, however, makes it very clear in subsequent texts that the way out of being must begin from being. Hence, in the original preface of EE, Levinas states that "the movement which leads an existent toward the Good . .. is a depamre fiom Being (une sortie de 'i 'être) . . .an ex-cendence." But then he immediately specifies the nature of this 'going out' of king as follows: "But excendence and the Good necessarily have a foothold in being . . ." (1 5) (DEE preface of 2nd ed.). In other words, the Good must be conceived in relation to being with which it is intertwined. This qualification avoids the pitfall of bifurcating ethics and ontology. 54 Unless the self is sensitive to the ethical context of consciousness - the scene that precedes the taking hoId of given entities (érant) (BPW 152) -then the act of knowing remains marally adrift. Levinas's idea of an ethical 'scene' or 'drama' that precedes the ontological drarna will be exarnined in greater depth in the following chapter.
55 Abram is Abraham's original name.
56 Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Scr@ture and Transfa~ion.trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1994), 123 .
57 Sarah. Abraham's wife, also undergoes a similar ûansfomation - she too assumes a ne\\ narnr afier her journey (she is originally "Sarai").
58 These specific relationships are adopted from the scherne proposed by Resenzweig in The Slur ofRedenprion. This scheme is quiet ly assirnilated into the structure of Totafigand Injirtin.
59 1 am using the term 'Greek' to cover the ancient period as a whole. I am fully aware that there are major differences between, for example, eighth century and fi# century Greek beliefs. These differences, however, are less pronounced when Greek culture as a whole is contrasted to Jewish culture.
60 In the nen two chapters, 1 will examine in greater depth what Levinas means bu -paganisrn.- For our present purposes, the tem 'pagan' refers to the ego's tendency to understand iitself. its world. and the gods, imrnanently.
Homer. The O&ssqv, &ans. Richmond Lanimore (New York: Harper and Row. 1965). 236- 238. The general indifference -be it deliberate or unintended - demonstrated by the gods towards mortais is not restricted to early Greek drama or myth. We find the same indifference expressed in the theological contemplation of a later philosopher like Aristotle. Though it serves as the inspiration for the perfect motion of the celestial bodies and the cyclical motion of the terrestrial seasons, the Prime Mover is itself utterly indifferent to the physical cosmos. Aristotle's Theos may move the universe. but remains itself unmoved. etemally silent. Metaphysics XII (107 1-1 074).
62 In Aeschylean drama, which serves as Rosenzweig's primary mode1 for Greek apdy. the garrulous speech of the chorus stands in sharp relief to the hero's reticence.
63 Rosenzweig. The Star of Redernption, 78. Rosenzweig's picture of the tragic self is corroborated by many classicists. See, for example, W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks und rheir Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 130.
64 Rosenzweig, The Stur ofRedemption, 77.
We are here dealing with the limitations of language, for God is rnost certainly not a being. Levinas is acutely aware of the limitations of a phitosophical vocabulary in describing transcendence. The development of Levinas's work is marked by a growing desire to purge -to the extent that this is possible -al1 ontological references in the portrayal of alterity. 66 Ephaim E. Urbach, The Sages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1987). 124K
67 See W. Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commenrary, 405-6. Buber develops a similar interpretation of God's name in Scrbture and TransIation, 87, 192-195. He argues that the name that God uners to Moses kindles in the sou1 the desire to understand it- The ultimate meaning of the name, however. remains forever a mystery.
6g Buber develops this argument in his reading of the Golden Calf episode. Moses: The Rmeiation and the Covenant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, I958), 147-6 1.
69 Franz Rosenzweig "The New Thinking," in Franz Rosenweig- His Life and Thoughr. ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1953), 200.
70 The precise nature of the relations between self, Other, and God. will be analysed in the fourth chapter.
Martin Buber, .'Dialogue," in Benveen Mon and Man, trans. Ronald Gregoor Smith (New York: Macmillan. 1968), 15.
72 Martin Buber, Meetings, trans. Maurice Friedman (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1973). 18-9.
73 Ironically. the traditional reading that pins exclusive blame on Eve -and by extension on woman in general - is itself complicit in the same evasiveness manifested by both Adam and Eve.
74 Rosenzweig, The Sim- of Redemption, 175.
75 Buber. *'Dialogue," 10.
76 Cain's narne signifies a "%mith," as well as one who works the soil. a famer. Ji11 Robbins presents a fruitfiil analysis of Cain fiom a perspective that draws on both Levinas and Blanchot (Altered Reading [Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999],63-72)- Her reading provides insight into the phenornenon of "losing face" (68). In my own interpretation, 1 emphasize the tragic afinities - in particular, the propensity for moral evasion -between Cain and Gyges.
