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Aspects of Alterity
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Series Board James Bernauer Drucilla Cornell Thomas R. Flynn Kevin Hart Jean-Luc Marion Adriaan Peperzak Richard Kearney Thomas Sheehan Hent de Vries Merold Westphal Edith Wyschogrod Michael Zimmerman
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John D. Caputo, series editor
P ERSPECTIVES IN C ONTINENTAL P HILOSOPHY
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BRIAN TREANOR
Aspects of Alterity Levinas, Marcel, and the Contemporary Debate
F O R D HA M U N IV ER SI TY P R E S S New York
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Copyright 䉷 2006 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Treanor, Brian. Aspects of alterity : Levinas, Marcel, and the contemporary debate / Brian Treanor. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Perspectives in continental philosophy ; 54) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8232-2684-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8232-2684-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Other (Philosophy) 2. Le´vinas, Emmanuel. 3. Marcel, Gabriel, 1889–1973. I. Title. BN213.T74 2006 194—dc22 2006036537 Printed in the United States of America 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1 First edition
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For Gitty, Darya, and Ciara
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The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible . . . Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
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Contents
Acknowledgments
xi
1
The Question of Otherness
1
2
Emmanuel Levinas
11
3
Gabriel Marcel
52
4
Transcendental Philosophy
92
5
Concrete Philosophy
122
6
The Other and God
150
7
The Nature of Otherness
196
Notes
271
Selected Bibliography
339
Index
349
ix
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Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many other people. I wish to thank the professors who helped to inspire, shape, and encourage my own enthusiasm for philosophy. The faculty members of California State University, Long Beach, and Boston College were uniformly helpful and supportive, especially Daniel Guerrie`re, Richard Cobb-Stevens, and Jacques Taminiaux. Richard Kearney has, in addition to being an exceptional teacher and mentor, been a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. My friends and colleagues in the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology have provided a forum in which to develop these ideas. Jack Caputo and Merold Westphal have been particularly helpful and supportive; both have encouraged me through numerous small gestures that, while no doubt common and unremarkable from their perspectives, were from my perspective the occasion for important insights. My graduate assistants at Loyola Marymount University, Bob Robinson, Tim Chatman, and Gabriel Griffith, were instrumental in helping me to proofread and prepare the manuscript. Brad Stone, James Taylor, and Thomas Whaling provided helpful feedback as well; their input was much appreciated. This project was brought to completion with the generous support of a Summer Research Grant
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from Loyola Marymount University and a Book Subvention Grant from the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts. Most importantly, I want to thank my wife, Gitty—to whom, along with my daughters, Darya and Ciara, this work is dedicated. Her love, encouragement, and patience during the long process of bringing this work to completion have been indispensable. In addition, I wish to thank Helen Tartar, Jack Caputo, and the staff at Fordham University Press for their support of this project and their work on my behalf. Finally, my thanks to the various journals and publishers who have allowed me to include sections of previously published material in this book. Part of chapter 2 appeared as ‘‘Gabriel Marcel,’’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab), http://plato.stanford.edu/ (2004). Portions of chapter 6 appeared previously in my ‘‘God and the Other Person: Levinas’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Otherness,’’ in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001). Elements of chapter 7 appeared in ‘‘The God Who May Be: Quis ergo amo cum Deum meum amo?’’ in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 60 (2004), reprinted in After God, ed. John Manoussakis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); ‘‘Plus de Secret: The Paradox of Prayer,’’ in The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); ‘‘Judging the Other: Beyond Toleration,’’ in Interpretando la experiencia de la tolerancia [Interpreting the Experience of Tolerance], ed. Rodrigo Ferradas (Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Cato´lica del Peru´/Fondo Editorial, 2006); and ‘‘Constellations: Gabriel Marcel’s Philosophy of Relative Otherness,’’ in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2006).
xii
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1
The Question of Otherness
After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘‘Abraham!’’ And he said, ‘‘Here I am.’’ He said, ‘‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’’ Genesis 22:1–3 Silently he arranged the firewood and bound Isaac; silently he drew the knife—then he saw the ram that God had selected. This he sacrificed and went home. –––––– From that day henceforth, Abraham was old; he could not forget that God had ordered him to do this. Isaac flourished as before, but Abraham’s eyes were darkened, and he saw joy no more. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
We are told that our postmodern age is characterized by the breakdown of Grand (or ‘‘Master’’) Narratives, the overarching systems that allow us to make sense of the world as a unified whole, as a cosmos rather than a chaos. In his famous report on knowledge, Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard asserts that ‘‘incredulity toward metanarratives’’ is the very definition of postmodernity.1 Without recourse to these guiding narratives, we find ourselves in a situation of paralogy, confronted by a host of ‘‘petite narratives.’’ These petite narratives express diverse perspectives and frequently take part in incommen1
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surable ‘‘language games,’’ each of which is as (il)legitimate as the next. Without a comprehensive narrative that allows us to understand the world, we begin to lose sense of our own place in the world; therefore, the demise of the Grand Narrative also leads to crises of identity and legitimation. Likewise, in the absence of a Grand Narrative, we are unable to confidently place the various others we encounter in a system that allows us to make accurate judgments about them. Thus, our contemporary situation confronts us with unnerving fundamental questions that threaten to undo twenty-five hundred years of philosophy, not to mention several thousand more years of theology, mythology, and folklore. How can I understand the world? How can I understand myself? How can I understand others? There have never been easy answers to these questions, but the current philosophical climate makes them even more disturbing, for it calls into question the very possibility of an answer, replacing ‘‘How can I know . . . ?’’ with the more radical ‘‘Can I know . . . ?’’ The death of the Grand Narrative and the host of questions that follow its demise like giants rising from the spilled blood of Uranus are tied directly to what may be called ‘‘the question of otherness.’’ This is because otherness is precisely what Grand Narratives seek to do away with. Anything unknown—that is, anything foreign, novel, surprising, disturbing, or otherwise resistant to the neat categories of the Narrative—challenges the comprehensiveness of the Narrative. Grand Narratives will not tolerate otherness; their motto is ‘‘a place for everything and everything in its place.’’ However, the demise of Grand Narratives leaves open the possibility that some things do not have a neat and tidy place within a comprehensive system. Or, more accurately, it is the intractability of otherness itself that defies such neat and tidy categorization, slaying the Grand Narrative. In the most basic sense, the question of otherness asks us to consider what it means for something or someone to be other than the self; however, the question is more frequently asked in terms of our ability or inability to understand some particular example of otherness. Abraham’s journey to Mount Moriah, evoked in the epigraphs above, is just one example of a conflict that arises out of a confrontation with otherness.2 What do we do when a voice from the desert calls us to murder? The four interpretations that Kierkegaard gives the story of Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling testify to the difficulty of understanding the conflicts that can arise when we are confronted with otherness. Abraham is forced to choose between two fidelities, between his love of Isaac and his duty to God (a sort of 2
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justice). Each of Kierkegaard’s interpretations of this story points to the challenge and potential traumatism associated with an encounter with otherness: Isaac keeps faith in God but believes his father is an idolater and a monster; Abraham cannot forgive God for asking him to sacrifice Isaac; Abraham cannot forgive himself for his willingness to sacrifice Isaac; and, finally, Isaac loses his faith.3 Faced with a choice between conflicting, mutually exclusive obligations, we are forced to affirm one ideal over the other and in so doing we betray the ideal that, or the other who, we do not affirm. So in addition to the disorientation associated with an encounter with otherness (that is, with something that does not fit neatly into our categories of understanding), the question of otherness also confronts us with a unique ethical challenge. How should we respond to the arrival of the other—whether that other is a voice in the desert, the voice of the unconscious, or the voice of the widow, orphan, or stranger? How we respond to the arrival of the other depends, in large measure, on how we think of otherness itself. Thus, the question of otherness does not require that we undertake an exhaustive examination of all the places we encounter otherness. The question of otherness asks what otherness itself is. What does it mean to encounter something that or someone who is other? The Traditional View of Otherness One way to look at the question of otherness is as a version of Meno’s Paradox. This celebrated problem arises when Meno asks Socrates how it is possible to encounter or discover something that is not already known: ‘‘How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?’’4 Socrates replies by revealing the doctrine of anamnesis—‘‘as the soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned’’—responding to Meno’s question about otherness with the answer that nothing is truly other.5 Socrates’ reply to Meno is in fact illustrative of how otherness is viewed in the Western tradition. Generally speaking, the Western philosophical tradition has thought of otherness as something to be conquered. As Aristotle points out, ‘‘all men by nature desire to know.’’6 Thus, when confronted with otherness, scientists, explorers, The Question of Otherness
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philosophers, and theologians have generally attempted to analyze the foreign phenomenon in order to learn something—indeed ultimately everything—about it. This almost invariably entails placing the other within a system where it can be understood in juxtaposition to other elements of the system. When confronted with something unknown, we tend to relate to it by asking ourselves where and how it ‘‘fits’’ among all the other things we already know. Otherness is thought in juxtaposition to, or in the terms of, the same; otherness is other-than-the-same. The goal is to convert something unknown (other) into something known. As William James points out, rationality encourages us to eliminate the ‘‘unease’’ and ‘‘perplexity’’ associated with a lack of understanding, replacing it with the ‘‘relief and pleasure’’ of rational comprehension.7 Perplexity is converted to relief by the shortest path possible, that is, by ‘‘preserving the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification.’’8 We are much more likely to alter a new phenomenon to fit the mosaic of our worldview than we are to abandon our worldview because a new phenomenon does not fit. Historically this tendency toward comprehension and systematic thinking manifests itself in the philosophic primacy accorded to ontology or metaphysics. On the face of it this ordering seems to make sense, for the nature of our reality and what we are capable of knowing about it would seem to dictate in no small measure how we should go about our existence in it—including our ethical, social, and political relationships with each other. Or, in James’s terms, it makes sense to pin down the more fundamental pieces of knowledge first, the better to avoid unnecessary or extensive modification of one’s truths at a later date. On the basis of this common-sense logic, metaphysics has, at least since Aristotle, been honored with the position of prima philosophia. First we figure out what is and what we can know of what is, then we address the ‘‘details’’ such as ethics. The Provocation of Levinas With very few exceptions, the primacy of ontology and metaphysics—sometimes implicit, often explicit—proceeded unchecked as the Western philosophical tradition developed. However, a philosophical revolution of sorts began in 1971—well before the 1979 publication of La Condition postmoderne—with Emmanuel Levinas’s Totalite´ et infini and his astounding claim that ‘‘ethics is first philosophy.’’9 Fundamentally, Levinas’s philosophical revolution was inspired by a con4
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cern for otherness. Rather than seeking to eliminate otherness by grasping it and analyzing it in order to reduce it to a known quantity, his philosophy seeks to preserve the otherness of the other and to respect the difference that distinguishes the other from the self. Levinas maintains that, in order to encounter the other as other, we must encounter the other on her terms rather than ours. Otherness must be absolute, that is, ‘‘other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other.’’10 Levinas’s arguments assert that philosophies based on ontological foundations do not allow the self to encounter anything truly foreign, anything other than that which merely orbits the self as a satellite. Whether it is Platonic anamnesis, Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, or Heidegger’s clearing of Being, all philosophy ultimately thinks the other in terms of the same and thereby absorbs the other into the same. Encountering the other on our terms rather than as other profoundly affects ethics, politics, theology, and all the other relationships between the self and an other. If the other is merely a satellite of the same—and, therefore, is not really other at all—it no longer makes sense to speak of these encounters in terms of a relationship to an other, for all relationships are ultimately solipsistic. This, in turn, means that ethics cannot be properly thought beginning with ontology—because ontology cannot encounter the other qua other— rather, ontology must be thought beginning from ethics if the other is to remain other. Ethics is first philosophy. Marcel and Levinas Despite his radical originality, Levinas’s thought is not without precedent in the philosophical tradition, nor does it lack confederates in its concern for the other person. First, while generally critical of the philosophical tradition of the West, Levinas gives credit to those thinkers who came before him and glimpsed, however fleetingly, the truth he was trying to articulate. Second, within the span of his own life, Levinas’s thought enjoyed significant popularity, and today there are certainly many who have been strongly influenced by his work, even if they do not consider themselves ‘‘Levinasians.’’ Thus, Levinas could look to both those who in some sense anticipated his thought and to those who, influenced by his philosophy, took up his cause. However, Levinas also was in the interesting position of having to come to terms with contemporaries whose thought appeared to operate in the spirit of his own while remaining fundamentally incompatiThe Question of Otherness
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ble with it. Such philosophers, including Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel, challenge Levinas insofar as they announce the possibility that Levinas’s philosophical goal—protecting the otherness of the other—might be accomplished without his philosophical method, which turned twenty-five hundred years of philosophy on its head. In what follows, it will become clear that many aspects of Marcel’s philosophy appear astonishingly close to Levinas’s. Indeed, it would be difficult to read Levinas and Marcel in succession and not feel that there were somehow a covert alliance between their philosophies. Both men clearly philosophize in a manner that is in some sense a response to a call originating from the other. Responding to a call, both naturally view philosophy as a vocation, and it is difficult to deny that the similarities between their philosophies result from the similarity of their vocations. Marcel insists, pace James, that we must think of philosophy as a vocation that is not about the self-centered quest to ‘‘pass from a state of perplexity or turmoil into a state of equilibrium,’’ but rather one that concerns itself with others, to whom the philosopher is bound by ‘‘a fraternal tie.’’11 Levinas’s own thought is characterized by its focus on the call of the other and the resulting effect on the self, and he is quick to acknowledge the parallels between Marcel’s vocation and his own: I would like to examine chiefly to what extent the thought expressed in [Marcel’s] work, contrasting sharply with the style of philosophy handed down to [him], responds to the vocation of philosophy, how it renews it, and more specifically how the traditional privilege of ontology is affected by this new approach, in which the source and the model for the meaningful are sought in interhuman relations.12 However, if Levinas and Marcel appear to be allies at first glance, a closer look reveals several fundamental differences that prevent any easy alliance between their philosophies. Clearly Marcel’s dialogical, intersubjective philosophy is responding to a call from the other, and thus responds to a calling similar to Levinas’s. The question, however, is whether or not Marcel’s response to the call of the other overcomes the ontological domination of the same pervasive in the tradition. Marcel hears the call of the other, but does he respond in a manner radical enough to break the grip of a tradition that ignores, marginalizes, or dominates the other? Despite his initially favorable reading of Marcel’s work, Levinas goes on to conclude that Marcel remains too firmly ontological to 6
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accompany him in his philosophical revolution, and many scholars agree with this assessment. Levinas’s philosophical claim is so original that other philosophies contemporaneous with or preceding it are generally thought to be incompatible with it. No one before him had quite seen the import of the question of the priority of ethics or ontology and, therefore, most other philosophers remained squarely within the ontological camp. In spite of the parallels between Levinas and Marcel—or perhaps because of them—Paul Ricoeur warns us that ‘‘[ce serait vain] de se demander quelle position Gabriel Marcel prendrait aujourd’hui entre Heidegger et Le´vinas sur la question de savoir si l’ontologie peut se constituer sans e´thique ou l’e´thique sans ontologie.’’13 Given this warning, it would seem that re-opening a dialogue between Marcel and Levinas on the topic of otherness—which is my intent—would be misguided at best; such a dialogue cannot avoid the question of ontology and ethics, and Ricoeur cautions that Marcel and Levinas are engaged in different endeavors with respect to this question. In attempting to invert the traditional priority of ontology over ethics, Levinas questions which of these is more primordial or fundamental, that is, which is prima philosophia. However, for Marcel, ‘‘e´thique et ontologie se nouent.’’14 In addition to divergent views on the legitimacy of ontology, Levinas and Marcel differ in terms of philosophical method. Levinas philosophizes in a way that ‘‘resembles what has come to be called the transcendental method’’ while Marcel remains resolutely rooted in the concrete, ‘‘working . . . up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, [in order to] throw more light upon life.’’15 Although neither thinker fits into a neat philosophical category, it is fair to say that Levinas and Marcel are differentiated in a general way by their respective affinities for the transcendental and the empirical. Ultimately, however, the biggest obstacle to rapprochement between these two philosophers is their differing positions with respect to the question of otherness. Levinas’s challenge to the tradition rests firmly on his claim that the other is absolutely other. Marcel demonstrates a similar concern for the other; however, he does so from the perspective of a philosophy that views otherness in decidedly nonabsolute terms. This is why, although Levinas sees promise in Marcel’s non-objectivizing, dialogical approach, he ultimately finds Marcel too mired in a tradition that limits and violates otherness. Despite the similarity of their philosophic callings, their different views of otherness ultimately result in philosophies that are incommensurable. The Question of Otherness
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Apparently minor gaps widen into a perhaps unbridgeable gulf. On one level, this should not be unexpected; remember the pervasive effect that one’s view of otherness has on one’s philosophy. For example, it is quite clear that Levinas and Marcel attach priority to different kinds of relationships with the other. In a very general sense, it would be fair to say that Levinas’s ideal intersubjective relationship is ‘‘justice’’ while Marcel’s ideal relationship is closer to ‘‘love.’’16 This priority, however, is a direct result of each philosopher’s understanding of otherness. When otherness is thought in absolute, all-or-nothing terms, it encourages us to think of preserving the otherness of the other as a primary goal. On this reading, the proper response to otherness is not to question the other—for if otherness is absolute, understanding the other is out of the question—but to maintain distance and to respect the difference of the other. Because of the focus on maintaining differences and distance between the self and the other, philosophies of absolute otherness tend to focus on justice in one form or another as the model relationship with otherness. ‘‘This is the primary sociality: the personal relation is in the rigor of justice that judges me and not in love that excuses me.’’17 Otherness is to be respected. No trespassing! Good fences make good neighbors. In contrast, when otherness is thought of in relative terms, understanding the other is not necessarily either violent or quixotic. The difference between the self and the other is not absolute, and so there is no ethical imperative to preserve absolute difference. Thus, Marcel’s non-absolute view of otherness leads to a philosophy that puts a premium on intimacy and participation. If otherness is merely relative, understanding the other is a possibility and the ethical concern becomes one of trying to understand better (in both the veridical sense of ‘‘more truly’’ and in the ethical sense of ‘‘in the proper way’’). Because of the emphasis on bridging distance and understanding, philosophies of relative otherness tend to take love, rather than justice, as the model for relating to others. ‘‘However strange it may seem to our minds, it is possible for there to be an unconditional love of creature for creature—a gift which will not be revoked.’’18 Responding to a calling similar to Levinas’s, Marcel’s philosophy claims to be able to think otherness in non-absolute terms and, nevertheless, remain fundamentally respectful of the other as other.19 So, we are confronted with two thinkers who both claim to be answering a call originating in the other with a philosophy that respects the other, but who author philosophies that nevertheless remain in8
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commensurable, even incompatible. In our postmodern condition, where the question of otherness daily takes on greater and greater importance, how should we think of the other? Is otherness absolute or relative? Should justice or love take priority in our relationship with others? Should we seek to maintain separation or to enrich our understanding? What follows is an investigation into the question of otherness, that is, into the nature of what it means for something or someone to be other than the self. Despite the obstacles and warnings, I will begin with analyses of the philosophies of Levinas and Marcel. Levinas’s importance for contemporary philosophy is widely acknowledged; Marcel, although long neglected by contemporary philosophy, is a thinker well worth rehabilitating into the contemporary discourse. These two thinkers are not only excellent representatives of two different ways of thinking otherness, but they each exert influence on the way in which the question of otherness is construed today. Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to a close study of Levinas and Marcel respectively. Focusing on intersubjectivity, but without losing sight of otherness itself or of the relationships of justice and love that I have claimed are so illustrative, these chapters lay the foundation for what follows by grounding the potentially abstract discussion of otherness in the work of two important philosophers. Chapter 4 takes up some important critiques of Marcel, and chapter 5 turns the same critical eye to Levinas. In keeping with one of the important differences between Levinas and Marcel, these chapters focus on transcendental and empirical problems respectively. These middle chapters help to clarify each philosopher’s position and raise important objections to each view of otherness. By the end of chapter 5 we will find ourselves confronted with two entrenched positions. Having examined their convergences and divergences, it is prudent to ask why two philosophers who have a great deal in common—they are contemporaries, French speaking, educated in the traditions of the West, not to mention responding to vocations that are remarkably similar—end up authoring incommensurable philosophies. At this point it will have become abundantly clear that their divergent views of otherness are what lead to their different views on love and justice, knowledge and understanding. Chapter 6 asks why their notions of otherness are so different. Finally, chapter 7 returns to the question of otherness itself in a more direct fashion. The links between Levinas, Marcel, and some The Question of Otherness
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contemporary articulations of the question of otherness are traced out. Appreciating the connection between Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and John D. Caputo on the one hand and Marcel, Paul Ricoeur, and Richard Kearney on the other will help to demonstrate the wisdom of using Levinas and Marcel to launch this inquiry into otherness. This chapter uses Levinas and Marcel as a springboard to address the question of otherness itself as it is raised in the debates between deconstruction and hermeneutics, and we will see that these two philosophers have provided us with an especially advantageous place to begin. At this point, equipped with an enriched understanding of these two views of otherness gleaned from a close study of Levinas and Marcel, as well as an understanding of the way these two philosophers helped to shape the terms of the contemporary debate, we will be ready to address the nature of otherness itself. How, in the final analysis, ought we to think of otherness? Postmodernity is fond of the truism that ‘‘all maps have edges.’’ Indeed, most are still checkered with some version of ‘‘here be dragons.’’ Nevertheless, if the maps with which we navigate our way are incomplete and imperfect, it does not follow that maps are useless, or that all maps are equal. We can rely on some bits of cartography more than others (and when maps fail, we can take some comfort in the stars).20 Postmodernity’s emphasis on the absolute otherness of the other has created a false dichotomy wherein the only alternative to the excessive confidence in rationality that characterized certain Enlightenment thinkers is the equally excessive skepticism of many postmodern thinkers. However, between Enlightenment hubris and hyperbolic postmodern doubt, between a complete and perfectly accurate map of the True and Real and a spectral, desert labyrinth, I hope to find support for a third alternative. This third alternative, in the tradition of Marcel and of philosophers he influenced, makes no claim to absolute, non-revisable knowledge, but neither does it completely lose its way in a spiral of hyperbolic doubt. On an uncertain journey, it offers us a sextant to aim at the horizon rather than an Ariadne’s Thread to follow home.
