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EMMANUEL LEVINAS:
THE
ETHICS
OF
"FACE
TO
FACE"(fHE RELIGIOUS TURN
409
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Ortega y Gasset, J. "Apuntes sobre el pensamiento, su teurgia y
su demiurgia", in his Obras Completas, Vol. V.
Ortega y Gas set, J. "Historia como sistema", Obras Completas,
Vol. VI.
Ortega y Gasset, J. "La idea de principia en Leibniz ... ", Obras
Completas, Vol. VIII.
Ortega y Gasset, J. Obras Completas. Madrid: Revista de
Occidente.
Ortega y Gasset, J. "Pro ogo para alemanes", Obras Completas,
Vol. VIII.
Ortega y Gas set,
J.
~ Q u e es el conocimiento?, Madrid: Revista
de Occidente/Alianza, 1984.
Ortega y Gasset, J.
~ Q u e
es filosoffa?", Obras Completas,
Vol. VII.
Ortega y Gasset,
J.
"Sobre el concepto de sensaci6n", Obras
Completas, Vol.
I.
Zubiri,
X.
El Sol, March
8,
1936.
Zubiri,
X.
Ensayo de una teona fenomenoldgica del juicio.
Madrid: 1923, p.
8.
Zubiri,
X.
Inteligencia sentiente, Madrid: Alianza, 1980.
Zubiri,
X.
Sobre Ia esencia. Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y
Publicaciones, 1972
(4a
ed.).
Zubiri, X. Inteligencia y razon. Madrid: Alianza, 1983.
Secondary Literature
Benavides, M. De la ameba al monstruo propicio. Madrid:
UNAM, 1988.
EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF
FACE TO FACE /THE RELIGIOUS TURN
INTRODUCTION
In
the preface
to
The Phenomenological Movement: A
Historical Introduction,
Herbert Spiegelberg acknowl
edges
that the main
innovation
of the
third edition to
his
work is the inclusion
of
a new chapter on
Emmanuel
Levinas. Spiegelberg
states:
Previously Levinas had been mentioned only in his
historical role as one of the early links between French
and German
phenomenology and as a co-translator of
Husserl's Cartesian Meditations into French. Only a brief
note in the Supplement had hinted at his independent
philosophical development. Now his academic rise and an
additional major work have made it clear that his thought
and especially his original type of phenomenology call for
fuller treatment. (xliii)
Cerezo, P. La voluntad de aventura. Barcelona: Ariel, 1984.
Conill,
J.
El crepusculo de la metafzsica. Barcelona: Anthropos,
1988.
Conill,
J
El enigma del animal fantdstico. Madrid: Tecnos,
1991.
Conill,
J.
El poder de la mentira. Nietzsche y Ia pol{tica de
la
transvaloracion. Madrid: Tecnos, 1997.
Fowler, Th. B. "Introduction to the Philosophy of X. Zubiri",
The X. Zubiri Review
1(1998), pp. 5-16.
Garragorri, Paulino. "Nota preliminar" in
J.
Ortega y Gasset,
Investigaciones psicoldgicas, Madrid: 1979.
Gracia, D. Voluntad de verdad. Barcelona: Labor, 1986.
Marias, J. Ortega. Circunstancia y vocaci6n. Madrid: Revista de
Occidente, 1973.
Orringer, N. Ortega y sus fuentes germdnicas. Madrid: Gredos,
1979.
Pintor,
A.
"El magisterio intelectual de Ortega y
Ia
filosoffa de
Zubiri", Cuadernos salmantinos de filosofza 0 (1983), 55-78;
Pintor, A. "Zubiri y Ia fenomenologfa", Realitas III-IV (1979),
389-565.
Pintor,
A.
"La 'maduraci6n' de Zubiri y
Ia
fenomenologfa",
Naturaleza y Gracia XXVI/2-3 (1979), 299-353.
Pintor,
A.
Realidad y verdad. Salamanca: Universidad Pontifica,
1994.
Regalado,
A.
El laberinto de Ia razon: Ortega y Heidegger.
Madrid: Alianza, 1990.
San Martin,
J.
(ed.). Ortega y
la
Fenomenologza. Madrid:
UNED, 1992.
Spiegelberg, H. The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical
Introduction. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969 (2. ed.).
Levinas' rise
to a position of eminence within the
international philosophical world has been further con
firmed
since Spiegelberg
wrote
these
words in 1982.
The
place Levinas now occupies within the history
of
the phe
nomenological
movement
is
unquestionably
one of the
highest importance. In his Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas,
Jacques Derrida accurately gives us a sense
of
the enor
mity
ofLevinas's
a?uvre: It is so large that one no longer
glimpse
its
edges One can predict with confidence that
centuries
of
readers
will
set
this as their task"
(3-4). One
of
the
most
lucid and coherent expositions
of
Levinas'
thought can be found in Stephan
Strasser's
essay
"Emmanuel
Levinas:
Phenomenological Philosophy,"
excerpted and translated by Spiegelberg,
and included in
the
third edition. However, Levinas continued to write
and
publish important
work in
the
decade
postdating the
Spiegelberg
volume.
Although
at
times the reader will
notice some factual corrections, the present essay is
not
an
A. A. Bello et al., Phenomenology World-Wide
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2002
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410 EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE" THE RELIGIOUS TURN
attempt to improve upon Strasser's piece, but rather to
include material that postdates his publication and to offer
an alternative reading
of
Levinas based in part upon his
later writings. The more recent material published by and
about Levinas indicates more clearly the way in which
Levinas understood his own philosophical itinerary.
Additionally, since the time
of
Strasser's publication,
Levinas, through a series
of
interviews, revealed some
of the elements of his biography that bear upon his phi
losophy, and therefore are also included here. While his
specifically Jewish writings are not considered as a
separate subject, the path that he so often describes as
"otherwise than Greek," including the relevance
of
his
reflections on the Talmud for his ethics are here introduced.
The originality
of
Levinas' s thinking, his use
of
language, and the richness
of
his phenomenological
descriptions do not easily yield a summary of his research.
Given the enormity
of
his philosophical task, his work has
already been subjected to a variety
of
interpretations,
responses, and applications. As Levinas' s thought con
tinues to be recognized as one that challenges every stu
dent
of
phenomenology, the secondary literature has
grown exponentially in the past two decades. A selective
bibliography of primary and secondary sources can be
found appended to this article. A glossary
of
some
of
the
key terms introduced by Levinas is also included.
BIOGRAPHY
The life of Emmanuel Levinas was affected and shaped
by some of the epochal events of the twentieth century.
His own thinking may be viewed in part as a response to
the crises and catastrophes that produced so much suf
fering in the world around him. Regarding his own phi
losophic biography Levinas writes a single statement that
is to remain permanently associated with his life and
work:
It
is dominated by the presentiment and the
memory of the Nazi horror" ("Signature" 291).
Levinas was born in Kovno, Lithuania, on January 12th
1906. Kovno had for centuries been recognized as one
of
the main centers
of
Talmudic scholarship, and Levinas's
childhood was dominated by a traditional Jewish atmos
phere that was itself a way of life. His father, Yechiel,
owned a bookshop, and Levinas's relation to books was
first nourished here. He learned to read the Jewish Bible
in the Hebrew language in which he was tutored.
Reflecting back on the Judaism of his childhood, Levinas
describes it in the following way: "the spiritual
essence
and this remains a quite 'Lithuanian
Judaism'-rested
for
me not in mystical modes but in a tremendous curiosity
for books"
(Elevations
116).
Levinas's family was forced to leave Lithuania in
1915, along with the other Jews
of
the Kovno district, as a
result
of
an edict from the Czarist government. The fol
lowing year, the family settled in Karkhov, Ukraine,
where Levinas attended public high school.
