The Aesthetic Versus Aesthetics: Emmanuel Levinas’ Cri- tique of Mediation

by

Cole Wesley Sadler

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto

© Copyright by Cole Sadler 2019 Sadler ii

Abstract

The Aesthetic Versus Aesthetics: Emmanuel Levinas’ Critique of Mediation Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2019 Cole Wesley Sadler Department for the Study of Religion University of TorontoThe student's thesis title, degree and year of convocation, full name, name of graduate department, and name of university must appear on the top of the abstract's first page. Emmanuel Levinas’ corpus occupies itself with the critique of representations mediating the experience of an individual with the world and the Other person. For Levinas, any attempt of an individual to mediate their experience of the Other is inherently inauthentic, and he argues that the mediating term between the self and Other has the quality of the plastic image. This plastic image d’art is the object with which aesthetics concerns itself. Therefore, Levinas’ cri- tique of mediation is a critique of aesthetics. The Phenomenological tradition in philosophy has the solution to the problem of aesthetics. The solution lies in Phenomenology’s basis in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason [First Critique] outlines the proper use of the term ‘aesthetic’ as based in the Greek aisthesis, meaning ‘sensation.’ Thus, Kant opens his First Critique with ‘The Transcen- dental Aesthetic’ of space and time as the conditions for all sensation. Phenomenology’s thesis that all consciousness is consciousness of something is indebted to this fundamental analytic of sensation. I term the fundamental analytic of sensation as ‘the aesthetic,’ as opposed to the more popular notion of ‘aesthetics’ as a concern with art and the beautiful. Ultimately, representation is a necessary element to experience, requiring that an individual re- present their experience to themself. I call The need for an individual to represent the Other to themselves ‘epistemological original sin.’ For Levinas’ Jewish context, representing the divine Other is akin to idolatry. Only the ethical revelation of the Other to the self is the solution to this fundamental problem of Phenomenology. Sadler iii

Acknowledgements

With all that I have overcome in my life, it is impossible for me to have made any ac- complishments without acknowledging my indebtedness to Others. I have been sustained and assisted by countless excellent individuals. Words fail to describe the gratitude I hold toward my Doktorvater, Professor David Novak, who has also employed me as his research assistant since January of 2012, in addition to advising my PhD. In like manner, I am grateful to Profes- sor Novak for his assistance with the Talmudic texts used in this thesis. I am grateful to Profes- sors James DiCenso and Robert Gibbs for their continued guidance in my scholarship: these individuals have helped to make me the scholar I am today. My studies would have been im- possible without the excellence of the Department for the Study of Religion administrators, Fereshteh Hashemi, Irene Kao, and Marilyn Colaço. Finally, I am grateful to my family for sup- porting my education all these years.

Cole Sadler July 4th, 2019 Sadler iv

Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 §1. Levinas and the Problem of Mediation 1 §2. Kant and the Problem of the Aesthetic versus Aesthetics 2 §3. Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Aesthetic 3 §4. Chapter Summaries 3 §5. Jewish Existentialism 5 §6. The Aesthetic and the Study of Religion 7 §7. Scholarly Engagement With Levinas’ Critique of Mediation 8 Chapter One: The Problem of Mediation in Kant’s Critical Corpus 10 §1. Judgment in the Critique of Pure Reason 10 §2. Schematism as Mediating Concept 11 §3. The Category of Community as Epistemological, not Social 13 §4. Representation and Experience 17 §5. Kant’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysical Categories 19 §6. Phenomenality Versus Causality 22 §7. Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic 25 §8. Kant’s Introduction of Practical Reason (Ethics) In the First Critique 28 §9. The Disciplines of Pure Reason, and their Antinomies 30 §10. Individual as Thing (Soul As Substance) 34 §11. Rational Cosmology: Totality of a Closed System 39 §12. Kant’s Antinomies of Pure Reason 42 §13. Postulates of Pure Reason 44 §14. Kant’s Transcendental Ideality (Prototypon Transcendentale) 48 §15. Arguments for God's Existence: Existence is not a Predicate 50 Chapter Two: Kant’s Doctrine of Method and the Critique of Judgment 55 §1. The Doctrine of Method 55 §2. Kant and the Problematic of Things 57 Sadler v

§3. Kant Anticipates Critique of Judgment 60 §4. Kant’s Definition of Metaphysics 61 §5. Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Mediation 62 §6. The Critique of Technical Reason 66 §7. Kant’s Comparative on the Different Modes of the Aesthetic 70 §8. Kant’s Definition of the Beautiful 74 Chapter Three: Heidegger and the Problematic of the Thing in Western Philosophy 79 §1. Heidegger’s Hermeneutics of Kant’s Epistemology 79 §2. Problematic of ‘Mind’ Versus Consciousness 81 §3. Appearance and Nothingness 84 §4. Aesthetic Self-Presentation 86 §5. Traditional Categories of Form and Matter 89 §6. Heidegger’s Primacy of Time over Space 91 §7. Johan Huizinga’s Fundamental Analytic of Play 94 §8. Heidegger’s Spatiality of Enframing 95 §9. Sundosis and the Problem of Wholism 99 §10. Categorical Substance and Temporality 102 §11. The Problematic of Thing-ification 105 §12. The Ingenuity of Kant’s Schematism 106 Chapter Four: Levinas and the Problem of Mediation 109 §1. Levinas’ Preliminary Analysis of On Ideas 109 §2. Levinas’ Dissertation on Husserl 113 §3. Judgment as Representation 115 §4. Levinas, Sensation, and Non-appearance 117 §5. Levinas’ Early Analysis of Mediation 120 §6. Levinas’ Interim Texts 122 §7. Ipseity, Il y a, The ‘There Is’ 125 §8. The Light of Consciousness and the Darkness of the Il y a 128 §9. Ego and God 130 Sadler vi

§10. Aesthetic Mediation in De l’existence à l’existant 134 §11. The Dark Density of Presence 137 §12. Metaphysical Hypostasis 140 §13. The Nietzschian Upsurge Into History 143 §14. Critique of Intersubjectivity in De l’existence á l’existant 145 §15. “The Ruin of Representation” 151 §16. “The Permanent and the Human in Husserl” 159 Chapter Five: The Maturation of Levinas’ Critique of Mediation in Totality and Infinity 162 §1. Levinas’ Critique of Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology 162 §2. Abraham as Prototypical Moral Individual 167 §3. Equality Versus Alterity 172 §4. Levinas’ Critique of Heraclitus 174 §5. Radical Alterity 177 §6. Necessary Mediation 179 §7. Prereflective, Autochthonious Enjoyment 183 §8. The Other as Non-Representation 185 §9. Bifurcation of Self from Self 188 §10. Approaching the Other, However Asymptotic 191 §11. Community as Distinct from the Other 196 §12. Definition of the Self as Same 199 §13. The Dwelling 202 Chapter Six: Apophatic Versus Apophansis 205 §1. Husserlian Apophansis 205 §2. Levinas’ Critique of Negativity in Totality and Infinity 209 §3. Maimonides Negative Theology of Unity Simpliciter 212 §4. The Will as Egoism 214 §5. Levinas and Positivity 216 §6. The Ego’s Autonomy in the Face of the Other 222 §7. The Encounter in the Dwelling 226 Sadler vii

§8. Metaphysics as Positivity 230 §9. The Interim Between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being 233 §11. Apo-Phansis 238 §12. Negative Theology in Otherwise Than Being 244 §13. Conclusion: The Absence of God as Opposed to a Mediating God 249 Afterword 252 Bibliography 253 Sadler 1

Introduction

§1. Levinas and the Problem of Mediation

In the Jewish tradition, idolatry is the worship of a god represented in the plastic (‘graven’) image. Judaism affirms only one God that is not subject to representation. For the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the most divine reality available to an individual’s expe- rience is the Other person. Therefore, for Levinas, idolatry is anything which attempts to medi- ate the self/Other relation. Levinas argues that the self’s attempt to mediate the Other for their- self has a quality of representation analogous to the plastic image. The plastic image has the quality of sensation (represented to the self) and therefore the ethical concern of one’s relation to the Other is epistemological, as well as metaphysically ethical. It should be emphasized that Levinas’ critique of the plastic image of aesthetics is not a literal critique of art and aesthetics as such, but rather serves as a metaphor for the metaphysical relation between an individual self and the Other person. In the manner that Emmanuel Levinas argues war is a basis for all philosophy, so too is Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic the model for all interpersonal relations.1 Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic is a metaphor for the consciousness of an individual Self in relation to the Other per- son.2 Despite accusations of pessimism, this manner of relation is the human condition. In or- der for a Self (who is the Same to their-Self) to deal with the anxiety of an Other whom they cannot control, the individual person attempts multiple strategies to neutralize the agency of the Other. One strategy consists in the Self absorbing the Other into their Same-ness through ‘capturing’ (i.e. enslaving) that other. This strategy posits everything is experienced through the mind of the Self, and the Other is merely Same ancillary to the Self’s consciousness. Because this strategy attempts to in-corporate (lit. ‘bring-bodies-together’) the Other into the Same, the sphere of the Self’s Same-ness is called ‘totality.’ Another strategy of the Self’s mastery over the Other is to deny Other-ness in favour of Self-division into a Same individual becoming their own Self-and-Other relationship. This strategy is called ‘dialectic’, insofar as it posits an indi- vidual’s back-and-forth dialogue between their Same and their Self. Finally, a third strategy of the Self’s mastery over the Other is to neutralize their alterity (their ‘Other-ness’) through the imposition of a mediating third term between the Self and the Other. This mediating third-term

1 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21. 2 “Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as an other being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other” (GWF Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, §179). Sadler 2 has the quality of a plastic image, which is an aesthetic quality of an object of art [objet d’art]. This dissertation especially emphasizes Levinas’ clarity and critique of this final part: the prob- lem of mediation. Levinas’ corpus deals with the issue of mediation from his 1930 dissertation and prelim- inary writings on phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, through his mature works Totality and Infin- ity, and Otherwise Than Being. Therefore, this dissertation is concerned with a genealogy of me- diation in Levinas’ corpus to clarify the issue of mediation and its implications. As much as Levinas gives the epistemic and ethical roles of mediation a systemic treatment, he also couches many of his concerns with aesthetic mediation in the form of aphorisms. An aphorism is a statement that is not logically demonstrable as much as it is a take-it-or-leave-it proposi- tion. Levinas’s philosophy demands the subordination of an individual Self to the transcendent alterity of the Other. To best understand the problem of aesthetics in its attempt to capture the Other’s freedom through mediation, we must understand Levinas’ basis in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Therefore, in the tradition of phenomenology as a philosophy and method, we must go back to Kant.

§2. Kant and the Problem of the Aesthetic versus Aesthetics

Immanuel Kant’s concept of sensation (aisthesis) seems to involve a contradiction of terms between ‘the aesthetic’ in his Critique of Pure Reason [First Critique] versus ‘aesthetics’ in the Critique of Judgment [Third Critique]. The aesthetic concerns itself with the foundational ana- lytic of space and time as the conditions for all sensation. Kant himself advocates for this for- mer meaning of ‘aesthetic' in his first footnote to the First Critique, purposively distancing him- self from the popular understanding of ‘aesthetics’ as concerned entirely with art and the beau- tiful. However, despite Kant’s clarity of the aesthetic as focused on the fundamentals of sensa- tion, he seems to have later fallen into the popular understanding of aesthetics. Kant’s Third Critique is concerned with aesthetics as how one approaches objects of art through their sense of taste. Kant explicitly argues for his transition from the foundational aesthetic to a narrow preoccupation with aesthetics. In this way, Kant ‘falls’ into the very aestheticism he meticulous- ly rejected in the First Critique. Therefore, in order to clarify the aesthetic as the foundation of sensation, we must be truer to Kant’s theoretical vision than Kant was himself. Phenomenology as a methodology focuses on the aesthetic versus aesthetics. Sadler 3

§3. Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Aesthetic

Edmund Husserl, foundational phenomenologist of the 20th century, summed up the importance of Kant’s elementary aesthetic in Cartesian Meditations: The extraordinarily vast complex of researches pertaining to the primordial world makes up a whole discipline, which we may designate as ‘transcendental aes- thetics’ in a very much broadened sense. We adopt the Kantian title here be- cause the space and time arguments of the critique of reason obviously, though in an extraordinarily restricted and unclarified manner, have in view a noematic Apriori of sensuous intuition. Broadened to comprise the concrete Apriori of (pri- mordial) Nature, as given in purely sensuous intuition, it then requires phenome- nological transcendental supplementation by incorporation into a complex of constitutional problems.3

Husserl’s foundational aesthetic of phenomenology is an important point of departure for fur- ther phenomenological inquiries. While Husserl gives us the basis for which to go back to an elementary faculty of the aesthetic. As Kant’s faculty of Judgment mediates epistemology (the First Critique) and ethics (the Second Critique), a critique of mediating aesthetics is a critique of the faculty of Judgment. On the topic of Judgment: “mediate judgment have such a sense-re- latedness to other judgments that judicatively believing them ‘presupposes’ believing these others.”4 For Husserl, the sense-relatedness of judgment is contrasted against the transcen- dental epoché, which negates and reduces the world to an individual’s pure consciousness.5 While Husserl’s transcendental reduction only gives an individual their own self-consciousness, the negation of appearance emphasizes transcendent principles over mere sensation. For Lev- inas, the negation of sensation by the transcendent is the revelation of the Other.

§4. Chapter Summaries

Chapter One

3 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 173.

4 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 50. 5 “But phenomenological epoché (which the course of our purified Cartesian meditations de- mands of him who is philosophizing) inhibits acceptance of the Objective world as existent, and thereby excludes the world completely from the field of judgment” (64) Sadler 4

Immanuel Kant’s concept of Judgment has its origin in his Critique of Pure Reason, as the mediating faculty between sensation (the aesthetic) and the understanding (categories). Judg- ment, as the facilitator of representations, demands any sensation be re-presented to the indi- vidual perceiver. Thus, objectification is a necessary structure of experiencing the world (and the Other who dwells therein). Since representation is a necessary function of experience, the self’s need to re-present the Other to them-self is ‘epistemological original sin.’ That is why this dissertation engages with a Levinasian reading of Kant’s critical system: rigorous Kantians would argue that Levinas commits the category error of confusing an epistemological relation between logical terms or geometric bodies with the ethical relation of an agent to their Other. For Levinas, this is precisely the point: the ethical relation of the self to the Other involves an attempt to epistemologically objectify the Other’s alterity, and deny an ethical encounter in the first place.

Chapter Two

This chapter performs a Levinasian reading of the Critique of Judgment, explicating how Kant attempts to bridge the unbridgeable abyss between epistemology (First Critique) and ethics (Second Critique) by Judgment as the mediating faculty. This chapter argues for Kant’s ‘fall’ into aestheticism, reducing aesthetics from its elementary meaning to a mere concern with art, especially the plastic arts. In an analogy to how the plastic arts stand-between the self and the higher reality in the manner of idolatry, Kant’s Judgment is preoccupied with technical rea- son and the structures of representation. Representation transitions from the phenomenal to the plastic.

Chapter Three Martin Heidegger, as Husserl’s successor, gave a series of lectures following the 1927 publication of Being and Time, that would be collected in Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Applying his phenomenological method to Kant’s epistemology, Hei- degger argues for the manner in which Kant’s schematism and the imagination enable individ- uals to reflect-upon and make meaning of the world. This chapter shows a solid foundation for Judgment’s mediating representation not only in Kant’s texts, but in phenomenology’s indebt- edness to Kant.

Chapter Four This chapter engages with Emmanuel Levinas’ corpus, from his dissertation The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology to the works leading up to his magnum opus, Totality and Sadler 5

Infinity. Levinas’ pre-Totality writings especially concern themselves with testing the limits of Husserl’s phenomenology in order to emphasize the alterity of the Other. This chapter shows that even at his earliest, Levinas was concerned with critiquing mediating representation in the structures of thought. For Levinas, mediation has the epistemological structure of the self's ob- jectification of the Other. This epistemological structure will inform Levinas’ later ethics of the self’s relation to the Other.

Chapter Five Levinas’ magnum opus, Totality and Infinity, is the mature fulfillment of Levinas’ critique of mediation as analogous to the plastic image proper to aesthetics. Levinas’ critique of media- tion is a critique of Kant’s concept of Judgment. Levinas argues that anything mediating the self’s relation to the Other is analogous to an idolatrous mediation of God. Therefore, represen- tation as a necessary faculty for experience is the self’s idolatry of their-self in-place of the Other. Only the Other’s revelation in their own alterity can overcome the idolatrous structures of epistemology.

Chapter Six This chapter engages with the seeming contradiction between a rejection of negativity and an upholding of non-appearance in Levinas’ texts Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Be- ing, respectively. While Levinas has emphatically argued against metaphysics as negation (in the manner of Heidegger) in Totality, he then introduces ‘non-appearance’ [apo-phansis] and self-negation in Otherwise. The engagement with apophansis is difficult insofar as Levinas treats the idea of non-appearance in an aphoristic manner. Without Levinas giving a systemic treat- ment, this thesis attempts to tease out and work through these ideas to their implications. Thus the strong foundation in Kant’s concept of Judgment and how it figures in phenomenology, through Levinas’ Husserl scholarship gives the foundation to this later study. Finally, this chap- ter engages with Levinas’ aphoristic dismissals of negative theology, ultimately arguing that Levinas’ lack of God in his philosophy is superior to Kant’s reduction of God to a postulate of pure practical reason between an individual and the transcendent moral law: compared to the Holy One (Blessed-Be), Kant’s mediating idea of God is but a Demiurge.

§5. Jewish Existentialism

While Levinas distances himself from the term ‘existentialism’ (especially its Sartrean association), I label his thought as ‘Jewish Existential Philosophy.’ What makes Jewish Existen- tial Philosophy ‘Jewish?’ As opposed to the egoistic existential philosophy proper to Jean Paul Sadler 6

Sartre and Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein, Jewish Existential Philosophy has a pre- eminently ethical nature. I would include Kierkegaard’s exegesis of the Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling as having the quality of a rabbinic midrash.6 Abraham struggles with the conflict between his morality and the divine command to sacrifice his son. Abraham’s ‘fear and trembling’ is his ethical struggle with the Divine. Mount Moriah is the world, and Isaac is the Other, the archetypal existential relation. Although Kierkegaard was not Jewish, he has become an important precedent for Jewish Existential Philosophy, as well as the Catholic philosopher Blaisé Pascal. Jewish existential philosophy has a place within the Jewish religious tradition of the Bible and the Rabbinic writings. In a famous Midrash, Rabbi Yitzchak answers the question as to how Abraham learned of the existence of the One God. According to R. Yitchak’s discourse: R. Isaac said that it is like one traveling from place to place who saw a palace burning [birah ahat doleket]. He said, “Could you say that there is a palace with- out an owner [manhig]?” The master of the palace shown forth [hetzitz] and said to him, “I am he who is the master of the palace!” So it is because Abraham our father said, “Could you say the world is without an owner? God shown forth and said to him, “I am the owner, Lord [Adon] of the world!”7

The whole crux of interpreting Abraham in the ‘blazing house’ [birah doleqet] hinges on the am- biguous meaning of [doleqet] as either ‘burning’ or ‘illumination.’ The standard interpretation is akin to the ‘argument from design’: that the wonders that God hath made are indicative of their Creator.8 Hence Abraham infers from the phenomenon of the illuminated palace the existence of God, who has so illumined it. However, for the purposes of existential philosophy, the phe- nomenology of Revelation and God’s absence in the world, let us consider the opinion of sev- eral commentators, who elaborate the double entendre of the ‘blazing’ palace as illuminated being on fire and burning to the ground.9 The world, as the metaphorical palace, is full of

6 “This man [Kierkegaard in the reflexive] was no learned exegete, he knew no Hebrew; had he known Hebrew then perhaps it might have been easy for him to understand the story of Abra- ham” (Fear and Trembling, 9).

7 Beresheet Rabbah 39,1, ed. Theodor-Albeck, p. 365. Translation David Novak, cited in Law and Theology in Judaism, vol. II. NY: KTAV, 1976. 8 Rashi comments that Abraham “saw the heaven and earth, the sun by day and the moon at night, and the shining stars and said, ‘Can something so wondrous be without a supervisor?’” Accordingly, the meaning of ‘he saw that palace ablaze’ would be that he saw it lit up, meaning that it seemed illuminated and buzzing with activity’ (Ohr HaSheichel)” (39§1, note B).

9 “There is no doubt that such a magnificent structure has an owner and was constructed with wisdom and skill. But it must have subsequently been abandoned and left unsupervised; oth- erwise, the supervisor would be attempting to extinguish the flames (Maharzu, Eitz Yosef)” (foot- note 4). Sadler 7 struggle and suffering, and Abraham cries out “Shall you say that this palace is without a su- pervisor?” Abraham cries out for one with authority to quench the fire and save the world. Abraham’s question in this Midrash mirrors his question to God at Sodom and Gomorrah: “Will not the Judge of all the world act justly?” (Genesis 18:25).10 Including Kierkegaard’s example of Abraham, we see here that the “Father of Many Nations” is a prototypical existential man, struggling with moral questions in a world beset by injustice. Abraham’s moral struggles define “Jewish” existential philosophy. This struggle to act in right moral relations toward Others informs both Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy, and Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical relation of the transcendence of the Other.

§6. The Aesthetic and the Study of Religion

Birgit Meyer broaches this methodological concern of the Aesthetic versus Aesthetics for the study of religion. She argues in her article “Religious Sensations” that the study of reli- gion needs to return to an elementary concept of ‘aesthetic’ in the sense of aisthesis’ [αἴσθησις: Greek for ‘sensation’]. Meyer is correct here, as the popular concept of ‘aesthetic’ narrowly lim- its itself to a concern with art and the beautiful. Meyer states: “My understanding of aesthetics exceeds the narrow sense advocated by Baumgarten and Kant, in which aesthetics refers to the beautiful in the sphere of the arts, more or less confined to the disinterested beholder.”11 She reiterates this statement in the introduction to her edited volume, Aesthetic Formations, writ- ing: “My understanding of aesthetics is not confined to the now common meaning that it ac- quired at the end of the eighteenth century (largely through Immanuel Kant), when it became limited to the beautiful in the sphere of the arts and its disinterested beholder.”12 Meyer’s throw-away treatment of Kant shows a lack of understanding with Kant’s texts. Specifically, Kant’s early footnote in the Critique of Pure Reason argues against the myopic view of aesthetics attributed to German Romanticism.13 To differentiate the elementary faculty of sensation from a narrow emphasis on art and the beautiful, I refer to the former as ‘the aesthetic’ and the latter

10 “Hence, the Midrash uses the parable of ‘one who was passing from place to place …” in con- trast to one who was externally directed to the palace (see Yefeh To’ar)” (39§1, B).

11 Meyer, Religion: Beyond a Concept, de Vries ed., 714.

12 Meyer, Aesthetic Formations, 6.

13 “The Germans are the only ones who now employ the word ‘aesthetics’ to designate that which others call the critique of taste. The ground for this is a failed hope, held by the excellent analyst Baumgarten, of bringing the critical estimation of the beautiful under principles of rea- son, and elevating its rules to a science” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A21/B35 [footnote]). Sadler 8 as ‘aesthetics.’ Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to argue in favour of the aesthetic versus aesthetics for the purposes of Levinas’ transcendental ethics. Nevertheless, Meyer’s critique of aesthetics versus the elementary aesthetic as sensa- tion (according to Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic” of space and time as the conditions for all sensibility) is very important for a phenomenological study of religion. Meyer sums up this broader project of phenomenology and sensation: To trace such an understanding of aesthetics in terms of aisthesis or sense ex- perience back to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, or to relate it to the phenomenology of religion as developed by Rudolph Otto, Gerard van der Leeuw, or Mircea Eliade, would be outside my present scope, not to speak of discussing the ins and outs, pros and cons, of phenomenology in gen- eral.14

Meyer’s broaching of this question opens a very important line of inquiry for the study of reli- gion. The project outlined in this thesis is an engagement with the elemental aesthetic as it be- gins in the work of Kant, as it is carried forward in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, and how Emmanuel Levinas builds upon their thought to constitute media- tion in radically new way. Levinas’ critique of the plastic image d’art of aesthetics and its medi- ating nature is the central concern of this thesis.

§7. Scholarly Engagement With Levinas’ Critique of Mediation

A significant amount of scholarship on Levinas’ is what I call ‘applied Levinasian’ schol- arship. Often from a Christian standpoint, applied Levinasian scholarship deals with situations and applications of Levinas’ ethics of alterity (often in a Christian mode of self-sacrifice). While such uses of Levinas’ ethics have their place in scholarship, they often lack in a methodologi- cal analysis of Levinas’ manner of arriving at the First Philosophy. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to fill the void in the analysis of Levinas’ extended critique of mediation in a method- ological treatment of Levinas’ corpus. An important, and recent work on this aesthetic prob- lematic is Adonis Frangeskou’s 2017 text Levinas, Kant and the Problematic of Temporality. Frangesou’s recent text engages with Levinas emphasis on the Transcendental Aesthetic from the First Critique against the analytic of tastes in aesthetics. This text will be most pertinent to the third chapter of this dissertation, on Heidegger’s lectures on the first Critique. Ultimately, the nature of this thesis is methodological, since so much scholarship on Levinas involves ‘applied’ ethics. Robert Gibbs’ Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas articu-

14 Meyer, Religion: Beyond a Concept, de Vries ed., 714. Sadler 9 lates the 'crossing over’ of ontology and epistemology into an ethics for Levinas, since ethics is ‘first philosophy.’15 I argue that the main issue in the methodological movement of the self to- ward the revelation of the Other must necessarily commit the category error of mistaking the Other person in their ethical alterity for an objectified, ontological relation. In order for the Other to be able to shatter the shell of being insulating the self, the self must construct their totality in the first place. The human condition involves the problem inherent to epistemology: the objecti- fication of Others for one’s self. In the manner that one does not assume their result, but must arrive at it through a method, the self cannot simply ‘leap’ to the Other’s face, but must tra- verse through their own totality for the revelation to be possible.

15 see Gibbs, Correlations, 206. Sadler 10

Chapter One: The Problem of Mediation in Kant’s Critical Corpus

In order to understand Levinas’ critique of mediation, we must go back to Kant. It is nec- essary to understand the role mediation plays in Kant’s critical corpus, in order to understand how it carried forth by the phenomenologists who derive their method from Kant’s writings.

§1. Judgment in the Critique of Pure Reason

Mediation is a major problem in Kant’s corpus. Kant’s own method, outlined in his Cri- tique of Pure Reason, includes the engagement with “antinomies,” or irreconcilable dilemmas. While Kant posits an insurmountable abyss between the two terms of epistemological theory and ethical principles, he also posits judgment as the mediation between the two. Judgment has a place in Kant’s epistemology that mediates sensation and understanding. In order to explicate the role of mediating judgment in Kant’s thought, one must explain his general critical system and the problem which Kant seeks to solve by mediation. This chapter engages with Kant’s “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements” in order to discuss Judgment as a methodological prob- lem. I here avoid the Critique of Practical Reason (“Second Critique”) because it focuses on practical transcendental principles, with little discussion of how to apply them. The methods of the first critique engage with the extended realm of space and time, which informs our experi- ence of the phenomenal world. The first critique goads phenomenology to be the study of that- which-appears-to us, the sensate world of space and time. Kant’s epistemological system sets up the dilemma between an individual’s pure experi- ence (the Transcendental Aesthetic of Space and Time as the conditions for all sensibility) and the a priori concepts of the understanding (Transcendental Categories, etc.). Kant defines the problem as how the extended experience of the world (which is thought through the a priori structures of Space and Time) and the transcendental concepts of the understanding seem to involve an unbridgeable dichotomy between experience and (epistemological) principles. How- ever, in order to bridge this dichotomy, Kant posits Judgment, as well as the ‘Schematism’ as the bridge, which is the mediating concept. Judgment mediates by representing16 the immediate experience conceptually, creating a re-presentation of the experience to the Same individual. The schematism functions as an in-between faculty, using the imagination as a sub-rational fac-

16 Vorstellung Sadler 11 ulty in the transition between experience and concepts. The representation forged by this process of the imagination acts as an intellectual artifact that re-presents the ‘elementary’ expe- rience to the ‘pure’ concepts of the understanding. Kant explicates the epistemological faculty of judgment in his section titled “The Tran- scendental Doctrine of the Power of Judgment (or Analytic of Principles); First Chapter: On the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding.”17 Kant explains the problematic con- cept of the relation between particular objects and general concepts.18 Pre-reflective knowledge would merely consider a necessary equivocation between the particular objects of experience and the general concepts through which we understand them. Kant’s problematization of the relation between “intuitions of objects”/experience and the “pure concepts of the understanding” is that they become mutually exclusive, creating an unbridgeable abyss.19 Kant understands the problem of this absolute difference (which he called “un-homogenous”). Therefore, Kant posits the faculty of judgement as a “technical” application of concepts to experienced objects.20 He acknowledges the very question demands a faculty to deal with the problematic of concepts.

§2. Schematism as Mediating Concept

To bridge the two faculties of sensate intuitions and concepts of the understanding, Kant therefore posits a third thing to facilitate this connection. He calls this connection the “transcen- dental schema.”21 Now it is clear that there must be a third thing, which must stand in homogeneity with the category on one hand and the appearance on the other, and makes possi- ble the application of the former [category] to the latter [phenomena]. The mediating representation must be pure (without anything empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other. Such a representation is the transcendental schema.22

17 B176.

18 Regarding the homogeneity of representation with its object, see B176.

19 B177.

20 For Kant, the subsumption of intuitions under pure concepts of the understanding is the tech- nical application of concepts to experience; see B177.

21 B177, editor’s bold.

22 B177. Sadler 12

The faculty of judgment is therefore “pure” in the same sense as the transcendental aesthetic, insofar as it is ‘empty,’ a metaphysical space that allows the metaphysical category to apply it- self to the phenomena contained therein. But is the schema a ‘thing’ or merely a ‘space’ in which the category can apply to the appearance? For Kant, while the aesthetic of space and time deals with sensible intuitions, space and time are themselves empty, a priori structures. It is in this case that Kant sees a connection be- tween the formal category of time and the concepts of the understanding. Time, as the formal condition of the manifold of inner sense, thus of the connection of all representations, contains an a priori manifold in pure intuition. Now a tran- scendental time-determination is homogeneous with the category (which consti- tutes its unity) insofar as it is universal and rests on a rule a priori. But it is on the other hand homogeneous with the appearance insofar as time is contained in every empirical representation of the manifold.23

The image of the schematism can suggest a diagram with sensation on the left circle, concepts on the right, and schematism in the middle. But Kant argues time is itself an empty form that can receive sensation, as an analogue to the concept ‘imprinting itself’ upon a particular category. As all sensation ‘exists’ (this term for Kant has a specific meaning) in time, the concepts imprinted on particular sensations are themselves universal. Therefore, Kant can conclude that an appli- cation (which he will later call ‘technical’) can occur in the first place: “Hence an application of the category to appearances becomes possible by means of the transcendental time-determina- tion which, as the schema of the concept of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of the latter [appearances] to the former [category].”24 Yet, the schematism is a product of the imagination, a faculty that is not-sensation, but also sub-rational, in that it is not a concept of ‘pure reason.’ Kant therefore argues that this a priori but sub-rational faculty falls under the imagination, as that which translates sensations un- der categories.25 Imagination is based on a kind of sensation. The process of translating a sen- sation thought under a category results in the image gaining a status of its own (i.e. it becomes a third thing between the first two). Kant's imagistic understanding of the aesthetic is therefore more in line with what popular understanding would call 'aesthetic,' in that it hearkens toward the plastic image. At the same time, Kant describes the imagination as having the quality of an

23 B178, editor’s bold.

24 B178.

25 see B180. Sadler 13 art in itself, what the Greeks would call a techné [τέχνη]. "This schematism of our understand- ing with regards to appearances and their mere form is a hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty.”26 Kant continues by explaining that these sensations, and the categories through which they are thought incongruously, have 'reality' insofar as they relate to concrete sensation. Kant refers to this 'reality' as 'substance.'27 It should be understood that 'real' and 'substance' are loaded words in the philosophical tradition, and Kant's critical system gives them the barest power as merely epistemological, not metaphysical concerns. To compare with the more tradi- tional philosophical concept of "soul as substance," we will examine Kant's "antinomies of pure reason.”

§3. The Category of Community as Epistemological, not Social

In Kant's explication of the schematism in relation to the categories, his notion of the category of community (reciprocity) is important for the phenomenology which would follow a certain line of Kant's thought: "The schema of community (reciprocity), or of the reciprocal causality of substances with regard to their accidents, is the simultaneity of the determinations of the one with those of the other, in accordance with a general rule.”28 While still epistemologi- cal, this dichotomy of the one and the Other causally acting upon one-an-Other will become ex- panded in subsequent phenomenology. In this case, however, the schematism of community (reciprocity) is the impersonality of two geometric bodies relating to each other.29 The crucial distinction is between the impersonal Verhältnis (lit. ‘causing to maintain itself in its place’, i.e. ‘relation’) and interpersonal Beziehung, (lit. ‘pulling-together’, ‘relationship). Kant introduces the category of community under the rubric of Relation, here called Relation in

26 B181.

27 For Kant's further discussion of ‘reality,’ see B180 & B183.

28 B184.

29 Eckart Förster makes the argument for the need to conceptualize both a schematism of out- er sense (as Kant does explicitly), but additionally a schematism of outer sense (which would be Förster’s argument): see 25 years of philosophy, 66. I argue that even if we concede a schematism of inner sense, it is still firmly grounded in the First Critique and does not require the Third Critique in order so to do. Sadler 14 the German.30 However, as editors Guyer and Wood note in their footnote to B98, Kant uses Relation only in the formal title of the category itself, referring to ‘relation’ everywhere else as Verhältnis.31 As the Critique of Pure Reason is concerned entirely with logical relations of terms, Verhältnis is the proper term. Relationship, Beziehung includes the unmediated dyad of space and time as the conditions for all sensibility (admitting of no mediation). Kant switches from the normative Verhältnis to Beziehung only in very specific cases of humanistic relations (however epistemological). Guyer and Wood clarify: “As noted in the first edition version above, here Kant switches from Verhältnis to Beziehung as his topic switches from the relation of objects in space or time to each other to the relation of space and time to us.”32 In his discussion of the postulates of empirical thinking in general, Kant reintroduces Beziehung, but not in a consistent manner. The Editors note: “In this section, as in the preced- ing, Kant continues the frequent use of Verhältnis rather than Beziehung, even here where he is speaking about a relation between the cognitive faculty and its object rather than among ob- jects, and thus by the usage of the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ the latter term might have been expected.”33 Concerning mediation in relation, Kant discusses the metaphysical concept of sub- stance: “A substance that was persistently present in space yet without filling it (like that inter- mediate thing between matter and thinking beings, which some would introduce).”34 The Editors’ accompanying footnote argues that insofar as Kant is introducing this mediating substance be- tween Cartesian matter and mind, Kant is preparing to critique it. Guyer and Wood write: Since Kant goes on to say that the possibility of this third thing is entirely ground- less because it has no basis in experience while he subsequently argues that the existence of the ether is actually is actually a condition of the possibility of expe- rience, it would seem that he is here considering (and denying) the possibility of

30 B106

31 “Verhälnisse; although he is now speaking of the functions of judgment the table had listed under the latinate heading Relation, Kant now reverts to Verhältnis, and in the remainder of this paragraph Verhältnis is translated by ‘relation.’ Kant’s reversion to Verhältnis here is consistent with his use of this term elsewhere, since he is talking of the relation of parts of judgments to each other rather than to us” (B98, Editor’s footnote b).

32 B45, Ed. footnote b.

33 B266, Ed. footnote b.

34 B270. Sadler 15

a third kind of substance in addition to matter and mind, rather than the extremely refined form of matter, which is how he later conceives of the ether.35

We can see that in his earlier writings, prior to the Critique of Judgment, Kant had rejected me- diation in favour of dyads like experience/principles, epistemology/ethics, thereby preserving the abyss between the two terms. I will argue that Kant’s Critique of Judgment will capitulate to me- diating aestheticism, and therefore Levinas’ critique of mediation is a critique of the Third Cri- tique. Kant continues by arguing that Verhältnis (‘relation’) is between objects, and this relation defines the significance (editor’s bold).36 As the ‘relation’ is the between the two objects (in log- ical terms: A & B), or terms, the between-space is the third term linking them. Beziehung, by contrast, has no third term mediating the interpersonal relationship. Thus, the meaning of the relation between two objects constitutes a median or third-term. This mediating nature of mean- ing (at least in the epistemological arena) shows its position in the critical system as a sub-ratio- nal, facilitating faculty.37 Thus the schemata of the concepts of pure understanding are the true and sole conditions for providing them with a relation to objects, thus with significance [Be- deutung], and hence the categories are in the end of none but a possible empirical use, since they merely serve to subject appearances to general rules of synthesis through grounds of an a priori necessary unity (on account of the necessary unifica- tion of all consciousness in an original apperception), and thereby to make them fit for a thoroughgoing connection in one experience.38

Therefore, Kant’s understanding of significance as mediation has important implications for phenomenology, a discipline which concerns itself with relationships between individuals and the meaning conferred by humans on their own experience. Meaning, as presented by Kant, is a sub-rational faculty. It is not strictly epistemological (like the categories), but it also not the bare elements of sensation. Rather, meaning occupies its own space, which gives it an impor- tant place in the critical system that will be important for Husserl and Levinas' phenomenological investigations. Kant concludes the section by emphasizing the seeming analogous or co-inci- dental relation between categories and sensations, as anything more substantive would refer to

35 731, Ed. footnote 80 to B270.

36 B185.

37 For Nietzsche’s summary of Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments as “facilitated by a faculty,” see Beyond Good and Evil, §3.

38 B185. Sadler 16

‘things-in-themselves’ [Ding an Sich] as opposed to mere appearances [phenomena].39 Rather, aside from a linking schematism, we are left with how things appear to us, and how we consider them: “Without schemata, therefore, the categories only are functions of the understanding for concepts, but do not represent any object. This significance comes to them from sensibility, which realizes the understanding at the same time as it restricts it.”40 Kant follows with an explanation of the difference between analytic and synthetic judg- ments, and the seeming possibility of synthetic a priori judgments (“On the supreme principle of all synthetic judgments”).41 While analytic judgments only deal with their subject of inquiry, di- vorced from relation with any other concepts, synthetic concepts go beyond themselves. The problem with this going-beyond on the epistemological level is that a standard faculty of the hu- man mind is to desire and posit objects of knowledge that cannot actually be known (Kant will discuss these objects in his ‘Transcendental Dialectic’): “If it is thus conceded that one must go beyond a given concept in order to compare it synthetically with another, then a third thing is necessary in which alone the synthesis of two concepts can originate.”42 Kant asks what this third thing is, before responding that the third thing concerns itself synthetically with both inner sense (time), imagination and the unity of that-which-is-priori-to-perception (‘apperception’).43 Because imagination creates the representations that re-present their corresponding intuition to the categories of understanding, these representations relate to the third thing. This third thing, or mediation between two synthetic concepts, Kant argues, is experience. Specifically, Kant ar- gues that this third thing involves the relation of representations (from the imagination) to expe- rience: “To give an object, if this is not again meant only mediately, but it is rather to be exhibited immediately in intuition, is nothing other than to relate its representation to experience (whether this be actual or still possible).”44

39 B186-B187.

40 B187.

41 B193.

42 B194.

43 B194.

44 B195. Vorstellung (repraesentatio); contrast against darstellen (lit. ‘exhibit; present). Sadler 17

Kant concludes this argument by stating: “The possibility of experience is therefore that which gives all of our cognitions a priori objective reality.”45 Experience is this ‘third thing,’ facilitating synthetic a priori judgments. Kant ends this section: “The supreme principle of all synthetic judgments is, therefore: Every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience.”46 Experience as this third thing in synthetic judgments is important to phenomenology, which attributes great epistemolog- ical authority to an individual’s experience. Kant’s view on representation and experience will be important for further phenomenological explications.

§4. Representation and Experience

Kant discusses representation as an ‘analogy’ between experience and concepts in the “Analogies of Experience.”47 In the second edition (B), Kant subtitles the third section, as “Their [Analogies’] principle is: Experience is possible only through the representation of a nec- essary connection of perceptions.”48 Kant explains that cognition does the work of synthesiz- ing sequential perceptions of time and space into a more coherent whole.49 In Kant's system, 'analytic' concepts are unique (in the sense of being one-to-themselves), as opposed to 'syn- thetic' concepts which are in-relation to one-another. Kant explicates the problem of there being no necessary connections between unique, sequential sensations, in order to explain the need for an a priori structure linking disparate sensations into a coherent, rational whole.50 An individ- ual, of course, experiences sensation as a coherent whole; it is only when one questions the metaphysical structures behind experience (epistemology) that one must enumerate the prob- lems behind an assumed unity of experience.

45 B196.

46 B197.

47 B219.

48 B219., Bold editor’s.

49 Kant follows by discussing individual consciousness and its constitution of experience through categorical reason, see B219.

50 See B219. Sadler 18

While Kant's system posits space and time as the conditions for all sensation, his expli- cation of judgment focuses on the successive, experiential experience of time. He posits three modes for time, stating: "The three modi of time are persistence, succession, and simultane- ity.”51 Kant continues by arguing that despite the seeming incoherent succession of appear- ances, or sensations, the unity of experience is necessary for knowledge that is the result of ex- perience.52 Kant then follows by arguing that this principle of analogy depends on the existence and relation of representations to consciousness, which he calls "the empirical intuition."53 Yet, he follows with a consideration of the manner in which that existence and relation cannot be de- termined a priori in the same manner as apperception (lit. "Prior-to-perception") and synthetic unity (which merely allows the aesthetic intuition, or sensation, to be ‘thought-through'). Kant can argue that principles exist in an epistemic manner, but do not determine the existences out- side epistemic structures.54 A phenomenologist would argue that the existence which one's per- ceiving consciousness relates to must appear as the result of experience, and not that which is prior to experience. Kant goes on to explain that his prior "Principles of the Pure Understanding" are divided in two; mathematical principles ("Axioms of intuition" & "Anticipations of perception"), or con- structive-quantitative, versus regulative-qualitative principles ("Analogies of experience" & "Pos- tulates of empirical thinking in general").55 In his explication of analogies of experience, Kant contrasts the following analogies and postulates with the prior mathematical principles. Kant will later discuss the constructed nature of mathematical ideas in the ‘Transcendental Method of Reason.’ In this sense, mathematical principles are applied to experience in terms of what I call technical reason.56 Kant explains that mathematical principles construct their proofs, theorems, etc., while experience itself cannot be constructed. Thus, one's perception of experience cannot

51 B220, editor’s bold.

52 See B220.

53 Kant argues that the principles ‘Analogies of Experience & Postulates of Empirical Thinking in General’ deal with the existence and relations of principles devoid of particular content, see B221.

54 B221.

55 B198., The chart of these principles is located on B201.

56 B221. Sadler 19 construct, but merely regulate the succession of experience occurring in time.57 Regulation as a concept is important across Kant's corpus, as epistemological and metaphysical excesses would result in individual perceivers inventing existences that have no analogy in experience. Therefore, epistemological and metaphysical faculties can merely regulate the experiences they receive, and not invent new ones. Kant will later argue that reason must regulate claims made by religions in what is acceptable for belief, and what is unfounded to believe. Kant follows with the first analogy, titled “In all change of appearances substance per- sists, and its quantum is neither increased nor diminished in nature.”58 “Substance” for Kant is not a transcendental object of knowledge, but rather an analogy for the persistence of phenom- ena. Kant once again argues that appearances occur in time, and that time as the faculty of in- ner sensation allows for simultaneity of sensations as well as their progressive succession in experience.59 Despite the ‘internal’ nature of time and perceptions associated with it, Kant ar- gues that substance is based on the ‘real’ quality in experience.60 Substance is the element of experience that determines a level of ‘objectivity’ not determinable from inner-sensation alone. ‘Substance,’ in Kant’s terminology, is that which allows us to think of our ‘manifold’ of sensations as having something ‘real’ to them, as opposed to our sensations ultimately having no referent, rendering our experiences mere illusions.61 Substance, in Kant’s critical, regulative understand- ing, is that-which-persists.

§5. Kant’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysical Categories

Kant brings up the problematic, though traditionally philosophical relation between ‘sub- stance’ and ‘accidents.’62 The problem is associated with an idea that is so commonly held with-

57 B222.

58 B224.

59 “All appearances are in time, in which, as substratum (as persistent form of inner intuition), both simultaneity as well as succession can alone be represented” (B225).

60 B225.

61 B226.

62 B227. Sadler 20 out criticism, namely, the tautology of the statement ‘substance persists.’63 Since the statement seems self-referential and perpetuating, it cannot serve as a logical proof for substance and ac- cidents in the first place. As Kant explains, because experience is the result of a synthetic a pri- ori proposition, and is based on sensation, it can be intuited, but has not been proven.64 Kant argues that even ‘necessity’ (itself a problematic word) requires an incomplete experience of ‘persistence,’ because time requires the not-yet of the future.65 Kant follows that the term ‘per- sistence’ at least has utility insofar as it designates the object’s prior existence, though a future existence is unknowable: “Nevertheless the inner necessity of persisting is inseparably con- nected with the necessity of always having existed, and the expression may therefore stand.”66 Kant then ends the paragraph by concluding that the important element for persistence, which has to do with experience, is the manner in which things are presented to a perceiving individual through experience: “This persistence is therefore nothing more than the way in which we rep- resent the existence of things (in appearance).”67 Kant can therefore argue that the relation of ‘substance’ to ‘accidents’ is the relation of particulars to the universal. Since substance is that which persists despite all mutable changes, accidents are the particulars. However, Kant removes the metaphysical quality from the scholastic understanding of the relation of substance and accidents. Instead, Kant has enumer- ated the regulative principles of experience as synthetic, and not the analytic/mathematical prin- ciples of axioms of intuition and anticipations of perception. By transforming substance from a metaphysical concept to an epistemological one: “The determinations of a substance that are nothing other than particular ways for it to exist are called accidents.”68 Therefore, instead of substance as necessary and accidents as contingent, resulting from its various appearances in the world, Kant reformulates the accidents into the particular ways that substance exists in the world. In this sense, accidents are not ‘properties’ inherent to substance, but rather based on how the general substance appears to the perceiver.

63 B228.

64 B228.

65 B229.

66 B229.

67 B229.

68 B230. Sadler 21

Kant struggles with this antinomy between the reality given to substance, and the acci- dents based on its appearance in order to refute an earlier empiricist idealism (which sounds like a contradiction), in his following section, “Refutation of Idealism.”69 Kant argues against both the extremes of Cartesian egoism and Berkleyan idealism. In this sense, the existence of space outside of the individual perceiver is either indemonstrable (Cartesian), or completely impossible (Berkley).70 In order to overcome the problem of Berkley’s “dogmatic idealism,” Kant appeals to objects of experience as merely appearance, rather than things-in-themselves. While Kant has focused so much previously on time as the condition for inner sensation, space is an appeal to objectivity in order to avoid the problem of what Kant calls “material idealism.”71 Kant’s a priori conditions for all sensation are based in space and time, which allow for inner and outer sense in individual sensation. Therefore, inner and outer sense allow for the real existence of experi- ence, rather than an appeal to skepticism or materialism. “The ground for this idealism, howev- er, has been undercut by us in the Transcendental Aesthetic.”72 Kant builds toward his refutation of idealism by discussing traditional metaphysical con- cepts not having existence in themselves, but as analogies for inner (time) and outer (space) experience. As we have previously analyzed the analogy of substance (as opposed to the tradi- tional, metaphysical concept), Kant follows the analogy of substance with the analogy of cause- and-effect.73 Kant summarizes: “All change (succession) of appearances is only alteration.”74 This is opposed to a more metaphysical notion of cause-and-effect being neces- sarily connected. Necessity is itself a problematic concept, which argues that the sequence of what an individual perceives in the temporal sequence must be connected, to the extreme where it could not be otherwise. This concept can lead to viewing actions as determined in their causality. Cause-and-effect is a major problematic concept for Kant’s critique of epistemology, in the same line of thought as David Hume’s critique of “necessary causation” which influenced Kant’s critical method in the first place. Hume would influence Kant with the idea that one can- not know necessary causation, but only a customary conjunction based on cultural assump-

69 B275.

70 B275.

71 B275.

72 B275.

73 B233.

74 B233, editor’s bold. Sadler 22 tions.75 Kant still needs to posit a ‘third term’ to mediate separate perceptions of time, in order to link them: “Thus I really connect two perceptions in time.”76 This third-term will be so crucial to arguments made about mediation and judgment that an explication of Kant’s critical epistemolo- gy is necessary. Following Hume, Kant argues that the idea of cause-and-effect linking different sensations in time is not a part of perception. This makes cause-and-effect, rather than an as- sumption of everyday experience, a metaphysical concept.77

§6. Phenomenality Versus Causality

One of Kant’s main arguments is that understanding the perception of cause-and-effect is based on a phenomenal understanding of experience, as opposed to claiming to have a knowledge of things-in-themselves (Ding an sich).78 He writes that human understanding is un- able to have knowledge about things-in-themselves, but merely how they are re-presented in experience: “For we have to do only with our representations; how things in themselves may be (without regard to representations through which they affect us) is entirely beyond our cognitive sphere.”79 Representations, in this sense, belong to the perceiver, but do not give them direct experience of things-in-themselves. Kant’s emphasis on the phenomenality of how-the-world- appears-to-us will be important for the resulting phenomenological mode of inquiry. It must be reminded that the unity of the manifold in cognition is not the same as merely combining an ag- gregate of sensation into a coherent whole. Rather, the ability to compute the manifold of sensa- tions is based on synthetic a priori principles, which are metaphysical. Based on the phenome- nal nature of knowledge, our knowledge is the result of thinking through this manifold of experi- ences, which act as a succession in time. That which appears to us is given, in the reflexive sense of phainomena.80

75 See David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 28.

76 B234.

77 B234.

78 B235.

79 B235-236.

80 B236. Sadler 23

Kant continues by distinguishing the difference between appearance-in-general from our personal representations of apprehension, or how-it-appears-to-us.81 This leaves the question of appearances’ objective existence, apart from how they appear to us. Kant’s hypothetical state- ment assumes that truth is the agreement of sensation to an object of experience, writing, “since the agreement of cognition with the object is truth.”82 It follows that such an object must be made distinct from the represented apprehension, in other words, how-the-object-appears-to- me. The ability to define a specific object from the general, temporal flow of experience and sensation requires a formal, metaphysical faculty. Kant would therefore be confident that his categories of the understanding, and the knowledge they facilitate, would be sufficient to deal with the problem of defining specific objects from general sensation. The problem then seems to be that an appearance has a definite existence apart from an individual’s experience of it. How- ever, how can something be an existent appearance, without being an appearance-for-some- one? It is this problem that Kant thinks he has solved by claiming that the objects of perception are mere appearances, and not things-in-themselves. His later “Refutation of Idealism,” previ- ously mentioned, argues that one falls into extreme idealism when one naively assumes things- in-themselves. Thus, Kant can sum up the necessary precondition of an appearance that in- forms the representations we make for that object: “That in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension is the object.”83 While still an appearance, that object exists. It is important for the purposes of Levinas’ thought (especially his ethics) to understand the concept of relations of terms or objects, in order to think of them in a manner analogous to relationships between persons. It is important to understand how epistemological terms relate, in order to discuss the problematic of the mediating “third term,” which will be central to the whole argument of this thesis. Kant’s third analogy of experience is called the “Principle of si- multaneity, according to the law of interaction, or community.”84 Kant defines ‘simultaneity’ as based in the category of ‘community’, which deals with reciprocity: “Things are simultaneous if in empirical intuition the perception of one can follow the perception of the other reciprocally (which in the temporal sequence of appearances, as has been shown in the case of the second

81 B237.

82 B237.

83 B237.

84 B257. Sadler 24 principle, cannot happen).”85 The problem for Kant is that we experience sensations in a tempo- ral, linear sequence, while knowing rationally that all events we experience are occurring simul- taneously. Community in this case means the relation of objects of appearance, or the relation between perceiver and perceived. This ‘community’ is not a social concept, but is an epistemo- logical one. However, one can see in it a precursor for the subject-object relation in phenomeno- logical philosophy. Levinas’ ethical concern emerges when individual perceiver-knowers treat fellow perceiver-knowers as mere objects of understanding. The human condition confuses the ethical relation for an epistemological one. Likewise, Kant has to react to Hume’s claim that we cannot know the essential properties of objects, merely basing our knowledge of objects on ob- served phenomena. Thus, Kant needs to argue that his epistemological reformulation of sub- stance relates to other objects (as opposed to a rationalist [Leibnizian] concept of ‘windowless monads’ or ‘pre-established harmony’), while also arguing that the same substances have no necessary properties, requiring observation and experience for knowledge. Kant sets up one attempt at a solution to the problem of the sequence of individual per- ceptions versus the simultaneity in the idea of objectivity. In other words, the objective nature of the objects of perception guarantees their simultaneity. Kant further states that the understand- ing of relations between objects relies on their nature qua objects.86 However, since the objects of experience are mere appearances, one cannot guarantee their objective simultaneity based on one’s own experience, which is only linearly sequential in time.87 Kant refers to the relation of objects as the ‘ground’ of their simultaneity. The ground is the reciprocal relation between the two objects. This reciprocity is the category of community and reciprocity between epistemologi- cal terms.88 Kant appeals to the previously discussed notion of existence, but still to a third thing which would enable different existences to be known simultaneously. My emphasis in this case is on the third, mediating term as some thing, because the thing-ness of the mediating term is where the problematic lies.89 Kant's logical formulae, that A acts on B while B simultaneously acts on A, is an appeal to the category of community previously noted. In this instance, however,

85 B257.

86 B258.

87 B258.

88 B258.

89 B259. Sadler 25

Kant works to further define the concept of community between concepts of "communio" versus “commercium." Following his section break, Kant sums up the analogies of experience: "[The analogies] are nothing other than principles of the determination of the existence of appearances in time, in accordance with all three of its modi."90 These modi are magnitude, series and "sum of all exis- tence.”91 However, Kant is quick to emphasize that the unity of time-determination is the result of an individual's cognition, not a property inherent to time itself: "rather the rule of the under- standing, through which alone the existence of appearances can acquire synthetic unity in tem- poral relations, determines the position of each of them in time, thus a priori and validly for each and every time.”92 Kant calls this synthetic a priori unity "dynamical" because it is the result of individual cognition, therefore it is the active process of the perceiver who experiences and un- derstands their experience. Phenomenology will greatly benefit from the epistemological notion that one is not merely receiving sensation, but the cognizant individual is actively producing knowledge based on metaphysical principles of perception. However, Kant follows with an “Elu- cidation" by which he explains that, despite the dynamical nature of perception, perception does not add anything to the object perceived.93 "The categories of modality have this peculiarity: as a determination of the object they do not augment the concept to which they are ascribed in the least, but rather express only the relation to the faculty of cognition.”94 Consciousness is the ground by which experience can happen, but it does not determine the experiences: hence Kant's following refutation of dogmatic idealism.

§7. Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic

In order to better explain Kant's methodology, as he repurposes metaphysical concepts into epistemological ones, let us look at Kant's "Transcendental Dialectic.”95 In this case, "dia-

90 B262, editor's italics.

91 B262.

92 B262.

93 B266.

94 B266.

95 B350. Sadler 26 lectic" does not refer to dialogue, but to the rhetorical illusions of sophistry.96 While Kant calls principles involving the use of metaphysical (that is, synthetic a priori) categories "Transcenden- tal," he contrasts "transcendental" with “transcendent" ones, which are purely illusory ideas, be- yond any actual experience.97 Kant defines reason as only concerning itself with sensations, understanding sensations (according to synthetic a priori judgments), and principles that reason discovers through critical reflection.98 To contrast pure reason with the previously explicated faculty of understanding, Kant defines reason as the faculty of principles.99 He follows by defin- ing a principle as the universal concept which a particular percept can be thought under. In this case, one can have a cognition under principles.100 Since principles are of transcendental use, and cognitions are based on experience, the phrase "cognition from principles" seems contra- dictory at face value. However, Kant contrasts cognition from transcendental principles against cognition from concepts. By "concepts" Kant means principles of pure understanding. One can- not use logic or understanding of experience to gain knowledge of concepts, therefore they must be the result of reason, which is the faculty of principles.101 Despite not being able to de- rive principles from experience, one can apply such principles to experience upon reflection. In this case, Kant's example is that one cannot derive the principle: "that everything happens has a cause" based on watching the interplay of various bodies affecting one-another.102 This example brings to mind Hume's billiard balls.103 Like Hume, Kant argues that the objects of experience do not contain the concepts in themselves, and only admit of the knowledge of their properties

96 B350.

97 B352-B353.

98 B255.

99 B356.

100 B357.

101 B358.

102 B357.

103 “If I see a billiard-ball moving towards another, on a smooth table, I can easily conceive it to stop upon contact” (Hume, Enquiry, 31-32). Sadler 27 through observation and experimentation.104 In other words, principles are entirely deductive insofar as they do not allow for examples to be induced from experience105 In terms of the problematic of the third term in Kant, he discusses the logical distinction of a mediating term between a statement and its conclusion, and the immediate entailment of a conclusion by a statement.106 Kant argues that the very ability to subsume a particular situation (the subordinate premise) under a general rule (the major premise) is itself a function of "the power of judgment.”107 It would follow that without the need for mediation, there would be no need for the power of judgment to act through a second term. Kant argues that all judgments fall under three categories, which (at least in the case of syllogisms) are categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive.108 Kant emphasizes that the concern of the subordinate premise is an object, which is to be subsumed under the major premise, and that the work of the subsumption is done by reason.109 What is important about this concept is the idea that the subordinate term is fo- cused on an object, or the inferiority of that which is objectified. Conversely, for Levinas' apo-phantic relation to the Other, he would argue that traditional thought turns the Other into this 'object' of the subordinate term, in order to subsume the Other under the totality of the subject’s universal term. For Levinas, this totality sees itself incorrectly as the true universal, following a tyrannical will-to-universalize. In a similar logic of objectifica- tion, Kant argues that reason attempts to bring the greatest number of objects under the least number of principles.110 It is a structure of pure reason to attempt to subordinate Others to a subject’s totality. It should be noted that Kant's critique argues that reason attempts to create a unity or totality erroneously, and leads into error. Levinas' critique of the objectifying nature of self/Other relation follows the principles Kant outlines in the First Critique, while coming to virtu- ally opposite conclusions.

104 B358.

105 B359.

106 B360, "On the logical use of reason".

107 B361, editor's bold.

108 B361.

109 B361.

110 361. Sadler 28

Kant's proposed solution(s) to the problematic of pure reason is to divorce the logical use of syllogisms from objects in the first place. He argues that syllogisms do not deal with intu- itions (sensations), and therefore, do not deal with experience.111 Kant follows by articulating the antinomy between reason's desiring the unconditioned, while also desiring the whole series of conditions between arché and telos with which reason concerns itself. The antinomy between the unconditioned and the whole of conditions is a form of totality, by which reason claims to know both these extremes.112 However, Kant explains that the attempt to derive a sequence of conditions from the unconditioned is impossible, as the conditioned can only be related to an- other conditioned. An analytic concept is by-necessity related only to another conditioned. The only manner in which a conditioned can relate to the unconditioned is through a synthetic con- cept.113 While one fallacy is to attempt to relate the conditioned to the unconditioned, the idea of the unconditioned itself becomes problematic when synthetic a priori judgments are made which attempt to use the unconditioned as their object of experience. This is a category error of using an unconditioned principle as an object of experience.114 The unconditioned cannot be an object for judgments. In Kant's system, the resulting principles would be entirely, problematically tran- scendent, while our empirical intuition can be transcendental.115

§8. Kant’s Introduction of Practical Reason (Ethics) In the First Critique

Kant contrasts the idea of objects or concepts that cannot be known through experience with the idea of “practical reason” or freedom, virtue and ethics: “Plato found his ideas preemi- nently in everything that is practical, i.e., in what rests on freedom, which for its part stands un- der cognitions that are a proper product of reason.”116 Kant calls this product of pure reason the “ideal,” which is based on the metaphysical nature of ethical principles.117 Kant contrasts the

111 B363.

112 B364.

113 B365.

114 B365.

115 B365.

116 B372.

117 B370. Sadler 29 experiential nature of knowledge with the transcendental nature of ethical principles, arguing that experience can never show the true nature of ethics.118 Kant discusses what he thinks, quite arguably, is the moral ideal of Plato’s Republic, which is to provide the greatest human freedom for individuals living in a society.119 In like manner (which will be echoed in the Critique of Practical Reason’s “Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason”) the superlative notion of the “great- est happiness” is not the goal or the means, but simply the co-incidental outcome of the greatest practical freedom.120 Kant emphasizes the notion of the superlative, the “most high” (or ‘God') as an ideal that can serve to elevate rational individuals to a higher level of morality.121 Levinas will make use of the superlative notion of the “most high” in his critique of Totality and the notion of mediation he associates with traditional metaphysics. Kant compares the idea of causality in the phenomenal world with the idea of an individ- ual as a self-caused source of freedom (a causa noumenon in the 2nd Critique).122 Kant argues that the very notion of laws of nature is based on ideas, and reason is necessary to think the many individual things under the concept of a general rule: “[the whole order of nature] show clearly that they are possible only according to ideas.” In other words, the order of nature in- ferred by human reason is the teleology imposed by human reason, not inherent to nature.123 Kant is a Platonist insofar as he abstracts from the extreme notion of physical objects corre- sponding to transcendental forms; Kant repurposes Plato’s application of the universal eidoi to the particular for epistemological and ethical purposes, rather than transcendent aims.124 Rather, Kant re-purposes Platonism to focus on the ideal existence of higher principles, by which he specifically includes “principles of morality, legislation and religion where the ideas first make the experience (of the good) itself possible, even if they can never be fully expressed in experience.”125 Kant argues that experience of that which exists (the is) cannot give knowledge

118 B372.

119 B373.

120 B373.

121 B374.

122 See B374.

123 B374-B375.

124 For Kant's platonism, again see B371.

125 B375. Kant follows by arguing for the imperfect application of the metaphysics of morals to the extended, phenomenal world (see B375). Sadler 30 of what one morally ought to do, and this is/ought distinction is a metaphysical problem, while laws of nature describe the manner in which things merely exist.126 Kant ends the first part of the first book of the Transcendental Dialectic by summing up the various kinds of representation, from the most immediate sensation to the idea which is based on pure concepts. Kant explains that general representations stand over the individual representations related to consciousness.127 He follows by differentiating perceptions into sub- jective sensations and objective cognitions of objects.128 Cognitions are then divided into imme- diate intuitions and mediate cognitions.129 The mediacy of cognitions is the focus here for this summary of Kant’s epistemological system, in which judgment is the mediation between sensa- tions and cognitions. While the focus of this inquiry is the critique of mediation, Kant will follow the second section of the Transcendental Dialectic’s first book with a discussion of universality or totality. As Levinas’ critique of the mediation between Self/Other involves the Self’s attempt to enclose the Other in its totality, the following section illustrates the role of totality in Kant’s sys- tem by contrast.

§9. The Disciplines of Pure Reason, and their Antinomies

Kant follows in the third section with the introduction of psychology, cosmology and the- ology.130 Kant explains that there are three relations of representations (representations being a mediation between sensations and concepts): “the relation of representations of which we can make either a concept or an idea are of three sorts: 1) the relation to the subject, 2) to the mani- fold of the object in appearance, and 3) to all things in general.”131 Thus, Kant summarizes, these relations to the unconditioned are likened to the psyché, the cosmos and God: “The think-

126 B375.

127 “Here is their progression: The genus is representation in general (repraesentatio). Under it stands the representation with consciousness (perceptio)” (B377).

128 “A perception that refers to the subject as a modification of its state is a sensation (sensa- tio); an objective percepction is a cognition (cognitio)” (B377).

129 “ The former is immediately related to the object and is singular; the latter is mediate, by means of a mark, which can be common to several things” (B377).

