Professional Documents
Culture Documents
ISBN 0-534-57641-9
90000
9 11 780534 11 576417
I II
'
I )
ON
LEVINAS
ON CHUANG TZU
0-534-58371 -7
O N GA NDHI
0-534-58374-1
()N A(l_!.J I NA S
0 [134 58360 1
ON THE
CHURCH LANDS
0-534-57627-3
O N GODEL
0-534-57595-1
( lN ARENDT
0 [134 58361 X
( lN ARISTOTLE
() !1:14 !I /607 9
<lN AlJCUSTINE
() [134 !18362 8
l l N AYI It
() [134 58370 9
l lN
I) I
1\I'AUVOI R
IJ !1:14 !l /603 6
l l N Ill RKLII:Y
U 11:14 !1/U 1U 2
<lN 11001 I
U 11:14 !lii:IIIO 6
I lN IIIli N IAN()
11 1!:14 il/011 I
llN 1111 l\l)i)I)11A
II 11:14 !/!1UO X
<>N ( ' AMli~
II 11:14 !111:1111 4
( lN ( 'II( lMSKY
0 b34 [1/040 0
ON CONFUCIUS
0-534-58385-7
ON DENNETT
0-534-57632-X
ON DERRIDA
0-534-57631 -1
O N DESCARTES
0-534-57593-5
ON DEWEY
0-534-57617-6
O N DOSTOEVSKY
0-534-58372-5
ON FODOR
0-534-58365-2
ON FOUCAULT
0-534-57614-1
ON FREGE
0-534-58367 -9
ON FREUD
0-534-57618-4
ON GADAMER
0-534-57598-6
ON GOLDMAN
0-534-57620-6
Peter Atterton
University of California, San Diego
ON HA BERMAS
0-534-57621 -4
ON H EGEL
0-534-58357-1
Matthew Calarco
Sweet Briar College
O N HEIDEGGER
0-534-57597-8
O N HOBBES
0-534-57592-7
O N HUME
0-534-57605-2
O N HUSSERL
0-534-5761 0-9
O NJUNG
0-534-58378-4
O N KANT
0-534-57591 -9
O N KIERKEGAARD
0-534-57601 -X
ON KR I PKE
0-534-58366-0
THOIVISON
..,...
""
VVADSVVORTH
Thomson Wadsworth
Asia
Thomson Learning
5 Shenton Way #01-01
UIC Building
Singapore 068808
Canada
http://www.thomsonrights.com.
Any additional questions about permissions can
be submitted by email to
thomsonrights@thomson.com.
Introduction
Australia/New Zealand
Thomson Learning
I 02 Dodds Street
Southbank, Victoria 3006
Australia
ISBN 0-534-57641-9
Contents
10 Davis Drive
Belmont, CA 94002-3098
USA
Nelson
1120 Birchmount Road
Toronto, Ontario MIK 5G4
Canada
Europe/Middle East
/South Africa
Thomson Learning
High Holborn House
50/51 Bedford Row
London WC1R 4LR
United Kingdom
Latin America
Thomson Learning
Seneca, 53
Colonia Polanco
11560 Mexico D.F.
Mexico
Spain/Portugal
Paraninfo
Calle/Magallanes, 25
28015 Madrid, Spain
1. Critique of Ontology
2. Separation
18
3. Face-to-Face
23
4. Eros
41
51
52
6. Responsibility
60
7. Substitution
64
73
85
Bibliography
90
Introduction
*
In his short autobiography called "Signature" (1963), Levinas
described his life as "dominated by the presentiment and the memory of
the Nazi horror" (DF 291)-a regime that would result in the murder of
Levinas's birth family from Lithuania along with at least six million
other Jews. Practically everything Levinas wrote after the war was
written with the experience of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in
mind; hence the moving dedication at the beginning of his second
major philosophical work, Otherwise than Being:
To the memory of those who were closest among the six million
assassinated by the National Socialists, and of the millions on
millions of all confessions and all nations, victims of the same
hatred of the other man, the same anti-Semitism.
Introduction
Introduction
The plain fact of the matter is that the good are all too rarely
rewarded and the bad frequently go unpunished. Where was God in
Auschwitz? Why were the Nazis allowed to get away with murder?
And even if the Nazis were to get their just deserts in hell after they
died, to what end? In the words of Dostoyevsky, "what do I want a hell
for torturers for?" (BK 287). Levinas observes that Nietzsche's
pronouncement "God is dead" became an almost scientific fact in the
concentration camps (PL 162). What the Nazi atrocities and excessive
cruelty of the twentieth century have shown perhaps more than
anything else, according to Levinas, is that God is powerless to
intervene in history and keep his promises, so powerless in fact that
anyone who acts ethically with the hope of reward is bound to be
disappointed.
To conclude, however, that morality is impossible after an event
such as the Holocaust would be a grave error. Why? Because it would
be to renounce the very basis upon which one might wish to criticize
what the Nazis did . Indeed, it would be to give up the possibility of
opposing injustice everywhere: war, slavery, mass hatred, imperialism,
genocide, terrorism, totalitarianism, unemployment, and Third World
poverty and hunger. This is true even when it is morality itself that is
being criticized. Ethics survives the attack on ethics, according to
Levinas, because it is ethics that motivates the attack. Does not
Nietzsche criticize the holy saints for their excessive cruelty? Does not
Marx criticize bourgeois ideology for oppressing the working class?
And does not Freud criticize Victorian morality for turning us into
suffering neurotics?
Levinas ' s critical task, then, is to rethink the meaning of ethics after
the breakdown of moral, religious, and philosophical certainty. It is a
task to which he applied himself in earnest upon his return from
captivity after WWII, and which culminated in the publication of his
first major work on ethics, Totality and Infinity. We now turn to this
highly original, rich, and colorful work.
For the purposes of this volume, we will use the term "morality" and
"ethics" interchangeably. It should be noted, however, that Levinas
does occasionally distinguish the two, as in an interview conducted in
1981 :
PART 1
Critique of Ontology
(1961)
According to Levinas, it is not just morality that is put into question
by Auschwitz, but the whole of Western philosophy beginning with the
Greeks. Levinas does not merely criticize philosophy for its failure to
prevent violence, but also for its complicity in violence insofar as it
privileges knowledge over ethics. Levinas reserves the word
"ontology" (literally, the study [logos] of Being [ontos]) for this general
tendency within philosophy to give priority to knowledge at the
expense of ethics. Early in Totality and Infinity, he writes:
The Greeks
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (c. 515) is considered by many historians to be
the "father of philosophy." He was among the very first thinkers to
draw a distinction between appearance and reality, i.e., the way things
merely appear to our senses and the way they are in themselves. This
distinction would prove to be fundamental for subsequent philosophy.
4
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
Parmenides presented his ontology in a poem called "On Nature" in
which the goddess Justice (Dike) reveals to him the nature of truth
(aletheia) in contrast to the opinions (doxai) of mortals. It is she who
tells Parmenides that we are accustomed to inquire about the nature of
reality in two fundamentally different ways. Either we say of things
that they are ("what is") or we say of them that they are not ("what is
not"). In order to think at all, we must have something to think about.
Accordingly, we can only think about what is. Since "what is not"
literally cannot exist (it is literally "no-thing"), we cannot properly
think about it. The question now becomes: Is what exists static? Or
rather is it-as Heraclitus (c. 540) claimed-continuously changing?
The goddess in Parmenides' poem argues that change (or becoming) is
merely an appearance, and thus is not real. How can something both be
and not be at the same time? If we view reality t,~rough the natural light
of "reason" (logos), we will come to understand that Being is eternal,
indivisible, and unchanging. Parmenides also says: "Thought and Being
are the same" (Fr. 8) by which he means that everywhere Being is
"one," and thus forms a unity with everything else-including thought
itself.
In contrast to this Parmenidean conception of Being as "one"
("monism"), Levinas argues that the differences between things cannot
be subsumed under a more basic concept of unity but that existence is
multiple ("pluralism"). The plurality of what exists, for Levinas, is not
just an appearance, but rather part of the very nature of reality as such.