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2
Emmanuel Levinas
‘‘This dog is mine,’’ said those poor children; ‘‘that is my place in the sun.’’ Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all of the earth. Pascal, Pense´es Each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all . . . ‘‘But how is it possible that I am guilty for everyone,’’ they would all laugh in my face, ‘‘well, for instance, can I be guilty for you?’’ ‘‘But how can you even understand it,’’ I would answer, ‘‘if the whole world has long since gone off on a different path, and if we consider what is a veritable lie to be the truth . . .’’ Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
These passages, both alluded to by Levinas in various places, underscore the impetus of his thought, which argues that ethical responsibility is more fundamental than ontology, inverting twenty-five hundred years of philosophy by showing that ‘‘man’s relation to the other is prior to his ontological relation to himself (egology) or to the totality of things that we call the world (cosmology).’’1 Although his work is exceptionally focused in its concern for the other, Levinas’s philosophy is extensive enough that a complete treatment of it is beyond the scope of this project, which demands that we summarize Levinas’s philosophy and focus on certain aspects of it rather than undertaking a comprehensive account of his thought.2 As is the case 11
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with any summary, subtleties and shades of meaning may be lost, and some significant themes will be overlooked or de-emphasized, although I will have occasion to address many of the themes and topics central to his thought—ipseity, alterity, illeity, responsibility, substitution, and sociality among them. Furthermore, while I will not neglect the breadth of Levinas’s work, this analysis will focus on Totality and Infinity and therefore will not focus on the subtle evolution in certain ideas from the early to the later work.3 This is perhaps acceptable, as Levinas himself denies the notion that there is a Kehre in his work, noting that ‘‘Je ne suis pas Heidegger.’’4 The primary considerations will be as follows: First, to give a general summary of Levinas’s philosophical project, noting especially his relation to ontology. Second, to set the stage for an encounter with Marcel by articulating Levinas’s version of the intersubjective relationship or, as he usually terms it, the relation of the same to the other.5 Finally, to describe alterity as seen by Levinas and to address the role of justice and love within his work. Needless to say, the question of otherness will be ever present in these considerations. Transcendental Phenomenology: Metaphysics Precedes Ontology Levinas’s philosophical project is an attempt to point out and address a significant, indeed the significant, lacuna in the Western philosophical tradition: the ability to account for the other qua other. Summed up in a single sentence, the objection to ontology is that it cannot be primordial because it cannot account for otherness. Thus, properly understood, Levinas’s arguments are more an attempt to reposition ontology, to point out that it cannot account for a certain basic phenomenon, than an attempt to do away with ontology. This philosophic project straddles two worlds, the transcendental and the empirical, walking a fine line between what would traditionally be construed as metaphysics on the one hand and ethics on the other. The nature of this balancing act has been the topic of several fine essays (for example, Robert Bernasconi’s ‘‘Rereading Totality and Infinity’’ and Theodore de Boer’s ‘‘An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy’’) and, more recently, Jeffrey Dudiak’s compelling book, The Intrigue of Ethics.6 The contradictory positions taken by Bernasconi and de Boer, and Dudiak’s reading of Levinas in light of these positions, illustrate the difficulty of teasing out and differentiating the transcendental and the empirical in Levinas’s thought. In fact, there 12
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are both transcendental and empirical elements in Levinas’s philosophy, which makes it difficult to keep in mind the largely transcendental character of certain arguments and leads to confusion regarding his role within the philosophical tradition.7 Levinas himself points out that responsibility (the ethical relationship) is both ‘‘extraordinary and everyday.’’ Responsibility is, he claims, a ‘‘commonplace moral experience,’’ and despite the infinite obligation demanded by this relationship, it does have a concrete, applicable aspect.8 Those who read Levinas in empirical terms can point to his insistence that, when speaking about the other, he is almost always referring to ‘‘this concrete other person that I actually encounter here before me.’’9 Nevertheless, it seems clear in the preface of Totality and Infinity that Levinas sees himself as first and foremost a transcendental phenomenologist insofar as he is attempting to describe the conditions for the possibility of subjectivity, language, truth, etc. The phenomenological character of Totality and Infinity is reflected in Levinas’s decision to publish the book with Kluwer/Martinus Nijhoff, under the editorship of Father Van Breda who, having rescued both Frau Husserl and Husserl’s manuscripts from the Nazis, was in charge of the Husserl Archives at Leuven. The transcendental character of his thought is evident in the early pages of Totality and Infinity: Without substituting eschatology for philosophy, without philosophically ‘‘demonstrating’’ eschatological ‘‘truths,’’ we can proceed from the experience of totality back to a situation where totality breaks up, a situation that conditions totality itself. Such a situation is the gleam of exteriority or of transcendence in the face of the Other. The rigorously developed concept of this transcendence is expressed in the term infinity.10 Although we will see that he is not merely a transcendental philosopher, in the same passage Levinas clearly states that he will work back to the situation that conditions totality by a method that ‘‘resembles what has come to be called the transcendental method.’’11 While the transcendental nature of Levinas’s work does not exempt him from responsibility for the concrete implications of his thought, the above quoted passage announces Levinas’s main goal. This goal is not to produce an ethical system, at least not in the traditional sense, but to question the grounding of ontology and other philosophies of totality, represented archetypically by Heideggerian fundamental ontology.12 Emmanuel Levinas
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Thus, Levinas challenges the primacy of ontology as ‘‘first philosophy.’’ The very questioning of the philosophical tradition turns on the claim that something important is missing. Levinas’s objection to totalizing systems in general, and to the primacy of ontology in particular, lies in the fact that such systems cannot account for the fullness of our experience. Philosophy, in most of its manifestations, is unable to account for alterity, for exteriority, for otherness, for this other here before me as other. Here, with the focus on otherness, the concern with ethics is announced. If alterity—itself clearly a significant and fundamental kind of experience for us—is inadequately unaccounted for, then the philosophical system in question cannot be comprehensive or primordial. Levinas means to establish that metaphysics—a ‘‘philosophical’’ relation that does take the other into consideration—is more primordial than the ontological relation and thereby prove the primordial nature of ‘‘ethics’’ construed in his broader, metaphysical sense. However, there are (at least) two possible objections to the claim that ontology cannot account for the other: first, that it does in fact account for the other and, second, that it need not account for the other in order to be primordial. First, the claim that ontology does not account for alterity may appear to be simply incorrect, for ontology, like most of the other philosophies of totality Levinas mentions, does indeed speak of the other. For example, Heidegger notes explicitly that Dasein’s being is a Mitsein and that the way in which Dasein is entails being-with-oneanother (Miteinandersein). ‘‘Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other is present-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein’s Being-alone is a Being-with in the world.’’13 Dasein is thus incapable of existing in a solitary manner—the way in which Dasein is is a being-with-others. However, Levinas alleges that otherness is only relative within ontology and that ‘‘relative otherness’’ is in fact a misnomer, for it does not retain its nature as other. He insists that if the other is to remain other, his otherness must be absolute. Within ontology the other is subordinated to the same and thereby divested of its otherness. Therefore, otherness within ontology is, properly speaking, no longer otherness at all. Second, the objection that the tradition ignores the supposed inviolability of the other may seem trivial. For example, both Plato and St. Augustine develop theories of truth that minimize the role of the other insofar as truth is discovered within oneself.14 One might object that the relationship to truth is more of an individual matter than a social one. Perhaps we can indeed arrive at the truth without undue 14
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emphasis on, or assistance from, the other. Heidegger, rooted as he is in the Greek tradition, claims that truth is a relationship to oneself, that truth is something won for oneself: ‘‘Truth (uncoveredness) is something that must always first be wrested from entities. Entities get snatched out of their hiddenness. The factical uncoveredness of anything is always, as it were, a kind of robbery.’’15 Even Descartes— whom Levinas identifies as an example of a thinker of the infinite— develops his metaphysics after ‘‘withdrawing into solitude’’ in a stove-heated room and seems to arrive at truth without the need for any ‘‘other’’ except God.16 If one can arrive at the truth without the other, then the other is an unnecessary element and, applying Ockham’s Razor, philosophy need not account for it. Levinas claims, however, that a philosophy without radical, absolute otherness is incapable of real critique, for it is never really challenged by something other than itself. If such thought is incapable of real critique, it is incapable of reaching any truth and ultimately degrades into dogmatism. In what way has the other become subordinated to the same in the philosophical tradition? How does Levinas justify the remarkable claim that ontology cannot account for the other as other? He employs a variety of interrelated arguments: questioning the ground of critique, the contrast between intentionality and ‘‘reverse intentionality,’’ the saying and the said, synchronic versus diachronic time, etc. However, a few examples of these arguments will suffice to show the general thrust of his objections, which revolve around the claim that otherness must be absolute. Returning to the paradigmatic example of phenomenological ontology as developed by Heidegger, I will address the following Levinasian claims: that ontology cannot account for the other; that, because of this inability, it cannot be ‘‘true’’; and, finally, that transcendence is meaningless without real (i.e., absolute) otherness. Ontology and Otherness Heideggerian phenomenology is a descriptive method of philosophy that inherits the Husserlian ‘‘discovery’’ of the intentionality of consciousness. For phenomenology, intentionality operates as a correlation of the object to the subject wherein the noema is captured in noesis. Ultimately, traditional phenomenology is always a correlation of the known to the knower in which meaning is bestowed by, and is meaningful in relation to, the knower. Things, which are disclosed in Emmanuel Levinas
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my world, reveal themselves to me; I bestow meaning on them in terms of their relation to me, by virtue of their involvement in my projects. Something unknown or other is thereby made familiar by being brought into a system within which it can be understood, minimizing or eliminating its strangeness. ‘‘[C]onsciousness of the object soon ceases to disturb us by its alterity as soon as we bestow a meaning upon it. Every experience, however passive, becomes a ‘constituting of being’ as if what is given originates with the thinker.’’17 This process of encounter with the other does not allow otherness to remain other. Rather, it is the process of divesting otherness of its strangeness in order to understand it and make it less threatening. Being, for Husserl, is thought in terms of meaning, in terms of its givenness to consciousness. Thus, the bestowing of meaning is the defining of being. By bestowing meaning on the other the being of the other is defined by the same. Heideggerian phenomenology, like the vast majority of philosophy, is quite literally self-centered. It is a process whereby the otherness of the other is subsumed under the dominion of the same. For Heidegger, being-with (Mitsein) means participation in something neutral (Being) with the other, something common to the self and the other. The shock of the encounter with otherness is mitigated by interpreting it through the mediation of this neutral third term, which makes it understandable by placing otherness within the known categories of a system. I see the other as ‘‘like me’’ in some respects and ‘‘unlike me’’ in others, but both these ways of seeing the other are in terms of ‘‘me.’’ After the initial shock of the otherness is reduced in this manner, the otherness is completely dominated by the assignation of meaning to the other in relation to my projects—by naming the other. For example, I begin to think of the other as ‘‘my student,’’ ‘‘my colleague,’’ or ‘‘my doctor.’’ Ontology thus reduces the other to a mode or modulation of ‘‘the same.’’ This is why Levinas insists on an all-or-nothing distinction when speaking of otherness. Either the otherness of the other is absolute and thus protected from domination by the same, or the otherness of the other is less than absolute, and the domination by the same is inevitable. If this is the case, then it is clear that otherness cannot be accounted for by ontology—as otherness is not absolute for ontology and is ultimately reduced to sameness—and, if ontology cannot account for the other, it cannot be primordial. The encounter with the other who is radically other and not merely relatively other cannot be accounted for in a system of intentionality wherein noesis always 16
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correlates with noema. The radically other always overflows my idea of the other. There is not, and cannot be, a correlation of noesis to noema when speaking of the other. Like the Cartesian idea of the infinite, the idea of the other is never adequate to the event of the other. [It] is of importance to emphasize that the transcendence of the Infinite with respect to the I which is separated from it and which it thinks measures (so to speak) its very infinitude. The distance that separates the ideatum and idea here constitutes the content of the ideatum itself. Infinity is characteristic of a transcendent being as transcendent; the infinite is the absolutely other.18 The radically other is an event that always surpasses or overflows my idea of the other, an ideatum that always surpasses my idea. For Levinas, the event of the other reveals itself in a manner that kath’ auto escapes our understanding or comprehension of it. To be other is to be incomprehensible, infinite. Ontology, Truth, and Critique While it may be true that the ontological account of the other is lacking in some significant way, it is not yet clear why that should be excessively problematic. As I noted, before Heidegger both Plato and Augustine developed theories of truth that minimized the role of the other. Perhaps the inability to account for the other is of little importance because each person can come to the truth on his or her own. However, Levinas rejects this possibility as inherently flawed. Levinas claims that ontology from Aristotle on is a kind of theoria—an observation or contemplation with the goal of insight into the given object. For ontology qua theoria the encounter with the other takes place in two general ‘‘steps.’’ The first of these steps has become so well known in the wake of the Heideggerian project that it has become something of a phenomenological maxim. Section 7 of Being and Time states that the phenomenological encounter with other beings consists in ‘‘[letting] that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.’’19 Such an injunction seems proper enough, and Levinas has no quarrel with the notion that the other reveals itself to the same. However, ontology does not stop here. Theoria demands insight into the thing in question and takes a second step that leads the other back to the same in the act of com-prehension. ‘‘Theory also designates comprehension—the logos of being—that is, a way of approachEmmanuel Levinas
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ing the known being such that its alterity with regard to the knowing being vanishes.’’20 If the first step of theorization encounters the other in a way that lets him show himself, the second step grasps the other in order to comprehend him. Rather than encountering the other in the directness and immediacy of the face-to-face encounter, it approaches the other obliquely, as if to ambush.21 As theoria, ontology grasps, it com-prehends, it divests the other of its otherness via a neutral third term (in this case ‘‘Being’’) that deadens the shock of the encounter with the other by viewing it through the lens of something familiar, something held in common. Levinas will take the first step of theoretical knowing (letting the other be, letting him show himself as he is in himself) because this first step is ‘‘theory understood as a respect for exteriority.’’22 The revelation of the other in this first step of knowing represents the critical aspect of the encounter. That is, the appearance of the other critiques me. In this initial, reverent encounter with the other, my dogmatism and the arbitrariness of my freedom are called into question by something utterly foreign. Such an encounter announces the possibility that I am not the center of the world. The unanticipated appearance of the other is anything but a priori, and thus, perhaps, is a Ptolemaic counterrevolution against Kant’s Copernican revolution. The other critiques me insofar as he makes me aware that my freedom is not autarchic but arbitrary, and in so doing the other calls me to justify myself. Ontology, however, in its desire to protect and promote its freedom, does not stop at the stage of the critical encounter with the other, but takes a further step that reduces the other to the same precisely in order to avoid this critique and assure its freedom. Thus, we can see that critique can take two basic forms: the critique of the self on the basis of one’s weakness or limitation, and critique on the basis of one’s unworthiness. Because the other is reduced to the same via a third term, ontological critique can only be self-critique on the basis of limitation seen as failure, that is, on the basis of the ‘‘limitation’’ uncovered by the resistance my freedom encounters in the other and my frustrated desire to grasp and comprehend the other.23 However, ‘‘[real] critique does not reduce the other to the same as does ontology, but calls into question the exercise of the same. The calling into question of the same—which cannot occur within the egoist spontaneity of the same—is brought about by the other.’’24 Real critique does not bring about consciousness of limita18