130 B390.

131 B391. Sadler 31 ing subject is the object of psychology, the sum total of all appearances (the world) is the object of cosmology, and the thing that contains the supreme condition of the possibility of everything that can be thought (the being of all beings) is the object of theology.”132 Kant follows that the respective disciplines of study (Wissenschaften) proper to the three categories (subject, cosmos and God) as the ‘transcendental psychology,’ ‘transcendental cosmology’ and ‘transcendental theology,’ respectively, when thought according to the dialect of pure reason.133 Kant empha- sizes that these ‘sciences’ are not the result of inference from experience to concepts of the un- derstanding, but rather, these three ‘sciences’ are the result of reason alone.134 Kant’s footnote at the end of the Transcendental Dialectic’s first book summarizes that the ends of metaphysics are “God, freedom and immortality.”135 Kant ends this footnote with the methodological process from what we can experience in ourselves to what we understand of the world, with the hopes of pointing to the ultimate reality of God as the highest good (summum bonum): “pro- ceeding from what experience makes immediately available to us from the doctrine of the soul, to the doctrine of the world and from there all the way to the cognition of God.”136 Kant reserves the Paralogism for the Psychology, while discussing the following con- cepts of Cosmology and Theology in the Antinomies. A “paralogism” involves a fallacy of logic based on the syllogistic form. In other words, the statement is wrong based on its form, not its content.137 The problem of the transcendental paralogism is that reason holds it has a ground for its knowledge claims. In this specific case, the paralogism involves the judgment “I think,” and all the problematics entailed by that statement. In a note added to Kant’s copy of the first edition of the First Critique, he includes the problem that existence in itself is taken as a predi- cate, or a modifier to that which is attributed to existence: "The paralogisms begin from existence as modality: 'I am'; proceed to relation [Relation] in order to determine existence not in time, which would be empirical. Therefore: I am as substance,

132 B392.

133 B392.

134 B392.

135 B395.

136 B395.

137 B399. Sadler 32 simple as to quality, identical in my duration. The time of my duration is thus the time of my own self-determination.”138 In this sense, the determination of an existent, in this case “I am,” does not actually determine its relation to other objects in the world, and to attempt to go from the transcendent major premise to an empirical minor premise is fallacious. The structure itself leads to the logical fallacy confusing a transcendent or empty con- cept with empirical experience. In this case, a mistake is to make a knowledge claim about the psychological self as a simple substance, when such an experience cannot be given. Reason, in dialectical illusion, mistakes that it can empirically intuit the categories, of which ‘substance’ (existence) is one: “The proposition 'a exists,' is a simple substance, always the same, must in other cases be cognized through marks: 1. of perception, at least in time; 2. through properties that are persisting; 3. through demonstration of their [parts in space and time]; 4. through perception. Here I, as it were, [have a sense of] the categories or know them a priori.” Rather, in a move similar to negative theology, Kant asks whether the question about how the transcendental object (the noumenon) gives actual knowledge, or is merely an empty category with which we have only a negative concept, one which we know by its absence.139 In terms of the purpose of the “I think” judgment, Kant argues that it is an empty concept that indicates consciousness of experience: “because [the concept of “I think”] serves only to introduce all thinking as belonging to consciousness.”140 For the purposes of phenomenology, Kant has helped us to see that an individual’s existence is not in terms of a “thing” that one “has,” but rather as a space where consciousness can occur. Kant’s transcendental psychology does the work of clearing out dogmatic, rationalist concepts of the soul and body that Kant ar- gues are based on confusions between phenomena and noumena. They are generally categori- cal errors. However, when we don’t confuse a transcendental self (causa noumenon) with a physiognomical or empirical experience of inner sense (temporal aesthetic) contrasted by our outer sense (spatial aesthetic), we can discuss empirical psychology as an object of sense: “I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am called ‘soul.’ That which is an object of outer sense is called ‘body.’”141 Therefore, the object of psychology is the 'I' of the empirical self, with-

138 B399.

139 B399.

140 B400.

141 B400. Sadler 33 out looking beyond to a superlatively higher reality, at least as a transcendent object of knowl- edge.142 “I think” is a proposition in line with the conditions for understanding, the categories, and not the empirical nature of inner sensation. Rather, “I think” enables us to see concepts of un- derstanding in the first place.143 Kant follows with a list similar to the categories, but in this case Kant presents ‘topics’ (topos) pertaining to the rational psychology. In the case of the rational psychology, the existence of the ‘I’ is important, the existential nature is a prime topic for the dis- cipline of the Self. In a marginalia added to a copy of Kant’s first edition, he emphasizes the im- portance of the soul’s existential nature, and its unity of consciousness. Kant’s marginalia states: "[The] I, object and subject of thoughts, is identical, exists, [substance, reality], but as unity in itself ... of the subject in all its consciousness - these are purely identical propositions" (E CLIX, p. 48; 23:39).”144 In the B edition, Kant follows the topics of rational psy- chology with an asterix, explaining that the ultimate attribute of the soul is in the category of ex- istence. What is important to foreshadow is Kant's problematizing existence as an attribute at- tributed to objects.145 Kant explicates the existential nature of rational psychology as in the first topic, which Kant later corrected to “The soul exists as substance.”146 The focus on the existen- tial nature of the Self is made further explicit in phenomenology and its following existential ana- lytic. Each of the four topics has a corresponding paralogism that attempts to distort the ‘pure’ categories of the understanding with a diluted admixture of empirical sense making untenable knowledge claims about the soul. Kant states that the “representation I” contains nothing “but a mere consciousness that accompanies every concept.”147 In like manner, the transcendent soul is compared with the noumenal object, with the pivotal formula “a transcendental subject of thoughts = x.”148 What the noumenal formula of “= x” signifies in phenomenological inquiry is

142 B400.

143 B401.

144 B401, Footnote c.

145 B403.

146 B402, footnote b.

147 B404.

148 B404. Sadler 34 that what is intended by the individual, whether an ‘object’ or an ‘Other.’ Kant continues his polemic with dogmatic rationalism (however fallaciously straw-person) by emphasizing con- sciousness as not a ‘thinking-thing’ [res cogitans], and therefore consciousness is not an object capable of giving knowledge of its ‘thing-ness.’149 He follows that not adhering to a rigorous method of the a priori conditions for knowledge would result in “an empirical psychology,” and this psychology “would be a species of the physiology of inner sense;” and this psychology would not be rational, but still focused on mere-appearance.150

§10. Individual as Thing (Soul As Substance)

Kant’s problematizes the first paralogism by questioning the concept of “substance” in the syllogistic conclusion: “Thus I, as thinking being (soul), am substance.”151 Kant opens the re-written paralogisms from section B406-onward by discussing the unity of consciousness and the modes of self-consciousness. Discussion of consciousness’ modes of understanding will lead to a discussion of “manners of existence,” or the manner in which one exists. Consciousness’ modes and manner of existence will be important concepts for the fol- lowing phenomenological inquiry. Kant continues his general remark on the paralogisms by in- troducing the ‘modes’ of self-consciousness, writing: “All modi of self-consciousness in thinking are therefore not yet themselves concepts of the understanding of objects (categories), but mere functions, which provide thought with no object at all, and hence also do not present my self as an object to be cognized.”152 He follows by four general statements on the paralogisms of rational psychology. Kant’s first section states: “1) Now in every judgment I am always the determining subject of that relation that constitutes the judgment.”153 Kant presents the idea of

149 B405.

150 B406.

151 B406. Kant follows with the full syllogism: “That the representation of which is the absolute subject of our judgments, and hence cannot be used as the determination of another thing, is substance. I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my possible judgments, and this represen- tation of Myself cannot he used as the predicate of any other thing. Thus I, as thinking being (soul), am substance” (B406).

152 B407.

153 B407. Sadler 35 individual consciousness as constituting its experience. While this is understood as the impor- tance of a conscious perceiver who perceives and experiences according to rational under- standing, this is not the same as saying the individual has created that which they experience. Kant continues by once again refuting this extreme formulation: “but [the thinking subject] does not signify that I as object am for myself a self-subsisting being or substance.”154 He follows with the second argument: “2) That the I of apperception” is a “single thing”, but this simplicity is not the same as making the synthetic leap to claim the ‘single thing’ is therefore a “sub- stance.”155 The very concept of “substance,” beyond a regulative use, as an object of knowl- edge is a major problem for Kant, but also a major preoccupation of post-Kantian, modern phi- losophy. Kant’s third criticism is that the individual’s identity with one’s self is a logical proposi- tion, but gives no intuitive (sensible) knowledge of that identity: “3) The proposition of the identi- ty of myself in everything manifold of which I am conscious is equally one lying in the concepts themselves, and hence an analytic proposition.”156 Kant ends the four general remarks on the paralogisms with his first mention of what is arguably the most important concept in epistemology: the knowledge of that which is outside the individual self. His final general remark states: “4) [That] I distinguish my own existence, that of a thinking being, from other things outside me (to which my body also belongs) - this is equally an analytic proposition; for other things are those that I think of as distinguished from me.”157 On the one hand, the idea that one’s own body is outside of their ‘Self’ seems to reaffirm the stereotypical mind-body dualism, but without the problematic of positing the body as an ‘extend- ed thing’ [res extensa].158 The problem of ‘thing-ness’ will be further explicated when dealing with Martin Heidegger’s lectures on Kant. Kant ends the general remarks with a refutation of a rationalist idea that logical concepts correspond to metaphysical structures, while Kant reduces the concepts to their epistemic function: “The logical exposition of thinking in general is falsely held to be a metaphysical determination of the object.”159

154 B408.

155 B408.

156 B409.

157 B409.

158 B409.

159 B409. Sadler 36

Kant follows that the leaps of logic beyond simple, analytic concepts like individual self- identity (‘a is a’) attempt to synthetically extend logical concepts to make intuited claims. The objects that pure reason claims to intuit are noumenal, and therefore beyond phenomenal expe- rience. Kant argues that these erroneous synthetic a priori concepts add a style or ‘manner of existing’ to thinking in general, but also adds predicates to the concepts that cannot be given in experience.160 I want to focus on the ‘way’ or ‘manner of existence’ mentioned by Kant as a syn- thetic proposition, and it will be important for phenomenological discussion of existence, espe- cially the ‘modes’ or ‘manner’ in which an individual exists.161 Kant’s further explication of the paralogism follows by discussing the problematic con- cepts of ‘things’ and ‘manners of existence,’ and how the paralogism erroneously attributes un- derstanding to noumenal objects.162 In the case of the paralogism, Kant argues that the syllo- gism equivocates between the major premise’s focus on subjects, and the minor premise’s fo- cus on thinking in general. In this case, the ‘I’ as thinking being is not an object, but the function of consciousness itself. Therefore, the concept of the ‘I’ as unity of apperception does not tell us anything about the manner in which the I exists, which is the subject of phenomenal analysis. Kant uses this discussion of the problematics between things and thinking, and the lack of knowledge of a manner of existing to end this section of the paralogisms.While the relation of Self to Others is not the focus of the rational psychology, which is focused on the ‘I’ of appercep- tion, he discusses the relationship of the rational self to other rational selves. Whether incidental, the ‘problem of Other minds’ comes to the fore in the rational psy- chology, introduced in the section where Kant refutes Moses Mendelssohn’s proof on the soul’s persistence (after death).163 While not the focus of this discussion of Self/Other difference, Kant discusses these concepts indirectly in the context of arguing against Mendelssohn. Kant argues that consciousness can be continually diminished, as opposed to the idea of a necessarily per- sisting, simple substance: “For even consciousness always has a degree, can always be dimin-

160 B410.

161 B411.

162 Kant has an asterixed section following “a sophism of a figure of speech” (B411), in which he clarifies that the act of thinking does not have the thinking individual as its object but as a sub- ject, and acts as the tautology ‘I = I’ (B412).

163 B413. Kant refutes Mendelssohn’s proof of the persistence of the soul in the section that fol- lows. Sadler 37 ished.”164 Kant adds an asterix to this statement, differentiating between consciousness of a representation (which he argues against) and the understanding of difference (his own view): “Rather [than clarity of a consciousness of representation] a representation is clear if the con- sciousness in it is sufficient for a consciousness of the difference between it and others.”165 On the one hand, one does not want to read a post/modern discourse of différence back into Kant where it is an unwarranted neologism. Rather, one could argue that Kant defines con- sciousness as that which is not-it, resulting in an individualist ego-ology defining one’s self against that which is not their self. Kant argues that clarity of representations has a place, but only insofar as it is clarity of difference.166 Kant is arguing against the rationalist concept that clarity of representations is equal to the reality of the object in the world (in the sense of adequa- tion, not the extremes of Berkleyan idealism), as he will explicitly mention in his later critique of Leibniz. However, for the purposes of Edmund Husserl’s notion of ‘someone other’ in the 5th Cartesian meditation, Levinas’ phenomenology of the Other and Jacques Derrida’s emphasis on différence, Kant's introducing the problem of other minds, even (or perhaps ‘especially’) buried in a marginal comment, is very important. Kant follows a logical progression from the synthetic proposition of rational psychology beginning from the category of relation, progressing ‘backwards’ to form a ‘circle.’ Finally, in so closing this ‘circle,’ the individual comes to encounter ‘thinking beings.’167 Once-again, in look- ing at Kant’s discussion of other minds, one might confuse ‘other thinking beings’ with the gen- eral concept that all thinking beings are substances (but not a ‘things in-themselves’). While it is tempting to see this as a formula for encountering other minds, Kant argues that such a synthet- ic method, adds more and more to itself, instead of being an isolated analytic procedure, will erroneously argue that the thinking being, starting only from itself, can somehow encounter that which is ‘outside’ itself. This error of synthetic addition, Kant argues, will lead to the extremes of the problematic idealism already explicated.168 Kant argues that existence is analytically contained within a thinking being. Kant states that the argument of ‘proving’ the soul’s existence commits the category error of not starting with

164 B414.

165 B415.

166 B415.

167 B416-418.

168 B418. Sadler 38 the concept, but assuming existence as a predicate (i.e. assuming: ‘the soul exists’).169 While not explicitly dealing with the problem of other minds, Kant’s analytic identity between thinking being and existence can be compared to the phenomenological concept of ‘the given.’ The idea of the given means that the rationalist problem of a world outside of thinking being, as well as other minds, can be dealt with by assuming existence as ‘given’ in the first place. The ‘given’ nature of existence as analytically identified with thinking being still must deal with Kant’s cri- tique of ‘existence’ as a predicate which ‘adds’ something to that which exists. As we know, exis- tence is not a predicate, but analytically bound to thinking being. Kant discusses ‘the given’ fur- ther to explicitly deal with the problem of analytically attributing existence to thinking, when he states: But because my existence in the first proposition is considered as given, since it does not say that every thinking being exists (which would at the same time predi- cate absolute necessity of them, and hence say too much), but only ‘I exist thinking,’ that proposition is empirical, and contains the determinability of my exis- tence merely in regard to my representations in time.170

In this case, Kant is specifically responding to a materialist argument that since there is nothing simple encountered in experience, therefore a transcendental thinking substance must not exist as such. That thinking would be (in modern neologism) an ‘epiphenomenon’ of material exis- tence. However, Kant argues that the ‘given-ness’ of existence in thinking allows one to under- stand the ‘I’ as a representation (even an empty, synthetic a priori one) encountered through experience. Kant concludes the paralogism of rational psychology by discussing dogmatic scholastic philosophy’s confusion of appearance with noumena, as well as the confusion of the category of community applied to the soul and body. Kant presents a new problematic as to how a ‘commu- nity of substances’ is possible at all.171 The solution is not contained within the individual psy- che, but rather within the broader context of the cosmos (‘world’). At this point, the problem of ‘community’ is of the community of ideas, beings and the like. It is still important to understand how Kant’s critical system is the basis for the later phenomenology, and how seeds of this phi- losophy are to be found in the critical corpus. Thus, in proceeding from the ego-ology to the

169 B418-419.

170 B420.

171 B428. Sadler 39

World/Others, and finally (if seen as relevant) to God, Kant employs the method that will be adopted by the 20th century phenomenologists.

§11. Rational Cosmology: Totality of a Closed System

Kant makes a transition from the paralogism, focused on the rational psychology. He fol- lows the antinomies of pure reason with the cosmology.172 All of the different types of antinomies concern themselves with achieving the unconditioned, whether subjectively (the psychology), objectively (cosmology) or the unconditioned possibility for all objects in general (the theology).173 The reason that the antinomies do not begin until the cosmology, according to Kant, is that the psychological parallelisms are entirely one-sided, on the side of the individual soul. However, as to the objective existence of substances outside in the individual self, Kant will present as an incommensurable either-or dilemma, with no satisfactory conclusion.174 As long as the rational individual is referring to something which is ‘outside’ their self (intuited through the sensation of space), it is a judgment based on the ‘world.’ Kant summarizes: “I call all transcendental ideas, insofar as they concern absolute totality in the synthesis of appear- ances, world-concepts.”175 In his system of cosmological ideas, Kant explains that reason goes beyond its limits when it attempts to bring all conditions into a totality unified in the perceiver’s understanding. Kant explains: [Dialectic cosmological illusion] happens when for a given conditioned reason de- mands an absolute totality on the side of the conditions (under which the under- standing subjects all appearances to synthetic unity), thereby making the category into a transcendental idea, in order to give absolute completeness to the empirical synthesis through its progress toward the unconditioned (which is never met with in experience, but only in the idea).176

172 B432.

173 B433.

174 B433.

175 B434.

176 B436. Sadler 40

The logical fallacy of cosmological ideas is based on an equivocation from that which is (exis- tentially) given to our consciousness, extrapolated to reason’s demand for the sum of all condi- tions.177 While Kant here is dealing with the self-deceiving, sophistical nature of rational episte- mology, the demands of an individual’s reason toward of the totality of all conditions for a given conditioned is taken up by Levinas for its ethical implications. Levinas’ ethics articulates the problem of an individual Self attempting to bring the Other under the tyranny of its own under- standing. Therefore, even in this very elementary form, we can see the Self’s epistemological tyranny which has a moral analogy. For Kant, reason’s transcendental illusion comes from attempting to infer a chain of causality ascending from the present phenomenon to its unconditioned first cause.178 Kant con- trasts reason’s error in attempting to infer the unconditioned first cause (which is a sophistical error) versus inferring causation from evidence. Kant calls the ascending chain of inference ‘re- gressive’ (looking toward the past), and the descending inferences he calls ‘progressive.’179 In like manner, Kant contrasts the synthetic a priori unity of the totality (a metaphysical concept unable to confer any actual knowledge) against the empirical aggregate of consequences. The aggregate is understood through addition of empirical concepts, but (at least as currently expli- cated) does not lead to knowledge beyond appearances, and therefore is not the concern of Kant’s critique. Kant elaborates the cosmological regression, progression and aggregate according to the transcendental aesthetic of space and time as the conditions for all sensation. Since time concerns the sequence of inner sensation, Kant argues that time concerns the past antecedent to present phenomena as a priori conditions for the existentially-given present (not, however, for consequences to come of the current given).180 What makes temporal-consciousness of the re- gressive conditions metaphysical is how it is thought a priori according to the ideal. Specifically, the regressive series of conditions are thought of as necessary for the present given condition, but the concept of necessity is not analytically inherent to the regressive series, but is rather a synthetic addition to it: “According to the idea of reason, the whole elapsed past time is thought

177 B436.

178 B437.

179 B438.

180 B439. Sadler 41 of as given necessarily as the condition for the given moment.”181 Therefore, for Kant, time as the internal, inner-oriented of the two aesthetic conditions is more prone to metaphysical error. By contrast, we can only think the present aggregate spatially, and as an empirical concept it is not prone to such error.182 Kant calls the present moment’s relation to the prior temporal series ‘subordinate,’ while the spatial relation is ‘coordinated’ simultaneously.183 While space cannot be subordinated as a series in the same manner as time, Kant does argue that the act of measur- ing space creates boundaries resulting in a sensation of a succession, but only in the sense of the boundaries and measurements given by the individual.184 In phenomenology, however, one can say the case of an individual creating boundaries in space for the purposes of measurement is the horizon given to spatial phenomena by a conscious individual. Kant systematically engages with cosmology from his categories of intuition (space and time as the aesthetic), the reality of phenomena, as well as the category of relation to empha- size that the cosmological problem is due to an erroneous, metaphysical concept of causality that underlies the antinomies.185 Kant’s explication of the category of relation serves to critique the scholastic model of a necessary substance with contingent accidents.186 Kant’s ongoing ar- gument with the scholastics and later rationalists is that they assume to be able to know ‘things- in-themselves’ (Ding an sich), and therefore fall into category errors that produce sophistical di- alectical illusions. Kant argues, instead, that accidents are coordinated with one-another, and hence spatial, while at the same time they are not subordinate to substance (like in the model of conditioned appearances subordinated to an unconditioned noumenon). Rather, accidents are the manner, or style, in which a substance exists.187 Again, it is this ‘manner of existence’ that will become crucial to later phenomenology, as one interrogates, investigates and describes how the world appears to them, and the manner in which the self and other conscious beings exist.

181 B439.

182 B439.

183 B349.

184 B440.

185 B442.

186 B441.

187 B441. Sadler 42

§12. Kant’s Antinomies of Pure Reason

Beginning at B454, Kant begins his masterful antinomies, in which he displays both the- sis and antithesis of their argument, while showing they both rely on erroneous knowledge claims about noumenal concepts that cannot be given in experience. Therefore, Kant rejects both terms of each antinomy. Kant begins with the temporal antinomy between the created fini- tude and uncreated infinity of the universe. He opposes the antithesis (the world has no begin- ning and no boundaries in space; therefore, it is infinite) to the thesis (the world has beginnings and boundaries; therefore it is finite).188 Kant agrees with “the last part” of the Leibnizian philo- sophical school.189 “Space is merely the form of outer intuition, but not a real object that can be externally intuited, and it is not a correlate of appearances, but rather the form of appearances themselves.”190 Kant overcomes the antinomies’ stalemate through the formality, instead of the objectivity, of the aesthetic. Kant refers to Leibniz again in second antinomy on composition and division of sub- stance namely, the thesis: every composite substance consists of simple parts.191 The antithe- sis, on the other hand is: there is nothing simple underlying composites.192 In the remark to the thesis against infinite divisibility, Kant characterizes Leibnizian “monadists,” by arguing that they deny mathematical proofs (like the idea of the infinite divisibility of matter) in favor of some other kind of intuition.193 Kant’s response to the monadists’ argument against infinite divisibility comes from their argument against space as the condition for outer sensibility, as they instead argue that objects are the condition for space itself.194 Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic has already dealt with this issue. Kant argues against the monadists with Leibniz’ own definition of a monad: “The proper signification of the word monas (in Leibniz's usage) refers only to the simple given

188 B455 & B454, respectively.

189 B459.

190 B454.

191 B462.

192 B463.

193 B469.

194 B469. Sadler 43 immediately as simple substance (e.g., in self-consciousness) and not as element of the com- posite, which one could better call the atom.”195 Kant has previously referred to this “simple giv- en” as a “totum” rather than a “compositum”, arguing that parts can only be given through a whole, rather than as a composite of parts (i.e. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts).196 Therefore, Kant calls the dialectical illusion of monadism “transcendental atomism,” saying that “it may be called the dialectical principle of monadology”, in other words, displaying monadolo- gy’s sophistical illusions.197 Kant’s third antinomy deals with the conflict between freedom and determinism.198 The third antinomy is a critique of a notion of transcendental idealism on the one hand (the individual as a causa noumenon), and the need for a notion of freedom for the sake of practical reason (which will later be called a ‘postulate of pure practical reason’ in the Second Critique).199 Kant argues that the assumption of freedom (later called a ‘postulate’) leads to the idea of a first cause or ‘prime mover’ or a necessary being in order to posit a cosmos and human freedom in the first place.200 As freedom is so necessary to ethics, as the transcendental faculty of practical reason, Kant’s remarks on this antinomy are far more straightforward than the psychology and cosmology, which involved complex discussions of mathematical composition and division of substances. Despite the problem of an individual as a first cause in the midst of nature being untenable to empirical philosophy, the explanation of personal freedom as causa noumenon gives value to human action. Kant follows with the fourth and final antinomy, which involves the idea of God as the most necessary being. However, what is notable about Kant’s antinomies for God’s existence is that Kant posits God as a part of the universe: “This necessary being itself, however, belongs to the world of sense.”201 The God that Kant talks about (in summarizing the “thesis”) is not tran- scendent, but rather the highest cause of the world, who is still in the world. The thesis argues

195 B470.

196 B468.

197 B470.

198 B472-B473.

199 B476.

200 B478.

201 B482. Sadler 44 that a transcendent cause that is not part of the world itself is impossible.202 The contradiction comes from the idea of a cause that cannot be found in the world of sense, which is somehow the source of the regressive synthesis of appearances up toward the first cause. Kant’s remark focuses on how the only valid attempt to argue for God’s existence, despite still being a dialecti- cal illusion of Reason’s claim to knowledge it cannot have, is the proof from nature or the world, and not from the mere idea of a highest being.203 Kant follows with a statement about God’s be- ing-in-the-world or beyond it, but the phrase “whether this being is the world itself” suggests al- most an identification of God and Nature, á la Spinoza.204 In this sense, one would seek the creator of the house (the world) by looking towards its apex, or the most-high (literally) place in creation; in the same way, looking to the beginning of time for the first cause in a series of caus- es progressing in a linear fashion from this arché. Kant’s articulation of the cosmological thesis, while useful for pure reason’s illusion, cannot look to or articulate the God who transcends the universe. Kant anticipates both the Second and Third Critiques by referring to the use of the tran- scendental ideals for morality (“Practical Reason”) as well as the benefit of ascribing purposive- ness to phenomena (‘teleology,’ which is a concern of “Judgment”). The opaque discussion of these issues in the midst of the rigor of discussing the illusion of speculative reason necessi- tates either a deep interpretive reading and explication of the First Critique, or dedicated treat- ments of the topics developed in later critiques. For instance, the problems raised by the an- tinomy, of the soul, the cosmos and God, can be solved when used for morality instead of em- pirical speculation.205

§13. Postulates of Pure Reason

Kant anticipates the “Postulates” in the “Analytic of Pure Practical Reason” from the Cri- tique of Practical Reason.206 In the practical dialectic, Kant contrasts the ideas of the Epicurean

202 B482.

203 B484.

204 B484.

205 B494.

206 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:107 Sadler 45

(empirical) and Stoic (practical Platonist). Kant anticipates this Analytic of moral concepts in the First Critique when he contrasts the idea of dogmatic realists against dogmatic empiricists: the former at least have value for ethics, the latter would undermine ethics into skepticism: This is the opposition of Epicureanism and Platonism. Each of the two says more than it knows, but in such a way that the first encour- ages and furthers knowledge, though to the disadvantage of the practical, the sec- ond provides principles which are indeed excellent for the practical, but in so doing allows reason, in regard to that of which only a speculative knowledge is granted us, to indulge in ideal explanations of natural appearances, and to neglect the physical investigation of them.207

The dialectic of practical reason brings the Epicurean empiricist into dialogue with the Stoic/ Platonic sage. To summarize Kant’s argument, the empiricist can give us scientific knowledge based on sensation thought-through the categories of the understanding, but they cannot inform morality. Pure reason cannot give us scientific knowledge, but it can give us moral principles. Anticipating the Second Critique, Kant argues for the third, intermediate between the views of the Epicurean and the Stoic, where empiricism concerns itself with the world of sense, while transcendental reason is the domain of ethics.208 Finally, Kant anticipates the ‘Method of Pure Practical Reason’ with the argument that no matter how base and unlearned, unscientific or un- philosophical people can be, they still adhere to the theses of the transcendental dialectic of pure reason, as opposed to the empirical antitheses: “Finally, for the common understanding every speculative interest vanishes before practical interest, and it imagines itself to have insight and knowledge into whatever its apprehensions or hopes impel it to assume or believe.”209 Kant argues that the popularity of pure reason’s moral principles works to prevent a state of moral degeneration due to skepticism. The problem tackled by this chapter is Kant’s concept of mediating representation as it informs modern philosophy, and specifically how mediation works in phenomenology. The prob- lem of other minds, as Kant broached in the first antinomy, is compounded by the fact that all sensations are not things themselves, but representations.210 If one cannot directly experience that which they perceive, how can an individual know other minds? In this critical system, one could argue that as the moral individual’s reason acts as a causa noumenon, it becomes a

207 First Critique, B500.

208 B500.

209 B502.

210 B520. Sadler 46 question as to how one it is possible for one individual as causa noumenon to encounter anoth- er. However, for Levinas, the issue in this case becomes how an individual’s consciousness works by representing for itself given sensations, and how an individual consciousness tends towards totalizing the world-whole for itself. Thus, the individual’s experience involves represent- ing the Other for their Self, which necessarily involves mediation. This totality becomes epis- temic tyranny when coming into relation with Others, and is a conflict between epistemology and ethics. The category of totality is and its ethical implications is the underlying argument for Lev- inas’ Totality and Infinity. In Kant’s continuing explication of the Antinomies of Pure Reason, in section 8 Kant shows the absurdity of the notion of “ought” in epistemology. Kant differentiates ‘indefinite’ from ‘infinite’ as concepts about the world (such as the infinite divisibility of a line). In this case, ‘indef- inite’ refers to dividing a line as much as the individual desires to do, versus a mandate that one has some kind of imperative to continue to divide the line into infinity.211 The absurdity of this statement comes from putting a practical, or ethical, mandate on a mathematical problem. One cannot make scientific inquiry morally imperative, but one can command morality. Kant here il- lustrates the is/ought dichotomy, that existence cannot inform morality. Therefore, in terms of understanding, one can only explore the mathematical and worldly (dynamical) to an indefinite point, as opposed to infinite practical necessity. Kant introduces the idea of negativity as a regulative principle in his “Resolution of the cosmological idea”, arguing that the universe is indefinite in time and space, seemingly without temporal beginning or spatial boundary.212 “Thus to the cosmological question about the magni- tude of the world, the first and negative answer is: The world has no first beginning in time and no outermost boundary in space.”213 In terms of this negativity, the indefinite idea of the universe serves as the regulative function of not attempting the problematic concept of limiting the uni- verse in reference to something that is ‘outside’ space and time, which cannot be known by intu- ition. In other words, it is ‘as if’ the universe were infinite, while not thinking infinity but rather the indefinite knowledge about possible boundaries. The negative idea has regulative power to de- limit what the transcendental ideas are not.

211 B539.

212 B545.

213 B548. Sadler 47

Kant follows by locating the question of freedom versus determinism not from the tran- scendental idea, but rather from a cosmological standpoint: “By freedom in the cosmological sense, on the contrary, I understand the faculty of beginning a state from itself, the causality of which does not in turn stand under another cause determining it in time in accordance with the law of nature.”214 Freedom in this case comes from a cosmological rather than psychological- individual basis, focusing on the issue of causality in the world, rather than the individual as a unique causa noumenon.215 Kant argues instead that a complete separation of the phenomenal and transcendental would result in the elimination of moral freedom: “the abolition of transcen- dental freedom also simultaneously eliminates all practical freedom.”216 Therefore, cosmology is unique in that it acts as a mediation or a both/and of the transcendental and practical concepts of causal freedom. In other words, moral reason is not of the world but in the world. Kant opens the Second Book of the Transcendental Dialectic, “Chapter Three: ideal of pure reason” with the argument that the transcendental object is the most individual object.217 “But something that seems to be even further removed from objective reality than the idea is what I call the ideal, by which I understand the idea not merely in concreto but in individuo, i.e., as an individual thing which is determinable, or even determined, through the idea alone.”218 This transcendental object does not concern itself with the universal, which one could argue is more ‘real’ than its particular instances. Rather than the epistemological concept of judgment that applies the universal to the particular, the individual ideal is what Kant calls the Urbild, or ‘original image.’ “Thus just as the idea gives the rule, so the ideal in such a case serves as the original image [zum Urbilde] for the thoroughgoing determination of the copy [des Nachbildes].”219 The Urbild is an ideal, and its perfection cannot correspond to experience. In this manner, Kant contrasts the original image against the idea of the imagination, which is the schematism of applying the categories of understanding to experience. Likewise, the Urbilde

214 B561.

215 B562.

216 B562.

217 B595.

218 B596.

219 B597. Sadler 48 does not serve as a mediating function in epistemology, since mediation is the function of ‘Judgment’; rather, an Urbilde pertains to its individual instance.220

§14. Kant’s Transcendental Ideality (Prototypon Transcendentale)

Kant follows in the next section “The transcendental ideals (Prototypon transcendentale)” by defining ‘thoroughgoing determination’: “according to which, among all possible predicates of things, insofar as they are compared with their opposites, one must apply to it.”221 In this method, one applies all possible predicates to the ‘thing,’ according to the principle of non-contradiction, in order to see what predicates can and cannot be applied to the ‘thing’ in question. The importance of the ‘thoroughgoing determination’ of testing predicates in- dicates which ones can be represented in sensation, and which ones have non-being or logical negation.222 Kant contrasts ‘logical negation’ with ‘transcendental negation.’ Kant defines non- being as: “Logical negation, which is indicated solely by the little word ‘not,' is never properly attached to a concept, but rather only to its relation [Verhältnis] to another concept in a judg- ment, and therefore it is far from sufficient to designate a concept in regard to its content.”223 The logical is merely formal, and predicates are a relation of ideas. On the other hand, about ‘transcendental negation’: “The opposed negation, on the contrary, signifies a mere lack, and where this alone is thought, the removal of every thing is represented.”224 This concept as out- lined by Kant is important for the idea of ‘negative theology,’ the experience of God’s absence in the world, as well as the lack of knowledge about any predicates attributed to God. ‘Negative Theology’ will be outlined in relation to Levinas’ critique of the concept in a later chapter. Kant follows: “Now no one can think a negation determinately without grounding it on the opposed affirmation.”225 Now, one can read this as saying (in the case of ‘negative theology’) that one cannot think ‘not-God’ without having a definite idea of God in the first place. As this is

220 B598.

221 B600.

222 B602.

223 B602.

224 B603.

225 B603. Sadler 49 absurd, since God cannot be an object of thought, one can rather argue that one cannot think God determinately at all, so one can only focus on the experience of God’s absence in the world. Kant follows with “All true negations are then nothing but limits, which they could not be called unless they were grounded in the unlimited (the All).”226 This meaning of God would be that either the sum-total of all predicates in the world can add up to the highest or most neces- sary being, or to the ‘most real being’ [ens realissimum].227 Even a concept of God as the sum total of all things, i.e., a metaphysical totality or whole and not a mere aggregate, such a God is not transcendent. Thus, this notion of the ‘most real being’ is still more akin to Spinoza’s identifi- cation of God with nature, than with a transcendent Creator. However, for Kant’s epistemology, anything outside of nature cannot be understood. In the sense of negation as limitation, nega- tive theology, as an application of Kant’s transcendental negation, imposes limits on an individ- ual’s understanding, a limit on our concept of God in this case. Kant therefore links the concepts of the prototypon (transcendental ideal) with the Urbild (original image), stating: “For reason the ideal is thus the original image [das Urbild] (prototypon) of all things.”228 Kant also follows with the logic that the ‘original being’ is also the ‘highest being’ and therefore the ‘being of all beings’: Hence the object of reason’s ideal, which is to be found only in reason, is also called the original being (ens originarium); because it has nothing above itself it is called the highest being (ens summum), and because everything else, as conditioned, stands under it, it is called the being of an beings (ens entium).229

Kant emphasizes the ideal nature of reason’s concept of this highest being, while there are problems with attempting to make the ideal based in ‘reality’ (as the confusion between a mere phenomenon and a ‘thing in itself’). Kant calls this making-real of an ideal concept “hypostasis”230 At this point, Kant finally makes the next logical step to equate the idea of the highest being and all the predicates attributed to it (singular, omnipotent, etc.): therefore the pro- totypon is the concern of transcendental theology.231

226 B604.

227 B604.

228 B606.

229 B607.

230 B608. Kant elaborates that hypostatic ideas are taken to hyperbolic extremes, endowing ideas with a fallacious transcendence. (B608).

231 B608. Sadler 50

The problem with the most individual transcendental ideal and concept of the ‘All’ (or ‘to- tality’ as a neologism in Levinas' usage) is the problem of a first causes versus the ground of existence. The problem involves the equivocation of beginning [arché] and ground or end [telos], or source and result. Kant’s polemic against those who claim to argue for God as first cause, or God as ground of all being (‘nature’ in an immanentist view) is that one assumes what they claimed to have ‘discovered.’ We have previously discussed the ‘regressive’ synthesis, by which pure reason claims to infer backwards through time to God as source of existence. At the same time, one infers progressively towards what can be seen as the sum of all existence. This logic is circular, a confusion of source and goal, which falls into dialectical illusions of pure rea- son. This fallacy involves a dialectic of judgment, the application of the universal to the particu- lar. Thus one confuses the most individual ideal (which would be the universal in this system, despite seeming counterintuitive) with the particular All (the particular being attributed to the aesthetic of space and time).Towards this end: “The All without limits, however, is absolute unity, and carries with it the concept of one single being, namely the highest being; and thus reason infers that the highest being, as the original ground of all things, exists in an absolutely neces- sary way.”232

§15. Arguments for God's Existence: Existence is not a Predicate

In the light of this critique of mediation, negative theology must be contrasted against epistemological mediation. As will be argued in chapter 6, Kant’s postulate of God is sub-ordi- nate to the transcendence of the moral law. Thus, Kant’s God is a form of mediation. Kant ar- gues that the only proof for God’s existence that can be entertained is the cosmological proof, attempting to infer God as first cause and ground of existence. Kant argues against the ontolog- ical proof because while concepts of reason can apply to mathematical concepts, they cannot be applied to dynamic existence.233 Kant’s main point against deducing God from the concept of existence is that ‘existence’ as a concept cannot add anything to an actual experience.234 If the concept of God is to go beyond a merely logical predicate, then it falls into the problem that ex-

232 B615. Kant continues with his articulation that all that exists must exist within God as the ground of cosmic being (B616).

233 In other words, judgments can be made about non-things (B621).

234 B625. Sadler 51 istence cannot be a predicate.235 Toward this end: “Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing.”236 Kant argues that the predi- cates attributed to God through the statement “God is…" merely posits these predicates in rela- tion to their subject (God as the subject of these predicates in this case). As predicates can only be attached to things, such predicates serve to objectify God237 The concept of existence can- not be a predicate added to God (which can only be argued for, though weakly, in a cosmologi- cal manner), and Kant uses the example of the idea of a hundred dollars: the idea of existence adds nothing to a hundred dollars, and certainly does not make it come in to being where it was not before.238 Kant contrasts the analytic concept of God (analytic concepts cannot exist in the world) versus the synthetic concept (which extends itself toward existences in the world, even to the dialectical illusion of the unconditioned).239 Thus, as a synthetic concept, we must go beyond the idea as initially presented to gain a greater understanding: “Thus whatever and however much our concept of an object may contain, we have to go out beyond it in order to provide it with existence.”240 The individual must go outside one’s self to discover these existences. In the case of which we speak, the individual synthetically extends beyond their self in order to attempt (however futile) to discover God in the world. Thus the phenomenological maxim: conscious- ness seeks for an object (outside itself). This maxim of phenomenology has its basis in synthetic concepts of understanding. Kant follows with the statement that the concept of God’s existence, as opposed to an object of the understanding, has practical utility: “The concept of a highest being is a very useful idea in many respects.”241 Kant ends the section by denying the logical realism he attributes to Leibniz and Descartes. They posit that clear and distinct ideas are reflections of that to which they refer; therefore, a clear and distinct idea of God, akin to a geometric proposition, guaran-

235 B626.

236 B626.

237 B627.

238 B627.

239 B627.

240 B629.

241 B630. Sadler 52 tees the real existence of God.242 Kant repeatedly emphasizes that such a realist view presup- poses a knowledge of a ‘thing in itself’ or concepts of pure reason, which can only scientifically apply to mathematics. Kant articulates the ‘physico-theological’ proof of God’s existence, which makes the fal- lacious leap from the idea of ‘existence in general’ to a ‘determinate experience’ (which is the ordered purposiveness of observable world), aiming at a Creator.243 Kant lays out the four stages of this argument from teleology: first: there is order in the cosmos as it appears to us; second: the order is not a part of the world itself, but rather comes from beyond it; third: there exists a wise cause (not necessarily a single wise cause at this stage of reasoning) which works through Freedom, not merely a mechanistic determinism; finally: by the previous principles of analogy, this cause is unified in its source; therefore God is one.244 Kant’s idea of purposiveness in nature and has analogy with purposiveness in human constructions (‘art’ being a broad term for both technology [techné] as well as works of the ‘fine arts’).245 This analogy of purpose (or telos) in art and nature anticipates Kant’s Critique of Judgment (The Third Critique), which deals with the mediation between epistemology and principles, which includes human arts and Kant’s critical teleology. We shall follow this analysis of the first critique with the third, to further explore the concept of judgment as mediation in Kant’s critical system. Kant defines the difference between theoretical and practical cognition through how practical cognition represents the ‘ought’ to the moral individual: “Here I content myself with defining theoretical cognition as that through which I cognize what exists, and practical cogni- tion as that through which I represent what ought to exist.”246 There is an unbridgeable chasm between the is and the ought, and the inability of experience to arrive at the objects of pure rea- son, which can only be known through practical reason, illustrates this. As to the objects of pure reason, practical reason postulates them as necessary for morality.247 Practical reason’s faculty for postulating objects of pure reason is dealt with in-depth in the Second Critique, in how the moral individual postulates the existence of God, freedom of choice and the immortality of the

242 B630.

243 B648.

244 B653-654.

245 B654.

246 B661.

247 B662. Sadler 53 soul in order to be motivated and inspired to moral duty. What makes these postulates different from speculative cognition is that they go beyond the conditioned experience to moral principles.248 Kant’s notion of principles goes beyond sensation to the transcendent moral law, but that relationship is generally confined between the moral agent and the moral law which they are to come into conformity with (while simultaneously acting from autonomy as a rational subject). However, this quality of going-beyond can also characterize ethical relations to the Other, which is Levinas’ emphasis on the Kantian going-beyond cognition. An ongoing concern with Levinas’ corpus (and its Kantian basis) is how one is supposed to interpret and engage with Levinas’ rejections of negative theology. Kant’s transcendental the- ology fulfills a negative role, in limiting what can be known about God (what Kant calls a “regula- tive idea”): “Accordingly, despite all of its inadequacies, transcendental theology retains an im- portant negative use, and is a constant censor of our reason when it has to do merely with pure ideas, which for this very reason admit of no standard but the transcendental one.”249 This tran- scendental idea allows us to think of God not as what God ‘is’, but rather what God is not. Kant wants to remove the ideas of division (polytheism) anthropomorphism (the idea of God being a ‘big person,’), deism (God as not a part of the world) and atheism (which, like theism, cannot be a part of knowledge).250 Negative theology is ultimately a rejection of idolatry, which can be reli- gious in the idea of offering worship to something that isn’t God, or a moral concept involving incorrect relations to various beings in the world. In the case of Levinas, idolatry occurs when one represents the Other for themselves in place of the actual encounter with the Other. This problem of representation as idolatry in the Kantian philosophical system is the main problem for this dissertation. As will be elaborated, the necessity of the Self’s representation of the Other to themselves is epistemological original sin.

248 B667.

249 B668.

250 B668. Sadler 54 Sadler 55

Chapter Two: Kant’s Doctrine of Method and the Critique of Judgment

§1. The Doctrine of Method

Levinas’ Kantianism stands firmly in the First and Second Critiques, especially the phe- nomenological method of engaging the world epistemologically in order for the Other’s tran- scendence to be revealed in the shell of Being. While Heidegger’s later Phenomenological In- terpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason will favour the Transcendental Analytic over the Transcendental Doctrine of Method (as will be discussed), it is necessary to explicate Kant’s attempt at applied theory in the First Critique’s Method. I argue that it is possible to apply both the theoretical doctrine of Method as well as its practical correllary in the ethics without the me- diating technical reason of the Third Critique. Kant’s “Transcendental Doctrine of Method” outlines the application of the “Doctrine of Elements” for the true use of pure reason for morality.251 What is important to note in this sec- ond main section of the First Critique is that Kant argues that mathematical concepts are con- structed according to ideas of pure reason, while empirical concepts are discovered. One would think in a traditionally realist sense that mathematical concepts would be that which is ‘real’ and therefore ‘discovered’ (having a ‘higher’, metaphysical existence); on the other hand, empirical concepts as mere ‘accidents’ are ‘constructed’ according to the higher principles. But Kant does not follow dogmatic rationalism, arguing rather that mathematical concepts are constructed and empirical intuitions are discovered.252 Kant outlines his “complete system of pure reason” as a ‘discipline,’ a ‘canon,’ an ‘archi- tectonic’ and, finally, a ‘history’ of pure reason.253 In this sense, Kant is reappropriating language that sounds religious for the purposes of pure (practical) reason. In regard to the application of

251 Adonis Frangeskou emphasizes Heidegger’s dismissal of the Transcendental Dialectic in Levinas, Kant, and the Problematic of Temporality: “In his concerted effort to prioritize the Tran- scendental Analytic Heidegger diminishes the potential of the Transcendental Dialectic to chart an interpretive direction in the Kantian ground-laying that takes us beyond the problem of Be- ing, one that Kant himself had foreseen, but a direction which Heidegger’s own interpretation conceals from us” (18).

252 B471-B472.

253 B736. Sadler 56 pure practical reason, Kant argues that the method can only suggest a programmic, or technical application of reason’s (moral) principles (B736). Kant’s attempt at a further technical application of transcendent principles to the world of experience will occur in the Critique of Judgment, as the mediation of experience and metaphysic of morals. While Kant argued that concepts of pure reason according to epistemological (or “specu- lative”) a priori structures of cognition are by necessity empty and negative without experience, he emphasizes negativity again in the “Method”: “negative judgments have the special job solely of preventing error.”254 Kant further refers to this application of epistemological reason as “the negative in instruction”, and adds a moral dimension by which the individual is under ‘compul- sion’ to speculate beyond experience into dialectical illusion.255 It is only through ‘discipline’ that individuals can contain their own propensity to useless speculation. Kant distinguishes discipline from what he calls ‘culture,’ because: “[Discipline] is different from culture, which would merely produce a skill without first canceling out another one that is already present.”256 Kant follows by previewing ideas that will later be elaborated in the Judgment, that “imagination and wit” are the flights of fancy requiring discipline to rein in extreme attempts to go beyond what is available to reason.257 Kant would argue that any attempt to achieve super-rational understanding would actually be a sub-rational regression. In this sense, Kant refers to discipline as the negative curtailing of speculative excess, while ‘culture’ and ‘skill’ refers to the positive formation of an individual according to culturally- transmitted norms, doctrines and techniques (analogous to a vocational techné). As Kant sums it up: “In the formation of a talent, therefore, which already has by itself a tendency to expres- sion, discipline will make a negative contribution, but culture and doctrine a positive one.”258 Kant engages here with ideas of the formation of individuals through cultural, technical, and ed- ucational means. In other words, this is how an individual is crafted due to external influences. While Kant will argue in the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason that only a Good Will, acting out of metaphysical principles of autonomy can actually be considered moral, there is still a give-and-take between metaphysical moral principles and influences on individuals’ char-

254 B737.

255 B737.

256 B738.

257 B738.

258 B738. Sadler 57 acter (called ‘virtue’ in another sense). Therefore, despite the theoretical distance of pure reason in its practical form, Kant still has concerns with how an individual’s experience forms their abili- ty to act in the world. Kant distinguishes philosophical and mathematical cognition as (previously stated) mathematical cognition is constructed, while philosophical cognition discovers the ‘given’ world through experience. Kant argues that philosophical cognition pertains to ‘general concepts’ and mathematical cognition to ‘particular concepts’ (However Kant emphasizes mathematics is not empirical in the sense of empirical intuition)259. While the modern use of ‘constructed’ refers to the arbitrary nature of social systems, but in Kant's terminology, ‘constructed’ is not confined to the empirical world. Rather, the idea of ‘constructed’ means that mathematical concepts are constructed a priori. Once again, Kant goes against the dogmatic realist emphasis on mathe- matical concepts as the ‘real’ or universal, while experience (empirical philosophy) is confined to mere ‘accidents.’ Rather, philosophical concepts are general principles, and mathematical con- cepts are particular, a priori constructions according to those general principles.

§2. Kant and the Problematic of Things

Kant follows with a discussion of the things, an important concept that will be highlight- ed by Heidegger’s What Is a Thing? Kant distinguishes ‘mere form’ with the idea of the thing, which can only be ‘given’ through intuition. Kant argues that the only thing that can be ‘given’ “a priori is the concept of the thing in general.”260 It follows that since these synthetic concepts cannot be given empirically, they are therefore transcendental.261 Synthetic general concepts transcend any possible intuition to which they refer, and therefore can expand themselves into speculative absurdity. Pertaining to judgment (the application of the particular to the universal): “If one is to judge synthetically about a concept, then one must go beyond this concept, and in- deed go to the intuition in which it is given.”262

259 B744.

260 B478.

261 B478.

262 B749. Sadler 58

In discussing ‘the correspondence theory of truth,’ Kant discusses the correspondence of ideas as they are given in particular experience to the ‘pure,’ universal concepts.263 What is no- table in Kant’s dichotomy between a priori and a posteriori, is that while a priori concepts are rational and mathematical, Kant refers to the empirical a posteriori as “mechanical.”264 This no- tion of mechanical or technical cognition, as judgment is the application of the particular to the universal, as will be crucial to Kant’s Third Critique as well as to the concept of mediation itself. Kant follows by discussing the mathematical and philosophical concepts starting with ‘definitions’, followed by ‘axioms.’265 While axioms are statements that are true in themselves, concepts of experience must necessarily relate to other concepts, and are therefore mediated by a third thing. This refers to judgment as mediation, or the schematism between experience and understanding.266 Kant follows ‘demonstrations’, with dividing propositions into ‘dogmatic’ and ‘mathemata.’267 In this case, dogmatic pertains to ‘synthetic’ intuitions and mathemata deals with analytic concepts. In other words, proclamations about experiences in the world are ‘dogmatic.’ It isn’t a negative concept in itself, but when it is proclaimed by authority figures (who Kant pejoratively terms ‘the schoolmen’), dogmas gain the rigid, authoritarian meaning they have in modernity. It makes sense that Kant follows the sections on definitions, axioms and demonstrations with a discussion of the use of pure reason for the purposes of polemics against such dogmatic authoritarians in education, politics, and religion.268

263 B479. Also see Heidegger’s “On the Essence of Truth”: “Veritas est adaequatio intellectus ad rem does not imply the later transcendental conception of Kant–possible only on the basis of the subjectivity of man’s essence–that ‘objects conform to our knowledge.’ Rather, it implies the Christian theological belief that, with respect to what it is and whether it is, a matter, as created (ens creatum), is only insofar as it corresponds to the idea preconceived in the intellectus di- vinius, i.e., in the mind of God, and thus measures up to the idea (is correct) and in this sense is ‘true’ (Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, 118).

264 B479.

265 B755 & B760, respectively.

266 B761.

267 B762 & B764, respectively.

268 B766. Sadler 59

Kant’s “Canon of Pure Reason” presupposes the idea of a dogmatic canon for the pur- poses of morality.269 Kant once again formulates the necessity of epistemological utility of pure reason in its purely negative use. The greatest and perhaps only utility of all philosophy of pure reason is thus only negative, namely that it does not serve for expansion, as an organon, but rather, as a discipline, serves for the determination of boundaries, and instead of dis- covering truth it has only the silent merit of guarding against errors.270

Kant defines the canon, stating: “I understand by a canon the sum total of the a priori principles of the correct use of certain cognitive faculties in general.”271 However, for his purposes, Kant argues that the canon can only concern practical (moral) reason, not speculation.272 Kant argues that reason desires to “go-beyond” the concepts readily available to it (‘ana- lytic’) towards incorporating more and more concepts to itself (‘dialectic’).273 This desire to go- beyond, while leading to mere epistemological illusions, finds its value in its desire (‘Will’) for the metaphysical moral law. For Levinas’ method in Totality and Infinity, draws on a similar method by which he goes from an individual’s experience of the world to the experience of the Other which commands the individual to ethical concern. What will differentiate Levinas from Kant is that, for Kant, individuals command themselves through the moral law available to reason, which is an emphasis on individual autonomy. Levinas’ view emphasizes heteronomy, by con- trast. Kant argues that when practical reason ‘goes-beyond’ its immediate experience, it desires ‘objects’ (in a similar line of thinking to ‘objects’ encountered by epistemological reason). These objects (also referred to as the ‘aim’ or ‘goal’ of reason) Kant argues are a free Will, the immortal soul, and God.274 It should be noted here that the idea of the ‘Will,’ the ‘Soul,’ and ‘God’ as ‘ob- jects’ of moral desire will be problematized by phenomenology. Clearly, Kant saw no problem with these ‘postulates’ being referred to as ‘objects’ or ‘things.’

269 B823.

270 B823.

271 B824.

272 B824.

273 B824.

274 B826. Sadler 60

§3. Kant Anticipates Critique of Judgment

Kant follows by discussing the “object that is foreign to transcendental philosophy” (B829). This statement is accompanied by an asterix whereby Kant explains that practical concepts pertain to objects invoking feelings of pleasure and displeasure in those per- ceiving them.275 Kant’s idea of moral feelings, pleasure or displeasure, feelings of good or bad (or ‘wellbeing and woe’) will be further developed in the Critique of Practical Reason in the “Dia- lectic of Pure Practical Reason.” Kant argues that practical reason desires to maximize feelings of pleasure and to minimize ‘woe’ or displeasure as part of a dialectical tension between these feelings and a more transcendent principle of ‘The Good.’ However, Kant continues the focus on practical reason as a faculty of ‘desire’ in the Judgment. But Kant foreshadows this emphasis on desire in the First Critique. Kant differentiates the idea of ‘practical reason’ from its more pragmatic meaning as skill or technique. Conversely, Kant’s meaning of practical reason is morality based on transcenden- tal principles. “Only in a practical relation, however, can taking something that is theoretically insufficient to be true be called believing. This practical aim is either that of skill or of morality, the former for arbitrary and contingent ends, the latter, however, for absolutely necessary ends.”276

In this meaning, ‘skill’ is the domain of ‘technical knowledge’ or techné, while morality is the do- main of ethical action. Morality is the domain of the Critique of Practical Reason, while techné is the domain of Judgment. Kant follows by further elaborating the dichotomy between skill and morality, which is the difference between ‘hypothetical’ and ‘categorical’ imperatives. For Kant, the desired goals (or ‘aims’) of reason can be technical when they are about accomplishing one’s goals. This is the logic of hypothetical imperatives: if the rational agent desires this specif- ic outcome (X), then one should do what is appropriate towards furthering said goals (Y). Thus: “Once an end is proposed, then the conditions for attaining it are hypothetically necessary.”277 On the other hand, Kant’s notion of how one is to act according to moral maxims is not contin-

275 “All practical concepts pertain to objects of satisfaction or dissatisfaction [Wohlgefallens oder Mißfallens], i.e., of pleasure or displeasure, and thus, at least indirectly, to objects of our feeling” (B829).

276 B851.

277 B851. Sadler 61 gent on the desired goals of the agent. Rather, since moral principles govern the agent’s moral motivation, such moral maxims are ‘categorical’ in their intent, scope, and reach.278 In his following chapter, “the architectonic of pure reason,” Kant argues for the construc- tion of a systematic, or ‘architectonic’ according to the concepts previously elaborated in the section on judgment, specifically the idea of the ‘schema.’279 “For [the architectonic’s] execution the idea needs a schema, i.e., an essential manifoldness and order of the parts determined a priori from the principle of the end.”280 However, Kant follows by contrasting the empirical idea of the schematism as transition from sensation to concepts against the idea of the architectonic according to the idea of pure reason.281 This difference between an empirical schema and archi- tectonic of pure reason is an important dichotomy, which will be elaborated further in regards to Kant’s Judgment. Insofar as Kant’s idea of Judgment mediates the two previous critiques, judg- ment’s mediating function in general is of great importance to understanding what mediation means for Kant’s critical corpus, and Levinas’ relation to that corpus.

§4. Kant’s Definition of Metaphysics

It is important to discuss what the word ‘metaphysics’ means for Kant, as Levinas will make the bold statement in Totality that there is nothing negative in metaphysics. Metaphysics, despite the disdain for the term in post-Kantian critical philosophy, is an important term, and as Levinas is in the Kantian tradition, the term must be defined. Kant argues that pure reason ei- ther serves two functions. The former is ‘propaedeutic’, in other words, prepares inquirers for what can be known, enumerating reason’s a priori faculties: hence the propaedeutic of pure

278 Kant uses the ‘common’ nature of everyday moral concerns (as opposed to more lofty ideals of science and metaphysics) as the manner in which one can communicate, educate, and foster moral ideas in individuals: “The human mind takes (as I believe is necessarily the case with every rational being) a natural interest in morality, even though this is not undivided and practi- cally overwhelming” (B858). This asterix affixed to the end of B857 anticipates a similar senti- ment expressed in the “Method of Pure Practical Reason” from the Second Critique [Kant, Cri- tique of Practical Reason, 5:151.]. I would argue that dialogue with other individuals on moral topics is the best expression of the general philosophical impulse in practical reason, but I think Levinas would disagree.

279 B860.

280 B861.

281 B861. Sadler 62 reason is ‘critical’ in this sense. Contrasted with this preparatory nature of pure reason is its ‘metaphysical’ quality: ‘metaphysics’ is the attempt to bring all rational faculties under a system.282 Kant differentiates the metaphysics of nature from the metaphysics of morals: “Meta- physics is divided into the metaphysics of the speculative and the practical use of pure rea- son, and is therefore either metaphysics of nature or metaphysics of morals.”283 He follows by arguing that metaphysics should be reserved only for morality, as its use for theoretical rea- son is inherently problematic.284 Kant divides the entire system of metaphysics into 4 parts, stat- ing: Accordingly, the entire system of metaphysics consists of four main parts. I. On- tology. 2. Rational Physiology. 3. Rational Cosmology. 4. Rational Theolo- gy. The second part, namely the doctrine of nature of pure reason, contains two divisions, physica rationalis and psychologia rationalis.285

Kant contrasts the architectonic nature of metaphysics with the previously contrasted techné, a system ‘cobbled-together’ through an empirical aggregate, as opposed to the a priori nature of the architectonic.286 By Kant’s definition, “Ontology” considers the sum total of objects that can be given in nature, and not merely the a priori form of the understanding in which those objects may appear.287 When Kant begins his Critique of Judgment, he reiterates a concept from the transcen- dental doctrine of method that philosophy has two ‘objects’ of its concern: nature and freedom.288 Here Kant distinguishes between the is and the ought, what exists, and what one is supposed to do. Nature is the concern of epistemology, and freedom is the concern of ethics.

§5. Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Mediation

282 B869.

283 B869.

284 B870.

285 B875.

286 B875.

287 B873.

288 B868. Sadler 63

Kant’s Critique of Judgment outlines the problematic set up by his previous two critiques, the seeming incommensurability of theory (knowledge from experience) and principles (the metaphysics of morals). Kant realizes the problematics of the misnomer ‘practical’ reason, be- cause of the colloquial idea of ‘technical’ reason. For Kant’s system of thought, the colloquial notion of ‘practical’ (‘technical’) pertains to the theoretical (experiential) part of reason, rather than the moral.289 He argues that ‘applied’ reason, which is not based on moral principles is “technical rather than practical propositions.”290 Kant continues, “In this way, all precepts of skill belong to technique and hence to the theoretical knowledge of nature as its consequences.”291 This statement is followed by an asterisked note in which Kant corrects the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. He corrects the problematic concept of hypothetical imperatives of skill (the duty to actualize one’s potential through their vocation) by calling them “technical impera- tives.”292 Therefore, I argue that Kant's Critique of Judgment would be better-titled “A Critique of Technical Reason.” Kant makes a three-fold summary of the division of theoretical (epistemological) reason: First, the faculty for the cognition of the general (of rules), the understanding; second, the faculty for the subsumption of the particular under the general, the power of judgment; and third, the faculty for the determination of the par- ticular through the general (for the derivation from principles), i.e., reason.293

Kant’s problem is that he has three a priori faculties He further divides these three a priori facul- ties (the general, the subsumption of the particular and the determination through reason) but only two domains of reason: nature and freedom, or theoretical and practical reason, respective- ly.294 If, as Kant has said “[therefore] the a priori principles for the whole of philosophy already seem to have been completely treated” there is a missing domain of reason.295 Since the ‘whole’

289 20:199.

290 20:200.

291 20:200.

292 “I should have called them technical imperatives, i.e., imperatives of art” (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 20:200).

293 20:201.

294 20:202.

295 20:202. Sadler 64 of philosophy is two parts, and the “systemic representation of the faculty for thinking is tripar- tite”, then Kant adds a mediating ‘third part’ to the ‘whole’ of philosophy by way of judgment.296 Kant introduces the idea of judgment as mediation between epistemology and ethics as follows: But now if the understanding yields a priori laws of nature, reason, on the con- trary, laws of freedom, then by analogy one would still expect that the power of judgment, which mediates the connection between the two faculties, would, just like those, add its own special principles a priori and perhaps ground a special part of philosophy, even though philosophy as a system can have only two parts.297

Kant argues that an abyss spans the gap between experience and metaphysical principles, and therefore the idea of judgment as “mediating” is problematic.298 However, Kant will work around this issue by arguing that judgment as such (i.e. aesthetic judgments of taste) has no a priori ground, unlike theory and praxis. Therefore, Kant can argue that judgment is an ancillary faculty to theory, concerning itself with the sensory side of experience. Despite its lack of an a priori faculty, it is Kant’s concise view that judgment is especially subordinate to theory, as aesthetics is a part of sensation.299 Instead, Kant summarizes the tripartite faculty of reason as the faculty of cognition (theo- ry), the feeling of pleasure and displeasure (judgment) and the faculty of desire (practical rea- son).300 While Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason dealt with feelings of pleasure and displea- sure in morality (feelings of good and bad),301 desire does not have the colloquial meaning often tied to what Kant calls base ‘inclination.’ Desire pertains to the moral Will. Rather than being based in reason, Kant locates the seat of morality in the Will. Therefore, moral desire is accord-

296 20:201.

297 20:202. See Henry Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Taste for his summary of Kant’s faculty of Judgment as mediation between epistemology and ethics, 13.

298 Allison argues that Kant’s Judgment serves not merely to fill in a ‘gap’ between the two main faculties, but to bridge an ‘immense gulf’ [unübersehbare Kluft]: see 201.

299 20:202.

300 20:206.

301 Kant writes: “The only objects of a practical reason are therefore those of the good and the evil” (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:58). For Kant’s linguistic analysis of good and bad versus good and evil, see 5:59-61. Sadler 65 ing to ‘pure’ practical reason, and the Will is a ‘higher’ faculty, beyond merely satisfying inclina- tion (which Kant calls ‘psychological’). Levinas’ critique of the mediating 'third term’ focuses on the idea of “radical alterity,” the idea of the difference between self and other. Kant had earlier argued that the differing faculties must remain distinct, and do not admit of being ‘collapsed’ into a more homogeneous whole.302 Kant argues against philosophers who attempt to collapse the faculty of desire into cognition, conflating the moral Will with speculative reason. However, Kant argues that the desire for an object ‘goes-beyond’ being conscious of it.303 In other words, the object of Kant's desire is the metaphysical moral law. In this sense, Kant’s radical differentiation between the faculties of cog- nition anticipates Levinas’ radical difference between the self and the Other. However, it is a question as to whether or not Judgement constitutes the problematic mediating third term, and whether Kant ultimately falls into the problematics later raised by Levinas. Kant argues that the faculties of cognition and desire are mediated by the feelings of pleasure that both scientific discovery and moral excellence engender.304 However, Kant means to stress that the feeling is not the means of connection between cognition and desire, but merely the result.305 He continues to argue that if there are a priori bases for cognition and de- sire, then it stands to reason that the mediating feeling of pleasure and displeasure (“well-being and woe” in the Second Critique)306 is likewise based on an a priori grounds.307 Instead, Kant emphasizes that while cognition deals with individuals' experience of nature outside of them- selves, and practical reason looks toward to the objective moral law (and the moral agent’s au- tonomous expression according to that moral law), Judgment governs the completely subjective feeling of pleasure or displeasure in relation to the representation given by experience.308

302 20:206.

303 20:206.

304 20:206-7.

305 20:207.

306 By contrast, Kant writes in the "Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason” that the speculative illu- sion occurs when one confuses their moral Will with the epistemological idea of an object of the ‘highest good.’ See Critique of Practical Reason, 5:110. Allison argues that rather than the au- tonomy of the Will in Kant’s ethics, Kant’s Judgment is the autocracy or actualization of the noumena Will in the phenomenal world, 207.

307 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 20:207-8.

308 20:208. Sadler 66

§6. The Critique of Technical Reason

Kant presents the problem I call “the aesthetic versus aesthetics.” By the ‘aesthetic,’ I mean Kant’s concept of the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic of space and time as the condition for all sensation’ from the Critique of Pure Reason. However, the Critique of Judgment contrasts the broad notion of the aesthetic versus the idea of the aesthetic judgment of taste, which I label ‘aesthetics.’ Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic argues for the broad understanding of ‘aesthetic’ as ‘sensation.’ In an asterisked footnote to the Transcendental Aesthetic: The Germans are the only ones who now employ the word "aesthetics" to desig- nate that which others call the critique of taste. The ground for this is a failed hope, held by the excellent analyst Baumgarten, of bringing the critical estimation of the beautiful under principles of reason and elevating its rules to a science. But this effort is futile. For the putative rules or criteria are merely empirical as far as their sources are concerned, and can therefore never serve as a priori rules ac- cording to which our judgment of taste must be directed, rather the latter consti- tutes the genuine touchstone of the correctness of the former. For this reason it is advisable again to desist from the use of this term and to save it for that doctrine which is true science (whereby one would come closer to the language and the sense of the ancients, among whom the division of cognition into ἀισθητα και νοητα was very well known).309

Kant here argues explicitly against the narrow, popular concept of ‘aesthetics’ as preoccupied with art and the beautiful, instead of the broader concept of the ‘aesthetic’ as sensation. In this earlier writing, Kant argues that any attempt to bring the critique of taste under rational princi- ples is “a failed hope” and “futile.” Therefore, if the two part system of pure reason in its theoret- ical and practical a priori grounds is complete in itself, then it is a question as to why Kant even needed to write a third critique at all.310 Either Kant has fallen into the fallacy he earlier attributed to earlier German philosophers, or he has critically “emptied” Judgment by arguing for its sub-

309 Critique of Pure Reason, B35-6.

310 “That is the reason why judgments of taste are also subject to a critique with regard to their possibility, since this presupposes an a priori principle, though this principle is neither a cogni- tive principle for the understanding nor a practical principle for the will, and thus is not a priori determining at all” (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:192). Eli Friedlander argues that Kant’s Third Critique is the completion of the critical enterprise: see Expressions of Judgment, 6. I argue that Kant's system requires not ‘completion,’ but the tension between the phenomenal and noume- nal. Phenomenology preserves this tension without need for a ‘bridge.’ Besides, the true 'com- pletion' of Kant's critical corpus occurs in the “Moral Catechism” at the end of The Metaphysics of Morals, 6:479. Sadler 67 jective nature that has no a priori grounds.311 This thesis articulates Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of Kant’s mediating ‘third term,’ applied to the Judgment? What if we argue instead that a lack of a priori ground ‘neuters’ the mediating, ‘plastic’ nature (as outlined by Levinas) of this seeming ‘third term.’ In the Judgment’s (First Introduction) Kant returns to the basis of the first Critique’s ground of the aesthetic in experience, i.e., to the “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements,” that space and time are the unity of experience. Kant emphasizes that experience is in reference to the objective quality of what is ultimately appears to a perceiving individual.312 Kant then follows by summarizing the epistemological faculty of Judgment for experience, the technical subsum- ing of a particular experience into the idea of the general.313 However, Kant introduces to this reiteration of epistemology’s aesthetic and judgment a faculty called ‘reflection.’ Reflection is very important for the phenomenology that will later be derived from Kant, where individuals re- flect on their experience.314 For Kant, therefore, Judgment has faculties for reflection as well as for determination of the objects of experience.315 Kant then reiterates the ‘schematism’ of pure reason (which mediates between concepts from experience and understanding according to the a priori categories) and the faculty of judgment (which is a part of the schematism’s application of particular experiences to the general).316 However, Kant distinguishes the power of judgment as outlined in his third critique from the schematism, by arguing that the reflective power of judgment does not engage experience epistemologically, but rather reflection has a technical/ artistic application.317 The problem with German thought is the linguistic conflation of art & tech-

311 Judgment, 20:239.

312 Judgment, 20:209.

313 20:210.

314 20:210.

315 20:210.

316 20:212.

317 20:214. Sadler 68 nology, also called techné.”318 Ultimately, reflection involves an engagement with the ‘technique’ or ‘art’ of nature, for Kant generally argues that nature is the supreme form of ‘art’/‘techné.”319 However, Kant surely emphasizes that reflection is a principle for the epistemological form of judgment (in regards to the First Critique), and not judgment per se that he will later in- troduce.320 Rather than merely being collapsed into theoretical reason, Kant argues that judg- ment’s faculty for the general and the particular results in the techné of nature, or nature’s aes- thetic and purposive qualities (as an analogy to craft).321 Therefore, Kant summarizes the Judgment’s principle: “The special principle of the power of judgment is thus: Nature specifies its general laws into empirical ones, in accordance with the form of a logical system, in behalf of the power of judgment”.322 One must question the wording here, as to the seeming agency given nature in this definition, instead of the a priori faculties proper to rational individu- als.323 I argue that Kant is attempting here to save his complete two-part system, and yet use the faculty of judgment to discuss elements that do not fit into his critical system.324 It is important to further define judgment as ‘technical’ in the sense of its application of particulars to universals. Kant argues that nature’s purposiveness (which is the result of an indi-

318 Martin Heidegger relies on this linguistic conflation for his article “The Question Concerning Technology.” Heidegger writes: “There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techné. Once the revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appear- ance was also called techné. There was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beau- tiful was called techné. The poiésis of the fine arts was also called techné” (Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 339).

319 Kant, Judgment 20:214. For Freidlander, philosophical systematicity is itself a form of media- tion: “This aesthetic dimension of systematicity can be explicated in terms of the notion of mediation” (Expressions of Judgment, 8). Levinas will argue that such mediation falls into categorical reason.

320 20:214.

321 20:215.

322 20:216.

323 20:215. Kant follows with an asterisked footnote comparing and differentiating himself from Aristotle: “The Aristotelian school also called the genus matter, but the specific difference the form” (20:215, asterix).