Such pluralism, he will go on to say, is particularly evident in my
relation to the other person- whom Levinas simply refers to as the
Other- inasmuch as he or she is radically different from me. Levinas's
thinking thus marks a decisive break with Parmenides and the
ontological tradition, a break that he himself characterizes as a
"parricide" (TO 43), adopting the expression of a character in Plato's
Sophist, to which we turn next.
Plato
The limitations of Parmenides' philosophy were not evident until
Plato (428-348) arrived on the philosophical scene. Plato accepted
much ofParmenides' ontology, including the claim that true knowledge
is discovered by the mind and not by the senses. He also agreed that
what we call true knowledge is eternal, indivisible, and unchanging.
However, he differed from Parmenides on two major points. First, he
6
Modernity
Kant
The German thinker Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the foremost
7
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
thinker of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a new dawn in
European intellectual and cultural history, characterized by an
optimistic faith in reason and science as opposed to superstition and
religious dogma. Like his predecessors, Kant drew an important
distinction between appearance and reality. However, unlike
Parmenides and Plato, he altogether denied that we could have
knowledge of reality as such. Our perception is strictly limited to what
we know by way of our senses. All we are aware of is the way things
appear to us; we can never step outside ourselves and see things as they
exist independently of us. We do not have what Kant called
"intellectual intuition"--or what the Greeks called nous- by which we
may know "things in themselves."
Kant, however, did not think that the hum,(!n mind was merely a
passive receptacle of sensory experience. OPI the contrary, in the
Critique of Pure Reason (1781 ), he argued that the mind or
"understanding" contributes to the world of knowledge by giving form
and objectivity to what would otherwise be a chaotic, buzzing mass of
sensory experience. We have no choice but to experience objects as
located in space and time. This is because we impose the "forms" of
space and time on them. Similarly, we are not simply stimulated by
light but perceive objects in the light. This we do with the help of
twelve fundamental concepts (substance, causality, etc.) that Kant calls
the "categories." These categories are not learned from experience
(they are "a priori") but are applied to experience. The categories are a
sort of conceptual apparatus that allow us to make sense of the world
by ordering and classifying it. Insofar as Kant is only concerned with
specifying the conditions that need to be met before we can possibly
know anything at all, and since what is known is not completely
determined by the objective world, but is also constituted by the
application of the categories, his philosophy is called "transcendental
idealism."
However, like every idealist philosopher, Kant is faced with the
problem of distinguishing between what is merely subjective
experience (e.g. , a dream) and what is properly objective in the sense of
belonging to the real world . Indeed, how do we know that there is an
objective world out there at all? Are we not simply aware of our own
thinking processes? Kant's answer to this supposed refutation of
idealism was to say that "our inner experience is possible only on the
assumption of outer experience" (Critique of Pure Reason A 226). He
argues that the mere fact that I am se lf-aware proves the existence of
8
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
Levinas is saying here that the knowledge and comprehension the "I
think" makes possible leads to the domination and exploitation of what
exists. By being placed under a concept, the Other falls within my
powers, and is thus exposed to violence and disrespect. We will return
to this important argument later on.
The violence associated with the "I think" is not restricted to Kant's
philosophy. It pertains to every philosophy that, as ontology, seeks to
comprehend the otherness of the Other by subsuming him or her under
a concept that is thought within me, and thus is in some sense the same
as me. This reaches its most extreme possibility in the idealism of
Hegel.
Hegel
Like many German philosophers of the nineteenth century, Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( 1770-1831) was heavily influenced by his
predecessor Kant. Hegel agreed with much of what Kant had to say
about truth and knowledge being constituted by the mind. However,
unlike Kant he rejected the view that things in themselves are
unknowable. Hegel took the more extreme view that everything that
exists must be mental and thus in principle knowable. In so doing, he
injected new life into Parmenidean monism, along with the claim that
being and thought are the same.
For Hegel, Kant's transcendental idealism is fundamentally flawed
insofar as it places the categories solely on the side of the human
subject, whereas they can equally be said to be on the side of the object.
In his best-known work, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel offers
a unique reading of the history of philosophy as a progression toward
this fundamental truth wherein subject and object finally coincide.
Hegel dubs this coincidence or unity of subject and object "Absolute
Knowledge ."
His argument is basically this. The Kantian dichotomy between
appearances and things in themselves is shown to be an illusion once
we assume, as did Hegel, that the proper objects of philosophical
knowledge all fall within consciousness in general (which Hegel calls
"Spirit"). To be sure, Hegel is not saying that material objects are
figments of our imagination . He is saying that what appears in the first
instance to be independent of consciousness ("being-in-itself') turns
out to be part of consciousness ("being-for-itself'), and thus ultimately
knowable to the extent that consciousness is capable of coming to know
10
Phenomenology
Husser!
From 1928 to I 929 Levinas studied under Edmund Husser! (185911
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
1938), the father of phenomenology, whose work he translated and
subsequently introduced to France. Husserl, who was originally trained
in mathematics, and later in formal logic and psychology, aimed to
develop a philosophy characterized by the same kind of rigor as that
found in the mathematical sciences. In order to accomplish his aim,
Husser! went "back to the things themselves," that is, he attempted to
describe phenomena (i .e., objects of conscious thought) in their own
right, without presuppositions. Husser! called this method of dealing
with phenomena
in a rigorous, purely descriptive, and
presuppositionless manner, "phenomenology."
In our everyday dealings with the world, we tend to make various
assumptions about the world. We naively assume that the world exists
outside us and that the objects it contains exist independently of
consciousness. This so-called "natural attitude~') according to Husser!,
is the greatest obstacle in the way of achieving genuine scientific
results in philosophy. To overcome it, Husser! begins in a manner
reminiscent of Rene Descartes' method of radical doubt by suspending
belief in the existence of the external world. Such "bracketing" is what
Husser! calls the phenomenological or "transcendental reduction"
(epoche). For phenomenology to maintain its scientific rigor, it must
limit its'elf to reflecting on the way in which objects in the world are
given to consciousness. Consciousness has two components: act and
object. According to the doctrine of the "intentionality" of
consciousness (a term Husser! borrowed from the German philosopher
Franz Brentano [1838-1916]), every act of consciousness (e.g.,
perceiving, believing, desiring, etc.) aims at or "intends" some object of
consciousness (e.g., what is perceived, believed, desired, etc.). The
question naturally arises : Who (or what) is the intentional subject of
consciousness? Husser! calls it the "transcendental ego," a purely
idealist (i.e., constituting) subject that is in many respects similar to
Kant's "I think."
However, at this point an objection may be raised. After suspending
belief in the existence of the external world, has not the
phenomenologist fallen into the idealist trap of"solipsism" by reducing
everything- including other persons- to one's own ideas? Husser! was
well aware of this apparently "grave objection" to his thinking:
l3
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
Heidegger
In his first major philosophical publication, Being and Time (1927),
Heidegger took phenomenology in a radically new direction . He argued
that the task of phenomenology is not to describe what is immediately
accessible, or present, to consciousness, but to grant us access to what
remains for the most part hidden from consciousness, which Heidegger
called the "Being" of beings (BT 35). As we have seen, Being in its
different forms ("the One," "reality," "thing-in-itself," etc.) has served
as the primary subject matter of philosophical inquiry. Heidegger's
focus on Being thus places him squarely within the philosophical
tradition that Levinas calls ontology.
Heidegger's "fundamental ontology," however, differs from the
traditional approaches inasmuch as it atterr\pts to unearth the very
foundations of philosophy as such. To understand the underlying
motivation behind Heidegger's project, it is important to recognize that
the intellectual climate of the time was thick with questions having to
do with the foundations of the sciences. For example, "biology," the
science of life, must have recourse to a philosophical distinction
between the "living" and "non-living" so as to establish the object of its
investigation. Philosophy is thus called upon to provide a certain
interpretation of the Being of beings, i.e., philosophy decides how the
world is to be "carved up" for subsequent scientific investigation. In
this sense, philosophy serves as a foundation and guide for all scientific
inquiry.
Since it is the task of philosophy to make truthful claims about
beings, it follows that philosophy should in turn be guided by an
understanding of the Being of those beings. However, according to
Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being has been forgotten .