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tion or failure, rather consciousness of the arbitrariness of my freedom and consciousness of my guilt. The first step of knowing—which allows the other to reveal or show himself—entails respect for the other and calls the self into question, initiating critique. This calling into question of the arbitrary freedom and naı¨ve spontaneity of the I, and the other that initiates this questioning, is the source of Levinas’s ‘‘ethics.’’ But this critical encounter remains only provisional in ontology, because ontology then proceeds to absorb the other in comprehension. If the encounter with the other is always followed by a return to self that reduces the other to the same, then the other remains at best only relatively other, for the other is ultimately absorbed in a movement that promotes and insures the freedom of the same. To affirm the priority of Being over existents is to already decide the essence of philosophy; it is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impersonal, permits apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates justice to freedom.25 Of course real critique generally involves seeing ourselves from another perspective. There is nothing truly critical in self-critique— only the other qua other is capable of real critique. Ontology is a dogmatism wherein critique and justice remain subordinated to comprehension and freedom. But, for Levinas, ‘‘as metaphysics precedes ontology, critique precedes dogmatism.’’26 Levinas claims that the ontological manner of thinking is ‘‘Greek’’ in nature and that it is symptomatic of Western thought. Ontological knowing, as a process of disclosure, is the removing of a thing from its hiddenness ‘‘into the light.’’ Greek thinking always equates knowledge with vision, which is ultimately a coincidence of the perceived with the perceiver. However, the Greek metaphor for knowledge is not the only one, and disclosure is not the only way in which things are encountered. ‘‘The absolute experience is not disclosure but revelation: a coinciding of the expressed with him who expresses, which is the privileged manifestation of the Other.’’27 The biblical, Hebraic, auditory metaphor for knowledge is one wherein knowledge, spoken by the other, comes to me unanticipated: revelation. Metaphysical knowledge is not disclosive, but revelatory; it ‘‘hears’’ the truth rather than ‘‘sees’’ it. It does not grasp or comprehend the truth, but accepts it, as one accepts a gift. Disclosive knowledge is the result of going Emmanuel Levinas
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out into the world, wresting things from their hiddenness, bestowing meaning on them, and returning with that understanding. It is a relation of self to self. Revelation, however, is unanticipated and comes to one unannounced. Things disclosed to us undergo examination with the goal of comprehension; but others who speak to us are heard, and we in turn respond to them. Thus, again, ontology cannot account for the other because it always encounters the other via a movement that seeks to return to the same—it thinks in Greek rather than in Hebrew, so to speak. However, without the other there can be no real critique; and without real critique there is only dogmatism, for there is no way to call into question the naı¨ve arbitrariness of freedom. If there is only dogmatism, then there can be no truth. Here we have Levinas’s fundamental objection to Heidegger, Augustine, and Plato: truth is not something that I already possess in an inchoate form waiting to be discovered. Rather, truth is something that is brought to me as a gift; it is given to me by the other.28 Truth requires critique, and critique requires the other; therefore, truth requires the other. In other words, truth is relational, it is dialogical, and it is ethical. Ontology cannot be critical, it cannot be (ultimately) true, and it cannot be primordial. Critique is only radical if it is ethical, not ontological. Ethics is first philosophy. Ontology, Metaphysics, and Transcendence The discussion of critique and truth brings to light the likelihood that the ontological relation to the other is really only a relation of the self to the self. Therefore, in addition to ontology’s inability to account for otherness and its subsequent dogmatic ossification due to its inability to undergo real critique, Levinas argues that ontology cannot account for transcendence in a meaningful way. Traditionally, transcendence has been thought of as a transition from one way of being to another way of being. Levinas, however, claims that this does not think transcendence radically enough. Transcendence cannot be a way of ‘‘being otherwise,’’ but must be an ‘‘otherwise than being’’ (autrement qu’eˆtre). Within the ontological framework there is no space for transcendence other than that of ‘‘being otherwise’’: another figure of beingness that can be treated as a super-phenomenon or super-world, a backstage or Hinterwelt whose mysterious events manifest themselves in the thaumaturgic gods of earth.29 20
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Transcendence to another world ‘‘behind the scenes’’ is not really transcendence, for one never leaves the totality of Being, but only relocates within it. Ontological transcendence is characterized by a return—a return of the self to the self, a departure from one kind of being that is followed by a transition or return to another kind of being. Real transcendence requires otherness, and metaphysical transcendence is precisely this sort of relationship. In contrast to ontological transcendence, metaphysical transcendence is a journey without a return. Metaphysics is characterized by its ability to encounter absolute alterity, and the ability to encounter absolute alterity manifests itself as metaphysical desire, as desire for the absolutely other. The metaphysical desire does not long to return, for it is a desire for a land not of our birth, for a land foreign to every nature, which has not been our fatherland and to which we will never betake ourselves. The metaphysical desire does not rest on any prior kinship. It is a desire that cannot be satisfied.30 In Heidegger, meaning is understood in terms of a hermeneutic circle in which otherness is disclosed as part of a movement that ultimately comprehends the other in a return to self. Levinas, however, insists that comprehension strips the other of his otherness. True otherness is not encountered in disclosure, but in revelation. Thus, for Levinas, transcendence does not take place as a hermeneutic circle, but as an ex-cendence and trans-ascendence toward the absolutely other. The journey can never reach its goal and never returns to where it began. Such a journey, and the task of responsibility that accompanies it, would be Sisyphean labor—for it is unending—were it not for the fact that the self is continually challenged by new and unfamiliar terrain rather than trudging in the rutted path of unending repetition. The difference between ontology and metaphysics is represented metaphorically as the difference between Ulysses and Abraham, between return to self and (unending) journey toward the other. Transcendence is not a relationship of myself to myself wherein I sojourn among beings in the world only to, like Ulysses, return home and reclaim my rightful position by restoring my house to order (as oikonomos). Rather, the movement of transcendence is from my home toward a land not of my birth, toward the absolutely other, the unknown. It is to be surprised by the voice of the other and to leave home, like Abraham, without knowledge of one’s destination. Where Heidegger moves from the at-home character of everydayness into Emmanuel Levinas
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the uncanniness that reveals my ownmost possibility, Levinas discovers metaphysical Desire, which is a desire for the invisible, for the absolutely other—a desire that cannot be satisfied.31 It is a desire for a ‘‘land not of our birth,’’ a movement from the chez soi to the horsde-soi.32 Desire, in the sense that Levinas uses it, is for the radically other, for the absolutely unknown, and is therefore non-anticipatory. Moreover, an encounter with the desired other does not satisfy metaphysical desire, only deepens it. Thus, desire is non-anticipatory (it is not nostalgic for a prior totality) and it is not satisfiable (it does not lead to totality). A desire without satisfaction which, precisely, understands [entend] the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other. For Desire this alterity, non-adequate to the idea, has a meaning. It is understood as the alterity of the Other and of the Most-High. The very dimension of height is opened up by metaphysical Desire. . . . To die for the invisible—this is metaphysics.33 Phenomenological intentionality cannot encounter the other qua other. Theory allows the other to show itself only to ambush and dominate. Ontological transcendence is a journey from the self to the self and does not encounter otherness in a manner that allows it to remain other. These arguments—only three of a large number made by Levinas—suffice to show why he insists that metaphysics, which can encounter the other qua other, must be prior to ontology, which cannot. However, in spite of his sustained critique of ontology, Levinas does not intend to renounce the ontological perspective entirely. The ontological is necessary. Theory and thematization are required when the ‘‘appearance’’ of the third demands that we ‘‘compare the incomparable’’ in order to be just.34 Levinas’s criticisms are designed to show that metaphysics is prior to ontology and that, because of this priority, metaphysics should guide and inform ontology. Given that Levinas’s critique of ontology hinges on the role of the other, it is fair to say that his metaphysics cannot be separated from his ethics or, in other words, that his metaphysics is inherently ethical. Scholars may debate whether Levinas’s thought is better characterized as metaphysical ethics, ethical metaphysics, or by some new and unique label. However, the finer points of Levinas’s critique of Heidegger, Hegel, and the totalizing tradition of Western philosophy, while undeniably important to Levinas’s project as a philoso22
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pher, are of secondary interest for this project, which must emphasize his characterization of intersubjectivity and alterity. Nevertheless, the preceding pages, while brief, serve to illustrate the central role played by the other in Levinas’s thought. The Same and the Other This brief look at Levinas’s critique of ontology has also brought to light some of the ways in which the metaphysical account of otherness, and the relationship between the same and the other, differs from the ontological account. Already it is clear that ‘‘other’’ has radically different meanings for Levinas and the majority of the Western philosophical tradition. However, the precise meaning of ‘‘other’’ in the work of Levinas is not yet clear and, if we are to come to an understanding of what Levinas means by the relationship of the same to the other, this meaning must be clarified. Complicating the situation, Levinas uses the term ‘‘other’’ in describing several different relationships with alterity. There are four significant instances in which Levinas discusses the relationship between the same and the other in his work. ‘‘Other’’ can refer alternately to the other person (autrui) whom I encounter in the face-to-face, to the ‘‘third’’ who is revealed in the encounter with the autrui, to God, and to the other(ness) in myself.35 First, the encounter with the other person includes Levinas’s treatment of responsibility, substitution, love, and fecundity. Second, the revelation of the ‘‘third’’ in the encounter with the other is the beginning of sociality and justice. Clearly, in the context of our discussion about justice and love, these first two senses of ‘‘other’’ will play a central role. Third, otherness in terms of the divine is significant for understanding Levinas’s conception of alterity, and will prove to be important when addressing certain differences between Levinas and Marcel. Finally, the fourth sense of otherness—the ‘‘other in myself,’’ or the sense in which I may be an other to the other—will be addressed intermittently in the discussion of responsibility, substitution, and justice. Although potentially misleading, the clearest manner of addressing these senses of otherness is to take up each of the four examples as if they appeared in progression, in a series of stages from solitude to alterity, sociality, and, finally, divinity. However, it is important to keep in mind that this is not the case; the temporal implication is merely an explanatory device—the various ‘‘stages’’ of economy, alterity, sociality, and relation to divinity Emmanuel Levinas
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take place simultaneously. Nevertheless, this is perhaps an acceptable liberty, given that Levinas himself addresses the first three of these topics in more or less the same order in Totality and Infinity. Economy Levinas insists that the same and the other must remain absolutely separate within their relationship. In order for this to be the case, the same must be complete in its existence ‘‘prior’’ to its encounter with the other. Just as the other is other by its transcendence, the self is an independent, self-sufficient, egoist psyche. The self is egoist; the other ‘‘is’’ alterity, is transcendent, that is, the other is absolutely other. ‘‘The same and the other at the same time maintain themselves in relationship and absolve themselves from this relation, remain absolutely separated. The idea of Infinity requires this separation.’’36 The possibility of genuine pluralism depends on the ability to keep the terms separate and independent. Thus, the self must be described in terms of its egoist interiority before addressing the relation of the self to the other. This state, ‘‘prior’’ to responsibility for the other, is not to be interpreted as some sort of fallenness from which the self would return to the perfection of responsibility. Such fulfillment or resolution would refer to a totality, and would be appropriate only if the other were a need that could be satisfied or the lost other half of a divided being as described by Aristophanes in the Symposium.37 However, the encounter with the other does not take place in terms of need, but in terms of desire. Here the relation connects not terms that complete one another and consequently are reciprocally lacking to one another, but terms that suffice to themselves. This relation is Desire, the life of beings that have arrived at self-possession. Infinity thought concretely, that is, starting with the separated being turned toward it, surpasses itself.38 What, then, is the self like in its relationship to itself, prior to the call from the face of the other? The self is egoist, a selfish psychism without care for the other and, yet, without guilt for its selfishness. In enjoyment I am absolutely for myself. Egoist without reference to the Other, I am alone without solitude, innocently egoist and alone. Not against the Others, not ‘‘as for me . . .’’—but 24
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entirely deaf to the Other, outside of all communication and all refusal to communicate—without ears, like a hungry stomach.39 This self is the ‘‘economic self’’ in the etymological sense of oikonomos, of legislating and ruling over the household, and is meant to emphasize the self-sufficiency of the self before the other. This allows the encounter of the same and the other to be a relation of truly separate beings. Prior to the encounter with the other, the economic self exists in enjoyment ( jouissance). ‘‘Enjoyment accomplishes atheist separation; it deformalizes the notion of separation, which is not a cleavage made in the abstract, but the existence at home with itself of an autochthonous I.’’40 ‘‘Atheism’’ is the natural condition in which the economic self finds itself. Prior to the affirmation or denial of the divine, atheism is intended to denote the condition of ‘‘separation so complete that the separated being maintains itself in existence all by itself.’’41 Atheism is self-sufficiency. The economic self is absorbed in its needs, absorbed in living from . . . (vivre de . . .). This ‘‘living from’’ is an interaction with things that are other, but it is unlike the encounter with the other (autrui). Nourishment, as a means of invigoration, is the transmutation of the other into the same, which is in the essence of enjoyment: an energy that is other, recognized as other, recognized . . . as sustaining the very act that is directed upon it, becomes, in enjoyment, my own energy, my own strength.42 Although Levinas means for nourishment to have a broader significance, the most apt examples are the literal nourishment of food and drink, where that which is other is literally grasped and absorbed, becoming the same. The encounter with the otherness of things that I live from remains on the level of being, of ontology. It is the life of Gyges, a life of satisfied desire wherein one sees without being seen and appropriates, assimilates, and bestows meaning as a sovereign. Thus, enjoyment is a state of ataraxy, a state of calmness born of satisfied needs. ‘‘At the origin there is a being gratified, a citizen of paradise.’’43 However, there is a menace lurking in economic enjoyment—the possibility that the needs that I can satisfy today will not be satisfied tomorrow. The uncertainty of the future and the possibility of an interruption in nourishment lead to labor, that is, to storing reserves against the possibility of a rainy day. Nevertheless, while the self is needy in enjoyment—and will even experience concern for the satisfaction of its needs in the future, precipitating labor—the self is Emmanuel Levinas
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happy for its needs. It is happy for the satisfaction of needs because the jouissance of satisfying a need is even better than the jouissance of ataraxy. Labor and work may insure the security of nourishment; but they have an unintended consequence insofar as they expose me. The atheist isolation and solitude of the economic self assures the separation and unicity of the self (giving a hint of the absolute unicity and individuation of responsibility)—a self-sufficiency that is independent of the other (autrui). However, this independence is not absolute. Even prior to the consideration of metaphysical desire, which exposes me to the other, both my body and my labor expose me to others on the economic level. My body exposes me to the possibility of injury and ‘‘war.’’44 Furthermore, ‘‘work itself transcends its intention; it rises up against its producer as fate, as an alien will. We are unable to predict the consequences of what we do, for work becomes an independent entity in the world.’’45 My labor produces things that can then be used by others, who in turn may give them meanings different from, even contrary to, my original intention. Although I am exposed to the other in the course of satisfying my needs, there is another sort of exposure to the other that takes place only when my needs are satisfied, one quite different from the potential exposure of my body to violence or my work to misappropriation. Out of the self-sufficiency of jouissance, happy for its needs, arises the desire for the other. ‘‘Having recognized its needs as material needs, as capable of being satisfied, the I can henceforth turn to what it does not lack. It distinguishes the material from the spiritual, opens to Desire.’’46 Only when my needs are satisfied can I turn outward in desire for that which I do not need. Desire The egoist, economic self of jouissance is, for the most part, happy and secure in its atheist self-sufficiency. The satisfaction of needs proceeds apace, nourishing me and storing the fruits of labor against the possibility of future need. However, the satisfied needs of jouissance open me to the possibility of desiring that which I do not need. Desire is qualitatively different than need precisely because I do not need it. ‘‘Metaphysics or transcendence is recognized in the work of the intellect that aspires after exteriority, that is Desire.’’47 The difference between need and desire is the difference between the Greek, visual metaphor for knowing and the Hebrew, oral/aural metaphor. 26