It
was from
this distance that Levinas witnessed the disintegration
of
the Czarist regime and the beginning of the Soviet
Revolution. In the aftermath
of
the Revolution, civil war
ensued, accompanied by outbreaks of anti-Semitism that
engulfed the Ukraine. These orchestrated pogroms, led by
the Ukrainian nationalist Semeon Petlura, resulted in the
murder
of
over 100,000 Jews. While the Levinas family
survived this upheaval, they chose to return in 1920 to the
familiarity and comparative safety of Lithuania.
Levinas remained in Kovno for the next three years
where he enrolled as a student in a Jewish Russian
Language Gymnasium.
It
was during this time that he
developed an abiding love for the Russian classics, from
Pushkin to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and also "the great
writers
of
Western Europe, notably Shakespeare" whose
descriptions of human existence prepared him for his
encounter with philosophy
(Ethics and Infinity
22). These
initial pre-philosophical experiences he would subse
quently regard as a first contact with "the meaning of the
human" (ibid). In 1923, Levinas left Kovno and enrolled
at the University
of
Strasbourg. It was at this time that he
absorbed the French language as his own, while also
devoting himself to the study of German and Latin.
During the same period, he met and was befriended by
Maurice Blanc hot, who later emerged as one
of
France's
eminent literary critics. Blanchot would remain a life
long source
of
intellectual inspiration for Levinas, and
Levinas in turn would leave his mark upon the writings
of
Blanchot.
Levinas first became interested in Husserl's phenom
enology in 1927. He traveled to the University of Freiburg
for the academic year 1928-29, where he studied with
Husserl, who was teaching his last public course, and with
Heidegger, who was teaching his first courses at Freiburg,
and "who was then the leading light in German phe
nomenology and philosophy"
(Face to Face with Levinas
14). In 1929, Heidegger singled out Levinas to serve as
his second in his famous debate at Davos with Ernst
Cassirer, the eminent Kant scholar. At that time,
as
Levinas later remarked, "My admiration for Heidegger is
above all an admiration for
Sein und Zeit.
I always try to
relive the ambience
of
those readings when 1933 was still
unthinkable"
(Ethics and Infinity
33). While Levinas
would always retain his admiration for Heidegger as the
author
of Being and Time,
he would later regret the
assistance which he had given him in light
of
Heidegger's
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"{I'HE RELIGIOUS TURN 411
subsequent political
act1v1ty.
Heidegger' s involvement
with the Nazi regime would force Levinas to reformulate
the foundational importance
of
ethics to philosophy.
In 1930, Levinas published his prizewinning doctoral
dissertation:
The Theory
of
Intuition in Husser ' s Phe
nomenology.
During this time, he married Raissa Levy, a
childhood friend. He became a naturalized citizen of
France and received a position in the French army.
Throughout most
of
the 1930s, Levinas worked as a
teacher and administrator at the Alliance Israelite
Universelle, a French-Jewish organization dedicated to
the education
of
Jews in countries under the influence
of
France, especially in North Africa.
Levinas served in the French army as a translator
of
German and Russian. With the help
of
Maurice Blanchot,
Levinas s wife and daughter escaped from Paris to
Orleans, where they were given refuge in a monastery.
Levinas's entire family
of
origin, including his mother, his
father, and his brothers, were murdered by the Nazis and
their collaborators in Lithuania. Levinas himself was
captured and transported to a prisoner-of-war camp for
French Jewish soldiers near Hanover, Germany, where he
performed forced labor. In
Difficult Freedom,
Levinas
comments on his incarceration, and acknowledges that the
French uniform protected him and the seventy in his unit
of
Jewish prisoners-of-war from Hitlerian extermination.
He recalls that "the other men, called free, who had
dealings with us or gave us work or orders or even a
smile-and the children and women who passed by and
sometimes raised their eyes stripped us of our human
skin." The only creature who recognized the prisoners as
human beings was a dog. Levinas explains: "He would
appear at morning assembly and was waiting for us upon
return jumping
up
and down and barking with
delight . . . For him, there was no doubt that we were
men . . . This dog was the last Kantian in Nazi Germany,
without the brain needed to universalize maxims and
drives" (152-53). Levinas' subsequent philosophical
reflections on the Holocaust are born
of
these searing
personal experiences and observations.
After his liberation, Levinas produced three important
works in quick succession:
Existence and Existents,
begun
in the stalag; Time and the Other; and Discovering Exis
tence with Husser and Heidegger.
These works represent
the emergence
of
Levinas' s own philosophic path. In the
late 1940s Levinas began to immerse himself in the study
of
the Talmudic texts in the presence
of
a master teacher,
Mordechai Shoushani. This period marks the beginning of
Levinas' philosophic recovery
of
the Hebraic tradition,
and the alternative approach to philosophy that he would
later inscribe in the phrase "Otherwise than Greek."
Levinas is not indifferent to the rich phenomenological
content
of
the Talmudic tradition which permitted him
over the course
of
the next many years to reflect on a
variety of subjects such as hunger and nourishment,
injustice and forgiveness, suffering and
redemption
subjects too often submerged in the history
of
philosophy.
However, Levinas tended to keep his philosophical and
Talmudic reflections quite separate, at least in an overt
sense, until after he had established himself as a philos
opher of the first order through the publication
of
Totality
and Infinity
and
Otherwise Than Being: Beyond Essence.
In 1951, Levinas authored the important article "Is
Ontology Fundamental?" representing his clearest break
with Heidegger as a philosopher. In 1961 he received his
first academic appointment at the University
of
Poitiers,
followed in 1967 by a position at Nan erre, a branch
of
the
University of Paris. In 1974, Levinas published Otherwise
than Being
which represents a radicalizing
of
his phe
nomenological work and ensured the international repu
tation that
Totality and Infinity
had already established.
His teaching career culminated in a position as Professor
of
Philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1973, where he con
tinued to teach and remained a Professor Emeritus until
1979. In 1986, Levinas published Of God Who Comes to
Mind,
a work that would serve to provide a new model for
the relation
of
philosophy to theology. In each of these
works, Levinas continued to propel the human subject
toward that which is beyond or outside
of
himself. By this
time, Levinas had demonstrated that there is a third
alternative between absolutism and the humanism
of
the
enlightenment, a theism that is also a radical humanism:
the humanism
of
the Other. During the last years
of
his
life Levinas taught at the lnstitut Catholique in Paris.
Levinas' s philosophic writings span over sixty years.
The originality and rigor
of
his thinking secured for
Levinas a position
of
eminence in Europe and continue
gain him ever greater recognition throughout the philo
sophic world. Levinas continued to write both new and
important philosophic texts in the last years
of
his life. In
addition, he produced a series
of
commentaries on the
Talmud and the status of morality, especially in light of
the Holocaust, and opened up new horizons for phe
nomenological inquiry. Emmanuel Levinas died in Paris
on the 25th
of
December 1995.
EXPLORATIONS IN PHENOMENOLOGY
When considering his philosophical influences, Levinas
singles out the great masters Plato, Descartes, and Kant,
and the twentieth-century luminaries Bergson, Husserl,
and Heidegger. The philosophy of Henri Bergson made a
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412
EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"{fHE RELIGIOUS TURN
strong impression on Levinas. In Face
to
Face with
Levinas, he observes: "In 1925, in Strasbourg University,
Bergson was being hailed as France's leading thinker."
Levinas credits Bergson's theory of concrete duration (la
duree concrete,
as a contribution to philosophy of lasting
importance. Levinas adds: "Indeed, it was this Bergsonian
emphasis on temporality that prepared the soil for the
subsequent implantation of Heideggerian phenomenology
into France" (13).
In Discovering Existence with Husser , Levinas gives a
clear indication
of
the importance that he attributes to the
work of Edmund Husserl. He refers to Husserl as the
creator of phenomenology and then describes its project:
Phenomenology means the science of phenomena.
All
things given, shown or revealed
to
our gaze are
phenomena. But then
is
everything a phenomenon
and every science a phenomenology? Not at
all.
What
is given
to
consciousness only deserves the name
phenomenon if one grasps it through the role it plays
and the function it exercises in the individual and
affective life of which it is the object.