The goal of Being and Time is thus to "raise anew the question of the
meaning of Being" (BT 19). What is revolutionary about Heidegger's
inquiry is his insistence that our knowledge of Being is not primarily
theoretical. In other words, our understanding of the meaning of the
word "Being" is not a purely intellectual enterprise, but stems rather
from our everyday, practical dealings with the world. Heidegger
maintains that human existence-which he calls "Dasein" (in German,
literally meaning "being-there")-is always involved in an
understanding of its Being as well as the Being of other entities. Dasein
is thus different from everything else (e.g., stones, plants, and animals)
because Being is a question for it. Heidegger writes:
14
Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities.
Rather it is ... distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that
Being is an issue for it. . . . Understanding of Being is itself a
defining characteristic ofDasein 's Being. (BT 32)
According to Heidegger, Dasein 's everyday way of being
presupposes what he calls a "pre-ontological" (BT 35) understanding of
Being, by which he means a non-scientific, non-theoretical, practical
concern with beings. Heidegger's argument amounts to the claim that
philosophical knowledge ultimately derives from our pre-philosophical
understanding of the world . Hence, if philosophy is to attain its goal of
knowledge, it needs to begin with an analysis of our everyday, practical
mode of existing, or what Heidegger calls "being-in-the-world."
For Levinas, Heidegger's focus on practical existence marks an
important break with the dominant "intellectualist" bias <?rerating in the
history of philosophy. Levinas, however, is quick to point out that
lleidegger's attempted departure from the ontological tradition
ultimately fails . Indeed, after WWII, Levinas began to work out a
powerful critique of Heidegger's writings. This critique comes to
fruition in Totality and Infinity, where Heidegger is accused of
repeating the classic ontological gesture of subordinating ethics to
ontology. Levinas writes:
15
Critique of Ontology
Critique of Ontology
neutralizing the existent in order to comprehend or grasp it. It is
hence not a relation with the other as such but the reduction of the
other to same. (TI 45)
Heideggerian ontology is thus what Levinas calls a "philosophy of
power." To know the Other is tantamount to predicting, manipulating,
controlling, even dominating the Other. Fundamental ontology remains
"under obedience to the anonymous, and leads inevitably to another
power, to imperialist domination, to tyranny" (TI 46-7).
Many commentators have strongly disagreed with this interpretation
of Heidegger's thought. They typically cite, for example, Heidegger's
discussion of "Being-with" in Being and Time (BT 26) as a rejoinder
to Levinas's criticisms. In these pages, Heidegger argues that being
with others is an inescapable fact of human e~istence. In stark contrast
to Husser!, who began his analysis of intersubjectivity from the
position of an isolated ego, and then was faced with the problem of
showing how the ego relates to other human beings, Heidegger argues
that Dasein is always already in relation with Others. From the outset,
others are encountered in the world in which I live.
However, not only are other Daseins encountered in the world,
according to Heidegger, they are encountered through the world as the
arena of meaning, language, customs, and history. Although clearly an
improvement over Husser!, Heidegger's account of intersubjectivity,
for Levinas, still remains steeped in comprehension and knowledge,
even if that knowledge is not one of traditional theory:
fully came to terms with his political error. Thus, while Levinas was
heavily indebted to Heidegger' s philosophy, he was also governed by
the strong "need to leave the climate of that philosophy, and by the
conviction that one cannot leave it for a philosophy that would be prelleideggerian" (EE 4).
This separation from pre-Heideggerian and Heideggerian
philosophy, indeed the separation not only from the totality of
philosophy but the totality in general is considered by Levinas to be the
pre-condition for ethics as such, as we will now see.
17
Separation
2
Separation
,.
Enjoyment
The Same
Separation is not to be understood as merely spatial or physical
distance. It denotes difference. The difference between my neighbor
and me is not due to some specific difference (e.g., ethnicity,
nationality, gender, etc.), which presupposes some underlying
commonality (e.g., human being). The "absolute difference" (TI 194)
between us derives from the fact that no genus, universal concept, or
general category serves to unite us. You might say that all the Other
and I have in common is that we have nothing in common. Levinas
writes:
I, who have no concept in common with the Stranger, am, like him
without genus. (TI 39)
How, then, do the Other and the Same enter into relation with one
another without destroying their separation? Or, what amounts to the
18
lpseity
In contrast to Kant, who argued that the knowing I remains an
empty form accompanying my representations, Levinas maintains that
in enjoyment "the same determines the other while being determined
by it" (Tl 128). What does this mean? It means that the Same does not
simply constitute objects in the manner of a transcendental ego.
Levinas argues that prior to knowing objects, we first "live from" them
to the extent that "every object offers itself to enjoyment" (TI 132). To
live from something is to treat it as an object of enjoyment by
assimilating it to oneself. Levinas's favorite example is eating:
Separation
Separation
Dwelling
The Feminine
However, the I is troubled by a fundamental insecurity that
threatens to undermine its separation and independence. In Totality and
Infinity, Levinas writes:
20
21
Separation
The Recollection
In the home, through the discrete welcome of the feminine, I am
given the opportunity to relax . The life of dwelling enables me to free
myself from the pressure of need in order consciously to "make use of
time" (TI 166). As such, it allows for a respite or what Levinas calls
"recollection . .. a suspension of the immediate reactions the world
solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself and one's possibilities"
(TI 154). This is similar to the emergence of self-consciousness in
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, where, to be human, man must
overcome his animal needs. He must show himself prepared to sacrifice
his biological desires, and in the process transcend them
(Phenomenology 174). Similarly, in Levinas's Totality and Infinity,
the self is said to attain full self-consciousness only by rising above the
satisfaction of need .
Face-to-Face
Metaphysical Desire
Need and Desire
Although enjoyment is "necessary" (TI 148) for ethics, the ethical
relation is not itself one of enjoyment. Levinas argues that having
satisfied one's material needs, the self finds within itself a type of
longing that cannot be satisfied. Such is what Levinas calls "Desire"
(TI33):
23
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
24
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
of the Other, the commencement of moral consciousness, which
calls in question my freedom. Thus this way of measuring oneself
against the perfection of infinity is not a theoretical consideration.
The Face
Meaning "kath auto"
(TI 84)
The Place of the Good above every essence is the most profound
teaching, the definitive teaching, not of theology, but of
philosophy. (TI 103)
By the phrase "good beyond being," Plato is drawing our attention to
the fact that the Form of the Good is epistemologically and
ontologically prior to all the other Forms (eide) . This is perhaps easiest
to understand when we recognize that the Forms constitute the perfect
essences of things in the world of appearances. Every Form is good in
the sense of being a good model or perfect blueprint, and thus can be
said in some sense to depend on the Form of the Good- the highest
Form- for its existence.
For Levinas, as for Plato, the Form of the Good has a moral
significance. It is in terms of the Good that everything else- including
the Being of beings- is to be understood . This signals for Levinas an
exception in the history of philosophy, which has tended to give
priority to ontology and epistemology over ethics.
26
How then does the Same relate to the Other without destroying the
otherness of the Other. How is ethics possible?
It is unquestionably the face that provides our everyday and most
immediate access to each other. The ethical relation is enacted "face-toface." By the term "face" (visage), Levinas does not simply mean a
person ' s countenance. Indeed, for Levinas, the face is not strictly
speaking an "object" of vision at all. It cannot be represented in a work
of art, a painting or a sculpture, and is not a mask or persona that "I
wear." The face rather is personification in that it presents-rather than
represents- the Other in person. It is the very presence of that which
does not present itself to knowledge and understanding in the manner
of things.
According to Levinas, the human face is unique in that it expresses
the person whose face it is "kath auto" (TI 67 passim) ("of its own
uccord" or "by itself'). Levinas borrows this term from Book !':!. of
Aristotle's Metaphysics, where it is defined as
27
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
It should be noted that according to Levinas discourse does not
require the use of actual words (see Chapter 5 below). He tells us that
" the whole body- a hand or a curve of the shoulder--can express as
lhc face" (Tl 262). "Expression" here is similar to what Plato in the
l'haedrus called "living and animate speech" (276 a8) that "knows how
10 defend itself' (276 e9; see Tl 66). Levinas likens it best to the
" language of the eyes" (TI 66):
Nesponsibility
Discourse
The ethical relationship between the Same and the Other-the faceto-face- is primarily enacted as discourse (TI 39). Discourse here is
not to be understood as the straightforward passage of information from
one person to the next. It is first of all a matter of responding to the
Other. According to Levinas, we always speak in response to the Other,
whose face presents itself as a kind of order or command to be heard.