324 In a similar manner, Kant reintroduces rationalized concepts proper to Aristotelian thought which he had previously cut from his critiques – teleology, virtue, etc. Kant makes a similar re- introduction of previously banned concepts repurposed for his system, like the social nature of morality (in this case as a result, not a cause of rational moral autonomy), in Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason. Sadler 69 vidual’s rational interpretation of experience) is what gives natural phenomena their ‘technical’ dimension, rather than being merely perceived and categorized according to reason alone.325 Therefore, Kant can argue that the purposiveness of nature is the technical application of judg- ment: “Thus the power of judgment is properly technical; nature is represented technically only insofar as it conforms to that procedure of the power of judgment and makes it necessary.”326 Kant follows by arguing that judgment ‘presents’ the object that one perceives epistemologically. In addition to ‘apprehension’ (immediate sensation) and ‘comprehension’ (intuition thought through concepts of the understanding), Kant adds “The presentation (exhibitio) of the object corresponding to this concept in intuition.”327 The concept of judgment helps us to understand the manner in which an object ‘presents’ itself to the perceiver, after the object has been ‘given’ in intuition. This ‘given-ness’ of an object to the individual, and its resulting ‘presentation’ to that individual’s consciousness is a fundamental element of employed by phenomenology phenom- enology. In like manner, presentation to consciousness is a question of whether the experience must always be re-presented to that consciousness, never as a thing in-itself but having been “thought-through” by the theoretical faculty. For Levinas, as we shall see, the problem of the self’s representing the Other for its own consciousness is the problem. However, it is a question as to whether the self can ‘apperceive’ the Other, as it were, in an immediate manner that is pri- or to representation. Otherwise, the self would be caught in ‘epistemological original sin’ of nec- essary representation. It is a question as to whether this representation as articulated by Levinas is ‘aesthetic’ in the more ‘narrow’ sense of the Judgment, rather than the broader sense of the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic.’ Kant argues more specifically that a judgment has no determinate concept, and is not cognitive in the epistemological sense: “for which, further, no determinate concept of the ob- ject at all is required nor is one thereby generated, and the judgment itself is not a cognitive judgment.”328 Kant’s definition of aesthetics as lacking ‘substance’ and confined to an individ- ual’s subjectivity is in line with the idea of ‘aestheticism,’ the lacking of substance in favor of pure appearance. Kant already emphasizes the merely phenomenal nature of experience, but that experience is based on the appearance of an objective nature outside the conscious indi-

325 20:218-9.

326 20:220.

327 20:220.

328 Kant, Judgment, 20:221. Sadler 70 vidual. It is still a question as to whether Kant wouldn’t have better left his aesthetic to the first critique.

§7. Kant’s Comparative on the Different Modes of the Aesthetic

Kant is aware of the problem he has created of ‘the aesthetic’ (first critique) versus ‘aes- thetics’ (third critique). Kant defines ‘aesthetic’ as a sensation commensurate to its representa- tion, but still in the merely phenomenal sense (‘phenomenon’ meaning ‘how-it-appears to the individual’). The expression ‘an aesthetic kind of representation’ is entirely unambiguous if we understand by it the relation of the representation to an object, as an appear- ance, for the cognition of that object; for then the expression ‘aesthetic’ signifies only that the form of sensibility (how the subject is affected) necessarily adheres to such a representation and that this is unavoidably carried over to the object (but only as phenomenon).329

Kant discusses the ‘manner’ or ‘style’ of representation, but insofar as it relates to a specific rep- resentation (‘given’ to consciousness by experience). This broad definition is proper to the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ in the first critique. Therefore: “Hence there could be a transcenden- tal aesthetic as a science belonging to a faculty of cognition.”330 Kant reiterates the difference between his ‘aesthetic’ from the first critique contrasted against ‘aesthetics’ in the sense at- tributed to the popular understanding.331 Kant argues that the term ‘aesthetic’ should be confined only to the (purely subjective) power of judgment.332 I argue, in a Levinasian interpretation, that Kant’s change in focus to the popular concept of aesthetics as concerned with art and the beautiful is Kant’s ‘fall’ into aes- theticism. Previously, Kant had argued against aestheticism in favour of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant’s focus on the latter form of ‘aesthetics’ versus the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ is

329 20:221.

330 20:222.

331 20:222.

332 “However, this ambiguity [between the aesthetic versus aesthetics] can be removed if the expression ‘aesthetic’ is applied neither to intuition nor, still less, to representations of the un- derstanding, but only to the actions of the power of judgment” (20:222). Sadler 71 questionable.333 How can one approach sensibility in its broadest meaning, as opposed to the narrow limits of aesthetics? He argues that the ‘aesthetic’ in the transcendental sense should be confined to the understanding, and therefore calling sensible intuition ‘aesthetic’ is redundant: “an objective judgment is always made by the understanding, and to that extent cannot be called aesthetic.”334 Kant continues that the ‘transcendental aesthetic,’ since it is necessarily connected to the understanding, cannot be used to discuss aesthetic judgments, but merely cognitive judgments.335 He then unpacks the seeming contradictions in the statement “an aes- thetic judgment about an object.” While the aesthetic objet d’art does affect the individual per- ceiver, the focus of judgment is on the subjection feeling produced.336 The problem that arises from conflating the transcendental aesthetic with aesthetic judgments is that the former deals with the cognition of concepts, while the latter has no determinate concepts of its own, but only concerns the subjective feelings of pleasure and displeasure in relation to the object. Kant continues by arguing that despite the fact that imagination is a faculty of cognitive judgments, and imagination is the mediation between aesthetic intuitions and concepts of the understanding, it is still limited to the theoretical realm, and not the realm of subjective feelings. He argues: “For in the power of judgment understanding and imagination are considered in rela- tion to each other, and this can, to be sure, first be considered objectively, as belonging to cog- nition (as happened in the transcendental schematism of the power of judgment).”337 Kant goes on to say that the subjective nature of aesthetic judgments is distinct from the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ in the first critique. It is based not on the objective determination of the object (as in theoretical reason), but on how the individual is affected by the object, therefore the feeling en- gendered by this particular object. Kant refers to this aesthetic affect as a ‘state of mind,’ [Gemütszustand] which is the style, manner, or mode in which an individual is affected. Herein lies the difference between ‘the aesthetic’ versus ‘aesthetics,’ which allows us to under-

333 John Zammito argues that Kant’s analytic of judgments of taste in the Third Critique is not a logical development from the first two critiques, but Kant changing his mind from the First Cri- tique’s Transcendental Aesthetic towards aesthetics in the Third. See The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment, 46.

334 20:222-223.

335 20:223.

336 20:223.

337 20:223 Sadler 72 stand the difference between Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic from the first critique, and aes- thetic judgments from the third critique. Levinas is bothered by Kant’s notion that aesthetics (especially the plastic image) medi- ates between the self and Other. I have drawn an analogy between the idea of two terms medi- ated by a third, and Kant’s three critiques. The Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason compose the two-part system, while the Critique of Judgment mediates as the third term.338 While this understanding of Kant’s critical system works for Levinas’ critique of media- tion, it is questionable as to whether Kant’s ‘third term’ (Judgment) actually has the quality of the plastic image attributed by Levinas.339 It comes down to the issue of the first two critiques’ grounding in a priori principles. So long as one argues that Kant’s third critique lacks the sub- stance of the first two (i.e. is entirely ancillary), judgment possibly lacks the mediating force at- tributed by Levinas. However, it is questionable as to whether Kant’s Judgment has the quality of a plastic image, when Kant argues that judgment has no principle of its own. Kant attempts to overcome the idea that aestheticism is a preoccupation with art and the beautiful from the place of base inclination by instead focusing on rational, disinterested, and universally-assented judgments of taste. Kant contrasts the individual’s agreeable interest in their object with a more rational concept of disinterested satisfaction.340 In this manner, a disin- terested satisfaction has the style and manner of the ‘pure’ metaphysics of morals.341 It isn’t that the individual merely receives sensation, or is affected with feelings of pleasure and displea- sure, but there is a sense of ‘producing’ an interest in the same manner as the autonomous, moral individual ‘produces’ moral action according to universal maxims of the Will. In this way, properly disinterested aesthetic judgments have a certain moral quality, while not being a part of pure practical reason itself. Therefore, in this manner, Kant argues that the ‘agreeable’ does not produce in the affected individual a ‘true’ sense of pleasure or displeasure, but merely ‘gratifies’ their sensation: “Hence one says of the agreeable not merely that it pleases but that it gratifies.”342

338 Kant, Judgment, 20:246-247.

339 20:251.

340 5:205.

341 5:205., footnote.

342 5:207. Sadler 73

Kant contrasts gratification that is merely agreeable with ‘the good’ in which satisfaction in an object is according to rational processes. ‘The good’ as a concept in Kant last appeared in the Critique of Practical Reason in the ‘Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.’ In its previous itera- tion, Kant contrasted the idea of ‘good and bad’ that is according to feelings of wellbeing and woe, versus moral concepts of ‘good and evil.’ In the Judgment, Kant is clearly speaking of ‘good and bad’ in terms of the pleasure or displeasure an object affects in us. In the sense of practical reason, initially outlined more explicitly in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, an act has moral value only if it is done for its own sake, rather than as a ‘mere means’ to an end.343 Thus Kant states: “That is good which pleases by means of reason alone, through the mere concept.”344 He follows by arguing along lines analogous to moral reason that the greatest value for aesthetic judgment is an object which pleases as a ‘good in itself’ rather than as a means to an end: “We call something good for something (the useful) that pleases only as a means; however, another thing is called good in itself that pleases for itself.”345 It is a use- ful illustration to discuss the linguistic element at play with the dative case, the ‘in order to’ or purposive case of language (which English, lacking a case system, uses the articles ‘to’ or ‘for’). In other words, the greatest value for moral action or aesthetic taste is when the act or apprecia- tion is done without the act or judgment of taste being done for a mere means, but for its own sake (or ‘an end in itself’ in the moral sense). An appreciation of an object not for its own nature but for its usefulness (or instrumentality) is a ‘technical’ appreciation of the object; the object’s pleasure in itself is according to aesthetics. Kant argues that while it seems that the ‘agreeable’ (which is based on empirical psy- chology or ‘inclination’) is identical to the good, this is merely a ‘habituation’ or imposter for the true ‘art.’346 He states: “The agreeable, which as such represents the object solely in relation to sense, must first be brought under principles of reason through the concept of an end before it can be called good as an object of the will.”347 Yet Kant argues that interest is more proper to the will as the faculty of moral desire, as opposed to the idea of a satisfied disinterest in an ob-

343 Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative reads: “So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Kant, Groundwork, 4:429).

344 Judgment, 5:207.

345 5:207.

346 5:207-5:208.

347 5:208. Sadler 74 ject: “For the good is the object of the will (i.e., of a faculty of desire that is determined by rea- son).”348 Because interest is proper to the will (moral reason), then an interest that is not of a moral nature is mere inclination (which is the opposite of a ‘good will’). Kant is therefore able to differentiate between that which is merely ‘agreeable’ (that is, what gratifies inclination), ‘beauti- ful’ (feelings of pleasure in relation to the objet d’art), and ‘good’ (the object of the moral will).349 Therefore, interest is proper only to the moral will of the good, and the aesthetic judgment of taste should be approached in a disinterested manner, free of gratification: “One can say that among all these three kinds of satisfaction only that of the taste for the beautiful is a disinterest- ed and free satisfaction; for no interest, neither that of the senses nor that of reason, extorts ap- proval.”350

§8. Kant’s Definition of the Beautiful

Kant follows with 4 ‘moments’ to define ‘the beautiful,’ concerning its disinterested and universal qualities, as well as their ends (whether technical-purposive or an aesthetic good in itself), and, finally, the mode of difference between the beautiful and the sublime. Kant’s first moment defines the beautiful: “Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representa- tion through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfac- tion is called beautiful.”351 Kant argues that, like moral norms that should be universal to all moral agents, the standard of aesthetic judgments of taste should be common to any rational, disinterested connoisseur. Because aesthetic judgments of taste are not ‘objectively’ valid (as in theoretical judgments from the first critique), it does not rest on a ‘concept,’ because ‘concepts’ are proper to theoretical reason. Since theoretical judgments are based on an objective reality that appears to all observers it is easier to make the argument that theoretical judgments should have universal validity.352 Since aesthetic judgments are entirely subjective, Kant has to make the argument that a disinterested judgment of taste, though subjective, is still valid for all rational individuals: “But from a subjectively universal validity, i.e., from aesthetic universal validity,

348 5:208.

349 5:210.

350 5:210.

351 5:211.

352 5:215. Sadler 75 which does not rest on any concept, there cannot be any inference at all to logical universal va- lidity; because [aesthetic] judgment does not pertain to the object at all.”353 Finally, it is a question of deducing the ‘ground’ (or lack thereof) for judgment, as to whether or not the faculty of judgment has an a priori ground.354 Despite its subjectivity, Kant argues that judgment as a faculty has an “obligation to provide a deduction, i.e., the guarantee of [its] legitimacy.”355 Ultimately, despite the principles of experience and cognition grounding theoretical reason, and the metaphysical moral law for practical reason, if judgment is its own faculty, one would that that is has its own principle underlying it (and serving to mediate the first two). However, Kant argues that “No objective principle of taste is possible.”356 It follows that taste itself is the subjective principle of the power of judgment. Now since no concept of the object is here the ground of the judgment, it can consist only in the subsumption of the imagination itself (in the case of represen- tation by means of which an object is given) under the condition that the under- standing in general advance from intuitions to concepts, i.e., since the freedom of the imagination consists precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a con- cept, the judgment of taste must rest on a mere sensation of the reciprocally an- imating imagination in its freedom and the understanding with its lawfulness, thus on a feeling that allows the object to be judged in accordance with the purposive- ness of the representation (by means of which an object is given) for the promo- tion of the faculty of cognition in its free play; and taste, as a subjective power of judgment, contains a principle of subsumption, not of intuitions under concepts, but of the faculty of intuitions or presentations (i.e., of the imagination) under the faculty of concepts (i.e., the understanding), insofar as the former in its freedom is in harmony with the matter in its lawfulness.357

Kant argues that the problematic of ‘deduction’ itself shouldn’t apply to judgment, because they are unlike the categories of the understanding from the first critique that require deduction.358 Kant argues that despite its subjective nature, a deduction is necessary to answer the question: “How are judgments of taste possible?”359 In the meaning of Kant’s system, judgments of taste

353 5:215.

354 5:279.

355 5:280.

356 5:286.

357 5:287.

358 5:288.

359 5:288. Sadler 76 are ‘synthetic’ in the sense that they ‘go-beyond’ the ‘simple’ (analytic) experience related to the object, and ‘adds’ the feeling of pleasure or displeasure.360 Kant elucidates two arts that are worthy of mention: rhetoric and the plastic arts.’ “Rhetoric is the art of conducting a business of the understanding as a free play of the imagina- tion.”361 While rhetoric for Kant and for Plato is important, it is more important to discuss the ‘plastic arts,’ which Levinas likens to the idolatry the self creates in place of the Other. Kant de- fines the difference in the imagistic (‘pictorial’) arts as between the plastic arts and painting.362 He further subdivides the plastic arts into sculpture and architecture. “[Sculpture] is that which presents corporeal concepts of things as they could exist in nature (although, as a beautiful art, with regard to aesthetic purposive- ness); [Architecture] is the art of presenting, with this intention but yet at the same time in an aesthetically purposive way, concepts of things that are possible only through art, and whose form has as its determining ground not in nature but a voluntary end.”363

Kant follows by contrasting the role of the plastic image inside the architectural space, especial- ly with regard to temples and their central icons or idols. For Kant, the singular example is of utmost importance for aesthetic judgments of taste.364 Judgment is akin to the mediating plastic arts. For Levinas’ analogy of idolatry, the most common form of idolatry consists of statues at- tempting to replicate divinities. When Kant discusses sculpture’s depiction of nature, it is ‘only through art’ i.e. mediated. Sculpture functions to mediate between an individual and nature, and Levinas sees mediation as idolatry. In regards to aesthetic idolatry, we will also see for Heideg- ger, idolatry is something that mediates between God and humans. For Levinas idolatry medi- ates between the self and Other. It is important to think about the plastic image as Levinas ar- gues that it acts as to stand in place of the other, mediating the self-Other relationship. In this sense, the plastic image is a reference to idolatry, and the self’s attempt to mediate its relation- ship with the Other is an act of idolatry.

360 5:288.

361 5:321.

362 “The pictorial arts or those of the expression of ideas in sensible intuition (not through rep- resentations of the mere imagination, which are evoked through words) are either those of sen- sible truth or of sensible illusion. The first are called the plastic arts, the second painting” (5:322).

363 5:322.

364 5:281. Sadler 77

As we have seen, Kant’s first two critiques, of theoretical and practical reason, form the complete critical system, especially with the broad meaning of ‘aesthetic’ outlined in the ‘Tran- scendental Aesthetic’ of space and time as the conditions for all sensibility. The Third Critique, rather than being a faculty unto itself, should be considered philosophically marginal concerning philosophical ideas that had been previously excised from Kant’s critiques, but now repurposed as subjective qualities of experience that are not rational in themselves brought under rules of reason. Kant’s Religion follows a similar program of articulating the social expression of moral reason, from what is generally a very individual system of autonomous moral reason. Therefore, in the conflict between ‘the aesthetic’ versus ‘aesthetics,’ this thesis must firmly decide in favor of the aesthetic as the elementary form of sensation. I have worked to firmly establish that Levinas’ Katianism is in-line with the Transcenden- tal Aesthetic from the First Critique, and rejects the aesthetics of the Third. To emphasize the importance of the First Critique for the Phenomenology, especially in its upholding of the Tran- scendental Aesthetic, I will explicate Martin Heidegger’s Phenomenological Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason in the following chapter. Sadler 78 Sadler 79

Chapter Three: Heidegger and the Problematic of the Thing in Western Philosophy

Having dealt with the concept of judgment as mediation in both Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment, we turn to the more fundamental ideas of the aesthetic pre- sented by Kant in the first critique, but as interpreted by Martin Heidegger. Because of Heideg- ger's overwhelming influence on philosophers of Levinas’ generation, his fundamental ontology becomes the focus of Levinas’ main polemic in Totality and Infinity. Levinas wants to overcome what he thinks is Heidegger’s idolatrous paganism of mere existence in order to make space for the ethical relation to the Other. Thus, we must follow Heidegger’s method of questioning western philosophy’s focus on ‘the thing’ in the subject-object relation. On the one hand, Lev- inas and Heidegger have a critique of the subject-object relation in common; on the other hand, Levinas would argue that Heidegger’s response is a regression into sub-rational pagan- ism, while Levinas’ phenomenology does the Husserlian work of ‘pointing beyond’ in order to aim at the transcendence of the Other. Therefore, we will look at Heidegger’s engagements with the concept of ‘the thing’ and the metaphysical substance attributed to it, but most-direct- ly focus on his collected lectures collected in Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, in which we will further discuss and clarify the aesthetic and the mediation of the schematism and its companying judgment.

§1. Heidegger’s Hermeneutics of Kant’s Epistemology

Heidegger’s Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was tran- scribed from lectures given at the University of Marburg between 1927-28.365 Fresh off the heels of the publication of Being and Time, Heidegger’s lectures extend the project of hermeneu- tic phenomenology’s task of the radical interpretation of Being to the ‘clearing-away’ (or ‘de- construction’ in its neologistic sense) of the previous philosophical tradition’s Christian ele- ments sedimented within it.366 “Both the contention that there are ‘eternal truths’ and the jum- bling together of Dasein’s phenomenality grounded ‘ideality’ with an idealized absolute subject, belong to those residues of Christian theology within philosophical problematics which have

365 Heidegger, Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, xi. 366 49. In terms of Heidegger’s anti-humanism of Being, the human person is subject to Being, Being is not the domain of human agency. See also, 49. Heidegger rejects this humanism. See also Nietzsche, petrified language, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, §13. Sadler 80 not as yet been radically extruded.”367 Since Kant represents the fulfillment and articulation of modern philosophy (insofar as the ‘modern’ period began in the 18th century), the interpreta- tion of Kant is a major project for such a radical ‘clearing-away’ of philosophy. One of the pri- mary concerns for Heidegger’s radical deconstruction is the idea common to western philoso- phy of the ‘thing’ (res), and its resulting concepts of ‘substance,’ the ‘soul as substance’ and the general ‘thing-ification’ of concepts.368 Instead, Heidegger’s project in Being and Time, of a ‘clearing’ in which Being can ‘show itself’ is a ‘spatialization’ of what has previously been con- fined to ‘things’ in the philosophical sense.369 Being for Heidegger is a space for things to ap- pear, rather than ‘substance’ itself, as assumed by philosophers from Aristotle to Descartes. In Heidegger’s own interpretive method, and the phenomenology he inherits from Husserl, the role of the ‘aesthetic’ as sensation (or ‘intuition’ as he will emphasize in these lec- tures) is a central concept of how the ‘Being’ or ‘subject’ (in a more traditionally metaphysical notion) ‘appears’ to conscious perceivers, as such. In this interpretation, Heidegger is at odds with the previous generation of Neo-Kantian philosophers from the Marburg School, who wanted to collapse Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ into the following ‘Transcendental Logic,’ showing that sensation is merely another category of knowledge.370 Heidegger will argue, in- stead, that the ‘intuition’ belonging to Kant’s transcendental aesthetic is itself not part of what Heidegger terms ‘the mind.’ Rather, Heidegger argues that by ‘sensation’ Kant means ‘intu- ition’ of what is immediately given to us, as opposed to an aesthetic judgment that mediates experience. Thus, Heidegger cites Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to argue that Kant himself would have seen intuition as immediate, rather than mediating the individual’s experience.371 Heidegger then says: “Here it is stated that knowledge as such means the relation to objects; that indeed knowledge consists in a manifold of ways of relatedness to objects, which belong together and are allied to one another; and that relation to objects to which all are directed is

367 230. 368 Frangeskou summarizes Heidegger’s destructive treatment of Kant’s First Critique in his chapter “The Ontological Destruction of the Schematism.” “This is the the opening statement to Heidegger’s 1929 interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason, one that clearly announces its utter devotion to the task of destroying this text… Hence ‘the violence’ that does not cease to dominate Heidegger’s interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason” (Levinas, Kant and the Problematic of Temporality, 17).

369 Heidegger discusses the nature of truth as ‘un-covering’ [a-letheia], see Being and Time, 33- 34. Contrasted against Descartes, Heidegger writes: “Descartes sees the extensio as basically definitive ontologically for the world” (89).

370 See Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant, 53. 371 Critique of Pure Reason, B33/A19. Sadler 81 intuition.”372 Heidegger argues that “all thinking stands in service to intuition,” therefore positing intuition as somehow ‘prior’ (a priori) to even the thought/the mind itself.373 Heidegger compares ‘intuition’ to other ambiguous concepts like ‘perception,’ ‘sensa- tion,’ representation,’ and ‘knowledge.374 In the sense of an individual’s being affected by their relation to the object of experience (an ‘aesthetic’ concept, as such), Heidegger argues that these terms entail that one ‘comports’ oneself toward what is perceived. On the other hand, these terms also concern what is intuited itself.375 One comports one’s self toward the objects of their experience, but that which is experienced is intuited in its givenness. In this manner, Heidegger brings attention to his intentional blurring of the subject-object dichotomy founda- tional to western philosophy (the ‘subject-object’ distinction previously discussed).376 What Heidegger is not saying is that a ‘thinking subject’ has sense data of an object. Rather, the per- ceiver is affected by what they intuit, and that which is perceived is the intuition. Thus, to reit- erate the previous chapters on Kant, Heidegger emphasizes the ‘given’ nature of the object we perceive (as problematic as that ‘object’ is). Therefore: “In intuiting something and through this intuition an object is given to us.”377 He then follows by giving an initial summary, stating “to intuit means to let a being be encountered in its immediacy.”378 The idea of immediacy when applied to Kant is highly problematic, and one that Heidegger does not escape philosophically unscathed.

§2. Problematic of ‘Mind’ Versus Consciousness

‘Mind’ is itself already a problematic concept, one that phenomenology will attempt to ‘spatialize’ for ‘consciousness,’ rather than a ‘thinking thing’ (res cogitans) as earlier articulated by Descartes and early modern rationalism.379 In this sense, the concern with ‘content’ that is ‘in’ the mind would fall into the conflation of the aesthetic with the logic that Heidegger attrib- utes to the Marburg School. Rather, Heidegger emphasizes the ‘relations’ of the manner in

372 Heidegger, PICPR, 57.

373 57. 374 58. 375 58.

376 See, Being and Time, 107.

377 Heidegger, PICPR, 58. 378 58.

379 See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 63. Sadler 82 which the ‘manifold’ (of things in the world) appear to us is not ‘sensation’ in the aesthetic sense commonly understood in philosophy: “The relations in which the manifold is encountered as organized, these relations are not sensation.”380 However, while these ‘relations’ are not ‘sen- sation’ (in the sense of immediacy Heidegger gives intuition), they are affections (i.e. the manner in which an individual is affected in relation to the object).381 Therefore, affections are proper to the mediating notion of aesthetic as already explicated in the previous chapters on the role of judgment in Kant’s critical corpus. It is important to see that Heidegger, so to speak, does Kant ‘one better’ according to Kant’s own critical writings. It would seem that Heidegger’s immedi- ate spatialization of Kant’s notion of intuition á la the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ of the First Cri- tique could rescue Kant, and therefore western philosophy, from the ‘epistemological original sin,’ which is the notion that a subject must necessarily mediate all experience for themselves, especially experience of the Other, according to concepts (that is the ‘plastic image’ attributed by Levinas to aesthetics as mediation). I will argue, in-line with Levinas, that Heidegger’s at- tempt to overcome the subject-object dichotomy does not liberate the Other from the tyranny of the self. Heidegger’s ontology simply attempts to collapse the Other’s transcendent freedom into the undifferentiated ethnic/volkish morass, more akin to Fascism. Instead, Levinas will ar- gue that the radical alterity of the self/Other relationship involves the most extreme objectivity and subjectivity, an abyss across which any attempt to bridge’ or mediate it is idolatry. Heidegger continues by arguing that pre-reflective experience is not located in the mind, but is rather the concern of immediate intuition (or ‘sensation’). It is important to note that reflection itself is a major concern in both Kant’s Third Critique and Husserl’s phenomenol- ogy. Heidegger argues that in a spatial relationship between an individual and their technical implements (a common theme of Heidegger’s from Being and Time, which needs more explica- tion) is an immediate relationship of intuition, and is priori to being ‘thought-through’ the mind: “But there is not the slightest indication of such a reflection on my mind in the simple state- ment of chalk being beside (next to) the eraser. From this [immediate spatial relation], naturally it cannot follow that this reflection would be something like data of sensation.”382 The dichoto- my for Kant is the relationship between the a priori form which structures experience and knowledge, versus the empirical ‘matter’ or content of experience, in this case.

380 Heidegger, PICPR, 72. See ‘Sinnlichkeit,’ ‘sensation.’ 381 “The latter [relations], however, belong to affections, to that which moves us, that which does something to us and comes from elsewhere” (72).

382 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 72. Sadler 83

Heidegger argues more explicitly that to confine sensation as a faculty of the mind would be the Marburg School’s thesis: space and time are mere ‘thought-determinations,’ rather than immediate intuitions. This much is clear: In the simple understanding of things we are not directed to- ward mind. However, if the relation of being-beside-each-other belongs to spon- taneity, which is defined as thinking, then are the relations of being-beside-each- other and following-each-other added to the matter by the mind in thinking? In that case then space and time would be thought-determinations, categories: and thus the Kant-interpretation of the Marburg School would be justified.383

Heidegger articulates an individual’s relation to their world is accomplished through technical grasping of objects that are ‘ready-to-hand’ (Zuhandenheit): “the less we just stare at the ham- mer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relation- ship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered that which it is– as equipment.”384 Heidegger’s phenomenology does not argue that one theorizes their object in order to be able to manipulate it (i.e. theory creates praxis), but just the opposite: praxis results in theory. One handles their tools in a primordial manner of technical grasping, only then to contemplate the object as a theoretical thing. Thus, Heidegger can state: “The kind of Being which equipment possesses–in which it manifests itself in its own right–we call ‘readiness-to- hand’ [Zuhandenheit].”385 Contemplation of an object in its presence rather than its immediate use is a second-order relation to one’s immediate context: “To lay bare what is just present-at- hand and no more, cognition must first penetrate beyond what is ready-to-hand in our concern.”386 This is Heidegger’s logic of technical reason, as was previously discussed in the prior chapter’s discussion of Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology.” Sensation prior to reflection (even prior to the a priori) is the aesthetic, versus the technical reason (Heidegger equivocates art with techné) as aesthetics. “Aἴσθησις, the sheer sensory perception of something, is ‘true’ in the Greek sense, and indeed more primordially than the λογός [‘logos’] which we have been discussing.”387 The primordial nature of sensation is contrasted against the results of technical labour.388

383 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 72. 384 Heidegger, Being and Time, 69. 385 69.

386 71.

387 Being and Time, 33. 388 69-70. Sadler 84

§3. Appearance and Nothingness

From here, Heidegger discusses the non-object nature of space and time as the facul- ties of sensation (or pure intuition). Heidegger calls this non-object nature of sensation by Kant’s term ‘ens imaginarium.’389 This concept is akin to the post-Nietzschian preoccupation with ‘nothing’ in the sense that Heidegger appears to conflate the ens imaginarium with the empty forms of pure space and time, while the literal meaning of the phrase is ‘being imagi- nary.’ It will become a question further on if the ens imaginarium and the faculty of imagination (as well as its accompanying, mediating schematism) are conflated, or somehow different, de- spite sounding superficially similar. In this manner, Heidegger quotes Kant at B347/A291, stat- ing “When Kant calls space and time pure intuitions, he understands intuition as intuiting: ‘… pure space and pure time, which are indeed something to be viewed as forms, but are not themselves objects which are intuited {ens imaginarium}.”390 Heidegger follows quoting Kant’s Reflexionen II, 413, in which Kant states, “There is no absolute time or space. Pure intuition here does not mean something which is intuited but rather the pure formal condition which pre- cedes appearance. Absolute time is empty intuition.”391 Here Heidegger seems to properly in- terpret Kant to say that the pure a priori forms are devoid of content, and therefore prior to be- ing ‘objects of the understanding’ or thought through the ‘mind’ (as problematic as the concept of ‘mind’ is versus phenomenological ‘consciousness’). Therefore, Heidegger states, “‘Nothing’ is being intuited.”392 Heidegger then identifies this ‘nothing’ with the ens imaginarium, following: “In the dissertation of 1770 we also read about time that it is an ens imaginarium, an empty intu- ition, which has no extant being as its correlate.” It is a question as to whether Heidegger is conflating the emptiness of pure intuition with the ens imaginarium, with the pejorative meaning associated with the term ‘conflate,’ or whether Heidegger properly understands the empty, pre- conceptual nature of pure intuition. Indeed, Heidegger does conflate philosophical concepts when he equates Kant’s notion of ‘appearance’ (in contradistinction to ‘the thing in itself’) with an Aristotelian notion that how the object appears to the individual (the ‘phainomenon’ in its literal sense) is actually identical with the object itself.393 In this manner, Heidegger will later state: “The term appearance means

389 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 76.

390 Heidegger, 76; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B347/A291.

391 Kant, Reflexionen, II, 413 [cited by Heidegger, PIKCPR, 76]. 392 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 76 393 See Aristotle, On Interpretation, ¶1. Sadler 85 beings themselves, what is extant from out of itself and what announces itself as such.”394 While Husserl argued that consciousness intends ‘the things themselves,’ I argue that Heideg- ger rejects Kant’s concept of the ‘thing in itself’ (Ding an sich) in favour of the more immediate ‘graspability’ of objects. Heidegger refers to the manner in which one grasps an object tempo- rally occurs in-advance: “In every case this interpretation is grounded in something we have in advance–in a fore-having [Vorhabe].”395 In like manner, he follows: “In either case, the interpreta- tion has already decided for a definite way of conceiving it, wither with finality or with reserva- tion; it is grounded in something we grasp in advance–in a fore-conception [Vorgriff].”396 The tempo- rality here proper to Heidegger’s ontology comes-toward an individual from the future. Thus the ‘vor-‘ nature of grasping-in-advance.397 Heidegger contrasts a more commonly-held view of “the transcendental object=x” and the idea individual’s consciousness can only perceive ap- pearance and not know the ‘thing in itself’ against the idea that appearances are identical with the ‘things themselves.’ Heidegger argues “However, in order to eliminate right away the grossest misunderstanding, we must say that appearances are not mere illusions, nor are they some kind of free-floating emissions from things. Rather appearances are objects themselves, or things.”398 Heidegger has previously referred to the difference between finite intuition as in- dividual and humanistic, versus the idea of God as one who is capable of infinite knowledge. Heidegger defines God’s originating intuition, as opposed to human finite intuition. He states: “In traditional terminology intuition means intuitus. There is an old doctrine according to which spirit which knows absolutely–in the medieval and modern philosophy: God–can only know in the manner of intuition.”399 Heidegger argues that God’s knowing is ‘original intuition’ (intuitus originarius) versus finite human intuition as ‘derived intuition' (intuitus deriva- tivus).400 Heidegger argues that while God (at least in the scholastic Judeo-Christian concept he attacks) is the source of knowledge, the derived intuition comes from what is ‘given,’ and for Heidegger, the ‘meeting’ of the finite individual with their context (called ‘the world’ in more tra-

394 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 110. 395 Heidegger, Being and Time, 150. 396 150.

397 See 325-326. Heidegger summarizes: “Self-projection upon the ‘for-the-sake-of-oneself’ is grounded in the future and is an essential characteristic of existentiality. The primary meaning of existentiality is the future” (327).

398 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 67-68. 399 58. 400 58-59. Sadler 86 ditional ontology, as opposed to the ‘subject’ who relates to ‘the world.’) occurs with technical engagement with tools ‘ready-to-hand.’ Accordingly our intuition as letting beings be encountered in their way of being involves a being-referred-to beings which are already on hand… Rather this intu- itable being must announce itself by itself, i.e., this being must concern the know- ing being, must touch this being, must do something to it, as it were, and must make itself noticeable–this being must affect the knowing being.401

For Heidegger, there is an autonomy to the given objects (ready-to-hand) that acts upon the individual engaging with it.402 Therefore, since Heidegger argues that autonomy can be shared by both the individuals and the world, which impact each other in a manner that is not strictly subject-object, Heidegger can argue that space and time have a certain autonomy (at least from the mind, as opposed to the Marburg School) in them-selves.403 This idea of the autono- my–of space and time as intuitions prior to reason–have a close connection to Heidegger’s previously discussed ‘technical reason.’ It follows that Heidegger will discuss the passage pre- viously analyzed in chapter 2, on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, and the ‘aesthetic versus aesthet- ics.’ Heidegger’s comparative of the aesthetic versus aesthetics will help us to understand both Heidegger and Kant’s third critique as what I call a ‘critique of technical reason.’

§4. Aesthetic Self-Presentation

Heidegger argues that the extant being “announces itself; and this what thus an- nounces itself Kant calls sensation.”404 Heidegger emphasizes the immediate ‘givenness’ of the object to experience: “Sensation means that as which the encountering object is primarily giv- en.”405 He cites Critique of Pure Reason at B74/A50 to show that Kant argues for the presupposi- tion of the actual presence of the object.406 Heidegger compares Kant’s (first) introduction to the Critique of Judgment against its third section (20:221-20:223). In terms of the aesthetic ver- sus aesthetics, Heidegger adds the interpretation that theoretical sensation (as opposed to judgments of aesthetic taste) engages with ‘the real,’ a concept that Kant rejects in his rejec- tion of dogmatic idealism of both Leibniz and Berkeley. Heidegger quotes Kant’s introduction

401 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 59. 402 71.

403 PIKCPR, 96.

404 66. 405 66. 406 For Heidegger's discussion of “the core of sensation,” see 66, (CPR B74/A50). Sadler 87 to the Critique of Judgment: “Sensation (here the external sensation) expresses just as much the mere subjective aspect of our representation of things outside us as it does what actually con- stitutes the material (the real) of the same representation whereby something is given as exist- ing.”407 Heidegger’s statements in parentheses are his own additions, which are his interpreta- tions. Heidegger will reference ‘the real’ in more depth in relation to his explication of the form/ matter distinction.408 Heidegger cites section 3 of the Critique of Judgment, once again differentiating between ‘the aesthetic’ of theoretical reason from the first critique, the broader meaning of sensation; ‘aesthetics,’ on the other hand, is the narrow understanding of art and the beautiful from the Third Critique. Heidegger cites section 3 of the Judgment: If determination of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure is called sensation, this expression means something entirely different from when representation of something is called a sensation. For in the latter case representation refers to the ob-ject but in the former case representation refers exclusively to the subject and so leads us to no knowledge. In the above explanation the term sensation is un- derstood to mean an ob-jective representation of the senses. And in order not to run the risk of being misunderstood, we wish to use the otherwise familiar title of “feeling” for what at all times must remain subjective and simply cannot constitute the representation of an object. The green color of the meadows belongs to the ob-jective sensation, as perception of an object of the senses; but the charm of the meadows belongs to subjective sensation, whereby no object is represented – their charm belongs to feeling.409

It becomes a question as to whether sensations are concepts (according to the transcendental logic of Kant’s epistemology). Here we see that the epistemological sensation has an objective quality, as re-presented to the senses. But according to Heidegger’s argument, we’ve seen ear- lier that the immediate presentation to intuition is different from the concepts re-presenting those experiences to the understanding. Kant makes Heidegger’s interpretation difficult be- cause Kant argues that the First Critique’s epistemological judgments are based on concepts grounded in objective reality, while the subjective concepts of taste, pleasure and displeasure are proper to the third critique. In this sense we reiterate Kant’s argument as to the aesthetic of epistemology being based on a concept, while the aesthetics of Judgment are based entirely on the subjective non-concept.410

407 Heidegger, PICPR, 66, citing Kant, Kritik von Urteilskraft [Critique of Judgment], xliii. 408 PICPR, 71.

409 66-67. Citing Critique of Judgment, 410 See Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:287. Sadler 88

Has Heidegger conflated the transcendental aesthetic (‘the aesthetic’) with ‘aesthetics’ from the Judgment? Clearly this isn’t the case, since Heidegger is carefully engaging with Kant’s comparative aesthetics from the first and third critiques. Thus Heidegger follows the large quote from the Judgment by arguing for the difference between the First Critique’s focus on ob- jective sensations, versus the subjective sensation which lacks an object. Heidegger states: The Critique [of Pure Reason] deals with ob-jective sensations, with what is given as real, something inherently real, a quale. By contrast subjective sensation is not representation of something, but representation of this thing in its relation to the subject, the representation of how the subject is disposed–this representation is feeling.411

Returning to Heidegger’s argument from §6, section b “Appearance as Object of Empir- ical Intuition Distinguished from the Thing Itself,” Heidegger continues to argue for the identity of the ‘thing in itself’. In contrast to Heidegger’s technical reason, comparable with Kant’s Judgment (which could be called the critique of technical reason), Heidegger argues that this sensation does not epistemologically produce the thing which appears to perceivers, but mere- ly allows the existent to appear to the perceiving individual.412 Heidegger continues by analyz- ing Kant’s Opus posthumum about the relation [Verhältnis] between appearance and the thing in itself. Heidegger follows by stating that appearances are not divorced from the thing in itself, and that appearances do not ‘correspond’ to things-in-themselves (as Heidegger opposes the correspondence theory of truth). Heidegger states: But things do not thereby vanish into phantoms and images–phantoms and im- ages which we produce for ourselves. For appearances are the things them- selves, and they are the things that they are without these things having to be thought as things in themselves on the basis of an untenable concept of being and on the basis of the assumption of a representing God, additionally as object for this God.413

Heidegger argues against mistaking the things in themselves for objects existing in the eye of a Creator God. Instead, based on Artistotle, Heidegger argues that ‘things’ have always existed in an uncreated universe.414

411 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 67. 412 68.

413 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 68-69. 414 69. Sadler 89

§5. Traditional Categories of Form and Matter

As suggested previously, Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant’s dichotomy of appearance and the thing-in-itself is comparable to the matter/form distinction, respectively. Heidegger contrasts Kant’s division of concepts into form and matter with the notion ‘common’ to these terms. This characterization of ‘form’ [as the ‘wherein’ of possible ordering or disorder- ing] easily leads to an irrelevant view–and the ensuing misunderstanding be- comes more fatal–if one takes the concept which is opposed to ‘form,’ i.e. matter, in such an irrelevant way as ‘stuff’ or ‘dough’ which is formed the form of a cake.415

In other words, one imagines ‘form’ as a general ‘outline’ which is ‘filled’ by ‘matter’ in a style akin to the ‘form’ being the universal and the ‘matter’ the particular instance of that universal. Therefore we see the priority of the universal over the particular in the victory of form over mat- ter. Heidegger then follows by arguing for the assumed universality of form and matter: the question becomes what the alternative to this universal distinction is.416 One would argue in a heideggerian manner that the form/content distinction is ‘blurred’ in Heidegger’s fundamental interpretation of the existential ‘everyday.’417 Heidegger therefore argues that the form/matter distinction constitutes a schema, applied universally.418 It is important to preface the different meanings of ‘schema’ here, as Heidegger ends this series of lectures with a discussion of the role of ‘schematism’ in Kant’s critical corpus. Heidegger uses his excellent knowledge of Aristotle in giving a history of the ideas of ‘form’ and ‘matter.’ He states: “For Aristotle [hulé] and [eidos] are basic concepts of the science of the being of beings. But these concepts function here in a different sense from that in Kant.”419 After highlighting that Kant never gave an explication proper to the subject of the form/matter distinction, Heidegger summarizes Kant’s critical view of these classic categories: “Form and matter belong among other things thus to concepts of reflection.”420 Reflection, (dis- cussed in the previous chapter on the Judgment), is also very important for Husserl’s phenome-

415 Heidegger, PIKCRP, 85.

416 85.

417 Being and Time, 17. As noted, Heidegger does not define Da-Sein’s everydayness [Alltäglichkeit] until nearly the end of Being and Time: see 370. In the aesthetic mode of self- comportment, Heidegger argues that everydayness is a style or manner of being: see 371.

418 PIKCPR, 85. 419 85. 420 85. Sadler 90 nology, and Heidegger points out the interpretive transition between Kant’s own thought and the later phenomenology indebted to him. Heidegger explicitly refers to Husserl’s role of en- gaging the intuitive nature of knowledge in phenomenology, stating: “At the present time and independently of Kant, Husserl, the founder of phenomenological research, rediscovered this fundamental thrust of knowledge in general and of philosophical knowledge in particular.”421 While Heidegger states that Husserl is doing his phenomenological project independently of Kant, of course one would argue that Husserl is indebted to Kant for the analysis of the world ‘as-it-appears-to-the-perceiver’ (the meaning of phainomena, which is itself in the middle-pas- sive form of reflexive meaning). More importantly, Heidegger would argue that Husserl’s inter- pretation is more accurate to Kant than the supposed Neo-Kantians of the Marburg School.422 In this manner, Husserl’s phenomenology is more properly Zurück zu Kant [‘return to Kant’] in the manner of the appearance in distinction to the ‘things themselves.’ We see the concepts of reflection as bound up with form and matter in Kant’s system. Heidegger cites Kant’s first critique, B322/A266f, on Kant’s explication of the historical con- cepts given to ‘matter’ and ‘form,’ and their relation to reflection: “These two concepts [matter and form] underlie all other reflection, so inseparably are they bound up with all employment of the understanding.”423 Kant argues that ‘matter’ means the determinable, and ‘form’ its deter- mination. Kant contrasts his definition of the matter/form distinction with the concepts histori- cally attributed by scholastic logicians: “Logicians formerly gave the name ‘matter’ to the uni- versal, and the name ‘form’ to the specific difference.”424 On its face value, the scholastic defi- nition of form and matter given by Kant seems backwards. In other words, one would think that ‘form’ deals with the universal ‘ideas’ (in the Platonic sense) and the ‘matter’ concerns the par- ticular, or the ‘difference’ between it and another iteration of the same form.425 Therefore, it would seem that Kant is arguing for the reverse of what seems to be a popular understanding of the form-matter distinction. It is important to note Aristotle’s distinction between form and matter in its biological sense (form is the genus, matter is the specific being), and Kant’s ideal- istic understanding of the same. Therefore, Kant argues that matter is all possibility, and form is the thing’s limitation, what he also calls negation: “Also as regards things in general unlimited reality was viewed as the matter of all possibility, and its limitations (negation) as being the form

421 57. See also 85. 422 85.

423 86, citing Kant, CPR, B322/A266f.

424 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 425 Compare with Michel Foucault's writing on the non-metaphysical, iterative nature of the el- ementary event of the statement, writing: see Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 135. Sadler 91 by which one thing is distinguished from others according to transcendental concepts.”426 In this regard, matter sounds like the undifferentiated totality of existence, and in so limiting the undif- ferentiated, one arrives at the form (as opposed to the reverse). In this manner, a phenomeno- logical interpretation of Kant’s form and matter distinction allows us to think through the form of differentiation of the Other apart from the undifferentiated matter of the self. As ‘apo-phan- sis,’ it is a question as to whether the Other, for Levinas, has a ‘form’ at all, or if even the con- cept of ‘form’ has too much in the way of ‘appearance’ for Levinas’ understanding of the Other. Heidegger argues that despite Kant’s critical project, Kant doesn’t complete the expli- cation of matter and form. As Heidegger argues, this characterization of form and matter “does not say anything at all,” and therefore despite itself, “still no interpretation is achieved.”427 Hei- degger is then tries to go beyond the limitations of Kant’s critique, attempting to explicate mat- ter and form. Heidegger references the following appendix, with its concepts of reflection.428 However, for Heidegger, while we understand Kant’s meaning of matter and form on its sur- face, her wants to focus not so much on the ‘what’ of matter and form as the ‘style,’ or ‘man- ner’ in which the transcendental aesthetic, space and time, act as pure forms of intuition. Hav- ing introduced the matter/form distinction in relation to space and time as forms, Heidegger states: For now the real task begins, namely the task of making phenomenologically clear in what way space and time are purely determining factors in intuiting, ac- cording to their specific character as pure intuitions–how indeed space and time as such determining factors are not objects and nevertheless are not nothing.429

‘Style’ and ‘manner’ are usually aesthetic terms, though more limited to the ‘aesthetics’ of the Judgment instead of ‘the aesthetic’ of the first critique. Often, style refers to the manner in which one presents themselves, in a form of aesthetic self-creation. Therefore, ‘style’ or ‘manner’ by which Heidegger attributes to space and time should be read in an aesthetic sense, much like the style attributed to ‘Being.’

§6. Heidegger’s Primacy of Time over Space

In an attempt to interpret Kant’s critical project for Heidegger’s own project of funda- mental ontology, Heidegger wants to argue for the primacy of time over space. Heidegger had

426 Heidegger, 86, citing Kant, CPR, B322/A266f.

427 Heidegger, 86. 428 86.

429 86. Sadler 92 already argued for the primacy of time over ‘Being.’430 Heidegger hints at this primacy by argu- ing that space determines what appears to the individual temporally in advance. In this sense, space is temporally prior. Heidegger states: “Space as form should determine this letting be en- countered of a manifold thus ordered; and indeed as pure form–i.e., in this letting-be-encoun- tered–space is what determines in advance.”431 Heidegger argues that space does not affect the individual in terms of sensation, and therefore space does not actively move upon the indi- vidual as such.432 Heidegger then says that for Kant space and time are “original representa- tions” and “original intuitions.”433 But Heidegger differentiates what Kant referred to as ‘original representation’ from what Heidegger designates as the intuitus originarius. Heidegger argues that only God can have intuitus originarius, and therefore such originating intuition is inaccessi- ble to human knowledge.434 Humans do not create original intuitions, but rather they experi- ence intuitions derived from experience that is always given in advance (the temporal element).435 And yet, Heidegger also distinguishes between pure intuitions as the result of sen- sation, while space and time are ‘represented’ as it is ‘given.436 Heidegger is able to split the hair between original representation versus intuitus originarius, arguing that one gives some- thing to their self directly through experience, without originating that intuition in the first place.437 It is a question as to whether the differentiation between intuitus originarius and intuitus derivativus has a similar relation as the ‘appearance’ [derivativus] versus a ‘thing in itself’ [origi- narius]. However, as Heidegger has already stated, the humanistic focus of his philosophy de- nies God as the ‘creator’ of the originarius, and therefore ‘leveling’ Kant’s ‘thing in itself’ as more accessible to finite intuition.438 Heidegger continues by emphasizing the temporal nature of space, as how that which appears to the perceiving individual is in space, as he states: “Orderedness of the manifold is only possible if a unity is given in advance, in terms of which what is ordered comes together

430 See the second half of Heidegger’s Being and Time, “Dasein and Temporality” (231). 431 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 86-87. 432 87.

433 87. 434 87. 435 87.

436 87. 437 87. 438 See 68-69. Sadler 93 as so ordered.”439 He calls the ability to think of spatial relations relative to various points and objects in space “spatial relations as such.”440 Heidegger furthers his aesthetic terminology about the manner in which we perceive the world, arguing, “That which we view [temporally] in ad- vance [in space], or more precisely that which we have always already taken into view, is dis- closed to us insofar as we are oriented toward it; but having a view of spatial relations as such is not an objectification of them”441 (but they are not given-in-advance by a Creator God: they give themselves). We recall that Heidegger already introduced the relative perspectivism of an indi- vidual engaging in the world, in an attempt to overcome the subject-object distinction. There- fore, this manner of an individual’s relating to that which appears to them is not objectification for Heidegger. Heidegger states that intuitions lack ‘things’ in his attempt to criticize the ‘thing-i-fica- tion’ of western philosophical consciousness: “Space and time are ‘intuitions without things,’ i.e., they are not brought about by what is extant.”442 In like manner, the ‘pure’ nature of intu- ition is empty, as Heidegger previously insinuated. This empty, pure intuition is the ens imaginar- ium, the imagination as the mediation between pure intuitions and concepts, stating, “The ex- pression ‘pre-figuration’ is not accidental; and we shall come back to the pure intuition as ‘imagination,’ as ens imaginarium, when we sum up the characteristics of space and time.”443 The imagination facilitates the mediation of pure intuitions into concepts of the understanding. In this manner, imagination is a pre-rational faculty, and acts in a spontaneous manner also re- ferred to as ‘play.’ Heidegger quotes Heinze’s Metaphysikvorlesung: “Thus time is the condition for the play of sensation, but space the condition for the play of figures [Gestalten].”444 Heideg- ger's phenomenology of play is crude and simple-minded in its approach to the phenomenon of play, compared to Johan Huizinga’s foundational treatise Homo Ludens. While Heidegger gave these lectures in 1927-8, Johan Huizinga would write an extended explication on the concept of ‘play’ in his 1938 book Homo Ludens. Huizinga’s work can be seen as a critique of Nazism, and therefore Heidegger’s capitulation to the dread ideology. According to Huizinga, play involves taking the rules so seriously that one is paradoxically able to play their game.445 It

439 88.

440 88. 441 88-89. 442 89-90.

443 90.

444 90, citing Heinze, Metaphysikvorlesung, p. 191. 445 Discussing the ‘seriousness’ of play, see Huizinga, 8. Sadler 94 should also be noted that Hans Georg Gadamer (Heidegger’s successor) cites Huizinga in his text Truth and Method.446

§7. Johan Huizinga’s Fundamental Analytic of Play

It should be noted in terms of Heidegger’s biography that Huizinga ends Homo Ludens with a remarkable condemnation of nazism cloaked under the guise of a critique of Roman culture, and its emphasis on family blood and ‘small,’ ‘chthonian’ earth-deities. Huizinga’s penultimate chapter, “XI Western Civilization Sub Specie Ludi,” hammers-home this critique of fascism’s roots. He states: “The culture of the Roman Empire merits attention if only on ac- count of the contrast it presents to Hellenic culture.”447 In other words, Huizinga is implying Rome’s cultural inferiority to Greece. Huizinga then lays in to attack Rome’s cultural inferiority, which is a veiled attack against the cultural inferiority of fascism, with its emphasis on blood, soil, and humorless nationalism. The essence of Latin antiquity can be summed up by qualities like sobriety, pro- bity, austerity, practical thinking of an economic and juristic order, feeble imagina- tion and tasteless superstition. The naïve, rustic forms of worship smell of the field and the hearth-fire. The atmosphere of Roman culture in the Republican Age is still that of the clan, the tribal community which, indeed, it had barely out- grown. The pronounced concern for the State bears all the features of household worship–the cult of the genius (indwelling spirit). Religious conceptions, such as they are, are feebly imagined and poorly expressed… Figures like Abundantia, Concordia, Pietas, Pax, Virtus, etc., are not the crystallizations of highly devel- oped social thinking; they are the crude and materialistic ideals of a primitive community seeking to safeguard its interests by means of business relations with higher powers.448

Huizinga’s scathing takedown of European fascism shows that the ‘small’ values of the Ro- mans are the same small values of National Socialism. Heidegger exemplifies these values with his emphasis on pagan aestheticism and a finite nature admitting of no transcendence. For Heidegger, nature’s value is not from its transcendental nature, but its particularity as the finite context of the German people. With an understanding of Huizinga’s notion of play, and Gadamer’s later use of the same, we can analyze Heidegger’s notion of the play of sensation on its own merit. Heidegger

446 Regarding the ‘seriousness' of play, Gadamer echoes Huizinga's idea that one must engage the game in full-seriousness, in order to truly play: see Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 103.

447 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 173.

448 173-174. Sadler 95 explains: “Play distinguishes itself by the absence of constraint; it is free.”449 Unlike Huizinga, who focuses on the boundaries of play as distinguished from the existential sense of the ‘everyday’ (what is attributed to Huizinga as ‘the magic circle’), Heidegger argues for the lack of boundaries in the act of play. Heidegger’s lack of boundaries, including subject-object, play/ not-play, individual-world, etc., is opposed by critics like Levinas and Huizinga. Heidegger con- tinues: “Space and time as pure viewing are play–i.e., they are not tied to the extant, but are a free enacting of the pure manifold of what is intuited in them.”450 Heidegger continues using perspectival, aesthetic language to describe the manner in which space and time intuits that which is given to it. ‘Pure viewing’ is equated with ‘play,’ the manner in which an individual has sensation via the a priori forms of space and time. Heidegger continues by arguing that time, specifically, has the style of relation and the manner in which one comports themselves to that which is experienced at the current moment. He states: “The pure intuition of time, the rapport and comportment with the now, just now and at once, is not tied to a definite extant.”451 This is a repeated reference the ‘manner’ or ‘comportment,’ in other words, to the aesthetic language used by Heidegger has this ‘free,’ aesthetic quality to play. However, I argue, in line with Huizinga against Heidegger, that it takes a great deal of effort to be able to ‘lose’ one’s self in play, the preparation including knowing the rules, practicing at the game, and approaching the play field with the seriousness that allows one to focus so wholly on the game that the individ- ual is able to play. Heidegger, by contrast, argues that one can randomly change their ‘com- portment,’ (in relation to time) choosing whether to be in a ‘mode’ of play, or not. Toward this end: “We may alter our comportment at random; we can comport ourselves playfully.”452

§8. Heidegger’s Spatiality of Enframing

Considering Heidegger had attempted to argue that individual ‘Being’ has its own histo- ry, or exists in history (the idea that the individual Being is affected and conditioned by their context), the argument that an individual can choose to alter their comportment at random seems more akin to Husserl’s thought. In Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, he argued that one’s context is the result of their ‘abiding’ in their decision.453 Therefore, for Husserl, one is free to

449 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 90. 450 90.

451 90. 452 90.

453 See §32, Husserl Cartesian Meditations, 101. Sadler 96 change their mind at any time, to change the course of action they have started for their self.454 However, Heidegger, in Being and Time, argue that one is effectively ‘sedimented’ by their histo- ry, context and situation.455 Despite the difference between Heidegger’s phenomenology and that of his his mentor, Edmund Husserl, we see that Heidegger’s random, completely free char- acteristic of play is more akin to Husserl’s phenomenology. In other words, Huizinga’s account of ‘seriousness’ in play seems more in line with the idea of historically-affected consciousness than Heidegger’s brief discussion in the Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant. Spatiality figures in both Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology more generally, and Huizinga’s (effectively) phenomenological analysis of play, specifically. Heidegger argues that Being appears in a ‘clearing,’ wherein Being can show itself.456 Likewise in his “Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger argues that technology does the work of ‘enframing,’ which artificially lays out and defines the space in which individual Beings can appear. Heidegger can therefore argue that technology is a destining which enframes us, determining who we become.457 With this under- standing of Heidegger’s spatiality of Being, Huizinga’s emphasis on the space of play, often summarized merely as “the magic circle.”458 With this understanding of space in Heidegger and other phenomenologists, it makes sense when Heidegger states: “Space and time pre-figure the space of the play [Spiel-Raum] which is the dimension within which what is extant can be encoun- tered, a dimension to and within which what is extant engages itself.”459 Heidegger’s following “§9. The Difference between ‘Form of Intuition’ and ‘Formal Intuition,” focuses on his explication of the footnote to section26 of the First Critique’s transcendental logic.460 In this note, Kant refers back to the transcendental aesthetic. In his opposes to the Marburg School, who argues that this note corrects the transcendental aesthetic in favor of the logic, Heidegger argues that this note does the opposite.461 He states: “the formal intuition is not an original representation but a derived one.”462 While the Marburg School would collapse

454 101.

455 Heidegger, Being and Time, 20.

456 170. 457 329.

458 Huizinga’s most-quoted element of Homo Ludens is the magic circle separating the space of play from the rest of the world of meaning: see Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 10. 459 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 90.

460 91. 461 91. 462 91. Sadler 97 the aesthetic into the logic’s formal intuition, Heidegger argues that the formal intuition is de- rived from pure intuition. He makes the distinction between ‘formal intuition’ (logic) and the ‘form of intuition’ (aesthetic). The latter is, according to Heidegger, immediate free-play of sen- sation. First, Heidegger cites the passage in §26 to which the note belongs, stating that while space and time contain the a priori forms of outer (space) and inner (time) intuition, however space and time are not merely ‘forms’ of sensible intuition (in the logical mode), but they are immediate intuitions in the aesthetic mode.463 Rather than space and time being the subjects’ preparation for receiving the things’ appearance, for Heidegger, space and time are the ways a thing prepares the subject to receive it. Heidegger follows by citing the note, in which Kant dis- tinguishes between the ‘form of intuition’ (sensation) and ‘formal intuition’ (logically thought- through the categories). The note begins: Space, represented as object (as we are required to do in geometry), contains more than mere form of intuition; it also contains combination of the manifold, given according to the form of sensibility, in an intuitive representation, so that the form of intuition gives only a manifold, the formal intuition gives unity of rep- resentation.464

The antinomy here seems to be between the ‘combination’ of the manifold versus the unity of that manifold. In other words, sensations by themselves would be a series of disjointed data, and it is only through the mediation of the logical categories that the ‘mere’ form of intuition is able to become ‘formal intuition.’ In other words, according to the traditional model, sensation gives the matter that is then ‘thought-through’ according to form. At first glance, doesn’t the aesthetic provides the ‘material’ for what is literally ‘formal intuition’? Kant’s note continues: In the Aesthetic I have treated this unity as belonging merely to sensibility, simply in order to emphasize that it precedes any concept, although, as a matter of fact, it presupposes synthesis which does not belong to the senses but through which all concepts of space and time first become possible.465

463 91.

464 92. Representation is Vorstellung, ‘placing-before,’ while Darstellung is placing-there, the thing itself showing itself there (according to the object's agency). The Da is coming from there, not acting according to human agency. On Vorstellung, Heidegger writes: “And only because the function of the λογός as αροφάνσις [‘apophansis] lies in letting something be seen by pointing it out, can the λογός have the structural form of συνθήσις [‘synthesis’]. Here ‘synthesis’ does not mean a binding and linking together of representations, a manipulation of psychical occur- rences where the ‘problem' arises of how these bindings, as something inside, agree with something physical outside. Here the συν has a purely apophantical signification and means letting something be seen in its togetherness [Beisammen] with something–letting it be seen as something” (Being and Time, 33).

465 92. Sadler 98

Therefore, while Kant has argued that the unity of sensation is a priori, the presupposition of synthesis is proper to the logical structures underlying knowledge, which follows sensation. Concepts are proper to the logic, and while they follow sensation, the logical structures make organized experience possible in the first place. Kant ends this footnote with a statement emphasizing that the formal intuition deter- mines the sensibility of the forms of intuition: “For since by its means (in that the understanding determines the sensibility) space and time are first given as intuitions, the unity of this a priori intuition belongs to space and time, and not to the concept of the understanding.”466 Heideg- ger’s interpretation seems to validate the Marburg School’s argument that the transcendental logic subordinates the aesthetic to its structures of cognition. In his hermeneutic phenomeno- logical interpretation, Heidegger emphasizes the undifferentiated unity of sensation. He em- phasizes the manifold’s spatial relatedness, in which all things are spatially relative to the posi- tion of any other (as opposed to some kind of Archimedean Fulcrum, or point outside of rela- tion to others). He states: “this manifold of what is purely after one another or next to one an- other–cf. the metaphysical exposition–is in itself a whole and is not first put together empirical- ly. This whole as such is one.”467 This holism in Heidegger’s notion of unity is critiqued by Lev- inas, who will argue that Heidegger’s holism is the attempt to overcome difference through to- tality, a totality which is necessarily closed and finite, as opposed to the revelation of the Oth- er’s infinity. Heidegger therefore tries to argue against the more ‘traditional’ view, also held by the Neo-Kantian school, that the form of intuition is beholden to formal intuition (the subordination of the aesthetic to the logic). Heidegger argues this is based on the idea that Kant mislabels the fundamental concept of ‘synthesis’ itself, and that what is called ‘synthesis’ should actually be relabeled ‘syndosis.’ Syndosis [σύνδοσις] refers to an ‘effusion,’ or more generally, a ‘giving’ in Heidegger’s usage. Thus, ‘sydotic’ judgments transfer and give-way to further knowledge. Syndosis thus falls in the mode of technical reason attributed to judgment in the first place. Imagination, previously hinted at in the discussion of ‘pure’ (empty) intuition as ens imaginarium, will follow as the ‘mediate’ transition between sensation and concepts. Here Heidegger states more explicitly: [Kant] further states that this synthesis does not belong to the senses. But this negative statement that the unity does not belong to the senses or to sensibility is ambiguous, since, on the one hand, unity can belong to understanding or, be-

466 92. Quoting CPR, B 161. 467 92. Sadler 99

cause Kant speaks of three fundamental sources of knowledge, to the power of imagination.468

‘Three fundamental sources of knowledge’ is of particular concern here, since it would seem that Kant’s system works in dyads of ‘aesthetic/logic,’ ‘theory/practice,’ ‘epistemology/ethics,’ etc. And yet a lingering presence of a ‘mediating’ ‘third term’ underlies this system, the prob- lem of mediation already discussed in the Judgment and which Levinas will discuss. Referring to Heidegger’s presupposition of the fundamental wholeness of the world given to us through space and time, he states: “With this unity of the originally one wholeness Kant associates an original synthesis which he sometimes designates explicitly as syn-thesis, as a putting togeth- er.”469 A major problem for Kant’s writing, in general, is his improper and erroneous use of terms. We have seen this regarding the ‘relation’ of objects (Verhältnis) versus a ‘relationship’ between others (Beziehung). Heidegger employs his own philological critique Kant’s use of language, especially the Greek roots of key terms. But now, on the other hand, the expression ‘synthesis’ is by itself not only am- biguous but it is also often used by Kant precisely when he does not mean a putting together and gathering together by the positing, thematic spontaneity, but rather when he means a putting together which he understands more as an intu- iting together, i.e., as letting-be-encountered.470

It is important to reiterate that Heidegger is attempting to ‘go beyond’ or ‘do one better’ than Kant in making clear and explicit what Kant merely hinted at. How much does Heidegger make-use of Kant for his own hermeneutic phenomenology? Heidegger’s is certainly empha- sizing the intuitive importance of knowledge once again, as opposed to intuition serving merely as ‘grist for the mill’ of transcendental logic. One the one hand, Heidegger argues that Kant’s ‘synthesis’ is really a ‘synopsis.’471 On the other hand, he argues it is more accurately a ‘syndo- sis.’

§9. Sundosis and the Problem of Wholism

468 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 92. 469 92.

470 92-93.

471 “By such a synthesis he actually means a synopsis–as he admittedly says too seldom–and by that he means an original giving-together, i.e., to let the together be encountered out of a unity” (93). Sadler 100

The ‘whole’ as given by intuition allows itself to be looked at as a whole, i.e., a ‘synop- sis.’472 However, Heidegger argues that synopsis does not capture the specifics of the term that Kant ambiguously labelled synthesis: “But even the expression ‘synopsis’ is misleading, as if the manifold of pure space and pure time is only given in their one wholeness when I intuit this manifold together sequentially.”473 So Heidegger admits the problem attributed to his ‘methodological holism’ explicitly as too human-centered. He therefore offers syndosis as the alternative to the ambiguities of ‘synthesis’ and ‘synopsis.’474 Heidegger explains the etymolo- gy of the Greek ‘sundidomi,’ and its conjugated form ‘sundosis.’ According to Heidegger, “The verb συνδίδωμι means to give along with, give together, give something along with something else. Thus σύνδοσις means connection.”475 Heidegger argues that ‘syndotical’ space and time as pure intuitions give the manifold of sensation “an original togetherness from unity as whole- ness.”476 Heidegger’s interprets Kant’s text for his own purposes. The undifferentiated whole of the world-as-given, which is only differentiated through human technical labour, demarcates space for-oneself from the already given whole. Thus Heidegger concludes this thought: By this syndosis, which belongs to unity as wholeness, space and time are first of all given as intuitions, i.e., as what is purely intuited, while the unity which be- longs to the [sum] of syndosis–and thus this syndosis or synopsis itself–belongs to space and time and not to the concept of understanding. This means that the unity of syndosis is not the unity which belongs to the synthesis of understanding in concepts, i.e., categories. Rather, the synthetic unity of concepts, i.e., cate- gories, presupposes this original, intuitive, syndotical unity.477

The problem of the undifferentiated primal unity of ontology will continue to be problematic for Heidegger’s opponents and critics (such as Levinas).478 At the same time, it is necessary to understand an alternative viewpoint that attempts to overcome what would be seen as the log- ical tyranny of Kant through interpreters like the Marburg School. The problem of an individual self-created and fully autonomous from their context is an extreme view eliciting an extreme

472 93. 473 93.

474 “Hence we need here another expression, namely syndosis” (93).

475 93. 476 Heidegger follows with the parenthetical statement “(We should compare the expression ‘syndotical with the word-image ἀνέσδοτος, which comes from ἐκδίδωμι and means anecdotal.)” (93)

477 93. 478 For clarity in his polemic against Heidegger, see Levinas’ interview with Philippe Nemo in Ethics and Infinity, 43, 58, 98. Sadler 101 response Levinas will deal with this logical tyranny in his later explication of the ‘light’ of logic, which paralyzes the individual caught within. Heidegger follows his discussion of syndotical unity in section 9 with his discussion of the priority of time over space in section 10. Here is where Heidegger really shoehorns Kant’s philosophy into his own argument from Being and Time.479 Therefore, followings his previous thesis in Being and Time, Heidegger argues for the primacy of time over space in Kant’s tran- scendental aesthetic. Heidegger argues that Kant’s analysis of the concept of ‘motion’ shows the importance of temporality over space, since motion presupposes something temporarily coming and going from the same space. Previously referring to Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Heidegger emphasizes Kant’s doctrine of motion: “For Kant motion is a cer- tain mode of change, which to him means change of place and time.”480 Quoting Kant directly, Heidegger states: “Thus our concept of time explains the possibility of that body of a priori synthetic knowledge which is exhibited in the general doctrine of motion, and which is by no means unfruitful.”481 Heidegger follows that time’s intuition of succession (what we saw in Kant’s first critique divided into ‘regressive’ and ‘progressive’) involves Zeno’s paradox of mo- tion more generally, acknowledging the seeming contradiction of a thing simultaneously in one place and yet in another. Heidegger states: Only time as pure intuition of pure succession renders intelligible something like motion or change of place. For change of place means that something which is in motion occupies a place and leaves that place behind already in occupying it; what is in motion is extant in one place and simultaneously not extant in the same place. This is what Plato already noticed: Motion is determined by a con- tradictory predicate.482

Heidegger therefore states: “That something both is and is not in the same respect is a formal contradiction; and therefore, according to Kant, motion cannot be logically graspable.”483 Heidegger appeals to the phenomenological notion of the horizon for the idea of a more blended simultaneity, rather than the atomistic, successive ‘moment-by-moment’ nature of a geometric idea of space and time.484 In terms of the horizon, Heidegger states: “Only in the horizon of successiveness can I understand something like motion. Only in the horizon of time

479 Regarding Heidegger’s primacy of time over space, see Being and Time, 367.

480 PIKCPR, 96.

481 96, citing Critique of Pure Reason, B49.