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Or the difference between the journeys of Ulysses, who returns home to restore order, and Abraham, who leaves home under the direction of another, without knowing his destination. Desire is never satisfied, is not even capable of satisfaction. Unlike need, it never grasps and consumes an other that would correspond to and satiate it. An encounter with the desired other only further deepens desire. What fits this criteria, that of a desire that can never be satisfied? Only the idea of infinity. Descartes already discovered the implications of the infinite in the Third Meditation. According to Levinas, Descartes’s most significant contribution was to show, in the analysis of the infinite, the impossibility of Platonic maieutics. For although the idea of substance is in me by virtue of the fact that I am a substance, that fact is not sufficient to explain my having the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some [other] substance which really was infinite.48 Although clearly building on Descartes’s work, Levinas does not come to the idea of infinity via the Cartesian method of introspection. Rather than looking inward, Levinas looks outward and locates the idea of infinity in the encounter with that which is absolutely other. Infinity is produced in such an encounter in both senses of the word—both producere and parere, created and revealed. Infinity is produced in the encounter between two beings who share no common ground, beings lacking even a frontier that would mark their separation. The desired other has distance kath’auto; distance is part of its formal characteristic. Just as the self is psychism, is egoism, the otherness of the other is what it is to be other. The self is a psychism; the other is other. Thus, the distance between the same and the other remains an untraversable one, for if this distance were bridged, the other would no longer be other. As this distance is absolute, the same and the other can never be encompassed in, or reduced to, a third term that they would share in common. ‘‘The metaphysician and the other cannot be totalized. The metaphysician is absolutely separated [from the other].’’49 The Face We have already seen that the absolutely other is, according to Levinas, a necessary condition for critique, truth, and transcendence. Emmanuel Levinas
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However, how can an encounter with that which is absolutely other come about? How is absolute otherness revealed or manifested without losing its character as other? Levinas tells us that the exteriority that ‘‘corresponds’’ to desire is revealed in the face (visage) of the human other. The face is not necessarily the physical aspect of the other—with two eyes, a nose, a mouth, etc.—rather, the face is the ‘‘countenance’’ of the other, which I can encounter ‘‘face to face’’ without actually looking the other in the eye. It is the face of the other that presents me with something I am absolutely incapable of assimilating into the orbit of my ontological and economic existence: the other qua other. The production of infinity ruptures totality by the introduction of something (someone) that cannot be contained within it, an ideatum that cannot correspond to any idea. How is this possible? It would seem that any encounter with absolute alterity would fall under a variation of Meno’s Paradox. If we recognize the other then we already know it, and it cannot, by definition, be absolutely other. However, if it is other and we have absolutely nothing in common with it, how will we recognize it when we encounter it? The Platonic reply to Meno’s Paradox is the theory of anamnesis. However, Levinas categorically rejects Platonic maieutics as inadequate to (and unjust for) interhuman encounters, and must therefore provide a different answer to the paradox.50 Edith Wyschogrod notes that the truth of Levinas’s contention that the intervention of the face breaks the hegemony of totalizing forces in human existence depends upon our acceptance of an absolute distinction between the way in which the face is apprehended and the way in which we experience other phenomena within the totality.51 Therefore, if the encounter with the face is to bestow an epiphany different from either Platonic anamnesis or normal perception—that is, perception modeled on the intentional structures of Husserlian or Heideggerian phenomenology—then the face must be encountered in a way unlike recollection or perception. The Cartesian discovery that the idea of the infinite cannot come from within myself points out the inadequacy of Platonic maieutics. However, Levinas still needs to provide an account of how we can encounter the other in a non-phenomenological manner, in a way that does not boil down to a correspondence between the knower and the known. He does this through a description of sensibility and enjoyment that introduces the possibility of experience with other28
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ness that does not operate on the intentional subject-object model. The analysis of sensation and enjoyment reveals that the sensible is directly apprehended without intermediate concepts, contradicting the dogma of intentionality (which is both stuck within, and a perpetuator of, the Greek visual metaphor for knowledge). Sensibility is not a fumbling objectification. Enjoyment, by essence satisfied, characterizes all sensations whose representational content dissolves into their affective content. The very distinction between representational and affective content is tantamount to a recognition that enjoyment is endowed with a dynamism other than that of perception.52 Enjoyment cannot be understood in objective terms. Sensations qua enjoyment are satiated (or filled) by definition. We ‘‘bathe’’ and ‘‘live’’ in sensation as in qualities without support, or adjectives unattached to nouns.53 Only later do we separate out subject and object. This description of sensation ‘‘recovers a ‘reality’ when we see in it not the subjective counterpart of objective qualities, but an enjoyment ‘anterior’ to the crystallization of consciousness, I and non-I, into subject and object,’’ and paves the way for the claim that the face of the other is directly revealed rather than encountered as the intentional correlate of a consciousness.54 Of course this is not to imply that the other is encountered in sensibility, just to note that here, in the analysis of sensibility, Levinas already illustrates a kind of reality that is encountered in a non-intentional way. In the same section, he goes on to note how things emerge from the emptiness of space—and disclose the menacing ‘‘there is’’ (il y a) of Being in so doing—while the alterity of the other starts only from itself, it is its own source.55 Thus, the encounter with the absolute otherness of the face takes place in a unique, revelatory manner—one that is qualitatively different than our normal encounter with things. What is revealed in the face-to-face encounter? Obviously, the first thing revealed is the infinite; that is, the absolute nature of the other’s alterity. The idea of infinity is not within us as something we have, but comes to us as something that is given by the other. The idea of infinity is exceptional in that its ideatum surpasses its idea, whereas for things the total coincidence of their ‘‘objective’’ and ‘‘formal’’ realities is not precluded; we could conceivably have accounted for all the ideas, other than that of Infinity, by ourselves.56 Emmanuel Levinas
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A sense of otherness that is absolute rather than relative cannot be defined in relation to the same. Nor can we say that our notion of otherness is arrived at via a negative movement. Alterity—absolute otherness—cannot be derived from a denial of the familiar, just as Descartes tells us that the infinite cannot be arrived at by a negation of the finite. If this were the case, alterity would not be radical. Absolute otherness must come from ‘‘elsewhere’’ and arrive as a shock; it is, strictly speaking, incomprehensible. It is the face-to-face encounter with the other person that produces Infinity. ‘‘The alterity of the Other does not depend on any quality that would distinguish him from me, for a distinction of this nature would precisely imply between us that community of genus that already nullifies alterity.’’57 In fact, the alterity that Levinas describes is so radical that it denies even the notion of a frontier that separates the same from the other; for a frontier, no matter how well defined, is something that both sides share in their separation, giving them something in common and mitigating their difference. The other is ‘‘other with an alterity that does not limit the same, for in limiting the same the other would not be rigorously other: by virtue of a common frontier the other, within the system, would yet be the same.’’58 The encounter with the other presents no line or point of separation; it is a non-allergic interaction, contact without touching. Clearly, in order to preserve this radical distance from the other, Levinas must reject disclosure as articulated by Heidegger. Such disclosure is, says Levinas, a manner of knowing that divests the other of his otherness. As noted, theoria comprehends things by clothing them in forms, naming and defining them. It gathers them (legein) and organizes them in order to classify them within a system—the system of the world of the same. Revelation, however, in which the other speaks to the same, operates differently. The work of language qua discourse with the other consists in entering into relationship with a nudity disengaged from every form, but having meaning by itself, καθ’ ατ . . . The nakedness of the face is not what is presented to me because I disclose it, what would therefore be presented to me, to my powers, to my eyes, to my perceptions, in a light exterior to it. The face has turned to me—and this is its very nudity. It is by itself and not by reference to a system.59 The other comes to me ‘‘naked,’’ that is, devoid of forms by which I might define and comprehend him. Disclosive knowing is a re-presentation, but ‘‘the metaphysical relation can not properly speaking 30
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be a representation, for the other would therein dissolve into the same.’’60 The face of the other is not disclosed by me or even to me; it reveals itself to me precisely as other, unknown, unknowable. Revelation What I ‘‘know’’ of the other is not the result of what has been disclosed to me, but is the result of what the other reveals to me. The distinction between disclosure and revelation is another manifestation of the differences between Greek and Hebrew (or biblical) modes of knowing, between knowledge as visual acquisition and knowledge as auditory reception. The visual metaphors used for phenomenological disclosure are used because they are the most apt metaphors for this kind of knowledge. However, this kind of knowledge cannot account for absolute otherness, for in it otherness is ultimately brought under the shadow of the same. Knowledge gained by revelation is of a different nature altogether. Revelatory knowledge is not something that is sought out, acquired, and assimilated into a system. Rather, a revelation comes unbidden and is often incomprehensible in its strangeness, incapable of fitting neatly into everyday systems of understanding. It is best described with auditory metaphors of speaking and hearing rather than visual ones. Most importantly, such knowledge is not an acquisition, but a gift. Language is therefore an indispensable ingredient for understanding the revelatory relationship with otherness. In fact, only language allows relations with the other qua other to take place. Of course language can indeed dominate, degrade, or oppress the other. However, when Levinas says language is the mode of relation to the absolutely other, he means language as response. The very fact that I respond to the call of the other precedes any use of language to accept or reject the call. In this sense, language is simply response; it is to hear the other and respond, like Abraham, ‘‘Here I am.’’ Thus, ‘‘language, which does not touch the other, even tangentially, reaches the other by calling upon him or by commanding him, or by obeying him, with all the straightforwardness of these relations.’’61 It is in discourse and language that Levinas finds the possibility of a relationship without contact. Ethical Resistance and the Command of the Other It is now clear that the encounter with the face confronts me with something that cannot be accounted for, something that cannot be Emmanuel Levinas
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comprehended. ‘‘The face is present in its refusal to be contained. In this sense it cannot be comprehended, that is, encompassed.’’62 Unlike things that can be taken and appropriated, the infinite otherness of the face resists such domination. Yet the resistance of the face is not hostility. Nor is it the result of my inability to conceptualize the other (although the other is indeed beyond conceptualization). Either of these limitations would result in merely ‘‘ontological’’ critique on the basis of limitation. The resistance of the face is an ethical resistance, a resistance that questions the legitimacy of my power rather than the efficacy of it. My inability to dominate the other in comprehension introduces the possibility of murder. There is more than one way to remove the discomfort caused by the appearance of the other. While I cannot comprehend the other, I can kill him. ‘‘To kill is not to dominate but to annihilate; it is to renounce comprehension absolutely. Murder exercises power over what escapes power.’’63 Murder is a power over the other that is simultaneously the admission of powerlessness over the other. My inability to comprehend the other, coupled with the possibility of murdering him, gives rise to the ethical resistance to my powers—the resistance of non-resistance. Destitution and nudity in the face of the other present me with the ethical command ‘‘thou shall not kill.’’ Thus, the absolute alterity revealed in the face of the other person calls into question the exercise of my freedom, both in terms of the naı¨ve exercise of freedom in jouissance and in terms of the temptation to murder. As I noted, Levinas distinguishes two ways in which critique is possible. Critique can take place on the basis of limitation seen as the ‘‘failure’’ of a finite freedom—the inability of freedom to define itself and its world, as in Sartre. Critique is also possible on the basis of worthiness—a critique that calls into question the justification for the exercise of freedom rather than one that restricts or limits the exercise of freedom. Freedom then is inhibited, not as countered by a resistance, but as arbitrary, guilty, and timid; but in its guilt it rises to responsibility. Contingency, that is, the irrational, appears to it not outside of itself in the other, but within itself. It is not limitation by the other that constitutes contingency, but egoism, as unjustified of itself.64 The ‘‘appearance’’ of the other alerts me to the possibility that the egoist exercise of my freedom may in fact be unjust, both in the sense 32
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of being unjustified and in the sense of creating a climate of injustice for the other. In so doing, the ethical resistance of the other leads me to question the worthiness of my being and calls for my justification. Does not the operation of my freedom, in the process of securing nourishment in jouissance, take bread from the mouth of the other? Does not my place in the sun cast a shadow on the other? The critique of one’s worthiness is not a limitation, but a call to justification. By calling my freedom into question, in demanding justification, the other does not limit my freedom, but invests and promotes it by calling me to goodness. The presence of the Other, a privileged heteronomy, does not clash with freedom but invests it. The shame for oneself, the presence of and desire for the other are not the negation of knowing: knowing is their very articulation. The essence of reason consists not in securing for man a foundation and powers, but in calling him in question and in inviting him to justice.65 Asymmetry: Height and Destitution Although the face of the other commands me, it is an ethical command. The other approaches and appeals to me in destitution and vulnerability—appearing as the widow, orphan, or stranger. The destitution of the other is articulated in the nudity, or formlessness, of the face; vulnerability is announced in the possibility of murder. However, while the other is vulnerable and destitute, he also appears at a ‘‘height’’ from the perspective of the self. The other, by the very fact of his otherness, calls into question my naı¨ve spontaneity and arbitrary freedom. Calling me into question and calling me to justify myself, the other appears as on a height, as my master. ‘‘The Other measures me with a gaze incomparable to the gaze by which I discover him. The dimension of height in which the other is placed is as it were the primary curvature of being from which the privilege of the Other results, the gradient of transcendence.’’66 Levinas insists, in many places, that the difference in height that characterizes the relationship between the same and the other is one that is by definition asymmetrical. The inaccessible height of the other, revealed in metaphysical desire, attests to the asymmetrical nature of the encounter. The other is always encountered in a situation in which he is ‘‘above’’ me and I am ‘‘below’’ him. ‘‘What I permit myself to demand of myself is not comparable with what I have the right to deEmmanuel Levinas
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mand of the other. This moral experience, so commonplace, indicates a metaphysical asymmetry.’’67 Thus, paradoxically, although as widow, orphan, or stranger the other appears to me as vulnerable, he also appears as my master because he comes to me ‘‘from a height’’ and expresses the command ‘‘thou shall not kill.’’ While the nudity of the other and the possibility of murder reveal the vulnerability of the other, the unique character of metaphysical desire—the desire for, and encounter with, the other qua absolutely other—results in a relationship in which the other is elevated with respect to the same. Like most of Levinas’s metaphysical structures, the height of the other does not necessarily refer to any real, worldly superiority. Rather, the height of the other is the result of the impossibility of reducing the other to a content of consciousness; and this allows for the possibility of simultaneous destitution and mastery. The elevation of the other leads Levinas to insist that transcendence only makes sense as trans-ascendence. However, the absolute alterity that ‘‘corresponds’’ to my desire is found only in the face of the other, the same face whose nudity attests to the poverty and destitution of the other. Thus, desire is both a transcendent movement toward a height and an encounter with the lowly, the humble. This dual movement expresses the critical role that the other plays in the investiture of my freedom by calling me to goodness. The being that expresses itself imposes itself, but does so precisely by appealing to me with its destitution and nudity—its hunger—without my being able to be deaf to that appeal. Thus in expression the being that imposes itself does not limit but promotes my freedom, by arousing my goodness.68 The incomprehensibility and vulnerability of the other that forbids murder, coupled with the height revealed by desire, allows for an encounter that simultaneously questions my freedom and promotes it. The promotion of my freedom—the order in which freedom is invoked by the call to justification and goodness—is the order of responsibility. Responsibility is not merely theoretical; it has distinctly concrete manifestations. If the height of the other calls me into question and invests my freedom, the destitution of the other calls me to use that freedom in service of the other. The way in which the other invests my freedom calls me to concrete acts of service to the other.