(33)
Levinas makes it a point to place the philosophical
revolution affected by Husserlian phenomenology in a
historical perspective:
[phenomenology] reverses the scientific attitude.
Newton's physics precisely turns away from the subject
for the greater glory of the object.
t
decrees the
expulsion of every so-called subjective element from
the object. For example, it
wipes
out from space every
subjective heresy: "top" and "bottom: "righC and
"left: far and "near Thus purified, objective space
and the objective world
see
no limits to their ever-purer
objectivity. (33)
Here Levinas recognizes the existential importance of
the attempt by phenomenology to recover the meaning of
spatiality from its purified and overly reduced objectivism
where there would be neither a sense of direction or dis
tance or placement recognizable by and for the human
subject.
The immediate effect
of
the first phase
of
Levinas'
encounter with phenomenology in the early 1930s
resulted in the publication of translations and texts that
made Levinas the recognized authority in France on the
subject of phenomenology. These efforts include a col
laborative translation
of
Husserl's
Cartesian Meditations
and The Theory of Intuition in Husser ' s Phenomenology,
the first systematic examination
of
Husserl's thought in
French. This latter work also served as Levinas' s doctoral
dissertation. Levinas had already published a serious
study
of
Heidegger in
La Revue Philosophique
in 1932,
and it is clear that he was preparing to write a book-length
study following Heidegger's adaptation
of Husserl's phi
losophy. However, this project was put to the side with
Hitler' advent to power in 1933.
While Levinas continued to publ ish articles on Husserl
and Heidegger in the 1930s, he also authored "Some
Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism" in 1934.
Levinas had already begun to rethink his relation to
Heidegger, the philosopher whom one could not bypass in
the twentieth century if one were to aspire to do serious
work after the publication of
Being and Time.
In
Ethics
and Infinity, Levinas describes Heidegger's analysis in
Being in Time of "anxiety, care and being-toward
death... as a sovereign exercise of phenomenology"
(39). For Levinas, Heidegger's methodological contribu
tion consisted in
verbalizing
existence: "It aims at
describing man's being or existing, not his nature." In this
respect Levinas indicates that Heidegger expresses ele
ments
of
a philosophical anthropology that awakens
and delineates the awareness of the patterns of human
existence.
However convincing and brilliant Heidegger's analy
sis, Levinas, by steps almost imperceptible in the early
stages
of
his work in the thirties and forties, emerges as
Heidegger's most serious philosophic critic. Levinas' own
original thinking offers a radical alternative to Hei
degger's ontology of power. The project of fundamental
ontology becomes in Heidegger the consummate expres
sion of
a will-to-power unbounded by the other person's
claims. Subsequently, with the 1951 publication of "Is
Ontology Fundamental?" Levinas provides the first ser
ious critique of Heidegger's insistence that ultimate or
"first philosophy" is necessarily and inescapably ontol
ogy. Here Levinas introduces a metaphysical critique
of
ontology which yields the ethical relation to the Other as
irreducible and hence
of
unsurpassable importance. He
elevates discourse to a place of special significance. And
he criticizes the Hegelian notion
of
negation whose
existential expression reveals itself
as
murder.
Against Heidegger, Levinas argues that one's fear for
the other, for his death and therefore his life, takes pre
cedence even over concerns for one's own ultimate pos
sibilities. Surely there is an undeniable interweaving
of
Levinas' thinking with his life and the climate under
which his philosophy was nourished. Life is no longer to
be modeled after an existential autobiography in which
others merely make their appearances and recede. As
Levinas writes in "Signature:"
The fundamental experience which objective experi
ence
itself presupposes
is
the experience of the Other.
It
is experience par excellence. . . the disproportion
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"(fHE RELIGIOUS TURN
413
between the Other
and the
self
is
precisely moral
con-
sciousness. Moral consciousness
is
not an experience of
values but an access
to
external being: external being
is
par
excellence,
the Other. Moral consciousness is thus not
a modality of psychological consciousness, but its
condition.
(293)
For Levinas, the humanism
of
the other person is a
precondition for the possibility of philosophy, which in
tum forms a precondition for theory, and the responsi
bility that grounds consciousness.
LEVINAS' S PHILOSOPHICAL ITINERARY
In the preface to Existence and Existents, Levinas notes:
These studies begun before the war were continued and
written down for the most part
in
captivity. The stalag
is evoked here not
as
a guarantee of profundity nor
as
a claim to indulgence, but as an explanation for the
absence of any consideration of those philosophical
works published, with
so
much impact, between
1940
and
1945. (15)
In these revealing remarks, Levinas, in a sharp and
pointed manner, indicates that he will be charting his own
philosophic course. Muting his own personal reservations,
here, about the role
of
Heidegger' s collaboration with the
Nazis, Levinas is clearly announcing his own future
philosophical itinerary, while at the same time expressing
his recognition of the changing conditions under which
philosophy must begin to think anew. As if
to drive home
this point, Levinas states:
f
in the beginning our considerations
as
far
as
the
concept of ontology and the relation of man to Being
are concerned are inspired in a high measure by Martin
Heidegger's philosophy, they are [nevertheless] domi
nated
by
the deeply felt need to relinquish the climate
of this philosophy.
(91)
For Levinas, Heidegger's nihilism is situated ontically,
between the insensibility toward the death of the Other
and the totalitarian egocentrism inscribed in the arbi
trariness
of
the resoluteness
of
the will. The future
of
phenomenology in part depends on the critique
of
Hei
degger's presentation. The philosophic path which Levi
nas takes from the time of
the destruction
of
European
Jewry focuses on a critique, and at times an enlightenment
of the entire Western spiritual tradition.
Preparing the reader for his work in Time and the
Other, Levinas indicates the larger context within which
his original reflection moves by first situating his phe
nomenological exploration within the history of philoso
phy: "Traditional philosophy, and Bergson and Heidegger
too, remained with the conception of a time either taken to
be purely exterior to the subject, a time-object, or taken to
be entirely contained in the subject" (90). The path that
Levinas is about to chart will diverge not only from
Heidegger, but also from Greek philosophy:
Classical philosophy left aside the freedom which
consists not in negating oneself, but in having one's
being pardoned by the very alterity of the other. It
underestimated the alterity
of
the other in dialogue
where the other frees us, because it
is
believed there
existed a silent dialogue of the soul with itself. In the
end the problem of time
is
subordinate to the task of
bringing out the specific terms with which the dialogue
has to
be
conceived.
(90)
In order to bring out these specific terms, Levinas
introduces the phenomenon
of
the il
y a.
The il
y
a, or
"there is," is an endless sequence
of
instants without
direction, purpose or claiming power. The il
y
a is
described as the consciousness of horror, the depersonal
ization
of
the subject, and the experience
of
an inability to
escape from existence. f there were no relation between
the self and the other, the "the re is" would be completely
senseless. However, from the relation between the self
and the other arises the possibility of meaning, justice and
goodness. In Existence and Existents, Levinas begins to
explore a way
of
escaping the il
y
a through a description
of time and alterity. He asks:
How indeed could time arise in a solitary subject
. . .
if
time is constituted by my relation to the other, it
is
exterior to my instinct, but is also something else than
an object given to contemplation. The dialectic of time
is the very dialectic of the relationship of the other,
that
is,
a dialogue which in turn has to be studied in
terms other than those of the dialectic of the solitary
subject.
(93)
For Levinas, the diachronic nature of time makes time
and alterity virtually synonymous. Here, the notion
of
a
time that is not one, or "diachrony" emerges. In Time and
the Other, Levinas states that "time is not the achievement
of an isolated and lone subject, but that it is the very
relation
of
the subject with the other"
(39).