Levinas tells us that the "first word" of the face consists in the Biblical
injunction: "Thou shalt not kill" (Tl I 99). The meaning of the face is
straightway ethical .
28
The language of the face does not merely consist in the negative
prohibition against murder, but also in the positive command to give
with "full hands" (Tl 205). For Levinas the face is the face of
destitution and poverty. Indeed it is precisely through the Other's
r ondition of being the Biblical "stranger, the widow, the orphan" (Jer.
:3; see Tl 77) that he or she has power over me. Levinas writes, in
typical lyrical fashion:
This gaze that supplicates and demands, that can supplicate only
because it demands, deprived of everything because entitled to
everything, and which one recognizes in giving . .. this gaze is
precisely the epiphany of the face as a face. The nakedness ofthe
face is destituteness. To recognize the Other is to recognize a
hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. (TI 75)
The face-to-face, which
ro rnprehension , emerges as
" Responsibility" here is to be
n.l'ponsivity (i.e., responding)
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
or lhe
31
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
I find within myself. I thus give myself the law. Levinas borrows
Kant's distinction but reverses its meaning. For him morality is not
autonomy but heteronomy (see Tl 88). The latter however is quite
different from what Kant called " negative freedom" or "spontaneity."
Moral freedom as heteronomy for Levinas is not a license to
unrestrained liberty. It is rather the sober obedience to an obligation
from which I personally cannot escape and which comes from the
Other.
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
The State which realizes its essence in works slips toward tyranny
and thus attests my absence from my works, which across
conomic necessities return to me as alien. From work I am only
deduced and am already ill-understood, betrayed rather than
expressed. (TI 176)
There are cruelties which are terrible because they proceed from
the necessity of the reasonable order. There are, if you like, the
tears that a civil servant cannot see: the tears of the Other. (BP 23)
personnel.
This stands in sharp contrast to the view of Hegel, who argued that
work is the medium through which an individual "becomes conscious
of what he truly is" (PS 195), i.e., arrives at objective confirmation of
her or his existence. For Levinas, work is ultimately the basis not for
recognition but "misrecognition" (TI 227; 297):
34
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (G 21).
The principles upon which actions are undertaken, which when valid
for a particular agent in particular circumstances are called "maxims,"
must, if moral, be chosen according to their suitability to function as
universally legislative. Practical judgment as the basis of universal law
is situated by Kant at the antipodes of "tyranny." It is freedom
(autonomy) itself.
Levinas, however, remains unconvinced; his conclusion the same:
War
Politics is not opposed to morality through commerce alone. Indeed,
it is important to bear in mind that the asymmetrical relation with the
other, according to Levinas, "can take on the aspect of the symmetrical
relation" (TI 225)-or commerce- to the extent that commerce is
necessary for ethics, which is "incapable of approaching the other with
empty hands" (TI 50). This opposition is most evident in the situation
of modern war as opposed to personal combat. In personal combat,
adversaries "refuse to belong to a totality" (TI 222); they "seek out one
unother" and thus do "not refuse relationship" (TI 223). In modern
military combat, by contrast, the totality is extended, national
boundaries become blurred, combatants do not manifest themselves in
their exteriority and consequently are encountered only through
logistics. Hence,
Death
Shakespeare's "Undiscovered Country"
Whether it be in the heat of battle or the dead of night, the death one
receives is absolutely unknowable. Shakespeare writes: "But that the
dread of something after death I the undiscovered country, from whose
bourn I No traveler returns I puzzles the will" (Hamlet 3.1.76-82).
Levinas presents the puzzle thus:
One does not know when death will come. What will come? With
37
Face-to-Face
Face-to-Face
what does death threaten me? With nothingness or with
recommencement? I do not know. In this impossibility of knowing
the after my death resides the essence of the last moment. I can
absolutely not apprehend the moment of death. . . . My death
comes from an instant upon which I can in no way exercise my
power. (Tl 234)
If this were all Levinas had to say about death then one might
wonder why he bothered to discuss it at all. But Levinas goes on to
draw several conclusions from the fact that death is absolutely
unknowable. The first is that "the unwonted hour of its coming
approaches as the hour of fate fixed by someone" (TI 235). Although I
know it is purely contingent when I will di~, I tend to think of that day
as predetermined by someone. Death is situated in a region ("bourn")
from which murder or execution comes. It is as though I am to die at an
appointed hour. I do not know in advance when that time is because
someone else has determined it for me . Hence Levinas writes:
~ It
'f"!Je solitude of death does not make the Other vanish, but remains
i11 a consciousness of hostility, and consequently still renders
possible an appeal to the Other, to his friendship and his
medication. The doctor is an a priori principle of human mortality.
Death approaches in the fear of someone, and hopes in someone . .
.. A social conjuncture is maintained in this menace. (TI 234)
Fulurity
Death threatens me from beyond. This unknown that frightens, the
silence of the infinite spaces that terrify [Pascal, Pensees], comes
from the other, and this alterity, precisely as absolute, strikes me in
an evil design or in a judgment ofjustice. (TI 234)
"Conscience," says the great procrastinator, Hamlet, "doth make
cowards of us all" (Hamlet 3 . I .91 ).
Mortality does not simply include reference to the Other in the role
ol murderer or medic . In the time that remains between me and my
death, there will be time for me to be for the Other. " This is why death
n umot drain all meaning from life" (TI 236). It is not that the Other is
there, as Heidegger suggests, to "tranquilize" (BT 298) me about death
hy telling me that death will not happen at that moment. Levinas claims
that death is always future not in order to console the reader or remove
his or her anxiety. His point is a logical one. As Epicurus says, "so long
ns we ex ist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not
exist" (Letter to Menoeceus). For Levinas, the time that remains until
my death is enough time to do one last thing for the neighbor, who will
survive me, and thus do something that does not end with my life. In
this postponement of death , my life is given meaning that the
inevitab ility of my fast-approaching death cannot destroy.
The will . .. on the way to death but a death ever future, exposed to
death but not immediately, has time to be for the Other, and thus
The goodness whose meaning
recover meaning despite death.
death cannot efface, has its center outside itself (TI 236)
Lev inas goes on to add :
39
Face-to-Face
We shall have to show this in the course of bringing to light the
other chance that the will seizes upon in the time left it by its being
against death: the founding of institutions in which the will ensures
a meaningful, but impersonal world beyond death. (TI 236)
We will see in the next chapter how the will manages somehow to go
"beyond death." To finish this discussion, let us emphasize that for
Levinas death entails a social relation that restores meaning to life by
making it possible for me to do something/or the other in the time that
remains before death- a possibility that is thus not mine in any
straightforward sense, and which my death thus cannot annihilate.
In his discussion of an inauthentic way of dying, Heidegger in
Being and Time cites Tolstoy ' s novella 'Fhe Death of Ivan 1/ych as
literary attestation of the "phenomenon of the disruption and
breakdown of having ' someone die"' (BT 495 n. xii). To be sure, the
majority of what Tolstoy says in his short story would seem to confirm
what Heidegger says about the tendency of Dasein to " flee" in the face
of its death . But it also contains a remarkable ending that is less
Heideggerian and more Levinasian. The passage in question concerns
Ivan ' s final realization that he is indeed going to die, that his life was
not as it should have been, but there was still time to put it right:
Eros
thu final section of Totality and Infinity, entitled "Beyond the Face,"
I .cv inas examines the relation of love, a relation that is said to bring
tho ut an alteration in the very identity or "substance" of the I, giving
1 1sc to a future that is paradoxically both mine and not mine.
40
41
Eros
Eros
44
45
Eros
category" (TI 266). He calls its "fecundity," which is defined as the
power to engender a child.
46
Eros
1111 ethics, albeit ethics under a new aspect- what Levinas calls the
"' ulinity of time" (TI 281). We will return to this in a moment.
