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If we were to try to invent a philosopher as different as possible from Heidegger in background and temperament, we would create Emmanuel Levinas. He was a Jew from Lithuania, home of one of the greatest of Talmudists, the Gaon of Vilna. Levinas grew up studying the Hebrew Bible and the great Russian writers Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. During World War II he served as an interpreter of Russian and German for the French army, became a prisoner of war, and served as a forced laborer. His book Existence and Existents (1978), with its descriptions of anonymous existence, insomnia, sleep, horror, vertigo, appetite, fatigue, and indolence, was begun during his captivity. His wife and child were hidden during the Holocaust in a French monastery; most members of his family in Lithuania were murdered by the Nazis. According to his own words, the forebodings, the reality, and the memory of the Holocaust have always accompanied his thinking (Hand, 1989a, pp. 1-2; Peperzak, 1997, pp. 2-3). Perhaps all his differences with Heidegger can be summed up in a single tellingly Levinasian phrase: Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry (Levinas, 1969, p. 134). Levinas is not easy to read. His writing is metaphoric, allusive, suggestive, inconstant. He is far from being a systematic thinker; he is not, as he himself would put it, a totalizing philosopher. Indeed, among French philosophers, he is much less like Sartre than he is like Bachelard. But while Levinas does not have a system, he certainly has
Em m a n u el Lev i n a s (ph ot o by Br a ch a Et t i n ger )
themes, which tie together his rich and complex work. Levinas is constantly discovering new connections among his themes. His work is like a great tangled ball of yarn. This makes him both difficult and exciting
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to read; but the advantage is that, no matter which thread you follow, you wind up at the center. One of these themes is his thinking of death, where he stands directly opposed to Heidegger. This thread, too, leads to the center. Levinass ultimate and exemplary challenge to the solitude of Being turns out to be a rigorous and moving testimony of ones infinite obligation to the other person (Hand, 1989b, p. v).
Ontology is an egology
It is clear that Heideggers ideal is in fact a sort of spiritual solipsism (Philipse, 1998, p. 259). All the Heideggerian virtues authenticity, resolution, heeding the call of conscience serve to isolate (vereinzeln) us. Thus, for example, Death, understood in authentic anticipation, isolates Dasein in itself (Die im Vorlaufen verstandene Unbezglichk eit des Todes vereinzelt das Dasein auf es selbst) (1962, 53, p. 308); Understanding the call of conscience reveals ones own Dasein in the dreadfulness of its isolation (Das Rufverstehen [des Gewissens] erschliet das eigene Dasein in der Unheimlichk eit seiner Vereinzelung) ( 60, p. 342); The call of conscience implacably isolates Dasein (Der Ruf des Gewissens Unnachsichtig vereinzelt er das Dasein) ( 62, p. 354) Heideggers philosophy is thus an egology: the relation with Being is more important than the relation with other people. But where Heidegger finds significance in existence as a project, Levinas locates it precisely in responsibility for the Other. This is the question of the meaning of being: not the ontology of the understanding of that extraordinary verb, but the ethics of its justice. The question par excellence or the question of philosophy. Not Why being rather than nothing?, but how being justifies itself (Levinas, 1984, p. 86).
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Against ontology
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Levinas holds that ontology is fundamentally mistaken, because it
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A Lov e Stor y Lina V aldez said: "I come late to the party too, but the fact that he didnt w ant to speak to his daughter on the phone and that he..." 24 Responses Lev i n a s a t St r a sbou r g, 1928
This inversion makes ontology as first philosophy a philosophy of power, a philosophy of injustice. Truth, which should reconcile persons, here exists anonymously. Universality presents itself as impersonal; and this is another inhumanity (1969, p. 46). Heideggerian ontology, which subordinates the relationship with the Other to the relation with Being in general, remains under obedience to the anonymous, and leads inevitably to another power, to imperialist domination, to tyranny (1969, pp. 46-47). Ontology is, in Levinass telling phrase, a philosophy of the neuter. Heideggerian freedom, he says, turns out to be obedience to insidious forms of the impersonal and the neuter (1969, p. 272). Levinas has broken with the philosophy of the neuter, the Heideggerian Being of the existent, impersonal neutrality, the neuter dimension of Being above the existent for, he says, they exalt the obedience that no face commands (1969, pp. 298-299). And this difference is seen precisely in their thinking of temporality and death. Adriaan Peperzak expresses Levinass thought this way: The closed character of Heideggers Dasein follows also from his analysis of death. If nothingness is the secret of time and the authentic foundation of existence, the human person cannot rely on anything other than himself. The rejection of any reference to the Eternal and the insensitivity toward any otherness result in a tragic form of liberty (Peperzak, 1997, p. 49). Levinas directly confronts this
Lev i n a s a n d Jea n -Pa u l Sa r t r e
sort of authenticity: But is the authenticity of the I, he asks, its uniqueness, contingent upon that unadulterated possessive
mineness, of self for itself, that proud virility more precious than life, more authentic than love or than the concern for another? (Levinas, 1988b, pp. 226-227). Levinas is fond of quoting an epigram from Pascals Penses That is my place in the sun. That is how the usurpation of the whole world began. It is this usurpation of the place of the Other this violence which is at the heart of an ontology as a first philosophy; instead, Levinas proposes as a first philosophy an ethics, an unquestionable and primary obligation to the Other (Hand, 1989a, p. 5).