In this text,
Levinas lays claim to the originality
of
his presentation in
a critique which reaches all the way back to Parmenides
and Plato, and whose themes will dominate, in various
ways, much of the rest
of
his philosophical writings:
"There is a multiplicity and a transcendence in this verb
'to exist,' a transcendence that is lacking in even the
boldest, existential analysis" (91). Anticipating the more
metaphysical grounding
of
these concrete descriptions in
Totality and Infinity, Levinas emphasizes that "existing
itself becomes double. The Eleatic notion
of
being
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"{THE RELIGIOUS TURN
dominates Plato's philosophy, "where multiplicity was
subordinated to the one, and where the role of the femi
nine was thought within the categories
of
passivity and
activity and was reduced to matter" (92-93). As part of
his inquiry into the transcendence
of
being, Levinas refers
the reader to the concrete situations
of
death, sexuality,
paternity, femininity, and fecundity. He reminds the
reader that the phenomenon
of
fecundity has not pre
viously been treated in a philosophical manner, and that
this omission leaves out one
of
the irreducible phenomena
of
human existence: "The fecundity
of
the ego must be
appreciated at its correct ontological value, which until
now has never been done." Levinas presents paternity,
fecundity, femininity, and love as generative patterns of
human existence that are open to phenomenological
investigation. For example, the child is a paradox that
formal logic cannot explain. The child both is and is not
a continuation of the parent. In this respect the child repre
sents an irreducible existent not completely reducible to
genetics or biology with an identity to claim as its own.
Just as Levinas raises birth to a philosophic category,
so
too does he register the death
of
the other as being
phenomenologically irreducible. In this respect he challen
ges Heidegger's understanding
of
human finitude and his
notion that authenticity does not permit us to register the
deaths of others as something outside of our own projects.
In fact, for Levinas, the death
of
the other, and therefore
the life
of
the other can take precedence over the possi
bility of one's own death and at times one's own life?
Totality and Infinity
The publication
of
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on
Exteriority in 1961 provided a vital new direction for
phenomenology. Totality and Infinity represents the cul
mination of Levinas' s independent philosophical positions
and delineates his rethinking
of
the relation of time and
alterity, ethics and ontology, self and other, justice and
freedom. Levinas became the first phenomenological
philosopher to offer a distinctly alternative approach to
a field whose underpinnings remained dependent on
Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Some
of
these origi
nal departures are noted in John Wild 's Introduction to the
English edition of Totality and Infinity. In Totality and
Infinity, Levinas embarks upon what Wild characterizes
as a "phenomenology of the other" (13). In so doing,
Levinas, while building on the work
of
Husserl, recog
nizes and responds to the egocentrism with which phe
nomenology had been charged. He reaffirms the priority
of
the existent over existence. For Levinas, it is the Other
as
existent who now occupies a position of primacy.
In this sense, Levinas could be interpreted as elevating the
"ontic" over the ontological.
I t
is in the elaboration
of
the ethical character
of
Levinas' metaphysics that Totality and Infinity marks a
new chapter in the history
of
the phenomenological
movement. While Sartre and Merleau-Ponty had each
contributed valuable and creative descriptions
of
human
existence, metaphysics, as envisioned by Levinas, takes a
position beyond and outside
of
Being.
It
begins with a
relation to the Infinite that cannot be reabsorbed into
Being. For Levinas, metaphysics arises and is maintained
in desire, a desire that cannot be reduced to need. Need
belongs within a system of ontological reference, where
each being is the bearer
of
meaning. The preface to Tot
ality and Infinity shows Levinas linking his metaphysical
undertaking to the phenomenon of morality, describing
its conditions for appearing, and attaching existential
importance to the subject: "Everyone will readily agree
that it is
of
the highest importance to know whether or not
we are duped by morality" (21). Levinas appears to be
asking whether or not morality is irreducible, despite war,
which vitiates its application; despite commerce, in which
subjects become commodities; or despite administration
that would subsume all subjects, in advance, as objects or
data exhausted in their quantification. An irreducible
phenomenon
of
morality would mean that morality cannot
be reduced to politics, or human beings reduced to bearers
of historical meaning or sociological function. The other
cannot be reducible to the self, nor can infinity be
encapsulated within totality. Establishing this position is
the work that Levinas undertakes in Totality and Infinity.
Levinas begins his phenomenological investigation
with an exposition and critique
of
totality, while posi
tioning the sameness that dominates totality in relation to
the otherness that derives from infinity. These formal
categories
of
metaphysics, with their roots in the thought
of Plato and Aristotle, are immediately endowed by
Levinas with a concrete sense
of
urgency and existential
importance. Levinas argues that an ontology of power is
subsumed under totality:
t
establishes an order from which no one can keep his
distance; nothing henceforth
is
exterior. War does not
manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys
the identity of the same. The visage of being that shows
itself in war is fixed in the concept
of
totality, which
dominates Western philosophy. (21)
Levinas argues and affirms an alternative version of
philosophy in which reason cannot be employed on behalf
of injustice. He presents significant variations on the
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415
ontology presented by Heidegger in
Being and Time
and
positions his thinking outside Heidegger's ontological
paradigm altogether.
The break with ontology makes it possible for Levinas
to investigate a variety of phenomena in a new way.
Levinas takes pains to describe phenomena such as the
home, the face, and the welcome that have for the most
part been previously overlooked. He also argues against
Heidegger that such phenomena are not reducible to tools
or implements, nor are they describable only within the
realm
of
projects for the self. These new phenomen
ological categories are essential to Levinas s critique
of
Heidegger and to his endeavor to situate ethics as first
philosophy.
The home, as described by Levinas, makes it possible
for interior life to go on. "The privileged role
of
the home
does not consist in being the end of human activity but in
being its condition, and in this sense its commencement.
The recollection necessary for nature to be able to be
represented and worked over, for it to first take form as a
world, is accomplished
as
the home" (152). The home
appears to enjoy an irreducible ontological status for
Levinas. The home does more than shelter the self from
the elements.
It
secures for the separated self a sense
of
stability, and interiority, where one can recover one's
sense
of
personal identity interrupted by sojourns through
the world.
The human face plays a central part in Levinas'
depiction
of
ethics. He shows how the face is connected to
ethics, reason, discourse, signification, and objectivity.
Levinas's contribution to raising the phenomenon
of
the
face to a philosophical category has both epistemic and
ethical dimensions. Epistemically, it is impossible for
one person to speak to another without making implied
or tacit reference to the human face.
It
is impossible for
anyone to understand anyone else, or for the speaker to
know if the meaning
of
what he has said was understood
without turning toward the face
of
the other. Here, the
other may be absent or present, the face turned toward
or away. Anonymous reason unattended by the human
face is incapable
of
rendering itself into the personal, the
singular, and the temporal dimensions
of
human exis
tence. Prior to speech with the other is the face-to-face
encounter.
I t
is here that original expression arises prior
to any language. It is from the face
of
the other that an
appeal prior to thematization appears. This appeal arises
in "the uprightness
of
the face, its upright exposure
without defense" (86). The face is the source
of
original
expression mandating a relation that opens the realm
of
the ethical. The face is
as
necessary for meaning as
the category
of
quantity is for counting. In Ethics and
Infinity
Levinas refers to the expression
of
the face as
"signification without context" (86). In this respect
Levinas begins to explore a distinctively non-intentional
consciousness. This is to say that for Levinas there is a
consciousness which exceeds the object
of
which it is
aware, or to put it in more Husserlian language, a
noesis
which goes beyond the object to be known, the
noema.
Like the home and the face, Levinas elevates the
phenomenon
of
hospitality to a metaphysical category
with vital ethical implications for the relation
of
the self
to the other. Hospitality arises as the welcoming
of
the
other to the home without divesting the other
of
his or her
alterity. The welcome is the first act of discourse where
the "I" turns toward the other, thus making the self
receptive to his speaking. The "welcome," then, is the
invitation to language. For Levinas, the welcoming
of
the other, generosity and shame before the other, are no
longer treated
as
pre-philosophic layers
of
human exis
tence but as transcendental conditions necessary for the
establishing
of
just discourse with the other. The welcome
also suggests a dimension
of
moral height, the asymmetry
that favors the other over the self, thereby wakening
the self to a sense
of
responsibility for the other. For
Levinas, the other has priority over the self, and through
discourse the self is summoned to justify itself before
the other.