77 Rosenzweig, The Star ofRedernption, 207.
78 To emphasize this point, Levinas goes so far as to say that Cain's response is %incereo-(EN 129).
79 J is the designated author of this particuiar text which is considered to be the oldest portion of the first fives books of the Tanakh or Pentateuch (as Christians refer to it). J is an abbreviation for Jahvist - the German rendition of Yahwist -adopted by a group of eighteenth and nineteenth cenmry German scholars, later known as the historical-cnticism school of BibIical interpretation. In his controversial essay on J, Harold Bloom speculates that J is a woman who wrote some time afier the death of King Solomon in 922 BCE (Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg, The Book o/J D\lew York: Vintage Books, 199 1 ],24ff). 80 Homer. The IZiad, trans. by Richmond Lattirnore (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 1951), 19:85-92. According to E.R- Dodds, we must not be rnisled into thinking that such rationalizations are understood by their enunciators to be mere allegoricaI expressions. The early Greeks actually believed that their most violent passions originated in extemal agents outside of their immediate control (The Greeks and the Irrational [Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 195 1 1. 1-27),
In Biblical Hebrew, ponirn (face) can also refer to the "presence" of either another hurnan being -panim is sometimes translated as "person" -or of God (see, George Arthur Buttnck, ed. The Inrerpreter's Dictionaty of the Bible, fr\lashville and New York: Abingdon Press. 1962],2:22 1 ).
82 At the end of The Sfar of Redemption, Rosenzweig wrïtes that there is -80other way to express the Tmth. Only when we see the Star as countenance do we transcend every possibility and sirnply see" (432)- Rosenzweig interprets the Star -the six-sided star of David -as a symbol of the interconnected fate of God and hurnanity. If one can imagine an upward-pointing triangIe (A) representing Rosenzweig's three irreducible elements of reality -God, Man, and World - and a second downward-pointing triangle (V)representing the three fundamentaI relationships of Redemption (Man and World), Revelation (God and Man) and, Creation (God and World), then the supenmposition of the two triangles resembles the sis- sided star of David (+). In a boId gesture, Rosenzweig correlates the hurnan face with this figure. Richard Cohen gives us a vivid graphic representation of Rosenzweig's Star in Ekvations: The Heighr ofrhe Good in Rosen-weig and Levinas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 246-5 1 -
83 Ontological language inevitably betrays the non-phenornenological nature of transcendence. Hence in Othemise than Being, Levinas will make use of the awkward, but necessary, phrase. "site-and non-site" of transcendence.
84 This is an important term in Levinas's vocabulary. Signification is the non-thematizable dimension of language that precedes each utterance. In Otherwise than Being. signification corresponds to what Levinas calls Saying (le Dire), which he contrasts to the Said (le Dit). Speaking cannot be reduced to the signs (the Said) that are exchanged between me and my interlocutor. Prior to the exchange of signs. prior to actual communication, in the presence of the Other 1 experience an obligation to respond (Saying). 1 have no conscious control over the terms of this imposition. 1 have not agreed to it. and yet 1 find myself in a position of indebtedness towards the Other. Signification transforms rny selfhood, for the moment I speak or respond to another person, the center of my being, rny '1' is displaced. In speaking, there is a tacit acknowledgement of the Other's hold on me -my words are meaningless unless she is willing to listen to me, and my questions are pointless, unless she responds. This cornmitment to hear and to respond preexists both me and my interlocutor, without which there can be no meaning, no significance in life.
85 See, for instance, EL (122). where he speaks ofthe "visée du visage."
86 While the obvious allusions here are to the Bible, one can also find illustrations of the ethicali- of the face in other literature. For instance, it is the suppkating face of King Priam that finally ends the murderous rage that possesses Achilles when he repeatedly mutilates the corpse of Priam's son, Hector. Priam. an old, grieving man, has no means to restrain the younger and physically more powerfül Achilles other than encountering him, face-to-face. Priam's plea breaks through Achilles self-absorbed rage. At that moment. Horner depicts Achilles breaking down, finally recognizing the gravis, of his brutal treatment of Hector's corpse. The Iiiad, Book 24. 87 This should not be taken to mean that other human beings do not encounter me as their Other. They do, of course. However. I do not experience myseIf as thek Other. To claim otherwise is. for Levinas. a sign of vanity.
88 Levinas distances himself from Buber's pomayal of the 1-Thou relationship as mutual and reciprocal. See the first three essays in OS, and PN(17-39). For Levinas, the seIf-Other relationship is first and foremost one-sided. The Other seizes me with his words, and compels me to dialogue. The mutuality of dialogue is the effect of the Other's initial demand or comrnmdment- Prior to communication or dialogue. the Other's speech is a cornmandment. This point cannot be stressed enough with respect to Levinas's thought. since it sets him apart from dialogical thinkers Iike Buber and Mikhail Bakhtin. This is not to say that dialogue plays no part in his thinking; it certainly does. Dialogue, however. for Levinas. is the orifcorne and nor rhe soztrce of ethicality.
89 Friedrich Nietzsche. .'Schopenhauer as Educator," in Untimefy Medir~fions.n-ans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 129.
Rousseau. Ernile or On Educarion; see, for example, 1 1,2 14- 15.