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Heidegger that death is clean and heroic, that death does not take place in cattle cars. Levinas the Jew,
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Death is not my ownmost; instead, it is encountered as a hostile, foreign, alien will set against me. This nothingness is an interval beyond which lurks a hostile will. I am a passivity threatened not only by nothingness in my being, but by a will in my will (1969, p. 236).
In the being for death of fear I am not faced with nothingness, but faced with what is against me, as though murder, rather than being one of the occasions of dying, were inseparable from the essence of death, as though the approach of death remained one of the modalities of the relation with the Other. The violence of death threatens as a tyranny, as though proceeding from a foreign will. The order of necessity that is carried out in death is not like an implacable law of determinism governing a totality, but is rather like the alienation of my will by the Other (1969, p. 234).
That is why, to Levinas, all death is murder because in death I am faced with another, a foreign will, an evil design, a judgment of justice, a will in my will, alterity. Thus, for Levinas, we do not die in Heideggerian isolation, but face-to-face with an enemy, a powerful other who remains invisible, who intends us as victims not before nothingness, but over against an opponent. In death we are seized without the possibility of retaliating against our attacker. We are exposed to absolute violence, to murder in the night (1969, p. 233). But herein lies the great paradox of death. Precisely because it is absolute alterity, death is human, relational; death maintains an interpersonal order (1969, p. 234); a social conjuncture is maintained in this menace (1969, p. 234). Murder, at the origin of death, reveals a cruel world, Levinas says, but one to the scale of human relations (1969, p. 236). And that is precisely why death cannot drain all meaning from life (1969, p. 236). Death does not subvert the interpersonal order, but is, as philosopher Edith Wyschogrod puts it, the most fundamental experience of the personal order (Wyschogrod, 2000, pp. 120-121). Indeed, what is
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In the same way, Heideggerian being-toward-death is, says Levinas, a supreme lucidity and hence a supreme virility. Authenticity, being-toward-death, resoluteness what Levinas sarcastically, virility is made possible for Heidegger only because he posits a the hypostasis at the heart of anonymous being. But death is never now. Levinas adopts Epicurus argument and, typically, inverts it: When death is here I am no longer here, not just because I am nothingness, but because I am unable to grasp. My mastery, my virility, my heroism as a subject can be neither virility nor heroism in relation to death. Death becomes the limit of the subjects virility.
It is not just that there exist ventures impossible for the subject, that its powers are in some way finite; death does not announce a reality against which nothing can be done, against which our power is insufficient realities exceeding our strength already arise in the world of light. What is important about the approach of death is that at a certain moment we are no longer ab le to b e ab le. It is exactly thus that the subject loses its very mastery as a subject (1947b, pp. 40-42).
My mastery, my virility, my heroism as a subject can be neither virility nor heroism in relation to death. For Levinas, the limit of the possible is reached in suffering. At the heart of suffering, where we grasp the nearness of death, activity becomes passivity. The subject finds itself enchained, overwhelmed, and in some sense passive. Death is in this sense the limit of idealism (1947b, p. 41).
am persuaded that around the death of my neighbor what I have been calling the humanity of man is manifested (1982b, pp. 157-8). Death for Levinas is something absolutely unknowable that comes at me from beyond my possibilities. The mystery of death forces me to recognize
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The relation to the face is the relation to the absolutely weak to what is absolutely exposed, what is bare and destitute, what is alone and can undergo the supreme isolation we call death. Thus there is always, in the face of the Other, the death of the Other. This weakness cries out with a dual voice on the one hand, to turn away, ignore the Other, neglect the Other, and thus murder the Other; on the other hand, Thou Shalt Not Kill. This Thou-Shalt-Not-Kill is the fact that I cannot let the Other die alone, it is like a calling out to me. And this relationship with the Other is not symmetrical. [I]n the relation to the Face, it is asymmetry that is affirmed: at the outset I hardly care what the other is with respect to me, that is his own business; for me, he is above all the one I am responsible for (1982a, 104-105). The original form of openness is thus my exposure to alterity in the face of the other. I literally put myself in the place of the other, without usurpation. I put myself in the place of the other even to the point of sacrifice. In typical Levinasian fashion, Levinas writes: In the general economy of being a preoccupation with the other, even to the point of sacrifice, even to the possibility of dying for him or her; a responsibility for the other. Otherwise than being! (1991, p. xii). It is, finally, the willingness to die for the other which Levinas calls holiness. It is inscribed in the face of the other, in the encounter with the other: a double expression of weakness and strict, urgent requirement. Is that the word of God? (1982a, p. 108). No one is so hypocritical as to claim that he has taken from death its sting, not even the promisers of religions. But we can have responsibilities and attachments through which death takes on a meaning (1968, p 118).