Here Levinas reveals the necessity of rethinking the
unannounced premise that spontaneity is at the core of
human freedom. He searches for an alternative description
of
human freedom that necessitates a critique
of
sponta
neity, that is,
of
arbitrary self-assertion in relation to the
other. Spontaneity is the absolutely free exercise of one's
will, power, and self-assertion. Its unchecked expression
may serve to menace, dominate, or subordinate the other.
Levinas associates the phenomenon of spontaneity
understood as absolute freedom with the ontology
of
power. "Political theory derives justice from the undis
closed value
of
spontaneity; its problem is to ensure, by
way of knowledge of the world, the most complete
exercise of spontaneity by reconciling my freedom with
the freedom of others"(83). The calling into question of
spontaneity by the other is for Levinas the way that one
first stumbles upon ethics. In a stunning reversal of
modem philosophical thinking, Levinas argues that jus
tice precedes freedom. This
tum
arises, in part, because
only a just relation with the other makes discourse pos
sible. Freedom, then, for Levinas, is understood as
invested in justice, which delimits it and makes it possible
and meaningful.
Phenomenologically, justice has an epistemic as well
as an ethical dimension. According to Levinas, the
"I"
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"{fHE RELIGIOUS TURN
the "for-the-other" emerges completely. This is a primary
thesis
of
Otherwise than Being.
For Levinas, subjectivity and alterity are spoken
together. In his exploration
of
the diachronic relation with
the other, Levinas moves beyond the reach
of
Rosenz
weig's speaking-thinking and concerns himself with the
origins
of
the phenomenon
of
speech before it is deposited
in the lapidary language
of
the said.
Levinas argues that it is proximity that binds sensibility
to sense. As Levinas puts it, proximity "is to be described
as extending the subject in its very subjectivity, which is
both a relationship and a term
of
that relationship" (86).
Here, Levinas introduces the phenomenon
of
obsession.
It
is only as proximity besieges the subject that the abso
lutely exterior other is near to the point
of
obsession.
Obsession for Levinas is a complete passivity, a rendering
into the grammatical and existential mode
of
the accusa
tive. Obsession renders the subject infinitely responsible,
beyond its own intentions, even for what it does not
will. In the concrete sense, this means, for Levinas, that I
bear a responsibility for what others do, even against me,
in the persecution I am forced to undergo. In
Levinas, an
Introduction,
Colin Davis explains this succinctly in the
following way: "I am persecuted because I cannot escape
the dominance
of
the other person over me" (80).
It
is the
recurring character of obsession that breaks open the limits
of
identity. Levinas writes, "This wound in the subject,
that begins in sensibility, opens me to responsibility for
the other" (120). Sensibility, rather than merely referring
to the first registering
of
neutral sensory experience, is
now reconceived in a more radical way as a susceptibility,
a vulnerability, and an exposure to the Other.
It
is through
this exposure that one begins to configure, perceive, and
give sense to one's cognitive life.
The phenomenon
of
responsibility does not displace
the central role that justice plays in Totality and Infinity.
Rather, responsibility occupies an ongoing, almost
incessant place in language. Levinas argues that to speak,
at its pre-original level, is to be responsible for others. The
reestablishing
of
the saying in the said makes it possible
to found economic, legal, and social justice. This, in turn,
makes room for a kind
of
justice for the self as well as the
other, the neighbor and the third party. The rationality of
transcendence has been broached by Levinas through
phenomenology.
I t
presents "the defection of identity . . .
as a for-the-other in the midst
of
identity: it is the inver
sion
of
being into time, the subversion
of
essence begins
to signify before being, the disinterestedness
of
essence"
(153). Before moving back to the conjuncture
of
respon
sibility with justice from the saying to the said, the
anarchic character of responsibility prior to commitment
without a present, without an ongm, must be further
exposed. This occurs through the "iteration of exposure
. . .
as expression, sincerity
as
saying
. . .
"
(Otherwise than
Being 153). In this saying the said begins to emerge
through re-iteration always moving first to what is
furthest, to the third party who is other to the neighbor
and therefore makes justice for me also possible.
Toward the close
of Otherwise than Being,
Levinas
makes it clear what it means to speak as an ethical subject
in the first person singular. He does so by interrupting his
own philosophic discourse in the following statement:
"And I still interrupt the ultimate discourse in which all
the discourses are stated, in saying it to one that listens to
it, and who is situated outside the said that the discourse
says, outside all it includes. That
is
true
of
the discussion I
am elaborating at this very moment" (170). Levinas, here,
indicates that in Otherwise than Being he has been
speaking philosophy to the reader and to the other.
Levinas characterizes his phenomenology
of
transcend
ence, that is, philosophy, as a "fine risk" (170).
This does not mean that Levinas has absolved himself
of
the necessity for explaining keeping the relation
between the self, the other, the neighbor, and the third
person. The infinite responsibility of the saying must be
reinstalled within the language
of
totality,
of
the said, if
just institutions are to be possible in this world. However,
the relation between the other and the third person is one
of
synchrony where coming together, reasoning together,
and creating a peaceful and stable society is realized. The
presence
of
the third person forces a common discourse.
The third person preconditions the neighbor and the other,
thus making room for me also, for my claims, for a
symmetry in which democratic forms express themselves.
However, it is in this sense that we may say that language
arises posterior to expression with the appearance
of
the
third person. Such synchrony is required to give just
institutions continuity, stability, and coherence. This does
not mean that Levinas reverts to the realm of totality in
which the subject might free itself
of
the position
of
infinite responsibility. On the contrary, it is from the
saying that the said can emerge and maintain itself. It is
from the time
of
diachrony that the time
of
synchrony
makes simultaneity and the time
of
sociality possible.
Justice, in its turn, must be rendered finite in order to
realize itself. However, in order for justice to appear, it
must reflect the conjuncture
of
peace and reason that
issues from the expression
of
the face
of
the other.
Levinas describes the relation between responsibility and
justice by reintroducing the phenomenon of the third
person. Levinas calls the "illeity
of
the third person," the
condition for the irreversibility
of
time.
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421
PHENOMENOLOGY OF TRANSCENDENCE
In the preface to the second edition
of
Of God Who Comes
to Mind
(1986) Levinas acknowledges that he has been
reproached for not taking up questions
of
theology. He
responds:
We
think, however, that theological recuperation
comes after the glimpse of holiness, which
is
primary.
This is all the more true that
we
belong to a
generation-and to a century-for which
was
reserved
the pitiless trials of ethics without consolation or
promises; and because it
is
impossible-for us, the
survivors-to witness against holiness,
in
seeking after
its conditions. (ix-x)
Here, Emmanuel Levinas appears to be searching for
the conditions of holiness just as he previously sought to
describe the conditions
of
knowledge and ethics. Is it
possible, then, to speak in the language of transcendence
without recourse to onto-theo-logy? Levinas does not, he
insists, take leave completely from phenomenology. In
fact, in Of God Who Comes to Mind, Levinas asserts that
his inquiry into the holy may be understood as philosophy
in the strict sense. How is this possible?
It
is through the approach
of
phenomenology that
Levinas moves to metaphysics: the beyond
of
being. At
the core
of
the argument in "God and Philosophy," the
centerpiece
of
Of
God Who Comes to Mind,
Levinas takes
issue with the position that the approach to the God of
philosophy and to "the God
of
Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob" cannot be reconciled. He argues that such oppo
sition is itself philosophically based upon ontological
categories wherein the phenomenon of Transcendence
cannot be approached. Levinas searches for a way that
does not commit what we might call the ontological
fallacy, a problem to overcome for theology as well
as
philosophy. As Levinas notes, this obstacle is
inscribed within the history
of
philosophy: "the history
of
Western philosophy has been a destruction
of
trans
cendence" (56).
In philosophical discourse prior to Levinas, God can be
thought
of
only as the exception to the categories gov
erning an ontology of immanence and this Exception must
itself be situated within the move or "gesture
of
Being."