One way to understand Levinas's startling claim that in paternity,
lhtl I both is and is not its son (or daughter) is to think of the Other as a
01 t of project in life. Everybody knows that good parents are
1nN ponsible parents. They feed and clothe their children, protect and
tlllllurc them, educate and cultivate them. They strive to teach their
1 hildrcn to become the best they can be- whether in math, music, art,
1tcnce, or sport. While there is often a temptation to exert too much
1outro l over the child by not allowing it to make its own choices in life,
lht good parent knows where to draw the line between negligence and
ht tng too controlling. The goal here is to teach the child to become
ludl.lpendent so that he or she will be in a position to make his or her
own choices in life. You might say that paradoxically the parent makes
It poss ible for the child to generate his or her own possibilities. Or, to
put it another way, the child depends on the parents to become
Ind ependent.
To the extent that the parents are successful and manage to teach
lhl.l child to become independent, then it can be said that the parents
Jl'H iize one of their possibilities. They make possible the possibilities of
tl ll.l ir child- possibilities that are both theirs (they made them possible)
nnd not theirs (they are possibilities of their child, who is an
iudependent being). Levinas expresses this most succinctly in an
Interview :
The fact of seeing the possibilities of the other as your own
possibilities, of being able to escape the closure of your own
identity and what is bestowed on you, toward something which is
not bestowed and which is nevertheless yours-this is paternity.
This future beyond my own being, this dimension constitutive of
time, takes on a concrete content in paternity. (EI 70)
How are the Other's possibilities my possibilities? How can there
be a type of parental relation which the Other outside ofbiology?
47
Eros
Eros
possibility I embarked on has been actualized, and the act of giving is
finished. Levinas suggests, however, that the gift, and the desiring
possibility that sends it on its way, go beyond the Other. We read:
The Other is not a term; he does not stop the movement of Desire.
The other that Desire desires is again Desire; transcendence
transcends toward him who transcends- this is the true adventure
of paternity, of the transubstantiation which permits going beyond
the simple renewal of the possible in the inevitable senescence of
the subject. Transcendence, the for the Other, the goodness
correlative of the face, founds a more profound relation: the
goodness of goodness. Fecundity engendering fecundity
accomplishes goodness: above and beyond the sacrifice that
imposes a gift, the gift of the power of giving, the conception of the
child. (Tl 269)
'
The passage is not as difficult to grasp as it might at first appear.
Levinas is making the point that through the gift goodness (or Desire)
engenders more goodness (or Desire). How so? Imagine I helped a
friend to get back on his or her feet again after a bout of depression.
Imagine that during the depression, she was in so much psychological
pain that her relationships with Others became virtually impossible or
seriously impaired. In helping her find a way out the tunnel of despair,
did I not make it possible for her to be there for Others should they
require assistance in the future , a time when perhaps I am no longer
there? Even though I must die ("the inevitable senescence of the
subject"), the good deeds I do live on through Others. Perhaps this is
the meaning behind the "miracle" story of the feeding of the five
thousand in the Gospels. Perhaps the five loaves and two fish
symbolize the fecund power of giving that keeps on multiplying its
effects.
The Other- in a relationship called fecundity, my child as it wereliberates me from the consequences of my own past actions. It is not
that I literally did not do X or Y, but it is as though I did not do them.
I he Other permits me to disburden myself of any unfortunate choices
or mistakes in the past, turning them into a felix culpa (literally,
" fortunate fall"). In the measure that I am responsible for the Other in
the future, I am relieved of the weight of responsibility for the past.
What is the connection between this new understanding of time and
the "dream of a happy eternity" associated with Jewish Messianic
thinking? Levinas modestly acknowledges that "the problem exceeds
the bounds" (TI 285) of Totality and Infinity. He will never again return
to the topic directly- possibly because he felt that talk of a happy
outcome to our moral actions risked resuscitating the idea of a theodicy
that he definitively rejects, and which after the Holocaust looks more
dubious than ever. But Levinas is clear about this much: there is
something wearisome about life without the Other. It is as though the
48
49
Eros
sheer fact of being- which early on in his career he called the "there
is" ("if y a")-were in the words of the French poet, Charles
Baudelaire: "tedium, fruit of the mournful incuriosity that take on
proportions of immortality" ("Spleen"; quoted by Levinas [TI 307]).
With these words Levinas closes Totality and Infinity. One should
perhaps contrast them with the fina l line ofSartre's play No Exit: "Hell
is other people." For Levinas, on the contrary, hell is being alone.
50
PART2
Otherwise than Being
or Beyond Essence
(1974)
51
5
The Saying and the Said
At the time Levinas presented Totality ~nd Infinity for his Doctorat
d' Etat in 1961, he was a relatively obscure philosophical figure in
French intellectual life. Although he was instrumental in introducing
Jean-Paul Sartre to phenomenology, he was known primarily as a
Husser( and Heidegger scholar but not as a thinker in his own right.
This was to change, however, with the publication of an essay by
Jacques Derrida entitled "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the
Thought of Emmanuel Levinas" (originally published in 1964, and
republished with minor changes in 1967). This dense, seventy-page
essay was among the first publications on Levinas and almost singlehandedly secured Levinas ' s reputation as one of the most important
thinkers in twentieth-century Continental philosophy. It also enabled
Derrida to pay his debts to a thinker whose influence on his own work
has been profound. Today, it is almost impossible to write on Levinas
without considering the questions raised by Derrida concerning
Levinas's language. Nor indeed is it possible to write on Derrida's
fundamental concepts of the " trace," "other," and "differance," without
acknowledging the influence of Levinas.
wtil cs:
52
53
Language
No said equals the sincerity of the saying. ... Sincerity would then
be saying without the said, apparently a "saying so as to say
nothing, " a sign I make to another of this giving of signs, "as
simple as 'hello."' (08 143)
Must one not at least say something objective, say something about
lhc world-ontology- before saying only saying itself, before making
1 sign of welcome to the Other? Obviously, "saying" here is not
ll~stricted to verbal or written communication; it also includes the
possibility of material giving. Shortly before describing the sincerity of
tlhics as a "saying without a said," Levinas tells us that it is
"i nseparable from giving for it opens reserves" (08 143). Shortly after
describing sincerity as a simple "hello," he tells us that it "is not
tlx hausted in invocation, in the salutation that does not cost anything,
understood as a pure vocative" (08 144). The welcome must also be
1rcompanied by the giving of one 's possessions. Using language
tlcurly intended to shock us out of our bourgeois complacency, Levinas
duscribes ethical saying as a
gift painfully torn up . .. not a gift of the heart, but of the bread
from one's mouth, of one's own mouthful of bread. It is the
openness, not only of one's own pocketbook, but of the doors of
one 's home. a "sharing of your bread with the famished, " a
"welcoming of the wretched into your house" (Isaiah 58) (OB 74)
It might be thought- and this would be Derrida's objection- that
I .tvinas here has not paid enough attention to the order of ontology.
55
Must not bread first be produced before it can be made into a gift for
the Other? Does not ethical saying therefore presuppose the entire order
of civilization : from agricultural science to relations of commerce, from
farming to transportation, from the manufacture of yeast to packaging?
We will return to these questions in Chapter 8 when we address the
problem of justice and the third party in Levinas's work. Let us
mention here in passing that Levinas will indeed go on to grant
ontology an important role in ethics, and thus we should be cautious of
presenting the relation between the saying and the said as merely one of
opposition.
The Trace
How is ethical saying heard if it is pre-linguistic and preontological? How is it possible for Levinas to talk about saying without
reducing it to consciousness and thematization? Levinas is acutely
aware of the apparent contradiction involved in making what ostensibly
cannot be thematized into the theme of his discussion. Whereas in
Totality and Infinity the face presents itself as a phenomenon of sorts,
in Otherwise than Being, Levinas is uncompromising in his insistence
that the "enigma" of ethics can never show itself as such. This does not
mean to say that the Other never appears at all. Levinas says that the
Other does indeed appear, albeit in the disguised and disruptive form of
a "trace."