482 97.

483 97. 484 Compare against Husserl’s idea of an atomistic ‘core’ of primary experience that is sur- rounded by its horizon as a second-order of experience. See Cartesian Meditations, 62. Sadler 102 is the transition from something to something graspable.”485 Although, in a phenomenological sense, the ‘horizon’ is already a spatialized metaphor. Heidegger follows by quoting Kant’s First Critique: “Only in time can two contradictorily opposed predicates meet in one and the same object, namely one after the other.”486 Yet Heidegger notes: “Because of the intimate connection of motion with the transcendental aesthetic, Kant was for a long time uncertain and finally de- cided against including motion in the aesthetic”487

§10. Categorical Substance and Temporality

In order to discuss “the phenomenon of motion and change,” Heidegger refers to Kant’s category of ‘substantiality,’ to argue that motion belongs to the categories of the understanding (which are proper to the transcendental logic): “Thus the categorical determination of substan- tiality of what is in motion belongs to the phenomenon of motion.”488 The category of ‘substan- tiality’ is problematic. Heidegger engages with the text of the Critique of Pure Reason to argue that time itself has a certain sense of substantiality, arguing that time has ‘substance’ that endures the specif- ic changes in the phenomena. Heidegger states: “Of course in Kant’s sense one could gather from the thesis that time is what endures, what time changes because only what endures can change–change implies that something which as itself, the same and lasting, becomes some- thing different.”489 This substantiality of time is opposite the view that time and space are something that an object ‘has.’ The notion that time is something an object ‘has’ is based on the older metaphysical differentiation of ‘substance’ and ‘accidents.’ In this understanding, the object is the ‘substance’ and its motion is an ‘accident,’ and what an object ‘has’ is referred to as ‘qualia’ or ‘qualities’ of the object. For temporality to be existentially coeval with the object as it exists in time is a radical proposition. But for Heidegger, the substantiality of temporal ob- jects is itself prior to their spatiality. Heidegger broaches his concern, reiterated from Being and Time, that time is not ‘equip- rimordial’ to space in his vocabulary, but has primacy itself. He states: “Up to now we have dealt with space and time in an undefined equality of rank as two forms of intuition which hap-

485 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 97. 486 97, quoting Kant, CPR B49.

487 97. 488 98. 489 Heidegger, 98. Heidegger previously cites Kant in various places on the idea of time’s sub- stantiality, see Kant, CPR B58/A41, B183/A144, B183/A144, B225. Sadler 103 pen to exist–space, and then time.”490 Heidegger even states that the work of interpreting Kant in such a manner is difficult, as Kant seems to emphasize the coequal nature of space and time in the aesthetic. Therefore, in order for Heidegger to be able to make use of Kant for his inter- pretive project, he must do the work of much deeper reading: “From what we heard so far about space and time, we cannot even presume anything like a priority of time over space. On the contrary, it is the spatiality of the extant which appears far more immediately and obtrusive- ly than its time-determination.”491 Heidegger states: “Space is the formal condition of the phys- ical. This means that space enables in advance the encounter with the extant which becomes accessible in that intuition which is not directed to us but away from us.”492 This encounter with the extant is the important spatialized notion of that which is outside the individual’s inner, temporal experience. It should be emphasized that the spatialization of the interior world be- comes a concern in Levinas’ Otherwise than Being, to be further discussed later. Heidegger follows by discussing the source of inner intuition as time, allowing the “be- ings which we ourselves are to be encountered.”493 This self-encountering occurs in time, as an internal succession of the manifold. Heidegger quotes Kant: “Time is the formal condition a priori of all appearances, whatsoever.”494 Heidegger therefore argues that all appearances are collapsed into time, the outer appearances of space are subordinate to temporality: “Thus time is the formal condition a priori of both inner and outer appearances. Thus time is given priority over space, because space is the formal condition of the physical, while time is the formal condition of both the physical and the psychic.”495 While arguing that Kant is in-line with his focus on the primordial nature of temporality, Heidegger still struggles with Kant’s text for the decisive interpretation he desires. It is easy to argue that ‘hermeneutics’ can mean (especially in this case) finding what one wants to find in the text under interpretation. Heidegger tries to argue that Kant would say even outer appearances move in time, and therefore space is be- holden to primordial temporality.496 Heidegger follows by arguing against Kant’s view that space and time are coeval, stating: “The first thesis disputes the inter-temporality of what is

490 PIKCPR, 99.

491 99. 492 100.

493 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 100.

494 101. 495 101. 496 101. Sadler 104 physically extant; the other thesis attributes inter-temporality to the physically extant.”497 Inter- temporality means the relation of the temporal to the experience of the spatial, as a succession of experience either without or within the perceiving individual. Crucial to the thesis of Levinas’ critique of mediation is Heidegger’s argument that tem- poral relations are immediate, while spatial relations are mediated. Heidegger argues that since all representations belong (in the possessive case) to the one who does the act of representing, even outer intuition (supposedly the domain of space) also falls in time. Heidegger states: But the Kantian deliberation continues [from temporal comportment as a series of internal states]: If all representations [belong to] the one who represents, if all comportments necessary and immediately fall in time, then what is represented in these representations, thus what is intuited in outer intuition, also falls in time.498

But the main point Heidegger makes emphasizes the mediated nature of spatial relations, and the immediate nature of temporal relations (which also contain spatial relations for one’s self). He states: “Thus outer appearances are not immediately intra-temporal but are so only through mediation.”499 Heidegger follows by qualifying Kant’s explicit statement “Time cannot be a de- termination of outer appearances” as a thesis that “only denies the immediate intra-temporality of physical objects.”500 In other words, Heidegger argues that time does not determine imme- diate outer appearances, but can engage with outer intuition in a mediated manner. Therefore Heidegger can state: “However, this thesis allows for the possibility of a time-determination of objects of outer intuition as mediated.”501 By focusing on the immediate nature of inner time-determination, Doesn’t Heidegger fall into a form of ‘idealism?’ Therefore, this temporal emphasis on interiority seems like a ‘fall’ into the previous metaphysical model of a ‘thinking thing’ [res cogitans] that Heidegger has pre- viously eschewed. However, if we understand that the individual’s condition is one of ‘inauthen- ticity’ (but not in the ‘bad’ sense of a value judgment), then awareness of one’s temporality through their being-toward-death is the ultimate interiority. More crucial to this argument is the mediated nature of primordial, temporal relations. If all spatial relations are mediated through time, then Heidegger falls into a kind of epistemology that demands the mediation between the individual and that which they encounter (especially

497 101.

498 102.

499 102. 500 102. 501 102. Sadler 105 insofar as they encounter it in time). Therefore, it would seem that despite Heidegger’s at- tempts to overcome dichotomies like interior/exterior, subject/object, individual/community, individual/world, etc., he falls into the philosophical trap of positing his own binary. Heidegger prioritizes immediate temporal interiority over mediated spatial exteriority. As we shall see, Lev- inas work in Otherwise Than Being does the work to reverse the transcendental aesthetic, spa- tializing the individual’s interior, and temporalizing the world exterior to the individual’s experi- ence.502

§11. The Problematic of Thing-ification

Heidegger ends his phenomenological interpretation of Kant’s transcendental aesthetic with a discussion of the ‘thing,’ whether in its Latin formulation as res, or the German term Sache. Appealing to ‘Da-sein’ (Being-there)’s finitude, Heidegger states: “As finite, Dasein is referred to an extant which is encountered.”503 Heidegger argues that ‘spatial determinations’ ‘belong’ to objects insofar as they are appearances.504 He further emphasizes spatial and intra- temporal appearances.505 In using the term ‘res,’ Heidegger brings to mind the Cartesian notion of the ‘thing’ as ‘thinking thing’ [res cogitans] and ‘extended thing’ [res extensia]. He states: “Spa- tial and temporal determinations belong to that which the encountered being is; they belong to appearances, to things (res); and they are as belonging to res.”506 This idea of the determinations belongs to what would seem to be the ‘qualities’ [qualia] of ‘things.’ While it is safe to say that Heidegger is not falling into the old ontology, but reinterpreting terms for the purposes of his own project of ‘Being,’ this formulation of res as presented seems suspect to a cursory reading.507 Heidegger follows with another statement loaded with historical weight from the prior ontology he attempts to overcome, that of ‘reality.’ For the problematic of reality in Kant, we also refer back to his refutation of (dogmatic) idealism in the First Critique. But Heidegger importantly qualifies: “Being real is not identical with being extant.”508 Heidegger does the im-

502 Heidegger discusses how the finitude of Da-Sein’s Being-toward-death completes the hermeneutic circle by closing the gap of the ‘not-yet’ through futural temporality: see Being and Time, 233.

503 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 107. 504 107. 505 107.

506 107.

507 Being and Time, 90. 508 Heidegger, PIKCPR, 107. Sadler 106 portant work of reformulating the old ontology for his own purposes towards Dasein, but sees Kant’s critical reformulation as an imperfect step along that path. Instead, Heidegger interprets Kant in contradistinction to the Neo-Kantians, stating: “‘Ob-jectively real’ means belonging to the factuality of ob-jects, objects, and appearances.”509 This ‘factuality’ is likened to the ‘factic- ity’ previously explicated in Being and Time.510 Contrary to the commonly-held view that imagination is a sub-rational faculty, Heideg- ger ends his explication of Kant my emphasizing the interconnection of sensation and imagina- tion. The individual steps of the presentation are so methodically laid out that Kant shows how a necessary interconnection between the power of imagination and sensibility results from out of the essence and ownmost possibility of transcen- dental apperception, if experience in general, i.e., synthetic knowledge, is to be possible a priori.511

Heidegger is arguing against the view of the mediating nature of the categories, i.e., that sen- sation and imagination are sub-rational faculties for the sake of the categories, thus assuming the categories’ priority.512

§12. The Ingenuity of Kant’s Schematism

Finally, Heidegger ends his phenomenological interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with “The Significance of Kant’s Doctrine of Schematism.”513 Heidegger summarizes the nature of the schematism as following the logical deduction of the pure categories of the un- derstanding. Heidegger points out that schematism has a mediating position, not only between concepts and principles, but between the deduction and presentation of the principles result- ing from the deduction.514 Heidegger summarizes the transcendental logic as the division of formal logic into the ideas of concept, judgment, conclusion.515 Judgment and schematism

509 107.

510 Being and Time, 56.

511 276. 512 Heidegger follows arguing for the subject who is representing ‘some-thing’ is itself tran- scendent (temporal) while at the same time orienting itself toward the object of its concern (to use Heidegger’s terms Sorge and Besorge, “care” and “concern’): see 277.

513 291. 514 291. 515 291. Sadler 107 both serve as mediation in their respective manners, either between sensation and concepts (judgment) or concepts and principles (schematism). Heidegger then states: “But between the two [the transcendental analytic of concepts and principles] there is the schematism of pure concepts of understanding.”516 Heidegger argues that the mediation of the schematism is cen- tral to the whole critique, as opposed to the logic of the categories. The schematism, while located in the transcendental logic, is tied to sensation, but what Heidegger calls “the productive power of imagination.”517 Previously, Heidegger has dis- cussed how imagination, as opposed to pure sensation’s passive reception of experience, has an active, productive function.518 Heidegger then states: “For Kant schematism is understand- ing’s character as necessarily an enactment by which understanding presents itself in time, that is, working with schemata, shapes, images or views, working with what is purely intuitable, that is, working with pure temporal relations.”519 In other words, the temporal nature of inner experience, and the doubly spatial-within-temporal relation of outer experience, still involves the ‘thinking-through’ of sensation into concepts, which is the mediating province of the schematism. Now we have deeply explored the concept of mediation, especially as it relates to judgment, in the critical corpus of Immanuel Kant, as well as its later Phenomenological inter- pretation by Martin Heidegger. Having looked at Kant’s complex treatment of mediation, as well as its treatment by Heidegger, we are now equipped to engage with Emmanuel Levinas’ Phe- nomenological critique of mediation in both Kant and Heidegger’s writings.

516 291.

517 292. 518 278. 519 292. Sadler 108 Sadler 109

Chapter Four: Levinas and the Problem of Mediation

§1. Levinas’ Preliminary Analysis of On Ideas

The three previous chapters have built up the history of thought in both Kant’s critical epistemology, and its phenomenological interpretation through Husserl and Heidegger’s phe- nomenological discourse, in order to show the origin of mediation as an epistemological con- cept. Emmanuel Levinas’ corpus has a strong preoccupation with mediation, especially media- tion between the Self and the Other. This extended critique of mediation includes critiques of Kant and Heidegger’s reliance on mediation in their own thought, whether Kant’s critical corpus or Heidegger’s interpretive phenomenology. Despite his critical nature toward Heidegger espe- cially, Levinas continues to show great deference to the thought of Edmund Husserl, locating seeds of the focus on alterity in Husserl’s writings.520 This chapter emphasizes Levinas’ con- cern with mediation throughout his body of writing, spanning his phenomenological writings, from 1929-1977, collected in Discovering Existence with Husserl. Levinas’ dissertation, published as The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930) as well as his 1929 article “On Ideas” show that the concern with mediation is fundamental to Levinas’ phenomenological writings, and informs his post-war ethics of the Other. The apex of Levinas’ writings are the books Totali- ty and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961) and Otherwise than Being: Or, Beyond Essence (1974), which concern themselves with the ethical relation to the Other. In this chapter, I will explicate how Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of mediation has an epistemic focus in a manner of Kant’s analysis from the Critique of Judgment. Ultimately, mediation’s role in Levinas’ ethics is the means by which the Self attempts to deny or control the Other, rather than a Self beholden to the Other’s alterity; the latter is Levinas’ own position. Levinas’ 1929 article “On Ideas" engages with Husserl’s text Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, doing his best to condense, explicate, summarize, and engage with Husserl’s work, which at the time was groundbreaking, taking the French philosophical milieu by storm. On this side of the 20th century, however, the sincere op- timism about phenomenology as a progressive project of inquiry based on the intuition of essences (Wesenswissenschaften) seems positively naive. Each page of Ideas sets out to show that philosophical problems can be posed in a new way, a way that renders them amenable to solution; but, on the other hand, that solution can only be presented in the form of positive work, the work of

520 See Levinas, “From Consciousness to Wakefulness,” Discovering Existence with Husserl, 162. Sadler 110

generations, as is the case in the exact sciences. The book of Ideas means to be an invitation to work.521

Levinas, especially in his translations into the French language, was on the cutting-edge of phenomenology as a method of inquiry, and the possibilities for discovery seemed infinite in scope. It is important for later metaphysical discussion here Levinas that argues phenomenol- ogy is not ‘metaphysical’ in the sense that it does not deal with the ‘reality’ of the intuited essences, but rather how they appear to the individual (phainomena, “how it appears” to an in- dividual in the reflexive middle voice). Levinas states to this effect: “But the term ideal essence must not be understood in the sense of a metaphysics–Platonic or otherwise–for neither the existence of the individual object nor that of the ideal object, nor the relationship between these two existences, is in question.”522 This argument against knowledge of an object’s ‘reali- ty’ obviously draws upon Kant’s critique of ‘dogmatic idealism.’ Kant has given the critical tools to the later phenomenological school allowing them to bracket the reality of the objects which appear to the individual, and concentrate on the phainomena: how they appear in themselves. Levinas summarizes Husserl’s thought by the principle “All thought intends something, and that which it intends–whether it exists or not–is its object.”523 Could the intention of con- sciousness for its object be argued to be an extension of the master-slave dialectic, or Heideg- ger’s critique of the correspondence theory of truth? ‘Predicates’ are a major problematic con- cern in both pre-modern philosophy (with its concerns of ‘substances’ and ‘accidents,’ these subjects or objects having ‘properties’ or ‘qualities’), and the discipline called ‘negative theolo- gy’ eschewing the attribution of ‘properties’ to God at all, because having ‘properties’ implies God is an object. While negative theology rejects the attribution of properties to God, the rea- soning of rejecting knowledge of predicates is applied to knowledge about individuals in phe- nomenology. We will see that in Husserl’s phenomenology, an individual’s ‘nature’ or ‘qualities’ only ‘abide’ so long as the individual chooses to abide in them. But insofar as the individual is free, the individual can choose to change their manner of existing. If one is defined by the choices they make from their place of freedom, then one’s choices define them, rather than an innate nature. Levinas discusses phenomenology’s ‘relation to its object’ as distinct from a philosophy of primary and secondary qualities.524 In contrast: “If we are to believe the account given by the philosophy of primary and secondary qualities, secondary qualities (and since Berkley also the

521 Levinas, “On Ideas,” Discovering Existence With Husserl, 3-4.

522 4.

523 Levinas, Discovering, 4. 524 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 13. Sadler 111 primary qualities) should be identified with the content of consciousness.”525 As Kant has al- ready argued against Berkley’s ‘dogmatic idealism,’ we understand that qualities assume ‘properties’ inherent in the objects, contrasted against the phenomenological thesis that such qualities exist not inherently in-themselves, but simply as they appear to the perceiver (lit. ‘phenomenally’). Hence, phenomenology applies Kant’s phenomenal thesis, in opposition to the ‘dogmatic idealism’ á la Berkley, and therefore phenomenology takes Kant’s phenomenality to a further end. Levinas emphasizes the sensory nature of phenomenology, in the manner that an indi- vidual re-presents phenomenal objects of consciousness to their self: “What belongs to the real content of consciousness are “Abschattungen” [adumbrations] or sensations; an intention ani- mates them and lends them a representative function.”526 It is important to emphasize that phe- nomenology adheres to the idea of ‘the aesthetic’ from the First Critique, rather than the the idea of ‘aesthetics’ in the Third. However, in this case, Levinas explicates the difference be- tween the more ‘classical’ geometric notion of objects in space, with phenomenology’s primor- dial concept of the ‘lived’ or ‘lifeworld’ [Lebenswelt].527 The emphasis on the object’s appear- ance to the individual focuses away from the idea of the objects own ‘objective’ quality, but also does not locate the object’s ‘reality’ in the perceiver (like Berkleyan idealism). Rather, the objects that appear to the individual ‘transcend’ that perceiver, their existence is beyond them, and therefore the appearance of the object is called “transcendent.”528 This idea of that which ‘transcends’ the individual will be taken to its superlative end in Levinas’ future ethics of the Other. Levinas broaches the issue of representation: later in his ethics he will greatly critique representational mediation as the Self’s relationship to the Other. Levinas introduces the pre- liminary analysis of Husserl’s noema-noesis distinction, and how judgment plays a major role in the mediation between the noesis of immediate experience, before being thought-through its concept as noema (much in the same manner as judgment mediates sensations and concepts in Kant’s critical system).529 Levinas refers to willing and judging as related in the noema-noesis manner, especially as ‘purely representative’ and focusing on ‘theoretical [epistemological]

525 13. 526 14.

527 14. 528 14. 529 23. Sadler 112 judgment.’530 Let us be reminded that in this case, willing is consciousness desire for its object. In Kant’s system, the ‘object’ desired by the will is the moral law. At this point, and until Lev- inas’ post-war writings, phenomenology is primarily epistemological, and not ethical. Levinas will here refer Kant’s formulation of the thing in itself, as “the transcendental object = x.” The idea is that the phenomenon points to ‘some thing,’ to the transcendental ob- ject that immediately escapes our reception of appearance. But the set of predicates which form the noematic nucleus [Kern] are necessarily predicates of something. Thus a still deeper moment can be described in the noema, a sort of X which bears the predicates and which Husserl, to avoid any metaphysical or realist equivocation associated with the term ‘X,’ later called ‘the object pole of intention.’531

Phenomenology has not yet arrived at Kant’s metaphysical object, otherwise known as the moral law. The object-oriented nature of the metaphysic of morals does not go to the tran- scendent extreme of the Other, which is so central to Levinas’ ethics. Finally, Levinas ends this article with an appeal to the intersubjective world, moving from the ego to the intersubjective in Husserl’s familiar methodology. Levinas will later attempt to argue for appeals to ethical alterity in Husserl’s writings, but for now intersubjectivity appears to have the more straightforward epistemological meaning.532 Levinas follows with the method of transition from hyper-individu- ality to intersubjectivity: If, therefore, phenomenology truly wants to study the meaning of truth and being, if it wants to exhaust their content, it must pass beyond the quasisolipsistic atti- tude in which the phenomenological reduction, which may be called the ‘egologi- cal reduction,’ leaves us. This attitude is only the first step toward the phenome- nology of reason, a first step that is nonetheless indispensable, and poses an infinity of problems that are nonetheless real. But all the investigations of egolog- ical phenomenology must be subordinated to the ‘intersubjective phenomenolo- gy’ which alone will be able to exhaust the meaning of truth and reality.533

Levinas could be arguing that one cannot merely remain in the individual, egological analysis, but must move-beyond itself to not only the world, but to other egos encountered in that world. On the other hand, in a more literal Kantian sense, one only knows egos (or ‘the problem of other minds’) as analogy to one’s self. Levinas here begins a project that will span the following 50 years. While this is a preliminary discussion of the problem, Levinas here intends a philoso-

530 23.

531 Levinas, “On Ideas,” Discovering Existence, 25. 532 See Levinas, “From Consciousness to Wakefulness,” Discovering Existence with Husserl, 162.

533 Levinas, “On Ideas,” 30. Sadler 113 phy of alterity within the structure of Husserl’s phenomenological writings.534 Therefore, we see Levinas working through the structures Husserl has established towards these truly metaphysi- cal, ethical ends. A concern with arguing for the primacy of the intersubjective is a possible ‘fall’ (in the Heideggerian sense of the term) into an ‘inauthentic’ subordination to their commu- nity.535 Levinas still focuses on Husserlian egoism in order to avoid this fall into the negative communal spirit.

§2. Levinas’ Dissertation on Husserl

Levinas’ 1930 dissertation, published as The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenolo- gy, also shows Levinas’ argument against representation, the domain of aesthetic judgment.536 Levinas responds to the problems of phenomenology, stemming from problems unresolved in post-Kantian philosophy. Following the thesis that objects of appearance appear for us, he ar- gues against the subjective phenomena’s distinction from the intuited object.537 Levinas refers here to their relation, in the previously articulated sense of Verhältnis, the technical-geometric relation of objects to each other in space. However, Levinas argues that this relation is not merely a sign or image referencing or representing that to which the individual is related (whether an object or an Other), and these ‘appearances’ do not point to the ‘thing in itself’ (whether that thing is ‘objective reality’ or ‘the Other’).538 In other words, appearances have a non-significative quality Levinas discusses not only the assumed connection between the appearance and the thing in itself, but the conceptual unity of ‘spatial things’ or ‘the thing.’ As Levinas is trying to emphasize that phenomenology does not posit ‘reality’ to the objects it encounters, he refer- ences Husserl’s positing of an ‘intentional unity.’ “Spatial things are nothing but an intentional unity which, in principle, cannot be given otherwise than as the unity of such phenomena.”539 Rather, the ‘thing’ as intentional unity is an ‘ideal’ in the Kantian sense of being a ‘regulative

534 30.

535 Heidegger devotes chapter IV of section I of Being and Time to the discussion of “Being-in- the-World as Being-with and Being-one’s-self: the ‘They’” (see Heidegger, Being and Time, 113). See also: "The ‘who’ is the neuter, the ‘they’ [das Man]” (126). Heidegger qualifies ‘falling’ into the everyday nature of das Man as ‘inauthenticity’ on the part of an individual: see 176. 536 Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, lv.

537 “The subjective phenomena are not given as distinct from the object they intimate” (6). 538 6.

539 Levinas, 6, citing Husserl, Ideas §42, 78, see also Philosophy as Rigorous Science, 311 [105]. Sadler 114 concept’ that informs an individual’s relation to the world, even if one cannot verify its ‘neces- sary reality.’540 In other words, the thing is spatially relative to the perceiver, but the individual’s perception, how the object appears to them, matters greatly. The individual’s perception of the surrounding space results in the limits of their personal space, their ‘realm of existence,’ as it were, the boundaries of the world as it appears to them. Husserl’s phenomenology calls this the ‘horizon.’541 One’s horizon gives spatiality to their experience, which as we have seen from Heidegger’s reading of Kant, is normally governed by internal spatio-temporal sensation, but also assumes that spatial relations are contained within temporality (according to Heidegger). For Levinas, one of the main elements of the phenomenological thesis is intention, which is the comportment of the individual towards its ‘object.’542 In the core of his thesis, Lev- inas states: “Intentionality is, for Husserl, a genuine act of transcendence and the very prototype of any transcendence.”543 While Levinas deals with epistemology at this point, we can see the seeds of the individual’s intending of the Other in his future works. He follows with a statement that one would take on face-value as apophatic, a quality usually attributed to negative theology, in terms of ‘that-which-cannot-be-spoken-about.’ In classical philosophy, one posits the object as ‘hav- ing’ or being ‘composed’ of ‘properties,’ qualities that can be enumerated discursively (in the classical sense of ‘discursive’). Hence Levinas' statement: “Intentionality in Husserl cannot be taken as a property of consciousness, i.e., as a character which is unrelated to the mode of ex- isting of consciousness, as simply a modality of the contents of consciousness.”544 In other words, to use classical philosophical language, consciousness in Husserl’s phenomenology is simpliciter, it cannot have properties attributed to it because it chooses to abide in its proper- ties, only until it so chooses to alter them. Intentionality is also not a logical element in an ar- gument, linking ‘terms.’ Anticipating Levinas’ future critique of the mediating ‘third term’ (especially between the Self and Other), Levinas criticizes the view that would make intentionality that ‘third term’ be- tween consciousness and the world it experiences: “But Husserl also attacks a theory which would see in intentionality a new element, a bridge between the world and consciousness.”545 The reduction of intentionality to a mere connecting logical term would remove the transcen-

540 7.

541 See Levinas, 19, citing Husserl Ideas, §35, 62. 542 Levinas, Theory of Intuition, 39-40.

543 40. 544 40-41.

545 Levinas, Theory of Intuition, 41. Sadler 115 dence of the [object] intended by the individual consciousness. Levinas will qualify this third term as ‘artificial’ in the sense of the plastic image of aesthetics. Finally, Levinas sums up the Other-oriented nature of consciousness, in terms of subjectivity as defined by the subject’s de- sire for its object: “Intentionality is what makes up the very subjectivity of subjects. The very reality of subjects consists in their transcending themselves.”546 Subjective experience then is for the self to intend that which is beyond itself, and therefore desiring a self-overcoming. Any attempt to create a third term to mediate that relationship is ‘inauthenticity’ in a Heideggerian sense, ‘bad faith’ in Sartrean vocabulary, or plain ‘idolatry’ in Levinas’ Jewish terms.547 For Levinas’ argument, mediation is bound up in representation (the plastic image) which is the domain of aesthetics (as opposed to the spatio-temporal aesthetic). Levinas ar- gues that that givenness of the object transcending the self is not given in Kant’s sense of ob- jects of the understanding, the self’s re-presenting its sensations to the understanding).548 Lev- inas can therefore write: “But ‘to have a sense’ doesn’t to mean the same as ‘to represent.’ The act of love has a sense, but this does not mean that it includes a representation of the object loved together with a purely subjective feeling which has no sense and which accompanies the repre- sentation.”549 This idea of theoretical consciousness as a form of re-presenting sensation for oneself, and by consequence, the belovéd Other (in this analogy of love), is a form of what I have previously defined as ‘epistemological original sin.’ Epistemological original sin compels an individual to attempt to ‘capture’ the Other’s transcendence via representation for their self. I argue that the self’s representation of the Other is epistemological idolatry. It would take an act equivalent to ‘revelation’ or ‘grace’ to overcome this epistemological human condition.550

§3. Judgment as Representation

In the fourth chapter of the Theory of Intuition, Levinas discusses judgment as represen- tation, which is so crucial for the full formulation of his mature philosophy: “The role played by representation in consciousness affects the meaning of intuition. This is what causes the intel- lectualistic character proper to Husserlian intuitionism. We cannot avoid here the study of the

546 41.

547 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 87.

548 44, citing Husserl, Ideas, §95, 198. 549 44.

550 See Levinas, “Demanding Judaism,” Beyond the Verse, 4. Sadler 116 role of representation.”551 Levinas is arguing that Husserl has had to work his thought through the realist mode, while realizing the limitations of realism that caused Kant to be awakened from his dogmatic slumber in the first place and begin his critical project. Therefore, the indi- vidual’s positing of a real object corresponding to their intuitions of it will give way to the ob- ject’s phenomenality, resulting in the constituting consciousness of that phenomenality.552 Lev- inas broaches Kant’s idea of “the transcendental object = X” in Husserl’s thought. However, in the form Levinas articulated from the earlier Logical Investigations, Husserl posits the ‘core’ predicated around an object, an idea that ‘there is’ (es Gibt, or il y a) a transcendental object in the first place.553 Levinas further broaches his criticism of judgment as mediation between subject and predicate in chapter 5 of Theory of Intuition, which he equates to the correspondence theory of truth. We have inherited, from the ancient tradition since Parmenides, the idea that truth lies in the adequacy of thought to things. Moreover, since Aristotle, truth and falsity are considered the exclusive privilege of judgments, which are the asser- tion of a relation between a subject and a predicate.554

He follows that the ‘bridge’ between the perceiver and their object is posited as a ‘logos,’ which facilitates this function according to its own law.555 Levinas follows that such an argu- ment for the world of our experience corresponding to the logical structures in our mind falls into the rationalist problem of adequate ideas, a problem that Kant, Husserl, and Levinas seek to avoid.556 In like manner, Hermann Cohen argued against the mediation of the ‘logos,’ which falls into a form of trap, analogous to Christian Gnosticism.557 This mediating logos is contrary to Judaism, which argues that there is no mediation between God and God’s Creation (includ- ing created persons), only distance.558

551 Levinas, Theory of Intuition, 53.

552 87. 553 55.

554 Levinas, Theory of Intuition, 84. 555 85.

556 85.

557 See Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason, 48. 558 See Levinas’ critique of Simon Weil’s Platonic Christianity in "Simon Weil against the Bible,” Difficult Freedom 140. In like manner, see Levinas’ critique of the Platonic logos in “Have You Reread Baruch?” (Difficult Freedom, 116). Sadler 117

Levinas discusses Husserl’s attempt to move away from the ‘reality’ of an object to- wards the positing or creation of an object for one’s self. In Husserl’s reformulation of represen- tation, one still sees the the a priori creation of an object for a Self, which is the function of rep- resentation (this epistemological structure cannot be ‘transcended’ in any immediate sense).559 Therefore, Levinas can argue in the following chapter 5 that thought is intentional, directed to- ward the object of its desire.560 The objectification of objects, even the Other, is accomplished through words when the desired object is not ‘seen.’ “Inasmuch as we have no image or per- ception, we content ourselves with the mere act of aiming at an object, at least provided that we understand what is said to us and what we ourselves say.”561 In terms of this epistemologi- cal desire, the desire is for the object to appear to the individual observer. A desire for an ob- ject unfulfilled leaves the perceiver with a sense of emptiness, while the individual has need for the ‘fullness (Fülle)’ of this desired object.562 By-contrast, intention (as opposed to intuition) ‘gives’ the desired object to its perceiver: “A signifying intention only thinks about an object, but intuition gives us something of the object itself.”563

§4. Levinas, Sensation, and Non-appearance

The concept of an object’s presence, or lack of presence, becomes the concern for ‘apo-phansis,’ the non-appearance of the desired object. Later elevated by Levinas, this apo- phansis is the non-appearance of the desired Other. Therefore, in its most elementary stage, Levinas introduces the nascent concept central to my thesis: the ‘apo-phansis’ or ‘non-ap- pearance’ of the Other. We see in Levinas’ 1930 dissertation that concern with the transcen- dence of the Other is endemic to Levinas’ thought.564 The question at this juncture is whether there can be a commensuration of intention (fulfilling the perceivers’ desire for the object) with intuition (the ‘given’). The question becomes, while an object can be ‘given’ to the perceiver in intuition, can the Other ever be ‘given’? This is a broader question for Levinas’ thought, though one I surmise to be answered in the negative.

559 See Levinas, Intuition, 59, citing Husserl, Logical Investigations, II 459. 560 65. 561 66.

562 67. 563 67. 564 33. Sadler 118

In terms of Levinas’ critique of sensation, he argues against the thesis (promoted by the Marburg School of Neo-Kantians) that sensation is not merely a faculty of the intellect (ironical- ly, reiterating Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason).565 Reit- erating that he has already dealt with the difference between sensualism and the sensation proper to phenomenology (as per Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic”): “and we have especially insisted that sensations must not be confused with the qualities of external objects, since they each belong to a different level of reality, one being represented, the other being experienced.”566 The disjunction between representation and experience will become a major dichotomy in the revelation of the Other, in the sense that while we can experience the Other, the Other is never an object represented to us. To attempt to represent the Other for one’s self is to attempt to capture the Other’s infinite difference. Levinas likewise engages with Husserl to argue for the irreducible phenomenological difference between signifying and intuitive apprehension.567 He argues that signification is that which points beyond itself toward the desired object in the style (or manner) of a sign.568 Lev- inas therefore reasons that “an intuition is necessary before a meaning can occur.”569 The issue of meaning, so central to the existential philosophy resulting from Husserl’s phenomenology, is broached in terms of signification. However, Levinas then argues according to Husserl that “The form of representation expresses the manner in which intentionality takes possession of a representative.”570 Therefore, Levinas argues that Husserl calls the manner of representation ‘apprehension,’ insofar as one encounters that object for their self.571 The issue of meaning, form and style is key to phenomenological inquiry. The manner in which one comports them- selves toward the world, and toward Others colours such comportment. The issue of significa- tion will become a major issue in Otherwise Than Being, as we shall see in chapter 6. Levinas continues by analyzing Kant’s concept of judgment, this concept being central to Levinas’ argument in Totality and Infinity. Levinas analyzes Husserl’s antinomy between sen- sibility (Kant’s aesthetic) and understanding (Kant’s logic). In this Kantian sense, judgment me- diates between sensibility and understanding. On the one hand, both sensibility and intuition

565 69.

566 70.

567 Levinas, 73, citing Husserl, Logical Investigations, III, 93 [p.742]. 568 Levinas, 72, citing Logical Investigations, III, 89 [p. 739].

569 Levinas, 72. 570 72. 571 “This is why Husserl also calls it ‘apprehension’” (72). Sadler 119 can be subsumed under the category of intuition. On the other hand, Levinas emphasizes the intrinsic difference between the two.572 Levinas’ early thought here is in-line with his later, ‘ma- ture’ formulation that the difference between sensibility and understanding cannot be mediated by the ‘third term’ of judgment. Rather, the abyss between the two cannot be bridged, and this necessitates the limit of two, unmediated terms: Self and Other. Levinas continues by noting Husserl’s remarkable method of delineating the difference between sensibility and understanding: “In order to distinguish sensibility from understanding[,] Husserl begins, not with some naïve metaphysics or anthropology, but from the intrinsic mean- ing of sensible or categorical life itself.”573 A ‘naïve metaphysics’ would posit sensibility and understanding as respective ‘qualities’ affixed to the ‘substance’ of individual reason; a ‘naïve anthropology’ would make a simplistic appeal to ‘human nature’ as the source of sensation and understanding. Therefore, Levinas argues that Husserl’s appeal is to the ‘lived’ nature of sensation or categorization as a lived-action or ‘doing’ of human existences. In Husserl’s meaning of ‘sensible objects,’ their givenness means they are given not in relation to other ‘acts’ (such as human cognition), but rather ‘in a single degree,’ or all-at-once. This also deals with the Empiricists’ problem of seeing an object from multiple angles, and the seeming inability to commensurate them into a single ‘object’ without an appeal to some kind of ‘substance.’574 ‘Categorical perception,’ on the other hand, divides the ‘wholeness’ of given sensible objects into its constituent parts for analysis and synthesis.575 In this manner, Levinas would be in-line with Heidegger’s lectures on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where Heidegger argues against the Marburg Neo-Kantian thesis that Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic” is mere- ly a pre-critical holdover, and could be easily collapsed into the transcendental logic. Phenom- enology would argue against this ‘logocentrism’ (in the literal sense), arguing for the necessity of pre-rational, sensate experience. Therefore, Levinas sums up the antinomy between sensi- bility and understanding: [These considerations of the intrinsic meanings of sensibility and understanding] clarify many aspects of the problem of the relationship between sensibility and understanding. Indeed, one seems to find there a deep antinomy: the spontaneity of the mind which characterizes categorical acts appears to perform a creation that goes beyond sensible perception, yet the objects of logical thought seem to belong to the objective sphere.576

572 79.

573 79.

574 79. 575 80.

576 81. Sadler 120

The creation of ideal objects is the concern for Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, asking the ques- tion “How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?” The problem as Kant presented it was the ideal objects of speculative reason have no relation to experience. At the same time, Kant re-purposes these objects as the “Postulates of Pure Practical Reason” in the Second Critique. The problem becomes the ideal objects’ relation to experience (or lack thereof). Levinas’ analysis of Husserl’s writings on sensibility and understanding prepares Lev- inas’ analysis of judgment, as the ‘third term’ mediating the two primary terms. Levinas sum- marizes: “Our analyses have tried to show the role played by such synthetic acts as judgments in giving us access to being, i.e., knowledge.”577 Levinas follows that judgment is not the es- sential component of knowledge (but in the Kantian sense, it is the application of principles to experience, as ‘technical reason’).578 In this manner, Levinas states: “The function of judgments is quite different. [The function of judgments] consists in constituting a new form of objects, a new level of being.”579 This is the summary of the ideality of Kant’s epistemology: that objects’ ideality comes not from their ‘objective existence’ in ‘pure mind’ (as according to Berkleyan idealism, which Kant calls ‘dogmatic idealism’), but in the ideality of the given objects as thought-through the a priori structures of consciousness. In this manner, phenomenology does not fall into the epistemological trap of solipsism, or even ‘dogmatic idealism.’

§5. Levinas’ Early Analysis of Mediation

The problem becomes the necessary mediation of given objects as objects ‘for-us’ (or more in line with the idea of individual phenomenological consciousness, ‘for-me’).580 The problem of meditation is not merely epistemological, but religious. In the Jewish arguments against Christianity, one argument hinges on the mediation of Jesus between God and the hu- mans. In this manner, the concept of the mediating Christ is compared to the Greek concept of the Demiurge, who mediates the phenomenal world and the world of the forms, according to the divine Logos. Hermann Cohen, in his defense of Judaism titled Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, argues against the mediation of the Logos as a holdover from pagan philos- ophy, uncritically absorbed by the Christian Church.

577 83.

578 83.

579 83. 580 See Bettina Bergo on “sensuous-affective immediacy and intentional or cognitive con- sciousness” (“Levinas’s Project: An Interpretative Phenomenology of Sensibility and Intersub- jectivity”, 79). Sadler 121

With this context of the problem of mediation in religion, in would then make sense for Levinas to make the following argument: The logos must be constituted according to a law. It is logic which will formulate the laws of reasonable thought, i.e., the laws of a thought which is adequate to its object. The laws of logic which allow us to bind subject and predicate become the very law of reality. This conception is then based on a metaphysical thesis which says that the principles of judgment are at the same time the principles of being. This thesis will become a problem for Kant.581

‘Adequacy’ is itself a rationalist concept that assumes that the relationship between the object of our perceptions and our concepts can be commensurate on a one-to-one ratio. In other words, if the idea one has in mind (‘interiority’) is clear and distinct, the objects those ideas rep- resent (‘externally’) must exist ‘out there.’ There are many assumptions here that modern phi- losophy, since Kant, has attempted to overcome: these assumptions are summed up here as ‘the metaphysical thesis.’ The metaphysical thesis is the idea of a ‘subject’ that ‘has’ (propre) properties that belong to it. In this manner, the manner in which individuals apply principles to experience through the technical faulty of judgment is assumed to determine actual existences in the world, rather than the merely subjective faculty of judgment. Kant’s Critique of Judgment attempts to overcome the rationalist thesis, while introducing its own problems (in terms of the fundamental meaning of sensation). Therefore, the ‘logos’ as mediating faculty is itself prob- lematic, and will be critiqued by Levinas in Totality and Infinity. Contrasting Leibnitz against Hume, Kant argues that adequation cannot be made be- tween inner and outer experience, because the assumption of the objectivity guaranteed by adequation is impossible. Levinas states: “Indeed, truth can never be demonstrated as the ad- equation between thought and things, since things can be given only in thought.”582 Therefore, the appeal to phenomenally is Kant’s answer to the problem of adequate objects’ ‘reality,’ inso- far as they merely appear (to proverbial ‘me’) as the phenomenon.583 Therefore, the idea of syn- thetic a priori judgments becomes the locus by which the multiplicity of experience is ‘thought- through’ the categories and applied to the understanding.584 Levinas is therefore able to use Kant’s engagement with early-modern philosophy to bolster Husserl’s concept of ‘consciousness’ as such: “A subject is a being which, inasmuch as it exists, is already in the presence of the world, and this is what constitutes its very being.”585

581 Levinas, Intuition, 85. 582 86.

583 87. 584 87. 585 88. Sadler 122

In this sense, Levinas can argue that: “for Husserl, sensibility is already capable of reason, be- cause one may already speak of the existence or nonexistence of sensible objects.”586 There- fore, Levinas can end chapter 5 of Theory of Intuition by summarizing his previous argument: “We insisted on [the importance of synthetic judgments] in this preceding chapter by showing that the difference between judgments and ‘representations’ is not a difference in quality but in matter.”587 Levinas argues that the ‘stuff’ of judgments and mere representations is their imme- diacy to sensation, as judgment does the proper epistemological work of applying sensations to the categories of the understanding (the concern of the Critique of Pure Reason), while repre- sentations are the merely the subjective, individual experience of that sensation (as proper to the Critique of Judgment). For an individual to re-present their experience to themself is to medi- ate their experience, including the experience of the Other person.

§6. Levinas’ Interim Texts

Levinas’ interim between his early Theory of Intuition and the mature magnum opus To- tality and Infinity consisted of essays developing and engaging with Husserl’s phenomenology. Of course, this work was punctuated by the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, the defeat of France (Levinas’ adopted country), the Holocaust and many French men interred in prisoner-of- war camps, or deported to the death camps. Levinas survived this period, but he was clearly unable to write. In this period, we see articles like “Phenomenology” in 1939, and “The Work of Edmund Husserl” in 1940: nevertheless, his 1947 postwar book De L’existence à l’existant [From Existence to the Existent] did attempt to develop a number of nascent ideas that will come to maturity in Totality and Infinity. In his 1934 article “Phenomenology,” Levinas introduces phenomenological develop- ment’s since Husserl’s early realist phase, followed by transcendental idealism (á la Kant), and followed by Heidegger’s existential phenomenology.588 Referencing Husserl’s student Eugen Fink, Levinas focuses on the importance of representation in phenomenology. Levinas distin- guishes between Husserl’s transcendental consciousness and Heidegger’s finite conscious- ness of the everyday.589 However, Levinas thinks that Fink is too-quick to offer a solution to Heidegger’s problem of human finitude, by offering Husserl’s phenomenological reduction as

586 89.

587 89.

588 Discovering Existence With Husserl, 39. 589 41. Sadler 123 an ‘escape’ from the finite nature of everyday existence.590 This appeal to a transcendental epoché makes the world-negating movement that Nietzsche would call ‘nihilism’ (in the literal sense without the value judgment normally associated with such a term). Levinas’ philosophy, while resisting the impersonal finitude of Heidegger’s concept of Being, still struggles with and remains inside the given world, rather than naïvely attempting to escape from it. According to Levinas, Fink analyzes Kant’s concept of the imagination, which itself does the work of mediating between sensations and concepts. Using Fink, Levinas argues that imagination is not strictly spatial (concerning the world external to the perceiver), nor a part of personal temporality.591 Fink contrasts ‘unreality’ is different from negation: that which is unreal is not a logical negation of that which exists, the ‘unreal’ has its own internal existence in its imaginary nature. By way of examples, Fink gives dreams (a standard concern after psycho- analysis) and ‘painted images.’ The latter of the two concerns us here, as the representative image is the domain of Kant’s third critique: “A painted image, belonging by its material reality to the real world, reveals to us at the same time an unreal world and time; it takes its place be- tween two worlds.”592 In like manner, Judgment is also ‘between’ in the sense of being a facul- ty between the a priori faculties of epistemology and that of ethics. Levinas contrasts Fink’s ‘pure’ Husserlian phenomenology against Hermann Mörchen, who Levinas characterizes as Heideggerian. Summarizing Heidegger’s method, Levinas states: “[‘The Imagination in Kant’] sets out with that view that the living past is not forever immobi- lized, that it is somehow a function of the present. One must then situate the systems of the past in a perspective ordered by current thought, and even interpret them with the help of a modern terminology.”593 In like manner, Levinas argues that Heidegger’s method focuses on the finitude of an individual, who is defined by their future ‘for-death.’594 Levinas acknowledges that Mörchen made these arguments before Heidegger gave his lectures collected as the Phe- nomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but he follows Heidegger’s internal logic to reach very similar conclusions about the finite subject in Kant’s epistemology.595 In this regard, Levinas agrees with Heidegger and Mörchten in their argument against the Marburg Neo-Kantians, who make the mistake of attempting to collapse the receptivity of the aesthetic

590 42. 591 42. 592 42.

593 43. 594 43. 595 43. Sadler 124 into the logic. The affirmation of the transcendental aesthetic is phenomenological, both Husserlian and Heideggerian. Levinas outlines Kant’s problem with merely dividing the mind into two faculties of re- ceptivity (receiving sensation for the purposes of knowledge) and spontaneity (the free-associ- ation of ideas, or in the ethical sense, freedom), and the need for a ‘third term’ to unify the two.596 Levinas here makes the important distinction between the schematism, which trans- lates sensations into concepts, and the less epistemologically-defined imagination: “Indeed, the imagination does not easily enter into the sensibility-understanding schema.”597 Levinas here acknowledges that the location of the imagination in Kant’s system is fraught with tension, that Kant himself had trouble locating it in any definite manner.598 The ambiguity of the imagi- nation, versus the definite epistemological role of the schematism is the imagination’s strength in defying the rigid structures that Kant attributes to epistemology and faculties of conscious- ness. Levinas continues to engage with Mörchen, in the manner in which Mörchen makes use of Kant’s work in a Heideggerian framework by which the holism of the world is ‘hollowed-out’ by metaphysics, creating a ‘clearing’ in which truth may appear (in the sense of ‘a-letheia’ or literally ‘uncovered’): “[Mörchen] tries to show that the function of the imagination is essentially transcendental, for it expresses only the projection of the mind toward that which will be given to it, the creation of a whole in which a particular being could appear to a finite subject that is incapable of creating being.”599 On the one hand, the argument from finitude is in-line with the biblical idea of a finite individual in the face of an infinite God and the cosmos that God has created. On the other hand, Levinas will argue against the emphasis on finitude in Totality and Infinity, a point later shared by Emil Fackenheim in his book To Mend the World.600 The question of finitude and the infinite is an antinomy between Levinas’ Husserlian thought and Heidegger’s appeal to hermeneutic consciousness.

596 43.

597 43. 598 43.

599 44.

600 See Emil Fackenheim on the topic of finitude, see To Mend The World, 159). One would think that ‘finitude' would be a human's condition in the face of the infinite God. However, Fackenheim emphasizes that Heideggerian finitude admits of no transcendence. Sadler 125

§7. Ipseity, Il y a, The ‘There Is’

In the 1947 text De l’existence à l’existant, Levinas develops the concepts of the tran- quilizing light, and the insomnia of night in the form of the ‘there is’ (il y a).601 These concepts are later developed in Totality, but it is important to understand their origin. De l’existence begins with Levinas elaborating the philosophical problematic with the Heideggerian notion of Being.602 Levinas acknowledges that Heidegger has created the great modern break in philos- ophy, between the metaphysics that came before him, and the philosophy that came after. As opposed to a naive retreat into a pre-Heideggerian philosophy, Levinas admits that the only way to deal with the philosophical crisis foisted upon us (and its political manifestation in Nazism) is to deal with Heidegger’s thought, and to go through it in order to arcuate a post- Heideggerian philosophy.603 He ends the preface with by arguing that radical evil has its own existence, as opposed to the idea that evil is merely the absence of Good: “We shall try to con- test the idea that evil is defect.”604 The idea of evil having its own existence is a strong position, almost akin to the gnostic nightmare of the ‘Demiurge’ or Cartesian ‘Evil Genius.’ Attributing agency to evil in-itself presents the problem of agency other than God, resulting in a kind of dualism. Emil Fackenheim deals with this ‘problem of evil’ by arguing that, in the particular case of the Holocaust, a world under the control of evil was created. This appeal to a ‘separate world’ by Fackenheim deals with this issue of evil’s agency competing with the Creator God. Levinas will make different appeals to divine agency in his own thought, rather than posit evil agency as an author of a world. Levinas begins with an appeal to the fragmentation of post-Heideggerian philosophy and its political ramifications in Nazism and the Holocaust. These localized ‘instances’ of Being (da-Sein in Heidegger’s terminology), by which individuals and groups create worlds for them- selves gives these localized situations ‘existences’ with their own internal logics, however nightmarish. Levinas here appeals to the ‘twilight’ nature of these ambiguous ‘worlds.’605 Lev-

601 It should also be noted that Levinas makes the category error which defines a central theme of his work: Levinas mistakes Plato’s ‘The Good’ (τό ἀγαθόν) for an ethical concept, while Pla- to’s ‘Good’ has the quality of an aesthetic ‘Good’ (ή καλός) that the Greeks would have con- ceived. This category error must be dealt with in a more in-depth manner. See Levinas’ preface to De l’existence à l’existant, xxvii.

602 De l’existence à l’existant, 3.

603 5. Compare to the White Rose Society's traditional Kantian reaction against Nazism, Fack- enheim To Mend The World, IV, 12, B (266-273).

604 De l’existence, 5. 605 7. Sadler 126 inas engages with a similar concern to the notion of ‘twilight’ in his Talmudic lecture on the ap- propriate time for learning ‘Greek Wisdom.’ Levinas quotes the statement of R. Ishmael: ‘nei- ther in the morning nor the evening.’ Levinas interprets R. Ishmael’s words not as dismissive of philosophy, but as concerned with this ‘twilight nature’ where morality is ambiguous and there is a need for thinking outside one’s immediate culture and assumptions, towards the ethical principles, meanings, and experiences involved in such difficult situations.606 In this case where even the most hyperbolic horrors (e.g. Nazism) can be internally consistent, even an enlight- enment appeal to universal logic does not have the regulative nature ascribed to it by Kant. Levinas calls these localized ‘world-spheres’ ‘totality,’ the desire of a specific, finite locus of Being to will itself to be a universal Totality. Levinas’ first chapter of Existence brings up a fundamental distinction in Kantian thought, the difference between a way that bodies relate to one another in a Geometric manner (Verhältnis in German), and a relationship between individual persons (Beziehung). In his own phi- losophy, Levinas makes this distinction, between individual Beings in the Heideggerian sense (with its ontological focus on how finite bodies relate in an aesthetic manner) and the ethical relationship between persons, later to be defined as the relationship between Self/Same and Other.607 For Levinas, Heidegger’s notion of relationality exemplifies the impersonal nature of Being.608 Heidegger’s concept of authenticity is the ‘solution’ to the problem of impersonal Be- ing, by which an individual rises out of the proverbial mud of culturally determined existence in order to become independent by differentiating themselves from the impersonal collective.609 To not engage with Heidegger’s internal system and Heidegger’s failings according to that sys- tem is to consciously limit Heidegger’s thought to the impersonal, inauthentic concept of Be- ing. In that Heideggerian context, the key concept of De l’existence à l’existant is the con- cept of the there is, called the il y a in French, or the German es gibt. The ‘there is’ is a concept of being (hence ‘ontological’) in relation to but also in distinction from Heidegger’s central onto- logical concept of ‘Being-there’ (da-Sein).610 Levinas contrasts the there is against the Platonic idea of the light. The light’s illumination makes that which it illuminates seem ‘obvious,’ ‘plain,’ and ‘common-sense’ to the perceiver. Light in this case is that which makes one feel at-home-

606 See Levinas, Beyond the Verse, 26.

607 De l’existence, 8.

608 8.

609 See Heidegger's writing on the relation between collectivity and individuality: Heidegger, Being and Time, 129. See also 167.

610 De L’existence, 7. Sadler 127 with-themselves. By contrast is the ‘uncanny,’ that feeling of being ‘not-at-home’ (Unheim- lichkeit in German): “[The strangeness of light’s intelligibility] is, we might say, due to its very reality, to the very fact that there is existence. The questioning of Being is an experience of Be- ing in its strangeness.”611 The questioning of Being is in contrast to the assumption of everyday Being as ‘normal.’ It is when one metaphorically ‘steps-back’ from their everyday situation, that their situation no longer appears as ‘normal’ as one previously assumed in their ordinary life. Heidegger calls this concept ‘distantiation.’612 It should also be noted that Heidegger’s project of ‘hermeneutic phenomenology,’ which deals with the interpretation of Being, is contrasted against Levinas’ argument in De l’existence on the ‘questioning’ of being. Interpreting Being merely deals with what-is-there, looking at Being in its ipseity; while Levinas’ questioning of being ‘goes-beyond’ that merely ‘given’ context, from the ‘totality’ of Being to the ‘infinity’ of the Other. Otherwise, it would be too-easy to argue that Levinas’ discussion of questioning Be- ing is in-line with Heidegger’s notion of authenticity.613 Levinas states: “Being is essentially alien and strikes against us.”614 On the other hand, even the feelings of ‘fatigue’ and ‘indo- lence’ in the fact of existence (what Heidegger calls angst) are themselves “positions taken with regards to existence” in the sense of the existential maxim “reflection poisons desire.”615 In discussing the ‘weariness’ of existence itself, Levinas argues that one is committed to existence in the manner of an ‘unrevokable contract.’616 He follows by arguing that this weariness is a response to reflection upon Being, but this reflection does not have the same epistemological quality as ‘judgment.’617 In other words, to reflect on the world and to apply values to that which we experience (the mediating function of judgment as applying principles to experience) does not have this experiential quality of fatigue. Conversely, Levinas states: “Weariness does not occur as a judgment about the pain of being, a judgment colored with an affective tonality, with a ‘content’ of lassitude.”618 In other words, these primal, existential feel- ings are not merely ‘qualia’ to be applied by an individual to that which they observe , but are

611 Levinas, De l’existence, 9.

612 Heidegger describes ‘distantiation’ as the manner in which one's distance from their object allows them to have a greater sense of its wholeness: see Being and Time, 107.

613 Eigentlichkeit.

614 Levinas, De l’existence, 9. 615 In this manner, Levinas argues that the ‘stepping-back’ from everyday existence is an act of ‘reflection’: see 11.

616 12-13. 617 12. 618 12. Sadler 128 part-and-parcel of the everyday human condition. Levinas continues: “Prior to every judgment, to be tired of everything and everyone is to abdicate from existence.”619

§8. The Light of Consciousness and the Darkness of the Il y a

Light paralyzes what it illuminates, while the refusal of existence takes place in the dark i.e. the absence of light.620 This focus on the power of the visual is seen in Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism, with the power of the individual’s gaze to constitute the meaning over that which it perceives.621 This visual focus is further developed by Levinas’ student Jaques Derrida with the concept of ‘logocentrism,’ the tyranny of the eye upon that which it gazes.622 We will see Levinas further develop this concept of the power of the ocular over that which it gazes, and the light which is so necessary to that gaze. In all cases, the gaze is a form of sensation, and therefore has an aesthetic significance. Aestheticism has traditionally been considered fo- cused on the visual, in the manner of the ‘aesthete,’ also called the ‘fop’ or the ‘dandy,’ a pre- occupation with that which is entirely concerned with appearance. Levinas’ critique, while very much in the phenomenological mode, attempts to overcome the trap of aestheticism in phe- nomenology. Levinas compares the ‘aestheticism’ the eye with the carelessness of play. Levinas fol- lows with a rare engagement with Johann Huizinga’s phenomenology of play. The Dutch scholar’s 1938 text Homo Ludens is a foundational text for play as a phenomenon, and its social implications. Huizinga’s work on play involves the argument that play requires utmost serious- ness to the rules of the game and the space in which the game takes place (what is often summarizes as ‘the Magic Circle’). Levinas, by contrast, argues: “Games also begin, but their beginnings lack seriousness. They are levity itself. One can drop them at any moment.”623 Lev- inas approaches the phenomenon of play from a Husserlian standpoint: Husserl argues in Cartesian Meditations that an individual chooses to abide in their choice until they choose to no longer do so. Huizinga’s Homo Ludens is more in the Heideggerian mode, with a focus on space and context (the rules and culture that determine the specifics of a game). The space of play

619 12. 620 12. “It is, we might say, the very way the phenomenon of the refusal to exist can come about, just as in the order of experience, vision alone is the apprehension of light and hearing alone the perception of sound.”

621 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 340, 345. 622 Jaques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, 3, 6, 7.

623 Levinas, De l’existence, 13. Sadler 129 has the quality of Heidegger’s notion of the ‘clearing’ of Being which uncovers truth (a-letheia), allowing it to ‘appear’ (the proper sense of phenomenology). Levinas follows by arguing “A game is made up of gestures, movements, decisions and feelings – so many acts which begin, but its reality qua game is enacted above that is enacted above that basis, and is essentially made of unreality.”624 Levinas’ interpretation of play has a more improvisational emphasis, ‘free-play,’ as opposed to Huizinga’s emphasis on the serious structured nature of play. Lev- inas’ Husserlian understanding of bodily comportment (the gestures of play) is more in com- mon with Sartre’s emphasis on the freedom involved in bodily comportment and self-styliza- tion.625 In the Husserlian sense, bodily gestures are expressed and abided by in pure freedom, and may be changed by the choice of the individual. However, a concept like ‘habitus,’ which deals with the manner in which an individual habituates their body language and style, enables us to discuss how historically-affected consciousness finds itself situated in its world.626 In this case, Heidegger’s thought more accurately discusses the meaning of play: “A game has no history.”627 Levinas continues, in the midst of articulating the existential states of indolence and fa- tigue (both refusals in the face of Being), he further juxtaposes seriousness (‘effort’ in this case) and play: “Effort and play are mutually exclusive.”628 While Huizinga would disagree, Levinas follows with a discussion of the ‘plane’ upon which the game takes place, his own analysis of the spatialization of the ludic. Describing this spatial ‘plane’ or ‘game space’: “Of course there can be effort in sports, but then the game is played as if it were over and beyond effort, at a plane where we live out a separation between effort and its goal, where it is possible to enjoy what is disinterested and gratuitous in effort.”629 While a game should be played for ‘its own sake’ rather than for the sake of a ‘goal’ (as Levinas has correctly articulated), his misunder- standing is his presumed ‘carelessness’ of play. The idea of ‘disinterestedness’ and the idea of a game played ‘for its own sake’ mirrors Kantian ideas like ethical action done on principal with no concern for results (Critique of Practical Reason) and the idea of art and the beautiful as appreciated by a disinterested, rational observer (Critique of Judgment). In this sense, Levinas

624 Levinas, De l’existence, 13-14. 625 Sartre uses the example of a waiter comporting and stying his body in the manner of ‘a waiter’: see Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 102. 626 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 134.

627 Levinas, De l’existence, 14. Levinas follows: “[A game] is a paradoxical kind of existence which is not prolonged into a having” (14).

628 Levinas, De l’existence, 22. 629 Levinas, 22. Sadler 130 reveals his Kantian assumptions in not taking play as ‘seriously’ as Huizinga. Levinas follows his previous discussion of the spatialized plane with the temporal nature of play, writing: “The effect occurs in a broader psychological system that refers to a history and a temporal horizon.”630 Here Levinas has presented the ‘aesthetic’ of play in the sense of Kant’s ‘Tran- scendental Aesthetic,’ space and time as the conditions of all sensibility. In this way, Levinas has ‘reduced’ play to an experience merely of sensation. Kantian temporality is the ‘internal’ perception of one’s thoughts in succession. However, Levinas argues for seriousness, breaking the spatially-focused nature of play in an instant; in the face of seriousness and effort given to the game, Levinas argues that the temporal ‘instant’ is broken by taking the game seriously.631 Levinas’ ‘aesthetic’ engagement with play puts him firmly in the Kantian-Husserlian mode, while arguing against Huizinga’s implicit Heidiggerian assumptions. Levinas analysis of bare, individual existence, and the ‘instant’ of labour (which breaks his characterization of the effortlessness of play) gives way to an analysis of an individual’s re- lation to the world through that labour. While the ‘instant’ is highly individual and internal in its temporal sense, the world is the external, spatial relation to that which we encounter. Heideg- ger’s concept of Being-in-the-world is an attempt to overcome the subject-object dichotomy from the traditional ontology. Therefore, to focus on the more traditional relation of an individual subject over the objects it encounters is not in the Heideggerian mode. However, for Heideg- ger, the individual’s primary manner of relation to the world around them is through engage- ment with tools that extend one’s ability to affect the world. Heidegger calls this term ‘Zuhan- denheit’ or ‘ready-to-hand.’ Tools are an extension of one’s embodiment in one’s ability to act on the world. In the same manner, these ‘ready-to-hand’ tools affect the individual using them, making the distinction between an individual and their world less distinct.

§9. Ego and God

Levinas, for the sake of argument, engages with Heidegger’s presupposition: “To be in the world is to be attached to things.”632 Here Levinas has an early articulation of his phenom- enology of ‘enjoyment’ of one’s life in the world that he will later develop in Totality and Infinity. Levinas follows: “Theophile Gautier’s line ‘I am one of those for whom the external world exists’

630 22.

631 “But in its instant, effort, even effort in sports, is a suspending of all play, a serious under- taking, and fatigue” (22).

632 Levinas, De l’existence, 27. Sadler 131 expresses that joyous appetite for things which constitutes being in the world.”633 On the one hand, one would argue that such an attitude of focus on individual enjoyment of the world would be hedonistic and self-absorbed. However, Levinas’ background in the Talmudic tradi- tion is aware of the Rabbinical notion: “each and every one is obliged to say, ‘for my sake was the world created.’”634 One normally associates traditional religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, as being self-denying and focused on serving the Divine and one’s fellow-person. On the other hand, rabbinic writings have a certain sense of reasonable self-interest, as op- posed to a purely self-mortifying ethic (which is more stereotypically characterizes Christianity)635. However, Levinas will focus on arguments for self-denial in service to the Other in his mature works, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being. In discussing the limit posed by Aristotle’s God (as the apex of the closed shell of the cosmos, or Being), Levinas discusses the role of teleology in Heideggerian finitude.636 Teleolo- gy in Heidegger’s thought takes the role of ‘Being-toward-Death’ (Sein zum Tode), which is the ultimate finite limit on human freedom and temporality. However, after Newtonian, a finite Aris- totelian cosmos has given way to an infinite universe. In this sense, Levinas can posit the movement from finite Being to transcendent infinity, writing: “Existing, in the whole of Western idealism, refers to this intentional movement from inwardness to the exterior.”637 In Levinas’ formulation, one begins in the existential everyday of Being, but with the revelation of the Other that breaks the shell of Being, one moves outside their personal world-shell, moving outside one’s personal sphere towards infinity in the person of the Other.638 The attempt of an individ- ual to make their merely personal world-shell universal, attempting to contain the freedoms and destinies of Others in one’s personal world-space has the tyrannical quality that Levinas calls ‘totality.’ In this manner: “Objects are destined for me; they are for me.”639 However, from this individual world-hood, one is able to shatter these finite boundaries in order encounter the in- finity of the Other. While the concepts of Totality and Infinity is fully articulated in the book by that name, Levinas lays the seeds in De l’existence à l’existant.

633 27. 634 B. Sanhedrin, 37a.

635 Regarding reasonable self-interest, see the Gemara's commentary, B. Baba Metsia 10a, ref. Leviticus 25:55.

636 De l’existence, 29.

637 29, Italics’ Levinas’. 638 30.

639 Levinas, 30. Compare to Heidegger’s concept of Being which is “for-me” (Jemeinigkeit). Sadler 132

Levinas’ phenomenology of the non-appearance of the Other will emphasize the nudity of the Other, their vulnerability in the face of the Self’s worldly comfort. However, in developing these ideas in their nascent form, Levinas focuses on the Other’s clothing. With this context in mind: In the world the [O]ther is indeed not treated like a thing, but is never separated from things. Not only is he approached and given in his social situation, not only is respect for a person shown through respect for his rights and his prerogatives, not only do institutions, like the arrangements which make things accessible to us, put us into relationship with persons, collectivities, history and the supernat- ural, but in the world the [O]ther is an object already through his clothing.640

Levinas here discusses the complex of relations that go into the process of historicizing, con- textualizing, and objectifying of the Other.641 Levinas introduces an early version of his formulation of the face the Other, which ap- pears to us in its nudity: “Form is that by which a being is turned toward the sun, that by which it has a face, through which it gives itself, by which it comes forward.”642 The presentation of the face in its nudity would be considered, to remain in Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger’s vocabulary, as the most ‘authentic’ relationship possible of an individual to anything outside that individual-self. ‘Authenticity’ in Heidegger is the most individualizing act, by which individ- uals resist their immediate context. For Levinas, the act of removing one’s-self follows the en- counter of the Other, by the ‘appearance’ of the face. ‘Appearance’ as the face is not merely a phenomenon (‘that-which-appears-to-me'), but rather a going-beyond. Part of the Levinas’ ar- gument involves framing the Other as beyond-mere-appearance, which his mature works will deal with. The phenomenology of an individual aiming beyond their self becomes, in-effect, an ‘apo-phansis,’ or phenomenology of non-appearance (which seems to be a contradiction in terms). As Levinas’ own critical reformulation of Heidegger’s concept of ‘inauthenticity’ (when one finds one’s self drawn back down into their own communal-social context) is the attempt to mediate the relationship of the Self/Same to the Other. If the unmediated relation of the indi- vidual to the Other is the most authentic, then any attempt to come in-between the individual and the Other is a ‘fall’ into Heideggerian inauthenticity. Levinas calls the mediation of the two primary terms (Same/Other) as the impersonal ‘third term.’643 While Heideggerian authenticity involves the individual isolating themselves from the proverbial ‘mud’ of their context, Levinas’

640 Levinas, 30-31.

641 31. 642 31. 643 32. Sadler 133 notion of authenticity is the encounter of the Other in their individuality: the attempt is to go- beyond the immediate relation to objects to that which is beyond objectification. Levinas states: “Not everything that is given in the world is a tool.”644 For Heidegger, tools and persons both have an indistinct quality between subjective and objective. In other words, tools and people are coeval. Levinas’ argument involves the immediacy of one’s relation to the world around them but does not make ‘Zuhandenheit’ out of them., but rather such ‘things’ are ends- in-themselves.645 Thus, Levinas argues that the Other’s beyond-objecthood creates a desire in the individual that cannot be fulfilled.646 “The other is precisely this objectless dimension.”647 While Levinas is a phenomenologist, his critical phenomenology understands that the epistemological structures an individual’s consciousness limits itself from the true experience of alterity that is outside their perspective and horizon.648 As opposed to Heidegger’s emphasis on the ‘weight’ of history and the world, Husserl’s transcendental epoché allows for the possibil- ity of an individual’s negation of the world. This epoché allows the individual some promise of being able, however ideally, to escape the vicious circle: “But consciousness describes a closed circle in which it stays effacing every ulterior finality, a circle where there can be satisfac- tion and avowal. This circle is the world.”649 Levinas’ critical reformulation of Husserl helps to give an ‘out’ from the world in order to allow for an ‘opening’ or ‘negation’ in the circle of being. Levinas follows by discussing how the individual encounters light through sensation, which makes the ‘surface’ appear to the eye. Levinas states: “Light, whether it emanates from the sensible or from the intelligible sun, is, since Plato, said to be a condition for all beings.”650 Here we see the ‘aesthetic’ nature of Plato’s concept of ‘The Good,’ that which individuals per- ceive visually, the desire for that which is pleasing to individual's sight. Levinas follows: “What- ever may be the physico-mathematical explanation of the light which fills our universe, phe- nomenologically it is a condition for phenomena, that is, for meaning.”651 The philosophical preoccupation with meaning is here seen as part of this aesthetic concern with that which ap- pears to individual perception in the ‘light.’ As opposed to the ‘cluttered’ ‘weight’ of history, the

644 34. 645 34.