God, then, is reduced to a being within the unfolding
gesture of Being. Rational theology depends upon the
same kind of error that it originally sets out to rectify.
If
the intellection
of
the biblical God, theology, does not
reach the level
of
philosophic thought, it is . . . because in
thematizing God, theology has brought him into the
course
of
being, while the God
of
the Bible signifies in an
unlikely manner the beyond
of
being, or transcendence"
(56). Here, Levinas concludes that the "faith" of rational
theology-however unknowingly-has tied itself to the
imperfect opinions
of
an uncritical, philosophical ontol
ogy. In other words, Levinas rejects the opposition
between the God
of
philosophy and the God
of
the Bible,
thus putting the reader on notice that he is searching for an
alternative approach to transcendence.
For Levinas, rational theology reduces transcendence
to complete intelligibility or dogma. While Levinas
rejects such a reduction, he nonetheless proposes an
ethical-religious stance that obligates the self in relation
to the other. An extreme vigilance that expresses itself
in what Levinas calls "insomnia" would be the "I" in a
state of wakefulness resisting the fall into the impersonal
matrix
of
being. This condition, not to be confused with
the inability to sleep, is a readiness to be called by and
made answerable to the other.
"Insomnia," understood as vigilance for-the-other,
permits otherness-in-sameness as a non-alienating con
sciousness. Levinas insists that insomnia, understood as a
primarily ethical meta-category, is irreducible. Trans
muted into wakefulness it appears without intentionality.
Levinas refers to this wakefulness as "a non-content"
Infinity (59). Wakefulness without intentionality emerges
as dis-interestedness. This breaks the simultaneity
of
consciousness resting within itself. In this way it differs
dramatically from reminiscence. Here, Levinas intimates
a critique
of
the Platonic doctrine
of
anamnesis. "Remi
niscence is the extreme consciousness that is also uni
versal presence and ontology " (60). This description
of
the hold that "universal presence and ontology" enjoys
in the West extends, with variations, for Levinas from
Plato to Husser . In order to explore Levinas's view fur
ther, it necessary to consider being as pure act, i.e., "pure
presence" for Aristotle, the sense
of
self-presence that
accompanies the "I think" in Kant's transcendental unity
of
apperception, and the doctrine of intentionality in
Husser where intelligibility or meaning is rediscovered
completely in consciousness present to itself. Common to
all these positions is the refusal to break with immanence,
and therefore an absence of Transcendence.
Levinas' s philosophic move toward transcendence calls
not for the abandonment
of
phenomenology, but rather for
pushing the phenomenological approach to its limits.
Levinas achieves this end by beginning with what is
already beyond the finite, thus making it possible to speak
philosophy in terms
of
the criteria
of
measure, order and
sense. This requires an ongoing "deformalization of time"
as Levinas calls it. Only by beginning with the Infinite do
the contours
of
the finite begin to emerge. How then does
the Infinite appear? For Levinas, the infinite appears as a
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO FACE"{fHE RELIGIOUS TURN
"trace" that has already pierced the simultaneity
of
self
presence.
It
is the past, or more precisely the trace
of
the
present in the past, that positions the "I" in the realm
of
the accusative. This means, therefore, that my responsi
bility extends beyond my own intentions, beyond my
own consciousness
of
the past. The "Infinite-in-me"
as
Levinas calls it, renders the "I" to a state
of
"pure pas
sivity." Aware that the
"I"
is so severely conditioned as
to be what Levinas calls "created," the awakening to this
condition already positions the "I" as a "me." In awak
ening the "I" to the accusative mode of subjectivity, what
is exterior to consciousness, what consciousness can never
quite contain, also makes responding to this exteriority
possible. Here, the diachronic sense of time appears in the
awareness that the other was there before me. I recognize
myself as called upon to respond to the others who obsess
me with their exigent appeals and demands. Understood
as
a respondent, the "I" can recognize itself as chosen,
as
singled out by a non-transferable responsibility. Sig
nification appears now in order
of
exigency. In this way,
Levinas begins to chart a way to understand meaning in
terms
of
importance to some one.
Levinas's philosophic moves, so original in their for
mulation, have vital implications for reconfiguring the
task
of
philosophy. Levinas charts a course which charges
philosophy with responsibility for describing the condi
tions that make ethical life possible. This has far-reaching
practical, moral and political implications. Levinas argues
philosophically for benevolent non-indifference toward
the other and urges a philosophically inescapable position
that must answer affirmatively to the question: "Am I my
brother's keeper?"
In Of God Who Comes to Mind Levinas discusses the
philosophical error in the thinking
of
Cain that makes
murder possible. The simple evocation
of
brotherhood is
not sufficient to prevent murder:
Biological human fraternity, considered with the
sober coldness
of
Cain,
is
not sufficient reason that
I be responsible for a separated being. Sober, Cain
like coldness consists in reflecting on responsibility
from the standpoint of freedom or according to a
contract. (79).
Levinas reaffirms his argument that one's responsi
bility for the other comes prior to one's freedom. Levin as's
description
of
ethical life forms the core
of
his phenom
enology of transcendence. Levinas begins his quest for
transcendence in a precisely philosophical manner. For
Levinas, metaphysics arises as a desire for the Infinite.
It
is a desire that cannot be reduced to mere need.
It
is in
this sense that the Infinite bestirs us, rips us out
of
our
inertia, and moves us beyond the simultaneity of self
presence. Levinas says that "love is only possible through
the idea
of
the Infinite" (67). Such love, born
of
tran
scendence, is beyond eroticism and interestedness for the
beloved. Love (a term that Levinas uses with great dis
cretion), even when it tries to grasp the other, always finds
the other slipping away. For Levinas, what is unique in the
beloved is that which is beyond the finite and therefore
ungraspable. Levinas, then, begins his philosophy
of
the
infinite with a registering of that which is unknowable.
However, this does not nullify, but rather enables the
inter-human drama that makes us responsible one for the
other.
Here Levinas approaches transcendence as love for the
neighbor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger--even the
beloved. The ultimate expression
of
love
is
in the "near,
yet different" that Levinas calls Holy (68). With extra
ordinary directness Levinas reformulates the "otherwise
than being." In the language
of
a via eminentiae elevation
to the good, even the holy is expressible in what Levinas
calls "the humanism
of
the other man."
The last two lecture courses
of
Emmanuel Levinas
were edited and annotated by Jacques Rolland, and pub
lished under the title God, Death, and Time. These lec
tures are based upon student notes and therefore quite
condensed. The first course on 'Death and Time' provides
Levinas' distinctive view of these vital subjects within the
context
of
some
of
modem philosophy's seminal thinkers,
including Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Fink, Bloch and above
all, Heidegger. Levinas crystallizes the main question
of
the course in the opening of the first lecture: "In question
in this course is, above all, time. This is a course on the
duration
of
time." As such, the text can be utilized to help
the reader understand Otherwise than Being.
Levinas argues in God, Death and Time that where the
philosophic scandal
of
death has not been ignored alto
gether, time has been thought on the basis
of
death. This is
indeed the signature
of
the philosophy
of
finitude. Levinas
sees in Bergson's duree, time as lived and irreducible.
Bergson's presentation prepares the way for a phenom
enological analysis of temporality. Here Levinas re
encounters Heidegger's thinking. Whereas the ecstatic
phases of human temporality would be authentically
unified for Heidegger on the basis
of
resoluteness in the
face
of
one's own death, Levinas refuses to regard the
death
of
the other as inauthentic.
Elevating the death
of
the other beyond the realm
of
the inauthentic, as Heidegger would have it, forces a
re-thinking
of
the Heideggerian notion
of
authenticity.
The other, for Heidegger, is merely a diversion from my
facing the inevitability
of
my own being-towards-death.
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RELIGIOUS TURN 423
Is not indifference toward the other, thereby, prescribed
by Heidegger? What stops this indifference from a tum
toward an interestedness accompanied by absorption into
my own project, which can result ultimately in the
negation or annihilation of the other?