Em m a n u el Lev i n a s (dr a wi n g by Da v i d Lev i n e)
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nakedness itself. But at the same time, his face faces. It is in his way of being all alone in his facing that the violence of death is to be assessed (1982b, p. 163). In this facing of the face, in this mortality, there is a summons and a demand that concern the I, that concern me, as if the invisible death which the face of the other faces were my business, as if that death had to do with me (1986, p. 186).
Em m a n u el Lev i n a s (ph ot o by Br a ch a Et t i n ger )
And the concern that is raised is precisely the aloneness of the other. Before the death of the other, my neighbor, death the mysterious appears to me, in any case, as the bringing about of an aloneness toward
which I cannot be indifferent. It awakens me to the other (1969, p. 161). And my responsibility is not to let the other die alone. The death of the other man implicates and challenges me, as if, through its indifference, the I became the accomplice to, and had to answer for, this death of the other and not let him die alone. It is precisely in this reminder of the responsibility of the I by the face that summons it, that demands it, that claims it, that the other is my fellow-man (1986, p. 186). To let the other die alone is to be an accomplice in the death. In an often-repeated passage, Levinas says that the face of the other before all gesture, in its facial straightforwardness, before all verbal expression, from the depths of that weakness commands me, orders me not to let the other die alone; that is, an order to answer for the life of the other man, at the risk of becoming an accomplice to that death (1985a, p. 169; 1989a, p. 148; 1989b, p. 29; see 1983, p. 130). But that face facing me in its mortality summons me, demands me, requires me: as if the invisible death faced by the face of the otherpure alterity, separate, somehow, from any whole were my business. As if, unknown by the other whom already, in the nakedness of his face, it concerns, it regarded me before its confrontation with me, before being the death that stares me, myself, in the face. The death of the other man puts me on the spot, calls me into question, as if I, by my possible indifference, became the accomplice of that death, invisible to the other who is exposed to it; and as if, even before being condemned to it myself, I had to answer for that death of the other, and not leave the other alone to his deathly solitude (1989b, pp. 2425). This responsibility is unlimited, whatever the circumstances a responsibility one is never rid of, which does not cease in the last moment of the neighbor, even if responsibility then only amounts, in the impotent confrontation with the death of the other, to responding Here I am (1989a, p. 149; 1989b, p. 30). [T]he ultimate meaning of that responsibility for the death of the other person is responsibility before the inexorable, and at the last moment, the obligation not to leave the other alone in the face of death. Even if, facing death even if, at the last moment, the not-leaving-the-other-alone consists, in that confrontation and that powerless facing, only in answering Here I am to the request that calls on me (1983, pp. 130-131). The responsibility is unlimited in another way as well. It is a responsibility for everyone. I am responsible for the death of the Other of any other. The ethical attitude is not the attitude toward the death of a being already chosen and dear, but of the death of the first-one-to-come-along. To perceive that we come after an other whoever he may be that is ethics (1982b, p. 167; emphasis added). It is clear, too, that the command not to let the other die alone is the same as the command not to abandon the other. The command not to be an accomplice in the death of the other embraces all the violence and usurpation my existence, despite its intentional innocence, risks committing the risk of occupying the place of another, of exiling him, condemning him to a miserable existence in some Third or Fourth World, of killing him (1989b, p. 30). And, finally, it is this understanding of death that separates Levinas from Heidegger. That way of requiring me, of putting me in question and appealing to me, to my responsibility for the death of the other, is a meaning so irreducible that it is on that basis that the meaning of death must be understood, beyond the abstract dialectic of being and its negation, to which, on the basis of violence that has been reduced to negation and annihilation, one reduces death (1989b, p. 25).