91 Nietzsche. ..Schopenhauer as Educator," 130.
92 Ibid., 127.
93 On the role of daemons in everyday Greek life, see F.M. Cornford. From Religion tri Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 199 1). 95-100.
94 Plato, Phaedo f 07e, 1 08c; cf. Staresman, in CDP,27 1 d.
96 My discussion will be confmed to Heidegger's examination of conscience in Behg and The. There is no direct mention of the term daimon in this text. Heidegger, however, does discuss, approvingly, the daimon in texts that are contemporaneous with Being and Time. A discussion of these texts can be found in David Farrell Krell, Daimon Lfe: Heidegger and Lfe-Philosophy (Bloornington. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992). See also Michel Haar, Heidegger and the Essence 03-Man, trans. William McNeil (Albany. NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 24.
97 Imrnanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. and trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 189. On this particular point, Levinas and Kant are both in agreement. The difference -and it is a major one -between them is that Levinas regards the Other as both the external Iawmaker and the interna1 prosecutor of conscience. Whereas Kant divides these two roles between the subject (1 am subject to a Iaw that 1 give myself) and the other person.
98 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarc~thuiFtra,in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and rrans. Walter Kauhann (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 19761,268. CHAPTER III
The ego iis "the temptation to separate oneself fiorn the GooC (CP 137).
In contrast to what Levinas refen to as the ethical 'being-for-the-Other' (OB 16 1 ).
The theme of the Other's accusations and their impact on the self is discussed in the final pages of the third section of Tt (244-7).
Most Levinas scholars point to Derrida's influence. in particular to his essay. "Violence and Metaphysics" (in Writing and Dlxerence [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978]), to account for Levinas's later willingness to regard the Other's gaze as a form of violence, For a good sumrnary of the complex relationship between Derrida and Levinas, see Robert Bernasconi. "Levinas and Derrida: The Question of the Closure of Metaphysics," in Face to Face wirh Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986).
In the opening pages of OB, Levinas mites that "[tlhe different concepts that come up in the attempt to state transcendence echo one another" (AE 23, OB 19).
Despite the central place that the concept of intrigue occupies in Levinas's work. it is virtually ignored in much of the Levinas scholarship. Two notable exceptions are Edvard Kovac, "L'intrigue éthique," in Levinas: l'éthique comme philosophie première (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993). and Alain Finkielkraut, "Levinas: Le souci de l'autre," Magazine littéraire 345 (1 996)- While both of these articles are helpfut, neither explains the evolution of this concept in Levinas's work. My own analysis focuses on providing just such a context.
My analysis of the concept of integrity will be deferred to the founh chapter.
8 This article -reprinted in DF- was wriîten as an intellecnial autobiography; it provides a very useful outline of the progression of Levinas's thought.
Richard Cohen captures the sense that Levinas wishes to convey about the Other's alterity when he describes the Other's face as an "ultrapositivity," a "non-phenomenal bursting of phenomenality" (Elevntions, 283).
Wittgenstein holds that silence and wonder are appropriate whenever we encounter the limits of language. He refers to these Iimits as "Ethics" -a broad term which encompasses religious. aesthetic. as weIl as moral, experiences. The Philosophical Review 74 (1 965), 8.
' I Though, given Levinas's penchant for etymology (see chapter 2, note 2). it is surprising that he does not exploit the sernantic history of 'expenence.' The root of the Latin experiens. peritus, meaning !O attempf or to endeavour, is akin to pericuium, f?om which we get English 'peril.' The idea that the ethical meeting is risk-fiIled and penlous wouId certahly be in keeping with Levinas's view of the self-Other relationship. Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Eiymolopical Dicrionary of Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 485.
IZ In particular, Levinas's two tex& of 1947, EE and TO, abound with theatncal references.
Goethe. Faust. trans. Walter Kauûnann (New York and London: Anchor Books, 196 1 ).
l4 Blanchot's thought, especially his fiction, captures the mute despair provoked by neutral being. An excellent example is the novel, L'arrêt de mort (Paris: Gallimard, 1948).
I5 These three philosophers are either alluded to or explicitly mentioned in the opening chapter of OB.
Ci Baruch Spinoza, The EIhics and Selecred letters, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapol is. Indiana: Hackett Publishing. 1982), Part III, propositions 6'7-
I7 Ibid., Part III, Proposition 9. Scholium.
*-Esseis interesse; essence is interest" (AE 4, OB 4).
l9 1 will develop this idea further, below.
20 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kauhann (New York: Randorn House. 1966). 259.
See also HO 26.
22 Levinas borrows this phrase fi-om Philippe Nemo (GCM 129).
3"-' In the prefatory note written for the 1990 English translation of RH. Levinas writes: "-This article expresses the conviction that [the] source [of the bloody barbarism ofNational Socialism] stems fkom the essential possibility of elemenral Evil into which we cm be led by logic and against which Western philosophy had not sufficiently insured itself*(RH 63).