646 35. 647 35. 648 33-34.

649 36. 650 40. 651 40. Sadler 134 spatial sensation of space as ‘light’ (in the Kantian sense) is an empty horizon transparent to perception. The metaphorical ‘sun’ is visible across the geometric plane, without the ‘clutter’ of buildings or terrain to obscure the purity of sight. According to Levinas: “Illuminated space all collects about a mind which possesses it. In this sense it is already like the product of a syn- thesis. Kant’s space is essentially a lit up space; it is in all its dimensions accessible, ex- plorable.”652 The concept of ‘light’ as the basis of western philosophy will itself be problema- tized in Levinas’ formulation of the there is.653 Levinas argues that the phenomenology of that which appears to us in the light has the quality of ‘capturing’ or suspending that which it perceives in the light. Therefore Levinas can argue: Light is thus the event of a suspension, an epoché, which consists in not com- promising oneself with the objects or the history with which one relates or which one realizes, in always remaining outside of those objects and that history, even outside of the history of the very being that suspends history.654

The individual, the ‘Same’ or ‘Self’ of the I has the power to ‘suspend’ the Other which they perceive, for-themself. Levinas states: “This suspension defines the I, its power to withdraw infinitely, and the ‘as for me….’”655 In this manner, Levinas compares the individual’s suspen- sion of that which it perceives with the problematic concept of ‘hypostasis.’ For Kant, ‘hy- postasis’ is the act of pure reason’s creation of objects of knowledge that it cannot actually perceive: “Light, knowing and consciousness appeared to constitute the very event of a hy- postasis.”656 The light’s inherent nature involves the desire to hypostatize that which appears to it, and the Other most of all. It is on this note that Levinas ends his chapter on the role of the light in phenomenology, and moves on to the ‘heaviness’ and ‘insomnia’ of ‘night.

§10. Aesthetic Mediation in De l’existence à l’existant

Levinas follows by engaging Bergson’s thought to discuss aesthetic mediation, arguing: “This way of interposing an image of the thing between us and the thing has the effect of ex- tracting the thing from the perspective of the world.”657 In this case, Levinas discusses photog-

652 41. 653 41-42.

654 43.

655 43. 656 44. 657 45-46. Sadler 135 raphy as an example of an artistic medium that mediates the individual and the Other (through the camera). Levinas follows by arguing for the loss of individual immediacy in the aesthetic experience, writing: “The movement of art consists in leaving the level of perception so as to reinstate sensation, in detaching the quality from this object reference.”658 The general idea in- volves the detachment of sensation from the idea of an object-proper. Levinas follows: “Instead of arriving at the object, the intention gets lost in the sensation itself, and it is this wandering about in sensation, in aisthesis, that produces the esthetic effect.”659 When sensation becomes it own end, as opposed to merely the presentation of that which determines the sensation, it becomes aestheticism. While aestheticism for its own sake has a certain purity in-line with Kant’s idea of morality for its own sake (rather than fear of of punishment or desire for reward), aesthetics is not tied to a principle (experience or the metaphysical moral law) in Kant’s system, and therefore aestheticism for its own sake does not have the same value as moral action for its own sake. Levinas follows with the most in-depth attention he gives to art and the beautiful, the purported domain of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Levinas argues for art in the same manner that Kant argued that Judgment (as formulated in the Third Critique and not the First) does not have its own synthetic a priori principal (whether experience or the metaphysical moral law). About the non-substantiality of art: “Sensation and the esthetic effect thus produce things in them- selves, but not as objects of a higher power; in sidestepping all objects, they open upon a new element foreign to the distinction of a “without” from a “within,” eluding even the category of the substantive.”660 In Levinas case, the ‘higher power’ is in reference to Kantian principles, and therefore the absence of the ‘category of the substantive’ for the art is in-line with Kant’s Third Critique. The interiority that Levinas references is not the interiority of individual experi- ence, but rather the less-substantive ‘world of the artist’: “But apart from this soul of objects, an artwork as a whole expresses what we call the world of the artist.”661 This world is not like Husserl’s “life-world” [Lebenswelt], the interior world and horizon as it appears to an individual, or Heidegger’s culturally-contextual world of the individual and community relating to the ob- jects at their grasp. The interior world of the artist lacks an objective horizon (and resulting in- tersubjectivity) as well as objects-at-hand. Considering that Heidegger’s “Question Concerning Technology” would be published after De l’existence à l’existant, it would become a question

658 47.

659 47. 660 48. 661 49. Sadler 136 as to whether art’s nature as a “destining which enframes us” would be comparable to Levinas’ characterization of the world of the artist. Levinas follows by discussing the superficiality of vision and the light: “Paradoxical as it may seem, painting is a struggle with sight. Sights seeks to draw out of the light being inte- grated into a whole.”662 Following his discussion of representation and sensation (appearance to one’s sight), Levinas discusses the ‘rupture’ of apparent coherence in the situation of art: “The breakup of continuity even on the surface of things, the preference for broken lines, the scorning of perspective and of the ‘real’ proportions between things, indicate a revolt against the continuity of curves.”663 The breakup, the ‘rupture’ of the continuity of appearance is ac- complished by art in the manner in which art/techné ‘enframes’ that which it re-presents to the world in its medium, is how sight can help give perspective to an individual. However, in oppo- sition to the ‘Apollonian’ focus on light, Levinas contrasts against the ‘vision’ of representation with the ‘Dionysian’ darkness of raw existence, what he calls the there is… Levinas ends the section: “The discovery of the materiality of being is not a discovery of a new quality, but of its formless proliferation. Behind the luminosity of forms, by which beings already relate to our ‘in- side,’ matter is the very fact of the there is…”664 In the traditional categories of Aristotelian ontology, the traditional dichotomy involves the distinction of form versus matter, with the distinction gendered between the masculine form (or breath of life, seed, reason) and feminine matter (receptive, carrying the generative mascu- line principal). In the realm of sensation, form preoccupies itself with vision, what Nietzsche calls ‘Apollonian,’ while the material is based the non-visual, somatic sensation, what is con- trasted as ‘Dionysian.’ Therefore, it makes sense for Levinas to contrast the raw experience of matter against his previous discussion of visual arts and representation. In his attempt to over- come the tyranny of representation, he makes this appeal to non-representative materiality in the there is… Levinas follows with the second section of the chapter, “Existence Without Existents.” He discusses the “night and the silence of nothingness.”665 He follows by discussing the im- personal third person (on in Levinas’ French, meaning ‘one’). This impersonality is in-line with Heidegger’s notion of Das Man or ‘the they.’ “Like the third person pronoun in the impersonal form of a verb, it designates not the uncertainly known author of the action, but the character-

662 Levinas, De l’existence, 50.

663 50-51. 664 51. 665 52. Sadler 137 istic of this action itself which somehow has no author.”666 Thus, instead of a specific individual inhibiting the space of authorship, Levinas posits this impersonal being as the there is…, but exactly who there is… is anonymous and unknown. He follows: “This impersonal, anonymous, yet inextinguishable ‘consummation’ of being, which murmurs in the depths of nothingness itself we shall designate by the term there is. The there is, inasmuch as it resists a personal form, is ‘being in general.’667 Levinas’s concept of the there is implies a reference to the figure of Lilith, the dark-femi- nine archetype of the night, from his own Jewish tradition. Levinas implies this relationship be- tween the ‘night’ as ‘feminine’ when he states: “We could say that the night is the very experi- ence of the there is, if the term experience were not inapplicable to a situation which involves the total exclusion of light.”668 In this sense, ‘experience’ itself as a term demands vision in or- der to define one’s self against their horizon and that which is found within. Experience, as such, demands the objectification of Others. It would be a circular fallacy to assume that which one attempts to derive; in this regard, Levinas cannot simply makes the methodological leap to the Other: he must explain the human condition that requires this radical movement towards Otherness. Thus, the phenomenological condition is necessarily egoistic and objectifying: it is only through self-overcoming that one can attempt to encounter the Other.

§11. The Dark Density of Presence

Levinas contrasts the empty, geometric space illuminated by the ‘light’ of phenomeno- logical reason against the dense, heavy darkness. He states: “There is a nocturnal space, but it is no longer empty space, the transparency which both separates us from things and gives us access to them, by which they are given.”669 Therefore, the density of nocturnal space thwarts the phenomenological individual’s aesthetic drive. He follows: “But the points of nocturnal space do not refer to each other as in an illuminated space; there is no perspective, they are not situated.”670 And here the there is structurally resists the ‘given’ of the existential world to ‘us’ on the horizon that belongs to our own perspective. But in the midst of the epistemological denial by the there is, Levinas emphasizes that the ‘night’ is not merely negative, as in the nega-

666 52. 667 52.

668 52. 669 53. 670 53. Sadler 138 tion of epistemological structures: “The absence of perspective is not something purely nega- tive.”671 As opposed to a mere void or weight of absence, the raw existence of the night has its own manner of presence, like the idea of the ‘night hag,’ which sits on the chest of the sleeping individual, or other forms of what psychology collectively refers to as ‘sleep paralysis.’ “[The dark background of existence] makes things appear to us in a night, like the monotonous pres- ence that bears down on us in insomnia. The rustling of the there is… is horror.”672 In this case, it is difficult to call Levinas’ method a ‘phenomenology’ in the sense that phenomenology pre- supposes ‘sight,’ the epistemic mode that Levinas here intentionally subverts. It is a failure of language to argue that in this instance, Levinas is doing a ‘phenomenology of horror’ (or that the there is… is itself ‘a phenomenology of darkness’) because of phenomenology’s visual pre- suppositions. Rather, Levinas here makes appeal to what he will later refer to as ‘apophansis,’ which means ‘non-appearance.’ To call what Levinas is doing an application of phenomenolo- gy to non-appearance, or ‘a phenomenology of non-appearance,’ sounds like a blatant contra- diction. We can overcome this seeming contradiction if we understand that phenomenology is the assumed manner by which we approach the world: in a visual, situated manner relative to our own horizon. To go against the phenomenological thesis by his engagement with the there is is to affirm the assumption of phenomenology in the first place. In like manner, if phenome- nology focuses on an individual’s experience, then that individual’s experience is not of space, but of density, and not of sight but of body, and not of presence but of absence (such as the densely embodied non-presence of the there is), then by that description of experience, one is still performing a phenomenology. Levinas’ engagement with apophansis will become a major theme in Otherwise Than Being. The ‘phenomenon’ of horror ‘neutralizes’ the rational, perspectival faculties of an indi- vidual, rendering them subject to the weight of the there is: “Horror is somehow a movement which will strip consciousness of its very ‘subjectivity.’”673 The individual is stripped of their power over that which they experience, in the sense of having free choice. There is no mean- ingful freedom in the face of horror: in this regard, Levinas’ formulation of horror can be com- pared to the overwhelming natural force of the sublime. In this way, horror, like the sublime, aesthetically overwhelms the would-be-subject.674 As opposed to the most-individuated notion

671 53.

672 55. 673 55.

674 See Kant’s introduction to the Analytic of the Sublime in the Critique of Judgment, 5:244-5:245. Sadler 139 of the rational subject who re-presents their experiences for their self, Levinas contrasts with ‘collective representations’: “The sensible qualities of the sacred are incommensurable with the emotional power it emits and with the very nature of this emotion, but their function as bearers of ‘collective representations’ accounts for this disproportion and inadequateness.”675 Among the assumptions challenged here include the rationalist doctrine of ‘adequate ideas’: that if the rational subject can have a clear and distinct idea in their ‘interiority,’ then that idea must corre- late to something exterior to that subject. Levinas’ ‘sensible qualities of the sacred’ are applied to the Other, but have all-too-often applied to the idolatry of various pagan religions. The pagan ‘sensible qualities of the sacred’ are detailed by Heidegger in his “Question Concerning Tech- nology” essay, and in his other various writings (see his “Myth of Cura”).676 Therefore, Levinas makes the point to emphasize that this collective representation doesn’t fall into the aestheti- cism of the Platonic vision of the Forms: “Mystical participation is completely different from the Platonic participation in a genus: in it the identity of the terms is lost.”677 Thus, in the face of horror, the subject is broken of their rational act of applying a universal idea to a particular ex- perience, as in the case Kant’s faculty of judgment. The shock of horror is a shock to an indi- vidual’s epistemological aestheticism, removing them from their standard manner of comport- ing themselves toward the world. To emphasize Levinas’s extreme alterity without mediation, he argues that the relation between two terms is not mediated as in a venn diagram, where two circles connect through the mediating space between, becoming a third space of its own, while also involving the two main terms. In like manner, there is the law of the excluded middle, by which the two terms are mediated by a minor premise. Thus, Levinas can state: “The participation of one term in anoth- er does not consist in sharing an attribute; one term is the other.”678 The two terms, in-effect, can share no ‘happy medium’: Levinas’ move, while denying any ‘middle-ground,’ makes the move toward radical alterity in order to not fall into the trap of collapsing the Other into the Same. Levinas makes an explicit comparison of the ‘impersonality of the sacred’ with the kind of pagan religions exemplified by Heidegger’s ontology.679 Instead of the ‘evolutionary’ model of religion (from the problematic categories of ‘primitive’ to ‘advanced’ religions), Levinas is emphasizing the need for God’s revelation to the world, and the lack of knowledge of God from pre-revelatory humanity denies a notion of ‘natural religion’ available to humans through rea-

675 Levinas, De l’existence, 55.

676 See Heidegger’s myth of Cura [Care, Sorge] Heidegger, Being and Time, 197-198.

677 Levinas, De l’existence, 55. 678 55-56. 679 56. Sadler 140 son. Levinas can therefore argue: “Rather than to a God, the notion of the there is leads us to the absence of God, the absence of any being.”680 While the ‘absence of God’ in human expe- rience may seem like an appeal to ‘apophatic’ (‘that-which-cannot-be-spoken’) or ‘negative theology,’ Levinas’ later works seem to contradict such an argument, while he will later appeal to the ‘apophansis.’ Therefore, a key question in Levinas’ thought is: why Levinas rejects nega- tive theology while arguing for ‘apophansis’ is dealt with in a later chapter.

§12. Metaphysical Hypostasis

Levinas’ fourth section of the book, called “Hypostasis,” deals with a problem in the critique of metaphysics, by which one gives metaphysical permanence to ideas that do not merit them. The ideas prone to hypostasis are discussed in my chapter on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but Levinas’ engagement is in-line with the Kantian presuppositions of phenome- nology. Hypostasis is seen as a negative appeal to the pre-Kantian metaphysics that the mod- ern critical system sought to overcome: positing existences that have no origin or grounding in experience. Continuing the theme of insomnia and the ‘night hag,’ Levinas begins by stating: “The bare fact of presence is oppressive; one is held by being, held to be.”681 The idea of being held subject to being reversed the Heideggerian thesis that one’s Being-in-the-world belongs to them, it is [Gemeinde].682 In the case of the there is, the lack of presence in the there is over- comes hypostasis’ fallacious positing of presence. Levinas follows: Attention presupposes the freedom of the ego which directs it; the vigilance of insomnia which keeps our eyes open has no subject. It is the very return of presence into the void left by absence – not the return of some thing, but of a presence; It is the reawakening of the there is in the heart of negation.683

The idea of existential anxiety has long been a topic since Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, through Heidegger’s Being and Time, and Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Levinas’ own take on this concept develops it toward the idea that the horror and fear of the there is ‘shows itself’ to the perceiving individual in the form of insomnia or ‘wakefulness’: “[The vigilance of insomnia] is the very return of presence into the void left by absence – not the return of some thing, but of

680 56. 681 61.

682 See Heidegger, Being and Time, 42. For Dasein’s engagement with the Other from its own standpoint, see 118.

683 Levinas, De l’existence, 62. Sadler 141 a presence; it is the reawakening of the there is in the heart of negation.”684 Wakefulness shocks the individual to attention, instead of the idea of the ‘darkness’ removing consciousness. In this sense, we can compare it to how Heideggerian ‘angst’ removes the individual from their exis- tential everyday and forces their reflection.685 Heidegger argues that this ‘angst’ is the result of ‘Being-towards-death’ [Sein-zum-Töde], one’s fear of their impending death and the prospect of nothingness. However, unlike the idea of this fear ‘shocking’ an individual to consciousness, Levinas argues that the impersonal there is results in a wakefulness that encloses conscious- ness: “We are, thus, introducing into the impersonal event of the there is not the notion of con- sciousness, but of wakefulness, in which consciousness participates, affirming itself as a con- sciousness because it only participates in it.”686 Therefore, Levinas is able to argue that the there is which causes wakefulness does not do so through the objectification of the Other, as in the mode of phenomenal consciousness of ‘light.’ Rather, the ‘presence’ which presents itself through the there is defies objectification. Language fails in this case, as the ‘presence’ that is not a ‘thing’ does not ‘appear’ to consciousness in the phenomenological sense, but rather jars the individual to wakefulness, in order to attend to this presence. Levinas acknowledges the problematic of the there is in regards to its (non)’appearance’ in the sense that such a ‘non-ap- pearance’ goes-beyond what phenomenology can understand about experience. Levinas states: “Our affirmation of an anonymous vigilance goes beyond the phenomena, which already presupposes an ego, and thus eludes descriptive phenomenology.”687 The presupposition of an ego posits that ego to be negated in the experience of the Other. The fear of the there is, which defies description, is the fear of the abnegation of the Self/Same. This abnegation is not the assumption, but rather the result of Levinas’ transition from experiencing the phenomenal world toward referencing the noumenal world of ethics, signified by the Other’s face. Levinas follows: “Here description would make use of terms while striving to go beyond their consis- tency; it stages personages, while the there is is the dissipation of personages.”688 Finally, Lev- inas outlines the broader need for a method in order to go-beyond phenomenology’s engage-

68462. Bettina Bergo comments: “Descriptions that contrast the harshness of fatigue, the tor- ment of exhaustion with the light in which the world shimmers by day, only to sink into oppres- sive darkness by night, are motivated by Levinas’s years in Fallingsbostel” (66).

685 For Heideggerian ‘moods’ (state-of-mind [Befindlichkeit]), see Heidegger, Being and Time, 182. In terms of an individual separating themselves from ‘the They’ of Das Man, see 191.

686 Levinas, De l’existence, 62 687 63. 688 63. Sadler 142 ment with the world: “A method is called for such that thought is invited to go beyond intuition.”689 This method will be outlined in more detail come Totality and Infinity. In his discussions of ‘Here,’ ‘Sleep and Place,’ Levinas discusses how an individual hy- postatizes their self based on their extrinsic relations, space, home, ethnicity, family: “Then only the concrete determinations of the surroundings, of the setting, and the ties of habit and of his- tory give an individual character to a place which has become our home [le chez-soi], our home- town, our homeland, the world.”690 The identification of an individual with their immediate sur- roundings is the metaphorical ‘congealing’ or ‘solidification’ of an individual into a ‘subject’ in the metaphysical assumption under-attack by Kant and his successors. Levinas follows: “The antithesis of position is not the freedom of a subject suspended in the air, but the destruction of the subject, the disintegration of the hypostasis.”691 Levinas follows that emotion is the manner in which an individual subject is overwhelmed.692 Levinas references Heidegger in rela- tion to affectivity, because Heidegger discusses affectivity in relation to Aristotle’s Rhetoric.693 Towards this end: Physiological psychology, which started with emotional shock and presented the emotions in general as a disruption of equilibrium, seems to us here to have grasped the true nature of affectivity, despite its rudimentary language, more faithfully than the phenomenological analyses, which, after all, keep something of the character of comprehension, and consequently of apprehensions in emo- tions (Heidegger), and speak of emotional experience and of objects clothed with new properties (Husserl, Scheler).694

Levinas’ reference to physiological psychology argues in favor of the embodied psychology of his day (the idea that physical needs precede the phenomenological experience of those same states of being). Despite arguments against ‘physiological psychology’ from Kant and all the idealists following in his wake (Husserl here is an example), Levinas goes against the grain of his idealistic forbears and argues for the embodied psychology of being giving us the emotions which have been ‘bracketed’ by Husserl’s phenomenological epoché. The idea of emotions as ‘properties’ is an assumption of the old metaphysics (with its emphasis on ‘substances’ ‘hav- ing’ ‘properties’ affixed to them). Rather, the immediate affectivity of emotions is more ‘primor-

689 63. 690 67.

691 68.

692 68. 693 138.

694 Levinas, De l’existence, 68. Sadler 143 dial’ (to use Heideggerian vocabulary) than the phenomenological reflection on feelings as a form of ‘secondary’ affect. Levinas follows with a further discussion of an individual’s situation in the world, the manner in which they relate to their immediate surroundings, or more generally they are ‘there.’ The spatiality, the ‘here’ and the ‘there,’ as it were, relates to Heidegger’s fundamental concept of da-Sein [lit. ‘being-there’]. Levinas contrasts Heidegger’s ‘there’ (the ‘ontological’ state of one’s being-in-the-world) versus a pre-reflective ‘here’ (the ‘ontic’ in Heidegger’s vocabulary).695 To discuss the pre-reflective, or pre-structural nature of the ‘here’: The here that belongs to consciousness, the place of its sleep and of its escape into itself, is radically different from the Da involved in Heidegger’s Dasein. The latter already implies the world. The here we are starting with, the here of posi- tion, precedes every act of understanding, every horizon and all time.696

Levinas is working through the assumptions of the old metaphysical logic of a ‘subject’ that ‘has’ ‘things’ or ‘properties. This is not the primordial relation of an individual to their immediate space, but the result of abstraction. Levinas follows: “In positioning itself on a base the subject encumbered with being gathers itself together, stands up and masters all that encumbers it; its here gives to it a point of departure. A subject takes on things.”697

§13. The Nietzschian Upsurge Into History

Levinas follows this discussion of personal space with a discussion of personal, pri- mordial time. The geometric model of time makes instants into ‘points’ on a timeline, as op- posed to the anti-metaphysical thesis which attempts to overcome the ideality of time with the idea that each instance in time belongs to itself: this is in-line with Nietzsche’s idea of moments of time acting as ‘upsurges’ [Urprung] into history. In a manner similar to the anti-metaphysical thesis on time, Levinas juxtaposes the temporal present (which is itself an ‘upsurge’ breaking with the metaphysical timeline) versus the ‘hypostasis’ which seeks to ‘crystalize’ time into a substance with its own metaphysical status: “For the production of an instant of time cannot come from an infinite series, which it would have to traverse, but shows an indifference to that series; it can cut the Gordian knot of time without untying it.”698 In philosophical, logical termi- nology, the present as an ‘upsurge’ into time is an aphorism, which does not need to be logi-

695 Heidegger, Being and Time, 13.

696 Levinas, De l’existence, 68. 697 69. Also see Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, 162-163.

698 Levinas, De l’existence, 71. Sadler 144 cally demonstrated, but functions on the merit of whether one chooses to take-it-or-leave-it. In this manner, Levinas succinctly follows: “It can be, out of itself.”699 In terms of the anti-meta- physical thesis, Levinas follows by discussing the ephemerality of the ‘present,’ which he terms its ‘evanescence.’ He follows: “[The present] thus can have no continuity. Its evanescence is the ransom paid for its subjectivity, that is, for the transmutation, within the pure event of being, of an event into a substantive – a hypostasis.”700 Levinas argues that time itself resists hy- postasis, despite the metaphysical grid we attempt to place upon it.701 Ultimately, for the purposes of De l’existence á l’existant as a whole text, and its relation to Levinas’ corpus in the broader sense, the hypostasis is a holdover from the old metaphysics, which mediates the relation of the individual to time and space. Hypostasis attempts to ‘cap- ture’ the moment in the master/slave relation of subject and object. Therefore, it is key for my argument to articulate Levinas’ broader project of the critique of mediation itself. Levinas is here in-line with Kant, as Kant’s critical project outlined in the First Critique engaged with the metaphysical thesis and its attempt to hypostatize ideas without corresponding experiences. After discussing hypostasis throughout the chapter, Levinas finally comes to define the term and its relation to the history of ideas: “We are looking for the very apparition of the substan- tive. To designate this apparition we have taken up the term hypostasis which, in the history of philosophy, designed the event by which the act expressed by a verb became a being desig- nated by the substantive.”702. For Levinas, the absence of the substantive noun in the active verb (or ‘doing-without-a-doer’) is better than a hypostatized, mediating substance. The impor- tance of this absence in Levinas’ corpus will be developed more in the following chapter. Part of the 'epistemological original sin’ inherent to the human condition is the necessity for the individual to re-present sensations and experiences to themselves as objects of thought and understanding. Levinas understands the necessity of hypostasis to phenomenological consciousness: “Hypostasis, an existent, is a consciousness, because consciousness is local- ized and posited, and through the act, without transcendence, of taking a position, it comes to being out of itself, and already takes refuge in itself from Being itself.”703 The phenomenological thesis differentiates itself by locating consciousness in the world, situated in relation to its own horizon, which is according to the conscious individual’s own perspective. Rather than positing a conscious individual’s overcoming the need for mediating hypostasis in order to immediately

699 71. 700 71.

701 71. 702 83. 703 83. Sadler 145 arrive at the face of the Other, Levinas’ method demands the existential given in order for it to overcome it in the first place.. To posit the human condition already overcome is methodically lazy, since the phenomenology of abnegation would be unnecessary. The genesis of an individual in relation to their world requires an articulation of the ‘world’ in its phenomenological meaning.704 Levinas, in this case, seems to be agreeing with Heidegger’s assumption that one distances themselves from the world through acts of free- dom. In this meaning, one is a social-communal being prior to removing themselves from their social context (in which one ‘privates’ themself from the world in which they are already as- sumed to exist). In this context, Levinas can then state: “The freedom of knowledge and inten- tion is negative; it is non-engagement. But what is the meaning of non-engagement within the ontological adventure? It is the refusal of the definitive.”705 Levinas contrasts the free individ- ual’s non-engagement with the world through their freedom (freedom is refusal of the given world), one is distancing themselves from in order to better observe their horizon. Levinas can then follow: “But then there remains for me, in this world of light, where all is given but where everything is distance, the power of not taking anything or of acting as though I had not taken anything.”706 Light as metaphor for consciousness (in contradistinction to the darkness of the there is) is that which removes an individual from the ‘dark material’ of their context. The light is the manner in which an individual ‘paralyzes’ (or ‘hypostatizes’) the world that they witness. Therefore, Levinas can state succinctly: “The world and light are solitude. These given objects, these clothed beings are something other than myself, but they are mine.”707 While Other as belonging (‘mine-ness’ [Gemeinde]) to the same is ontologically necessary (it is the human con- dition), Levinas will follow by introducing the method and manner by which one may relinquish their attempt to capture the Other’s freedom for themself, and therefore move toward a more authentic relationship.

§14. Critique of Intersubjectivity in De l’existence á l’existant

Finally, we end this chapter’s engagement with De l’existence á l’existant with Levinas’ criticism of Husserl’s intersubjectivity, challenging the idea of the egalitarianism of both Husserl’s intersubjectivity and Martin Buber’s I and Thou: “To this collectivity of comrades we

704 “[Freedom] is enacted in our perpetual birth” (85). See also Husserl’s concept of Genesis from his late writings.

705 Levinas, De l’existence, 85. 706 85. 707 85. Sadler 146 contrast the I-you collectivity which precedes it. It is not a participation in a third term – inter- mediate person, truth, dogma, work, profession, interest dwelling, or meal; that is, it is not a communion.”708 In the primordial mode of relations Levinas articulates here (following Buber’s assumptions), the ‘primal’ relationship of the I and Thou becomes ‘covered’ and diluted by the various manners in which an individual attempts to deny the Other’s alterity. However, as op- posed to the ‘mere-equality’ between Buber’s formulation of the I-thou relationship, Levinas emphasizes the priority of the Other over the Self. Levinas critiques the ‘bourgeoisie’ mentality of ‘pompous’ charity to the Other, rather than the radical ‘upsurge’ of the Other's face.709 Lev- inas therefore can state on intersubjectivity: “Intersubjective space is initially asymmetrical.”710 Levinas follows: “Intersubjectivity is not simply the application of the category of multiplicity to the domain of the mind.”711 Levinas, firmly beholden to Kant’s second formulation of the cate- gorical imperative (“Treat Others always as an end in itself and not as a mere means”), but Lev- inas follows the dyadic philosophy already articulated (with his extended critique of the ‘third term’). Levinas can thus critique Kant’s third formulation of the categorical imperative (the “kingdom of ends”), writing: “The reciprocity of civilization – the kingdom of ends where each one is both end and means, a personal and personnel – is a leveling of the idea of fraternity, which is an outcome and not a point of departure, and refers back to everything implicated in eros.”712 Therefore, Levinas can critique the idea of liberal equality (‘equality-before-the-law’) as the inauthentic attempt to overcome difference between the Other’s demand upon the Self.713 The attempt to level the inherent asymmetry between the Self and Other is itself, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s terminology, an act of ‘bad faith.’714 We end our discussion of De l’existence with Lev- inas’ argument against the inability of the Same to substitute itself for the Other, which is im- portant for the idea of impersonal ‘terms’ that can stand in either position: “To the cosmos, the world of Plato is opposed to the world of the spirit, where the implications of eros are not re- ducible to the logic of genera, where the I is substituted for the same and the Other [auturi] for

708 98. 709 “There is no greater hypocrisy than that which invented well tempered charity” (98). 710 98.

711 98.

712 99.

713 Paul Ricoeur, in Oneself as Another, engages in the bifurcation of the self in dialectic with its- self that Levinas will critique in Totality. 714 See Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 109, 475. Sadler 147 the other.”715 In Levinas’ discussion of ‘genera,’ one’s ‘desire’ (eros) for the Other goes beyond reducing an individual and the Other to mere logical terms. The desire for the Other is either primordial to the logical reduction to terms, or transcends the mere geometric relation (as op- posed to ‘relationship’), perhaps desire does both. Levinas can conclude the chapter with: “Asymmetrical intersubjectivity is the locus of transcendence in which the subject, while pre- serving its structure’s subject, has the possibility of not inevitably returning to itself, the possi- bility of being fecund and (to anticipate what we shall examine later) having a son.”716 While it is over a decade off at this point, Levinas’ argument that procreation is the ultimate manner in which the self transcends itself toward an Other is the concluding thesis of Totality and Infinity. De l’existence á l’existant lays this groundwork for the development of ideas in his ‘mature’ works.

§14. Levinas’ Intermediary Articles On Husserl

In this chronological genealogy of Levinas’ critique of mediation (which this thesis ar- gues is a central concern throughout his corpus), we now transition from the embryonic formu- lation of Levinas’ thought in De l’existence á l’existant to his articles on Husserl leading up to the seminal Totality and Infinity. Levinas begins “Reflections on Phenomenological ‘Technique’” with a strong, pes- simistic statement: “Philosophy has not become a rigorous science, pursued by a team of in- vestigators, arriving at definitive results.”717 This statement, written after the second world war, and its resulting tragedy and atrocities, shows the failure of Husserl’s optimistic project of “Phi- losophy as Rigorous Science.” However, Levinas qualifies that which differs Husserlianism from other discourses based on individual philosophers (Kantian, Spinozism) in that Husserlianism is more about the phenomenological method (in its various interpretations) than a direct exegesis of Husserl’s texts.718 Phenomenology, therefore, is not the cult of Husserl’s writings, as much as it is the application of his method according to the interpretations of the individual phenom- enologists. Levinas can thus state: “Phenomenology is a method in an eminent sense, for it is essentially open.”719

715 Levinas, De l’existence, 99. 716 100.

717 Discovering Existence With Husserl, 91. 718 91. 719 91. Sadler 148

In discussing the manner in which phenomenology reduces the naiveté of everyday life to open up a more radical engagement with experience, by which an individual understands that which is given to them in experience.720 In his continued summary and re-presentation of Husserl’s method (in-line with the idea that every methodological explication of phenomenolo- gy is itself merely an introduction to its further applications), he discusses the progressive na- ture of the ‘the synthesis of sensible representations’ as an asymptotic task: progressively ap- proximating its goal without ever achieving it.721 Furthermore, while one cannot achieve com- prehension of this absolute existence, one can signify it: “The idea of absolute existence, by contrast with which the existence of the world is posited as relative, is, in turn, taken from the description of the ‘fulfillment’ of a ‘signitive’ intention by an intuition.”722 Signification is that which ‘points at’ its intended object of concern (in a Heidiggerian sense of ‘care’ and ‘concern’). It also follows the Buddhist aphorism ‘religion is like a finger pointing at the moon: look at the moon, not the finger.’ If one focuses on the method (the metaphorical ‘finger’), and ignores that which is intended (‘pointed-at’), one misses the point of signification. Individuals’ intending of an object outside of themselves is to intend that which transcends them. Dis- course-analysis, including archæological and genealogical methods, spins its proverbial wheels in the mud by referring only to its own method, without intending anything (in-fact: claiming this intending is itself impossible). Phenomenology’s superiority as method lies in its pointing-to the transcendental object, even if such a signifying relation is merely an approxima- tion, and does not naively claim to reach its own proper object. In his second reflective thesis on phenomenology, Levinas argues the core concept of this thesis that: “Phenomenology is a destruction of representation and the theoretical object.”723 This is a powerful and concise declarative. Levinas argues, understandably, that this statement seems to be in contradiction with the general aim of western metaphysics, in which the individual subject claims to capture its object; in other words, phenomenology has been accused of the same ‘logocentrism’ attributed to the traditional metaphysical subject-object relation (or ‘master-slave dialectic’). Therefore, Levinas argues in contradistinction to the pre- vailing post-war perception of phenomenology (especially the following Structuralist and Post- Structuralist movements) that, “to do phenomenology is to denounce the direct vision of the object as naive.”724 Levinas defends Husserl’s concept of intentionality (the concern of his dis-

720 92. 721 92-93.

722 93. 723 94. 724 94. Sadler 149 sertation, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology) as merely the point of departure for further investigations which transcend that point of departure: “[Husserl’s phenomenology] starts at the extreme limit of the abstraction that in naive realism (naive for just this reason) is taken for being itself.”725 The important critique of intentional representations is compared to a critique of signifi- cation: neither can fully-approximate their object, either in individual understanding, or descrip- tive language: “To intend the object, to represent it to oneself, is already to forget the being of its truth.”726 To compare with intuitive representations: “But the recourse to intuitive thought, to Erfüllung [fulfillment] as opposed to signitive thought, does not put an end to equivocations, which threaten every vision fixed on an object.”727 ‘Equivocation’ in this sense is the idea that the object of one’s desire can be exchangeable or swapped for another object intended by the in- dividual. In this manner, that which an individual signifier signifies for themselves could easily be substituted for another signified. The individual who intends or signifies therefore can equiv- ocate that which they intend or signify, and this substitution has a dehumanizing element. If one can substitute any individual for that whom they intend or signify, then the Other becomes exchangeable. One exchanges the living Other, in all their transcendent freedom and alterity, for an aesthetic mediator who does not make a demand (therefore a limit) on my own freedom. This exchangeability of the Other is akin to the act of idolatry, by which an individual exchanges the one God, Creator of the universe, for an object that exists in the created world. The individ- ual’s idolatry of the Other is an act of what has already been termed “epistemological original sin,” insofar as such an epistemic ‘Equivocation’ of the Other is not merely an aberration or de- ficiency in human relationships: rather, the Self’s idolatry of the Other into their ‘Same’ is a fun- damental part of the human condition, one’s ‘existential’ ‘attitude’ toward the Other. It takes an ethical ‘revelation’ to shock us out of this Master-Slave dialectic, towards the Other’s face which confronts the individual. Levinas follows by discussing the ‘revelation’ of being in Husserl’s early thought: “The beloved, the implement, or the work of art exist and are ‘substances,’ each in their own way. And the way cannot be separated from the ‘intentions’ that sketch it out.”728 The ‘manner’ in which one comports themselves toward that which they intend has an aesthetic quality (or ‘style’). At the same time, what limits this formulation of that which is desired by the individual is its ‘objectification,’ the ‘equivocation’ of one’s belovéd is exchangeable or equal to technol-

725 94.

726 94 (Italics Levinas’). 727 95. 728 96-97. Sadler 150 ogy or art. We have discussed Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which could more appropriately be called ‘A Critique of Technical Reason,’ insofar as techné can mean both ‘technology’ in the popular understanding, or works of art. But still, however limited in Husserl’s formulation, the revelation of that which is given to an individual in experience (the ‘revelation of being’) allows us to discuss the role of ‘revelation’ in phenomenology at all. Levinas follows: “Thus, phenom- enology as a revelation of being is a method of the revelation of their revelation.”729 Levinas tackles the problem of the correspondence theory of truth, famously denounced by Heidegger, from his own, Husserlian vantage-point. “Intentionality does not consist in affirming the correlation between subject and object.”730 Levinas follows by arguing that even the relationship of an in- dividual representing their sensations for themselves as objects is not the goal of phenomenol- ogy, and that making representation the goal of experience is inauthentic. He states: “The rep- resentation of the object by a spectator whose gaze is fixed on it is realized at the price of manifold neglect and forgetting.”731 Levinas’ generous reading of Husserl allows for his critique of mediating representation to apply even to Husserl’s phenomenology; Levinas reserves his real critique for the phenomenologies respective to Hegel and Heidegger.732 Levinas can there- fore argue that theoretical representation is merely the beginning of Husserl’s phenomenology: the desire of the individual to transcend their initial experience toward the transcendental expe- rience of the Other does not fall into the logical fallacy of assuming that which one wishes to derive [petitio principi, or ‘circular reasoning’]. Rather, one begins with their own limited, repre- sentative understanding, in order that the revelation of the Other can occur, and not merely be assumed. Toward this end: “This is why, in Husserl, phenomenology begins with the object and Nature, the quintessence of objectivity, and then moves back toward the intentional implica- tions.”733 Before Levinas’ “Reflections on Phenomenological ‘Technique’” transitions into a more conversational interview, he ends the article with the manner in which Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation lays the groundwork for intersubjectivity. On the one hand, Husserl’s intersubjectivity is argued to still privilege the viewpoint of the ego, and the intersubjective Other as mere ‘ego- analogue’; on the other hand, Levinas argues for the going-beyond this mere cursory under- standing towards the true alterity of the Other.

729 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 97. 730 97.

731 97. 732 97. 733 97. Sadler 151

Similarly, the reduction to primordial egological knowledge, through which, in Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation, the constitution of intersubjectivity begins, does not end in self-evidence structured as objective knowledge (because of its monadological character). Yet this egological knowledge is a situation whose function is to be found objectively.734

The ‘monad’ nature of an individual seems to be them in their ‘pure’ individuality, cut off from any relation or relation anything outside themselves. The monadic ‘shell’ of one’s individuality is broken by the revelation of the Other.

§15. “The Ruin of Representation”

Levinas follows “Reflections on Phenomenological Technique” with the an article which is central my thesis: “The Ruin of Representation.” This is the lynchpin by which this whole the- sis, The Aesthetic Versus Aesthetics: Emmanuel Levinas’ Critique of Mediation, hangs: Levinas’ cor- pus is continually concerned with the critique of mediation as aesthetic representation. One could say it is the leitmotif of his entire philosophy. This 1959 article sits perfectly in the centre of Levinas’ corpus, between his previous writings on Husserl’s phenomenology and the philos- ophy of existence (though he did not refer to himself as an ‘existentialist’) and the following works on the ethics of alterity. Representation ruins itself on the shores of knowledge, and the individual consciousness (likened by Frankfurt School authors Hans Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno to Odysseus: the lone conscious individual afloat on the dangerous sea of the uncon- scious), bereft of its vessel, the epistemic armour by-which they defends themself from alterity (the sublime nature, or the divine Other).735 Leaving the armor of representation behind, the in- dividual must walk ashore on an unfamiliar territory, where the encounter with the Other is pos- sible. My analogy here is purposefully in-reverse of Kant’s brief analogy of the ‘island of reason,’ opening ‘The Transcendental Dialectic’ from the Critique of Pure Reason.736 However, while Kant’s island of reason confines the epistemic individual to the boundaries of phenome- nal experience, from which they cannot pass (as suits Kant’s critical project), in the spiritual of Levinas’ critique of Kant, one could say that the individual of phenomenological consciousness seeks the dry land of ethics (‘practical reason’), and in many cases, does not find it. Therefore, in the context of this phenomenological project, we can discuss “The Ruin of Representation.”

734 101. 735 See Horkheimer and Adorno’s history of consciousness and subjectivity with Odysseus, Hans Horkheimer & Theodore Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 38, 48. 736 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A295/B236. Sadler 152

Levinas begins this article with another powerful aphorism: “To meet a man is to be kept awake by an enigma.”737 In his further declarative aphorisms, Levinas states succinctly: “Phenomenology is intentionality.”738 This statement at this point seems self-evident, has it has been repeated so many times previously. However, Levinas qualifies this fundamental state- ment, writing: “The refusal of a sensationalism that identified consciousness with sensations- things? To be sure.”739 As opposed to the ‘fall’ into aestheticism argued in Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Levinas argues that phenomenology refuses the aestheticism and the objectification of sensations (including Others). However, as opposed to the gnostic denial of all sensation, Levinas follows: “But the sensible plays an important role in phenomenology and intentionality rehabilitates the sensible.”740 In like manner to the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ from Kant’s Cri- tique of Pure Reason, sensation is a necessary starting place for further researches into under- standing and consciousness. Unlike the Marburg school of Neo-Kantians (critiqued by Heideg- ger in his Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason), Levinas argues: “The sensible is not an Aufgabe [task] in the Neo-Kantian sense, nor an obscure thought in the Leib- nizian sense.”741 In other words, as Heidegger had discussed in his lectures on Kant, transcen- dental sensibility is neither collapsed into transcendental logic, nor is it an excuse for a fall into pure aestheticism. Levinas crudely characterizes the metaphysical assumption of the subject’s power over their world: “If intentionality meant no more than that consciousness ‘bursts forth’ toward an object, and that we are immediately in the presence of things, there would never have been a phenomenology.”742 Furthering his argument against the substance attributed to representations: “Re-pre- sentation deals with beings as if they were entirely self-supporting, as if they were substances.”743 In the words of the previous article, one can ‘equivocate’ these substances for one’s self, exchanging them for equivalents without concern for their uniqueness or individuali- ty. Using the language of Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Levinas attacks the aesthetic thesis for the disinterested aesthetic judgment of taste: “[Re-presentation] has the power to disinterest itself–

737 Discovering Existence with Husserl, 111.

738 112. 739 112. 740 112.

741 98. 742 112. 743 112. Sadler 153 be it only for an instant, the instant of representation–from the condition of these beings.”744 One is not to approach the Other with aesthetic disinterestedness, nor subject them to judg- ments of taste. To do so would be to deny the Other’s alterity, which might be considered an act of idolatry. Levinas follows: “Whence [phenomenology’s] modification of the very concept of philosophy, which was identified with the absorption of every ‘Other’ by the ‘Same,’ or with the deduction of every ‘Other’ from the ‘Same’ (that is, in the radical sense of the term, with idealism).”745 In this traditional, metaphysical formulation, the individual retains primacy and the Other is merely their ancillary. Transcendence, Levinas argues, is the ability to see countless ‘horizons’ beyond one’s own immediate apprehension of their ‘object’: “By contrast, intentionality bears within itself the innumerable horizons of its implications and thinks of infinitely more ‘things’ than of the object upon which it was fixed.”746 This infinity of imagined horizons could be considered speculative excess, in-line with Kant’s First Critique, or it could be considered transcendental in its “philo- sophical eros.”747 However, Levinas follows by arguing for the implicit nature of phenomenolog- ical understanding, in contrast to the philosophical demand to make all that is hidden explicit: “This discovery of the implicit, which is not a simple ‘deficiency’ of or ‘fall’ from the explicit, appears as a monstrosity or a marvel in a history of ideas in which the concept of actuality co- incided with the absolute waking state, with the lucidity of the intellect.”748 Levinas contrasts the philosophically explicit against the there is…, already-detailed in Existence and Existents. Levinas articulates his interpretation of Husserl’s concept of the ‘Urimpression,’ the unity of sensation, Self and Other, into an undifferentiated sensation: “The way is open for all Husserl’s analysis of the sensible and the prepredictive that he so obstinately preferred, going back to the Urimpression, which is at once primary subject and primary object, giver and given.”749 Nature is itself undifferentiated from an individual’s own ego and sense of Self. How- ever, while this is the primal relation of an individual to their world, individuals must differenti- ate themselves in order to be able to encounter the Other in their alterity, not as that which is undifferentiated into the Same. Levinas follows: “The way is open for the philosophy of the lived body, in which intentionality reveals its true nature, for its movement toward the repre-

744 112. 745 113.

746 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, 116.

747 113. 748 116. 749 117. Sadler 154 sented is rooted there in all the implicit–nonrepresented–horizons of incarnate existence.”750 Levinas’ movement toward the unrepresented is a movement towards embodiment and a phi- losophy of domesticity (to be articulated in Totality and Infinity). The movement away from the idolatry of representation moves toward the domestic relation with the Other. A question be- comes whether one can truly be ‘at-home’ in one’s context, or whether an individual is doomed to be a sojourner in this world through the vale of tears, as Levinas follows: “Conversely, the sojourn in a world is only conceivable as the spontaneity of a constituting subject, failing which this sojourn would have been the simple belonging of a part to a whole, and the subject a sim- ple product of the ground.”751 Individuals, despite the initial Urimpression, is never truly settled, of at home with themselves. Therefore, this is an antinomy between individualistic freedom and communal belonging. Levinas continues to qualify: “[Husserl’s] simultaneity of freedom and be- longing–without either of these terms being sacrificed–is perhaps Sinngebung itself, the act of bestowing a meaning that runs through and sustains the whole of being.”752 The meaning one gains from their domestic relation sustains them, despite their individuality and sojourning from that domestic relation. Levinas ends the article with the conclusion: “[Phenomenology] leads us outside the subject-object categories and topples the sovereignty of representation.”753 And while Levinas argues against ‘solid,’ ‘plastic’ representations, he privileges immediate sensation, which is it- self more ‘pure’ in the sense of Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ of space and time as the a priori conditions of all sensibility and are themselves without objects: “Sensuous experience is privileged, because within that ambiguity of constitution, whereby the noema conditions and shelters the noesis that constitutes it, is played out.”754 Husserl defines noema as description of the intentional object, while noesis describes consciousness’ relation to the intuited noema.755 Levinas can summarily state: “We are beyond idealism and realism, since being is neither inside nor outside thought, but thought itself is outside itself.”756 Thought transcends itself, rather than obsessing with the adequacy of clear and distinct ideas, or merely the indi-

750 117. see also Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Part One: “The Body as Object and Mechanistic Physiology,” 84.

751 118. 752 118. 753 119.

754 119.

755 See Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 74.

756 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 120. Sadler 155 vidual’s internal structure of the understanding. This displacement of the self is the manner in which the phenomenological individual disrupts their everyday experience with the revelation of something greater: the transcendental. Anxiety and discomfort, a feeling of being not-at-home (the ‘Uncanny’ or Unheimlichkeit) is that which gets an individual outside their own ego-sphere, towards the dimension of the ethical. Therefore, Levinas can end “The Ruin of Representation” by stating: Where all Sinngebung was the work of a sovereign ego, the other could in fact only be absorbed in a representation. But in a phenomenology where the activity of totalizing and totalitarian representation is already exceeded by its own inten- tion, where representation already finds itself placed within horizons that it some- how had not willed, but with which it cannot dispense, an ethical Sinngebung be- comes possible, that is, a Sinngebung essentially respectful of the Other.757

Here the concept of the Self’s attempt to ensnare the Other in their totalizing, totalitarian grasp is made explicit; the infinity of the Other cannot be captured in any good faith (and all represen- tations are merely aesthetic images). Even the moral will of Kant’s ethics cannot encompass an Other that escapes an individual’s ethical will. ‘Existential’ means that the locus of meaning, or meaning-giver (the meaning of Sinngebung) is ‘some-thing’ existent in the world. However, Lev- inas’ ‘existential’ philosophy differs from Sartre and other ‘existential’ philosophers’ emphasis on an individual’s domination over the negative Other who threatens their freedom. Levinas’ phenomenology inverts the traditional Self-Other relationship with the negative Other in favour of the transcendental nature of Other. Levinas can argue that Husserl’s phenomenology point- ed the way to foster this transcendental relationship with the Other. He states: “In Husserl him- self, in the constitution of intersubjectivity… social relations… are abruptly awakened.”758 Levinas continues to struggle with the manner in which phenomenology can intend an Other instead of merely an object in his 1959 article “Intentionality and Metaphysics.” Levinas begins by continuing to argue against faulty interpretations of phenomenology that fall into ‘psychologism’ (a concern with bodily affects or ‘inclination’ in Kantian vocabulary). Levinas begins the article: “In its struggle against psychologism, Husserl’s phenomenology invited us not to confuse psychic life with its ‘intentional object.’”759 Levinas again qualifies the lack of certainty in phenomenology’s perspectivism, as opposed to a realist metaphysics of ideas per- fectly adequate or corresponding to their objects: “But straightaway Husserlian phenomenolo- gy means the opposite of this: a distrust concerning the naivety of that intentional movement

757 121. 758 121. 759 122. Sadler 156 that brings us into the presence of things.”760 The problem of the ‘thing-ness’ of metaphysics (a broad concern addressed in Heidegger’s What Is a Thing?) continues to be the main problem that phenomenology engages with as it addresses the world and the Other. Levinas follows with an at-length discussion of the manner in which phenomenology apprehends the transcendental object based on its own perspective, which cannot truly ‘cap- ture’ the ‘object’ (or Other) fully for it-self: the object always escapes it. Qualifying phenome- nology’s “infinite program of investigations,” Levinas follows: [The movement of consciousness toward its object] cannot be so named [as sub- jective], however, for it is not just an eddy within the psychic ‘mass’ but remains intentional and concerns that sphere, other than the selfsameness of the subject where Husserl in the end situates objects.761

This situated nature of intentionality outside the self refers not only to objectivity, but an object that transcends an individual’s perception of that object. While there are phenomenologies more focused on the Self’s mastery over objects (such as Sartre’s Being and Nothingness), the idea of one’s total domination of the object would be, in Sartre’s terminology, ‘bad faith’ be- cause the Other always escapes the Self. However, the implication of the transcendental ob- ject, or Other, that escapes the individual is such an object/Other could possibly constitute the perceiving individual. This is the appeal to alterity: an Other may constitute an individual who has previously held themself sovereign over meaning. Regarding the ontological disappoint- ment that one faces in the face of a world and Others that escape them: “[Individuals disap- pointed by their relations to Others] criticize [their ontological condition] as the fox criticizes the grapes beyond his reach.”762 This relation is the ‘sour grapes’ of existence: an individual’s dis- appointment with existence and their attempt to dominate the same in bad faith. Levinas follows by discussing the relation of Kant’s epistemology to Husserl’s phenom- enology, beginning from a Kantian notion of the Self and its interiority, but moving beyond to exteriority: “Kantianism, in which truth does not open upon exteriority, even though it abides in the necessary, was interrupted before Heidegger substituted a metaphysical interpretation for it.763 Levinas makes the strong and controversial claim that Husserl actually left Kantianism, despite Husserl’s many, many Kantian assumptions. Most of all, is the idea of ‘phenomenality’ itself based on Kant’s distinction between phenomenon and noumenon; the concept of ‘tran- scendental object’ is likewise Kantian. The a priori nature of sensation as grounded in space

760 122.

761 122. 762 123. 763 123. Sadler 157 and time gives subjective experience its own grounded nature (that one can argue as objective). However, despite phenomenology’s indebtedness to Kant, Levinas continues: “Husserl was the first to free himself from Kantianism, by showing, behind objectifying inten- tionality, a concrete life that is also intentional.”764 It would seem that the generosity Levinas extends to Husserl in interpreting phenomenology against the grain of accusations it of falling into the old metaphysics has not been extended to Kant’s own critical project against the old realist metaphysics. Whatever the reason for this rhetorical move, Kant’s thought carries the prototype of phenomenal sensation that is developed by Husserl, and later developed by Lev- inas as the Other’s transcendence. Further explicating Husserl’s departure from Kant (or Husserl’s ‘point of departure’ in phenomenological terminology): Whence the idea of an exteriority that is not objective. Transcendental operations constitute an outside, but they do not constitute that outside (or that other than me) by a movement that is like that of the eye that perceives its object: the Other guides the transcendental movement without presenting itself to vision, which would precisely always be left behind by the very transcendental movement it was supposed to define.765

The fact that we do not constitute that which appears to us gives that appearance a sense of objectivity, and if that which escapes my desire to constitute is ‘other than me,’ it is possible that the Other can constitute me. The constitution of the Self/Same by the Other reverses the mas- ter-slave nature of ontological relations; Levinas reverses Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego in favor of the transcendence of the Other.766 The primacy of the Other as constituting the Same for Levinas is the great reversal of the master-slave dialectic. At the same time, one could ar- gue the concern for the Other (or Martin Buber’s ‘Thou’) is which sets ‘Jewish Existential’ phi- losophy apart from its gentile counterpart. Levinas continues to argue against a one-to-one correlation between Kant’s phenome- nal nature of aesthetic perception, and Husserl’s phenomenology. In this sense, Levinas argues that Husserl represents a radical departure from Kant, if not a break: “But [Husserl’s transcen- dental] reduction never comes to an end; each of these ‘little perceptions’ leads to a transcen- dental horizon, and this to another indefinitely. Kant refuses to interpret transcendental activity as intuitive.”767 Levinas argues here that Husserl’s progressive project of infinite phenomeno- logical investigations is different from Kant’s more categorically rigid and stable relation of per- ceiver to the perceived world. In this regard, the phenomenological horizon is truly Husserl’s

764 123.

765 123.

766 “Reflection ‘poisons’ desire” (Sartre, Transcendence of the Ego, 59). 767 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 124. Sadler 158 innovation, the specific Lebenswelt or ‘lived-world’ proper to a perceiving individual’s perspec- tive. However, Levinas follows by arguing that Kant does allow the way for an objective exteri- ority beyond an individual’s perception, writing: Even though this refusal confines the transcendental to the interiority of the sub- ject that does not aim any anything other, Kant maintains the transcendental out- side of the objective. That the other of the transcendental activity arises through the effect of a binding or synthesis instead of being polarized like an object of vi- sion is of considerable importance, since it enables us to foresee the end of the universal domination of representation and of objects.768

Despite Kant’s focus on the interiority of the moral individual (and their relation to the transcen- dent metaphysical moral law, which is itself the true object of desire) does not allow the Other to appear, but Levinas argues that Kant does point the way to the end of the aestheticism of representation. Thus, Levinas can confidently state: “Here Kant is bolder than Husserl.”769 De- spite the finitude of Kant’s epistemic project compared to Husserl’s infinite phenomenological researches, the idea of synthetic a priori judgments allows for an exteriority that affects the in- dividual. Levinas then argues for another manner of interpreting Husserl outside the normative interpretation of phenomenology in a realist mode (according to the traditional thesis of meta- physics). For Levinas, rather than thought closed in on itself, sensation in the manner of the transcendental aesthetic is immediate in its apprehension of that which appears to it: “By con- trast, the sensible, the hyletic datum, is an absolute datum. Intentions animate it, to be sure, to make it an experience of an object, but the sensible is given immediately, before being sought.”770 Levinas follows, however, by arguing that Husserl himself would not hold that sen- sation immediately affects the Self by the agency of the Other; rather, Husserl is still concerned with the interiority of the egology more properly attributed to phenomenology. Levinas follows: Nevertheless, a pure and simple return to the sensationalism of the statue which becomes the smell of a rose does not occur in Husserl, for the idea of intentional- ity dominates all of his analyses of sensibility. The coinciding of sensing with the sensed is a relationship between the self and self, even though this relationship does not connect a thought with that which it thinks.771

Therefore, Levinas must do the philosophical task of interpreting his forbears, Kant and Husserl, in order to go-beyond the limits of their own thought, even as their philosophies lay

768 124.

769 124. 770 124.

771 125. Sadler 159 the groundwork for Levinas’ ethical project. In not positing hypostasis to sensation, Kant gives us a way to think of experience in a non-substantive way; in Husserl’s phenomenology, sensa- tions can give the individual horizons that are not of their constitution, but rather affect the Self from that which is Other.

§16. “The Permanent and the Human in Husserl”

Just prior to the publication of Totality and Infinity in 1961, Levinas wrote “The Perma- nent and the Human in Husserl” in 1960. ‘Permanence’ is a concept often discussed in terms of ‘substance’ and ‘hypostasis.’ The question of phenomenological method becomes: ‘what remains, after the reduction of all particulars?’ Levinas can therefore begin this article in the dramatic manner of his other post-war articles on the failures of the idealistic project: “A nos- talgia for the Permanent, a nostalgia for Substance is deep in man.”772 The nostalgia for Sub- stance is the philosophical eros of post-Kantian metaphysics, after his transcendental psychol- ogy of the reality and unreality of individual subsistence. Levinas qualifies Hegel’s aestheticism, stating: “Thus what is human is not only that perceives the image of the world, but also the light that illuminates it.”773 The individual sensate perceiver, focused on the tyranny of the eye, captures the subject of their gaze in this emphasis on optics. The Marburg School Neo-Kantians and Husserl’s phenomenology both attempted to overcome Hegel’s substantialization of sensations: “No one combated the dehumanization of the Real better than Husserl, the dehumanization which is produced when one extends the categories proper to mathematized matter to the totality of our experience, when one elevates scientism to absolute knowledge.”774 The Realist thesis attempted to see the world and human relations in terms of geometry: individual bodies in a plane affecting one-another in a causal manner. Despite Husserl’s privileging of experience through sensation as the locus of knowl- edge, geometric metaphors remain in an individual’s experience of their self, the world and Others. The experiences of parabola, parable, and hyperbole are etymologically related in terms of the great reversal of power relations and superlative experiences of the literally ‘most- high.’775 The individual’s mastery over the world is overcome in the parabolic sense, and their encounter of the Other has the hyperbole of the religious experience of the ‘Most-High.’

772 130.

773 131. 774 131. 775 Gratitude to Robert Gibbs for this insight. Sadler 160

In conclusion, Levinas can state: “Phenomenology has not only permitted the ‘de- thingifying,’ the ‘de-reifying’ of the human being, but also the humanizing of things.”776 The positing of a conscious individual in-space, the spatializing of individuality, is itself a resistance to the hypostatic thing-ification of individuals as objects in a geometric formulation of space (no matter how much this geometric metaphor persists). Levinas follows: “The apparently trite proposition, all consciousness is consciousness of something–the famous intentionality of consciousness–lent itself to an investigation of a new kind: phenomenology.”777 Here instead of re-ifying, we get re-iteration of the same proposition, but in a different spatio-temporal context. The full-circle of this statement, as trite as Levinas admits it to be, reminds us of the fundamen- tal axiom that phenomenology is not about discovering objects in a world that are adequate to the ideas we have of those objects, but rather that our encountering those beings ‘in-them- selves’ is in the world, apart from (though appearing-to) the individual perceiver. I end this analysis of “The Permanent and the Human in Husserl” with the following quote, by which Lev- inas distinguishes phenomenological intentionality from the previous realist metaphysics: Thus we would be wrong in placing this prepredicative [pre-reflective, embodied] work into representation, for which it is a condition, and from which the thinking subject is already nourished before representing the world to itself. Intentionality indicated not only a direct relation between reason and things, but the horizon in which the flow of things supports and carries along legislative reason itself.778

Thus Levinas can state that while the immediate experience of an individual is necessary for re- presenting that experience for themselves, the primordiality of experience liberates the individ- ual from objectification. With the end of Levinas’ final article prior to Totality and Infinity, we see the genealogy of Levinas’ critique of mediating representation prior to its mature articulation in that summative text. Having established Levinas’ history of thought around mediation, the following chapter will engage directly with Totality, for the fullness of the critique of mediation.

776 132. 777 132.

778 132. Sadler 161 Sadler 162

Chapter Five: The Maturation of Levinas’ Critique of Mediation in Totality and Infinity

§1. Levinas’ Critique of Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology

Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority is the culmination of Levinas postwar ethical philosophy. The previous chapter’s genealogy of mediating representation has shown that To- tality’s maturation is not a radical break from Levinas’ phenomenological investigations as much as its crystallization or fullness. Totality represents the outcome of Levinas’ pre-and- postwar thought, which will itself undergo a seeming reformulation in Otherwise Than Being. But for now, let us view the fullness of Levinas’ critique of mediation, his ‘critique of the Critique of Judgment,’ if-you-will. In his introduction, Levinas discusses on the visual nature of phenomenology, and how it attempts to ‘capture’ the Other for the Same’s own interiority: “The first ‘vision’ of eschatol- ogy (hereby distinguished from the revealed opinions of positive religions) reveals the very pos- sibility of eschatology, that is, the breach of the totality, the possibility of a signification without a context.”779 He follows: “The experience of morality does not proceed from this vision–it con- summates this vision; ethics is an optics.”780 While the ‘optics’ is the primacy of individual vision over that which it surveys, the negativity discussed in relation to that which-does-not-appear to the Same is the subject of chapter 6 of this dissertation. Here Totality serves as Levinas’ polemic against Heidegger’s philosophy of fundamental ontology, which argues that meta- physics is a ‘clearing’ or negative space in the midst of solid Being. Levinas’ thesis, contra- Heidegger, is that the highest metaphysical reality is that of the Other, and that metaphysics is not negative. This would put Levinas in line with Kant’s radical formulation of the Moral Law as the highest metaphysic: the metaphysic of morals.781 In Levinas’ thesis against negativity he formulates his argument, contra-Heidegger: Consciousness then does not consist in equating being with representation, in tending to the full light in which this adequation is to be sought, but rather in over- flowing this play of lights–this phenomenology–and in accomplishing events

779 Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority, 23. 780 23.

781 Blake Billings translates an article from a Dutch journal in 1970-71, published in English as “Emmanuel Levinas: The Primacy of Practical Reason” (Man and World 27, 1994: 445-453.). While I disagree with the statement “The practical reason that intervenes in the choice of rea- son is technical”(448), the article does highlight that Levinas operates within the Kantian mode of the metaphysic of morals, but with an emphasis on the Other, not the moral law. Sadler 163

whose ultimate signification (contrary to the Heideggerian conception) does not lie in disclosing.782

‘Dis-closure’ is analogous to ‘un-covering’ [ἀ-λήθεια, ‘a-letheia’], in which Truth is revealed through the un-covering of nature. Heidegger here is in-line with his inspiration by Heraclitus, that the logos is revealed from a Nature that ‘loves hiding.’783 Levinas’ ethical philosophy would be opposed to Heidegger’s basis in Heraclitus, especially the logos and its mediation, as well as the negativity of the dis-closure. Levinas continues: “Philosophy does indeed dis-cover the signification of these events, but they are produced without discovery (or truth) being their des- tiny. No prior disclosure illuminates the production of these essentially nocturnal events.”784 Rather than the individual agent dis-covering nature for themselves (such as the reflexive na- ture of phenomenology’s basic assumption), the Other reveals itself to us in the ‘darkness’ of the il y a (as discussed in Existence and Existent). The difficulty is the manner in which the Other reveals their-self by their appearance to the perceiving individual. Levinas continues: “The wel- coming of the face and the work of justice–which condition the birth of truth itself–are not in- terpretable in terms of disclosure.”785 In other words, the a-moral nature of Heidegger’s funda- mental ontology does not acknowledge the primordial relation to the Other rooted in justice. However, the question here becomes one of method: if the observed world seems to be one of violence and cruelty that is beyond-good-and-evil, how does one arrive at the ethical relation with the Other in its primordiality? If one merely assumes this ethical relationship to the Other, then one is guilty of the fallacy of assuming that which one wanted to derive. The problem of arriving at this ethical encounter is methodological. Levinas follows on this methodological point, stating: “Phenomenology is a method for philosophy, but phenomenology–the comprehension effected through a bringing to light–does not constitute the ultimate event of being itself.”786 In teasing-apart this sentence, let us look at the most-concise summary of phenomenology: “the comprehension effected through a bring- ing to light.” ‘Comprehension’ is itself individuals’ attempts to re-present experience for them- selves in a comprehensive manner, incorporating experiences into a totality. This act of totaliz- ing experience is part of the tyranny of individual representation. Com-prehension is second- order rationalization of experience, while ap-prehension is the immediate sensation of that

782 27-28. 783 Heraclitus, 123.

784 Totality, 28. 785 28. 786 28. Sadler 164 which is given in experience. However, even in the phenomenological thesis of immediate ap- prehension of the Other, Levinas goes the step further to argue that the Other is not merely giv- en at all by some external cause or by the individual themselves, but that the Other, in-effect, gives itself (il y a, es gibt): “The relation between the same and the other is not always reducible to knowledge of the other by the same, not even to the revelation of the other to the same, which is already fundamentally different from disclosure.”787 The difference from disclosure in- volves the fact that the Other confronts us in their freedom, rather than existing as the some- thing we have disclosed for ourselves, i.e. ‘discovered’ by comprehending them. The Other breaks the shell of Being, in Levinas’ words. Levinas follows with a further elaboration of his aphorism: “Already of itself ethics is an ‘optics.’”788 Concerning this concise, aphoristic statement, alluding to the ‘appearance’ of the face to a perceiving individual, Levinas has stated earlier: “If, as this book will show, ethical re- lations are to lead transcendence to its term, this is because the essential of ethics is in its transcendental intention, and because not every transcendent intention has the noesis-noemata structure.”789 In other words, while the ethics of the individual follows the structure of phenom- enology, it introduces ‘transcendental intention’ to the more general intention of that which is presented in sensation. However, while he follows the structure of personal comprehension (the ‘noesis-noemata structure’), this apprehension of the Other is beyond those personal epistemic structures. Levinas follows the aphorism of ‘Already of itself ethics is an ‘optics’’ with: “[Ethics] is not limited to preparing for the theoretical exercise of thought, which would monop- olize transcendence.”790 In the previous analyses of Kant’s aesthetic, as we have seen, the most generous interpretation of authors like the Marburg School has been that sensation mere- ly prepares us for theoretical knowledge. However, the ‘vision’ of the face (however question- ably ‘visual’ it actually is) is apprehension in its most immanent form, which is outside our theo- retical constructions and shaping of experience. Therefore, Levinas can state succinctly: “Husserlian phenomenology has made possible this passage from ethics to metaphysical exte- riority.”791 Levinas begins with a discussion of the ontological condition in which an individual is at-home with itself, while metaphysics refers to something that is beyond that individual:

787 28.