It
is by emphasizing the diachronic nature
of
time that
Levinas recognizes the death
of
the other as an event
of
irreducible importance. Describing time
as
diachrony
makes it possible to think
of
death on the basis
of
time
rather than time on the basis
of
death. When death is
understood as the unknown, for both the Other and the
self, it is possible to reinvestigate the ethical relation
with the other on the basis of the infinite demands placed
upon the self within the context
of
one's own finite
temporal existence.
Here meaning is understood in the context
of
the time
left. Such time, deformalized, means that the death
of
the
other can be elevated even beyond my own. This is one
of
the most essential differences between Levinas and
Heidegger. For only by taking the death
of
other with utter
philosophic seriousness is an ethical relation, one prior to
the neutrality of Being, possible.
The second set
of
lectures entitled "God and Onto
Theo-Logy" clearly prefigures Levinas's last milestone
text, Of God Who Comes to Mind. Here Levinas first
reconstructs Heidegger's critique
of
theology by investi
gating Heidegger's claim that philosophy prematurely
becomes theology as soon
as
God is identified with
ultimate being or reality. In this sense, Levinas sees in
Heidegger's reading
of
Aristotle the beginning
of
"the
European philosophy
of
being as being becomes theol
ogy" (God, Death, and Time 123). According to
Heidegger, Being, in its truth,
is
immediately vaporized as
a question and instead becomes "the universal founda
tions
of
being, by a supreme Being, a founder, by God"
(123). Levinas clearly breaks with Heidegger on the most
ultimate level by arguing on the contrary that God signifies
the other of being.
Heidegger' s thoughts still belong essentially to the
ontology
of
power that has dominated the West. In
opposition to Heidegger, Levinas posits that "to contrast
God with onto-theo-logy
is
to conceive a new mode, a
new notion
of
meaning. And it is from a certain ethical
relationship that one may start out this new search" (125).
To inquire after God on the basis
of
ethics does not reduce
God to ethics, but rather, on the contrary, accounts for the
possibility
of
religious life itself. In other words, to ask
what makes totality possible
is
at the same time to ask
what makes the possibility
of
intelligibility appear as
well. According to Levinas, it is Infinity expressing
itself through its trace in the finite-the metaphysical
relationship par
excellence-that
makes it possible for us
to speak in the common language
of
philosophy. Fur
thermore, Levinas is explaining how God is other than
and different from the neighbor. God is the alterity that is
prior to the alterity
of
the other person-"prior to the
ethical compulsion to the neighbor" (224). Levinas
describes God as transcendence "to the point
of
absence,
to the point
of
the possible confusion with the agitation of
the
there is"
(224). The
there is
is pure immanence.
Transcendence makes this immanence possible. This
appears to be the philosophic basis
of
Levinas' s argument
for identifying the infinite with pure transcendence and
therefore as God. However, according to Levinas it is still
possible to speak
of
bearing witness to and for the Glory
of the Infinite. What does he mean by bearing witness?
"Bearing witness does not thematize that
of
which it is
the Infinite, and as such it can be a witness only
of
the
Infinite" (196-97). Bearing witness has powerful ethical
implications. We try to take refuge from responsibility by
hiding in the concept. This represents Levinas' s very
perplexing, but original refusal
of
the ethical as the
universal: "Contrary to what Kierkegaard thought, the
'ethical stage' is not universal; rather, it is the stage in
which the
'me'
forgets its concept and no longer knows
the limits
of
its obligation" (196). This more expands the
realm
of
the ethical by contracting it. In other words, all
obligations bear on me, personally.
REITERATIONS: DISTILLATIONS, NEW DIRECTIONS:
INTERVIEWS
AND
COLLECTED ESSAYS
A number
of
interviews are found in collections of essays
assembled by Levinas presenting diverse profiles on a
variety
of
subjects toward the close of his philosophic
career, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These texts
include Entre Nous: Thinking
of
the Other, Proper
Names, Alterity and Transcendence, Outside the Subject,
and
In the Time of the Nations,
a text devoted largely to
issues in Jewish philosophy. Here we will introduce only
some of the most salient subjects and themes explored by
Levinas in some of his later works.
For Levinas, speaking philosophy expresses an infinite
conversation whose future does not announce itself in
advance. It is extremely important to note that to
re-iterate,
to say again, is to keep these words saying what
they still intend by taking continuing responsibility for the
texts already authored. The interviews given by Levinas
to serious interlocutors permit a greater mobility for the
intention
of
saying to be addressed also to the third
person, the reader. Levinas speaks with an unusual
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EMMANUEL LEVINAS: THE ETHICS OF "FACE TO
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RELIGIOUS TURN
mixture
of
patience for his questioner, and a sense
of
urgency regarding the existential necessity to respond to
the suffering
of
the twentieth century, to which he was so
often the witness. Despite his mastery
of
the Western
philosophic tradition, or perhaps because of this mastery,
he seldom strays from the junctures that shape the lives
of
human beings. The same tradition of philosophy in
which he is so much at home, permits him to think beyond
its self-defining limitations, and in so doing to open a
vein
of
inquiry where the advance
of
philosophy
implies the elevation
of
what he calls the humanism of
the other.
As is the case with the best
of
teachers, Levinas awak
ens the other to a living encounter, pointing the student
beyond himself toward the Infinite. However open the
space
of
speech, Levinas goes beyond the level
of
encouraging questioning. Ethically, language is the other
prior to a context, and is therefore devoid
of
presupposi
tions. The continuing response I am called upon to give to
the other constitutes "me"
as
an ethical subject answer
able to and responsible for the other to an unimaginable
degree. Levinas ' s reiterations are not mere repetitions,
but the forward movement
of
an itinerary.
What Levinas appears to be searching for is a language
adequate to express the urgencies
of
human existence.
The reiterations in dialogue, then, represent his continuing
attempt to express again what has been said before; to
make room for the reader to enter a temporal context
along with the author where both can proceed together in
the pursuit
of
wisdom. This is a way
of
reconceiving
philosophy in terms of temporality, and phenomenology
as a discourse open to transcendence. In Totality and
Infinity
Levinas puts it in the following way: "philosophy
itself constitutes a moment
of
this temporal accomplish
ment, a discourse always addressed to another. What
we are now exposing is addressed to those who shall
wish to read it. Transcendence is time and goes onto the
Other" (269).
Entre Nous
In Entre Nous, Levinas speaks
of
exploring the inter
subjective relation in the transcendence
of
the 'for-the
other,' thus encapsulating what he calls the ethical
subject.
It
is the ethical subject that initiates the entre
nous.
For Levinas, all thinking is
of
the other and for
the other. This has technical and epistemological rele
vance and serves as a kind
of
exhortation for the reader.
Among the more original contributions in Entre Nous
are "Useless Suffering," Levin as' meditation on human
suffering; "Philosophy, Justice and Love," an interview
that helps to clarify some of the salient social, ethical
and political implications of Levinas' later thinking; and a
succinct reflection on "Non-intentional Consciousness,"
which deals with questions of phenomenological method.
"From One to the Other: Transcendence and Time" pre
sents the philosophic determination
of
the idea of culture
and a critique of Eurocentrism. This critique originates
from an invocation
of
metaphysical pluralism, founded
upon the irreducibility of ethical life, where difference
is argued to be a function of otherness, and uniqueness is
discussed as non-transferable responsibility at the core of
the singularity of the human subject. "Dying for" is a
meditation on a non-egoistic form
of
self-sacrifice and
the primacy of the death of the other. In two important
dialogues, "Thinking of the Other," and "The Other,
Utopia and Justice," Levinas invites a sustained inter
rogation
of
some of the most fundamental complexities
of
his later thinking.
In these essays, as elsewhere, Levinas, without
preaching, speaks about the importance
of
philosophy
guided by benevolence in the face
of
the legacy of the
sufferings of the twentieth century and the burden that
they impose upon the future
of
philosophy. Above all,
Levinas is concerned with disconnecting philosophy from
violence. In "Useless Suffering" Levinas argues against
rationalizing the sufferings of others. He juxtaposes this to
my own efforts to make sense out
of
my own suffering.