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Irreversibility The responsibility revealed in the face-to-face encounter does not flow both ways. While the face-to-face encounter reveals the other to be both the impoverished stranger and the one who commands me, I do not appear to the other in a like manner. An important complement to the fundamentally asymmetrical nature of the metaphysical relationship is its non-reciprocal character. I experience the face-toface encounter as one in which the other is above and I am below, but it is not the case that the other experiences a reverse of this situation. The metaphysician and the other do not constitute a simple correlation, which would be reversible. The reversibility of a relation where the terms are indifferently read from left to right and from right to left would couple them the one to the other; they would complete one another in a system visible from the outside. The intended transcendence would be thus reabsorbed into the unity of the system, destroying the radical alterity of the other.69 Levinas claims that to allow for reversibility in the metaphysical relationship—to say that I myself am the other of the other—would be to unite the same and the other under a totality. Unlike Martin Buber or Gabriel Marcel, both of whom are criticized by Levinas on precisely this point, Levinas insists that the irreversible character of the fundamental asymmetry in the relationship between the same and the other is the only way to insure that the other remains other. To say that I am the other of the other would be to claim that the other is like me, that the other is another self, which would in turn destroy the otherness of the other. Responsibility As metaphysics precedes ontology, justice and responsibility precede freedom. Because my freedom is not autarchic but invested, whatever freedom I have the right to assume must be claimed in the full light of the face of the other who calls me to justification. Levinas argues compellingly that such justification for my being can only be found in the realization of my responsibility for the other. ‘‘Responsibility for the Other, for the naked face of the first individual to come
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along. A responsibility that goes beyond what I may or may not have committed, as if I were devoted to the other man before being devoted to myself.’’70 I only encounter the other qua other in responsibility, and in some sense these two terms are synonymous, or perhaps simultaneous. The recognition of the other is responsibility, is ethical. It is only when I recognize my responsibility that I encounter the other as other. If I do not recognize the other qua other, I do not recognize my responsibility; if I do not recognize my responsibility, I do not see the other qua other. While we may interact with other people in manners that degrade or even kill, in doing so the face of the other is not acknowledged—it is rejected. Responsibility is the result of the simultaneous destitution and height of the other that commands me. Because the nature of Levinas’s responsibility is all encompassing, without regard to actual culpability, it leads to a universal guilt and fear for the violence generated by my very existence. My being-in-the-world or my ‘‘place in the sun,’’ my being at home, have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing?71 My responsibility for the other denotes both my status as obligated, and the necessity of responding to the other who questions me: responsible and responding. I cannot deliberate about my responsibility—it is not something that I am free to choose or reject. As Alphonso Lingis notes in the introduction to the translation of Autrement qu’eˆtre: every effort to deduce responsibility, justify or ground it, or even state it in a synthetic representation, is already an exercise of responsibility. Responsibility is a fact. That responsibility has the status of a fact means that it did not originate in an act of subjectivity—in the act of assuming or taking upon oneself.72 Responsibility is a fact. Qua subject, I am responsible. The only escape from responsibility—which is in fact not escape, but refusal—is murder. The concept of responsibility is difficult to understand, straddling the line—as much of Levinas’s philosophy does—between ‘‘transcendental’’ and ‘‘empirical’’ philosophy. On one hand, responsibility is 36
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clearly a transcendental structure, a condition for the possibility of subjectivity. Levinas often describes responsibility, and the substitution to which it leads, as a ‘‘passivity more passive than all passivity’’ in order to emphasize its non-activity, its givenness prior to action or choice. The very identity of the subject comes from the inescapability of the call to responsibility. The more I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution, of my freedom as a constituted, willful, imperialist subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible; the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am ‘‘in myself’’ through others. [Je suis « en soi » par les autres.]73 The more I acknowledge my responsibility, the more conscious of my guilt I become, the more I realize that this acknowledgment is not enough to expiate my guilt, and the more I realize that even more is demanded of me.74 As a transcendental condition of subjectivity, the election of responsibility constitutes the very unicity of the subject.75 The call in the face of the other calls me, specifically, to responsibility. No one can take this responsibility from me, nor can I renounce it; my conscience cannot be unburdened. In fact, it is precisely as responsible that I am unique and irreplaceable—my responsibility individuates me. Insofar as the election of responsibility constitutes me as subject, it is inescapable, and in this sense it can be seen as persecution to the point of being hostage to the other: the subjectivity of the subject is its subjection. On the other hand, Levinas insists on the concrete and material nature of my responsibility, frequently affirming that ‘‘the other’s material needs are my spiritual needs’’ and noting that responsibility requires that I take the bread from my mouth in order to give to the other.76 Responsibility is not satisfied by sympathy or empathy for the other, but by actual, concrete sacrifice. The ethical relation is ‘‘unnatural’’ precisely because it conflicts with the natural instinct of the conatus essendi. This ethical truth refuses the first truth of ontology—the struggle to be. 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 openness, not only of one’s 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)77 Emmanuel Levinas
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Responsibility puts the needs of the other before the needs of the self and does so even to the point of putting the being of the self at risk— the death of the other is feared more than the death of the self. Levinas notes, ‘‘this is the fundamental difference between my ethical analysis of death and Heidegger’s ontological analysis. Whereas for Heidegger death is my death, for me it is the other’s death.’’78 These two sides of Levinas’s thought—the transcendental and the concrete—together lead to the confusion regarding his position. Speaking transcendentally—in terms of the conditions of the possibility for subjectivity, etc.—the absolutely other approaches me from a height, calling my freedom into question and calling me to justify myself, commanding ‘‘thou shall not kill.’’ However, that same other also appears to me as vulnerable and destitute, calling me to concrete acts of sacrifice and service, crying ‘‘Please, sir. May I have some more?’’ The transcendental ethical critique, when coupled with the concrete ethical action that Levinas means to advocate, leads directly to the notion of responsibility; however, these two aspects also result in frequent misunderstandings regarding the kind of philosophy he is developing. The ‘‘seriousness’’ of the claim placed on me by responsibility, and of the response it requires, distinguishes metaphysics from the ‘‘play’’ of ontology. My responsibility before the other persecutes me to the point of being hostage to the other, to the point of substitution. ‘‘To be responsible before another is to answer to the appeal by which he approaches. It is to put oneself in his place, not to observe oneself from without, but to bear the burden of his existence and supply for its wants. I am responsible for the very faults of another, for his deeds and misdeeds.’’79 Substitution Levinas addresses the intimate connection between responsibility and substitution in Otherwise than Being as follows: Signification, the one-for-the-other, the relationship with alterity, has been analyzed in the present work as proximity, proximity as responsibility for the other, and responsibility for the other as substitution. In its subjectivity, its very bearing as a separate substance, the subject was shown to be an expiation for another, the condition or unconditionality of being hostage.80 38
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Responsibility grows in proportion to the assumption of it. Therefore, responsibility can never be satisfied and the obligation to the other can never be fulfilled. On the level of the individual encounter, Levinas claims that our responsibility to the other, when taken to its limit as an infinite responsibility that cannot be fulfilled, becomes substitution. To be oneself, otherwise than being, to be dis-interested, is to bear the wretchedness and bankruptcy of the other, and even the responsibility that the other can have for me. To be oneself, the state of being a hostage, is always to have one degree of responsibility more, the responsibility for the responsibility of the other.81 It is because responsibility increases in proportion to the recognition and assumption of this responsibility as mine that responsibility expands to the point of substitution. Like responsibility, substitution is difficult to express clearly. It would be a misunderstanding to think of substitution as an act that one chooses. Like responsibility, substitution is not an action that is chosen—although it is a ‘‘behavior’’82—it is a characteristic of being a subject. Substitution is neither transubstantiation nor fusion with the other. ‘‘To be a substitute is not to coincide with another ego, as if I could replace another as being-in-the-world . . .’’83 Nor should we interpret responsibility and substitution as the being of the subject. Substitution is the result of the non-indifference of responsibility for the other, pushed to its limit by the infinite nature of this responsibility. Levinas cautiously suggests that substitution, as the subjectivity of the subject, might be understood as expiation.84 He does this by suggesting that subjectivity might be traced back to the vulnerability of the ego, to a passivity more passive than all passivity. Such a subjectivity—as one-for-the-other, as substitution—signifies prior to essences, and the breakup of essences is one way of characterizing ‘‘ethics’’ in the most general sense for Levinas. This breakup of identity, this changing of being into signification, that is, into substitution, is the subject’s subjectivity, or its subjection to everything, its susceptibility, its vulnerability . . . Subjectivity, locus and null-site of this breakup, comes to pass as a passivity more passive than all passivity.85 The passivity of responsibility is the defecting of the ego’s identity, ‘‘and this, pushed to its limit . . . is a substitution for another, one in the Emmanuel Levinas
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place of another, expiation.’’86 Here we can see the for-the-other proper to disclosure—that is, Heideggerian solicitude (Fu¨rsorge)—replaced by the for-the-other proper to responsibility and metaphysics.87 The psyche is the form of a peculiar dephasing, a loosening up or unclamping of identity: the same prevented from coinciding with itself, at odds, torn up for rest, between sleep and insomnia, panting, shivering. It is not abdication of the same, now alienated and slave to the other, but an abnegation of oneself fully responsible for the other. This identity is brought out by responsibility and is at the service of the other. In the form of responsibility, the psyche in the soul is the other in me, a malady of identity, both accused and self, the same for the other, the same by the other. Qui pro quo, it is a substitution, extraordinary.88 Thus, substitution—the possibility of an inversion of intentionality in which the other is in me—announces the manner in which I can be other to myself, the manner in which I do not coincide with myself. In a simplified generalization, we can make a distinction between the ‘‘me’’ of enjoyment and the ‘‘I’’ of responsibility—the distinction between a child’s ‘‘Me, Me, Me!’’ and the response of the ethical subject: ‘‘Here I am’’ (me voici).89 This is the very meaning of I: Here I am, responsible for everything and everyone.90 However, we should not understand this other(ness) in the self, the distinction between the economic self and the responsible self, in a dualist sense. Rather, Levinas means to draw our attention to an an-archic identity, or ipseity, prior to consciousness. He addresses this distinction by bringing up the notion of the soul as a recurrence, a ‘‘sound that would resound in its own echo.’’91 Thus, self-consciousness and consciousness already rest on the subjective condition of an identity called an ego or I.92 Subject and consciousness are not equivalent. Even if one were to allow the loose terminology of separate ‘‘selves,’’ the notion of ipseity and the distinction between the ‘‘self in enjoyment’’ and the ‘‘self as responsible’’ are not meant to imply that the economic self is depraved and the responsible self is virtuous. Jouissance is not a state of fallenness out of which the self would rise to the purity of responsibility. The encounter with the other does not contradict the description of the egoism of enjoyment. ‘‘Both the sovereignty of the separated being and the relation with the other person 40
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are characteristic of human existence.’’93 This must be the case in order to have a genuine, non-totalizing pluralism. There must be two separate, complete, distinct persons who enter into relation—the self in enjoyment and the otherness of the other. The Third However, the world is not made up of only the same and the other. We live in a world of many people, many others. In every encounter with the other, there is reference to ‘‘the third.’’ If the relationship of proximity—the approach of the other and the same toward each other—were able to remain a relationship between only two persons there would be no problem. In such a circumstance, on a hypothetical desert island inhabited only by the self and the other, the self would be the obsessed and responsible servant of the other. But the relationship between the same and the other does not take place on a desert island. The face of the other confronts me from within society. The epiphany of the face not only challenges me with my responsibility for the other, but also announces, by proxy as it were, the presence of the third. For Levinas, the other is always ‘‘vous,’’ never ‘‘tu.’’ Vous reminds us of both the numeric component of the otherness of the other (as the second person plural pronoun) and of the propriety demanded by the other (as the formal second person singular pronoun). It is frequently noted that this linguistic device emphasizes the formal nature of the relationship with the other; it is less frequently mentioned that vous is also the second person plural pronoun. Although the relation to the face is always a relation to the face of a particular individual person (autrui) who confronts me, the relation is simultaneously plural insofar as it refers to (all) other people. While the encounter between the same and the other is an individual encounter, humanity gazes out from the face of the other.94 A third person need not be empirically present at the encounter, for the third party is present in the eyes of the face of the other. ‘‘Everything that takes place here ‘between us’ concerns everyone, the face that looks at it places itself in the full light of the public order, even if I draw back from it to seek with the interlocutor the complicity of a private relation and a clandestinity.’’95 There is no private encounter with alterity. In the face of the other, I am presented with both the height and humility of the other, and with humanity in the third person. The third is present as another other with needs and Emmanuel Levinas
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demands just like my other (autrui). The third’s nudity and vulnerability are just as destitute as that of the other before me, and the alterity of the third is just as radically asymmetrical. Given that the other commands me by virtue of his poverty, destitution, and vulnerability, it only makes sense that the poverty and vulnerability of the third also command me. The autrui and the third are ‘‘equal’’ in their destitution and vulnerability. However, I am already responsible to the other to the point of obsession and substitution—obligated beyond my ability to satisfy my obligation. How, then, can I address the needs of the third, who is equally deserving of the bread I take from my mouth to feed the other? The answer is that I cannot. The appearance of the third forces me to compare that which is incomparable—the absolute alterity of two unique persons—thereby inaugurating consciousness, theory, thematization, and totality in order to mediate between the competing demands of the others. Paradoxically, in order for there to be justice among my competing responsibilities to the others, I have to compare them and, in doing so, inaugurate the injustice of totality. The thematization that accompanies this comparison of incomparables also points the way toward concern for oneself. The ethical relationship is asymmetrical and irreversible; however, the relationship of justice opens a field wherein the self may take itself into consideration. Already, the objectification required by thematization and communication creates a distance of the self from the self, of consciousness from self-consciousness.96 Once we move from considering things through the lens of ethics to considering them through the lens of justice (although one of Levinas’s points is that there should not be a complete break or disjunction between the two) I may consider myself along with the others. Out of representation is produced the order of justice moderating or measuring the substitution of me for the other, and giving the self over to calculus. Justice requires contemporaneousness of representation. It is thus that the neighbor becomes visible, and, looked at, presents himself, and there is also justice for me.97 However, this relationship is both more complex than and subsequent to the ethical relationship on which it is founded. ‘‘As citizens we are reciprocal, [although this] is a more complex structure than the Face to Face.’’98 42
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Curiously, the introduction of the third also intimates the sense in which my other—the other of the asymmetrical, non-reciprocal relationship—is himself obligated within the field of responsibility and justice. While Levinas is highly reluctant to elaborate on this subject, it is clear that the interaction between the self, the other, and the third is more complicated than a unidirectional responsibility of the self for the other(s). The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as an equal. His equality within this essential poverty consists in referring to the third party, thus present at the encounter, whom in the midst of his destitution the Other already serves. He comes to join me. But he joins me to himself for service; he commands me as a Master. This command commands me to command. The Thou is posited in front of a we.99 Clearly, the presence of the third calls me to a responsibility beyond my responsibility and substitution for the other. In addition, Levinas indicates in several places that the presence of the third announces the responsibility of my other (autrui) for others (present as thirds to me) who are other (autrui) to him. I am responsible for the other, and we are both responsible for others (thirds), and, indeed, others are responsible for me. This level of the intersubjective relationship is not emphasized by Levinas and should not be insisted on too strongly at this point; however, Levinas does allude to it in various places throughout his work. ‘‘If the other can invest me and my freedom, of itself arbitrary, this is in the last analysis because I myself can feel myself to be the other of the other. But this comes about only across very complex structures.’’100 Levinas refuses to insist that the other must be obsessed—responsible to the point of substitution—in the manner in which the self is obsessed and obligated. Despite the sociality created by the presence of the third, the relationship between the same and the other remains irreversible. ‘‘The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one would like to have paired up a sister soul. But to say that the other has to sacrifice himself to the other would be to preach human sacrifice!’’101 To explicitly address the obligations of the other would be to destroy the essential asymmetry of the relationship that Levinas insists is primordial. In any case, the presence of the third in the face of the other reveals a new dimension of my responsibility. I am infinitely responsible due to both the infinite demand that the other places on me and Emmanuel Levinas