24 "L'actualité de Maimonide," in EP (144). This article appeared originally in Paix et droit (i 935). It was reprinted along with five other articles that date back to the sarne period under the title. "Épreuves d'une pensée," in L 'Herne 60 (1 99 1): 139-1 53. See Jacques Rolland's excellent analysis of these early writings in his postscript to Levinas's De I 'évasion (1 15-120).
25 Levinas rejects the conventional picture of the relationship between Judeo-Christianiq and Iiberalism. The standard view tends to emphasize the disjunctions between the two. Levinas, on the other hand, is suspicious of the view held both by religious and by Iay thinkers that iiberalism represents a departure fiom Judeo-Christianity. He consistently argues that the secularization of the modem liberal world is not antithetical to Jewish and Christian principles, but one of their essential moments. On the religious foundations of secular justice, see 1.(18 lm. Levinas repeats this thesis in the various presentations he gave between 1969 to 1986 at an annual coiloquium organized by the Italian philosopher, Enrico CasteIIi, in Rome. Levinas's biographer, Anne-Marie Lescourref gives us a vivid picture of the excitement surrounding this internationally-renowned conference, as welI as a sense of the importance attached to it by Levinas, Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Flammarion, I994), 268ff.
26 Levinas does not actually explicitly refer to a dialogue between Plato and Heidegger. 1 am suggesting, however, that the first part of the second chapter of OB can be better understood if we read it as an imaginary dialogue between Plato and Heidegger -one that Levinas intemipts.
27 Until the end of the 1920s. Heidegger's attitude towards Plato was for the most part syrnpathetic. After his famous Kehre, however, Heidegger adopts an increasingly critical stance towards Plato's philosophy. For the later Heidegger, Plato represents the begiming of the ossification of ontolog that Heidegger claims undergrids western thought from the end of the pre-Socratic period to the present.
28 Sophfst 244a; cited in SZ 1, BT 19.
29 See Sophisr 242c.
30 Only three yean before Being and Time, the Sophisr served as the centrepiece of a serninar delivered by Heidegger (Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer [Bloomington. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 19971). Heidegger employs a novel reading of Aristotle in order to interpret the Sophisr.
I Levinas explicitly refen to Heidegger's peculiar reading of the Sophist in the 1932 study. "Martin Heidegger and Ontology" (1 5).
j2Cf. Peperzak Beyond: The Phifosophy ofEmmanuel Levinm. 80.
33 Adriaan T. Peperzak To the Olher: An Introduction to the Philosophv ofEmmanuel Lo.Nzrn (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993)' 45-6,9 1-2.
34 In the Sophist (254b-255e), Plato introduces what he calls the five .'greatest kinds.'. Along with 'being,' 'sarneness,' and 'otherness,' he aIso includes 'rest' and 'motion.' The five kinds or genera are intirnately related: being, rest, and motion are at once other to, or different fiom, each other, and at the same tirne each kind is self-identical- While Levinas is primarily concerned with the categories of the Sarne and the Other, he does in fact make direct use of al1 five genera. The following passage fkom OB, for example, not only ahdes to the principal argument of the Sophist - the inquiry into the nature of non-being - but aIso explains the self- Other relationship by drawing on Motion and Rest, two of the five of Plato's kinds: "To understand that A could be B, nothingness has to be a sort of being. Mahix of every thematizable relation, the one-for-the- other. signification, sense or intefligibility, does not rest in being. Its restlessness [in-quiétude]must not be put in terms of rest [repos]" (OB 136). See also OB t 08.
35 Amongst the many themes that preoccupy Plato in the Sophisf, one of the most important is the relationship between being (the 'what is') and non-being (the 'what is not'). The Eleatic Stranger - whose position most scholars identiQ with Plato's -argues, against his own teacher Parmenides. that non-being possesses some degree of reality. Plato ahdes to this gesture as an act of parricide, that is, a betrayal of Parrnenides (24Id). If we keep this in mind this might help to explain Levinas's ofien cryptic allusion ta Plato's parricide, These references suggest that Levinas conceives his own reinterpretation of Plato and Heidegger as another, necessary, philosophical parricide. See, for example, OB 136. 166.
36 "[Alny entity is either a 'who' . . .or a 'what"' (SZ 45, BT 7 1). It is not entirely clear From Levinas's discussion if the question of the 'who?' that he attributes to Heidegger refers to Dasein or Daii Man. Heidegger states explicitly that the question 'who?' points to the 'they-self.' and not Dasein (SZ i 14- 1 1 7, 128-1 3 1. BT 149-1 53, 166-1 68). But perhaps Levinas has Heidegger's discussion of conscience im mind where the -who' behind the voice of conscience corresponds to Dasein itself (SZ276, BT32 I ). For the purposes of my discussion, I will assume that Levinas is referring to Dasein.
j7 And even when western philosophy does deal with ethics. the very fact that it regards ethics as a branch or subset of ontoiogy means that it inevitably mesmoral issues according to the impersonal dictates of being.
j8 In defense of Heidegger, it might be argued that the 'who' does refer to sorneone other tham Dasein, namely. Dos Man (see note 36). While this is me, Levinas's argument, 1 would contend, still holds. because Das Man, like Dasein, is not conceived tiom the perspective of alterity. but fiom being.
j9 .'[T]hinking and discoune are the sarne thing, except that what we cal1 thinking is. precisely. the inward dialogue carried on by the rnind with itself without the spoken sound (Sophisr 263e).
