This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G

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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. 1 Levinas, Messianism and Parody Terence Holden University of Edinburgh PhD 2010 2 I CONFIRM THAT THIS IS ALL MY OWN WORK SIGNED: _____________________ TERENCE HOLDEN DATE: ________________________ 3 ABSTRACT Levinas has come to be seen as one of the principle representatives in contemporary thought of a certain philosophically articulated concept of ‗messianism‘. On the one hand, the appeal by philosophy to messianism is conceived by many as a ‗turn‘ within postmodern thought broadly conceived towards a theology and ethics. On the other hand, there is the closely related consensus that Levinas‘ messianism is an expression of a certain ‗correlation‘ between ‗philosophy‘ and ‗Judaism‘, a correlation in which Judaism becomes the suppressed voice of conscience of the latter. We revisit some of the consensuses upon which these related understandings are based. Firstly, we consider whether the heterogeneity of Levinas‘ different articulations of the messianic dimension should be emphasized, a heterogeneity which defies simple classification. Secondly, we consider whether Levinas‘ thought can properly be called messianic as such: we emphasize the functional character of messianism in Levinas, and how messianism is structurally re-ordered according to the function it takes on. We explore namely the manner in which messianic discourse in Levinas is implicated in the construction of a certain humanism, and how it is called upon to negotiate the obstacles which such a construction faces. Re-ordered according to this regime, we consider whether what unites the various expressions of messianism in Levinas is not the articulation of a discourse which progressively realizes its non-eschatological status. We frame this thesis in terms of what we call the ‗parody‘ of messianism, a notion we derive from Nietzsche. This complicates any notion of a ‗turn‘ within postmodernism; and yet it can be shown to be an intensification of a certain tendency at work already within normative Judaism. 4 Contents 6 List of Abbreviations 8 Introduction 18 Chapter 1) Levinas and Rosenzweig: Messianism and Parody 19 Messianism and Philosophy in Rosenzweig 28 Philosophy and Judaism: Correlation or Displacement? 36 Rosenzweig, Messianism and Parody 50 Levinas, Messianism, Functionality 54 Chapter 2) Levinas, Messianism and Humanism 54 Messianism in Levinas: Literature Review 60 Not Messianism but Messianisms 66 Salvation and Sanctification 73 Messianism and the Sanctification/Fetishisation of the Human 90 Chapter 3) Messianism and ‘Straightforwardness’ 91 Messianism and Postmodernism 95 Messianic figures a) From Time and the Other to Totality and Infinity 103 Messianic figures b) Totality and Infinity and Difficult Freedom 113 Totality and Infinity: From Difference to ‗Straightforwardness‘ 119 Chapter 4) Messianism in Totality and Infinity 120 From Ethics to Justice 124 Other to the Third, Third to the Other 136 Messianism, Straightforwardness, Intelligibility 153 Messianism, Sanctification, Fetishisation 164 Messianism and Parody 5 176 Chapter 5) Messianism in Otherwise than Being 176 From Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being 184 Otherwise than Messianism 194 Otherwise than Humanism 203 Sanctification/Fetishisation of the Human 204 Messianism and Parody a) the Face and Reminiscence 220 Messianism and Parody b) Messianism and Politeness 231 Conclusion 241 Bibliography 6 List of Abbreviations Levinas AE Autrement qu’être ou au-delà̀ de l’essence AT Alterity and Transcendence AV L’au-delà du Verset: lectures et discours talmudiques CP Collected Philosophical Papers DMT Dieu, La Mort et Le Temps DF Difficult freedom: Essays on Judaism DQVI De Dieu qui vient à l’idée DL Difficile Liberté SS Du Sacré au Saint: Cinq Nouvelles Lectures Talmudique DE De l’Evasion DEHH En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger EN Entre-Nous: essais sur le penser-à-l’autre EI Ethics and Infinity EPP Ethique comme philosophie première EE Existence and Existents HS Hors Sujet HAH Humanisme de l’autre homme IH Les Imprévus de l’histoire LC Liberté et commandement NLT Nouvelles lectures talmudiques 7 OBBE Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence PN Proper Names QLT Quatre Lectures Talmudiques SH Secularization and Hunger TO Time and the Other TI Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority TeI Totalité́ et Infini: Essai sur l’Extériorité́ TN In the Time of Nations Rosenzweig SE Der Stern der Erlösung SR The Star of Redemption GMW God, Man and the World PTW Philosophical and Theological Writings 8 INTRODUCTION The word ‗messianism‘ evidently does not exist in the English language. It is somewhat disconcerting to observe the key word of ones thesis subject to repeated automatic correction. ‗Messiah‘ and ‗messianic‘ are accepted without complaint. The latter most often qualifies the expectation of the former: it concerns the expectation of a figure whose roots can be traced to the appropriation of the near eastern theology of kingship made-to-measure for the particular Israelite situation. Hyperbolae applied figuratively within this appropriation became progressively, with the transition to the post-exilic situation and the destruction of the Davidic monarchy, literal attributes of a figure who in turn became the object of anticipation, an anticipation which progressively took on an eschatological character. This anticipation and its declared realisation take on a diversity of forms across the centuries, via its scriptural treatment in the likes of Daniel and Isaiah, its pseudoepigraphical treatment in II Baruch, I Enoch and IV Ezra, its splitting into two figures in the Qumran scrolls and early Rabbinic tradition, its integration among other motifs in the sui generis articulation of the Christ figure by the early Christian community, its pretenders such as Moses of Crete, its mystical turn with Luria and Vital, its scandalous turn with Sevi and Frank, its subsequent Hassidic ‗neutralisation‘, its Zionist secularization and so on. In short we know where we are, given reasonable limits, with the word ‗messiah‘ and its derivative ‗messianic‘. This is not so with ‗messianism‘. Perhaps it denotes certain morphological features shared amongst the diverse manifestations of messianic expectation, some examples of which we have just given? Once we start talking of ‗philosophical messianism‘, however, an idealization whose intelligibility is to be detached from any determinate ‗messianic‘ expectation of any specific ‗messianic‘ figure, the consternation to which the electronic dictionary bears witness becomes understandable. Required is a more precise understanding of this notion of philosophical ‗messianism‘. The diversity to which its formulation is subject indicates to us the importance and yet also the enormity of such a task. Its origin could potentially be traced, as Fletcher and Bradley suggest, to the early Heidegger‘s phenomenology of Paul's Letters in The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Outlined here is something of an ‗ontological messianism‘: eschatology as formalised structure of experience, the structural experience namely of time as ‗watchfulness‘ stripped of the dogmatic content in view of which in Paul consciousness holds vigil, an analytic paving the way for Being and Time‘s vision of the ecstatic participation of Dasein in 9 its own end via the existential of Being-towards-death.1 Of more immediate influence, however, is the ‗messianic turn of deconstruction‘ as Caputo frames it, along with the messianic ruminations of Benjamin in particular in his late essay ‗Theses on the Concept of History‘.2 Additional important strands are the Schelling-inspired vision of the ‗objective possibilities‘ imbedded in reality furnished by Bloch, and the rendering of messianism as a critical-hermeneutical tool, as the ‗viewing of things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption‘, at the hands of Adorno.3 More recently we are faced with the parallel formulations of messianism from the likes of Agamben, Badiou and Zizek, all more or less taking their cue from Taube‘s consideration of Saint Paul and the messianic suspension of the law or ‗state of exception‘ observed at work in the latter.4 It is here that a definitive cleavage in the contemporary formulation of the messianic dimension emerges. Both Badiou and Zizek attack the messianic posturing of the Derridean strand and in different ways undertake the subversion of some of its presuppositions. With Agamben we are faced with a somewhat inverted messianism of ‗impotency‘, or of a state of suspended potency.5 The rug is effectively pulled out from under our feet, moreover, if with Zizek we are not only to throw away the dogmatic content of messianism in view à

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