The concept of the trace is perhaps Levinas's most successful and
sophisticated attempt to respond to the type of question posed by
Derrida in "Violence and Metaphysics." So successful in fact that
Derrida himself would take over the concept in his deconstruction of
the metaphysics presence. In his most famous work, OfGrammatology
( 1967), Derrida spoke of
the concept of the trace that is at the center of the latest work by
Emmanuel Levinas and his critique of ontology . . . which has
determined the meaning of being as presence and the meaning of
language as full continuity ofspeech. (OG 70)
The indications are such that Derrida came to see the trace as a way
of moderating the dependence on the ontological tradition. The trace is
not a sign in the conventional sense in that it does not refer to either a
concept or an extra-linguistic entity (e.g., a tree). Rather, it refers to
56
Diachrony
Another way in which the trace operates in Levinas's work is in
terms of what is called "diachrony" (literally, "across time"). Levinas
suggests that I and the Other are not related to each other in the same
time. Understood in classical phenomenological terms (Husserl's
"internal time consciousness"), time consists of a series of now
moments that are represented within consciousness by way of memory
(retention) or anticipation (protention). Levinas 's understanding of the
time of the Other is radically at odds with this picture. The Other
cannot be recalled or anticipated in that he or she is never presented (or
represented) to consciousness as such. The Other belongs to an "anarchic" (in the etymological sense) time that Levinas calls a "past that
was never present." In saying this, Levinas wishes to draw attention to
the fact that I find myself commanded by the Other and responsible for
him or her prior to consciousness:
1/leity
Levinas asserts that the trace is also the trace of God. This may
sound like a traditional claim to make inasmuch as it seeks to unite
ethics and religion, but it is a most unusual variant of Divine Command
Theory. This is because for Levinas ethics consists in following God's
commands paradoxically prior to my hearing t~e command. "I find the
order in my response itself' (OB 150). The command to respond to the
Other with responsibility presents itself only after the event ("as in a
prayer in which the worshipper asks that his prayer to be heard" [OB
I 0]). God thus appears to me in the form of a trace, which is the face of
the Other-simultaneously "a trace of itself' and "the trace of the
infinite" (OB 91 ). Levin as calls this way of relating to the Infinite by
way of the face "illeity" ("illeite," a neologism in French, literally
meaning "he-ness" in the sense of the unacquainted third person):
the dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face . .. .
our relation with {God] is an ethical behavior and not theology. . .
. There can be no "knowledge" of God separated from the
relationship with men. (TJ 78)
This clearly shows that Levinas is concerned to rethink religion in
58
59
6
Responsibility
Responsibility
that I am constantly "exposed" to the Other.
Sensibility
Proximity
In Totality and Infinity, Levin as spoke mostly of the ethical relation
as a relationship of separation and distance: "Metaphysics approaches
without touching" (TI I 09). However, it seems that Levinas eventually
became dissatisfied with such a description, which could be seen to
invite the misunderstanding that ethics is constituted by vision and
theory (from Greek, theorein, to look at, as in a "theater"). In his later
writings Levinas thus tends to speak of the ethical relation not as a
relation of separation and distance, but that of proximity and contact.
"Contact" here does not mean either the caress or the palpation (the
method of"feeling" with the hands used during physical examinations).
It signifies an immediate attachment to the Other wherein I am no
longer free to move away or sever ties, as though the Other were under
my skin. This is not meant to imply ethics consists of a fusion between
us. We remain different in our cores. The immediacy of proximity
suggests that I remain firmly within the relation, living it in such a way
60
Responsibility
Responsibility
41-4) in abject poverty gives more than does the bourgeois who donates
ten measly dollars to the Salvation Army every Christmas.
Freedom
Passivity
We mentioned earlier when examining Totality and Infinity that the
ethical relation is not enacted in full freedom . It is not autonomy as
Kant defined it. This becomes clearer the more we recognize that the
ethical relation is constituted via sensibility prior to consciousness.
According to Kant, sensibility is passive in that it is the faculty of
receiving sensory intuitions; understanding, on the other hand, is
spontaneous or active, and is the faculty of synthesizing these intuitions
by bringing them under concepts. Levinas similarly construes
sensibility as passive, albeit radically so inasmuch as the Other who
affects me cannot be brought under concepts via the transcendental
operation of the understanding. The relation between the Other and me
is thus said to be "a passivity more passive than all passivity" (OB 14).
This notion of radical passivity is not meant to suggest that the
Other fully determines my actions or completely controls me . The
ethical relation may not be contracted in full freedom , but it is not
thereby to be thought of as coercion . While Levinas indeed denies that
the ethical relation is one of altruism constituted by full freedom , he
goes to some length to make it clear that it is not thereby part of the
determinist order of nature or natural necessity. Levinas tells us that
" responsibility for others could never mean altruistic will, instinct of
' natural benevolence"' (OB 111-2). "It is against nature, nonvoluntary" (OB 197 n. 27). The responsible relation with the Other is
outside the traditional opposition between free will and determinism .
Here then Levinas parts company with Sartre, for whom all relations
with the Other are a free project of the I, including love: "To will to
love and to love are one since to love is to choose oneself as loving by
assuming consciousness of loving" (Being and Nothingness, 462;
italics added) . In sharp contrast to Sartre, Levinas states, "the Good is
not presented to freedom ; it has chosen me before I have chosen it"
(OB Ill).
It is this passivity that quickly emerges as the locus for personal
identity or subjectivity. Capitalizing on the etymological kinship
between "subjection" and "subjectivity" (from Latin, sub, meaning
62
63
7
Substitution
Subjectivity
Principle and An-archy
The chapter "Substitution" opens with a quotation from the poem
"Praise of Distance" by Paul Celan.
64
Substitution
This line by Celan seems to suggest that the I attains its identity
only in relation to the Other- a "you" ("I am you"). This is not to say
that the identity of the I is completely destroyed. It is precisely this
paradoxical notion of self-identity- where the I exists only in relation
to the Other, but at the same time does not merge with the Other in a
relation of fusion- that Levinas wishes to describe and make sense of
in these pages.
Levinas tells us that the chief aim underlying his discussion of
substitution is to try to think "the Other-in-the-Same without thinking
the Other as an other Same" (OGW 80). He seeks to show how the self
attains its identity in a pre-reflective or non-cognitive relation with the
Other without that self-identity eliminating the radical difference
between the I and the Other. Although we saw above a similar thought
of relation when we surveyed the notions of sensibility and
responsibility, here these notions are presented in a far more severe and
challenging manner in order to underscore further the paradoxical
nature of subjectivity.
Levinas's main target of criticism in his discussion of substitution is
the modern epistemological and ontological tradition, stretching from
Kant and Hegel through Husser!. This tradition would have us
understand subjectivity as a consciousness capable of reducing every
encounter with alterity to thought. When a series of singular and
unrelated perceptions appear to consciousness, it is able to identify
them as its own through the use of language and concepts. Different
representations (and this would include both internal and external
perceptions) thus become transcendentally ideal phenomena. As such,
they can be re-presented to consciousness in such a way that they are
stripped of their otherness. In grasping beings across ideal structures
(e.g., the Kant ian a priori categories, the Hegelian "Concept"),
consciousness is thereby able to maintain itself in its identity and
remain fundamentally unaffected by the otherness of the beings it
encounters. It is this structure of identity that Levinas has in mind when
he refers to consciousness as "se lf-possession, sovereignty, arche"' (OB
99). The fundamental aim of consciousness is to achieve certainty
regarding beings. This aim predetermines the approach of
consciousness to everything it encounters, and ensures that it can never
be caught off guard. The drive toward certainty ensures that
Substitution
cannot be a complete surprise. (OB 99)
Levinas proposes an alternative to the account of subjectivity found
in the idealist tradition, one that does not reduce everything it
encounters to an operation of consciousness. As we have already seen
in our analysis of sensibility and proximity, the self is a "subj-ect"
precisely to the extent that it is subjected to the neediness of the Other.
It is in the radical passivity of proximity, in which the "I" is available to
the Other without taking the initiative, that the relationship with the
Other is formed outside of consciousness understood as arche (meaning
"principle," "beginning," or "origin"). It is, as Levinas likes to say,
literally an-archic. "Proximity is thus anarchically a relationship with a
singularity without the mediation of any principle, any ideality" (OB
100).