788 Totality, 29.

789 29. 790 29. 791 29. Sadler 165

For in the most general form [metaphysics] has assumed in the history of thought is appears as a movement going forth from a world that is familiar to us, whatev- er be the yet unknown lands that bound it or that it hits from view, from an ‘at home’ [‘chez soi’] which we inhabit, toward an alien outside-of-oneself [hors-de- soi], toward a yonder.792

What follows is the methodological process by which one goes from their individual enjoyment of existence to the encounter with the Other in its metaphysical transcendence. Levinas follows with a discussion of the standard ontology in the traditional realist metaphysics: “Vision is an adequation of the idea with the thing, a comprehension that encompasses.”793 Levinas dis- cusses ‘desire’ in its understanding of distance and height, the ‘desire’ in a sense comparable to Kant’s Second Critique, the desire for the metaphysical moral law. However, Levinas’ con- cept of desire is the desire for the Other in their transcendence. In the spatial relation of the in- dividual to the Other: A desire without satisfaction which, precisely, understands [entend] the remote- ness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other. For Desire this alterity, non-ade- quate to the idea, has a meaning. It is understood as the alterity of the Other and of the Most-High. The very dimension of height is opened up by metaphysical Desire.794

The ‘remoteness’ is a reformulation of Heidegger’s idea of ‘distantiation.’ However, for Heideg- ger, the concept is that one distances them-self in order to get a comprehensive view of the object of their aesthetic contemplation. For Heidegger, the distance is on the horizontal axis, by which an individual observes their given object as a relation of two bodies. However, Levinas reformulates the concept of distance on the vertical axis, by which the individual looks ‘up’ to perceive the metaphysical height of the Other. In ancient formulations of distance, the manner in which Heidegger discusses the ‘Myth of Cura’ in his return to presocratic philosophy, the concepts of the ‘heights’ and ‘depths’ of the heavens and the earth are very literal. The Olympian gods live ‘up there’ (in the sky, on Mt. Olympus, etc.), while the chthonian deities (Hades, the titans) live ‘down there’ (in the literal depths of the earth). However, Levinas makes the explicit break with the literal meanings of the ‘heights’ and the ‘depths,’ in arguing for the metaphysical nature of the heights: “That this height is no longer the heavens by the Invisible is the very elevation of height and its nobility.”795 Then Levinas makes an appeal that goes-be- yond Kant’s ethics of rational ethical restraint and Heidegger’s anthropology of individual au-

792 33.

793 34.

794 34-35.

795 Levinas, Totality, 35. Sadler 166 thenticity with an appeal to metaphysical martyrdom: “To die for the invisible–this is meta- physics.”796 But the ‘invisible’ for which one martyrs their same/self cannot have the ephemeral nature of Hermann Cohen’s ideal (in sense of transcendental idealism), for which no one would martyr themselves.797 The nature of this martyrdom must be for the most-metaphysical exis- tence, which is at the same time the most-concrete: the Other in their ipsaiety. In his following discussion of the “Breach of Totality,” Levinas argues that metaphysics refers to an outside-the-self, that the metaphysician must necessarily have what I call ‘critical distance’ (as distinct from Heidegger’s ‘distantiation’) in order to apprehend the Other: “The absolute exteriority of the metaphysical term, the irreducibility of movement to an inward play, to a simple presence of self to self, is, if not demonstrated, claimed by the word transcendent.”798 Amid this circumlocutive sentence is Levinas’ definition of an individual’s in- terior totality, the ‘inward play, a simple presence of self to self’ is the totality in one’s self that Levinas rejects in favor of metaphysical exteriority. By contrast, Levinas summarizes: “Thus the metaphysician and the other can not be totalized. The metaphysician is absolutely separated.”799 The act of ‘doing’ metaphysics is therefore an individual act of observation that is not ‘contained within’ the totality they observe. The possibility of such a view from ‘outside’ the totality of the world is a major problem. However, phenomenology contains the elements necessary to effect such a ‘stepping’ out and ‘doing’ metaphysical observation proper to the metaphysician. In Husserl’s phenomenology, this ‘standing outside’ is accomplished by the “Transcendental Epoché” in which an individual ‘reduces’ their world in order to stand outside of it with a sense of objectivity (through a true ‘view-from-nowhere’ or Archimedean fulcrum is itself impossible).800 In this manner, Levinas makes the argument that phenomenology is always an ‘intro- duction,’ merely a methodological point-of-departure for future inquiries into the world of expe- rience as it appears to an individual. For Levinas, individuals must place themselves at this point-of-departure in order to encounter the Other in their alterity. The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure,

796 35.

797 For Kant's idea of ‘moral martyrdom,' see Critique of Practical Reason, 5:159, (citing Juvenal, Satire 8.79-84).

798 Levinas, Totality, 35. 799 35.

800 See Cartesian Meditations’ §44, 124. Sadler 167

to serve as entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I.801

The ‘point of departure’ is the radical moment for existential philosophy, the doorway between individuals and their intersubjective horizon by which they encounter the Other. But Levinas emphasizes the Other’s asymmetrical relationship to the Same: the Other is not merely analogy or corollary, as in Kant’s ethics or Husserl’s phenomenology. And yet, as opposed to an imme- diate abnegation, Levinas argues that the Same must encounter itself in its Ipseity as an indi- vidual enclosed in its Self, before it can reach that point of departure by which they encounter the Other. This is the existential human condition. In popular Satrean existential philosophy, the reflection of an individual upon their exis- tence and struggle for meaning against their given situation produces feelings of listlessness and ennui. Levinas’ philosophical method of begins with an individual’s feelings of pleasure and displeasure in relation to their own existential given. Levinas discusses the ‘I’ as the sepa- rate relation of an individual Ipseity to their Same Self: “The I that repels the self, lived as re- pugnance, the I riveted to itself, lived as ennui, are modes of self-consciousness and rest on the unreadable identity of the I and the self.”802 In other words: one cannot escape their self through bad faith attempts to flee one’s self and one’s context. The attempt to divide the self into different constituent parts has been a rationalist method of allowing for dialectic to occur entirely within the totality of one’s self, between their different ‘aspects’ or ‘parts.' Levinas, in contradistinction to the rationalist thesis (while accepting many of its methods, styles, and premises), does not discuss such an individual bifurcation, save that one is inexorably identi- fied with their self. This ‘simplicity’ of the human person as a unity not admitting of division im- plicitly shares its psychological thesis with the negative theology. This is especially important for the following chapter on comparing Levinas’ ‘apophansis’ with ‘apophatic’ theology. For now, we will assume Levinas’ apophatic treatment of individuality as a ‘simple’ unity.

§2. Abraham as Prototypical Moral Individual

Levinas argues, however, that this unity is not merely the logical tautology of “I am I.”803 Rather than mere formalism (‘A is A’), Levinas argues that one must begin with their concrete situation in the world before further reflection or abstraction.804 In this manner, Levinas is in

801 Levinas, Totality, 36.

802 37. 803 37. 804 37. Sadler 168 agreement with Heidegger’s initial phenomenological anthropology of an individual ‘at-home’ in their particular context. As opposed to the gnostic thesis arguing that the world is inherently evil and threatening to individuals, Levinas argues instead for a state of idyllic, pastoral bliss of individual enjoyment.805 And yet the term that Levinas uses does not give the idea of one’s au- tochthonous rootedness in the world, but more the idea of Abraham living in his tents, as a so- journer in this world: “But the true and primordial relation between [the I and the world], and that in which the I is revealed precisely as preeminently the same, is produced as a sojourn [séjour] in the world.”806 Here we have the idea of a ‘shifting’ or destabilized self, one that ‘dwells’ at the same time it moves through the world given to them. In the Biblical example, Abraham leaves the city of Ur of the Chaldees for the promised land of Canaan at God’s be- hest. Abraham was settled, but then his revelatory encounter with God uprooted him at the di- vine request. In this understanding, Levinas continues: “The way of the I against the ‘other’ of the world consists in sojourning, in identifying oneself by existing here at home with oneself [chez soi].”807 The identify of ‘I’ with its land-of-origin is the definition of nationalism: the manner in which one identifies their self as identically same to their Vaterland. This is the logic of ethno- centrism and nationalism, and the ethical task is to overcome this conflation of origins and in- hospitality (nationalism and its attendant xenophobia) . Nevertheless, the mere conflation of identifying one’s self with their coincidental land of origin is different from being at-home with one’s self [chez soi]. In this nuanced difference, one maintains a sense of home and the hospi- tality offered to strangers within their dwelling, wherever they happen to sojourn. In the Bible, establishment can often be compared to tyranny, while the truly humble live in temporary dwellings upon the land. This is rationale behind the Proverb “The house of the wicked shall be overthrown; But the tent of the upright shall flourish.”808 In like manner, Abraham’s tent is a place of hospitality, while the established twin-cities of Sodom and Gemorrah are dens of cru- elty to sojourners like Lot and his family. In this manner, the commandment given for the ‘Feast of Tabernacles’ (Sukkot) reads: “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in booths; that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."809 The dichotomy between being at home with one’s self [chez soi] and being a sojourner [séjour] in the land is a great source of interpretive tension.

805 “The world, foreign and hostile, should, in good logic, alter the I” (37). 806 37.

807 37. 808 Proverbs 14:11 (JPS Tanakh 1917). 809 Leviticus 23:42-43. Sadler 169

Levinas follows by discussing the ‘autochthonous’ nature of one’s ‘being-in-the-world.’ ‘Autochthonous’ literally means ‘self-generated-out-of-the-earth,’ and it follows a ‘pagan’ men- tality that human beings are not created in the image of God, but rather human beings are self- generated out of the ground.810 This ‘ground’ (in the Heideggerian sense) is the immediate so- cio-ethno-cultural context from which an individual arises: “In a world which is from the first other [to me] the I is nonetheless autochthonous.”811 According to Levinas, the world is ‘other’ to us, while at the same time that ‘otherness’ is not the transcendence of the Other person. The world is ‘outside’ of us as an individual; the world transcends us in a more pragmatic man- ner. In spite of the opposition of the Same’s ipseity to the world, the ipseitous Same is ‘itself- generated-from-out-of-the-earth.’ The idea of the autochthonous individual is in-line with Hei- degger’s ‘myth of Cura’ in Being and Time. Levinas argues that the autochthonous Self “finds in the world a site [lieu] and a home [maison].”812 In this phenomenology of an individual’s experi- ence of the world in relation to themselves, that I ‘settles down’ in a place and home. The phe- nomenological movement goes from an individual’s sojourn towards settling in a place, however temporarily they dwell in the midst of their sojourn. The temporality of an individual’s succes- sion from sojourn to dwelling involves the ongoing preservation of one’s self in order to have a sense of continuity within time: “Dwelling is the very mode of maintaining oneself [se tenir], not as the famous serpent grasping itself by biting onto its tail, but as the body that, on the earth ex- terior to it, holds itself up [se tient] and can.”813 The metaphor of the ouroboros (the serpent-eat- ing-its-own-tail) is a metaphor for the classic metaphysical thesis of interiority: the manner in which individuals contains itself and is contained within them selves. Levinas rejects this tradi- tional metaphysical thesis in favour of an individual’s embodiment whose dynamism (the ‘can’) is literally ‘able’ to maintain their existence of standing upon the earth. In a manner similar to Levinas’ rejection of the metaphysical thesis represented by the ouroboros, he likewise rejects the idea of one’s home as a mere geometric ‘container’ for one’s ‘body’ (in a geometric sense). Instead, the meaning given by the context of the site of one’s home enables their dynamism: “The ‘at home’ [Le ‘chez soi’] is not a container but a site where I can, where, dependent on a reality that is other, I am, despite this dependance or thanks to it, free.”814 The site is where an

810 Aὐτό-χθονος means ‘sprung from the land itself’ (Liddell and Scott). It specifically refer- ences the myth of Deucalion, who Levinas will reference in both Totality and Infinity as well as Otherwise than Being. 811 37.

812 Levinas, Totality, 37. 813 37. 814 37. Sadler 170 individual is ‘able’ to be free. The necessity of embodiment and the earth hearkens back to the creation of Adam out of the dust of the earth.815 The soul or consciousness of the individual is the breath of life, while the body is necessary in order ‘to be able’ [dunamis] to be conscious and therefore, free. ‘Ability,’ ‘capacity,’ ‘dunamis,’ ‘connatus,’ all deal with an individual’s ability to affect the world world around them in an active manner. In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza argues that one is morally permitted can do whatever they are capable of doing.816 What this means is that one is master of their world until they encounter that which is greater than their individual connatus. Since no one is of vastly different capacity compared to any other individual, it be- comes pragmatic to create a social contract from the prior ‘state of nature.’817 In Levinas’ own phenomenology of one’s Being-in-the-world, Levinas’ focus on an individual’s ability to affect their world is indicative of their own pre-reflective enjoyment of the world around them: “It is enough to walk, to do [faire], in order to grasp anything, to take.”818 The French verb faire has a broad meaning and usage, generally meaning the equivalent of ‘to be able [to do sth.]’. This is equivalent of dunamis, or machen. One claims the land under their feet by walking the bound- aries of ‘their’ property; one grasps and takes what they desire for themselves. This taking is sounds similar to Heidegger’s Zuhandenheit, or ‘ready-at-hand.’ One affects the meaning of the objects which they grasp, and how they use said objects in the world. Levinas makes a state- ment pertinent to his following critique of mediation, when he states: “The site, a medium [Le lieu, milieu], affords means.”819 The idea of the ‘site,’ as that which mediates an individual, en- abling their ability over that which is in their space, can be compared to Buber’s idea of the mediating space in I and Thou.820 Levinas, while having many similarities-of-kind with Buber’s dialogical philosophy, differs from Buber by degree. Buber’s spatial mediation between the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ would be rejected by Levinas as mediating the superlative experience of the Other.

815 Genesis 2:7.

816 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 190. 817 191.

818 Levinas, Totality, 37. See also the German Begrift. 819 Levinas, Totality, 37. 820 “The Thou also appears in space, but only in an exclusive confrontation in which everything else can only be background from which it emerges, not its boundary and measure. The Thou appears in time, but in that of a process that is fulfilled in itself–a process lived through not as a piece that is a part of a constant and organized sequence but in a ‘duration’ whose purely in- tensive dimension can be determined only by starting from the Thou” (81). Sadler 171

Levinas follows his phenomenological method by establishing an individual’s enjoyment in the element of their environment. With this, pre-reflective, aesthetic individuality is estab- lished as one’s initial condition in the world, in order that one has their ‘shell’ of Being’s totality broken by the revelation of the Other. In its most-concrete form, this involves the Other arriving at our door as a stranger, disrupting our individualistic normality: “The absolutely other is the Other [L’absolument Autre, c’est Autri].”821 This superlative statement has the style of the hy- perbole of the ‘most-high.’ He follows “[The Other] and I do not form a number.”822 The idea of the relation of self/Other does not occur as the relation of geometric bodies in space. While Levinas is outright in opposition to the kind of geometric relation of bodies proper to Spinoza, he is also rejecting Buber’s spatial metaphors. He states: “Neither possession nor the unity of number nor unity of concepts link me to the Stranger [l’Etranger], the Stranger who disturbs the being at home with oneself [le chez soi].”823 Of course, “the stranger” in existential terminology calls to mind Albert Camus’ book l’Etranger. However, Camus’ stranger is the individual whose sense of meaninglessness in the face of an absurd society sets them apart and defines their individuality. Levinas’ “stranger” is not an alienated individual; rather, Levinas’ formulation of individuality is perfectly at-home-with-their-self [le chez soi]. The stranger who disturbs our so- cial conventions is the Other. Levinas follows that the categories of our engagement with the world through grasping that which is ready-at-hand, in our sense of personal aesthetic pleasure, do not apply to the Other: “Over [the Other] I have no power. [The Other] escapes my grasp by an essential dimen- sion, even if I have him at my disposal. [The Other] is not wholly in my site.”824 One’s relation of power over the world as a Subject who defines and grasps its objects cannot exercise this power over the Other in their transcendent freedom. Likewise, the Other-as-such is not fully within one’s ‘site,’ the space which they trod underfoot and make their home; the Other cannot be a ‘body’ in geometric space in relation to the I. And yet, Levinas’ affirms that the freedom of the I allows for its negative commonality with the Other insofar as neither is a ‘genus’: “But I, who have no concept in common with the Stranger, am, like him, without genus.”825 Even the concept of ‘genus’ [genos] is itself problematic, implying different ‘species’ of beings, lacking common-ground. The concept of ‘genus’ is the basis of ‘race,’ which itself has been used to divide humanity based on pseudo-scientific prejudice and ideology. In his post-Holocaust con-

821 Levinas, Totality, 39. 822 39.

823 39. 824 39. 825 39. Sadler 172 text, Levinas is writing under the shadow of Nazi racial ideology and the mass-death [lit ‘geno- cide’] that it engendered.

§3. Equality Versus Alterity

Here Levinas discusses the sense of undifferentiatedness between self and Other that Buber would call ‘equality. However, I would argue that ‘equality’ is a positive concept, denot- ing a ‘qualia’ of what a relationship is, while an undifferentiated manner of relation is purely negative: it merely says which the relation is not: “The conjunction and here designates neither addition nor the power of one term over the other.”826 Levinas uses logical formality to discuss how even the conjunction of two terms does not give one term primacy over the other. What I find more at-issue in this logical analogy is the idea that the conjunction term itself mediates the relation between the Self and Other. Either the conjunction is a ‘solid’ term, a mediating ‘third-term,’ or a ‘space’ [lieu] in which both same and Other terms can stand. Either way, whether the conjunction is substantive or spatial, it still constitutes mediation, which is itself inauthentic in Levinas’ philosophy. Levinas follows by giving a concrete manner by which the self and Other are able to relate to one-another: “We shall try to show that the relation between the same and the other–upon which we seem to impose such extraordinary conditions–is lan- guage.”827 Language itself becomes the manner of relation between the self and Other, while Levinas attempts to deal with the problem of mediation. Levinas argues that the manner in which the self and the Other converse still allows for the Other to retain their transcendence. Levinas follows: “For language accomplishes a relation such that the terms are not limitrophe within this relation, such that the other, despite the relationship with the same, remains tran- scendent to the same.”828 While the previously-mentioned conjunction has its own problem as mediator, to posit the linguistic relation between the self and Other as a mere limitrophe ‘slash,’ even the self/Other relation brings the Other too-far into the self’s space [lieu]. Therefore, the linguistic relation between the self and Other is beyond logical terms of conjunction, and even beyond a mere limitrophe ‘/.’ The manner of linguistic relationship is through ‘conversation.’ Levinas continues: “The relation between the same and the other, metaphysics, is primordially enacted as conversation, where the same, gathered up in its ipseity as an ‘I,’ as a particular existent unique and autochthonous, leaves itself.”829 The relation of the self and Other is meta-

826 39.

827 39. 828 39. 829 39. Sadler 173 physics in its most positive sense, and is expressed through conversation. An individual leaves their own self-generated-from-the-earth [autochthonous] dwelling in order to meet the Other from the vantage point of the individual self’s non-place. Finally, Levinas introduces the manner of the conversational relation between the self and the Other as one that occurs face to face. A relation whose terms do not form a totality can hence be produced within the general economy of being only as proceeding from the I to the other, as a face to face, as delineating a distance in depth–that of conversation, of goodness, of Desire–irreducible to the distance the synthetic activity of the understanding es- tablishes between diverse terms, other with respect to one another, that lend themselves to its synoptic operation.830

In other words, Levinas argues that the ‘face-to-face’ encounter with the Other is not merely an action of epistemological (or even aesthetic) judgment, which merely applies the universal cat- egory to the particular instance. In other words, it is not enough to categorize the particular Other to the ‘genus’ called ‘humanity-in-general,’ or ‘general-personhood,’ but that the Other defies this act of technical reason in the first place. Levinas references ‘the synoptic problem,’ of epistemology’s brining diverse sensations under a rule of the understanding, once-again via the faculty of judgment. If the need to objectify that which an individual experiences is ‘episte- mological original sin,’ then the revelation of the Other overcomes this ontological problem of human nature. Levinas’ following chapter 4 of Section I, part A “Metaphysics Precedes Ontology” deals with the problem of the Heideggerian attempt to ‘capture’ the Other’s freedom through mediation and the third term. In a manner similar to Hermann Cohen’s critique of the mediating ‘logos’: “But theory also designates comprehension [intelligence]–the logos of being–that is, a way of approaching the known being such that its alterity with regard to the knowing being vanishes.”831 We are reminded that for both Levinas and Cohen’s Jewish backgrounds there is a rejection of any figure or term that mediates the relation of the religious Jewish community with God. Idolatry is anything which the individual human worships instead of the Divine.832 The ‘logos’ calls to mind an immediate association with the opening of the Christian Gospel ac- cording to John, with its ubiquitous “In the Beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.”833 This immediate identification of the mediating Logos (in the person of Jesus of Nazareth) with God, and its following Incarnation, “the Logos was made

830 39. 831 42.

832 This is what the Rabbis call ‘shittuf’: See B. Sukkah 45B. [shittuf means mediation: associat- ing God’s name with something else] 833 John 1:1. Sadler 174

flesh,” are at-odds with the Jewish tradition as formulated and interpreted by the Rabbis against the new Christian movement.834 The mediation of the ‘Logos’ has been compared to the mediation of the ‘Demiurge’ in Plato’s Timaeus dialogue, the god who creates the imperfect phenomenal world according to the transcendent Forms. This mediating demiurge is also the ‘villain’ of Gnosticism, which in Christianity became the Marcionite Heresy that posited the di- vine-concern of the Hebrew Bible and Evangelion as separate ‘gods,’ the ‘false-demiurge’ of the ‘Old Testament,’ and the ‘true’ divinity of the ‘New Testament.’835 However, in terms of Lev- inas’ critique of Heidegger (and not just Levinas’ Jewish rejection of Christian mediation), the ‘logos’ must also be considered in light of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus.

§4. Levinas’ Critique of Heraclitus

Heidegger’s ‘return’ to Heraclitus is a rejection of the philosophical tradition through Plato, fostered by Christianity á la Nietzsche’s aphorism: “For Christianity is Platonism for the ‘common people’”836 In the first categorized fragment, Heraclitus is attributed as saying that the world is eternal, but human understanding cannot adequate itself with the manner in which the world is ordered according to the ‘Logos.’837 When referring to ‘Zeus,’ as he does, one imagines the relation to a singular reality, either identical or similar to the ‘Logos.’ In fragment 32, Heraclitus is attributed as saying “The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.”838 It should be noted that ‘Zeus’ here is not the nymph-ravishing brute of mythology, but a philosophically-purified concept of the divine intellect, or literally ‘Tzdeus,’ the ‘sky [mind] god.’ Nietzsche references this ‘Tzdeus’ as “Heraclitus’ Great Child,” with regards to the random flux of the cosmos.839 This is in reference to attributed fragment 52: “Eternity is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s.”840 Thus, while the principal behind the cosmos, the ‘Logos,’ is a monad, its expression is one of flux and division. The

834 John 1:14.

835 See David Novak, “From Supersessionism to Parallelism in Jewish-Christian Dialogue”, Talk- ing With Christians. 836 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Preface.

837 See Heraclitus, Fragment 1. 838 Heraclitus, Fragment 32.

839 “Since that time [of divine witness to human spectacle], man has been included among the most unexpected and exciting throws of dice played by Heraclitus’ ‘great child’, call him Zeus or fate” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, Second Essay, ¶16). 840 Heraclitus, Fragment 52: “αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.” Sadler 175 eternal, uncreated nature of the cosmos, and the expressive (one might say, ‘aesthetic’) flux of the ‘Logos’ inspire Heidegger’s project of liberating fundamental ontology’s root from its pla- tonic appropriation. Nevertheless, Levinas rejects a great deal of Heidegger’s conclusions, while making use of his phenomenological method. Let us focus on the idea that Heraclitus argues for the unity and division of all ‘couples,’ the dualities which, for our researches, includes and focuses on the self/Other relation. Accord- ing to fragment 10: “Couples are things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.”841 One would be tempted to regard this idea of all dualities as sub- divided from the whole as a kind of monism, save Heraclitus’ also-attributed idea of ‘flux,’ es- pecially the famous 12th fragment, that one never steps into the same river twice. Since for Heraclitus, all dualities are unique and in-conjunction, simultaneously, love and hate, sacred and profane, self and other are necessarily in-relation to one-another. In this sense, all phe- nomena are simultaneously and necessarily conjoined to their opposite, and completely dis- joined from the same. This allows both the idea of an all-encompassing totality, as well as that of a complete disunity proper to ‘post-modern’ thought. This ‘post-modern’ flux can be em- bodied in the continual revolution, upheaval and ‘upsurges’ on the political stage of the world. Consider Fragment 80, attributed to Celsus by Origen: “We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away (?) through strife.”842 The view attributed to Heraclitus is one that seems characteristically ‘post-modern’ in its be- yond-good-and-evil morality: generation and passing away, upheaval and strife are what is paradoxically constant. Here Heraclitus’ justification of the ongoing nature of war and violence in the world is explicitly rejected by Levinas in his introduction to Totality and Infinity: “We do not need obscure fragments of Heraclitus to prove that being reveals itself as war to philosophical thought, that war does not only affect it as the most patent fact, but as the very latency, or the truth, of the real.”843 This is the task to be overcome in Levinas’ critique of Heidegger’s return to Heraclitus: the idea of philosophy as war by intellectual means. Heraclitus’ idea, in this case, is that the ‘real’ is the truth of this flux, pain, and violence; it has no ethical character, and self/ Other are considered parts of the same reality, of qualitatively identical, but different in-degree. Heraclitus contrasts the relativity of good and evil among humans against the perspective of the gods, that all things are good (however bad things happen to appear to humans): “To a god

841 Heraclitus, Fragment 10.

842 Fragment 80, Celsus, in Origen, Against Celsus, VI, 42. 843 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21. Sadler 176 all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.”844 This is not to say that the ‘gods’ care for humanity, merely that all things appear as good to them. This can justify the Olympian gods’ apparent cruelty and violence toward each other and help- less human victims as actions that are good by their very nature. Since the Olympian gods are the gods of the ‘light’ (as opposed to the pre-Olympian, chthonian titans of the depths), the ‘good’ of the gods is an aesthetic, not a moral, good. If one were to have this superlative aes- thetic beauty, then all actions from the place of that beauty are good, no matter how vile to human sensibility they may otherwise appear. Levinas’ radical reformulation argues in favour of the downtrodden and ugly: the Other as widow, orphan, and refugee (sojourner). Therefore Levinas’ ethical philosophy is anti-aesthetic, against the aesthetic ‘light’ of beauty as good for its own sake. Following Levinas’ critique of the logos, á la Hermann Cohen, he makes his explicit cri- tique of the third term, which mediates between the self and the Other. “This mode of depriving the known being of its alterity can be accomplished only if it is aimed at through a third term, a neutral term, which itself is not a being; in it the shock of the encounter of the same with the other is deadened.”845 The encounter with the Other is the shock of revelation that breaks the shell of the same’s being. The mediating third term attempts to capture this moment like light- ening in a bottle, objectifying and controlling it. Through mediation, the primal, metaphysical authenticity of the same’s encounter with the Other is made less-vital, less-alive. The same de- sires that the Other be under their control, and this is the ontological condition of the same’s self-interested desire for power and control over the transcendent Other. Levinas continues: “The third term may be called sensation, in which objective quality and subjective affection are merged.”846 This is the crux of this dissertation, the extended critique of Kant’s faculty of Judgment in its epistemological and aesthetic iterations. Levinas sums up the mediating nature of judgment as mediating between that which is objective (the extended world of experience) and the subjective (the manner in which the individual is affected by their sensations of the world). Levinas here equates the empty space observed by the phenomenological individual with the empty, open space of light, by which an individual ‘body’ (human or otherwise) can ‘appear’ to the Self. Levinas follows: “Being, which is without the density of existents, is the light in which existents becomes intelligible.”847 The ‘light’ of Being is the epistemological con- dition for an individual to phenomenally witness objects and thus apply experience to con-

844 Heraclitus, Fragment 102.

845 Levinas, Totality, 42. 846 42. 847 42. Sadler 177 cepts. The tyranny of he light is that which individuals uses in their bad-faith attempt to render the Other captive. Ontology, as the interpretation of the structure of Being, is seen as the ‘method’ by which the same attempts this act of bad faith. Thus: “Ontology, which reduces the other to the same, promotes freedom–the freedom that is the identification of the same, not allowing itself to be alienated by the other.”848 The same’s naive definition of ‘freedom’ comes only at the expense of the Other’s freedom: this is seen as a zero-sum-game, where the free- dom of one necessarily limits the freedom of the Other. The Other’s limiting of the same’s sup- posed ‘omnipotent’ freedom, for Levinas, lies at the heart of traditional metaphysics. As we will see, Levinas posits that the same’s subordinating their freedom in service to the Other is the ultimate ethical freedom.

§5. Radical Alterity

The same’s experience of the encounter with the Other is itself the individual’s strug- gling to understand the Other in their radical alterity: “We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics.”849 Now we have two of Levinas’ aphoristic definitions of ‘ethics’: optics is ethics as logical specification, while ‘calling into question’ is the genuine dynamic of ethical relation. We see the first as ‘ethics is an optics’; the latter now, is the individual’s attempt to ameliorate themselves to the Other’s infinite alterity. Thus, ethics is focused on an individual’s experience of the Other, both through their own sensation as ‘optics,’ while trying to understand the Other without ‘falling’ into the ‘epistemological original sin’ of the self attempting to comprehend or assimilate Other into one’s own being. Levinas summarizes: “Western philosophy has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of be- ing.”850 This is the summary of ontology, which attempts to hypostatize the Other into a medi- ated being, the third term. Levinas contrasts ‘authentic’ freedom from the encounter with the Other against the commonly-held idea of ‘free will’: “Freedom does not resemble the capri- cious spontaneity of free will; its ultimate meaning lies in this permanence in the same, which is reason.”851 ‘Freedom’ is here contrasted against ‘free will,’ which Levinas refers to as ‘capri- cious spontaneity’: in other words, ‘free will’ is merely arbitrary in the literal sense. Let us now focus on how an individual attempt to control the Other’s freedom as an act of bad faith. Lev-

848 Levinas, Totality, 42.

849 43. 850 43. 851 43. Sadler 178 inas continues: “The neutralization of the other who becomes a theme or an object–appearing, that is, taking its place in the light–is precisely [the Other’s] reduction to the same.”852 This ‘tak- ing one’s place in the light’ is similar to the rhetoric employed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the great phantom which takes its place on the stage.’853 The problem involved with the compari- son of the Other with the ‘great phantom’ (phenomena) is that the Other, despite the experi- ence of their face, is that which paradoxically ‘does-not-appear’ (apo-phansis). While the nega- tivity of the apo-phansis will be dealt with in the following chapter, suffice to say one assumes the phenomenon which they witness (‘the great phantom’) has its own agency. The agency of that-which-appears-to-me (phenomena) exists apart from my perception. This is a crucial point of Levinas' phenomenology. Re-iterating his argument from Existence and Existent, Levinas states that the ‘light’ of philosophical consciousness attempts to trap and control the object which is held in its vision. Levinas makes more explicit the epistemological mediation engendered by the light of con- sciousness: “To know amounts to grasping being out of nothing or reducing it to nothing, re- moving from it its alterity. This result is obtained from the moment of the first ray of light.”854 More explicitly we see that phenomenological epistemology has the structural nature of at- tempting to appropriate the Other for the same. Levinas discusses how the spatialization of the phenomenological horizon it itself the ‘stage’ or ‘space’ in which the Other is made to appear before the same. Levinas continues: “To illuminate is to remove from being its resistance, be- cause light opens a horizon and empties space–delivers being out of nothingness.”855 This ‘de- livery’ of the Other to the same is based on the same attempting to aggrandize their own free- dom at the cost of the Other's. This ‘delivery’ is the opposite of the ‘revelation’ in which the Other appears of itself to the same. Here Levinas introduces mediation as ‘meaningful’ only if it does not merely serve to reduce the distance between the same and Other.856 This can be compared, once-again, to Heidegger’s concept of ‘distantiation’, where one is so close to their

852 43.

853 “He is using his body as a means to play acting; he finds it entertaining to pretend to be a soldier; he escapes from reality in the rôle of the soldier just as the actor slips his real body into the ‘great phantom’ of the character to be played” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 120). For her treatment of phenomenology as “dramatique des phénomènes” see “Levinas’s Project: An Interpretative Phenomenology of Sensibility and Intersubjectivity” (Conti- nental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, 2011, 67).

854 Levinas, Totality, 44. 855 44. 856 “Mediation (characteristic of Western philosophy) is meaningful only if it is not limited to re- ducing distances” (44). Sadler 179 object that they fail to comprehend its totality.857 It is only by means of distance that one can appropriately understand their object. Levinas inverses this emphasis on individual compre- hension, by arguing that the distance between the same and the Other is infinite: “For how could intermediaries reduce the intervals between terms infinitely distant? Will not the intervals between the mid-points progressively staked out ad infinitum appear always equally untra- versable?”858 Levinas here refers to the attempt to overcome Zeno’s paradox of motion, and all other arguments that attempt to bridge the abyss between two terms, via an infinite number of mediating points. We can compare this to David Hume’s discussion of the infinite divisibility of a line.859 For our purposes, the most apt analogy is the ‘asymptote,’ the idea of the infinite progress and futility of a two geometric lines to meet. The terms of the ‘asymptote’ are the 0 and the 1, the difference between is infinite. The closest a Zero can ever reach a One is 0.999999999… ad infinitum. It is the bad faith of an individual ego to think they can re-present this Other to their self, rather than respecting the infinite escapability of the Other’s alterity. Lev- inas sums up this philosophical bad faith: “Philosophy is an egology.”860 It is therefore neces- sary to go-beyond philosophy as a method for understanding the world.

§6. Necessary Mediation

Levinas follows by discussing the necessary structural mediation proper to phenome- nology, which Levinas explicitly calls ‘ontological imperialism.’861 Discussing the spatialization of phenomenological apperception of the world and those beings found within, Levinas sum- marizes: “Since Husserl the whole of phenomenology is the promotion of the idea of horizon, which for it plays a role equivalent to that of the concept in classical idealism; an existent arises upon a ground that extends beyond it, as an individual arises from a concept.”862 The idea of ‘transcendence’ presented here is that the horizon extends (‘transcends’) that which appears within it, even if this ‘appearance’ is the Other. Levinas reverses this relation by arguing that it is the Other who transcends the same’s horizon of perspective, and is therefore not subject to the space of the ego’s horizon. Further describing this process of objectification, Levinas states:

857 Abständigkeit. 858 44.

859 see Hume, Enquiry, 135-136.

860 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 44. 861 “Phenomenological mediation follows another route, where the ‘ontological imperialism’ is yet more visible” (44). 862 44-45. Sadler 180

“To broach an existent from Being is simultaneously to let it be and to comprehend it.”863 As previously stated, com-prehension is the individuals’ attempt to capture the object of their concern as a totality. Therefore, Levinas can state the thesis of Being and Time, to which he is opposed: “Being and Time has argued perhaps but one sole thesis: Being is inseparable from the comprehension of Being (which unfolds as time); Being is already an appeal to subjectivity.”864 Heidegger argues for a being that is as-affected by the world it affects, while conversely Levinas argues that the ‘grasping’ of the Other-as-object (or technical implement) is still focused on individual subjectivity. Levinas further qualifies Being and Time’s thesis as the priority of generalized Being over personal existents: To affirm the priority of Being over existents is to already decide the essence of philosophy; it is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impersonal, per- mits the apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates justice to freedom.865

Freedom here is a problematic concept for Heidegger, as one’s freedom is limited by their situ- ation of Being-in-the-world. And yet, cannot one argue that the subordination of the ego to their situation in the world is an excuse to abdicate responsibility for their actions? They can appeal to their context, upbringing, religion, education, and other ‘given,’ ‘situated’ factors that have impacted their exercise of justice and responsibility. But Levinas makes sure to qualify that Heidegger’s notion of freedom is not one of individual autonomy, according to the idea of ‘free will.’866 “To be sure, the freedom involved in the essence of truth is not for Heidegger a principle of free will.”867 The Will constrains individual freedom. However, Levinas qualifies that Heideggerian freedom has its own agency, and the individual ego is merely the medium for en- acting this freedom: “Freedom comes from an obedience to Being: it is not man who possess- es freedom; it is freedom that possesses man.”868 Therefore, human freedom and agency is

863 45.

864 45.

865 45.

866 See Hannah Arendt: Life of the Mind: Willing. Arendt discusses the Will in terms of freedom, not as the locus of ethics qua Kant (27). For Kant’s separation of (moral) will versus (appetitive) inclina- tion, see 57. She understands that Kant’s ‘Will’ is actually Aristotle’s ‘practical reason’ (63). 867 45. 868 45. Sadler 181 subordinated to the impersonal drive of Being: from such a standpoint, anyone involved with atrocities can claim they were just ‘following orders.’ Levinas states succinctly: “Such is the definition of freedom: to maintain oneself against the other, despite every relation with the other to ensure the autarchy of the I.”869 Levinas’ use of the term ‘autarchy,’ a play on the Greek ‘autos’ and ‘arché,’ meaning “the rulership by the Same,” highlights a major linguistic problem between the Same and the Other. In Greek, the pronouns ‘auto’ and ‘allo’ signify Same and Other, respectively. However, while one sees many uses of ‘auto,’ either in reference to the subject of inquiry, or in ubiquitous terms like ‘autono- my’ (lit. ‘law of the Same’), one sees far fewer uses of ‘allo’ (usually in contradistinction to the auto). This linguistic structure emphasizes the autonomy of the self/Same, at the expense of the Other. The primacy of the Same and the minimization of the Other is endemic to western phi- losophy, as Levinas conceives it. In a manner similar to Heidegger’s gradations of Being, Lev- inas argues that one’s comprehension of the world results in grasping it in accordance with technical reason: “‘I think’ comes down to ‘I can’–to an appropriation of what is, to an exploita- tion of reality.”870 Levinas articulates the degeneration of the Cogito into ‘faire’/‘dunamis’/ machen: i.e. once one comprehends the world in its totality, one literally ‘is able’ to do with that totality whatever they wish. Comprehension leads to technical grasping which results in ex- ploitation, exploiting both the world and the Other. When one reduces the transcendence of their world-horizon and the Other who faces them into a mere totality, this exploitation takes place. Levinas continues by examining Heidegger’s attempt to overcome the problems of the traditional metaphysical thesis by the appeal to the pre-Socratic philosophers (especially Hera- clitus), and the critique of technology in the “Question of Technology”: “The ‘egoism’ of ontol- ogy is maintained even when, denouncing Socratic philosophy as already forgetful of Being and already on the way to the notion of the ‘subject’ and technological power, Heidegger finds in Presocratism thought as obedience to the truth of Being.”871 Levinas underscores the irony of Heidegger’s thought. In attempting to overcome egoism and technical reason, Heidegger reinforces both ideas through the ‘grasping’ individual who appropriates their totality as tools for their purposes, resisting society as an ‘authentic’ individual. The appeal to Heraclitus brings the ‘logos’ back to mind, despite its seeming banishment by modern philosophy. Discussing Heidegger’s ‘anthropology’ (in the sense of the study of human nature, rather than the methods

869 46. 870 46. 871 46. Sadler 182 of the modern social sciences), Levinas critiques Heidegger’s ‘sedentary’ paganism, in opposi- tion to the nomadic Hebrew people, who dwelt in tents: In bringing together presence on the earth and under the firmament of the heav- ens, the waiting for the gods and the company of mortals in the presence to the things–which is to build and cultivate–Heidegger, with the whole of Western his- tory, takes the relation with the Other as enacted in the destiny of sedentary peo- ples, the possessors and builders of the earth.872

Heidegger’s totalization of the world in the mode of Being is comparable to the Aristotelian ‘closed cosmos,’ of a limited world in limitless time. In the old cosmology, space is finite, and time infinite, Heidegger privileges time over space. Levinas, by contrast, privileges the space in which the Other may reveal itself to the individual person in a timeless manner.873 Likewise, Levinas privileges the spatial superlative of ‘the most high.’ Levinas continues his critique of Heidegger’s ‘anthropology’ by critiquing the implicit power dynamics of the ‘strong men,’ the ‘gods’ and warriors of pre-technical society: “In denouncing the sovereignty of the technologi- cal powers of man Heidegger exalts the pre-technological powers of possession.”874 In the Biblical metaphors so familiar to Levinas, the ‘strong men’ of the Hebrew Bible: the superlative ‘Sons of god’ of the antediluvian era, Nimrod of Babel, Esau the hunter, and Og, king of Bashan.875 These powerful, individual men held great control over others, and used their strength to possess and control people, animals and land. These are the tyrants who represent autarchy in all its ipseity, the summum ego or ‘most-I.’ Levinas continues: “[Heidegger’s] analy- ses do not start with the thing-object, to be sure, but they bear the mark of the great land- scapes to which the things refer.”876 These ‘landscapes’ become signs that point to the ‘great deeds’ of these superlative ‘great men.’ One has only to think of Keats’ Ozymandias, or the Biblical Tower of Babel, or Nietzsche and Foucault’s ‘cyclopic buildings’ or ‘Panopticon’ to conjure images of these oppressive structures.877 Levinas ends the paragraph on the au- tochthonous nature of Heidegger’s ontology by discussing its quality as literally ‘self-generat-

872 46. 873 See Bettina Bergo, “Levinas’s Project: An Interpretative Phenomenology of Sensibility and Intersubjectivity.” Bergo writes: “This ‘otherwise’ [than Being] simply happens outside of every- day time” (Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, New York: Springer Publishers, Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, 2011, 62). 874 46.

875 See Spinoza, Tractatus, ¶24. 876 46. 877 “So far, science has not yet built its cycloptic buildings; but the time for that, too, will come” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ¶7). See Foucault, Panopticism”, Discipline and Punish, 195. Sadler 183 ed-from-the-earth’: “Ontology becomes ontology of nature, impersonal fecundity, faceless generous mother, matrix of particular beings, inexhaustible matter for things.”878

§7. Prereflective, Autochthonious Enjoyment

Levinas discusses how the autochthonian nature of these powerful, pre-technological ‘anthropoi’ have the quality of ‘tyranny,’ the tyranny of Being over Others: “Tyranny is not the pure and simple extension of technology to reified men. [Tyranny’s] origin lies back in the pa- gan ‘moods,’ in the enrootedness in the earth, in the adoration that enslaved men can devote to their masters.”879 The ‘moods’ which Levinas mentions in typical aphoristic manner refer specifically to Heidegger’s concept of ‘moods’ or ‘states-of-mind’ in Being and Time. Levinas’ mention of those slaves who are in-devotion to their supposedly-superior masters is the oppo- site of Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment, specifically the hatred that the inferior have toward the superior. Therefore, Levinas is critiquing a deeply held view of the human experience experi- ence, namely: the love the oppressed have for their tyrants. Levinas explicitly states that “the terms [of same and Other] must be reversed.”880 Lev- inas argues that the western philosophical tradition has used ‘theory’ as a manner to resolve and overcome the difference between the perceiver and their perceived: that the idea in the perceiver is adequate to object or Other escaping them. Here summarizing the overall charac- ter of western philosophy: For the philosophical tradition the conflicts between the same and the other are resolved by the theory whereby the other is reduced to the same–or, concretely, by the community of the State, where beneath anonymous power, though it be intelligible, the I rediscovers war in the tyrannic oppression it undergoes from the totality.881

Levinas follows the idea that the act of philosophical dialogue between two individuals is itself violent, and that philosophy is war sublimated to a higher, intellectual state. Levinas contrasts the idea of totalizing theory with ethical ‘opinion’: “Ethics, where the same takes the irreducible Other into account, would belong to opinion.”882 In colloquial use, ‘opinion’ is usually taken as arbitrary, uninformed views on whatever topic is of concern. In this manner, the ethical ‘op-in-

878 46.

879 47.

880 47.

881 47. 882 47. Sadler 184 ion’ of the Other’s alterity does have an origin in individual, phenomenological perspectivism. The individual is the ‘pinion’ around which their experience of the Other who is ‘revealed’ or ‘given’ revolves. But this ‘revolving’ of the ‘op-inion’ does not subject the Other to the same, it is the same’s apperception of the Other. Concerning the same’s apperception of the Other: The effort of this book [Totality and Infinity] is directed toward appreceiving in dis- course a non-allergic relation with alterity, toward apperceiving Desire–where power, by essence murderous of the other, becomes faced with the other and ‘against all good sense,’ the impossibility of murder, the consideration of the oth- er, or justice.883

‘Apperception’ means ‘that-which-is-prior-to-perception,’ and has the quality of an a priori structure. Therefore, Levinas’ priority of the Other's over the same’s theoretical understanding is metaphysical in its priority-to-experience. Levinas continues by discussing the conventional structures of philosophical meta- physics that he will later critique and reformulate. He beings chapter 5, the end of part A, “Transcendence as the Idea of Infinity” by stating: “The schema of theory in which metaphysics was found distinguished theory from all ecstatic behavior. Theory excludes the implantation of the knowing being into the known being, the entering into the Beyond by ecstasy.”884 Heideg- ger discusses ‘ecstacies’ in Being and Time, the word itself derived from the Greek ‘ek-stasis,’ literally outside of standing or of stability.885 An ek-static self is a destabilized self or a dis- placement of self-hood. For Heidegger, that which is outside-one’s-state is primordially orient- ed towards the future. Let us recall that ‘schema’ has the specific meaning in Kant’s episte- mology of facilitating the transition from sensation to the understanding, via the categories. The schema facilitates theory. Here Levinas means that ek-stasis takes the individual same out of itself. Theory attempts to seize [tenir] its object of contemplation for itself; ek-stasis takes the self outside itself, the better to ap-rehend the Other. Levinas continues: “To be sure, represen- tation does not constitute the primordial relation with being. It is nonetheless privileged, pre- cisely as the possibility of recalling the separation of the I.”886 Levinas specifies that the theo- retical structure of representing an experience to the self is not the primary relation with the world and Others, but it is how one goes about their everyday existence. Representation is the means by which the I thinks its object to itself, while remaining distant from it.

883 Totality and Infinity, 47. 884 48.

885 Heidegger discusses ek-stasis, the ‘ecstasy' that is literally ‘outside time,’ see Heidegger, Being and Time, 329. 886 Levinas, Totality, 48. Sadler 185

Levinas follows by discussing the Desire for the infinite, which I thematically compare to Kant’s metaphysical desire for the Moral Law. For Levinas, the desire of metaphysics is for the Infinite.887 “The infinite in the finite, the more in the less, which is accomplished by the idea of Infinity, is produced as Desire–not a desire that the possession of the Desirable slakes, but the Desire for the Infinite which the desirable arouses rather than satisfies.”888 As we have previ- ously specified in discussing Kant’s location of the moral law in the Will’s Desire, Levinas differ- entiates a ‘moral will’ from the mere inclination to ‘slake’ one’s lusts. If one has never known the Other, then the revelation of the Other engages a longing one did not know they held. Lev- inas contrasts this desire for the infinite metaphysical object (however much it escapes us) against Kant’s idea of ‘disinterestedness’ from the Critique of Judgment. Kant argues that the only manner in which one can have an aesthetic experience of beauty under rational principles is through a sense of rational disinterestedness: “A desire perfectly disinterested–goodness.”889 However, for Levinas goodness can be similar to Kant’s distinction of ‘wellbeing,’ (aesthetic) good, as differentiated from the idea of moral good. Kant discusses the difference between aesthetic and moral goods in the ‘Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason’ in the Critique of Practical Reason. For Levinas, the satisfaction of one’s sense of wellbeing in the face of the moral duty to the Other misses the point: the point is not the Same’s feeling of moral satisfaction, but the ap- prehension of the Other’s infinite difference. Therefore, Levinas articulates the revelation of the face of the Other, and how it affects the Self: “The way in which the other presents himself, ex- ceeding the idea of the other in me, we here name face.”890 We have previously discussed the concept of an individual’s aesthetic self-fashioning, how they present and comport themselves towards the world and those they encounter in it. This ‘visage’ or ‘façade’ of self presentation has the quality of a crafted persona presented to the world. However, Levinas inverts this by arguing for the manner in which individuals are affected by the Other.

§8. The Other as Non-Representation

Levinas states his point against idolatrous aestheticism: “The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me, the idea existing to my own measure and to the measure of its ideatum–the adequate idea.”891 The solidified concept of the

887 See Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation, §60, Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 166. 888 50.

889 Totality, 50. 890 50. 891 51. Sadler 186 understanding, created through Judgment’s mediating sensation, is the manner in which one represents something to one’sSelf. The necessity of representation, to create an intellectual object of that which one perceives (even the divine reality) is ‘epistemological original sin.’ It is not enough to attempt to leap-over this necessary facet of human experience: one first creates an idol of the Other for one’s Self, but the revelation of the Other destroys this idol. The self’s idolatry-of-the-Other is a necessary step in this method, in order for that plastic image to be overcome. Levinas continues that the Other’s face has its own quality of the ‘in-itself,’ a term usually attributed to the agency of the Self: “[The face] does not manifest itself by these quali- ties but καθ'αὐτό [kath’auto, lit. ‘in-itself’ or ‘according to itself’]. It expresses itself.”892 Expres- sion is usually considered the purview of the Self, as one presents one’s self to the world through self-expression. Levinas reverses the expressive relation by arguing the face expresses itself toward the perceiving Self. The concept of the ‘in-itself’ usually describes individual inte- riority, but Levinas argues that the Other’s face as in-itself is the expression of exteriority.893 It is notable that here Levinas’ use of the ‘kath’auto’ to refer to the Other’s autonomy conversely is the use of the term usually designated for (literally) the Same instead in reference to the Other.894 Levinas continues by discussing how expression overcomes the simple presentation of the aforementioned plastic image. In other words, the active nature of expression allows the Other to show forth their freedom, instead of being trapped as a presented objet d’art. The face brings a notion of truth which, in contradistinction to contemporary on- tology, is not the disclosure of an impersonal Neuter, but expression: the exis- tent breaks through all the enveloping and generalities of Being to spread out in its ‘form’ the totality of its ‘content,’ finally abolishing the distinction between form and content.895

The ‘Neuter’ term here discussed is the mediation or trapping of the Other as a plastic image. The Other’s active expression of itself overcomes categorical distinctions of being and theory, like ‘form’ and ‘content,’ towards the simpliciter of the Other’s expressed freedom. Therefore,

892 51. 893 Heidegger writes: "In a peculiar and obvious manner, the ‘Things' which are closest to us are 'in themselves’ [‘An-sich’]; and they are encountered as 'in themselves’ in the concern which makes use of them without noticing them explicitly–the concern which can come up against something unusable. When equipment cannot be used, this implies that the constitu- tive assignment of the ‘in-order-to’ to a ‘towards-this’ has been disturbed” (Being and Time, 74). 894 This may be the only time an αὐτό is in reference to the ἅλλο

895 Totality, 51. Sadler 187

Levinas’ articulation of the Other’s self-expression overcomes the traditional theoretical cate- gories that the Same would place upon the Other. Levinas introduces the manner of relating with the Other in their own expression through dialogue.896 [apophansis] The introduction of a dialogical relation between the Self and Other comes perilously close to sounding like Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue expressed in I and Thou. As is the case with many philosophers who probably agree on the majority of premises and differ on various points (often subtle points), such differences in thought can ap- pear to be finicky nit-picking or hair-splitting. It must be kept in mind that Levinas’ philosophy of dialogue is not simply mirroring Buber’s, but there are subtle differences regarding the in- equality of the relationship, and lack of mediation in Levinas’ philosophy. An important empha- sis in Levinas philosophy of conversation is the fact that the Same becomes dialogically recep- tive to the Other: “[To approach the Other in conversation] is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity.”897 Levinas’ concept of dialogue is in contradistinction to Socrates’ leading questions and verbal bludgeon- ings, which bring his interlocutors to agreement with him, or a state of aporia. In this manner, Socratic dialogues forcefully engage the speaker against their interlocutive Other; Levinas re- verses the relationship in favour of the Same’s receptivity toward the Other. Levinas further qualifies the nature of the gaze: “[Thesis and antithesis] appear in oppo- sition to a synoptic gaze that encompasses them; they already form a totality which, by inte- grating the metaphysical transcendence expressed by the idea of infinity, relativizes it.”898 The ‘synoptic gaze’ is the attempt to smooth over the differences to create a consistent, coherent narrative of that which appears to an individual. ‘Synoptic’ brings to mind the idea of the ‘syn- optic gospels’ from the New Testament, the 3 gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The three synoptic gospels tell the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth, retaining discrepancies and filling-in- the-blanks left from the gospel according to Mark, as well as manners in which Matthew and Luke corroborate each other. The attempt of ‘synoptic reasoning’ would compile a list of differ- ences in perception in an attempt to smooth them over, while simultaneously retaining the ini- tial differences. When the synoptic gaze is applied to the Other, the same attempts to ‘smooth over’ and commensurate their disparate experiences of the Other into a comprehensive narra- tive. For the Other to remain Other, the Same must experience them in the fits and starts, fear and trembling, broken instants and disjunctions in which the Other is encountered.

896 51. 897 51. 898 53. Sadler 188

§9. Bifurcation of Self from Self

Levinas follows by discussing the manner in which an individual is bifurcated from themself, in order to have a dualism of mind/body or interior/exterior. In terms of correlating one’s interior life commensurate to their exterior: “Correlation does not suffice as a category for transcendence.”899 ‘Correlation’ is a concept proper to Hermann Cohen, which is itself an at- tempt to overcome the realist thesis of adequate ideas by positing that exterior sensation and interior idea merely correlate rather than making a declaration about existence.900 Robert Gibbs differentiates between Paul Tillich’s theological concept of 'correlation' for the purposes of apologetics from the correlation between Jewish scholarship and philosophy (especially the eponymous Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas).901 Gibbs qualifies Cohen's epistemology as a correlation between an individual who constructs the plurality of others for their self.902 Levinas, by contrast, calls the attempt of an individual to bifurcate themself in order to make themself an Other to them Self ‘psychism.’ ‘Psychism’ means the ‘cutting of the soul/mind,’ and it is an act performed out of the bad faith that one can be their own Other while not en- countering the exterior Other: “The separation of the Same is produced in the form of an inner life, a psychism.”903 The separation of the Same from their Self is in contradistinction to the idea of the self as a unity simpliciter (simple, singular). Levinas continues: “The psychism con- stitutes an event in being; it concretizes a conjuncture of terms which were not first defined by the psychism and whose abstract formulation harbors a paradox.”904 As previously stated: the act of individual idolatry is the human condition, to be over- come through Levinas’ method of encountering the Other in their alterity. Levinas can therefore state: “The original role of the psychism does not, in fact, consist in only reflecting being; it is already a way of being [une manière d’être], resistance to the totality.”905 Une manière d’être is a self-stylization, the comportment of an individual toward the world and others in an aesthetic manner. Therefore, the act of psychism is the Self’s stylization, following Nietzsche’s maxim:

899 53.

900 See Robert Gibbs’ discussion of Cohen’s definition of correlation, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, 18.

901 Correlations, 18. 902 18.

903 54. 904 54.

905 Levinas, Totality, 54. Sadler 189

“One thing is needful. – To ‘give style’ to one's character – a great and rare art!”906 In the Self’s idolatry, it attempts to create itself as the Ereignis, and thus remove them self from their origin in divine creation. The act of psychism is a defense mechanism against the Self’s fear of being absorbed into the totality of the Same-that-is-not-them. The fear of tyranny causes the Self to tyrannize the Other. It calls to mind those who have been abused becoming the abusers they so abhor. Levinas follows the discussion of psychism and the bifurcation of the self with the idea of the self as a metaphysical unity, a totality-within-itself that excludes difference and the Other. The absolute interval of separation cannot be obtained by distinguishing the terms of the multiplicity by some qualitative specification that would be the ulti- mate, as in Leibniz’s Monadology, where a difference, without which one monad would remain indistinguishable from an ‘other,’ is inherent in the terms.907

In the model of the old metaphysics that Levinas critiques, the attempt to posit qualities to ‘subjects’ simpliciter (as a unity-in-them-self) is to differentiate what would otherwise be identi- cal individual substances. However, the problems associated by the old metaphysical model of a ‘substance’ that ‘has’ ‘qualities’ were dealt with by Kant in his ‘Transcendental Psychology,’ the great ‘clearing-away’ of the old metaphysics. We see that the concept of the ‘simplicity’ of an individual (as opposed to an individual bifurcated within them self) is a problem in order to understand difference. Levinas continues: “As qualities the differences still refer to the commu- nity of a genus.”908 The old metaphysical concepts of genus, species, and specific individuals were cleared-away to make way for modern post-metaphysics. In the old metaphysics, ‘dia- lectic’ is an internal relation, analogous to ‘dialogue,’ but between the bifurcated parts within the individual Self: “The plurality required for conversation results from the interiority with which each term is ‘endowed,’ the psychism, its egoist and sensible self-reference.”909 The old meta- physics allows for dialogue within one’s self, and confines otherness to the Same’s interiority. Thus, the concept of an individual as a unity simpliciter demands an Other exterior to them self in order for such a conversational relation to be possible. Levinas discusses the manner in which metaphysical (ethical) desire allows the Same to approach the Other in their alterity, overcoming what Levinas calls the Self’s ‘allergic reaction’ to the Other: “[The Self] thus finds itself above, or at the apex, at the apogee of being by enjoy-

906 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book IV, ¶290.

907 Levinas, Totality, 59. 908 Levinas, Totality, 59 909 59. Sadler 190 ing (happiness) and by desiring (truth and justice).”910 Here Levinas contrasts one’s enjoyment of the Other’s company as ‘wellbeing’, and the metaphysical nature of truth and justice. Lev- inas follows that Desire overcomes the traditional metaphysical categories, in affirming the Same’s enjoyment of the Other’s presence: “Above being. Desire marks a sort of inversion with regard to the classical notion of substance.”911 Levinas qualifies the fundamental inversion as not merely an individual giving up their own personal ‘goals’ (metaphysical telos), but a com- plete reordering of their own hierarchy of being as oriented toward the Other. The Self makes the Other in the Other’s immediacy into the Self’s teleological destination. Levinas states: [Concern for another being] represents a fundamental inversion not of some one of the functions of being, a function turned from its goal, but an inversion of its very exercise of being, which suspends its spontaneous movement of existing and gives another direction to its unsurpassable apology.912

The ‘unsurpassable apology’ calls to mind Socrates in Plato’s Apology, giving his defense against the Athenian judges (dikastoi).913 The Self has spent its effort and energy justifying itself, especially justifying its denial and indifference toward the Other. However, in the reorienting of the Same toward the Other, the Same becomes the advocate for the Other in their metaphysi- cal alterity. Levinas analyzes Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation, discussing the ‘primordial sphere’ in which, for Husserl, the Other appears according to the Same’s perspective.

The constitution of the Other’s body in what Husserl calls ‘the primordial sphere,’ the transcendental ‘coupling’ of the object thus constituted with my own body itself experienced from within as an ‘I can,’ the comprehension of this body of the Other as an alter ego–this analysis dissimulates, in each of its stages which are taken as a description of constitution, mutations of object constitution into a relation with the Other–which is as primordial as the constitution from which it is to be derived.914

It must be emphasized that Husserl’s intersubjectivity does not go to the ends of positing the Other ‘in-itself,’ but the Other becomes an analogue for the Same who perceives it. The pri- mordial world is still primordial according to the Same’s perspective. For Husserl, the Other is not constituting the primordial world. The idea of the Other as alter ego emphasizes the idea of the ego recognizing the Other through the same Self, and has a quality similar to the Self’s bi-

910 63.

911 Levinas, Totality, 63.

912 63.

913 Defending himself against the Athenian dikastés accusations, Socrates argues that he is not “ὡς δεινοῦ ὄντος λέγειν” (“formidable at speech”) (Apology, 17β).

914 Levinas, Totality, 67. Sadler 191 furcation of itself into its own Other. Levinas continues that the Other is encountered in the pri- mordial sphere at the Other’s initiative and agency.915 The Other’s agency in appearing to the Same is Revelation.916 Levinas contrasts Husserl’s intersubjective primordial world, in which the Other could appear, against Heidegger’s more impersonal notion Being: “Moreover, for Heideg- ger intersubjectivity is a coexistence, a we prior to the I and the other, a neutral inersubjectivity.”917 Heidegger’s neutral intersubjectivity is not a horizon in which the Other can present itself, since Heidegger’s philosophy attempts to neutralize the Other’s alterity.

§10. Approaching the Other, However Asymptotic

Levinas does a comparative genealogy of other philosophers’ approximations of the Other. None of these philosophers go to the end that Levinas will make the Other: the Other is an end-in-itself. The closest to approximate the importance of the Self’s relationship to the Other was Martin Buber in I and Thou. Levinas questions Buber’s dialogical thesis, stating: “One may, however, ask if the thou-saying [tutoiment] does not place the other in a reciprocal relation, and if this reciprocity is primordial.”918 The questioning of reciprocity means that Levinas cri- tiques the idea of ‘mere-equality’ in favour of the asymmetry of the Other. Such an equality is merely formal-equality, the equality afforded by the liberal bourgeoisie. Levinas comments on the formal reciprocity of Buber’s thought: “On the other hand, the I-Thou relation in Buber re- tains a formal character: it can unite man to things as much as man to man.”919 Furthermore, while Buber’s I-Thou relationship can occur between physical objects, nature, or God, Levinas’ asymmetrical relation to the Other is strictly humanistic.920 The Other is preeminently human: the most-human. However, Levinas makes it clear that mere pedantic nitpicking against Bu- ber’s writings is not the goal of his analysis: “[Totality and Infinity] does not have the ridiculous pretension of ‘correcting’ Buber on these points.”921

915 “The primordial sphere, which corresponds to what we call the same, turns to the absolutely other only on call from the Other” (67).

916 67. 917 68. 918 68.

919 68.

920 Robert Gibbs contrasts Levinas humanism of the Other against Buber’s extra-human di- mension in Correlations, 189. 921 Levinas, Totality, 69. Sadler 192

In his further discussion of the manner in which things mediate the relation of the Other to the Self: “I can recognize the gaze of the stranger, the widow, and the orphan only in giving or refusing; I am free to give or to refuse, but my recognition passes necessarily through the interposition of things.”922 The gaze of the Other affects me, as opposed to the common exis- tentialist idea (á la Sartre) that the Self’s gaze constitutes the Other. But instead of the Self as Master enslaving the Other through the gaze, the Other’s gaze affects the Self in its seeming- sovereignty. Levinas continues: “Things are not, as in Heidegger, the foundation of the site, the quintessence of all the relations that constitute our presence on the earth (and ‘under the heavens, in company with men, and in the expectation of the gods’).”923 Heidegger’s phenom- enology has an individual at the mercy and relation to the elements, such as the aforemen- tioned Myth of Cura. An individual is composed of the undifferentiated, pre-categorical ele- ments, between the earth and sky. Heidegger’s paganism of his later technical reason crafts an object for the Volk to stand in the centre of their space, as the focal object of Völkish self-wor- ship. Levinas’ iconoclasm overcomes Heidegger’s idolatry, focusing on the positive existence of the Other. Here, Levinas calls the positive existence of the Other ‘the fact’: “The relationship between the same and the other, my welcoming of the other, is the ultimate fact, and in it the things figure not as what one builds but as what one gives.”924 Not only is the other a fact, but the ultimate fact. Heightening the superlative dimension of the Other above the Self: “In the dimension of height in which his sanctity, that is, his separation, is presented, the infinite does not burn the eyes that are lifted unto him.”925 In the transcending of spatial heights to the realm of the di- vine, Levinas reiterates: “Ethics is the spiritual optics.”926 The aphorism that “ethics is an op- tics” is taken to its superlative heights: the height of the divine. For Levinas, the Other does not mediate the God-human relationship, or the relation between self and world: “[The Other] does not play the role of a mediator.”927 Levinas sums up the project of ethics as first-philosophy, one of the major theses of Totality and Infinity, when he states: The establishing of the primacy of the ethical, that is, of a relationship of man to man–signification, teaching, and justice–a primacy of an irreducible structure upon which all the other structures rest (and in particular all those which seem to

922 77. 923 77.

924 Levinas, Totality, 77.

925 77. 926 78.

927 Levinas, Totality, 78-79. Sadler 193

put us primordially in contact with an impersonal sublimity, aesthetic or ontolog- ical), is one of the objectives of the present work [Totality and Infinity].928

‘Impersonal sublimity’ is here important for our study on Levinas’ critique of the mediating third term, which has the impersonal quality of the aesthetic image. The ‘sublime’ is that which overwhelms the perceiver by the overwhelming power of nature.929 While the sublime is the su- perlative of experience, it does not reach the metaphysical heights of the Other. The sublime, despite its overwhelming effect on the Self, is still impersonal, and therefore relegated to the realm of the aesthetic, or a state of an individual’s being (ontology). Levinas’ overcoming of im- personal, aesthetic mediation is one of the major concerns across his writings, and Totality and Infinity brings the nascent ideas previously discussed to full crystallization. Levinas continues to discuss the Other’s superlative, metaphysical height: “The dimen- sion of height in which the Other is placed is as it were the primary curvature of being from which the privilege of the Other results, the gradient [dénivellement] of transcendence.”930 The ‘curvature of being’ refers to the idea that being, far from being a flat-plane in the geometric sense of the pure a priori of space, is able to have differences in height. The idea of the curva- ture of being allows for the Other to stand above the Same, and for the same to appreciate the difference in height. Therefore, the transcendence of the Other is a difference in height, howev- er superlative, but the Other’s transcendence does not leave this world. Levinas summarizes: “The Other is metaphysical.”931 The Other’s nature as summum gives them the metaphysical hy- perbole of height. In his discussion of the manner in which an individual’s enjoyment of the world has a pre-reflective quality, purely aesthetic and prior to theory, Levinas does his own philosophical anthropology. As Heidegger’s Being and Time begins with a philosophical anthropology of an individual’s experience of being-in-the-world, Levinas critiques Heidegger with an anthropolog- ical counter-narrative: “The ontology of human existence, philosophical anthropology, endlessly paraphrases this abstract thought by insisting, with pathos, on finitude.”932 As we have previ- ously discussed, Emil Fackenheim is the most-critical of Heideggerian finitude, but Levinas has

928 79.

929 Kant’s footnote states: “Perhaps nothing more sublime has ever been said, or any thought more sublimely expressed, than in the inscription over the temple of Isis (Mother Nature): ‘I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and my veil no mortal has removed” (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5:316, asterisk).