The moral height
of
the other, however, prohibits me from
superimposing a premature justification for the sufferings
of
others on whose behalf I may intercede, but in whose
name I cannot speak. Therefore I can forgive, pardon, and
absolve only the one who persecutes me. I am not per
mitted to do so for the other without his or her consent. In
this way, Levinas rejects as premature any recourse to
systems based upon theodicy. Commenting on human
suffering, Levinas asks the reader: "consider the outrage it
would be for me to justify my neighbor's suffering" (98).
For myself I can choose such a course. For the other, this
is beyond the path
of
mere rationalization and shows an
ultimate insensibility toward the other. Reckoning with
human suffering requires no less than a reconfiguration
of
the essential nature
of
human intrigue
as
a social and
political drama. For Levinas, the war
of
each against each
and all against all must be viewed as subordinate to the
relation he calls the "for-the-other".
It
is in this sense that
it would be possible to justify the ways of God to the
other as well as to myself. Refusal to justify the other's
suffering marks Levinas's response to Nietzsche's "death
of
God" theology. There is no theodicy that I may impose
upon the others who exceed my attempts to justify the
ways
of
God. Levinas absorbs Nietzsche's warning
of
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425
making a virtue into a necessity. However, he does so
without abolishing the idea
of
the good as transcendent.
Here again, the opening up
of
time proves to be decisive.
As he states in "Philosophy, Justice and Love," "in
my responsibility for the other, the past
of
the other,
which has never been present 'concerns me:' it is not
re-presentation for me" (115). Levinas goes on to explain
the reason for this by again resorting to an unrelenting
phenomenology
of
human time: "the past of the other
and, in a sense, the history
of
humanity in which I have
never participated, in which I have never been present,
is my past" (115). The future, on the other hand, is dif
ferent. "It is not my anticipation which is already and like
the imperturbable order
of
being, as
if
it had already
arrived, as if temporality were a synchrony" (115). Levinas
links the future to the phenomenon
of
prophecy as a
philosophical idea that can be articulated through phe
nomenological inquiry: "the future is the time
of
pro
phecy which is also an imperative, a moral "order, herald
of
an inspiration" (115). Levinas makes the ethical rela
tionship with the other depend upon the diachronic rela
tion between the past and the future in which each have
their own sense of time, responsibility and signification.
Proper Names
Proper Names
contains a collection
of
essays by Levinas
on such thinkers as Buber, Derrida, Kierkegaard, Proust
and Maurice Blanchot. There
is
also a touching essay
devoted to Father Herman Leo Van Breda and the debt
which future phenomenologists owe to his pains in
creating, maintaining and disseminating the work of the
Husserl Archives.
Proper Names
was first published in France in 1975
and dates from the same time as
God, Death and Time.
Levinas begins
Proper Names
with a description
of
the
breakdown of the human order in the catastrophes and
crises haunting the twentieth century. He speaks more
openly
of
the importance
of
formulating a response to the
breakdown
of
language: "at no other time has historical
experience weighed so heavily upon ideas, or at least
never before have the members
of
one generation been
more aware
of
that weight" (34). Showing a pronounced
and keen awareness
of
the conditions leading to this cri
tical time, Levinas offers his own characterization
of
the
post-modem age:
Now theories on the death of God, the contingency
of
humanness in philosophical reflection and the bank
ruptcy of humanism-doctrines already voiced
by
the
end of the last century-have taken on apocalyptic
proportions. The new anxiety, that of language cast
adrift, seems to announce without periphrases-which
are henceforth impossible, which are henceforth
impossible or deprived of all persuasive
force-the
end of the world.
(4)
As an alternative to the nihilism that follows from this
condition, Levinas proposes the humanism
of
the other
man. In
Proper Names,
Levinas diagnoses the disin
tegration
of
contemporary life from some
of
its linguistic
indications. As he states, "Time no longer conveys its
meaning in the simultaneity
of
sentences. Statements no
longer succeed in putting things together" (4). He refuses
to believe that this signifies the death of philosophy, that
is, its much-discussed inability to deal with the larger
questions concerning the meaning
of
human life. He
explains why each
of
the articles included in the volume is
attached to a proper name. He urges the reader to keep in
mind the irreducibility
of
a proper name that attaches to a
human face. This is the someone with whom I can speak
philosophy. As he says almost longingly, "Perhaps the
names
of
persons whose
saying
signifies a face-proper
names in the middle
of
all the common names and com
monplaces--can resist the dissolution
of
meaning and
help us to speak" (4). Levinas ties the importance
of
proper names to the recovery
of
the saying prior to the
said where we are always speaking philosophy to some
one. The said by itself can convey fields
of
knowledge,
systems of thought, or being. However, it is necessary
to join the said with the saying if we are to understand
why it is that we are responsible for what we say. Only
in this way is it possible to understand the meaning
of
what is most urgent, most important and therefore most
meaningful.
There
is
one essay that stands out
as
the exception
that demonstrates what happens when proper names are
effaced.
It
is an article entitled "Nameless."
It
refers to
a time between 1940 and 1945 where all the institutions
of justice had been suspended, and where proper names
were reduced to an inhuman series
of
numbers branded
on the arms
of
the concentration camp victims. In
"Nameless," Levinas asks us to rethink the role
of
phi
losophy in general, and phenomenology in particular in
the aftermath
of
the Holocaust. He argues that when I
express non-indifference toward the other, my uniqueness
returns to me. I become aware of my irreplaceability
rather than being alienated. It is in this sense that it is
possible to again begin speaking philosophy. By elevating
ethics to the rank
of
first philosophy, Levinas has
embarked upon the task
of
restoring to philosophy its own
good name.
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ALTERITY AND
TRANSCENDENCE
Alterity and Transcendence
includes twelve texts
authored by Levinas from 1967 to 1989.
It
was first
published in 1995, the last year of his life. The thrust
of
the work as a whole is in the direction of a philosophy of
transcendence which absorbs but does not synthesize
his previous work, and in which the social, political
and religious implications of his philosophy are further
delineated.
In Alterity and Transcendence Levinas emphasizes
that transcendence indicates both a crossing over (trans)
and also an ascent (scando). As Pierre Hyatt notes in his
preface, "Transcendence would appear to be the marker
of
the paradox
of
the relation of what is separate" (ix).
This, for Levinas, represents ascent. What does "ascent"
signify beyond the moral height
of
the other person? We
may describe the ascent as a "surplus of morality." The
phenomenology of transcendence, then, begins with the
neighbor and my responsibility for this the "third" person
who appears "before" and "after" the second or the you-
to whom I am obliged completely. Here, Levinas ven
tures toward the perfectly other. Earlier, in Totality and
Infinity, Levinas had characterized religion as the refusal
to engage in the reduction of the Other to the Same. The
motive force behind these philosophical moves is to enact
justice responsibly. Bleak times cannot compel us to give
up on the phenomenon
of
transcendence.
There
is
in Alterity and Transcendence a further dis
tillation and reiteration of some of the signature themes
of Levinas's later writings. For example, in "Philosopher
and Death" he allows himself to be interrogated about
questions on the importance of the way "we are answer
able not only for the death of the other, but for his life
as well" (167). Levinas remains very much concerned
with taking responsibility not only for one's own life, but
for the life and death of the other. This is not expiation by
proxy for the other. This means that I am willing to
substitute myself for the other even to the point of self
sacrifice to preserve the humanity
of
the other.
OUTSIDE THE SUBJECT
In Outside the Subject, Levinas assembles a number
of
essays on important contemporary thinkers including
Buber, Rosenzweig, Jean Wahl and Merleau-Ponty.
Returning to the subject of the task of phenomenology,
Levinas shows through his essays in this text that he has
not left behind his original concerns to understand human
subjectivity, and to rediscover