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to the innumerable others who are present in the face of the other. The demand of responsibility is both ‘‘too much’’ and ‘‘too many’’ for my responsibility to ever come to an end. The Face of the Other and the Trace of God102 There are several reasons why it makes sense to speak of the relationship with God in the context of the relationship to the other person when discussing Levinas’s philosophy. Although Levinas makes some effort to distinguish between his philosophy and his theology, it seems safe to say that, for Levinas—and Marcel, and Buber—the model for the relationship to the other person is the relationship to God. The intimate connection between responsibility and spirituality is affirmed in the claim that the material needs of the other are the spiritual needs of the self. Furthermore, Levinas employs a religious vocabulary to describe the human other and uses terms traditionally associated with a description of the divine: infinite, transcendent, absolutely other, etc. Within the philosophical tradition, the notion of a subjectivity irreducible to essence immediately brings to mind the idea of God. Indeed, it is perhaps the insistence that the alterity of the other person is absolute that most directly associates the encounter with the other to the relationship with God. Finally, Levinas himself tells us quite directly that God is encountered in the face of the other person. ‘‘ ‘Going towards God’ is meaningless unless seen in terms of my primary going towards the other person. I can only go towards God by being ethically concerned by and for the other person.’’103 The way in which the relationship to the human other is related to the relationship to God is expressed in what Levinas calls ‘‘the trace.’’ The trace is the trace of the infinite in which the other is encountered, which ‘‘lights up as the face of a neighbor, ambiguously him before whom . . . and him for whom I answer.’’104 The trace of the infinite is the trace of God. ‘‘Only a being that transcends the world can leave a trace.’’105 The trace is not a sign—which might be interpreted ontologically—it means without intending, without disclosing, without indicating or signaling.106 The trace disturbs order; it is ‘‘unrightness.’’ Although it signifies, it does so without manifesting anything, in a limitless alterity, thus preventing anything like a (complete) phenomenology of the trace. For Levinas, there is no ‘‘experience’’ of God—the divine is not a transcendent noema corresponding to a religious noesis. It is only by 44
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the trace, through the face, that transcendence can ‘‘appear’’ without being destroyed qua transcendence. This detour at a face and this detour from this detour in the enigma of a trace we have called illeity. Illeity lies outside the ‘‘thou’’ and the thematization of objects. A neologism formed with the il (he) or ille, it indicates a way of concerning me without entering into conjunction with me. . . . The positive element of this departure, that which makes this departure, this diachrony, be more than a term of negative theology, is my responsibility for others.107 Illeity is never present, but always already past—an irrecoverable past, the past of diachrony—and, thus, corresponds in a sense to the an-archic and pre-conscious subjectivity of ipseity. As non-thematizable, illeity cannot properly be a subject of discourse and cannot be connected with any attributes, hence the allusion to negative theology. Given that all other persons stand in this trace of illeity—which is the origin and source of the alterity of the other—it is not hard to see something akin to a philosophy of imago dei in the description of the trace. This is Levinas’s point of view: the face is in the image of God. But what does it mean to be in the image of God? It is not to be an ‘‘icon’’ of God but to ‘‘find oneself in his trace.’’ The God of Judeo-Christian tradition retains ‘‘all the infinity of his absence.’’ He shows himself only through his trace, as is written in Exodus 33.108 In his treatment of the face and the trace, Levinas so clearly has the passage from Exodus in mind that it bears repeating. When Moses asks God to reveal his ‘‘glory’’ and his ‘‘ways,’’ God grants this request, making all his goodness pass before Moses and proclaiming his name. However, God will not let Moses see his face. ‘‘You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.’’ And the Lord said, ‘‘Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft in the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.’’ (Exodus 33) Emmanuel Levinas
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Moses cannot see the face of God, but he can see God’s back, his wake, and the trace of his passage. There is substantial exegetical scholarship concerning this particular passage, which emphasizes the otherness of God and points out the inability for persons—even Moses—to stand before him face to face.109 Levinas’s work most often refers to the other as ‘‘in’’ the trace of God, rather than saying that the other ‘‘is’’ the trace of God.110 To approach the divine is to encounter others who stand in the trace of illeity. The encounter with the divine takes place in the face of the other, and the movement toward the divine is responsibility, substitution, and justice. It is in taking the bread from my own mouth to feed the others, even if it is hurtful to me, without regard to what is good for me, that I am compassionate. And it is as compassionate that I am like God. The knowledge of God which we can have and which is expressed, according to Maimonides, in the form of negative attributes, receives a positive meaning from the moral ‘‘God is merciful,’’ which means: ‘‘Be merciful like Him.’’ The attributes of God are given not in the indicative, but in the imperative.111 The election of responsibility by which I am unique is one that is responsible to a non-thematizable value, and ‘‘Levinas does not hesitate to name this value, it is God.’’112 Adriaan Peperzak goes so far as to claim that, in Otherwise than Being, Levinas presents a summary of an entirely new version of philosophical theology. Levinas’ novelty is that without denying the necessity of attributing transcendence to God, he shows: (1) that the circle of philosophical logic is opened up by the fact that all discourses are necessarily addressed to another human, and (2) that the transcendence of God destroys itself if it is separated from the transcendence of the other human. . . . Neither I, nor the Other, nor God can be thought in terms of kerygmatic discourse alone.113 Levinas insists that the Jewish tradition is one that minimizes the significance of numinous experience. Numinousness would, in emphasizing the mystical encounter with the divine, reduce the significance of human freedom and the ethical relation. How, then, does one relate to God? ‘‘Levinas does not get tired of insisting on [this]: intimacy with God is primarily and basically obedience to his commandments, not knowledge of his nature, thoughts or deeds.’’114 46
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However, both the other and the third stand in the trace, and we are brought back to the conflict between responsibility for the other and the demands of justice by the third. Where is the encounter with God located? In the obsessive responsibility for a single other or in the more expansive encounter that includes the third? Peperzak notes that, for Levinas the relation to which the other calls me is not the closed society of love. God is not to be found in romantic love or in friendship, but in the law of justice, that is, in the non-intimate relationship to the other, which is called here—in opposition to the second person of the beloved ‘‘Thou’’—‘‘the third.’’ I would neglect the third and do injustice to him or her if I were to abandon myself to the dual privacy of love.115 Justice and Love What then are the roles played by justice and love in Levinas’s philosophy? Are they in conflict—as was suggested at the beginning of this chapter—and, if so, how is this conflict resolved? Which relationship has priority? Levinas takes a clear position on this issue: there is indeed a tension between justice and love, and justice must take priority. This is true both in the (hypothetical) encounter with a solitary other person and in the face-to-face encounter with the other in which the third is also implicated. Justice is the primary (in the sense of ‘‘most important’’ rather than ‘‘primordial’’) mode in which I relate to other persons in both my individual and social relationships, and is also my primary relationship to God. First, it should be noted that ‘‘love’’ could mean several different things: eros, agape, philia, etc. Levinas is highly suspicious of erotic love—it is presented in contrast to the ethical relationship in Totality and Infinity—despite the role such relations play in fecundity and paternity.116 Even when addressing the transcendence and pardon possible via the production of a child, it is apparent that the caress of erotic love is a ‘‘profanation and, somehow, a violation of a neverlost virginity.’’117 Responsibility and substitution clearly have priority over erotic love (and this is even more clear in the work after Totality and Infinity). In addition to the potential for violation and domination within a relationship that allows for knowledge and contact, the intimacy of love excludes others (thirds) and is therefore inherently unjust. Emmanuel Levinas
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In fact, when Levinas addresses ‘‘love’’ of the other, he most often means to stress the aspects of charity and sacrifice characteristic of responsibility and substitution rather than a preferential relationship of intimacy. From the start, the encounter with the Other is my responsibility for him. That is the responsibility for my neighbor, which is, no doubt, the harsh name for what we call love of one’s neighbor; love without Eros, charity, love in which the ethical aspect dominates the passionate aspect, love without concupiscence. I don’t very much like the word love . . .118 Love is an unjust modification of responsibility insofar as it privileges one other on the basis of nearness, similarity, reciprocity, or sexual attraction. For Levinas, just love is the love of one’s neighbor, and love of one’s neighbor is to be understood as responsibility for one’s neighbor. The encounter with the other person is one in which the same and the other enter into a relationship while simultaneously absolving themselves of this relationship; it is a relationship without contact, a relationship at a distance. The intimacy that is normally associated with love is, and must be, entirely absent from this relationship. ‘‘Socialite´ premie`re: le rapport personnel est dans la rigueur de la justice qui me juge et non pas dans l’amour qui m’excuse.’’119 While Levinas does address the importance of atonement, particularly in his Talmudic readings, the relationship with the other is a judgment before it is an absolution.120 It is a relationship in which I am persecuted to the point of being hostage, to the point of substitution, not one in which reciprocal intimacy allows for presence to the other and for knowing the heart of the beloved. We saw that language is the mode of relation that does not encroach upon the otherness of the other, a relation that allows otherness to remain other. However, the forthrightness of language would be compromised if it were to be used for secrets between two people to the exclusion of the third. ‘‘Language as the presence of the face does not invite complicity with the preferred being, the self-sufficient ‘I-Thou’ forgetful of the universe; in its frankness it refuses the clandestinity of love, where it loses its frankness and turns into laughter and cooing.’’121 If there were the possibility of a solitary encounter with otherness in which the third was not present, the relationship would remain one of obsession and responsibility to the point of substitution. However, such a one-on-one encounter remains only hypo48
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thetical. The presence of the third in the face of the other demands inclusiveness and makes an additional demand for justice. The justice of my obsession with the other is called into question by the third, just as the other called into question the naı¨ve exercise of my freedom in enjoyment by calling for its justification. The other and the third party, my neighbors, contemporaries of one another, put distance between me and the other and the third party. . . . The third party introduces a contradiction in the saying whose signification before the other until then went in one direction. It is of itself the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: what do I have to do with justice? A question of consciousness. Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence, contemporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system, and thence also a copresence on an equal footing as before a court of justice . . .122 The presence of the third party demands to be addressed alongside the responsibility for the other and forces me to compare that which is incomparable. Unable to even fulfill the responsibility to and for the other, the self is now confronted with third, fourth, fifth, nth others whose nakedness, vulnerability, and destitution are equal to the other’s (autrui). The task of responsibility seems impossible, a Sisyphean or Herculean labor. However, even if the subject will never be able to finish cleansing the Augean stables of responsibility, he needs to pick a place to begin. Hence, the necessity of justice, a fair way of dealing with the unfairness brought about by my inability to meet the infinite demands of my responsibility. In proximity to the other (autrui), I am obsessed to the point of substitution in an absolutely asymmetrical and non-reciprocal relationship. However, the third challenges my obsession with the other. ‘‘The relationship with the third party is an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity in which the face is looked at . . . in which my anarchic relationship with illeity is betrayed.’’123 The third introduces a contradiction or conflict into the obsession with the other and, in doing so, presents a limit for responsibility and introduces the realm of justice, consciousness, thematization, and the state, that is, a totality.124 The introduction of totality, which is the betrayal of illeity, is necessary in order to compare that which is incomparable outside the totality: the otherness of two other persons. Emmanuel Levinas
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In taking the bread from my mouth to give to the other, I must decide which other will receive it and, in so doing, decide which other will go without. Moreover, it is here, in the realm of justice, where I may legitimately consider my own place in the equation as one among the others. It is justice that, putting a limit on ethical responsibility, stops the responsibility and substitution from ending in suicide brought about by the diversion of all my goods and resources to the other. Levinas admits that this is inevitable; we can only postpone the betrayal of the ethical relationship.125 How can systems and thematization—which are inherently totalizing—assure the just treatment of others? How can a totality do justice to the otherness that makes others incomparable by comparing them, by ignoring the very characteristic (otherness) it claims to protect? Justice is possible only if it is founded on the original asymmetry of the face-to-face. Justice, as thematization, must be founded on the original asymmetry of responsibility. My responsibility for the other (autrui) who stands before me and accuses me implies, and must inform, my concern for justice, my responsibility to all others. Although this assertion seems to harbor a contradiction insofar as obsession, by definition single-minded, cannot coexist with a diffused consideration of all others, Levinas insists that this is the case. In no way is justice a degradation of obsession, a degeneration of the for-the-other, a diminution, a limitation of anarchic responsibility, a neutralization of the glory of the infinite, a degeneration that would be produced in the measure that for empirical reasons that initial duo would become a trio. But the contemporaneousness of the multiple is tied about the diachrony of the two; justice remains justice only, in a society where there is no distinction between those close and those far off but in which there also remains the impossibility of passing by the closest.126 This is perhaps a utopian ideal, a charge that Levinas does not entirely deny. He maintains that the fact that the ethical relation is ‘‘utopian does not prevent it from investing our everyday actions of generosity or goodwill towards the other.’’127 My responsibility to the other should lead me toward a just treatment of all others, and the ideal presented by justice should, in turn, re-inform my generosity and goodwill toward individual others. Nevertheless, this utopian ideal indicates that, on the concrete and pragmatic level of everyday 50
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encounters and choices, the demands of justice have priority over responsibility to individuals. Thus, while on the level of the face-to-face encounter with the other, responsibility has priority over love—though it is equivalent with love qua responsibility for the neighbor—the introduction of the third demands that justice has priority over responsibility.128 However, while justice has priority over responsibility and love, paradoxically justice, as an ideal, must proceed from love qua charity. ‘‘[J]ustice itself is born of charity. They can seem alien when presented in successive stages; in reality, they are inseparable and simultaneous, unless one is on a desert island . . . without a third.’’129 Love (qua responsibility) and justice operate to restrain each other from becoming dogmatic. Justice demands that love look beyond the individual other to consider the others implicated in every interhuman encounter, and responsibility is the original relation that justice must take as its guide if it is to be just. The moral/political/ ontological world must be guided and informed by the ethical dimension of metaphysics.130 Only the necessary thematization of Levinas’s topics—which must take place not only in these pages, but in Levinas’s own books—seems to present the encounter with the Infinite in a series of temporal stages that appear to be mutually exclusive. In fact the self is simultaneously economic, responsible, persecuted, substituted, and just. And the self is simultaneously in dialogue with the other (autrui), the third, and God.
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3
Gabriel Marcel
All that can be said is that everything in our life happens as though we entered upon it with a load of obligations contracted from a previous existence. Proust, La Prisonnie`re Don’t you feel sometimes that we are living . . . if you can call it living . . . in a broken world? Yes, broken like a broken watch. The mainspring has stopped working. Just look at it; nothing has changed. Everything is in its place. But put the watch to your ear, and you don’t hear any ticking. You know what I’m talking about, the world, what we call the world, the world of human creatures . . . it seems to me as if it must have had a heart at one time, but today you would say the heart has stopped beating. Gabriel Marcel, The Broken World
Just as the previous chapter sketched an outline of Levinas’s thought, this chapter will summarize some of the significant elements in Marcel’s diverse and unsystematic work. The format will follow that of the previous chapter: a general summary, followed by a description of intersubjectivity and alterity, and a final focus on love and justice. Again, while intending to provide a fair representation of Marcel’s work, the role played by these first two exegetical chapters—that of anticipating an engagement between Levinas and Marcel on the question of otherness—requires a more selective summary. 52
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Furthermore, while building toward a dialogue, this summary must resist the temptation to speak of Marcel’s thought in terms of Levinas’s thought or to prematurely juxtapose absolute and relative otherness. Each of these thinkers deserves to be taken on his own terms and to have the merits of his philosophy evaluated before undertaking any analysis of the shortcomings of either one. Thus, this chapter will do for Marcel what the previous chapter did for Levinas, that is, provide a general overview of the philosophy in question, but with a special attention to those features that have a bearing on love, justice, or otherness. Gabriel Marcel was not a ‘‘professional’’ philosopher and his philosophical legacy includes lectures, journal entries, and dramatic works in addition to more orthodox philosophical expression in essays.1 Of these various genres, Marcel was perhaps most pleased with his dramatic works, in which he felt he was able to express things for which the more rigid structures of philosophical language were inadequate. In fact, reading between the lines of Marcel’s autobiographical remarks, one can discern some puzzlement and no small amount of frustration at the success of his philosophical works and the relative obscurity of his dramatic works.2 Although he maintains a distinction between his drama and his philosophy, at times Marcel seems to acknowledge that it is in the dramatic works that his thoughts are found in their pure and unalloyed state.3 Le Monde casse´, Un homme de Dieu, L’Iconoclaste, and Le chemin de creˆte are, in part, dramatic expressions of philosophical (and theological) positions, and of insights better conveyed by experience or example than by theory and concept. Marcel frequently cites his drama in his philosophical work in order to anchor his philosophy with examples. In fact, examples of all kinds are central to Marcel’s way of philosophizing. He claims that ‘‘thinking that does not deal seriously with examples always runs the risk of losing itself, of letting itself be deluded by a kind of antecedent linguistic structure.’’4 Marcel’s thought does not build up a system. Rather, it digs down; it mines experience in order to come to a fuller understanding of it. Instead of moving predictably from one point to another, he frequently returns to reevaluate the same phenomena again from a different perspective before moving on. Through the repetitive treatment of the same subjects from new perspectives, new insight is gained. Like Karl Jaspers, he seems to think that ‘‘philosophy’’ should properly be used to designate the act of philosophizing rather than the body of philosophical doctrines. However, the lack of sysGabriel Marcel