40 In his translations, Lingis consistently translates the French word intrigue as .6plot.*-
" According to the Oxford English Dictionory' it is uncertain as to whether or not this is the correct etynologv of 'religion.' Nevertheless, the association with the verb 'to bind' (iigare) rernains a popular erymology for -religion,' Levinas recognizes that a major obstacle in understanding why ethics necessarily implicates the divine has to do with the fact that "the word 'religion' provokes so rnuch violent reaction as soon as we urter it." For that reason. he goes on to argue, it is best to remind others, as Rosenzweig did. that religion in the Jewish sense is '-totaIly different from the one that secularism combats and is put forth (DF 187).
42 "[Tlhe relation to God called faith does not prirnordially mean adhesion to cenain staternenm that constitute a knowledge for which there is no demonstration . , . To me, religion rneans . . . the excellence proper to sociality. . . ," Levinas goes on to describe transcendence as that which "bind[s] men among one another with obligation, each one answerïng for the Iives of al1 the othersl' (TN 17 1).
43 Cf. Cf 23, BPW 7-8.
44 From the Late Latin, laetus, rneaning, 'serf.'
45 Levinas bnefly mentions an episode in the Phaedm where Socrates Lkienounc[es]those who . . - instead of fistening to a statement, ask about the one that states it" (OB 27). Levinas is probably referrimg to Socrates's rebuke of Phaedrus for being more concemed about the source - 'who is it?' -of an important story that he has just recounted, than whether or not the story is tme or false - 'what is it?.' @bat is, the ontoIogical validity of the story (Phaedrus 275c). The context of Levinas's analysis implies that he in turn rebukes Socrates for subsuming the utterer ('who') under the utterance ('what'). There is a passage from the Theaetetus -which Levinas does not mention -that 1 think illustrates his point more effectively. Socrates is addressing the popular perception that philosophers are useless and cIumsy. He invokes the story of the maidservant who ridicules Thales afier he falls into a well while attempting to study the stars. What good is his preoccupation with the heavens. she asks mockingly. if Thales does not even pay attention to the ground beneath his own feet? Tn defence of Thales - and al1 'genuine' philosophers - Socrates notes that while it is "‘truc that [the philosopher] is unaware what his next-door neighbor is doing, hardly knows, indeed, whether the creature is a man at all." the true philosopher "spends a11 his pains on the [far more impomnt] question, whar man is. . . ." (1 74a-b [my emphasis]). In other words, for Socrates, who your flesh-and-blood neighbour might be is of little significance compared to the question -what is man in genetal?'
46 Wanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; al1 ir vanity- (Ec. 12) [King James Version]. See aIso OB 1 82. D VI 85.
47 References to bpmximity' appear in Levinas's work as early as EE (95). The concept however. is onIy developed much later in HAH and OB.
48 It should also be pointed out, as several cornmentaton have already. that proximité is semantically Iinked to another key word in Levinas's vocabulary, narnely, the neighbour (leprochain).
49 As we will see in chapter four, the Hebrew word for holiness. kodesh. signifies separarion.
50 God's revelation or presence is often described as "glorious" in the Hebrew Bible. The Latin gloria is a translation of the Hebrew kabüd. At one point in the book of Exodus we are told that Moses was so overwheIrned by GodTsglory that he was forced to Wear a veil over his face (Exod. 34: 29-30). In OB ( 12. 144; cf. 13.93.94, 140, 142-152, 159, 162, 193), Levinas speaks of both the 'glory' and the 'glow' of the human face.
Ephraim Urbach. The Suges (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Universiry Press. 1987). 38.
52 opened the door for my beloved, But rny beloved was gone.. ., 1 sought, but found him not; 1 caIled, but he did not answer. .. . If you meet by beloved, tell him this: That 1 am faint with love" (Song of Sol. 5:6-8). Both the translation and the original edition of Othenujse than Being erroneously cite chapter 3 of the Song of Songs (AE 1 12x26, OB 192~126)-
53 Cf. "[H]umiliry means mainly the proximity of God to human suffering" (TN 1 15).
54 For a hiller treatment of this problem see TI 97-20 1.
55 In his later work Levinas occasionally utilizes an obscure theological term, szrsceprion. to depict the self s position vis-à-vis the Other (see, for example, the preface to OB [AE x, OB xlii; cf. DC'/ 6 1. GCM 32). Susception refers to the assumption of holy orders. Like the word susceptibility, susception originally meant 'to take fiom below' (sub-capere). The term is meant tu underscore Levinas's view of the asyrnmem-caI reiationship between self and mer. He employs the word 'subject' (subjectum) for a similar reason. The original meaning of subjectus - 'to throw or place under' -captures what he takes to be the essential point about the self, namely, its dependence on the merfor moral guidance.