930 86-87. 931 87. 932 103. Sadler 194 his own critique of finitude as denying the infinite nature of the Other. As opposed to Heideg- ger’s concept of grasping, an individual’s control of whatever is at-hand, Levinas posits the as- ymptotic nature of the Other’s transcending the Same’s grasp: “The contemplation of objects remains close to action; it disposes of its theme, and consequently comes into play on a plane where one being limits another. Metaphysics approaches without touching.”933 The asymptote means that which approaches but never reaches its goal: an individual Self cannot grasp the Other in the manner of an object. Likewise, the Other escapes the gaze’s contemplation of its object. Sight and touch cannot reach the Other. In his discussion of “Living from… (Enjoyment),” Levinas discusses the manner in which enjoyment is prior to an individual’s reflection, allowing them to enjoy herself within their totali- ty. He states: “We live from ‘good soup,’ air, light, spectacles, work, ideas, sleep, etc… There are not objects of representations.”934 The prior-to-representation is an individual’s unbridled aestheticism, without the mediating structures of epistemological understanding. Unlike aes- thetic judgment, enjoyment is sensation without principle. It is elemental, primordial in-itself. Contrasting against Heidegger: “The things we live from are not tools, nor even implements, in the Heideggerian sense of the term.”935 The enjoyment of one’s non-objectified objet du plaisir has the quality of consumption. The Self consumes what they enjoy. Levinas argues that this consumption is the manner by which an individual attempts to consume, literally incorporate that which is Other into their Same. Nourishment, as a means of invigoration, is the transmutation of the other in to the same, which is the essence of enjoyment: an energy that is other, recognized as other, recognized, we will see, as sustaining, the very act that is directed upon it, becomes, in enjoyment, my own energy, my strength, me.936

In the sense of the colloquialism “you are what you eat,” the consumption of the exterior world by the Same draws that alterity into the same as its very fuel and sustenance. This is one man- ner of relating to exteriority: consumption is a manner in which an individual takes that which they enjoy into their interior totality. Consumption totalizes the world. Further critiquing the aforementioned existentialism of Heidegger, Levinas critiques Heidegger’s idea that one worries about one’s own existence: “Life is not the naked will to be, an ontological Sorge for this life… Life is love of life.”937 Levinas’ concept of enjoyment is an at-

933 Levinas, Totality, 109. 934 110.

935 110. 936 111. 937 112. Sadler 195 tempt to overcome the seemingly inherent pessimism to broadly-termed ‘existential’ philoso- phy. In response to Sartre’s famous aphorism: “Life is an existence that does not precede its essence. Its essence makes up its worth [prix]; and here value [valeur] constitutes being.”938 Happiness is the essence of existence, prior to the ethical revelation of the Other’s metaphysi- cal difference. The primordial essence of an individual’s being in the world is overcome by the superior ethical essence of the Other. Complementing Sartre’s aphorism “reflection poisons desire,” Levinas’ phenomenology of enjoyment describes the pre-reflective (pre-representative) state of enjoyment as primordial.939 The Self’s enjoyment of its elemental existence makes the self its own Ereignis, event or upsurge into the world: “The upsurge of the self beginning in enjoyment, where the substantiality of the I is apperceived not as the subject of the verb to be, but as implicated in happiness (not belonging to ontology, but to axiology) is the exaltation of the existent as such.”940 The axiom of an individual’s mastery of their world is the upsurge of the “I enjoy,” rather than the bare, ontological fact of “I am.” The act of re-presenting that which has been given in primordial experience is the neutralization of happiness. Representing the world for one’s self (the epistemic human condition) neutralizes the vitality of enjoyment for the plastic image of representation: “To represent to oneself is to empty oneself of one’s subjective sub- stance and to insensibilize enjoyment.”941 The representative, mediated human condition is Paradise Lost, primordial enjoyment gives way to the self-deification of the Self. Original sin is “ye shall become as gods,” in other words, primal idolatry.942 Thus knowledge has the structure of fashioning idols for the Self’s contemplation. This primal idolatry attempts to tyrannize all that is encountered, the world, Others, and God, into one’s own totality. With regards to Spin- oza’s discussion of the totality of nature in-itself, Natura Naturans: “By imagining anesthesia lim- itless Spinoza conjures away separation.”943 Levinas’ characterization of Spinoza’s philosophy as an-aesthetic precisely emphasizes the loss of sensation through an individual’s process of totality through representation. Let us compare Levinas’ characterization of Spinoza as an-aes- thetic, with Nietzsche calling Spinoza a “bloodless vampire.”944 Levinas qualifies Spinoza's

938 112.

939 see Jean-Paul Sartre, Transcendence of the Ego, 59: “Reflection ‘poisons’ desire.” 940 119. 941 119.

942 Genesis 3:5

943 Levinas, Totality, 119. 944 See Nietzsche, The Gay Science V, ¶372. Sadler 196

God as practical and theoretical, unlike Kant’s dismissal of God’s theoretical intelligibility.945 The manner in which an individual represents the world to herself in the totality of nature re- moves this individual from their primal enjoyment to a second-order epistemological reflection.

§11. Community as Distinct from the Other

Despite modern philosophy’s emphasis on epistemology, Levinas sees a restoration of primal enjoyment through the communal nature of Kant’s Kingdom of Ends.946 “How could the Kantian kingdom of ends be possible, had not the rational beings that compose it retained, as the principle of individuation, their exigency for happiness, miraculously saved from the ship- wreck of sensible nature?”947 The dialectic between an individual’s practical reason and the Kingdom of ends references the first and third formulations of the categorical imperative. Lev- inas presents the first and third formulations of the categorical imperative, while not discussing

945 “We are at a point prior to the Kantian critique: the God of philosophy is for Spinoza both the theoretical and the practical God of reason” (Levinas, “Have you Reread Baruch?”, Difficult Freedom, 115).

946 Kant's third formulation of the categorical imperative works toward the instantiation of the legislating moral will in the kingdom of ends. He introduces the concept in the Groundwork, writing: “The concept of every rational being that must consider itself as universally legislating through all the maxims of its will, so as to judge itself and its actions from this point of view, leads to a very fruitful concept attached to it, namely that of a kingdom of ends” (Kant, Ground- work, 4:433). Kant, in like manner, introduces the third part of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason as “The victory of the good principle over the evil principle, and the founding of a kingdom of God on earth” (Kant, Religion, 6:93). While Kant’s language sounds normatively Christian its usage, Kant is re-purposing Christian language for the purpose of his project of rational ethics. For Kant, the only manner in which an individual can create positive change in the world is by combining their efforts with those of other moral individuals. Kant writes: “But how [can one resist the forces of evil]? That is the question. – If he searches for the causes and the circumstances that draw him into this danger and keep him there, he can easily convince himself that they do not come his way from his own raw nature, so far as he exists in isolation, but rather from the human beings to whom he stands in relation or association” (Kant, 6:93). Despite Kant’s seeming pessimism about pure practical reason in contradistinction to psycho- logical inclination, his vision of the ethical kingdom of ends is progressive and positive. James DiCenso discusses 6:93 of Religion in his Commentary, discussing the manner in which an individual’s inclinations are influenced by their surrounding culture. DiCenso writes: “Kant really is concerned with how societal interactions can exacerbate our propensity to evil. In ac- cordance with the initial analysis of radical evil, human passions or inclinations cannot be blamed for causing our ethical lapses” (James DiCenso, Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Commentary, 131). Eli Friedlander argues that Kant's third question of “What can I know?” (First Critique), “What ought I to do?” (Second Critique), and “What can I hope for?” is answered by the application of technical reason in the Third Critique (Expressions of Judgment, 9). I disagree, arguing that Kant’s question “What can I hope for?” is answered in his Religion book.

947 Levinas, Totality, 119. Sadler 197 explicitly the second formulation “Treat Others as an end-in-themself, and not merely as a means to an end." In this metaphor, returning to the 'isle of reason,’ the human consciousness is adrift upon the metaphorical sea of undifferentiated enjoyment and sensation. When the ‘ve- hicle' of sensible nature crashes on the island of reason, one is marooned from their undifferen- tiated enjoyment on the desert island of reason. One is alone with their own epistemic faculties. However, the encounter with other shipwrecked exiles allows for the creation of a society in which enjoyment of the world and the company of Others is possible. Thus Levinas skips over the second formulation of the categorical imperative, which requires its own treatment of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. For Kant, the object of moral desire is the metaphysical moral law. Levinas follows in Totality with part B. of Section II: “Enjoyment and Representation.”948 Levinas dives deeper in to the problematics of Husserl’s phenomenology, dealing with the epis- temic necessity of representation in Husserl’s thought. And yet, Levinas continues to affirm Husserl’s transcendence of the Self beyond it-self to an Other (it is a question as to what this Other is).949 Reiterating the phenomenological thesis that all consciousness is consciousness of something: We know the rhythm with which this thesis is exposed: every perception is a perception of the perceived, every idea an idea of an ideate, every desire a de- sire of a desired, every emotion an emotion of something moving…; but every obscure thought of our being is also oriented toward something.950

The emphasis on the faculties of consciousness’ intention of that which is outside itself is an argument against the realist thesis of adequate ideas and the identity of appearances and things-in-themselves. Phenomenology posits that which is intended as beyond the individual who intends. The intentional object is the equivalent of the noumenal formula “the transcen- dental object = X,” with the ‘X’ as that which is beyond the Self. For Levinas, the transcenden- tal X = the Other, but the Other is not an object. Despite Levinas’ support (even ‘apologetic’) for Husserl’s phenomenology, he must admit that phenomenological intention still involves the Self representing her object to herself: “Yet already with the first exposition of intentionality as a philosophical thesis there appeared the privilege of representation.”951 Even Husserl’s phe- nomenology, as radical as its break from realist epistemology as it was, still sees representation as the result of human experience.

948 122.

949 122. 950 122. 951 122. Sadler 198

The idealist thesis argues that one creates the objects of thought for themselves through synthetic a priori judgments from experience.952 The power of judgment allows for the creation of the objects of the understanding for one’s self. This creativity is what Levinas refers to as idealism, how the objects created by judgment have an epistemic analogy to plastic objet d’art. When an individual objectifies the Other as an object of knowledge, this objectification is the intellectual tyranny over the Other: “This mastery [over alterity] is total and as though cre- ative; it is accomplished as a giving of meaning: the object of representation is reducible to neomata.”953 Levinas refers to representation as the superlative ‘event’ (in the sense of the aforementioned Ereignis).954 Levinas qualifies: The intentional relation of representation is to be distinguished from every other relation–from mechanical causality, from the analytic or synthetic relation of logi- cal formalism, from every intentionality other than representation–in that in it the same is in relation with the other but in such a way that the other does not de- termine the same; it is always the same that determines the other.955

Levinas differentiates representations as a higher-order epistemic faculty, more privileged than mere mechanical causality (or the ‘technical reason’ proper to the Critique of Judgment), or the analytic and synthetic relations of ideas in idealistic philosophy. Levinas’ critique of representa- tion as the Same’s determination of the Other is also a critique of Jean-Paul Sartre’s character- ization of the Self-Other relation in Being and Nothingness. Representation is the techné by which an individual affects that which is before them: “While every activity is in one way or other illuminated by a representation, hence advances on a terrain already familiar, representation is a movement proceeding from the same with no searchlight preceding it.”956 There is no heralding representation, it is its own upsurge that illu- minates the world that was not illuminated prior to it. As opposed to a predetermined teleology which gives pre-established goals to an individual in the world, the act of representation cre- ates its own goal. Such a teleology is in accord with individual, rational faculties. Kant had re- formulated teleology in the Critique of Judgment. Hence, Levinas can write: “Representation is this very projection, inventing the goal that will be presented to the still groping acts as won a priori."957 He follows: “The ‘act of representations discovers, properly speaking, nothing before

952 123.

953 124. Husserl defines noema and noesis in Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 74-75. 954 124.

955 124.

956 Levinas, Totality, 124. 957 Levinas, Totality, 125. Sadler 199 itself.”958 The idea of representation’s quality as having ‘nothing before itself’ brings to mind the second commandment of the Decalogue, “You shall have no gods before me [God].”959 Since the act of idolatry is placing any object (often a plastic image) as prior to the one God, then representation’s having nothing before itself has the quality of idolatry. The Self’s act of re-pre- senting the world for itself is the attempt at making itself like God, or to make gods for itself. This god-making is an epistemic condition, though not necessarily literal.

§12. Definition of the Self as Same

Levinas defines why he refers to the Self as the Same, in how the Self attempts to draw everything into its own homogenous totality: “We call [the Self] ‘the same' because in represen- tation the I precisely loses its opposition to its object; the position fades, bringing out the iden- tity of the I despite the multiplicity of its objects, that is, precisely the unalterable character of the I.”960 The position is the perspective by which one views their object, or even the Other. However, closing Heideggerian distantiation, the Self draws the object into the totality of their Same. For the Same, multiplicity becomes totality. Levinas summarizes the Same’s relation to its own representations: “To remain in the same is to represent to oneself.”961 In the manner of Husserl’s idea that a conscious individual abides in their decisions, Levinas argues that the Self’s choice to abide in its representations makes it identified as the Same as the representa- tions it brings into its totality. Levinas critiques Kant’s categories of the understanding from the Critique of Pure Rea- son, which follow a deductive process from Quantity, to Quality, to Relation, then Modality.962 Kant follows the categories with his methodological explication “On the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding”963 The process goes from finite to infinite, to a relation be- tween terms, and finally style and manners of terms’ iteration. Despite Kant’s metaphysical de- struction of the old ontology, the epistemological categories entail the risk of being mistakenly

958 125. 959 Exodus 20:3.

960 Levinas, Totality, 126.

961 126.

962 Kant, CPR, B106. 963 B116. “ I therefore call the explanation of the way in which concepts can relate to objects a priori their transcendental deduction and distinguish this from the empirical deduction, which shows how a concept is acquired through experience and reflection on it, and therefore concerns not the lawfulness but the fact from which the possession has arisen” (B117). Sadler 200 applied to ethical human relations in a confusion of the epistemological for the ethical. The method of categorical reason results in the very ontological categories Levinas’ ethical project critiques: quantity results in totality, quality in limitation (finitude), and ‘relation’ in reciprocity.964 Levinas has heavily critiqued the ontological concepts of totality, finitude, and reciprocity in the manner which they objectify moral relations. The Other, in all its alterity, breaks-through the categories that Kant says are deduced by an individual knower: “But the way [exteriority] is de- termined does not simply bring us back to the reciprocity designated by the third Kantian cate- gory of relation.”965 Relation is a misnomer to common usage, as it refers to the relation of ideas analogous to the geometric relation of bodies in space. Levinas has previously discussed the category of community in Totality, arguing that the category of relation and its outcome in community still refer to the Same and not to the alterity of the Other. First: “As qualities, the dif- ferences still refer to the community of genus.”966 Genus in Kant’s categories would be proper to quality, as quality deals with univer- sals, particulars, and the totality of the whole (of universal ideas and particular instances). Genus as the type is still a manner of collapsing difference into the Same. Even qualitative dif- ference, the second category, is still a difference in terms of the qualia proper to the Same. Lev- inas continues to critique the category of community in relation to Hermann Cohen’s love for an idea as the meaning of idealism.967 “Community through the interposition of the ideas does not establish pure and simple equality among the interlocutors.”968 Levinas criticizes the idea of equality in dialogue, á la Buber, but also the argument that this inequality is the care of the infe- rior for their superior.969 The question “am I my brother’s keeper?” is a resounding yes, and for Plato the philosopher is a guardian of their fellow. Levinas’s philosophy of the ethical relation to the Other does not allow the Other to be deduced as a category of the Same’s understanding, but the Other is beyond categorical deduction. Levinas describes the manner in which primordial enjoyment is processed through rep- resentation into something graspable. In both phenomenological anthropology (first articulated

964 James DiCenso discusses the categorical importance of human personhood, over being, in “Levinas and the Irreducibility of the Other” (Studia z Filozofii Boga, Religii i Czlowieka 3, War- saw, Poland: 2005, 271-282). Kant’s ethics as beyond (or Otherwise) than Being affirms him as a Kantian with regards to the transcendence of ethics (DiCenso, 272).

965 Levinas, Totality, 128. 966 59.

967 71. 968 71. 969 71. Sadler 201 by Heidegger, but here critiqued by Levinas) and Kant’s epistemological schema, a mediating third-term facilitates the transition from primal sensation toward object of representation. Artic- ulating what I have called ‘technical reason’: “[Objects] take form within a medium [milieu] in which we take hold of them.”970 The milieu in which we take hold of objects is Heidegger’s clearing, the a-letheia in which Being can appear. The a-privative in aletheia refers to the nega- tive action of un-covering the object of concern so it may stand before the Same who per- ceives it. The act of attempting to possess or grasp the world which one perceives through technical reason is ultimately an act of bad faith, as the elemental nature of the primordial world belongs to no-one in the sense of Heidegger’s Das Man (‘the They’). “Things refer to pos- session, can be carried off, are furnishings; the medium from which they come to me lies es- cheat, a common fund or terrain, essentially non-possessable, ‘nobody’s’: earth, sea, light, city.”971 The various elements of everyday life do not have their own agency in the manner they affect us (á la Heidegger’s myth of Cura), the elements are the predifferentiated Lebenswelt. And yet, the term ‘medium’ itself has the quality of the mediated. However, look at the analogy to artistic medium: paint, marble, clay, etc.: that which is composed of the medium is not differen- tiated from its composition. Thus, the individual, prior to the revelation of the Other in their al- terity, is composed of their elemental medium. Therefore the predifferentiated medium can be distinguished from the mediating third term in the reflective relation between Self and Other. Levinas sums up his explication of the predifferentiated medium by writing: “We shall call it the elemental.”972 The elemental, prior to the depth of interpretation or the heights of theory is ‘su- perficial’ in its aesthetic enjoyment. He qualifies: “The element has no side: the surface of the sea and of the field, the edge of the wind; the medium upon which this side takes form is not composed of things.”973 In other words, these are not bodies occupying a shared, mediating geometric space. The human condition, prior to reflection (Same) or revelation (Other) is as a ship upon the sea. The ship is not a tool that turns the sea into its ‘space,’ but rather the ship and individual upon the surface of the waves are identified.974 For Levinas, one’s enjoyment of their context and their labour means an individual lives in their own closed cosmos. The ‘shell’ of this cosmos is finite in the sense of Aristotle’s closed

970 130. 971 131.

972 131.

973 131. 974 “The navigator who makes use of the sea and the wind dominates these elements but does not thereby transform them into things” (131). Compare to Horkheimer and Adorno, “Excursis I," Dialectic of Enlightenment. Sadler 202 cosmology: a world-shell with an impersonal God at its apex (literally the ‘most-high’), a cos- mos admitting of no exteriority in its finitude. If one were to traverse the distance of this interior cosmos, one would still not transcend it: “The interiority of immersion is not convertible into exteriority.”975 In like manner, he follows: “The element separates us from the infinite.”976 Our finite, prereflective context does not allow us to transcend this finitude toward the infinite. An individual’s prereflective experience of their finite world is prior to epistemology: “One does not know, one lives sensible qualities: the green of these leaves, the red of this sunset.”977 He fol- lows that the enjoyment of one’s immediate, finite context is itself the essence of aestheticism, or sensibility.978

§13. The Dwelling

My analysis returns to the previous antinomy between sojourning and dwelling, Levinas discusses the finitude by which one establishes herself, and dwells within the elemental, finite cosmos proper. However, despite the closed shell of the cosmos not admitting transcendence, the Other can ‘appear’ or ‘show-itself’ in the Same’s dwelling, demanding (exigent) hospitality from the Same: “In sensibility itself and independently of all thought there is announced an in- security which throws back in question this quasi-eternal immemoriality of the element, which will disturb it as the other, and which it will appropriate by recollecting [se recueillant] in a dwelling.”979 The reflexive nature of the Other re-collecting themself in the dwelling is what al- lows the sojourning Self to come-home to the Other. In relating to their own context, in Husserl’s manner of the one who ‘abides,’ Levinas argues that one stands in their world- dwelling: “This relation of myself with myself is accomplished when I stand [me tiens] in a world which precedes me as an absolute of an unrepresentable antiquity.”980 The reflective native of how one places themself in their unrepresentable, uncreated world (which Levinas calls ‘an- arche’ lit. 'no-beginning’) has the quality of the autochthonous, self-generated nature from the earth.981 Levinas argues that one’s position in the world in a prereflective manner is different

975 132.

976 132. 977 135. 978 “The finite as contentment is sensibility” (135).

979 137. 980 137. 981 αυτόχθονας in Greek Sadler 203 from the manner in which one grasps and comprehends the world in terms of the Da in Hei- degger’s Da-Sein: “Position, absolutely without transcendence, does not resemble the compre- hension of the world by the Heideggerian Da.”982 The awareness of one’s Being-There (Da-Sein) is already an interpretation of one’s existence in the world: one’s Being-There has already re- moved them from the prereflective enjoyment of the elemental. Finally, Levinas ends part B’s section 4, “Sensibility” with the more declarative engage- ment with the idolatry of the plastic image d’art in place of the divine Other. Discussing the question as to whether the transcendent face of the Other appears to us as the sign by which we refer to it: “Things have a form, are seen in the light–silhouettes or profiles; the face signifies itself.”983 The question of signification and the non-appearance of the Other (apo-phansis) will become the issue of this dissertation’s following chapter. However, given that the face escapes representation and epistemological understanding, the attempt to represent the divine reality is idolatry: “The world of things calls for art, in which intellectual accessions to being moves into enjoyment, in which the Infinity of the idea is idolized in the finite, but sufficient, image.”984 ‘Suf- ficient’ is not the same as ‘adequate’ in the realist sense. And how does an image suffice in place of the unrepresentable Other? It suffices that an individual Self can feel she has compre- hended the Other’s freedom into herself as the Same. However, the act of creating art is itself a secondary order of experience, theorizing and reflecting on the primordial enjoyment of the el- emental world. Thus, while the elemental, undifferentiated world of enjoyment is aesthetic sen- sibility, the creation of the objet d’art is aesthetic in the sense of Judgment. This is the conflict between the aesthetic of the primordial Lebenswelt, and art as aesthetics. Levinas states sum- marily: “all art is plastic.”985 Having discussed Levinas' critique of the aesthetic image, mediation and idolatry prop- er to representation in place of the Other, this chapter has shown the importance of Levinas’ critique of aesthetics as a major theme in his magnum opus. The following chapter will discuss the opposite of the representative thesis: the non-appearance of the Other, and the self-as-sig- nifier, which signifies the Other. In this manner, Phenomenology is the method for pointing to- wards alterity. The Self is this signifier.

982 138.

983 Levinas, Totality, 140. 984 140. 985 140. Sadler 204 Sadler 205

Chapter Six: Apophatic Versus Apophansis

In the previous chapter, we discussed a genealogy of Levinas’ critique of mediation and the plastic image d’art: the object of aesthetics, as opposed to the more elemental transcen- dental aesthetic from Kant’s First Critique. This chapter will deal with a problem opposing rep- resentation: the problem of Levinas’ rejection of ‘negativity’ in metaphysics while still arguing for the non-appearance (apo-phansis) of the Other. This chapter plots Levinas’ critique of nega- tivity from Totality and Infinity, followed by his seeming embrace of negativity in Otherwise than Being. It is a question as to whether or not Levinas’ emphasis on apophansis is in contradiction or contradistinction to his off-hand aphorisms against apophatic or ‘negative’ theology. This chapter ends with a discussion of theological errata, and how Levinas deals with the seeming contradiction between criticizing metaphysical negativity while advocating for theological ab- sence.

§1. Husserlian Apophansis

Levinas introduces apophansis in his 1929 article “On Ideas,” where he introduces the various terms from Husserl’s Ideas. I shall restrict myself [in discussing Ideas] to mere mention of the passages where it is a question of problems such as the nature of God, the constitution of immanent time (cf. § 24), the relationship between apophantic logic and formal ontology (cf. § 26), the possibility of practical and aesthetic truths and their rela- tion to theoretical consciousness.986

Levinas here summarizes a number of points central to this thesis: apohantic logic (‘discursive’ in its literal meaning, but meaning ‘non-appearance’ in another sense), formal ontology (Hei- degger’s project of ‘fundamental ontology’ of Dasein), practical truths (ethics) and aesthetic truths (representative mediation), as well as theoretical consciousness (Levinas’ overcoming of logic categories by the revelation of the Other). Levinas broaches these topics in this prelimi- nary article, and his body of writings would engage with these topics over decades. Levinas follows: “Traditional logic, according to this conception [of Husserl’s Logical In- vestigations], is only a very small part of the mathesis universalis; it is only an apophansis.”987 Here, Levinas means that Husserl is arguing traditional logic is discursive. In like manner: “While the logician in the naive attitude grasps the pure forms of objects (formal ontology) or judgments (apophansis), establishing for them the apodictic axioms of their value, the phenomenologists’

986 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, 3. 987 8. Sadler 206 aim is the meaning of this value.”988 In the meaning of apophansis here presented, Levinas argues that judgments are the actions by which one discursively ascribes ‘this-ness’ to that which they see. While the literal meaning of apo-phansis is [ἀπόφημι], literally ‘speaking-toward’ or ‘dis- course,’ I argue that Levinas interprets apophansis as [ἀποφαίνομαι], or non-appearance. The ambiguity of meaning involves the indefinite meaning of the prefix ‘apo-‘, which can be positive in the sense of ‘being-in-the-direction-of’ or negative in the sense of ‘away-from.’ Thus the meaning of ‘apophatic’ theology as ‘that-which-cannot-be-spoken-of.’ Therefore, this final chapter is the conflict between Levinas’ rejection of negative theology (apophatic) and his ar- guments in favour of a phenomenology of non-appearance (apophansis). Levinas broaches the topic of negative theology in De l’existence á l’existant, as the fail- ure to articulate the idea of eternity in a positive manner aside from what Kant would call a ‘regulative function.’ The classical notion of eternity has no other positive meaning [than the exten- sion of the present]. Every attempt to grasp it ends up in a negative theology, in that ‘I do not understand it very well myself’ with which Theodore, in Male- branche’s Metaphysical Dialogues, comments on what he has to say about the eternity of divine action.989

This idea of eternity is contrasted against Heideggerian finitude in his concept of Being-to- ward-death (Sein zum Tode). The temporal idea of eternity, as the present moment taken to its superlative, escapes an individual’s grasp, or livability in experience. Heidegger would critique the idea of the eternal now through his emphasis on the future, which comes toward the indi- vidual, becoming their past. It has been established that the concept of thing-ification is a metaphysical basis of hy- postasis. The ‘solidification’ of dynamic vitality, whether that of sublime nature or the divine Other, is the epistemological basis of objectification. And yet, according to this method, objec- tification is necessary in order for the Other to break through the Self’s idolatry. Defining hy- postasis in his rudimentary De l’existence á l’existant: “To designate this apparition we have tak- en up the term hypostasis which, in the history of philosophy, designated the event by which the act expressed by a verb became a being designated by a substantive.”990 As it has been previ- ously discussed, the ‘event’ [Ereignis] is when an individual ‘upsurges’ into history without an- tecedent or concern for the consequent. The verb or existence becomes hypostatized into a substance that typifies the thing-ification proper to metaphysics. Hypostatic substance is a problem in relation to phenomenological consciousness. Consciousness has a quality of non-

988 28.

989 De l’existence á l’existant, 73. 990 De l’existence, 83. Sadler 207 thing, the ‘space’ which ‘has’ or ‘intends’ its object. The phenomenological thesis is against a hypostatic philosophy of mind, which posits the psyché is a ‘thing.’ Kant’s ‘Transcendental Psy- chology’ in the First Critique overcomes the hypostasis of the psyche, as an antecedent to phe- nomenological consciousness. Levinas continues: “Hypostasis, an existent, is a conscious- ness, because consciousness is localized and posited, and through the act, without transcen- dence, of taking a position, it comes to being out of itself, and already takes refuge in itself from Being in itself.”991 Here Levinas equates hypostasis with consciousness because the manner in which consciousness is situated in the world is located in one’s horizon relative to their perspective. I argue against Levinas’ more rudimentary formulation of hypostatic con- sciousness: phenomenology already follows Kant’s destruction of metaphysics of mind, allow- ing for the intentional space by which objects can appear on the horizon. Having previously critiqued Heideggerian finitude, though not to the extent that Emil Fackenheim later would, Levinas does not merely critique finitude, but negativity itself. Heideg- ger, while arguing for the finitude of an individual in the face of Being, argues further for meta- physics as a negation of the world, a ‘clearing’ (a-letheia) in the midst of solid Being. Levinas makes a critique of negativity in favour of the most-positive existence of the Other. Levinas ar- ticulating the progress from the critique of finitude to the critique of negativity: “Phenomenolog- ical description seeks the significance of the finite within the finite itself: hence the particular style of the description.”992 The interpretation of Being, the hermeneutic phenomenological de- scription, requires the finite perspective of an individual Same. Levinas continues to argue that the phenomenological analysis argues for negation as the explanation of human finitude: “Whenever a philosopher of the classical type insists on the imperfection of a phenomenon of knowledge, phenomenology, not content with the negation included in this imperfection, posits instead this negation as constitutive of the phenomenon.”993 This is an introduction to the problem of theology in Levinas’ philosophy. Levinas critiques the idea of the phenomenal world as imperfect reflection of the divine reality. Arguing against idealist abstraction, Levinas states that concrete experience is necessary “Even for God.”994 He follows: “‘Even for God’–the for- mula is remarkable. We do not need the idea of God–of the infinite and perfect–to become aware of the finitude of phenomena; the essence of the phenomenon such as it is manifested at the infinite level is its essence itself.”995 What is important about this statement is that it does

991 Levinas, De l’existence, 83. 992 “Reflections on Phenomenological Technique,” Discovering Existence with Husserl, 93.

993 Levinas, Discovering Existence With Husserl, 93. 994 93. 995 93. Sadler 208 not identify God with Kant’s formula ‘the transcendental object = X.’ To do so would posit that the noumenal reality behind phenomenal experience would mean that the existence of the ‘thing in-itself’ exists in the mind of God. To follow this path would be to fall into Berkeley’s ‘dogmatic idealism,’ to collapse alterity into the idealism of God. Therefore, Levinas critiques the idea of experiential finitude as ‘failure’: “What seemed at first a setback–the incompletion of a series of the thing’s aspects–is a thing’s mode of completion; what deforms memory is just what constitutes the sui generis reliability of memory.”996 We can compare the idea of the aspi- ration for the completeness of a series, from cause to result, in Kant’s ‘Transcendental Dia- lectic’ from the First Critique. Levinas argues against the aspiration of pure reason to complete the series, as well as the pessimism that can result from this epistemic failure. Levinas can thus critique existential pessimism, even that of religious existentialism, in its seeming failure of knowledge on the part of the phenomenologist: “Soon the doubts that traversed and shattered Kierkegaardian faith will be taken to authenticate this faith; the god who is hidden will be pre- cisely, in his dissimulation, the god who is revealed.”997 Levinas’ critique of Kierkegaard’s exis- tential philosophy will become a theme for Levinas’ corpus: the critique of negative theology. While it would be easy-enough for Levinas to argue for his philosophy of ethical difference to the Other’s transcendence would be in-line with religious existential philosophers like Kierkegaard, Levinas continues to criticize this thought throughout his writings. Levinas dis- tances himself from the ‘existentialist’ label in a lecture, stating: “I prefer to render as existing and existent, without ascribing a specifically existentialist meaning to these terms”998 As Lev- inas’ critiques have an aphoristic quality, and are not dealt with in a systematic manner, it is up to the work of this chapter to tease out Levinas’ critique of negative theology. Levinas ends “Reflection on Phenomenological ‘Technique’” by discussing the idea that an individual’s intentional relations are neither representations nor ‘exist’ as substances: “Nothing is more characteristic of phenomenological reflection than the idea of intentional rela- tions maintained with correlates that are not representations and do not exist as substances.”999 These ‘intentional relations’ are likened to Kant’s ‘Postulates of Pure Practical Reason’ in the Critique of Practical Reason. Hence, Levinas follows: “Here, too, Kant is among the precursors in this theory of the postulates of practical reason that make use of ‘original a priori principles… that resist every possible intuition of theoretical reason.”1000 Levinas here is

996 Discovering Existence, 94.

997 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 94.

998 Time and the Other, 44. 999 101.

1000 102. citing Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Sadler 209 referring to Kant’s “Transcendental Doctrine of Method” in the First Critique. What is interesting for this analysis is that Kant introduces his ethical principles and postulates in a relatively cur- sory treatment. While it can be argued that Kant’s postulates of freedom, God, and the immor- tality of the soul are in the First Critique’s Doctrine of Method. Their treatment is tertiary after the weight of the text as a whole emphasizes the Doctrine of Elements in general, and specifi- cally the Aesthetic, Categories, Dialectic, and Antinomies. Kant’s Second Critique addresses the need for a focused development of the ideas of the noumenal moral law, and the manner in which an individual approaches that moral law either through inclination (inauthentic) or princi- ple (authentic). The "Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason” and its postulates are the central ele- ment in the Second Critique.1001 What is salient for this dissertation is the manner in which the postulates “resist every possible intuition of theoretical reason.”1002 The resistance to theory includes a resistance to representation, as theory must necessarily represent experience to it- self. While Kant’s postulates escape theoretical representation (as per the First Critique’s Tran- scendental Dialectic), they still fall into the problem of mediation. In other words, Kant’s postu- lates mediate the moral individual’s attempt to approach and enact the metaphysical moral law. Therefore, this thesis argues that Kant’s idea of God as mediating postulate reduces God from “that which nothing greater can be thought” to a mediating demiurge between the noumenal reality of the moral law and the phenomenal world as it appears to an individual. Levinas' cri- tique of mediation extends to a critique of Kant’s postulate of God. However, it becomes a question as to how Levinas responds to Kant’s problem of a God-as-mediator.

§2. Levinas’ Critique of Negativity in Totality and Infinity

In Totality and Infinity, Levinas introduces his critique of negativity, especially meta- physics-as-negation. He makes sure to differentiate the Other’s transcendence from the idea of the Other as negative, writing: “This ‘beyond’ the totality and objective experience is, however, not to be described in a purely negative fashion.”1003 Signification is also introduced as a con- cern in Levinas’ philosophy in Totality, but brought to full maturity in Otherwise Than Being. Re- garding signification: “The first ‘vision’ of eschatology (hereby distinguished from the revealed opinions of positive religions) reveals the very possibility of eschatology, that is, the breach of

1001 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, “Book II: Dialectic of pure practical reason” (5:107). Kant deals with the superlative issue of “The Highest Good” with the solution of the postulates: Freedom, immortality of the soul (assumption of a future life), and God (5:132).

1002 Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, 102. 1003 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 23. Sadler 210 the totality, the possibility of a signification without a context.”1004 Levinas here brings up the idea of eschatology, the theological concept of the ‘logic of the ends,’ often signifying the ‘end of the world.’ For Levinas, the ‘world’ in this signification is not the end of time elaborated in reli- gious apocalypse, but the ‘end’ of the Same’s personal cosmos-shell of totality. But Levinas follows his rejection of negativity and the eschatological event of the Other with the Other’s ‘non-apperance’ (apo-phansis): “But it is a ‘vision’ without image, bereft of the synoptic and to- talizing objectifying virtues of vision, a relation or an intentionality of a wholly different type– which this work [Totality and Infinity] seeks to describe.”1005 Levinas’ one paragraph sums up four concerns for this chapter: the critique of negativity, theology, signification, and non-ap- pearance (apophansis). Levinas discusses the idea of Ulysses, protagonist of Homer’s Odyssey, as the prototyp- ical modern individual, adrift upon the surface of consciousness, at the mercy of the elements, as well as non-human beings with their attendant malformed consciousnesses: “For the tran- scendence of thought remains closed in itself despite all its adventures–which in the last analy- sis are purely imaginary, or are adventures traversed as by Ulysses: on the way home.”1006 Ulysses is welcomed into the homes and hospitality of several women and as a bard to the Phaeacians, in contradistinction to the false-hospitality of the monstrous cyclops. At any point, Ulysses could have settled his wandering in the arms of Circe, Calypso, or the Phaeacians, but he did not engage with them in an authentic manner. In his enclosed-consciousness, to Ulysses, these hosts were merely imaginary ephemera, while his native Ithaca was the most- real. Thus we are here reminded of Horkheimer and Adorno’s thesis in Dialectic of Enlightenment, that the Odyssey is the first novel: the epic verse arises out of the lyrical in the manner that prose will arise out of verse itself.1007 It is thus appropriate that James Joyce’s Ulysses, a retelling of the Odyssey in the mode of everyday life, is itself the archetypal modern novel, refer- ring to the Odyssey’s contribution to narrative in general. Like the everyday Luftmensch that is Leopold Bloom, Ulysses is the least-heroic of the veterans of Troy, and yet one of the few to survive. In this manner, Ulysses is the prototypical ‘existential non-man,’ a Luftmensch literally afloat on the waves.1008 In spite of Ulysses’ situation as the prototypical ‘existential non-man, as the knowing individual, one’s intentionality focuses on the infinite, the outside-of-their-world (paracosmos):

1004 23. 1005 23.

1006 27.

1007 See Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 61.

1008 See Dialectic, 53-54. Sadler 211 outside of the Self, infinity is pre-supposed: “All knowing qua intentionality already presuppos- es the idea of infinity, which is preeminently non-adequation.”1009 In the manner proper to the extended critique of the aesthetic vs. aesthetics, Levinas discusses the manner in which vision attempts to totalize its object into an adequate idea: “Vision is an adequation of the idea with the thing, a comprehension that encompasses.”1010 However, Levinas differentiates non-ade- quation from negativity, negativity being a major focus of Levinas’ critique. He follows: “Non- adequation does not denote a simple negation or an obscurity of the idea, but–beyond the light and the night, beyond the knowledge measuring beings–the inordinateness of Desire.”1011 Lev- inas here argues that non-adequation (the phenomenological thesis of the phenomenality of experience, divorced from adequation with a thing-in-itself) is not a fall into anti-rationality or skepticism. ‘Inordinate’ is a key word here, as ‘ordinary’ refers to counting, while the moral De- sire for the Other transcends Levinas’ previous dichotomy of the light of phenomenological consciousness and the density of the light-escaping il y a…. Here Levinas’ discussion of an ab- sence without negation, or a distance affirming alterity is a critique of Heidegger’s idea of dis- tantiation. For Heidegger, distantiation allows the Self to com-prehend an object in its totality, that would otherwise be obscured by closeness. It has the quality of placing an objet d’art on a pedestal and visually analyzing it, robbing the object of its agency to affect the Same. The Oth- er transcends such a visual relation to an object. We are reminded in this instance of Kant’s epistemological category of relation, including the traditional metaphysical categories of sub- stance and accident, as well as causality. Kant’s First Critique was a project of heavily cri- tiquing these categories’ excesses in favour of an individual as unity simpliciter. In this manner, Levinas argues that the distance between the Same and the Other’s alterity is not a matter of epistemological categories, nor the negation of categories (á la skepticism), but that this dis- tance is positive, in the sense that the Same’s moral Desire is increased by the Other's ab- sence. It is a generosity nourished by the Desired, and thus a relationship that is not the disappearance of distance, not a bringing together, or–to circumscribe more closely the essence of generosity and of goodness–a relationship whose positiv- ity comes from remoteness, from separation, for it nourishes itself, one might say, with its hunger.1012

It has been discussed in the previous chapter how desire is not a lack, but a hunger for a posi- tive existence. The summum of desire is the Other, the most-positive existence. The hyperbole

1009 Levinas, Totality, 27.

1010 34. 1011 34.

1012 Levinas, Totality, 34. Sadler 212 of the Other’s distance is not their negativity: “The very dimension of height is opened up by metaphysical Desire.”1013

§3. Maimonides Negative Theology of Unity Simpliciter

In the previous chapter, the topic of the negative Other was broached in discussion of the stranger whose amoral, if not immoral conduct alienates them from society (á la Camus). For Levinas, the Other who is a stranger to the Self is a positive stranger. Here Levinas critiques the logical categories, as was discussed in the previous chapter. He states: “Neither possession or the unity of number nor the unity of concepts link me to the Stranger [l’Etranger], the Stranger who disturbs the being at home with oneself [le chez soi].”1014 The unity of numbers belongs to the logical category of quantity from Kant’s First Critique, while the unity of concepts belongs to the ideal existences in Kant’s Second Critique. Maimonides’ negative theology argues that God is a unity simpliciter, without the ‘possession’ of qualities added to this simpliciter unity.1015However, as Levinas rejects the application of Kant’s logical category of quantity and its attendant unity, therefore Levinas would argue that classification of God as unity simpliciter still falls into the quantitative, logical trap of categorical reason. However, Levinas would find Maimonides as an ally in the rejection of attributing categorical reason to God. Maimonides’ strategy against the Mutazilite School’s negative theology is to argue for ‘attributes’ as merely a problem of human language, rather than logical attribution.1016 Maimonides argues that to as- cribe ‘unity’ to God is to fall into the very problem of categorical reason that Levinas will later reject: “Now to ascribe to Him – whose existence is necessary, who is truly simple, to whom composition cannot attach in any way – the accident of oneness is just as absurd as to ascribe to Him the accident of multiplicity.”1017 Maimonides’ strategy is one of nominalism: describing God as having ‘attributes’ or ‘qualities’ is merely a failure of human language. God is beyond epistemological categories in the first place. For Maimonides, one can only ascribe to God God’s actions, as they are separate from God’s unknowable essence. Maimonides states: “Now this kind of attribute [action] is remote from the essence of the thing of which it is predi-

1013 34-35.

1014 Levinas, Totality, 39. 1015 Moses Maimonides, while he argues against the radical separation of Creator from creature as formulated by the Mutazilite School (Mutakalimun), he still engages with their fundamental thesis on the unity of God simpliciter, having no attributes added to the Divine. See Mai- monides, Guide of the Perplexed, 132.

1016 See Maimonides citing the Talmud, tractate Berachot 33b, Guide of the Perplexed, 140. 1017 132. Sadler 213 cated.”1018 In the words of David Novak: “We can say what God does, but we cannot say what God is.”1019 Levinas grants ultimacy to the Other as the most-divine reality that an individual may encounter through experience. The concepts proper to theology, and negative theology in this case, instead apply to the Other. Continuing the critique of categorical logic: “But I, who have no concept in common with the Stranger, am, like him, without genus.”1020 It would not be a radical-enough formulation to say that each individual is their own genus, i.e. sui generis. The revelation of the Other explodes the categories: therefore, we can term Levinas’ critique as a critique of categorical reason. Levinas follows his critique of categorical reason with a discussion of the conversational relation between self and Other with the pertinent chapter 3 of part A. of Section I: “Transcen- dence Is Not Negativity.”1021 This is the dense and immensely important argument against Hei- degger’s ‘clearing-out’ a (negative) space in the midst of solid (positive) Being. In this manner: “The presence of the face coming from beyond the world, but committing me to human frater- nity, does not overwhelm me as a numinous essence arousing fear and trembling.”1022 As Fear and Trembling is Kierkegaard’s most important work, Levinas here refers to Kierkegaard’s focus on individual subjectivity (the eponymous fear and trembling) in the face of the God and the Other. For Levinas, this fear and trembling is not only pessimistic (the popular meaning of ‘neg- ative’), but also entirely self-focused and devoid of language. Levinas’ philosophy, despite su- perficial similarities to Kierkegaard’s existentialism, focuses on the alterity of the Other, and the manner in which the encounter happens through speech. In his critique of pessimism, which is ‘negative’ in its colloquial meaning: “The doctor who missed an engineering career, the poor man who longs for wealth, the patient who suffers, the melancholic who is bored for nothing oppose their condition while remaining attached to its horizons.”1023 Levinas is here critiquing the pessimism that comes from an individual’s finitude and inability to do all things as they please according to their ability (conatus). Sartre refers to the material limitations of an individ- ual’s freedom as ‘facticity,’ the manner in which one is limited in their choices. Sartre uses ex- amples of a waiter’s aesthetic self-stylization ‘to-be a waiter.’ In other words, one’s comport- ment is a choice. Sartre here is in-line with Husserl’s argument that one chooses to abide in

1018 119.

1019 David Novak, “Jewish Negative Theology: A Phenomenological Perspective,” Negative The- ology as Jewish Modernity, 240.

1020 Levinas, Totality, 39.

1021 40.

1022 Levinas, Totality, Section III, B., 7. “The Asymmetry of the Interpersonal,” 215. 1023 Levinas, Totality, 41. Sadler 214 their decisions, until they choose to change their comportment and abide in another manner. As for Sartre’s argument as to how radical freedom coincides with a limitation on one’s abilities (dunamis/conatus), Sartre argues that even ‘sour grapes’ is one’s own radical decision. Continu- ing his critique of existential pessimism, Levinas critiques Heidegger’s concept of Being-to- ward-death [Sein-sum-Tode], the idea that one’s interpretation of their own existence is defined by their inevitable finitude qua death. “In the horror of the radical unknown to which death leads is evinced the limit of negativity.”1024 Levinas’ critique of Heideggerian finitude is a cri- tique of pessimism in the service of life-affirmation. Therefore, Levinas summarizes: “Meta- physics does not coincide with negativity.”1025 Levinas differentiates between seemingly related or equivocal concepts of ‘Being’ and ‘existent.’ Semantically, ‘Being’ refers to the participial act of existing, while ‘existent’ is that- which-exists. This distinction may seem like the splitting of a hair, but Levinas distinguishes between the Heideggerian verb and the substantive noun existent. Referring to his critique of the mediating third term (the subject of the previous chapter and this entire thesis): “[The third term] may appear as Being distinguished from the existent: Being, which at the same time is not (that is, is not posited as an existent) and yet corresponds to the work plied by the existent, which is not a nothing.”1026 In terms of Levinas’ critique of negativity, he argues that Being ‘is not’ (while also ‘corresponding to the existent, which for Heidegger is a concern of ‘the corre- spondence theory of truth’), while the existent is ‘not a nothing.’ Therefore, we can see that Levinas upholds the existent over Heideggerian Being. Levinas’ upholding of the existent is the thesis of Existence and Existents, here brought to a more explicit conclusion. Levinas can thus follow: “Being, which is without the density of existents, is the light in which existents become intelligible.”1027 The light is empty, and allows for the negativity of the empty synthetic a priori structures proper to Kant’s categories of the understanding. The ‘density of existents’ is the density of the there is…, which itself has an alterity apart from an individual’s sensation. The there is… was rudimentary in its treatment in Existence and Existents, and here it has the full force of alterity in its crystallization in Totality and Infinity.

§4. The Will as Egoism

1024 Levinas, Totality, 41.

1025 41. 1026 42.

1027 Levinas, Totality, 42. Sadler 215

Levinas’ Section I’s first 1 of part B. ,called “Atheism or the Will,” is crucial to the theo- logical argument of this chapter. The chapter’s title implies that an individual’s sense of neces- sary atheism (that prepares them for the revelation of the Other) is equated to an individual’s fulfillment of their own will. The will, as formulated here, is in the pessimistic sense of that which separates an individual from the higher divine reality (in this case, the Other).1028 Levinas here discusses the positivity of postulating existences that, whether or not they can be demon- strably true, are taken as-though they are. The as-though applies to the heavily-critiqued category of causation. While Hume had already argued that one must simply appeal to customary-con- junction, rather than necessary causality, ‘cause’ can be applied to morality, qua Kant, as causa noumenon. “The cause of being is thought or known by its effect as though it were posterior to its effect.”1029 The assumption of a posterior cause is important for moral reasoning, whether one is engaging with transcendental principles or the transcendence of the Other. A major concern of the as though deals with its side-stepping of the problem of reality. Therefore, one can argue that even though one acts as though a transcendent exits, one can posit it without actually ‘be- lieving’ in it, per se. Levinas argues instead for the positivity of that which is posited, writing: “We speak lightly of the possibility of this ‘as though,’ which is taken to indicate an illusion. But this illusion is not unfounded; it constitutes a positive event.”1030 Levinas here critiques Hei- degger’s assumption of the positive event [Ereignis] of being, arguing for an individual’s as- sumption of their own autochthonous upsurge into the world. This upsurge does not assume a Creator, focusing instead on the emergence of one’s individual Da-Sein. The self-contained na- ture of an individual’s being is the assumption of the ultimacy of their human condition, prior to the revelation of the Other who breaks their shell of being. Toward this end: “[Detachment] is founded in the interiority of a psychism; it is positive in the enjoyment of itself. Its power for il- lusion–if illusion there was–constitutes its separation.”1031 Levinas here makes two equivoca- tions: he equivocates ‘illusion’ as both an assumption of the as though, while also being an indi- vidual’s illusion of their own self-contained enjoyment. In like manner, ‘positive’ is equivocated as existence (as opposed to non-existence), as well as ‘well-being’ in the sense of enjoyment.

1028 On the atheism of the will, see Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 58. In terms of the possible sep- aration of God from creation, Maimonides argues against a concept of 'the necessity of athe- ism’ for the necessary conjunction of God and God’s creation. In this manner, Levinas has al- lies in the Islamic Mu’tazila school, who argue to the extreme that if God ceased to exist, cre- ation would still endure due to the radical separation of Creator from creature. See Mai- monides, Guide of the Perplexed, Pines translation, 171.

1029 Levinas, Totality, 54. 1030 54. 1031 55. Sadler 216

Levinas’ equivocation focuses on the transition between an individual’s enjoyment in them- selves toward the encounter of the real existence of the Other in domestic hospitality.

§5. Levinas and Positivity

Levinas’ critique of Heidegger’s ontology critiques Heidegger’s privileging of time over space. Heidegger argued for the primacy of time over being in terms of the ultimate meaning arriving from Being-towards-Death. Levinas upholds the primacy of life his critique of temporal- ity is a critique of Heidegger. Levinas qualifies the temporal nature of one’s separation from the world and the Other, writing: “That there could be a chronological order distinct from the ‘logi- cal’ order, that there could be several moments in the progression. that there is a progression– here is separation.”1032 The moments of chronological order are in contradiction to the time-se- quence plotted on a line. Heidegger’s concept of Being-towards-Death is not linear, but moves backwards toward an individual, becoming their past, and only then their present. Levinas con- tinues: “For by virtue of time this being is not yet–which does not make it the same as nothing- ness, but maintains it as a distance from itself.”1033 Levinas here critiques the idea of negation, as Heidegger’s philosophy of death posits that death gives an individual meaning by enforcing an individual’s finitude by their pending non-existence. However, Levinas argues here that po- tentiality and separation are not ‘nothingness,’ but rather emphasizes spatial separation. Lev- inas upholds of the phenomenological horizon over Heidegger’s temporality. Toward this end, he critiques the mythology behind temporality, stating: “Cronos, thinking he swallows a god, swallows but a stone.”1034 Let us analyze Levinas’ aphorism about Cronos. Cronos, the Greek god of time, sought to literally consume all life outside himself, unwilling to accept alterity. In an attempt to draw the Divine into totality (the clearing in which a god or its idol may show itself), Heideggerian temporality fails to capture the divine, and acts in bad faith. Levinas contrasts the mythologizing of reason against Judaism's subordination of reason to legal praxis.1035 In his discussion of temporal ruptures that conform neither to a linear concept of time or to Heideggerian temporality, Levinas discusses the upsurge into the spatial horizon. This up- surge or individual has the quality of a birth, a new life: as opposed to a mediating third term, this new life is the result of the self and the Other: “Each instant of historical time in which ac- tion commences is, in the last analysis, a birth, and hence the continuous time of history, a

1032 Levinas, Totality, 54.

1033 54. 1034 58.

1035 See “For a Jewish Humanism”, Difficult Freedom, 274. Sadler 217 time of works and not of wills.”1036 In explication of this positive introduction of an-other: in terms of creation, Levinas argues that a birth (literal or metaphorical) in the proper ethical sense, is not a projection of an individual’s will but the work of the self and the Other. This de- nial of the will calls to mind the Gospel according to John, stating that the Logos gives individ- uals the right to become ‘Children of God,’ not according to a human father’s will, but via the work of God and their co-operation therewith.1037 For Levinas, humans doing the action of fe- cundity to foster a third person is according to works, i.e. labour, instead of the capricious wills of individuals. One does not simply foster new life according to their willful individuality, but by the encounter with the Other in their domesticity. As opposed to the work done with the Other, the will is the result an Self’s ego: “In the egoism of enjoyment dawns the ego, source of the will.”1038 While Levinas is not an explicitly hermeneutic thinker, to argue against Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology is to engage with interpretation. The struggle of interpretation is a struggle between an individual’s expressing their self versus the impersonal density of history (one’s context): “Expression is this actualization of the actual. The present is produced in this struggle against the past (if one may so speak), in this actualization.”1039 Levinas champions individuality against a faceless and undifferentiated mass (Das Man in Heidegger’s terminology). At the same time, while individuality is a higher reality than impersonality, even individuality hits the ceiling of the ‘most high,’ which can only be shattered by the revelation of the Other. Lev- inas’ discursive relation between self and Other is a manner in which an individual may wrest themself from their context: “The unique actuality of speech tears it from the situation in which it appears and which it seems to prolong.”1040 Speech has the power to interpret the text and its analogous world (for the text is a world of meaning, and the world is a text to interpret). Lev- inas’ interpretive method is in-line with his Jewish tradition of Midrash, or textual interpretation. The Rabbis have the authority to interpret the text and its practice (Halakah) according to their situation and understanding. This authority is called magisterial, which has the connotation of a master of text and tradition. In this manner, the authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is called the magisterium. Therefore, Levinas can state: “Speech, better than a simple

1036 Totality, 58. 1037 John 1:13-14.

1038 Levinas, Totality, 59. 1039 69. 1040 69. Sadler 218 sign, is essentially magisterial.”1041 Levinas emphasizes the individual interpreter over the im- personal interpreted. However, when one attempts to interpret the Other as one would interpret worldly phenomena, one is attempting to solicit that Other. Levinas follows with a critique of rhetoric, which has the interpretive concern of understanding one’s audience in order to better influence them. Levinas summarizes rhetoric by stating: “Our pedagogical or psychological discourse is rhetoric, taking the position of him who approaches his neighbor with ruse.”1042 Rhetoric has the quality of sophistry or demagogy, the attempt to deceive the other through discourse.1043 The reference to rhetoric as an ‘art’ is a reference to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, a text that teaches how a would-be orator can persuade audiences based on interpreting their respective psychological characters.1044 Levinas argues that rhetoric has nature of attempting to bypass the Other’s metaphysical alterity, merely attempting to persuade the Other into acquiescing to the same’s will (selfish and arbitrary as it is). This is another method by which the same attempts to ap- proach the Other through artifice (similar to the mediating third term elaborated in the previous chapter). While aesthetic mediation has the quality of the plastic image, rhetorical persuasion is an attempt to control the Other through speech: “[Rhetoric] approaches the other not to face him, but obliquely–not, to be sure, as a thing, since rhetoric remains conversation, and across all its artifices goes unto the Other, solicits his yes.”1045 Judgment is the application of sensa- tion to the understanding, through the categories. Levinas’ argument against Judgment’s na- ture as the artificially mediating third term extends to rhetoric’s attempt to apply categories to the Other: “To freedom [rhetoric] manages to apply a category; it seems to judge of it as of a nature; it asks the question, contradictory in terms, ‘what is the nature of this freedom?’”1046 The same’s attempt to apply the logical categories to the Other’s freedom questions the Oth- er’s freedom on the side of skepticism. While one can question the Other’s freedom in terms of how one should act in the face of the Other’s metaphysical alterity, to question one’s freedom according to epistemology reduces the Other to their bare knowability. To reduce the Other is the equivalent of the popular saying “To look a gift horse in the mouth.” Conversely, Levinas argues that the face-to-face encounter with the Other breaks free of categorical imposition:

1041 69. 1042 70. 1043 70.

1044 In manner following Heidegger, Hans Georg Gadamer lays out Aristotle’s relevance for hermeneutics: see Truth and Method, 312. 1045 Levinas, Totality, 71. 1046 70. Sadler 219

“This absolute experience in the face to face, in which the interlocutor presents himself as ab- solute being (that is, as being withdrawn from the categories), would for Plato be inconceivable without the interposition of the Ideas.”1047 In other words, the Other as a simple unity (sim- pliciter) still cannot be thought without the mediation of the Ideas (qua Plato) or postulates (qua Kant). Levinas understands the problematic of Kantian ideals and their postulates, when he fol- lows: “Hermann Cohen (in this a Platonist) maintained that one can love only ideas; but the no- tion of an Idea is in the last analysis tantamount to the transmutation of the other into the Oth- er.”1048 By Levinas’ characterization, Hermann Cohen’s argument that one can love only an idea takes away the personal relation with the Other, who is substituted for an impersonal idea. As discussed earlier, to apply the category of community to the Other is a category error confusing the Other’s ethical existence for the merely epistemic. Rather, to understand the Other in their Truth is to realize one’s duty to ensure their just treatment.1049 Thus Levinas can succinctly state: “Justice consists in recognizing in the Other my master.”1050 This realization of the Oth- er’s mastery over the same is the essence of the inequality of Levinas’ ethics. Levinas com- pletes his critique of rhetoric by stating: “And in this sense justice coincides with the overcom- ing of rhetoric.”1051 Levinas continues his critique of discourse, and the manner in which one approaches the other through the artifice of rhetoric. With the realist thesis rejected in favour of a rudimen- tary philosophy of language, nominalism becomes its own trap. Nominalism is the argument that rather than a prior reality to that which is signified in discourse, what is said about things determines their meaning (since ‘reality’ has been bracketed). Levinas critiques nominalism, the other extreme from the realist thesis: “For the nominalist critique of the general and abstract idea is not overcome thereby; it is still necessary to say what this intention of ideality and gen- erality signifies.”1052 An appeal to objectivity does not give general and abstract ideas a ground for that to which the general and abstract ideas refer. However, as opposed to a realist notion of ‘objectivity,’ language (apophansis) engages with the given that is objective insofar as the perceiver does not determine that which appears. For Levinas, language fulfills the function of Kant’s Judgment, while not falling into the problem of aesthetic mediation. “Language is uni-

1047 71. 1048 71.

1049 “Truth is thus bound up with the social relation, which is justice” (Levinas, Totality, 72).

1050 72.

1051 Levinas, Totality, 72. 1052 76. Sadler 220 versal because it is the very passage from the individual to the general, because it offers things which are mine to the Other.”1053 If the same is an individual qua individual, the summum ego, then the Other is the infinite universal which confronts that summer ego. Language is the rela- tional antidote to aesthetic mediation, in terms of an authentic relation of the Same toward the Other. And yet, despite an individual Same standing in language and thereby approaching the Other, dialogue and discourse themselves engage with the Other in an artificial manner. Elabo- rating the artificiality of conversation: “Thus conversation is not a pathetic confrontation of two being absenting themselves from the things and from the others.”1054 The pathetic confronta- tion is the style of ‘philosophical dialogue.’ This manner of conversation is still the Same's so- liciting of the Other. Levinas summarizes: “Discourse is not love.”1055 Rather, the Other appears to the established Same in the Other’s role as an exile or stranger: “The transcendence of the Other, which is his eminence, his height, his lordship, in its concrete meaning includes his des- titution, his exile [dépaysment], and his rights as a stranger.”1056 Rather than the Same’s gaze constituting the Other who they attempt to capture, Levinas argues that it is the gaze of the Other in their most concreteness, the widow, orphan, and sojourner, that captures and de- mands (exigent) the Same.1057 Levinas distinguishes the noumenal from God: in other words, in the noumenal formula ‘the transcendental object = X,’ X does not equal God. God is not the thing-in-itself: “The noumenon is to be distinguished from the concept of God possessed by the believers of posi- tive religions ill disengaged from the bonds of participation, who accept being immersed in a myth unbeknown to themselves.”1058 The immersion in myth is proper to the paganism of Carl Jung, as well as the “phenomenology of religion” in general. These thinkers fall into an anti- Jewish paganism, the idea of blaming the Jewish religion and its assumptions common to Christianity for what is seen as repression or stagnation in European pagan culture. The answer to the so-called “Jewish question” becomes a return to myth, but as classical myths are full of abhorrently unethical behaviour, the myths are psychologized in order to not influence human behavior. All the same, this form of anti-Jewish paganism often results in antisemitism and eth- ical degeneration of supposedly ‘Judeo-Christian’ culture. While Walter Benjamin did not give

1053 76. 1054 76. 1055 76.

1056 76-77. 1057 77. 1058 77. Sadler 221

Carl Jung’s pagan psychology a systematic treatment in his truncated corpus, he does refer- ence Jung in letters to Gershom Scholem. In August of 1937, Benjamin refers to Jung’s psy- chology as “the devil’s work through and through, which should be attacked with white magic.”1059 Levinas’ argument about ‘positive religions’ states that religions in their pre-ratio- nalized practice often fall into mythological elements. Cohen argues that religion overcomes mythology by ethical self-examination (through the awareness of human sin). Cohen writes: “This knowledge [of sin] is conceived as self-knowledge. Hence religion separates itself from mythology in which man is not the originator of his own sin but merely the heir of his ancestors and their guilt.”1060 One can see this with Marcionite Christianity, which mythologizes according to Plato’s mediating Demiurge. Levinas’ designation of popular religion as ‘positive’ means that its content is positive insofar as it is revealed: even prohibitive commandments are still intro- duced via revelation in order to designate what is permitted and forbidden. In contradistinction to ‘positive’ religion, in a Kantian sense, would be religion as a regulative function of pure (ethi- cal) reason.1061 Religion in this sense is a pure a priori form, divested of its positive content, in order to provide the structure for the ethical kingdom of ends. And yet, for Kant, an ethical so- ciety (here called ‘religion’) is the only positive instantiation of his ethical project, beyond mere individual moral abstinence.1062 Levinas echoes the thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno’s “Excursis II” on antisemitism in Dialectic of Enlightenment, when he argues that monotheism destroys myth: “But faith purged of myths, the monotheist faith, itself implies metaphysical atheism.”1063 In like manner, Horkheimer and Adorno argue that Monotheism was the myth which destroyed myth.1064 Monotheism’s destruction of myth is an act of iconoclasm, the prohibition against idolatry. For Levinas, the destruction of pagan myth is accomplished according to the assumption of athe- ism, which lays the groundwork for revelation to break through one’s personal cosmic shell:

1059 Walter Benjamin, August 1937, Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 203. For more critique of Jung, see Benjamin, July 1937, (197).

1060 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason, 20.

1061 For Kant on the regulative nature of religion, see Kant’s Religion, 6:62. 1062 Continuing in his discussion of Religion’s regulative nature at the interpersonal level (be- yond mere individuality), see 6:154. Kant’s accompanying asterisk reads: “There are no particu- lar duties toward God in a universal religion; for God cannot receive anything from us; we can- not act on him or for him” (6:154). Kant here denies the human relation to God, as well as posi- tive religious commandments and duties toward God.

1063 Levinas, Totality, 77.

1064 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 146. Along this line of thinking, see also 153. Sadler 222

“Atheism conditions a veritable relationship with a true God καθ’αὐτό [‘kath’auto’].”1065 The kath’auto (according to itself) shows that the revelation is that which happens to an individual according to themselves: God breaks in to their perspective through revelation. The Other is this revelation. Concerning the divine reality, at least insofar as it is experienced at the human- istic level, Levinas states: “There can be no ‘knowledge’ of God separate from the relationship with men.”1066 Levinas is clear to state the Other does not mediate the relationship with the di- vine, but that the Other signifies the divine in their own right. The Other’s signifying the divine gives positive content to the otherwise empty a priori structures of religion: “Without the signi- fication they draw from ethics theological concepts remain empty and formal frameworks.”1067 The Other is a positive concept insofar as it exists, but it transcends the logical categories, so the description of a formal unity simpliciter commits a category error. Toward this end: “The role Kant attributed to sensible experience in the domain of the understanding belongs in meta- physics to interhuman relations.”1068 Sensible experience is the phenomena which informs the understanding: but Levinas argues that to attribute the Other to epistemology is a category er- ror. The Other is metaphysical, they are the most-real. While in Totality and Infinity, Levinas ar- gues that the Other is divine signification par excellence, his argument in Otherwise than Being will develop into arguing for the Self's negation, or ‘hollowing out,’ in order to become a signifier signifying the Other.

§6. The Ego’s Autonomy in the Face of the Other

Levinas elaborates the relation of the self to the Other as “Truth and Justice” in chapter C., further critiquing the ego’s assumption of autonomy in the face of the commanding Other. Levinas discusses the manner in which idealism, in the sense of Hermann Cohen’s Kantianism, attempts to ‘neuter’ (or ‘neutralize’) the Other into a more neutral idea, rather than the personal- ized, metaphysical nature of the Other: “Existents are reduced to the neuter state of the idea, Being, the concept.”1069 While it has been stated that, according to Cohen, one can love only an idea, such a reduction of the belovéd Other to ideation serves the function of depersonaliza- tion. Levinas continues: “It was to escape the arbitrariness of freedom, its disappearance into the Neuter, that we have approached the I as atheist and created–free, but capable of tracing

1065 Levinas, Totality, 77. 1066 Levinas, 78.

1067 79. 1068 Levinas, 79. 1069 88. Sadler 223 back beneath its condition–before the Other, who does not deliver himself in the ‘thematization’ or ‘conceptualization’ of the Other.”1070 The neutralization in this case is not the same’s neutral- ization of the Other via aesthetic mediation, but the same’s attempt to escape its own existen- tial condition results in its bad-faith attempt at neutralizing itself. Since freedom necessitates responsibility, the same’s self-neutralization is an attempt to flee from its own freedom. The fact that the same is able to trace back beneath its condition means that the same is able to inter- pret its own history, its own Being-in-the-world. As opposed to the near-divine ego as the re- sult of Husserl’s transcendental epoché, the Same’s limiting itself to its interpretation of its own context is a reduction in the opposite sense. Instead of a transcendental reduction, the same is reduced to mere Being. Levinas will develop this self-neutralization into the self-hollowing in Otherwise than Being, in which self-as-signifier does not flee from its responsibility, but phenom- enologically abides in it. The atheism of the individual ego is effected by enjoying one’s life without reflecting on the ethical ramifications of one’s actions, the result of enjoyment without concern for conse- quences or the Other. This self-creation assumes one arose out of the ground in an autochtho- nous manner: “Enjoyment accomplishes the atheist separation; it deformalizes the notion of separation, which is not a cleavage made in the abstract, but the existence at home with itself of an autochthonous I.”1071 The ‘deformalizing’ of separation is the manner in which one’s athe- ism is not based on reflecting on one’s condition, and theoretically-perceiving the absence of God in the world. Instead, one’s atheism is prior to reflection on the Divine. As based in formal categories of logic, negative theology cannot accomplish the atheism of the ego’s will, as re- flecting on God’s absence in the world is not primordial to experience. Levinas juxtaposes the autochthonous I of primordial enjoyment against the fraternity of the ethical relation to the Oth- er. Levinas critiques the mythological origin of the term ‘autochthonous’ (Deucalion’s casting stones, from which arose human beings): “Fraternity is radically opposed to the conception of a humanity united by resemblance, a multiplicity of diverse families arisen from the stones cast behind by Deucalion, and which, across the struggle of egoisms, results in a human city.”1072 The idea of ‘races’ that each have their origin uniquely from the earth, as opposed to common ancestry, allows for the idea of different human genoi or different human species that are exclu- sive to one-anther. This mentality of racialism allows for human cruelty, prejudice, and literal genocide. The struggle of egoisms resulting in a human city calls to mind Cain, a murderer for- ever cursed to wander, and yet settles-down to build a city, where all manner of human vi-

1070 88. 1071 115. 1072 214. Sadler 224 ciousness increases. The competing of interests in a legislative body has nothing in common with metaphysical fraternity. Levinas argues that metaphysical negativity in phenomenology is not the Heideggerian clearing (a-letheia), but Husserl’s transcendental epoché, the egoistic reduction to one’s own consciousness-proper. The face of the Other is the one who confronts the same beyond the mere phenomenal given, the “meaning given,” the noema that appears in prereflective experi- ence.1073 Levinas qualifies: “[The same’s] first movement is negative: it consists in finding and exhausting in itself the meaning of an exteriority, precisely convertible into noemata.”1074 The Same exhausts its authority over that which is given to it in experience, the only exteriority it knows prior to the absolute metaphysical alterity of the Other in the Other’s revelation. The Same’s exhaustion of its phenomenological investigations underscores the failure of the phe- nomenological project of an individual to reach true transcendental alterity in-themself. Rather, it is the Other who breaks into the same’s horizon. Levinas qualifies: “Such is the movement of the Husserlian ἐποχή [epoché], which, strictly speaking, is characteristic of representation.”1075 The very possibility of an individual to transcendentally reduce the extraneous world to pure consciousness allows it to represent the objects external to them within their own conscious- ness. The reduction to pure essence allows for representation within the individual’s totality. However, as the reduction occurs within the individual Same, the reduction will not effect the appearance of the Other to the Same. The Other is still beyond the reflexivity of the phe- nomenon as it appears to the Same. The Other avoids being reduced: it is pure essence, and will remain after every particular has been disabused.1076 Husserlian intentionality is rooted in the perceiving individual, and thus reduction to the same means that-which-appears does so rooted in the Same’s ipseity.1077 Despite the seeming anarchic or antinomian nature of freedom as presented by a philosopher like Sartre, Levinas argues that radical freedom itself already depends on the Same's relation to the Other, despite the fact that the Same will use its freedom in a bad-faith attempt to tyrannize the Other. “The total freedom of the same in representation has a positive condition in the other that is not something represented, but is the Other.”1078 There must be an outside in order for there to be an inside, and as the Other is the superlative of alterity, the Other enables the Same to even

1073 125. 1074 125. 1075 125.

