An Evaluation of Levinas' Critique of Heidegger

C.D. KEYES Duquesne University

I In his introduction to Emmanuel Levinas' Totality and Infinity,' Professor John Wild writes that Levinas' book "constitutes one of the most basic attacks on the thought of Heidegger that has yet been formulated." The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the main areas of Levinas' criticism of Heidegger and to evaluate them in the light of Being and Time.2 It will be argued that Levinas' critique of Heidegger ranges from genuine dialogue in some areas to (uninten- tional) falsification of Heidegger in other areas.

Levinas offers four main criticisms of Heidegger: (1) The way in which we "live from" and enjoy the elements that we need cannot be explained in the light of Heidegger's analysis of how Dasein uses a piece of equipment (Zeug) or implement: "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry. Food can be interpreted as an implement only in a world of exploitation."3 (2) Time is not an aspect of finitude, but of infinity: "It is not the finitude of being that constitutes the essence of

'Emmanuel Levinas, Totalityand Infinity: An Esssay onExteriority, trans. A. Lingis; intro. J. Wild (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1969), 20.This title will henceforthbe abbreviated as "Tl," while referencesto the French rext. Totalité et infini: essai sur l'exteriorite (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1961-1961),will henceforth be indicated by the short form of the title to distinguish it from referencesto the English translation. - 'MartinHeidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New ' York: Harper, 1962).This title will henceforth be abbreviated as "BT," while references to the German und Zeit Max text, Sein (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1957),will be indicated as' "SZ." In citing "BT" the German, marginal, pagination will be used.

' /" time, as Heidegger thinks, but its infinity."4 Not only are time and infinity to be thought together, according to Levinas, but time must also not be interpreted as Being-towards-death: "Time is ... not being for death, but ... a way of being against death, a retreat before death...."5 (3) Heidegger has made the wrong type of phenomena fundamental, according to Levinas. By giving priority to structures such as Being-towards-death, thrownness (Geworfenheit) and care (Sorge), Heidegger has neglected to take the love of life into account: "It is interesting to observe that Heidegger does not take the relation of enjoyment into consideration."6 (4) If philosophy (whether traditional or Heideggerian) makes ontology its fundamental ques- tion, the result is an undesirable totalizing effect that causes existing things to be seen together panaromically or reduces them to the neutralizing effect of the Being which they supposedly share in common.' Levinas insists that we also lose the primacy of the ethical8 if ontology is made fundamental. One of the most interesting, and perhaps questionable, implications of Levinas' argument, however, is that thinking in terms of visualizable totalities necessarily leads to totalitarian ways of acting. Levinas believes that this is the result not only of traditional ontology but of Heidegger's ontology as well: "Heidegger, with the whole of Western history, conceives of the relation with the Other as enacted in the destiny of sedentary peoples, ... Heideggerian ontology, which subordinates the relationship with the Other to the relation with Being in general, remains under the obedience to the anonymous, and lends inevitably to another power, to imperialist domination, to tyranny."9

'TI, 284. ' m.224. "TI, 134. 'Tl, 67, 89, 189, 294. 'This aspect of Levinas' criticism of Heidegger has been evaluated (but with results different from those found in the present essay) by Luk Bouckaert in "Ontology and Ethics: Reflections on Levinas' Critique of Heidegger," International Philosophical Quarterlv. 10 (1970), 402-19 (henceforth abbreviated as "IPQ 10"), 418: "The philosophical significance of Levinas' critique of Heidegger lies in this rejection of ontological thinking as ultimate relation to reality ... the occurrence of being as the history of truth must be founded on the ethical happening as responsibility for the , Other, and not the other way around."

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