56 The notion of passivity requires a different conception of ternporality than the one that Levinas had studied in the publications that span EE and Tl. Levinas came to realize that the phenomenologica1 privileging of the füture in his immediate post-war tex= acted as a serious impediment to his intention to voice the ethical relationship between self and mer. Before the pubIications of the essays that comprise HAH and OB, Levinas dubs the encounter variously as bvisitation,' 'anticipation,' and 'hope.' in other words. as something that cornes towards the self from a distant future, Levinas identifies the future with the Other: the future cornes to me "across an absolute interval whose other shore the Other . . . is alone capable of marking" (TI 283). The füture, however, is rarely mentioned afier TI. The relative absence of references to the future should not be interpreted to mean that Levinas rejects the future as a temporal modality of ethicaliy. but rather that it is displaced in favour of the absolute past.
57 The Greek prefix 'dia-' of 'diachronic' can be understood as either iacross' or -rhrou~h.'In OB (9 1 ), Levinas also refers to the Other's face as an "anachronous immediacy [une immédiateté anachronique]" (AE 1 15). Levinas's prïncipaI discussion of the diachronic dimension of language is in his 1 982 essay. "Diachrony and Representation" [in TOI.
58 Shakespeare. Hamiet 1.v. 196.
59 Nietzsche. On the Genealogy ofMorals, Il1 $28. 162-3.
60 Everett Fox bases his own translation on Buber's analysis of the name Yaakov. See Scriprurr und Translation. trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloornington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1994), 12 1-2.
See Hosea l2:4.
62 The divine ottack on Moses is briefly alluded to in Exodus 4:24.
63 The name chosen for the second book of the Torah by the Septuagint -the seventy or so Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in the third century BCE was Exodos, meaning. 'rhe path thar leu& outside.'
64 The phrase "[ieu es non-lieu" and its various pemutations is a recurrent one in OB 8. 10. 14. 17,82, l8în5. Peperzak explains that the "French word 'non-lieu' is a legal expression: it indicates a judge's decision not to pursue a case." But he concludes fiom this that the definition "does not seem to fit here" (Bqfond:The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, 97). Peperzak may be underestimating the signi ficance of his own suggestion. If non-lieu rneans to throw a case out of court, then this would resonate with Levinas's presentation of the Other as the one who both judges and deposes the self.
65 Gillian Rose, Mourning Becornes the Lmv (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1 996). 3 7. 66 Plato, Republic 5 1 Bd, 521c. Plato, however, does express, at least on one occasion, a similar idea about the catastrophic ethical encounter with the Other when he has Alcibiades recount at the end of the Symposium the effect that Socrates has had on him: "[he] turned rny sou1 upside down and lefi me feeling as if 1 were the lowest of the low .. . smitten with a kind of sacred rage," Symposium, in CDP, 2 15d- e.
67 As well as refemng to Descartes, the reference to the Infinite in this passage rnight also be alluding to the important KabbaIist writer, Issac Luria (1534-72). The metaphoric appeal to the bursting screws resonates with Luria's account of the 'breaking of the vessels' - later in the essay, Levinas speaks of a "container" that "breaks" to describe the subject's traumatic encounter with the Other. For a surnrnary of Luria's ideas, see the third chapter of Gershom Scholem's Kabbalah and ifs Symbolism (New York City: Schocken Books. 1969). This connection, however, should be approached with caution, given the fact tha; Levinas is generally suspicious of al1 forms of mysticism, including the Jewish mystics.
68 The idea of catastrophe is inseparable nom theophany -the manifestation of God as ihe agent of catastrophic events - and issues relating to justice and ethics. For a helpful and succinct explanation of the term within the Jewish tradition, see Alan Mintz's article on catastrophe in Arthur Allen Cohen and Paul R- Mendes-Flohr, eds., Confemporaty Jewish Religious Thoughr: Original Essays on Criiical Concepts. Movements. and Beliefs (New York: Scribner, 1987), 4 1-45.
69 It is also interesting to note that in The Antichi&, Nietzsche reproaches the Jews as .-the nrosr catasfrophic people of worId history," in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kauhann (Harrnondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), 593. As 'We strangest people in world history," the Jews are catastrophic, for Nietzsche, because they have "denanued" the world (Ibid. 592,594). In other words. Nietzsche condemns Judaism for precisely the same reasons that Levinas afirms it.
The French translation of Micah that Levinas cites uses lieu for b6dwelling-place+-(DM I I On9).
71 Ha-maqqorn also refers to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. For a detailed account of the term maqqom, see Urbach, The Sages, 66K 1 would Iike to thank Dr. Roger Simon (University of Toronto) for his helpful comrnents on the rneaning and significance of the term maqqom.
72 "God'r presence in the world and the modes of His theophanies" are. according to Urbach. interpreted by the Rabbinical tradition as "linked to man's conduct and deeds." Ibid., 5 1.