Substitution
responsibility, which has its ongms outside of consciousness, "take
place and have its time in consciousness?" (OB I 02)
Recurrence
66
67
Obsession
The proximity that gives rise to responsibility, then, cannot be
thematized. It operates at a different level than does vision, and can be
inferred only indirectly by way of the responsibility that it makes
possible. Proximity is an im-mediate (i.e., non-mediated) relation with
a singular Other who does not give me time to reflect on what is going
on between us. According to Levinas, it amounts to an "obsession," an
unwonted (and "unwanted"- for the Other is not an object of need)
preoccupation that disrupts the normal, sovereign functioning of the
ego qua consciousness. In obsession , consciousness's machinery is
jammed, its projects are derailed, and its quest for certainty is
interrupted. Again it is anarchy:
Substitution
Substitution
being responsible for the Other to the point of sacrificing oneself for
the Other. Levinas calls this situation of extreme abnegation and
sacrifice, in which the self takes upon itself the hardship its spares the
Other, the condition of being a "hostage."
Hostage
I owe my identity to the Other insofar as he or she makes me
responsible. Only I can answer for the Other, in which I become
irreplaceable. Responsibility is thus for Levinas the sole principium
individuationis ("a principle that uniquely identifies one individuai"Antony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy). Not ~hat I can ever escape
this responsibility for I can never fully escape myself. The Other
persecutes me, hunts me down, calls me back to my responsibilities,
which my natural egoism would rather ignore. Whereas the Sartrean
self attempts to evade the responsibility of choosing itself by choosing
to adopt the cloak of bad faith, responsibility for Levinas is the Nessus
tunic I cannot take off despite the pain it causes me.
68
"Here I am"
At the beginning of Genesis 22:7 God tests Abraham by demanding
that he sacrifice his son, Isaac:
And it came to pass after these things that God did test Abraham:
69
Substitution
Substitution
and he said hineni. ( Gen 22: I)
In Hebrew, hineni means "behold me" (in the grammatical case
called the "accusative"), which Levinas translates into French as "me
void' (in English the standard translation is "here I am"). It is as
though Abraham knew himself to be under an obligation (or
accusation) without a why or a wherefore.
We should here issue a caveat that Levinas only applauds
Abraham's willingness to follow the Other's (God's) commands
unconditionally. Levinas does not agree with Kierkegaard who in Fear
and Trembling presents the story as a " teleological suspension of the
ethical." For Levinas the story of Abraham and Isaac does not show
that the ethical can be transcended by the religious imperative. On the
contrary, he argues that Abraham's failure to kill his son precisely
confirms the sanctity of ethics and the prohibition against murder.
According to Levinas, it is not God (or the angel) who intercedes on
Isaac's behalf, which is how the story is usually understood, but Isaac
himself. "Abraham's attentiveness to the voice that led him back to the
ethical order, forbidding him to perform a human sacrifice, is the
highest point in the drama" (PN 77).
Levinas admits that to hold a person accountable for faults he or she
did not commit is from philosophical point of view "simply demented"
(OB 113). But we should be clear that Levinas is not saying that
everybody is responsible without guilt. On the contrary, he makes a
point of stipulating that
philosophers is that the Other only has the right to demand what is his
or her legal due, and that anything he or she receives beyond that is
purely optional and a matter of private philanthropy on the part of the
benefactor. It has to be said time and again that Levinas is entirely
opposed to that way of conceiving ethics. For him, the self has no such
choice in the matter. Levinas further explains this point in his reply to
the classical questions raised in the name of egoism and moral
skepticism :
Hobbesianism
70
71
Substitution
with Hobbes that the self is naturally indifferent to the Other, whose
face is required to interrupt its natural egoism and tendency to put itself
first. Levinas does not deny the banality of egoism exists; he simply
contests the assumption that egoism is "earlier" than ethics. For
Levinas, ethics in the sense of the relationship of responsibility to the
Other is just as early as- if not earlier than-egoism.
Levinas sums up this and his whole discussion of substitution in the
following :
72
A Conflict of Duties
The Limit of Responsibility
In Chapter 5 of Otherwise than Being, in the section entitled "From
Saying to the Said, or the Wisdom of Desire," Levinas draws attention
to the "contradiction" (08 157) that arises in ethics when due
consideration is given to the third party, also present at the encounter:
"The third party introduces a contradiction in the saying whose
signification before the other until then went in one direction" (08
73
74
Just Violence
Punishment
The problem of justice is exacerbated- enormously so- when we
consider the situation in which the Other is the oppressor of the third
party. Most of us agree that society could not exist without some sort of
criminal justice system that imposes sanctions in the form of
punishments on those individuals who disobey the law and violate the
rights of others. Such punitive measures are sometimes given a
retributive rationale, or else they are justified in terms of restraint,
rehabilitation, or deterrence. But how is punishment justified from a
Levinasian point or view? How in the concern for justice is it possible
to justify punitive and repressive measures- violence of sorts- when
75
the face would appear express ly to forbid them . Does not Levinas
describe the face in terms of its resistance to violence?
Things would be relatively straightforward if the Other had si mpl y
forfeited his or her rights as a face through infringing on the rights of
the third party. That would be the traditional liberal response, but it is
not Levinas's. When asked in an interview whether an SS officer has a
face, and thus "a right to a defense and respect," Levinas replied: "a
very troubling question that ca lls. to my mind, for an affirmative
answer. An affirmative answer that is painful every time!" ("A quoi
pensent les philosophes?" Autrement I 02 [ 1988]: 59; personal
translation).
Nazism
How then does Levinas justify punishing and repressing the face,
for example, that of a Nazi? Does not the sanctity and inviolability of
the human face make vio lence impossible to justify? In a short article
denouncing the death penalty entitl ed "An Eye for an Eye," Levinas
appeared to concede as much: "violence calls up violence, but we must
put a stop to this cha in reaction" (OF 147) . But if that is true, how is it
possible to serve justice, which sometimes requires us to do violence in
defense of the third party?
Levinas is not a pacifist. "Unquestionably," he writes, "violent
action against Evi l is necessary" (NT I 09). This is perhaps contrary to
what one might expect when first reading Levinas and the high ethical
premium he puts on the face , but totally understandable when we
realize that he lived through th e horrors of WWII, which resulted in the
murder of his birth fami ly by the Nazis. For Levinas, there can be no
question of refusing violence outright for the si mple reason that the
type of pacifism Jesus advanced in the Sermon on the Mount ("not to
resist one who is evi l" and "to turn the other cheek" [Matt. 5:39-40])
appears to have done litt le, if anything, to stem the tide of blood of the
last two-thousand years. " If I am vio lent," Levinas writes citing a
Jewish source. "it is because vio lence is needed to put an end to
violence" (NT 114).
But note that Levinas seeks to defend the use of violence only
insofar as it is abso lutely necessary for justice. It is the third party, and
my ob ligations to him or her, that justify using violence against the
Other. An important implication of this is that it makes it unethical to
defend oneself without reference to the third party. It is not that I am
76
Patience
It must not be thought that in rejecting the doctrine of non-violence,
Levinas is insensitive to the risks involved in using violence to combat
violence. According to Levinas, the biggest problem facing justice is
not that of seizing the evil-doer, but of making sure that the innocent do
not suffer in the process. In Otherwise than Being, we are told:
77
Charity
We have seen how when faced with the problem of justice there is a
sense in which one is always in the wrong. If I carry out my duty to the
Other to the letter, then I am remiss in my duty to the third party. If, on
the other hand, I do my duty to the third party, I not only renege on my
responsibilities to the Other, but also risk making the innocent suffer. It
would theref ore seem that a certain violence is inevitable. The best I
can hope for is to attenuate the violence as much as possible. Such is
the role assigned to what Levinas calls "charity" following justice. In
an interview conducted in 1986, Levinas said :
Justice, society, the State and its institutions, exchanges and work
are comprehensible out of proximity. This means that nothing is
outside of the control of the responsibility of the one for the other.
It is important to recover all these forms beginning with proximity,
in which being, totality, the State, politics, techniques, work are at
every moment on the point of having their center of gravity in
themselves, and weighing on their own account. (OB 159)
In the measure that the presence of the third party gives rise to the
necessities of justice, understood as the weighing and comparison of
terms that are unique and incomparable, involving calculation,
conceptualization, and knowledge, the third party can be said to justify
ontology. "In the comparison of the incomparable there would be the
latent birth of representation, logos, consciousness, work, the neutral
notion: being" (OB 158). This is perhaps the most radical thesis
80
81
Conclusion:
The Future of
Levinas Studies
83
1 :1
Conclusion
theory to push Levinas 's philosophy in directions he himself failed to
go, or to point out important limitations in his work.