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In the face of this sort of death of even the possibility of this sort of death what Levinas issues, finally, is a call not to authenticity but to holiness. I have never claimed to describe human reality in its immediate appearance, Levinas says, but what human depravity itself cannot obliterate: the human vocation to holiness. I dont affirm human holiness; I say that man cannot question the supreme value of holiness (1985b, p. 180). This value is, finally, what separates his philosophy from Heideggerian ontology, even in the darkest times. There can be periods during which the human is completely extinguished, but the idea of holiness is what humanity has introduced into being. An ideal of holiness contrary to the laws of being (1982, p. 114; emphasis added). And again: Man is not only the being who understands what being means, as Heidegger would have it, but the being who has already heard and understood the commandment of holiness in the face of the other man (1985b, p. 180). This call to holiness precedes the concern for existence (1988a, p. 216). Indeed, as Levinas, says, it is humanity that has introduced holiness into being, in the form of sacrifice, which is the possibility of dying for the other (1987, p. 202). It is as if the emergence of the human in the economy of being, he says, upset the meaning and plot and philosophical rank of ontology: the in-itself of being-persisting-in-being goes beyond itself in the gratuitousness of the outside-of-itself-for the other, in sacrifice, or the possibility of sacrifice, in the perspective of holiness (1991, p. xiii). The priority of the other over the I is precisely the response of the I to the nakedness of the face and its mortality. It is there that the concern for the others death is realized, and that dying for him, dying his death, takes precedence over authentic death the excessiveness of sacrifice, holiness in charity and mercy. This future of death in the presence of love is probably one of the original secrets of temporality itself and beyond all metaphor (1988a, p. 217).
REFERENCES
Hand, S. (1989a). Introduction. In Hand, S. (Ed.), The Levinas reader (pp. 2-8). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Hand, S. (1989b). Preface. In Hand, S. (Ed.), The Levinas reader (pp. v-vi). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Hand, S. (1989b). Preface. In Hand, S. (Ed.), The Levinas reader (pp. v-vi). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (Mcquarrie, J., & Robinson, E., Trans.). New York, NY: Harper & Row. (Original published 1927) Keenan, D. (1999). Death and responsibility: The work of Levinas. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Levinas, E. (1947a). The other in Proust (Hand, S., Trans.). In Hand, S. (Ed.) (1989), The Levinas reader (pp. 160-165). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1947b). Time and the other (Hand, S., Trans.). In Hand, S. (Ed.) (1989), The Levinas reader (pp. 37-58). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1948). Reality and its shadow (Hand, S., Trans.). In Hand, S. (Ed.) (1989), The Levinas reader (pp. 129-143). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1954). The I and the totality (Smith, M., & Harshav, B., Trans.). In Levinas, E. (Ed.) (1998), Entre nous (pp. 13-38). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1968). Substitution (Hand, S., Trans.). In Hand, S. (Ed.) (1989), The Levinas reader (pp. 88-125). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity (Lingis, A., Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. (Original published in 1961) Levinas, E. (1978). Existence and existents (Lingis, A., Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (Original published in 1973) Levinas, E. (1982a). Philosophy, justice, and love (Smith, M., & Harshav, B., Trans.). In Levinas, E. (Ed.) (1998), Entre nous (pp. 103-121). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1982b). The philosopher and death (Smith, M., Trans.). In Hayat, P. (Ed.) (1999), Alterity & transcendence (pp. 153-168). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1982c). Useless suffering (Smith, M., & Harshav, B., Trans.). In Levinas, E. (Ed.) (1998), Entre nous (pp. 91-101). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1983). Nonintentional consciousness (Smith, M., & Harshav, B., Trans.). In Levinas, E. (Ed.) (1998), Entre nous (pp. 123-132). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
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Thanks for these fascinating thoughts. I was describing them to a friend with a great deal of experience with ayahuasca yesterday, and his immediate reaction saw no conflict between Heideggers conception of facing death and Levinass. Yes, he said, speaking about his experiences of facing death with ayahuasca. And you have to go through one [Heidegger's experience of solitary 'authenticity'] to get to the other [Levinas's experience of the fundamental nature of relationality]. I wondered what your thoughts are on this. Need there be a dichotomy here, or was Heidegger merely stuck? Makes me think of people like Nietzsche and Lovecraft, who seemed to be on some kind of genuine transformative path, but got stuck in a failed initiation, taking a phase of terrifying isolation as an end-point.
REPLY
Gyrus, it is always a great pleasure to hear from you. I am not sure what your friends move actually buys. A Heideggerian could simply respond that the idea is correct but your friend has the direction wrong: Dasein must pass through an inauthentic and tranquilized subjection to the other in order to reach true authenticity. In the absence of some independent metric, we cannot say that one position is
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authenticity. In the absence of some independent metric, we cannot say that one position is evolutionarily in some sense superior to the other. I think we are faced with a choice: how do we want to live our lives?
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