73 For Levinas, such phrases as the 'proxirnity of God" or the "proxirnity of the Other" signiQ above al1 else social justice. Thus the proximity of the Other, he Mtes. "coincides with the disappearance of servitude and domination in the very structure of the social" (BV 5).
74 See, for example, Deuteronomy 3 1: 1 7- 18.
75 Human spirituality begins in the relation to a You, which in its "purity is the relation with the invisible Cod' and in that way "the old Biblical theme of man made in the image of God takes on a new meaning," namely, that it is through 'you' and not the '1' that 'Wis resemblance announces itself. The very movement that leads to the Other [aumi] leads to God" (DVI 227 [my trans.]). 76 Levinas's criticisrn is directed at those individuak who, like Simone Weil. cm only conceive of the Good as uncontarninated by force or violence (DF 134) and are "ignorant of the fact that notions Iike goodness are not simple, and that they can cal1 up and encapsulate notions which seem opposed to thern" (DF 140 [my emphasisj).
77 Levinas pomays such a possibility in the most chilling terms in a meditative essay on the Shoah. He describes the period between 1939 and 1945 as a "return to the desert" for the Jewish people (Phr 12 1 ). For Levinas, this was a perïod that eclipsed the Good entirely -a regression into the vortex of the meaningless Night of the il y a: "And already a chilling wind sweeps through the still decent or luxurious roorns. tearing down tapestries and pictures, putting out the lights, cracking the walls. reducing clothing to rags and bringing with it the screarning and howling of ruthless crowds. . . - [The language of anri-Semitism is] a nihilistic, devastation no other discourse could evoke" (PN 123).
78 Edith Wyschogrod. An Ethics oiRemembering.. hi si or^: Heterology, and the Numefess Orhers (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 66.
79 Bultmann is best known for his efforts to "demythoIogize" Christianity, that is. to disentangle the dominant reception of the New Testament ftom the semantics of Greek ontology. See, in particular. "New Testament and Mythology," in Kerygma and Myih, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch. trans. Reginald H. Fuller (New York: Harper &k Row, 196 1 ).
80 See also DF 249,
8' Paul S. Fiddes. The Crearive Sufering God (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1988). 1 S.
82 Levinas, of course, means, Iike Nietzsche before him, that a certain idea of God is no Ionger tenable. In the very lasr paragraph of Otherwise than Being, Levinas speaks of the necessity to reimagine the nature of ethics "after the death of a certain god inhabiting the world behind the scenes" (AE 233. OB 185). See also OB 123.
83 In contrast to Aristotle, the Bible teaches, according to Levinas, that "man is not a rational animal. but rather he resembles God . . ." (Tr140).
84 The French translation of this work is accompanied by Levinas's preface. L 'cime de fa i9ie. trans. Benjamin Gross (Lagresse: Verdier, 1986).
85 Levinas acknowledges that The Sou! o/L@ is a book that he bbread[s]fiequently" (TAr1 19)-
CHAPTER f c.'
1 exarnined this theme in the fuJt part of the second chapter. David Tracy, .'Response to Adriaan Peperrak on Tranxendence," in Erhicr as Firsr Philosopig*: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, ed. Adriaan Pe perzak. (New York: Routledge, 1999, 197.
Tracy ignores the fact that this phenomenological analysis of the sacred is actually in EE and Tl- As we will see later in the chapter, this phenomenology corresponds to Levinas's analysis of the ily a. Tracy's oversight can be partly explained by the fact that Levinas does not always explicitly refer to the "sacred," but instead ofien employs related terms Iike "participation." 1 will examine "participation" below. As well as in EE, TI, and DF, Levinas has addressed the problem of the sacred in several other essays. See, in particular, "Levy-Bmhl et la philosophie contemporaine" (1 957 [in EN)]. "Desacralization and Disenchantment" (1 97 1 [in SS, NTR]),"Sécularisation et faim" (1976 [w)."Ideology and Idealisrn" ( 1973) (in DIf/,GCM), and "Contempt for the Torah as Idolatry" (1985 [in TM).The seriousness and attention that Levinas devotes to the sacred can also be gauged by his extensive contributions to the annual Castelli colloquia on demythologization. For a Iist of the presentations that Levinas made at this conference. see Marie-Anne Lescourret, Emmanuel Lévinas (Paris: Flammarion, 1994)' 386n62. Lescoumet. however. ornits "The Name of God According to a Few Talrnudic Texts" (1 969) (in B v,
Levinas, as we will see. borrows this terni from the work of Lévy-Bruhl.
The significance of this phrase from Macbeth will be discussed later in the chapter.
See, for example, IH (1 77-8). Some English translations of Levinas's writings - especially earlier translations -neglect this important distinction by rendering both le sacré and le sain! (or lu saintete3 as L'sacred." Levinas, unfortunately, does not always adhere to the distinction that he otherwise adarnantly upholds. Thus, a reader will occasionally come across texts that use 'le sacré' interchangeably with la sainteté. In these texts, only context can determine whether or not Levinas rneans the mystical sacred or Jewish holiness. Despite these exceptions, it important to be aware of the distinction benveen the two categories if we are not to misinterpret his view of religion and its relationship to ethics.