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tematicity, the journal entry format, and the wandering meditations of Marcel’s thought pose some interesting problems for his interpreters. Where should one look for a concise and coherent explanation of Marcel’s philosophy? Does such a source exist, or must one wade through the entirety of his extensive oeuvre in order to grasp the underlying themes and positions? The logical place to look for a clear and structured treatment of Marcel’s thought is in the two volumes of The Mystery of Being, delivered as the Gifford Lectures in 1949 and 1950, or in The Existential Background of Human Dignity, the publication resulting from his William James Lectures at Harvard in 1960 and 1961.5 However, when concerned with the intersubjective relationship, these works alone are not sufficient for a concise elaboration of Marcel’s position. Marcel gave up on the idea of authoring a system of philosophy very early in his career, as early as the publication of his Journal me´taphysique (1927). In fact, the text we now know as The Mystery of Being consists of lectures and essays chosen and organized by M. Roger Troisfontaines, a friend of Marcel’s, for presentation in Aberdeen.6 While The Mystery of Being is indeed an excellent survey of Marcel’s thought, his style of philosophizing demands that his ‘‘minor’’ works not be overlooked. Other works that are particularly helpful for an examination of Marcel’s thoughts on intersubjectivity and otherness include On the Ontological Mystery, Creative Fidelity, Homo Viator, and Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. On the Ontological Mystery ‘‘explains the main lines’’ of Marcel’s thought, which ‘‘have not changed since [1933].’’7 Creative Fidelity offers us, on Marcel’s own account, the best introduction to his philosophical thought.8 Homo Viator is ‘‘an analysis which is a kind of nucleus of the possible phenomenology of the relationships between myself and others.’’9 Finally, Tragic Wisdom is a later (1968) attempt to summarize Marcel’s work, one that he calls ‘‘the image of my work as a whole.’’10 Concrete Philosophy Although Marcel and Levinas are quite similar in their philosophical concern with the other person, they differ radically in their methodology, despite the fact that both of them can be classified as phenomenologists in a qualified way. In Marcel’s case, such a qualification must note that he began his philosophical writing prior to having read Husserl or Heidegger, and his early struggles were against his own tendencies toward idealism. It was from these struggles that he 54
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independently developed a personal method of philosophy via ‘‘concrete situations,’’ one that bore some similarity to Husserl’s phenomenological revolution. However, the structure of Marcel’s early writing did not match the rigorous systematicity of Husserl and his students, and later exposure to these thinkers served to clarify and sharpen the method toward which Marcel had been groping alone. Marcel describes his method as ‘‘working . . . up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, so that I may try to throw more light upon life.’’11 Thus, Marcel is a peculiar phenomenologist, the result of a partially independent development that was only later influenced by the phenomenological revolution proper.12 Early on, Marcel’s ‘‘phenomenology’’ was identical with his concrete philosophy—philosophy that begins by accepting our everyday experiences and asking what implications might be drawn from them. Later, phenomenology gained specificity and came to mean ‘‘a description bearing upon the structures which reflection elucidates starting from experience.’’13 Nevertheless, Marcel never felt compelled to adopt the phenomenological method as laid out by Husserl or Heidegger, and he never embraced the phenomenological vocabulary. He insisted that philosophy begin with our experience and maintained that ‘‘we should employ current forms of ordinary language which distort our experiences far less than the elaborate expressions in which philosophical language is crystallized.’’14 In fact, he found technical language of any sort to be obfuscatory rather than illuminating and attempted to avoid it at all costs, even the cost of a perceived lack of clarity and rigor. In addition to ‘‘phenomenologist,’’ the term most often associated with Marcel is ‘‘existentialist’’—a term for which he expressed mixed feelings. When pressed to replace the designation ‘‘Christian existentialist’’—which he spent much of his life repudiating after an initial but brief endorsement of the term—he accepted, at the suggestion of a friend, ‘‘Neo-Socratism.’’15 The comparison to Socrates was meant to underscore both the dialogical emphasis of Marcel’s thought and the fact that his philosophizing was a journey or process rather than a destination or goal, and thus often concluded with an aporia-like admission of the limits of human reason. Where, then, should we place Marcel in the tradition? Although there is some legitimacy in calling Marcel an ‘‘existential’’ philosopher, he himself rejected this term.16 ‘‘Empirical’’ philosophy is somewhat less problematic, but suffers from persistent misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of what Marcel means by ‘‘experience.’’17 Thus, if we feel compelled Gabriel Marcel
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to classify Marcel, his Neo-Socratism—in parts phenomenological, existential, and empirical—should perhaps be expressed by the term he was comfortable with: concrete philosophy. The Broken World and the Functional Person Marcel begins most of his philosophical essays with an observation about life. Although nonsystematic, his method tends to exhibit a certain pattern: an observation about life (‘‘One will notice that today . . .’’) gives rise to a philosophical position, followed by an illuminating example (‘‘Imagine the case of . . .’’), possible objections (‘‘It will be said that . . .’’), and a reply to those objections (‘‘Such a position cannot be maintained, for it assumes . . .’’). One of Marcel’s central observations about life and experience is mentioned in the epigraph to this chapter: that we live in a ‘‘broken world.’’ A world in which ‘‘ontological exigence’’—if acknowledged at all—is silenced by an unconscious relativism or by a monism that discounts the personal, ‘‘ignores the tragic and denies the transcendent.’’18 It is important to note that Marcel does not mean to imply that there was once a historically intact ‘‘whole world,’’ a prelapsarian Eden subsequently broken. Although we can see that the course of history—in particular certain events of the twentieth century—has contributed to the fracturing of the world, we cannot point out a time when the world was not, to some degree, broken in Marcel’s sense.19 It would be more correct to emphasize that the world is essentially broken, broken in essence, in addition to having been further fractured by events in history. The observation is intended to point out that we find ourselves hic et nunc in a world that is broken. This situation is characterized by a refusal (or inability) to reflect, a refusal to imagine, and a denial of the transcendent.20 Although many things contribute to the brokenness of the world, the hallmark of its modern manifestation is ‘‘the misplacement of the idea of function.’’21 As is his custom, Marcel begins with an example rather than an analysis of functionalism and the broken world. ‘‘I should like to start with a sort of global and intuitive characterization of the man in whom the sense of the ontological—the sense of being—is lacking, or, to speak more correctly, the man who has lost awareness of this sense.’’22 This person, the one who has lost awareness of the sense of the ontological, the one whose capacity to wonder has atrophied to the extent of becoming a vestigial trait, is an example of the influence of the misapplication of the idea of function. 56
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Marcel uses the example of a subway-token distributor. This person has a job that is mindless, repetitive, and monotonous. The same function can be, and often is, completed by automatic machines. All day this person takes bills from commuters and returns a token and some change, repeating the same process with the same denominations of currency, over and over. The other people with whom he interacts engage him in only the most superficial and distant manner. In most cases, they do not speak to him and they do not make eye contact. In fact, the only distinction the commuters make between such a person and the automatic, mechanical token dispenser down the hall is to note which ‘‘machine’’ has the shorter line. The way in which these commuters interact with this subway employee is clearly superficial and less than desirable. However, Marcel’s point here is more subtle. What can the inner reality of such a person be like? What began as tedious work slowly becomes infuriating in its monotony, but eventually passes into a necessity that is accepted with indifference, until even the sense of dissatisfaction with the pure functionalism of the task is lost. The unfortunate truth is that such a person may come to see himself, at first unconsciously, as merely an amalgamation of the functions he performs. There is the function of dispensing tokens at work, the function of husband and father at home, etc. His life operates on a series of timetables that indicate when certain functions—such as the yearly maintenance trip to the doctor, the yearly vacation to rest and recuperate—are to be exercised. In this person the sense of wonder and the exigence23 for the transcendent may slowly begin to wither and die. In the most extreme cases, a person who has come to identify himself with his functions ceases even to have any intuition that the world is broken. A corollary of the functionalism of the modern broken world is its highly technical nature. Marcel characterizes a world such as ours—in which everything and everyone becomes viewed in terms of function, and in which all questions are approached with techniques—as one dominated by its ‘‘technics.’’ This is evident in the dependence on technology, the immediate deferral to the technological as the answer to any problem, and the tendency to think of technical reasoning as the only mode of access to the truth. When functions go awry, we repair them with the appropriate technique. Today we think that, for any given problem, there is an appropriate technique that will solve the problem. Even when we do not publicly assert or consciously think this, our speech and actions betray us. Gabriel Marcel
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People think they can accomplish as much as their techniques and technologies allow. However, it is clear that there are some problems that cannot be addressed with technique, and this is disquieting for persons who have come to rely on technics. Disease, hunger, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and even war all become the objects of a technical assault and are, we assume, destined to fall before inexorable human progress. However, while technology undoubtedly has its proper place and use, the deification of technology leads to despair when we realize the ultimate inefficacy of technics regarding the most important existential questions. It is precisely this misapplication of the idea of function and the dependence on technics that leads to the despair that is so prevalent in the broken world. We have come to rely on technics in an idolatrous manner. Ontological Exigence ‘‘What defines man are his exigencies.’’24 Nevertheless, these exigencies can be smothered, perhaps even silenced, by despair. Such is the case in the example of the ‘‘functionalized’’ person given above. The broken world can smother transcendent exigencies, leaving only quotidian, functional needs intact. The ontological exigence, the need for transcendence, is linked to a certain dissatisfaction—one that is all the more troubling because I seem unable to soothe this dissatisfaction by my own powers. Without a feeling that something is amiss, without the feeling of dissatisfaction, ontological exigence withers. This is why the functional person, the person who no longer even notices that the world is broken, is described as having lost the awareness of the ontological and of the need for transcendence. Marcel himself has difficulty defining ontological exigence. The term is closely tied to other Marcelian concepts—e.g., mystery, presence, hope—that will be brought to light in what follows. However, as a preliminary approximation, it is possible to note that: Being is—or should be—necessary. It is impossible that everything should be reduced to a play of successive appearances which are inconsistent with each other . . . or, in the words of Shakespeare, to ‘‘a tale told by an idiot.’’ I aspire to participate in this being, in this reality—and perhaps this aspiration is already a degree of participation, however rudimentary.25 Thus, the ontological exigence is a need and a demand for some level of coherence in the cosmos and for some understanding of our place 58
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and role within this coherence. It is the combination of wonder (thaumazein) with an attendant desire, not to understand the entire cosmos, but to understand something of one’s own place in it.26 Note that, for Marcel, the ontological exigence is not merely a ‘‘wish’’ for being or coherence, but is an ‘‘interior urge’’ or ‘‘appeal.’’ ‘‘Otherwise stated, the [ontological] exigence is not reducible to some psychological state, mood, or attitude a person has; it is rather a movement of the human spirit that is inseparable from being human.’’27 Marcel is very clear that the term ‘‘transcendence’’ has, in his view, become degraded in modern philosophy. Transcendence cannot mean merely ‘‘going beyond’’ without any further specification. It must retain the tension of the traditional distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, one that emphasizes a vertical rather than a horizontal going beyond, a transcendence toward a height, a trans-ascendence.28 Although the transcendent is juxtaposed with the immanent, Marcel insists that ‘‘transcendent’’ cannot mean ‘‘transcending experience.’’ ‘‘There must exist a possibility of having an experience of the transcendent as such, and unless that possibility exists the word can have no meaning.’’29 The tendency to discount the idea of experiencing transcendence is the result of an objective view of experience. However, experience is not an object, a Gegenstand, and therefore it cannot be viewed objectively. Speaking metaphorically, the essence of experience is not an ‘‘absorbing into oneself,’’ as in the case of taste, but ‘‘a straining oneself towards something, as when, for instance, during the night we attempt to get a distinct perception of some far-off noise.’’30 Thus, while Marcel insists on the possibility of experiencing the transcendent, he does not thereby mean that the transcendent is comprehensible. The transcendent, by definition, refers to that which is beyond. There is an order where the subject finds himself in the presence of something entirely beyond his grasp. I would add that if the word ‘‘transcendent’’ has any meaning it is here—it designates the absolute, unbridgeable chasm yawning between the subject and being, insofar as being evades every attempt to pin it down.31 Being as Absolute Thou The transcendence hoped for in ontological exigence points directly toward being, which in turn demands the consideration of the meanGabriel Marcel
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ing of this term. However, the specification of being is itself difficult, a problem exacerbated by the double meaning of eˆtre as substantive and verb.32 Marcel variously says it is that which ‘‘withstands analysis,’’ ‘‘resists atomization,’’ or ‘‘is irreducible.’’ However, examining Marcel’s work as a whole, it becomes clear that one significant sense of being is, for him, an ‘‘Absolute Thou.’’ Although Marcel also uses the term ‘‘God’’ in his work, he most often retains the term ‘‘Absolute Thou’’ when discussing being, and he insists that his philosophy is not specifically Catholic, Christian, or even theistic. In fact, ‘‘Absolute Thou’’ could often be replaced with the term ‘‘Absolute Presence,’’ for it will become clear that presence is the manner in which we relate to any thou. This is not to say that one should read Absolute Thou in a de-sacralized manner; Marcel certainly did not. Rather, it is to say that Absolute Thou should be read in a radically ecumenical manner, one that is not tied to any specific, and perhaps not even necessarily to a conscious, confession. Marcel does maintain that phenomena such as mystery, presence, and hope are only accessible to those who experience ontological exigence. However, such a disposition is not specific to any confessed faith, and some ‘‘confessed’’ atheists or agnostics are, no doubt, more disposed to the transcendent than certain practicing theists.33 Being and Having In addition to being qua Absolute Thou, Marcel uses ‘‘being’’ to discuss the way in which man is—that is, the being of humans.34 Although the distinction between being qua being and the being of beings is a traditional one, Marcel characteristically approaches it from a unique perspective. While being qua being is taken up in terms of an absolute presence, Marcel most frequently chooses not to ask what the being of man is (i.e., not to define it), but to examine the various ways in which people are. He does this in part by contrasting being with having, that is, by distinguishing ways that we are from things that we have. In some cases this distinction is obvious and therefore not particularly illuminating. For example, most people would readily acknowledge a difference between having a home and being hospitable. However, there are other cases where the distinction between having something and being something is much more significant. For example, on Marcel’s account, when we hope we do not have hope; we are hope. Similarly, we do not have a belief; we are a belief. 60
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Marcel’s hallmark illustration of being and having actually straddles the distinction between them: my body. My body, insofar as it is my body, is both something that I have and something that I am, and it cannot adequately be accounted for using either of these descriptions alone. I can look at my body in a disassociated manner and see it instrumentally. However, in doing so, in distancing myself from it in order to grasp it qua object, qua something I have, it ceases to be ‘‘my’’ body. I can have ‘‘a’’ body, but not ‘‘my’’ body. As soon as I make the connection that the body in question is my body, not a body, it can no longer be something that I have pure and simple— this body also is me, it is what I am. On the other hand, it cannot be said that I simply am my body either. I can dispose of my body in certain circumstances by treating it instrumentally. A person who loses a limb in an accident is not less of a person and, therefore, there is a sense in which our bodies are objects that we have. The ambiguous role played by my body not only points out the distinction between being and having, but also shows that we relate to other things and persons differently in these two modes. Having corresponds to things that are completely external. I have things that I possess, that I can dispose of—and this should make it clear that I cannot have, for example, another person. Having implies this possession because ‘‘having always implies an obscure notion of assimilation.’’35 While the encounter with otherness takes place in terms of assimilation when speaking of having, the encounter with otherness can also take place on the level of being, as, for example, in the case of other persons. In this case Marcel maintains that the encounter is not purely external and, as such, plays out in terms of presence and participation rather than assimilation. Being and having are both legitimate ways to encounter things in the world; however, the misapplication of these two modes of comportment can have disastrous consequences. For example, we do not have life; we are our lives. When we come to see life objectively, in terms of having, we begin to conduct our lives in an administrative manner. We dole out bits and pieces of our life to protect the limited quantity that we have. This administrative conservation of our lives often leads us to become unavailable to other persons, persons on whom the limited resources of our life might be wasted. However, we do not have, for example, fifty years left to live—as if these years were safely stored in some metaphysical bank account. We do not ‘‘have’’ any life at all. We may die fifty years from now or fifty minutes from now, and no oracle can divine for us which it will be. The Gabriel Marcel
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objective view of life does nothing but cut us off from communion with others. It keeps us from hearing the cry of the other—or persuades us to ignore it—because we become convinced that we must safeguard our limited time, a time that we never had in the first place.