1076 “Ἐποχή’s very possibility defines representation” (125). 1077 126. 1078 126. Sadler 225 represent its experiences to them self in the first place. The Same’s abiding in its own ipseity is accomplished through representation, stating: “To remain the same is to represent to oneself.”1079 The I wills itself to universality, the ego’s would-be transcendence embodies the universalization of the particular. In other words, the ego in its would-be transcendence acts like Kant’s Judgment, as facilitating the universalization of particular experiences. Thus, Lev- inas states: “The I of representation is the natural passage from the particular to the universal.”1080 As we have been noting, representation through Judgment has the quality of the plastic image, and therefore idolatry. The role of the ego-as-idol is the idolatry of the self, at- tempting to totalize the world into its Same ipseity. Levinas’ philosophy allows for the elabora- tion of the idolatry-of-the-self as an element of the egological human condition. The revelation of the Other is the iconoclasm that remedies the Same’s idolatry. Levinas continuing to champion Kant’s critical system against the realist metaphysics: “The strength of the Kantian philosophy of the sensible likewise consists in separating sensibili- ty and understanding, in affirming, though only negatively, the independence of the ‘matter’ of cognition with regard to the synthetic power of representation.”1081 Kant’s affirmation of the Transcendental Aesthetic against logocentric attempts to collapse it into the Transcendental Logic affirms the primordiality of pre-reflective consciousness of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). As sensibility is prior to categorical reflection, its purity of sensation without understanding is not equivocal to negativity or a lack of substance: to posit negativity already assumes categorical logic. Sensation is prior to categorical reasoning. Levinas differentiates the temporality of rep- resentation from the temporality of sensibility: “The sensibility is therefore to be described not as a moment of representation, but as the instance of enjoyment.”1082 To describe experience as a moment of representation is already to fall into second-order re-presentation (to one’s self), as opposed to the immediate instance of sensation. Instances of sensation cannot be plotted as points on a timeline. Because of the infinite, asymptotic space of represented mo- ments, sensibility’s immediate temporality overcomes Zeno’s paradox of motion.1083 He dis- cusses the almost mystical nature of immediate sensation: “Sensibility is not an inferior theo- retical knowledge bound however intimately to affective states: in its very gnosis sensibility is enjoyment; it is satisfied with the given, it is contented.”1084 This is the radical separation be-

1079 126. 1080 126. 1081 135-136.

1082 136.

1083 Compare to Levinas' account of the Other's deferred presence, Otherwise than Being, 93. 1084 Totality, 136. Sadler 226 tween sensibility and understanding: taken to its logical conclusion, sensibility cannot be inter- preted as proto-understanding. Sensibility engages that-which-is-given to it at the level imme- diate apperception, the direct-revelation of gnosis. In the manner of the infinite-regression of Zeno’s paradox, Levinas follows: “Sensible ‘knowledge’ does not have to surmount infinite re- gression, that vertigo of the understanding; it does not even experience it. It finds itself imme- diately at the term; it concludes, it finishes without referring to the infinite.”1085 The arrival at the term overcomes the asymptotic nature of theoretical reason, as Levinas is here calling the as- ymptote the ‘vertigo of the understanding.’ In this nightmare, one never reaches their desired- object: one always falls-short or can only approach through mediation. But sensation arrives at the term. However, the Other cannot be an objet du plaisir, or encountered in the manner that the Same consumes its given. Unlike Heidegger’s appeal to technical reason, Levinas argues that pleasure is accomplished “without tools.”1086 The immediate space of encounter with the Other, free of logical categories, occurs in the non-geometric space of the dwelling.1087

§7. The Encounter in the Dwelling

Levinas includes God in his formulation of the world in Existence: not in the sense of the most-ineffable, but rather in the Aristotelian sense of that which is at the ‘top’ of the cosmos (‘god’ in this sense is still within Being, not transcending that cosmological ‘shell’ of Being): “The orekton of book 10 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is the supreme being, immobile, loved but never loving, terminus. The problem of the Good is formulated as a loving problem of ends.”1088 God as the end of all ends in this case is the non-reciprocal object of desire, such desire for the (literal) ‘highest’ is a one-way-focus. This desire for the ‘highest’ is alternatively considered ‘the Good’ according to Plato, and ‘god’ in Aristotle’s sense. By contrast, the Biblical God and Levinas’ concept of the Other transcend the shell of cosmic Being. Both of these concepts of God have the direction of ‘up,’ and are aesthetic insofar as one has a ‘vision’ of the highest. One could well criticize Levinas’ analysis of Plato’s ‘Good’ as an ethical, rather than aesthetic

1085 136.

1086 136. 1087 137.

1088 Existence, 29. Sadler 227 category is category error.1089 In his sense of the individual’s focus on the ‘highest,’ the ‘high- est’ for Levinas becomes the ‘Other.’ In chapter “D. The Dwelling” of Totality, Levinas argues that Labour, as one’s working to create their world within their own totality, does not engage with freedom (in the manner of aes- thetic enjoyment), but rather engages with the will: "Labour characterizes not a freedom that has detached itself from being, but a will: a being that is threatened, but has time at its dispos- al to ward off the threat.”1090 The ‘threat’ in this case is the passive-threat of starvation, expo- sure, and other bodily harms that come without life’s basic necessities. In the antinomy of free- dom and will, the pre-categorical aestheticism (proper to the Transcendental Aesthetic, not the Judgment) concerns itself with the freedom of individual enjoyment versus the deliberate im- printing of one’s will upon their totality through labour: “The will marks, in the general economy of being, the point where the definitiveness of an event is produced as non-definitive.”1091 For Levinas, the will replicates the Ereignis from the uniqueness of an upsurge into a replicated event in the manner of industrial production. Unlike the freedom of enjoyment, which is the

1089 Republic 506b: The interlocutors, Adamantus and Glaucon, ask Socrates of that which is ‘the Good’ [τὸ ἀγαθὸν] in-itself. Glaucon makes the connection between opinions divorced from knowledge versus aesthetic ugliness: “Is it, then, ugly things that you prefer to contem- plate, things blind and crooked, when you might hear from others what is luminous and fair?” (506c-d). Socrates follows by contrasting pleasant sensation with the faculty to sense ‘the higher’ (507b-c). Socrates asks: “Have you ever observed,” said I, “how much the greatest expenditure the creator [δημιουργός] of the senses has lavished on the faculty of seeing and being seen?” (507c). Socrates follows by discussing the medium, or ‘third thing’ required of vision, and not required of any other sensation [ἐὰν μὴ παραγένηται τρίτον, ἡ μὲν οὐκ ἀκούσεται, ἡ δὲ οὐκἀκουσθήσεται;] (507d). Referencing again the 'third thing’ [γένος τρίτον], Socrates qualifies that the third thing is light [φῶς]. It stands to reason that the source of the light is the sun (508a). The eye, by analogy, is the “the most sunlike of all the instruments of sense.” [ἀλλ᾽ ἡλιοειδέστατόν γε οἶμαι τῶν περὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ὀργάνων] (508b). Thus, Socrates makes the analogy between vision of light to comprehension of the purely intellectable [νοούμενα] (508c). He discusses in this manner “the idea of good” [τὴν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν]. To these superlative heights of language, Glaucon states “Apollo, spirit of hyperbole, speaks!” [Ἄπολλον, ἔφη, δαιμονίας ὑπερβολῆς] (509c). This metaphor for vision of the Good is illustrated in the allegory of the cave in 514a. Therefore, Socrates describes the education and habituation of the philosopher-kings as the ‘ascent’ to the ‘heights’ in order to view the ‘Good’ [ἰδεῖν τε τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἀναβῆναι ἐκείνην τὴν ἀνάβασιν, καὶ ἐπειδὰν ἀναβάντεςἱκανῶς ἴδωσι] (519c-d). Therefore, the ‘vision’ of the forms, while it is ‘eidos’ and not ‘aisthesis’ still has that quality that is of vi- sion that concerns itself with what is ‘beautiful’ (however eidetic) and not ethical. For the Re- public, ethical conduct is the outcome of philosophy, not its goal, apex, summum, or the like. Levinas’ concept of ‘the Good’ as ‘ethics as first philosophy’ is not the same as Plato’s eidetic Good. 1090 166. 1091 166. Sadler 228 aesthetic enjoyment of the present moment, the temporality of the will’s labour is oriented to- ward the future: “To will is to forestall danger. To conceive the future is to fore-stall.” One is working desperately to forestall one’s Being-toward-Death [Sein Zum Tode], the will-to-live is en- acted through laboring to extend one’s existence. Labour as expression of will-to-live is ac- complished through the will-to-power over nature and even Others. Levinas contrasts the technical temporality of labour with the authentic temporality of encountering the Other: “But time, which manifests itself in the recollection of dwelling, presupposes (as we will explain fur- ther) the relation with an other that is not given to labor–the relationship with the Other, with infinity, metaphysics.”1092 Levinas concludes chapter D with the statement in opposition to “Ethics is an optics” with “Transcendence is not an optics, but the first ethical gesture.”1093 In response to his previ- ous aphorism “Philosophy is an egology,” Levinas contrasts “Egoism is life: life from…, or en- joyment.”1094 ‘Life from…' is purposiveness or the dative case. Living from… is another expres- sion of technical reason. Despite an individual’s enjoyment of their totality, the elemental nature of that enjoyment can affect the individual ego to the point that they lose their ipseity, absorbed into their context, into the ‘nowhere.’1095 In order to escape this negation, an individual at the mercy of the elements ‘withdraws’ into the safety of the dwelling. This ‘withdrawal’ is not the Same’s negation of their world, but a ‘contraction’ of their totality into the domestic sphere. In this contracted totality of the dwelling, the Other breaks in upon the shell of totality, and the encounter between Same and Other occurs. In Levinas’ philosophy of semiotics, he discusses the manner in which the Other is sig- nified to the same, whether by the will of the same or the will of the Other. The same attempts to control and invent its own expressive works that signify itself. In terms of its idolatrous self- signification: “In undertaking what I willed I realized so many things I did not will: the work rises in the midst of the wastes of labour.”1096 The ‘wastes of labour' brings to mind the artifacts of tyranny: the statues of Communist and Fascist dictators past. These icons were the dictators’ signification of their self, the demand for adulation and worship from their followers. With the collapse of these autocratic regimes, the destruction or deconsecration of these icons be- comes a major symbolic task. The self-signifying icon arises before the individual who willed it, but they did not will the wastes surrounding their opus. The wastes that were not willed in will-

1092 166. 1093 174.

1094 175. 1095 175. 1096 176. Sadler 229 ing the self-iconography are the ‘unintended’ and ‘unforseen’ consequences of one’s will: ‘col- lateral damage’ and civilian casualties of one’s ideological triumphs. The suffering of Others becomes grist for an individual’s apotheosis: “can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,” as the colloquialism goes. The Same builds the altar upon which he sacrifices the Other to his own self-worship. And yet, signification cannot be identified with the Other. While the Other may leave signs to its existence, these signs do not ‘give’ us the Other in the manner that the phenomenological ‘given’ gives objects to their perceiver. But neither do I break through the crust of separation by approaching the Other in his works, which, like my own, are delivered over to the anonymous field of the economic life, in which I maintain myself egoist and separated, identifying in the diverse my own identity as the same, through labour and possession.1097

No amount of individual effort to ‘follow the signs’ can approach the Other in their ipseitous infinity. The Other confronts the same through revelation, and nothing less can achieve this en- counter. In this absent manner (an absence which is not negative): “The Other signals himself but does not present himself.”1098 One cannot use their labour to build a tower to heaven, all the better to conquer it. We will see in the following text, Otherwise Than Being: Or, Beyond Es- sence, that what ultimately signifies the Other is the same’s hollowing-out of their self into a sign. The self-as-sign signifies the Other. For Levinas, as opposed to the philosophical task of bridging the dichotomy (in the manner of Body/Mind, Self/Other, Humanity/World, World/God, or Epistemology/Ethics), Lev- inas’ philosophy preserves the abyss between the two terms: “Separation as a break with par- ticipation was deduced from the Idea of Infinity. [The Idea of Infinity] is therefore also a relation extending over the irremediable abyss of this separation.”1099 The preserved abyss between terms is not negative in the sense of the logical negation proper to Kant's epistemological cat- egories. Any attempt to bridge this preserved abyss falls into the problem of the mediating plastic image proper to Judgment.1100 There are two concepts here central to this thesis: the

1097 176.

1098 176. 1099 180. 1100 Eli Friedlander argues: “[Aesthetic mediation] would be seen as letting into our experience of the world, postponement, ambiguity, and evasiveness” (Expressions of Judgment, 75). I ar- gue that Levinas’ phenomenology preserves the ambiguity between the two faculties of theory and practice. Paul Guyer also highlights the ambiguity of aesthetic judgments, but also arguing that aesthetic judgments of taste could be better classified under intersubjective experience (see Kant and the Claims of Taste, 63-64). I would argue for the emphasis on an analytic of in- tersubjective experience, rather than compromising the Transcendental Aesthetic from the First Critique. Sadler 230 critique of mediation and the critique of negativity. The preserved abyss between the two terms overcomes both the problem of mediation, and the problem of categorical negation.

§8. Metaphysics as Positivity

Metaphysics is the most-positive presence of the Other. Levinas critiques Heidegger’s a-letheia, the un-covering or clearing-away of solid being so that Dasein may appear: “Expres- sion manifests the presence of being, but not by simply drawing aside the veil of the phe- nomenon.”1101 Kant discusses the highest sublimity of the “Veil of Isis” in his Critique of Judg- ment, which can be compared to Heraclitus’ Nature, which loves hiding. While Levinas’ concept of the there is… is similar in kind to the density of hidden nature, the self’s agency of un-veiling is inferior to the revelation of the Other. The self’s unveiling of Being cannot replicate the revela- tion of the Other. Levinas continues: “And expression does not manifest the presence of being by referring from the sign to the signified; it presents the signifier.”1102 The Other is signification qua signification. It is not the object signified by the same-as-signifier. The Other subverts the relation of the agentive signifier to their signified. Levinas states: “The signifier, he who gives a sign, is not signified.”1103 In Levinas’ great inversion of the subject/object, master-slave di- chotomy, the Other becomes the signifier, despite the same’s intending and desire for the Oth- er. The same may intend the Other, but the Other is not the object of signification. In Totality and Infinity’s third main Section, “Exteriority and the Face,” Levinas continues to develop and elaborate the role of sensation in his ethics. Sensation as a simple quality floating in the air or in our soul represents an ab- straction because, without the object to which it refers, quality can have the sig- nification of being a quality only in a relative sense: by turning over a painting we can see the colors of the objects painted as colors in themselves–but in fact al- ready as colors of the canvas that bears them.–Unless their purely aesthetic ef- fect would consist in this detachment from the object…. But then sensation would result from a long thought process.1104

The idea of bare sensation as a qualia is itself a major problem for Levinas’ thought, as quaila are proper to categorical reason, to which Levinas’ concept of sensation is prior. Levinas brings up many concepts here proper to the categorical logic of post-sensate experience. ‘Abstrac- tion,’ ‘reference,’ ‘quality,’ aesthetic ‘detachment’: these concepts are all proper to categorical

1101 181.

1102 Levinas, Totality, 181-182. 1103 182. 1104 187. Sadler 231 reason. Levinas’ critique of negative theology is a critique of the presuppositions of Substance and Accidents, and the qualia proper to their being. Referring to enjoyment, which is prior to the categorical reflection proper to the understanding: “The very distinction between represen- tational and affective content is tantamount to a recognition that enjoyment is endowed with a dynamism other than that of perception.”1105 While affective content is prior to representational content, the very concept of ‘content’ in itself belongs to something. The idea of content is also within the paradigm of categorical reason, as content is affixed to some prior object. Even the idea of unity simpliciter still presupposes an object according to the understanding. Despite the importance of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic of space and time as the a priori conditions for sensibility, and its contribution to phenomenology (as Heidegger’s lectures have shown), Levinas argues that Kant’s aesthetic is still in the mode of logical reasoning (the mode of reasoning that the Marburg School sought to reduce Kant’s Aesthetic in the first place). “It is for having neglected in the sensibility this function of pure sensibility in the Kantian sense of the term and a whole ‘transcendental aesthetics’ of ‘contents’ of experience that we are led to posit the non-I in a univocal sense, as the objectivity of the object.”1106 Kant’s tran- scendental aesthetic still reasons space and time in terms of geometric space: it is a priori in- sofar as it is empty and formal, awaiting contents and geometric bodies. As opposed to the Other-as-revealed, one posits the non-I for-themself, and this includes Others as mere bodies- in-space. Without the phenomenology of everyday enjoyment that is prior to the understand- ing’s categories, Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic is still in the logical mode. Levinas performs the philosophical task to go-beyond one’s forbears: in assuming Kant’s presuppositions about sensation and experience, Levinas does Kant’s thought more justice than Kant did himself. In this manner, Levinas is more-Kant-than-Kant when he critiques the need for a mediating third term between irremediable experience and principles. Levinas discusses the primacy of vision in western philosophy, the equivocation of all sensation with vision: “As Heidegger, after St. Augustine, pointed out, we use the term vision indifferently for every experience, even when it involves senses other than sight.”1107 Further elaborating on the important role of the First Cri- tique: The Critique of Pure Reason, in discovering the transcendental activity of the mind, has made familiar the idea of a spiritual activity that does not issue in an object, even though this revolutionary idea was in Kantian philosophy attenuated in that activity in question constituted the condition for the object.1108

1105 187.

1106 Levinas, Totality, 188. 1107 Levinas, Totality, 188. 1108 Levinas, 188-189. Sadler 232

Ultimately, despite the nature of the aesthetic as prior to categorical logic, Kant’s geometric a priori of space and time focuses on how an individual ego can find its object, and not the alteri- ty of the Other. Kant’s aesthetic, while being the condition for experience as given to the per- ceiver, is still focused on interiority (especially time as interior sensation). Therefore, Kant’s aes- thetic is still within the idealist mode of interior understanding. In his sub-chapter “B. Ethics and the Face,” Levinas elaborates Kant’s idea of infinity, comparing Kantian infinity to the infinite nature of the Other: The Kantian notion of infinity figures as an ideal of reason, the projection of its exigencies in a beyond, the ideal completion of what is given incomplete–but without the incomplete being confronted with a privileged experience of infinity, without it drawing the limits of its finitude from such a confrontation.1109

The concept of a regulative ideal of reason is proper to Kant’s ethics as an idea that regulates thought or action outside of any reality corresponding to that ideal.1110 Kant’s postulates of pure practical reason (freedom, God, and the immortality of the soul) are engaged with in the manner of the as-if… without any reference to the reality of the objects of Practical Reason . Levinas further qualifies: “The Kantian finitude is described positively by sensibility, as the Hei- deggerian finitude by the being for death.”1111 Levinas here uplifts Kant, despite all his flaws, over Heidegger’s phenomenology. Kantian sensibility is positive, while Heidegger’s being-to- wards-death is negative; Levinas’ philosophy upholds the positivity of metaphysics against pri- vation and negativity. He follows: “This infinity referring to the finite marks the most anti-Carte- sian point of Kantian philosophy as, later, of Heideggerian philosophy.”1112 Despite Heidegger’s writings against Descartes’ assumptions foundational to modern metaphysics in Being and Time, Levinas argues that Kant’s relation of the infinity to the finite opposes Heideggerian fini- tude as well as Descartes’ philosophy. Therefore, Kant’s definition of infinity supplies Levinas with an antidote to Heideggerian negativity and finitude. Levinas makes arguments for the existence of a ‘third’ who is not the mediating third term, this ‘third person' is personal and not plastic. One form of personal ‘third-ness’ is prog-

1109 196. 1110 In the First Critique, Kant argues that principles of reason merely regulate the phenomena under rules, as opposed to actively constituting them (á la Realism): “Things must be entirely different [from constitutive mathematical principles] with those principles that are to bring the existence of appearances under rules a priori. For, since this existence cannot be constructed, these principles can concern only the relation of existence, and can yield nothing but merely regulative principles” (Kant, CPR, B222). The regulative nature of ethics is that of the regulation of the self in accordance with the principles of moral will (see Critique of Practical Reason, 5:65). 1111 Levinas, Totality, 196. 1112 196. Sadler 233 eny; another is the ‘third' of justice. These different concepts of third-ness are not to be con- fused with each other, or with the mediating third term. It is necessary to clarify Levinas' medi- ating third term from his positive, personal ideas of the third person.1113

§9. The Interim Between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being

In his 1965 article “Intentionality and Sensation,” Levinas seems to be transitioning in his thought to a concern for genealogy or history of consciousness. Levinas posits that phe- nomenology retrieves lost horizons and their various contexts: “Phenomenology is then the ‘re- activation’ of all these forgotten horizons and of the horizon of all these horizons.”1114 Is the re- trieval of horizons lost to the history of consciousness an appeal to hermeneutics? Levinas’ ethical philosophy of the Other rejected the historicizing of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenome- nology in favour of the transcendental phenomenology appropriate to the Other’s alterity. How- ever, an epistemological concern for consciousness’ relation to history is still important for the horizon defining an individual’s totality (however fragile to the Other’s revelation).1115 The lost horizons signify or point to other, prior horizons that one can excavate in an archeological manner. The epistemological project of phenomenological investigations becomes one of dis- covering and bringing-to-light (phainō in its active meaning) that which was previously lost. Thus, the active sense of phenomenological research brings-to-light, φαίνω [phainō], that which has been lost in order that it may appear, ϕαινομάι [phainomai], to the researcher. This rediscov- ery of lost horizons is a positive phenomenological project to undertake in relation to history, without falling into Heideggerian hermeneutics. Levinas contrasts his project against the an- tipodes of Heidegger’s hermeneutics, as well as the Marburg School’s logocentrism, writing:

Contrary to the neo-Kantian method, which reconstitutes the transcendental from the logical and the scientific, and through this very process forgets the horizons which are lost precisely because scientific results can only be pur- chased at the price of the forgetting of these infinite horizons–phenomenology, which does turn toward them, makes possible the expression and the perfecting of the logical itself.1116

Levinas argues that Neo-Kantian logocentrism willfully forgets the history of thought in order to argue that it has begun at an axiom in bad faith. A philosopher, without any concern for intel-

1113 See Levinas, Totality, 267, 277, 305-306.

1114 Levinas, Discovering Existence With Husserl, 137. 1115 137. 1116 137-138. Sadler 234 lectual history, will declare their philosophy to be the beginning, with no reference to prior thought. It is as though one erases the calendar, declaring ‘year one’ for their own philosophi- cal contribution. The willful naiveté of Descartes’ method of doubt, or other attempts to ‘start from scratch’ in philosophy will either come to the same conclusions as previous philosophers without attribution (becoming a form of willfully-ignorant plagiarism) or will simply replicate the individual philosopher’s biases and assumptions as uncritical dogma. Levinas introduces interpretation to Husserl’s otherwise transcendental phenomenolo- gy, writing that interpretation is a mode of apprehension.1117 “The terms ‘Interpretieren’ [Inter- pretation] and ‘Deuten’ [Interpret] are added to ‘Auffassen,’ [take] ‘Beseelen,’ [animate] and ‘Durchgeistigen,’ [enspiriting] which we have already noted; all of which are designed to express the relation that exists between intention and sensation.”1118 The addition of interpretation to Husserl’s transcendental egology engages the historical dimension of the phenomenological horizon. Since Levinas’ Husserlian thesis in Totality and Infinity was so principled in its adher- ence to the purity of transcendental apperception in the revelation of the Other, Levinas seems to bring hermeneutics in through the back door. It is as though Levinas’ ascending the heights of the Other’s transcendence has established the priory of the ethical relation to the Other in order to be able to do further phenomenological researches of an individual’s experience. Lev- inas introduces idealists Jules Lagneau and Emile Chartier (‘Alain’) in their attempt to reintro- duce Judgment to Husserl’s phenomenology. Levinas previously banished Judgment as its own mediating faculty or third term, reduced to its role in epistemology (the technical applica- tion of sensation to categorical logic): “They are borrowed from the activity of judgment that already bears upon a world of constituted objects, but that a Lagneau or an Alain, by extrapo- lating from the logical to the transcendental, situate at the origin.”1119 Levinas argues that Lageanu and Alain’s thesis that would introduce Judgment to Husserl’s phenomenology does not do justice to Husserl’s writings. While, using idealist and hermeneutic vocabulary, one can discuss “apprehension,” “apperception,” and “interpretation” in Husserl’s phenomenology.1120 Levinas questions how suitable interpretation in-particular is for Husserl, writing: “Sensation in Husserl is not found on the objective side, as an embryonic object or as a brute fact requiring interpretation.”1121 ‘Interpretation’ requires a density of Being that confronts us, demanding we apply interpretation in the manner of the technical application of tools to base, unformed mat-

1117 140. 1118 140.

1119 140. 1120 140. 1121 140. Sadler 235 ter. Levinas summarizes: “Apperception, interpretation, and apprehension, which Husserl seemed to identify with the work of intentionality, are not judgments. Judgment is a kind of in- tentionality; intentionality is not a form of judgment.”1122 Therefore, Levinas opposes any at- tempt to collapse intentionality into judgment. Judgment’s role in phenomenology is reduced to a mere element of epistemology.

§10. “From Consciousness to Wakefulness”

Levinas’ 1974 article “From Consciousness to Wakefulness” deals with issues of signifi- cation that will be engaged-further in the contemporary text Otherwise Than Being. Levinas be- gins the article by emphasizing the humanism of Husserl’s phenomenology, writing: “Husserlian phenomenology intervenes at the level of the human where reason signifies the manifestation of beings to a true knowledge, careful of their presence in the original, their presence in their iden- tity as beings, or their presence qua being.”1123 The question of the humanistic nature of phe- nomenology is the question of ‘presence,’ or absence thereof, in relation to the Other. Does the Other who has been revealed to an individual, who arguably does not appear (apo-phansis) in the first place, have any ‘presence’ at all? The answer, seemingly in the negative (while Levinas attempts to avoid problematic negativity), is the phenomenology of non-appearance. Levinas discusses: “That beings may appear without remaining in there being–that, in images, beings should present only their resemblance instead of their identity.”1124 Levinas’ discussion of the image and lack thereof is an introduction of apo-phansis (though this term was mentioned in earlier writings). Levinas discusses the manner in which representation results in the affectation of the Self through the manner in which one comports and stylizes themselves. Levinas characterizes Kant’s epistemological system as “The unity of ‘I think,’ a solidity that will signify ‘I will,’ but immediately construed as a grasping, a ‘transcendental apperception.’”1125 ‘I think,’ ‘I will,’ and ‘apperception’ describe the relation between the epistemology of an individual’s reason and the moral will, both engaging a form of apperception: epistemological and ethical. Appercep- tion applies to both: it does not mediate in the manner of Judgment. Levinas follows with a discussion of the ‘blows of affection’ in the manner in which an individual is affected and trans-

1122 140.

1123 153. 1124 153. 1125 154. Sadler 236 formed into the aesthete, the dandy with concern for their pure aestheticism and bodily-com- portment. Levinas’ continues to summarize and characterize Husserl’s phenomenology in light of Kant’s system. Levinas discusses the ambiguity in Husserl’s phenomenology, stating: “Here there is an alternative that, in the Ideas, is an ambiguity.”1126 The ambiguity is between the phe- nomenological ego and its relation to its world.1127 The phenomenological ego’s project of re- searching the world is infinite in its progressive-nature, without definite goals or concrete defin- ition of these relations. Likewise ambiguous is the relation of the ‘kernel’ of being and the world: one’s ‘core’ of being is indefinite in where it ends, and the world and its horizon begins.1128 To reiterate Levinas’ summary: “To this horizon belongs the past of the ego, almost always totally obscure.”1129 The horizon is an assumption of the phenomenological ego, and the horizon represents the ego's history. And yet, the ego is ‘apodictic,’ or prior to being spo- ken (and therefore prior to a horizon): “But the limit between the apodictic [ego] and the non- apodictic [horizon] is not reducible to what separates the ‘core’ from its horizons–a limit that nothing indicates or brings out in the texts (§ 6-9) that Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations devotes to apodiciticity”.1130 The later Husserl of the Cartesian Meditations posits that the phenomeno- logical ego is prior to its appearance in the world of its horizon. The primacy of the ego over its world is positive insofar as it upholds the dignity of the Same, but Levinas seeks to argue for the asymmetrical primacy of the Other. Regarding this primacy of the Same’s relation to the Other: “Transcendence in immanence, the strange structure (or depth) of the psychic as a soul within the soul, is the ever-recommencing awakening in wakefulness itself; the Same infinitely brought back in its most intimate identity of the Other.”1131 As Levinas has previously dis- cussed, dialectic is the Same’s attempt to bifurcate itself into an Other in order to have a rela- tion with itself. The authentic relation of the Same to the Other sees the Same as a unity sim- pliciter in relation to the Other. This unity simpliciter is considered in the manner of negative the- ology. Despite Levinas’ upholding of Husserl in the face of Heidegger and similar hermeneutic phenomenologies privileging Being, he understands that Husserl’s egology can only go so far.

1126 158. 1127 158.

1128 159, quoting Cartesian Meditations and Ideas I.

1129 159. 1130 159. 1131 161. Sadler 237

Levinas asks: “Must not the analysis then be pushed beyond the letter of Husserl’s text?”1132 Referring to the concept of psychism and self-dialectic from Totality and Infinity, Levinas com- pares ‘insomnia’ (previously articulated in Existence and Existents) and ‘waking’ (a more active form of passive ‘insomnia’). Now, for Levinas, ‘waking’ is the act of bifurcating Same from it- Self.1133 Levinas stresses that the mentality of the waking of the “difference between same and same” is itself in the mode of categorical reason. We have established in this chapter that Lev- inas’ rejection of negative theology is due to the concept of unity simpliciter still following the mode of categorical reason (rather than pre-reflective consciousness). Levinas continues: “A scission of identity, insomnia or waking–otherwise than being–belong to ‘logical’ categories no less august than those that sustain or found being, just as, for example, dialectical negativity, to which insomnia is not reducible, belongs to them.”1134 Here Levinas introduces his following title, second only to his magnum opus Totality and Infinity: Otherwise Than Being: Or, Beyond Es- sence. Here Levinas also argues that the “scission of identity…belonging to ‘logical categories” and that ‘dialectical negativity’ is proper to these categories. Levinas’ argument here is in-line with his previous rejection of negativity in Totality and Infinity. Levinas continues to locate the origin of his ethics of the Other in Husserl’s phenomenology.1135 "It is in any case on the basis of the Other that Husserl describes transcendental subjectivity wresting the Ego from its isola- tion in itself.”1136 Even though Husserl’s intersubjectivity assumes the Other as ego-analogue, Levinas still sees the genesis of alterity in Husserl’s thought. Levinas summarizes Husserl’s re- lation to wakefulness: “Husserl's transcendental reduction has as its vocation to rouse it from torpor, to reanimate its life and its horizons lost in anonymity.”1137 The vocation of an individ- ual’s phenomenological researches into the world is to wake consciousness, and do the work of retrieving lost horizons, in a hermeneutic manner more proper to Levinas’ phenomenology than Heidegger. Levinas’ previously critiqued concepts, especially negativity, will be reintro- duced in Otherwise Than Being.

1132 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 162. 1133 162.

1134 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 162.

1135 163. 1136 163. 1137 163. Sadler 238

§11. Apo-Phansis

Levinas’ Otherwise Than Being: Or, Beyond Essence is his other mature work, after Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. After over a decade interval between the works, Levinas re- sponds to new problems or engages with old ones from a different angle. Here Levinas intro- duces theological concerns, previously ‘bracketed’ from the phenomenology of the Same’s en- counter with the Other in Totality. In like manner: though the critique of Heideggerian negativity (the a-letheia clearing-away of solid being so that Being may appear) was a major concern in Totality, negativity appears here in the service of the Other. From a more traditional perspective of apophatic (negative) theology, iconoclasm is the destruction of objects that are not-God. In declaring any creature in the world to be not-God, one has performed the iconoclasm that en- ables the true divinity of the Other to be revealed to us. While Levinas never gave his prior re- jection of negative theology an engaged treatment, Levinas’ thought emphasizes the Other who is revealed to the Same through the Other’s agency. In other words, the Same’s engage- ment with negative theology emphasizes the Same’s autonomous agency in clearing-away idolatry in order to encounter the Other. The agency of the Same would reduce the Other to categorical (technical) reason, through judgment, into a mere object of the understanding. However, Levinas’ emphasis on the heteronomy of the Other would entail the rejection of nega- tive theology as the agentive action of the Same attempting to ‘uncover’ (a-letheia) the Other.1138 For Levinas, the heteronomy of the Other permits an individual's autonomy to go be- yond formal, categorical reason: in this way, “man goes infinitely beyond man.”1139 It is the Other’s agency to break the shell of Being (Totality), making its demand (exigent) upon the Same. Levinas begins Otherwise Than Being with a chapter title loaded with implications. “Es- sence and Disinterest” calls to mind Kant’s Critique of Judgment, with its rational disinterest to- ward the aesthetic objects presented to an individual. Levinas' summary thesis states: “If tran- scendence has meaning, it can only signify the fact that the event of being, the esse, the essence, passes over to what is other than being.”1140 While the revelation of the Other broke-in-upon the Same’s totality (from the exteriority), Levinas’ method here is the manner by which the Same passes from being to that which is otherwise-than-being. He follows that there lacks a

1138 DiCenso highlights Levinas’ emphasis on heteronomy and its problematic nature for Kant- ian discourse in “Levinas and the Irreducibility of the Other” (277).

1139 See “Demanding Judaism”, Beyond the Verse, 9-10.

1140 Levinas, Otherwise Than Being: Or, Beyond Essence, 3. Sadler 239 category in traditional epistemology to indicate this passing beyond to the otherwise.1141 It could be argued that Kant’s ‘transcendental object = x’ or the noumenon does the work of go- ing beyond being. For Kant, the ethical individual is causa noumenon.1142 But Levinas’ emphasis on alterity will not locate the causa noumenon in the Same’s autonomy. Therefore, Levinas intro- duces the Same’s self-negation, writing: “The void that hollows out is immediately filled with the mute and anonymous rustling of the there is, as the place left vacant by one who died is filled with the murmur of the attendants.”1143 One cannot simply argue that Levinas’ introduction of the Same’s non-being is a capitu- lation to Heideggerian clearing (Seinlassen). While a Heideggerian argument would state that the Same hollows-out a clearing in which the Other may appear, such a characterization of the Self/Other relation focuses on the event of the encounter on the Same’s autonomy. Levinas characterizes the absolute existence of the Other (the positivity of metaphysics), while non-ex- istence applies to the Same. The Self can be negated, ‘hollowed out,’ their space in the world emptied in an analogy to death. The Other, by contrast, cannot die. In this manner: “To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned.”1144 The Other is ‘to be’ pre- eminently; the Same is ‘not to be.’ The ‘beyond’ qualitatively separates negation from absolute transcendence.1145 Levinas summarizes: “Every attempt to disjoin the conjunction and the con- juncture [between existence and nonexistence] but emphasizes them. The there is fills the void left by the negation of being.”1146 The negation of an individual’s being gives space for the den- sity of the dark, feminine there is: the density of raw presence and insomnia. Levinas contrasts Kantian aesthetic disinterest with the superlative interest in the es- sence of one’s immediate existence (comparable to the phenomenology of pre-reflective en- joyment in Totality and Infinity). “Esse is interesse; essence is interest.”1147 Levinas argues that this superlative interest is not merely corollary to an individual’s concern for their own existence or non-existence.1148 Rather than this denial of negation, Levinas affirms the positivity of ones ability to do in the same manner as the phenomenon of enjoyment: “[Interest in existence] is

1141 3.

1142 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:55. 1143 Levinas, Otherwise, 3. 1144 Levinas, Otherwise, 3. 1145 3.

1146 4.

1147 Levinas, Otherwise, 4. 1148 4. Sadler 240 confirmed positively to be the conatus of beings. And what else can positivity mean but this conatus?”1149 Conatus is Spinoza’s Latin equivalent to the Greek dunamis [δύνᾰµις]: one’s ability or ‘power’ over the world.1150 An individual’s relation to the world is positive (in both literal and colloquial senses) insofar as it can affect the world according to their Will. As previously dis- cussed: Spinoza’s ethics allow for one to do whatever one is capable of doing: according to their conatus or dunamis. Levinas acknowledges this initial assumption in one’s primal relation to their world. However, the Same’s conatus is rendered impotent by the Other’s revelation. Levinas introduces signification in “The Said and the Saying,” critiquing notions of signi- fying play in the manner previously attributed to Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. Levinas argues against the solidifiying, substantive power of the said over that which is actively saying in the artificial nature of the mediating logos.1151 Levinas broaches the issue of mediation in theology: Then would not the bankruptcy of transcendence be but that of a theology that thematizes the transcending in the logos, assigns a term to the passing of tran- scendence, congeals it into a ‘world behind the scenes,’ and installs what it says in war and in matter, which are the inevitable modalities of the fate woven by being in its interest?1152

The simple reduction of the transcendent Other to a mere term is analogous to the reduction of the Divine relation into the mediation of the logos. While the concern of mediation is much more ancillary than its central treatment in Totality and Infinity, it is still fundamental to Levinas’ ethics of the relation to the Other. Levinas follows: “It is not that the essence qua persistence in essence, qua conatus and interest, would be reducible to a word-play. Saying is not a game.”1153 Levinas further discusses the concept of play in contradistinction to the disinterested- ness proper to Kant’s Critique of Judgment. He asks: “Does not disinterestedness, without com- pensation, without eternal life, without the pleasingness of happiness, complete gratuity, indi- cate an extreme gravity and not the fallacious frivolity of play?”1154 The antinomy of disinterest- edness and the frivolity of play is also the antinomy between different phenomenologies of play. As previously discussed, Huizinga argues that one must take the rules of the game with

1149 4. 1150 See Bettina Bergo: “This hybridity involves a kind of Spinozist worldview – appealing to the conatus or will to persevere in one’s existence” (“Levinas’s Project: An Interpretative Phenome- nology of Sensibility and Intersubjectivity”, 78).

1151 Levinas, Otherwise, 5.

1152 5.

1153 Levinas, Otherwise, 5. 1154 6. Sadler 241 such seriousness that one is paradoxically able to play. Levinas, as discussed in Existence and Existents, mischaracterizes play as pure frivolity and freedom, which does not give the gravity proper to play its due. Levinas’ rejection of rational disinterestedness is a rejection Kant’s Cri- tique of Judgment. Levinas introduces apo-phansis, a topic crucial to Otherwise Than Being. While previously given mention in his dissertation on Husserl's theory of intuition, Otherwise Than Being gives the concept its first dedicated treatment. Apo-Phansis means ‘that which does not appear.’ Apo- Phansis in Levinas’ corpus is in contrast to Apo-Phatic theology (lit. ‘that which cannot be said’). Thus, while Levinas has rejected apophatic theology, he upholds apophansis, or the phenome- nology of non-appearance. The contradiction of phenomenology as ‘how the world appears to me’ is contradicted by ‘that which does not appear.’ The phenomenology of non-appearance is the theme of this chapter, and the overcoming of Levinas’ previous issues with negativity. Phe- nomenology’s primordial life-world is prior to the categorical logic of reflection through the un- derstanding (via epistemological judgment). Therefore, it overcomes the problems inherent in the categorical negativity of apophatic unity simpliciter. In his discussion of signification and the ‘birth of cognition,’ Levinas introduces apo- phansis.1155 “But the fact that the ex-ception shows itself and becomes truth in the said can not serve as a pretext to take as an absolute the apophantic variant of the saying, which is ancillary or angelic.”1156 The apophantic presupposes a transcendental existence beyond that which appears to the Same (phainomena), which has a substantive quality. Levinas argues that the apophansis of the said has the quality of the 'ancillary or angelic.’ To assume a non-appearing substance (or transcendental object) behind that which is said is to attribute a pure existence (in both the sense of 'pure reason’ and ‘purity’ as goodness). This ‘purity’ has an aesthetic quality of pleasure to one’s moral senses. This moral pleasure is dealt with in Kant’s Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason from The Critique of Practical Reason. However, even such an ethical sense of pleasure in the higher reality behind the said is its own form of aesthetic mediation, however angelic: “An ancillary or angelic variant, however sublime it be, the apophantic form of the saying is only mediating”1157 Therefore, even the an-iconic nature of apophansis falls into the problems proper to both negativity and aesthetic mediation (however ‘angelic’). Levinas con- tinues by arguing that thematization, a major phenomenological concept, as well as theory and the thought which thinks it, is “motivated by the pre-original vocation of the saying, by respon-

1155 Levinas, Otherwise, 6. 1156 6.

1157 Levinas, Totality, 6. Sadler 242 sibility itself.”1158 In a manner similar to Kant’s ethical project of practical reason, Levinas ar- gues that responsibility-itself is an individual's vocation at the pre-theoretical (i.e. prior to the a priori) level of existence. One’s moral vocation [Bestimmung] is a concern for both Kant and Levinas.1159 Levinas further qualifies apophansis, stating: “But apophansis does not exhaust what there is in saying. Apophansis presupposes the language that answers with responsibility, and the gravity of this response is beyond the measure of being.”1160 Since individuals cannot escape their sensate world (such an escape would be a form of gnostic negation), an individual relates to beyond-being through signification. We will see that an individual crafts themself into a signifier in the manner of aesthetic self-crafting. Levinas discusses the methodological problem of the manner in which a primordial or ‘pre-original’ element of the saying is contrasted against a ‘non-original’ saying that concerns itself with an attempted historical recovery of the pre-original (however in bad faith it could be). Levinas references the seemingly contradictory nature of an-archaeological: the recovery of a saying that itself has no origin, in the manner of an ‘upsurge’ or Ereignis. A methodological problem arises here, whether the pre-original element of say- ing (anarchical, the non-original, as we designate it) can be led to betray itself by showing itself in a theme (if an an-archaeology is possible), and whether this be- trayal can be reduced; whether one at the same time know and free the known of the marks which thematization leaves on it by subordinating it to ontology.1161

The ‘an-arché’ is a wordplay on ‘non-originary,’ in the sense of arché being the Greek word for both ‘origin’ and ‘rulership’ [ἄρχων]. Levinas’ wordplay, which was introduced in Totality and In- finity, equivocates the lack of tyrannical leadership (anarchy) with the lack of an origin, especial- ly for the metaphysical Other (an-arché). Levinas takes this wordplay farther in his discussion of hermeneutics, towards an an-archaeology. The idea of ‘archaeology’ as method was introduced in a developed manner by Michel Foucault in his 1969 text The Archæology of Knowledge. By Otherwise Than Being’s publication in 1974, France’s intellectual climate had become dominated by archaeological and genealogical methods, eschewing the prior phenomenology. Levinas’ critique of hermeneutics discusses the manner in which one can retrieve these sayings, without an appeal to an ‘origin’ (a chief critique of archaeological thinking).

1158 6.

1159 “The proposition about the moral vocation of our nature , that only in an endless progress can we attain complete conformity with the moral law, it of the greatest usefulness, not merely in regard to the present supplement to the incapacity of speculative reason but also with re- spect to religion” (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 122).

1160 Levinas, Otherwise, 6. 1161 Levinas, Otherwise, 7. Sadler 243

Despite the seeming primordial iconoclasm of the apophatic, Levinas here affirms the thesis previously asserted, that despite the iconoclastic nature of apophatic theology and its philosophical analogue, it still participates in categorical reasoning: “When states in proposi- tions, the unsayable (or the an-archical) espouses the forms of formal logic; the beyond being is posited in doxic theses, and glimmers in the amphibology of being and beings – in which be- ings dissimulate being.”1162 That-which-cannot-be-spoken (apophatic) still participates in the second-order mediation of the categories. In the following section “Subjectivity,” Levinas further introduces negativity into the the- sis of Otherwise: “The task is to conceive of the possibility of a break out of essence… But the extraction from essence contests the unconditional privilege of the question ‘where?’; it signi- fies a null-site [non-lieu].”1163 The ‘where’ references the da of da-Sein, the location of Being which is indicated as ‘there.’ We have seen Levinas’ use of negative vocabulary in Otherwise, with the hollowing-out of being, as well as the ‘null-site’ where an individual attempts to break out of being. The null-site is in-line with the existential idea of non-place, in a manner similar to the meeting-space between Martin Buber’s I and Thou. Referring back to Plato, Levinas argues that non-being “in a certain sense is.”1164 Levinas argues that even negation has a sense of ex- istence, meaning negation still participates in ontology rather than escaping it. Levinas follows by arguing for the unity of the ego, which is necessary in order to have a ‘solid’ ego that can encounter the Other; however, this unity is not the same as the apophatic concept of unity sim- pliciter, which is still categorical in its reasoning. Rather, Levinas argues for the primal, pre-re- flective unity of the ego, in the manner of the aphorism “philosophy is an egology”: “The ego is an incomparable unicity; it is outside of the community of genus and form, and does not find any rest in itself either, unquiet, not coinciding with itself.”1165 We have previously analyzed the problem of confusing the category of ‘community’ with an actual relationship of individuals in the colloquial sense. In this manner, the primal enjoyment of the ego is prior to genus and form, which are both epistemological categories. Levinas discusses the paradoxically reflexive nature of the same’s attempt to get outside itself. The outside of itself, the difference from oneself of this unicity is non-indifference itself, and the extraordinary recurrence of the pronominal or the reflexive, the self (se) – which no longer surprises us because it enters into the current flow of lan-

1162 Levinas, Otherwise, 7.

1163 8. 1164 8.

1165 Levinas, Otherwise, 8. Sadler 244

guage in which things show themselves, suitcases fold and ideas are understood (les choses se montrent, les baggages se plient et les idées se comprennent).1166

The reflexive nature, indicated by the reflexive particle se, shows that the naive attempt of the unified ego to escape its totality of its own volition is an act of bad faith. In this manner, the ego must not be limited to its world and context, but it is Husserl’s Pure Ego, or analogous to Kant- ian Pure Reason.1167

§12. Negative Theology in Otherwise Than Being

Levinas’ characterizes the Self’s ethical vocation, the responsibility for the Other, as lo- cated in the ‘null-site’ without the da of Da-Sein: “The responsibility for the other is the locus in which is situated the null-site of subjectivity, where the privilege of the question ‘Where?’ no longer holds.”1168 It is a question as to whether Levinas grants the ego a greater agency than the heteronomy of the Other in Totality and Infinity. Levinas’ previous critique of abstraction and emphasis on the dwelling seems to give way to the null-space. Has Levinas capitulated to Bu- ber’s mediating space between the I and Thou? Levinas could still maintain that Buber’s space is geometric, and therefore falling into the second-order mediation of categorical reason. Levinas further defines the negative that is prior-to-categorization: “The non-present here is is invisible, separated (or sacred) and thus a non-origin, an-archial.”1169 The definition of the Hebrew ‘Kadosh’ (the Holy) is ‘set-apart.’ In this same vein, Levinas has introduced the non-presence of the Divine, assuming the Divine is the Other. The Other is beyond the fallacy of positing origins to that which appears in the world. Since the Other is apophantic, and not a proper phenomenon, the Other defies tyranny and origin: the Other is an-archial. The Other can- not be reduced to their origin in the phenomenal world. To further developing Totality and Infini- ty’s concept of the ‘most high’: “The non-present is in-comprehendable by reason of its im- mensity or its ‘superlative’ humility or, for example, its goodness, which is the superlative itself.”1170 The superlative itself goes beyond reason toward primordial goodness. In like man- ner, Levinas continues “Immemorial, unrepresentable, invisible, the past that bypasses the

1166 8. 1167 8.

1168 10. 1169 11. 1170 11. Sadler 245 present, the pluperfect past, falls into a past that is a gratuitous lapse.”1171 Levinas’ prose here calls to mind the Anglican hymn “Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” with practically rhapsodic diction. It would be easy to characterize Levinas here as capitulating to Heidegger’s temporality of the future becoming the past which becomes the present. Rather, Levinas’ gratuitous tem- poral lapse denies Heideggerian temporality: the past is always-past (it is never brought-for- ward) while also never-past. The Divine is eternal. Levinas continues: “All my inwardness is in- vested in the form of a despite-me, for-another.”1172 Levinas here articulates abnegation as the denial of one’s self in-service to the Other. At the same time, Levinas’ previous argument in To- tality was against interiority and in favour of the Other’s nature exterior-to-the-Same. The Self hollows itself out as a signifier which signifies the transcendent Other: “Despite-me, for-anoth- er, is signification par excellence.”1173 The abnegating self is the ultimate signifier: it signifies the ultimacy that is the Other. In linguistic structure, the Same is not the subject of the sen- tence, but like the image of clothes walking around without a body, an accusative object of a sentence without a nominative to act upon an object: “And it is the sense of the ‘oneself,’ that accusative that derives from no nominative; it is the very fact of finding oneself while losing oneself.”1174 This self-negation seems to be a novum in Levinas’ philosophy, after his explicit rejection of negativity in Totality and Infinity. Levinas explicitly introduces negative theology. Oriented toward and signifying the face of the Other, Levinas discusses ordinary non-presence: “In this order which is an ordination the non-presence of the infinite is not only a figure of negative theology.”1175 Levinas introduces negative theology in terms of the ‘being-accounted’ in terms of ordination (lit. “counting”). ‘Or- dination’ refers to the manner in which an individual is counted among the ranks of religious authority, and this ordination concerns itself with the non-presence of the infinite Other. Con- tinuing to discuss the logic of negative theology, in the mode of categorical reason: “All the negative attributes which state what is beyond the essence become positive in responsibility, a response answering to a non-thematizable provocation and thus a non-vocation, a trauma.”1176 Negative attributes answer to the non-vocation: a moral vocation is proper to the Same, while the Other is beyond being and beyond vocation. All of these negative qualities that Levinas’

1171 11. 1172 11. 1173 11.

1174 11. 1175 11-12. 1176 12. Sadler 246 reintroduces and reformulates in Otherwise Than Being result in the abnegated Same is itself the signifier signifying the Other. Levinas explains signification in the face of theological negation: “The positive element of this departure [from the there is… of the Same toward the Other], that which makes this de- parture, this diachrony, be more than a term of negative theology, is my responsibility for the others.”1177 The hollowed-self is the point-of-departure toward that which signifies the Other through the Same’s vocational responsibility. Levinas writes in the manner attributed to the Odyssey by Horkheimer and Adorno: “But this is still perhaps a quite narrative, epic, way of speaking.”1178 And in this epic of the great individual, the ego substitutes themself for the Oth- er. Levinas articulates: “In its being subjectivity undoes essence by substituting itself for another. Qua one-for-another, it is absorbed in signification, in saying or the verb form of the infinite. Signification precedes essence.”1179 This is the self-denial, the abnegation, of the Same substi- tuting itself for the Other. As opposed to the aphorism ‘existence precedes essence,’ Significa- tion precedes essence. Therefore the Self denies itself in order to signify the Other. Despite his patently non-theological discourse, Levinas uses theological vocabulary throughout Otherwise than Being, especially Christian ideas or emphases. Levinas’ discussion of theological terms is always difficult to interpret, given the aphoristic, non-systemic treatment Levinas gives to these terms. Levinas discusses ‘transubstantiation,’ the specifically Catholic theology that the elements of the Eucharist become the literal flesh-and-blood of Jesus of Nazareth, the Body of Christ. Levinas contrasts literal transubstantiation against the substitu- tion of Self-for-Other: “As a substitution of one for another, as me, a man, I am not a transub- stantiation, a changing from one substance into another, I do not shut myself up in another identity.”1180 The Same does not become the Other: true unio mystica does not happen. Levinas qualifies: “As signification, proximity, saying, separation, I do not fuse with anything.”1181 De- spite Self-abnegation and substitution, radical alterity between the Same and the Other is maintained. Levinas introduces the Same’s sacrifice for the Other, writing: “The pain, this un- derside of skin, is a nudity more naked than all destitution. [The pain] is sacrificed rather than sacrificing itself, for it is precisely bound to the adversity or suffering of pain.”1182 However,

1177 13. 1178 13. 1179 13.

1180 14. 1181 14. 1182 49-50. Sadler 247 rather than a subsuming of the Same’s identity into impersonal Being, pain is the most individ- uating. Levinas discusses suffering as not a good in itself in later writing, but here the pain of the Same is in substitution and sacrifice for the Other: the Same remains same, rendered su- perlatively Same by its suffering.1183 In the same manner the individual ego maintains itself in the face of metaphysical alterity: “It is not an abdication of the same, now alienated and slave to the other, but an abnegation of one-self fully responsible for the other.”1184 One is humbled by the Other, but one does not lose their own identity in the face of the Other. The maintenance of the Self (se tenir) in its substitution and signification toward the Other is not a loss of the Same. In this manner, Levinas upholds the integrity of the ego and “philosophy as an egology” by discussing the ipseity of the Same: the Same qua Self. Returning now to the theme of the first part of this exposition, we have to ask if this folding back upon oneself proper to ipseity (which does not even have the virtue of being an act of folding itself, but makes the act of consciousness turn- ing back upon itself possible), this passive folding back, does not coincide with the anarchic passivity of an obsession.1185

Recall Levinas’ metaphor of the folded briefcase as illustrative of reflexivity, reiterated: “suit- cases fold and ideas are understood (les choses se montrent, les baggages se plient et les idées se comprennent).” This folding-in-on-oneself in their own reflexivity is an ongoing metaphor for ispeity. While the title of Levinas’ other mature work was literally Totality and Infini- ty: An Essay on Exteriority, Levinas engages with interiority as ancillary to the more-important exterior. And yet, the emphasis on the exterior Other does not deny the role of interiority in phenomenological egology. As opposed to the anti-humanistic denial of the subject (proper to post-structural thought), Levinas affirms the Same as subject, a who is subjected to the Other through ethical responsibility: “The self is a sub-jectum; it is under the weight of the universe, responsible for everything.”1186 As opposed to Sartre’s amoral liberum arbitrium from Being and Nothingness, the subjectivity of the phenomenological ego is pre-eminently responsible for the Other. Levinas articulates the manner in which this reflexive folding-inward (se plient), the literal ‘pliability’ of the ego, is the manner in which the ego empties itself in order to signify the otherwise: “[The ego] is

1183 For Levinas’ engagement with suffering, and his argument that suffering in itself has value (a critique of Christianity), see “Simone Weil against the Bible” and “Loving the Torah more than God” in Difficult Freedom.

1184 68-69. 1185 110.

1186 Levinas, Totality, 116. Sadler 248 a being divesting itself, emptying itself of its being, turning itself inside out, and if it can be put thus, the fact of ‘otherwise than being.’ This subjection is neither nothingness, nor a product of transcendental imagination.”1187 This process of the ego’s emptying of itself is nor a second- order, logical emptiness proper to geometry.1188 The geometric space, with no reference to that which outside of itself, results in mere narcissism.1189 Substitution is not the passive reception and dis-integration of the Same into their envi- ronment, horizon, or context. It does not have the possessive nature of Heideggerian Je- meinigkeit, or ‘mine-ness.’ Unlike Jemeinigkeit, Levinas argues that the ego’s possession is completely unique and individual: it is not a category that can be applied to an individual as impersonal being-in-the-world.1190 One’s substitution is possessed by them: “My substitution – it is as my own that substitution for the neighbor is produced.”1191 He qualifies the difference between the preeminently individualistic possession of abnegation against Heidegger’s Je- meinigkeit, writing: “‘Me’ is not an inimitable nuance of Jemeinigkeit that would be added on to a being belonging to the genus ‘soul’ or ‘man’ or ‘individual,’ and would thus be common to sev- eral souls, men and individuals, making reciprocity possible among them from the first.”1192 As opposed to a socio-anthropological category of existence or vertical relation with the imper- sonal they (das Man), for Levinas, an individual is unique and alone in their self-signification to- ward the Other. To summarize the summum of self-negation that is primordial to categorical reason, even the pre-logic of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic, we look at Levinas’ summary of his own text: “This book [Otherwise Than Being] has exposed the signification of subjectivity in the ex- traordinary everydayness of my responsibility for other men, the extraordinary forgetting of death or the being without regard for death.”1193 One’s primordial lifeworld (Lebenswelt) is con- sumed or obsessed with the Same’s comportment towards the Other through ethical responsi- bility. The Same’s comportment in the ipseity of their ego is accomplished through signification. Levinas follows: “[Saying] is to exhaust oneself in exposing oneself, to make signs by making

1187 117.

1188 81. 1189 81. 1190 126.

1191 126. 1192 126. 1193 141. Sadler 249 oneself a sign, without resting in one’s every figure as a sign.”1194 The Same hollows itself out by folding in on itself (se plient). This hollowing-out can be compared to the crafting of the self proper to aestheticism, but the sign is an aesthetic not for its own sake, but one that intends Otherness. He concluding this signifying argument with an appeal to the ego’s signifying interi- ority as sign: Inwardness is not a secret place somewhere in me; it is that reverting in which the eminently exterior, precisely in virtue of this eminent exteriority, this impossi- bility of being contained and consequently entering into a theme, forms, as infin- ity, an exception to essence, concerns me and circumscribes me and orders me by my own voice.1195

It is as though, entering into the depth of one’s interiority, one wraps-around full circle into the exteriorly that is within themself, and outside themself. The strength of the Same qua Self is required for a truly moral individual to then substitute and abnegate that Self in order to be the phenomenological sign. Phenomenology points at the transcendent Other: it is the Same that is this sign.

§13. Conclusion: The Absence of God as Opposed to a Mediating God

The most useless “philosophy of religion” consists in logical proofs for the existence of God. Levinas initially asks: “Is the question of existence or non-existence the ultimate ques- tion?”1196 In regards to an individual’s experience of their world, this is absurd: the world exists in its primordial, existential givenness, and skepticism is a level of thinking abstracted from everyday life. But since the existence of the Same and their World (as-it-appears-to-them, phenomenally) can be assumed, what of God’s existence? Levinas follows: “To locate the problem of the existence of God behind the signifyingness of signification and the proximity of a neighbor would, it is said, correspond to the desire to settle things and not let oneself be abused by ‘nothingness’ and words.”1197 The analogy, formulated in Levinasian terms, would argue that just as the same can signify the transcendent relation to the Other, one can, by- analogy, signify God. For Levinas, this is preeminently wrong. The Other has been pushed into the non-appearance of the apophansis, and God is absent entirely. At the same time, Levinas does not postulate God as a mediating third term to enable the Self/Other relation. That would make God like Kant’s second postulate of pure practical reason from the Second Critique.

1194 143.

1195 147. 1196 94. 1197 94. Sadler 250

God-as-mediator would reduce God to the plastic image of the mediating third term. God would therefore be reduced to a mere idol. Levinas overcomes idolatry with God’s absence, rather than a mediocre and debased Divinity. He summarizes the logical problem of God’s exis- tence: To state the problem of the existence of God, despite signification, despite the- one-for-the-other, which derogates from the finality of the interestedness of man inhabiting the world, is to hold the unity of being and the univocity of the esse, which, despite and in the resistance to action, would ‘enter into account,’ figure in the calculation that accompanies projects.1198

The Same’s signification and substitution toward the Other assumes God, though not as term or logical category. ‘Existence’ is not a predicate in Kant’s epistemology, and therefore ‘exis- tence’ cannot be superadded to God. It is of important note for future analysis of apophatic versus apophantic that Levinas discusses the idea of predicates pertaining to the object’s es- sence, in which he states: “In the sense outlined above, we can speak of ideal essences, and characterize them as follows: the essence of an object is a set of essential predicates ‘which must belong to it, so that other secondary relative determinations can be attributed to it.’”1199 Rather than a negative theology of unity simpliciter, phenomenology allows an individual to ar- ticulate God’s absence in the world, while signifying the transcendence of the Divine Other.1200 And yet, in prophecy and revelation, God ‘speaks.’ Levinas asks: “The enigma of a God speaking in man and of man not counting on any god?”1201 “Then, the trace of saying, which has never been present, obliges me; the responsibility for the other, never assumed, binds me; a command never heard is obeyed.”1202 The commanding voice speaks out of the absence, and though an individual does not hear it, they obey it. The command to responsibility for the Other is to be obeyed, whether it has been heard or not. Therefore, Levinas can state: “Only the meaning of the other is irrecusable, and forbids the reclusion and reentry into the shell of the self. A voice comes from the other shore. A voice interrupts the saying of the already said.”1203 It is the task of phenomenology of religion to carry-forward the meaning of the Other

1198 Levinas, Otherwise, 94. 1199 Discovering Existence with Husserl, 5, citing Husserl, On Ideas, 9, 7-8.

1200 “Perhaps we could say that our experience, from which negative theology is derived, is our experience of the absence of God: when God is away from us, when God is not here” (Novak, “Negative Theology,” 239-240).

1201 Levinas, Discovering Existence, 154. 1202 Levinas, Otherwise, 168. 1203 183. Sadler 251 through signification and researches into the world. Phenomenology allows an individual to ex- perience this voice and embody it as a sign signifying the Other. Sadler 252

Afterword

This dissertation on Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of mediation has been a methodologi- cal engagement with his work. While many have rushed to apply Levinas critical system to var- ious relations to the Other (a worthy and noble cause to be sure), this dissertation took a step back to engage with Levinas’ Phenomenology at the epistemological level. With a greater methodological clarity, especially in regards to the structures of necessary mediation and rep- resentation, as well as the arrival at the Other of First Philosophy, hopefully the impetus to as- sume the very First Philosophy at which one desires to arrive will be overcome. Representa- tional mediation cannot be naively overcome: it is the human condition. One does not simply assume the goal that they wish to reach. In the manner of Aristotle’s Analytics, one requires a method to arrive at the end goal of First Philosophy: Levinas’ Phenomenology is that method, and the end goal is the Other in their alterity.

Sadler 253

Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 1997. Dialectic of enlightenment. London: Verso. Allison, Henry E. 2001. Kant's theory of taste: a reading of the Critique of aesthetic judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The life of the mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Benjamin, Walter, and Gershom Scholem. 1992. The correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Bergo, Bettina, “Levinas’s Project: An Interpretative Phenomenology of Sensibility and Intersubjectivity”in Morny Joy, ed., Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (New York: Springer Publishers, Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, 2011), 61-88 Buber, Martin, and Walter Kaufmann. 1970. I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Chadwick, H. 1980. Origen: Contra celsum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, Hermann. 1995. Religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism. Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press. Derrida, Jacques, Marie-Louise Mallet, and David Wills. 2008. The animal that therefore I am. DiCenso, James J. 2012. Kant's Religion within the boundaries of mere reason : a commentary. ------“Levinas and the Irreducibility of the Other,” in Jan Sochoń and A. Wiercinski, eds., Studia z Filozofii Boga, Religii i Czlowieka 3, Warsaw, Poland: 2005 (pp. 271-282). Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press. Epstein, Isodore. 1959. The Babylonian Talmud. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Rabecca Bennet Publications Inc. Fagenblat, Michael. 2017. Negative theology as Jewish modernity. Förster, Eckart. 2012. The twenty-five years of philosophy: a systematic reconstruction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 2010. The archaeology of knowledge ; and, The discourse on language. New York: Vintage Books. ------Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books. Frangeskou, Adonis. 2017. Levinas, Kant and the problematic of temporality. Friedlander, Eli. 2015. Expressions of judgment: an essay on Kant's aesthetics. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Joel Weinsheimer, and Donald G. Marshall. 2004. Truth and method. London: Continuum. Gibbs, Robert. 1992. Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Guyer, Paul. 1997. Kant and the claims of taste. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, Martin, David Farrell Krell, and Taylor Carman. 2008. Basic writings: from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964). New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought. ------, John Macquarrie, and Edward S. Robinson. 1962. Being and time. ------. 1997. Phenomenological interpretation of Kant's Critique of pure reason. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and J. B. Baillie. 1910. The phenomenology of mind. London: S. Sonnenschein. Huizinga, Johan. 1970. Homo Ludens: a study of the play element in culture. London: Maurice Temple Smith Ltd. Hume, David, Eric Steinberg. 1993. An enquiry concerning human understanding ; [with] A letter from a gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An abstract of a Treatise of human nature. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co. Husserl, Edmund. 1999. Cartesian meditations: an introduction to phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Sadler 254

Jewish Publication Society. 1999. [Tanakh] = JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh : the traditional Hebrew text and the new JPS translation--second edition. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Kant, Immanuel, and Paul Guyer. 2000. Critique of the power of judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ------, and Mary J. Gregor. 2015. Critique of practical reason. ------, Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood. 2003. Critique of pure reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ------, and Mary J. Gregor. 1998. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. ------, Allen W. Wood, and George Di Giovanni. 1998. Religion within the boundaries of mere reason and other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985. Fear and trembling. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. Levinas, Emmanuel. 2007. Beyond the verse: Talmudic readings and lectures. London: Continuum. ------, 1990. Difficult freedom: essays on Judaism ; freedom on tablets of stone (Trac tate of principles, 6.2). London: Athlone Press. ------, Richard A. Cohen, and Michael B. Smith. 1998. Discovering existence with Husserl. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press. ------. 2001. Existence and existents. Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne University Press. ------. 1985. Ethics and infinity: conversations with Philippe Nemo. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Pr. ------. 1998. Otherwise than being, or, Beyond essence. Pittsburgh, Pa: Duquesne University Press. ------. “The Primacy of Pure Practical Reason,” translated by Blake Billings. Man and World 27 (1994): 445-453. ------. 1973. The theory of intuition in Husserl's phenomenology. Evanston [Ill.]: Northwestern University Press. ------. 1987. Time and the other and additional essays. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. ------, and Alphonso Lingis. 1969. Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Maimonides, Moses, and Shlomo Pines. 1963. The guide of the perplexed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge & K. Paul. Meyer, Birgit. 2009. Aesthetic formations: media, religion, and the senses. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Keith Ansell-Pearson, and Duncan Large. 2006. The Nietzsche reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Novak, David. Law and Theology in Judaism II (New York: KTAV, 1976) ------2005. Talking with Christians: musings of a Jewish theologian. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Plato, and John Burnet. 1902. Platonis Res publica. Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano. Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Hazel Estella Barnes. 1992. Being and nothingness: a phenomenological essay on ontology. New York: Washington Square Press. ------, Forrest Williams, and Robert Kirkpatrick. 1991. The Transcendence of the Ego: an Existentialist Theory of Consciousness. Vries, Hent de. 2008. Religion: beyond a concept. New York: Fordham University Press. Zammito, John H. 1992. The genesis of Kant's critique of judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.