The literature on the sacred and the holy is van. Ernile Durkheirn.~The Elemenlmy Forms of rhe Religious Lfe (trans. Joseph Ward Swain [New York: The Free Press, 19651) is considered the classic sociological treatrnent of the sacred. The major texts in the phenomenology of religion include Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. WiIIard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954); G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manfestarion: A Study in Phenomenology, tram. J. E. Turner (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); and Rudolf Otto's highly influential study, The ldea ofrhe Holx trans. John W.Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958).
* While not disregarding some of their important differences, Durkheim does not consider the differences between 'low' or preliterate religion and 'high' or monotheistic religion to be essential. See. in particular, the introduction to The EIemenrary Forms ofthe Religious Lfe. Levinas rejects this thesis. For him, monotheism represents a radical and fidamental break with the metaphysics of preliterate religion. See DEE 99. EE 6 1.
Durkheim, for exarnple, interprets the totem as an emblem that ultimately symbolizes the divinity of the clan (The Elementary Forms ofrhe Religious L fe, 236ff). 75 My comments here are partly indebted to Susan Handelman's analysis of Paul in The Siayers of Moses, especialIy 84-92,
76 Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost ofDiscipleship, ms. RH. Fuller and lrmgard Booth. revised ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., I963), 139.
77 On the sigificance of tamim and its cognates, 1 have consulted the useful entries on 9ntegriry" and "Simplicity" in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible II: 71 8, IV: 360-1 ;Joshua O. Haberman. "Righteousness," in Arthur Allen Cohen and Paul R, Mendes-Flohr, eds. Contemporary Jeuvkh Reiigious Thought :Original Essays on Critical Concepts, Movements, and Beliefs (New York: Scribner. 1 987). 83 1 - 9: see also the entry on tamim in Willem A. Van Gemeren, ed. The New Inrernational Dictionan ofOid Tesramenr Theologv and Ecegesis, vo1.4 (Grand Rapids: Zonderman Publishing House, 1997). 306-8. For a copious analysis of-vasherand zedek, see the respective enîries in The New International Dictionan-. 563- 68 and 744-69.
78 Another important reference to tatnim is Genesis 17: 1. Just before seaing out the conditions for his covenant with Abraham and his descendants, God commands him: "Walk in my presence! And be wholehearted (tamim)!" The term b'walk" in this phrase refers to moral conduct. In other words. the convenant is conditional on Abraham's ability to sustain his moral integrity.
79 On the idea of the approximation of the perfkctly just man, see the Republic (472b-473b).
Finkielkraut borrows the phrase "the shaken" fiorn Jan Patocka. The M'isdom ofLove. trans. Kevin OWeil and David SuchofT(Linc01n~Nebraska and London: University of Nebraska Press. 1997). 82.
83 Buber. Between Man and Man, 17.
83 Jean-Paul Sartre, AnriSemite andJew, tram. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books. 1948). 40ff.
84 Levinas's insights shed Iight on the phenomenon of left-wing tenorism that reached its apex in the 1970s. Despite their socialist pretensions, underground groups Iike the Italian Red Brigades, the French Action Directe, and the Gennan Baader-Meinhoff Gang, saw no contradiction between bombing "bourgeois" shopping malls - in the process mairning and killing innocent people -and their objective to end the class struggle.
85 We are al1 prone to the naïve view that agression is a tool that is exercised by others. We imagine others to be self-centred, prejudiced, and exclusionary, and rarely think of ourselves or our immediate circIes as being so. Freud makes use of the concept of the 'harcissism of minor differences" to foregound this widespread form of denial. He argues, convincingly, that every group - including those groups that are marginalized within society -feels a powerful urge to mark itself off from other groups. The tendency to priviiege one's own group while denigrating or belittling others also occurs wirhin the group. Hence, group members feel compelled to systematically categorize and exclude other members on the basis of the most minor of differences. For Freud, human narcissism is so deeply ingrained that individuals and groups go out of their way to find differences -even when these are not apparent - in order to distinguish themselves as superior to oîhers (Sigmund Freud, Civilizarion and ifsDisconrenrs, tram, James Strachey. The Penguin Faeud Library [Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. 198.51. 12: 305). 1 am indebted to Deborah Brïman for clariQing this concept. Similarly, what disturbs LevUnas is not the fact that there are bigots in the world, but rather as he concluded in 1 933 that racism -as the hatred of others - is a universal feature of humanity (IH 4 1. RH 7 1). One should not conchde from thais that Freud and Levinas are resigned to a stark Hobbesian picrure of human beings. Rather, for both of these thinkers, an awareness of the omnipresence of narcissism obliges each of us to be more vigilant in chec2Iring the excesses of our own narcissism.
I For example, those wn-ten in the mythico-poetic tradition who speak of the need to -reenchant' the world-
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