To take but a few examples, the recent phenomena of globalization
and multiculturalism have provoked some authors to consider the role
that Levinas ' s writings on politics and justice might play in the
construction of a radical and global democracy. Levinas's
uncompromising stance on the ethical duty to help those who are
hungry and suffering, coupled with his acute insight into the logics of
racism and imperialism, promise to add an important and sometimes
much needed ethical dimension to existing debates on these topics.
Similarly, recent advances in medicine and technology have raised a
whole host of ethical issues for which Levinas 's thought might provide
insightful answers. How might Levinas ' s thought shed light on debates
over human cloning, genetic therapy, and abortion? Is the question
concerning technology purely ontological, as Heidegger argued, or
does it have an ethical meaning? Can Levinas's notion of the face-toface help explain the efficacy of psychotherapeutic practice and the
"talking cure"? Many authors have also begun to explore the
implications of Levinas's thinking for current trends in environmental
philosophy and politics. Although most critics agree that Levinas did
not give animals or the natural environment their due regard, there are
nevertheless several aspects of Levinas 's thinking that many critics
consider useful for the development of an environmental ethic. Along
these lines, some scholars have argued that Levinas ' s analyses of the
face of the Other should be extended to include the faces of non-human
animals, and others have suggested that his notions of singularity and
responsivity might be rethought so as to include a certain responsibility
and respect for all life forms.
It is the opinion of the authors of this volume that the best work on
Levinas is still to come. This is something Levinas would indeed
welcome, fond as he was of Nietzsche's dictum from Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Part I ("On Love of the Neighbor"):
Let the future of the farthest be for you the cause ofyour today. (Z,
62; quoted CP 93)
Levinas 's star may not have arisen in his own lifetime to the
Empyrean heights of some of his French contemporaries, such as
Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, and Derrida, but it might take longer for it
to be extinguished from the philosophical firmament.
84
Glossary
Glossary
Glossary
75).
Face-to-face: "A relation whose terms do not form a totality can hence
be produced within the economy of being only as proceeding from the I
to the other, as a face to face" (TI 39).
Feminine: "Feminine alterity is situated on another plane than
language and nowise represents a truncated, stammering, still
elementary language. On the contrary, the discretion of this presence
includes all the possibilities of the transcendent relationship with the
Other. . . . This is a new and irreducible possibility, a delightful lapse in
being, and the source of gentleness itself' (TI 155).
Good : "Goodness consists in taking up a position such that the Other
counts more than myself' (TI 247).
,.
Hatred: "The one who hates seeks to be the cause of a suffering to
which the despised being must bear witness .. . . Whence the insatiable
character of hatred; it is satisfied precisely when it is not satisfied, since
the Other satisfies it only by becoming an object, but can never become
object enough, since at the same time as his fall, his lucidity and
. witness are demanded. In this lies the logical absurdity of hatred" (TI
239).
History: "History is worked over by the ruptures in history, in which a
judgment is borne upon it. When a man truly approaches the other he is
uprooted from history" (TI 52).
Hostage: "Strictly speaking, the other is the end; I am a hostage, a
responsibility and a substitution supporting the whole world in the
passivity of assignation, even in an accusing persecution, which is
undeclinable" (08 128).
Illeity: "The infinite who orders me is neither a cause acting straight
on, nor a theme, already dominated, if only retrospectively, by freedom.
This detour at a face and this detour from this detour in the enigma of a
trace we have called 'illeity.' llleity lies outside the "thou" and the
thematization of objects. A neologism formed with if (he) or ille, it
indicates a way of concerning me without entering into conjunction
with me" (08 12).
Language: "Absolute difference, inconceivable in terms of formal
logic, is established only as language . .. . Words are said, be it only in
the silence kept, whose weight acknowledges the evasion of the Other.
The knowledge that absorbs the Other is forthwith situated within the
discourse I address to him. Speaking rather than 'letting be,' solicits the
Other. Speech cuts across vision" (TI 195).
Logic: "The relationship between me and the Other does not have the
86
87
Glossary
Glossary
the said" (TI 195).
Saying: "This 'saying to the Other'- this relationship with the Other as
interlocutor, this relation with an existent- precedes all ontology; it is
the ultimate relation in being" (TI 48).
Self: "Perhaps the possibility of a point of the universe where such an
overflow of responsibility is produced ultimately defines the I" (TI
244).
Sensibility: "Only a subject that eats can be for-the-other, or can
signify. Signification, the one-for-the-other, has meaning only among
beings of flesh and blood . ... The immediacy of the sensible is the
immediacy of enjoyment and its frustration . It is the gift painfully tom
up, and in the tearing up, immediately a spoiling of this very
enjoyment. It is not a gift of the heart, but of the bread from one's
mouth, of one 's own mouthful of bread. It is the ppenness, not only of
one's pocketbook, but the doors of one's home, a 'sharing of your
bread with the famished,' a ' welcoming of the wretched into your
house' (Isaiah 58). The immediacy of sensibility is the for-the-other of
one's own materiality; it is the immediacy or the proximity of the other.
The proximity of the other is the immediate opening up for the other of
the immediacy of enjoyment, the immediacy of taste, materialization of
matter, altered by the immediacy of contact" (OB 74).
Subject: "The self is a sub-jectum ; it is under the weight of the
universe, responsible for everything. The unity of the universe is not
what my gaze embraces in its unity of apperception, but what is
incumbent on me from all sides, regards me in two senses of the term,
is my affair. In this sense, the idea that I am sought out in the
interstellar spaces is not a fiction of science-fiction, but expresses my
passivity as a self' (OB 116).
Substitution : "It is because in the approach there is inscribed or written
the trace of infinity, the trace of a departure, but [also] the trace of what
is inordinate, [of what] does not enter into the present, and inverts the
arche into anarchy, that there is forsakenness of the other, obsession by
him, responsibility and a self. The non-interchangeable par excellence,
the I, the unique one, substitutes itself for others" (OB 117).
The Third Party: "If proximity ordered me to the other alone, there
would not have been any problem, in even the most general sense of
the term. A question would not have been born, nor consciousness, nor
self-consciousness. The responsibility for the other is an immediacy
antecedent to questions, it is proximity. It is troubled and becomes a
problem when a third party enters" (OB 157).
88
89
Bibliography
Bibliography
IR
KS
NT
Abbreviations
BK
08
BT
OG
BP
OGW
OF
PL
CM
PN
CP
SB
EE
SS
El
Tl
EO
TO
WD
90
91
Bibliography
Bibliography
The Levinas Reader. Ed. by Sean Hand. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
The Theory of Intuition in Husser/'s Phenomenology. Trans. Andre
Orianne. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Time and the Other. Trans. Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 1987.
Totality and Infinity. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 1969.
92
93
Bibliography
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Bernasconi, Robert and David Wood, eds. The Provocation of Levinas:
Rethinking the Other. London : Routledge, 1988.
Chanter, Tina, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas.
University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 200 I .
Cohen, Richard A. Exegesis and Philosophy: Interpretation After
Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Cohen, Richard A., ed. Face to Face with Levina:s. Albany: SUNY,
1986.
Critchley, Simon. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Critchley, Simon and Robert Bernasconi, eds. The Cambridge
Companion to Levinas. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Derrida, Jacques. Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999.
Katz, Claire, ed. Critical Assessments: Emmanuel Levinas, 4 vols.
London: Routledge, 2004.
Llewelyn, John . Emmanuel Levinas: Th~ Genealogy of Ethics. London:
Routledge, 1995.
Peperzak, Adriaan T. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy
of Emmanuel Levinas. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press,
1993 .
Peperzak, Adriaan T., ed. Ethics as FirsJ Philosophy: The Significance
of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion. New
York: Routledge, 1995.
Wyschogrod, Edith. Emmanuel Levims: The Problem of Ethical
Metaphysics. The Hague: Nijhoff, 197-t.
94