Problem and Mystery The notion that we live in a broken world is a favorite example of Marcel’s, one that has a global presence in his thought. However, the example itself is most often used—along with the person who is characteristic of the broken world, the functionalized person—to segue into one of Marcel’s central thematic distinctions: the distinction between problem and mystery. He states that the broken world is ‘‘on the one hand, riddled with problems and, on the other, determined to allow no room for mystery.’’36 The denial of the mysterious is symptomatic of the modern broken world and is tied to its technical character, which only acknowledges that which technique can address: the problematic. The distinction between problem and mystery is one that hinges, like much of Marcel’s thought, on the notion of participation. A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity.37 A problem is a question in which I am not involved, in which the identity of the person asking the question is not an issue. In the realm of the problematic, it makes no difference who is asking the question because all of the relevant information is external to the questioner. As such, a problem is something that bars my way, placing an obstacle in front of me that must be overcome. In turn, overcoming a problem inevitably involves some technique, a technique that could be, and often is, employed by any other person confronting the same problem. Thus the identity of the questioner can be changed without altering the problem itself. This is why the modern broken world only sees the problematic; the problematic is that which can be addressed and solved with a technique, for example, changing a flat tire on an automobile or downloading anti-virus software. 62
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When I am dealing with a problem, I am trying to discover a solution that can become common property, that consequently can, at least in theory, be rediscovered by anybody at all. But . . . this idea of a validity for ‘‘anybody at all’’ or of a thinking in general has less and less application the more deeply one penetrates into the inner courts of philosophy . . .38 Marcel insists that the mysterious is the proper field of inquiry for philosophy, the problematic being the hallmark of endeavors such as physics, mathematics, and astronomy. Marcel often describes a mystery as a ‘‘problem that encroaches on its own data.’’39 Such a ‘‘problem’’ is, in fact, metaproblematic; it is a question in which the identity of the questioner is an issue. On the level of the mysterious, the identity of the questioner is tied to the question itself and, therefore, the questioner is not interchangeable. To change the questioner would be to alter the question. Here, on the level of the mysterious, the distinctions ‘‘in-me’’ and ‘‘before-me’’ break down. It makes every difference who is asking the question when confronting a mystery. Marcel insists that mysteries can be found in the question of Being (e.g., my ontological exigence), the union of the body and soul, the ‘‘problem’’ of evil, and—perhaps the archetypal examples of mystery—freedom and love. For example, I cannot question Being as if my being is not at issue in the questioning. The question of being and the question of who I am cannot be addressed separately. They are somehow incoherent if approached as problems; however, taken together, their mysterious character is revealed and they cancel themselves out qua problems. Unlike problems, mysteries are not solved with techniques and therefore they cannot be answered the same way by different persons—one technique, one solution, will not apply in the different cases presented by different persons. Mysteries are not open to solutions at all, at least not in the sense we normally think of solutions. Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to call the mysterious a gap in our knowledge in the same way that a problem is. The problem of cold fusion remains merely problematic, whether or not a technical solution for this problem is ever (or can ever be) discovered. ‘‘The mysterious is not the unknowable, the unknowable is only the limiting case of the problematic.’’40 Although a mystery may not be solvable, it does not follow that it is senseless. Likewise, if it cannot be expressed in clear and direct language, it can still be spoken of indirectly or suggestively; hence Gabriel Marcel
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Marcel’s interest in the arts.41 Marcel notes, in a journal entry dated December 18, 1932, that: The metaproblematic is a participation on which my reality as a subject is built . . . and reflection will show that such a participation, if it is genuine, cannot be a solution. If it were it would cease to be a participation in a transcendent reality, and would become, instead, an interpolation into transcendent reality, and would be degraded in the process . . .42 Referring back to the idea of a broken world, the technical and the problematic are questions that are addressed with only part of a person. The full person is not engaged in the technical because a person’s self, his identity, is not at issue. ‘‘At the root of having [and problems, and technics] there lies a certain specialization of specification of the self, and this is connected with [a] partial alienation of the self . . .’’43 Problems are addressed impersonally, in a detached manner, while mysteries demand participation and involvement. Although some problems can be reflected on in such a way that they become mysterious, all mysteries can be reflected on in such a way that the mystery is degraded and becomes merely problematic. ‘‘The continuity implied in all problems is the continuity of a ‘system for me’. Whereas in mystery it is quite different; I am carried beyond any ‘system for me’.’’44 Problems, despite the interchangeability of the questioner, are all encountered and addressed relative to the questioner, relative to ‘‘my body’’ or to ‘‘my system.’’ Participation in the mysterious, however, involves me in a reality that, despite my personal stake in the matter, cannot be reduced to an object for me, or comprehended in a system of mine. How can something which cannot be reduced to a problem be thought? Thinking qua looking reduces mystery to problem . . . the contradiction implied in the fact of thinking a mystery falls to the ground of itself when we cease to cling to an objectified and misleading picture of thought . . .45 What analytic, objectifying reflection sees as a contradiction, philosophy is capable of encountering as a paradox, a mystery. ‘‘This philosophy is based on a datum that is not transparent to reflection, and when reflected on implies awareness, not of a contradiction, but of a mystery, becoming an antimony as soon as discursive thought tries to reduce or problematize it.’’46 While the mysterious is open to experience, open to thought, even open to reflection, such reflection can64
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not be the objectifying, analytic ‘‘seeing’’ of normal reflective thought. Mundane reflection merely succeeds in degrading the mystery in question to the state of problem or a contradiction. Thus, the mysterious is something in which I am involved, something in which my role may be questioned. Unlike a problem, it is not solved with techniques that others might use. Rather than solve a mystery, I experience it—and the experience of the mystery as mysterious demands my participation. Where the notion of a broken world led us to the distinction between problem and mystery, this distinction in turn points toward (1) a second distinction between two kinds of reflection—primary and secondary—and, (2) the important role played by participation in Marcel’s thought. Primary and Secondary Reflection The distinction between two kinds of questions—problem and mystery—brings to light two different kinds of thinking or reflection. The problematic is addressed with detached and technical thinking, while we encounter the mysterious in reflection that is involved, participatory, and decidedly non-technical. Marcel calls these two kinds of thinking primary and secondary reflection. Primary reflection examines its object by abstraction, by analytically breaking it down into its constituent parts. It concerns itself with definitions, essences, and technical solutions to problems. In contrast, secondary reflection is synthetic; it unifies rather than divides. ‘‘Roughly, we can say that where primary reflection tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it, the function of secondary reflection is essentially recuperative; it reconquers that unity.47 Reflection, Marcel notes, is contiguous with human life; human life and reflection go hand in hand.48 In the most general sense, reflection is nothing other than attention brought to bear on something. However, different objects require different kinds of reflection. In keeping with their respective applications to problem and mystery, primary reflection is directed at that which is outside of me or before me, while secondary reflection is directed at that which is not merely before me—that is, either at that which is in me, that which I am, or at those areas where the distinctions ‘‘in me’’ and ‘‘before me’’ tend to break down. The thread connecting having and being, problem and mystery, and primary and secondary reflection is quite clear. For example, I can reflect on my body, ask questions, inquire into the cause or nature of an illness from which I suffer. My initial reGabriel Marcel
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flections may address my body and its illness as things external to my self, things that I have—as if I were inquiring into a mechanical problem with my car. Such reflection attempts to identify problems and search for a solution, a technique to apply in the given situation. However, a second reflection can take place following this first reflection, one that recoups the full unity of my experience of this illness and reveals a mysterious element. This is ‘‘a reflection whereby I ask myself how and from what starting point I was able to proceed in my initial reflection . . . this second reflection is recollection in the measure in which recollection can be self-conscious.’’49 Marcel uses recollection in what he refers to as its ‘‘spiritual’’ sense, denoting the act whereby I ‘‘re-collect myself as a unity.’’ Curiously, although recollection is an act whereby I grasp or get hold of myself, it is also a relaxation, abandon, or surrender. This unusual situation is due to the fact that, while I unify myself in the act of recollection, I also come to see that there is a fundamental incohesion in my self, a fracturing or permeability within the unity. It will become clear that it is the encounter with the other that, on the one hand, gives me back to myself and allows me to re-unify myself in recollection and, on the other hand, should alert me to the fact that this unity must possess a fundamental permeability if my encounter with the other is to give me this gift of myself. Recollection reveals what we might call the ‘‘porous unity’’ of the self. Thus, secondary reflection is one important aspect of our access to the self. It is the properly philosophical mode of reflection because, in Marcel’s view, philosophy must return to concrete situations if it is to merit the name ‘‘philosophy.’’ As such, philosophy should begin with the fullness of our lived experience and proceed to ask what implications can be drawn from reflecting on that experience. Primary reflection does not take place from this fullness but abstracts from it, for it ignores my place in the question. Reflections on the philosophical level must, in part, call into question my own position. Such reflections are difficult and can be the source of a good deal of angst and anguish. This is especially true when questioning my role or position brings to light aspects of myself of which I am ashamed. However, such revelations can also be the source of a sense of freedom or release. Indeed, some reflections are simultaneously the source of both anguish and relief. These difficult reflections are properly philosophical insofar as they lead to a more truthful, more intimate communication with both myself and with any other person whom these reflections include.50 It should be clear that secondary 66
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reflection, which recoups the unity of experience, points the way toward a fuller understanding of the participation alluded to in examples of the mysterious. The Spirit of Abstraction Although secondary reflection is able to recoup the unity of experience that primary reflection dissects, it is possible that secondary reflection is frustrated. When we engage in primary reflection without proceeding to the synthesizing, recollecting act of secondary reflection, we fall victim to what Marcel calls ‘‘the spirit of abstraction.’’ ‘‘Abstraction, as such, is a mental operation to which we must have recourse if we are seeking to achieve a determinate purpose of any sort . . .’’; therefore, abstraction, which is in essence the kind of thinking that characterizes primary reflection, is not bad per se.51 However, the method of abstraction can in some cases come to dominate our thinking such that we give into the spirit of abstraction. Abstraction—which is always abstraction from an embodied, concrete existence—can overcome our concrete existence, and we may come to view abstracted elements of existence as if they were independent. Boyd Blundell succinctly summarizes this problematic possibility: [T]he process of abstraction can quickly overcome the concrete, embodied existence from which it is abstracting, detaching itself and becoming an independent system. As Marcel describes it: ‘‘it can happen that the mind, yielding to a sort of fascination, ceases to be aware of these prior conditions that justify abstraction and deceives itself about the nature of what is, in itself, nothing more than a method.’’ It is necessary to abstract, but equally necessary to acknowledge both that one is abstracting and that the abstraction is not the point of the exercise. To confuse the two is to initiate ‘‘a violent attack directed against a sort of integrity of the real.’’52 Blundell points out that the first casualty of such a violent attack on reality is, of course, the human person, ‘‘who loses her concrete reality and thus her dignity, making it easier to account for violence against her in terms of an overall conceptual ‘system’.’’53 Marcel notes that, in a sense, his whole philosophical project is an ‘‘obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.’’54 In contrast to the spirit of abstraction, which fetishizes or idolizes primary reflection, Marcel argues in favor of a philosophy exercised ‘‘for the sake Gabriel Marcel
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of the concrete, on behalf of the concrete,’’ which uses secondary reflection to supplement the primary reflection without negating it.55 Abstraction is a necessary moment in this dialectic’s quest for the concrete. However, it is only a moment; it is, again, not the point of the exercise.
Participation and Presence Marcel asserts that these reflections will inevitably lead us to realize that human life always has its center outside of itself.56 For humans, ‘‘existence is participation,’’ insofar as participation can be spoken of objectively.57 To exist is to participate. However, the term ‘‘participation’’ is invariably misunderstood because it is articulated with misleading physical and objectifying metaphors or accompanied by concepts that Marcel does not have in mind when using the term. Our picture of participation as [being] submerged in a sort of sea and then emerging from it into the light of thought cannot be treated as a sort of intrusive foreign body, a mote in thought’s eye; thought has given us the image and therefore it is only by reshaping itself that thought can escape from the image. Secondary reflection, as we have already said, is merely this sort of inner reshaping, and indeed this inner reshaping is also what takes place when we wish to attain to participation.58 Given the potentially misleading concepts associated with participation, an understanding of the term is perhaps made easier through an examination of its sister concept: presence. A presence is something that cannot, in any respect, be considered in an objective or objectifying manner. The encounter with a presence is radically different than the encounter with an object. We confront objects objectively and attempt to grasp them in order to use and manipulate them. [However,] in the case of a presence, the very possibility of grasping at, of seizing, is excluded in principle. . . . In so far as presence, as such, lies beyond the grasp of any possible prehension, one might say that it also in some sense lies beyond the grasp of any possible comprehension. A presence can, in the last analysis, only be invoked or evoked, the evocation being fundamentally and essentially magical [i.e., incomprehensible] . . .59 68
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A presence cannot be disposed of or possessed. We cannot have a presence, for the manner in which we encounter a presence is diametrically opposed to having. However, while a presence is essentially different from an object, we should not thereby conclude that it is something that I am, something merely subjective. Rather, presence is the hallmark of the intersubjective, which illustrates the way in which presence is connected to participation. ‘‘I am not first and fundamentally homo spectator, but rather homo particeps.’’60 Marcel came to realize during the course of his philosophical thought that the term ‘‘participation’’ has a primarily negative value: ‘‘it indicates the kind of natural splitting that seems to take place the moment I say ‘I am’.’’61 Participation actually brings out the distinction between two possible alterations of the self, which I will refer to as ‘‘splitting’’ and ‘‘incohesion.’’ First, a brief digression must point out that when Marcel speaks of the self his meaning is sometimes unclear to a casual reader; he makes an important distinction between the self as ego and the self as person.62 Qua ego, I attempt to distinguish myself from others on the basis of my knowledge of them. This process is self-centered and leads to an excessive emphasis on the self as an independent individual, self-sufficient and self-important—although even qua ego I am dependent on the other as the one I distinguish myself from.63 The process by which I affirm my ego is primarily a negative one, and if it is not balanced out by full personhood it is liable to all sorts of degradation. While my ego is based on knowledge that distinguishes me from the other, my personhood is based on love and responsibility that tie me to the other. Thus, the interaction between persons— though it includes the distinction between egos—is an essentially unifying relationship that binds them to each other while maintaining their individuality. While there are some aspects of experience that are clearly definable as ‘‘self’’ and others that are clearly definable as ‘‘other,’’ there are, in addition, regions at the border of the mysterious where these distinctions become less applicable, or at least less clear. These mysterious regions, revealed by secondary reflection, are those where participation blurs the lines between ‘‘in me’’ and ‘‘before me.’’ It is in this vein that Marcel speaks of the ‘‘incohesion,’’ ‘‘porosity,’’ or ‘‘permeability’’ in the self. The self is not some hypothetical proto-hyle that is absolute, solid, and protected against the other, ‘‘because it has first integrated the other into the self.’’64 In fact, ‘‘Marcel’s Gabriel Marcel
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thought does not assume, in the Cartesian fashion, an ‘I’ as a primitive and self-evident datum of experience.’’65 The splitting, or alienation of the self from others is the result of a cogito that posits a radical separation between the other and the self, leading to a withdrawal that increases the ‘‘density’’ of the self rather than its porosity. This increasing density and impermeability of self is contrasted with the incohesion and relaxation associated with recollection of self. Thus, the unified self reveals a fundamental incohesion that will allow for participation with others, while the alienated self withdraws from others, becoming more dense and less participatory. The similarity of these terms—incohesion and splitting, unity and density, etc.—can appear confusing at first, but the distinction is essential. The point is that withdrawal from others (splitting or alienation) leads to a focus on oneself (density), while permeability to others (the incohesion of self) allows me to recollect myself (as a unity).66 The fact of being in a situation, i.e. of being exposed to (influences), is inseparable from a certain in-cohesion. We should not attempt to discover a causal relation here. . . . Indeed, there is reason to suppose that however it may look, the term ‘‘incohesion’’ really refers to something which has positive characteristics; and inversely, cohesion, construed here in terms of its contrary, can be considered as a negative quality; indeed, isn’t it that very thing which offers no foothold to the other?67 The splitting of the self from others results in alienation and a cohesion or density of self. Incohesion qua permeability, however, is paradoxically possible only as part of a ‘‘recouping of the unity of the self’’—the unified self qua permeable, that is, as open to the other. When I reflect on the fact that I occupy a certain place in the world, when I try to uncover which it is that masks my eccity, I am led to recognize that my condition as a living being admittedly subjects me not only to objectively describable properties, but also exposes me to, or better, opens me up to, a reality with which I somehow communicate. . . . I must somehow make room for the other in myself.68 Note, however, that participation with the other implies neither assimilation of the other nor the dissolution of the self. Marcel rejects with equal force the view of humans as atomic individuals and the view of humans as a collective or totality.69 Participation and pres70
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ence are existential categories that present a middle ground between the absolute unity of monism and absolute, unbridgable separation. This middle ground is the domain of commitment, communication, and communion between separate beings. Presence is, of course, brought up in terms of possible relationships with other persons. As noted above, our relationship with a presence cannot take place in terms of having. Therefore, they must take place in terms of being; that is, presence must be a modification of the way in which a person is. We are able to manipulate things that we have because we encounter them ‘‘before us.’’ If presence is not something that we can have, then it is not something purely before us. However, neither is the presence of the other something that is us; that is, something that we are. Marcel detects an ambiguity in the encounter with the other not unlike the ambiguity encountered in my body. The encounter with the other cannot be described adequately as purely external (for then the other would be something that I could have or possess) or purely internal (for then the other would not be other, but would be same). This ambiguity is the result of the openness, permeability, and participation in which we encounter a presence. ‘‘Presence is a reality; it is a kind of influx; it depends upon us to be permeable to this influx, but not, to tell the truth, to call it forth.’’70 The Self and the Other: Intersubjectivity While Marcel, like Levinas, speaks of otherness in several different cases, his primary concern is also the encounter between persons. Presence, participation, and permeability all point us toward the encounter with the other and give us a good preliminary indication of the way in which he will characterize this relationship. Marcel notes in several places that the relationship that I have with other persons is somewhat analogous to the relationship with my body; that is, it is a relationship that is mysterious, non-technical, and often ambiguous. The ambiguity presented by the encounter with the other is the result of a unique possibility that is not present in the relationship with things: participation—the possibility of forming a relationship that, while not a unity, is not a relationship between absolutely separate beings.71 The other can be encountered deficiently as a thing or more adequately as a presence; only relationship of presence can access ‘‘a region where the words I and You cease to denote two nuclei Gabriel Marcel
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quite distinct from each other.’’72 However, Marcel takes pains to emphasize that the other person and I can never form a totality. Although things may be ordered within our field of attention and encompassed in our systems, the other person remains his own ‘‘center,’’ even as he participates with me in a relationship of presence. Beings who are their own centers ‘‘can no longer be introduced as simple unities in a totality.’’73 Conglomerations of such beings can never be encompassed in a totality and, therefore, Marcel refers to such participatory relationships as ‘‘constellations.’’ It is, of course, possible to approach such a relationship by regarding the other inadequately and unjustly in terms of the other qua nature, qua object. However, in so doing, we have lost sight of the other as other. The other as other exists for me only insofar as I am open to him (insofar as he is a thou), but I am only open to him insofar as I cease to form a circle with myself within which I somehow place the other, or rather, the idea of the other; for in so doing, the other becomes the idea of the other, and the idea of the other is no longer the other as such, but is the other qua related to me, as fragmented, as parceled out or in the process of being parceled out . . .74 Thus, in addition to confronting the other inadequately as object, it is possible to encounter the other qua other; that is, as freedom, as presence. While there is an aspect of the encounter with the other that can be addressed in terms of the objective qualities of nature, it is as freedom that the other is other. In encountering the other in this manner, as freedom, we acknowledge that there is something unique in the other, a region from which we will always be barred. Though we may endeavor to understand and commune with the other in any number of ways, the other qua other—that is, the other as a presence—is de facto beyond my ability to grasp. Disponibilite´ and Indisponibilite´ Although there are numerous possible interhuman associations, Marcel emphasizes two general ways of comporting ourselves toward others that can be used as barometers for intersubjective relationships: disponibilite´ and indisponibilite´. In general terms, it might be said that disponibilite´ describes the ‘‘transcendent,’’ intersubjective relationship and indisponibilite´ is applied to relationships that are ‘‘im72
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manent’’ or ‘‘objectifying.’’ These words—generally translated as either ‘‘availability’’ and ‘‘unavailability’’ or, less frequently, as ‘‘disposability’’ and ‘‘non-disposability’’—have meanings for Marcel that do not fully come across in English. Therefore, in addition to the sense of availability and unavailability, Marcel suggests the addition of the concepts of ‘‘handiness’’ and ‘‘unhandiness’’ to his English readers in an attempt to clarify his meaning. Handiness and unhandiness refer to the availability of one’s resources—material, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Thus, the term disponibilite´ refers to the measure in which I am available to someone, the state of having my resources at hand to offer. This availability or unavailability of resources is a general state or disposition. While it may appear that there is the possibility of a selfish allocation of one’s resources, the truth is that when resources are not available, their inaccessibility affects both the other and myself. Marcel comments frequently on the interconnected nature of the treatment of others and the state of the self. What then is the situation of someone who is indisponible, someone who is ‘‘encumbered’’ with himself? Indisponibilite´ can manifest itself in any number of ways—a technical obsession, a functional worldview, an excess of pride—however, ‘‘unavailability is invariably rooted in some measure of alienation.’’75 This alienation from the other always results in alienation from myself. Generally speaking, it could be said that indisponibilite´ is a withdrawal, a closing off of oneself from communication (and communion), and a denial of presence resulting in the separation and self-cohesion described above. As is often the case with Marcel’s thought, an example will help to clarify things. Pride—taken as the metaphysical problem of hubris—is Marcel’s classic example of indisponibilite´, although it is clear that the same state of non-disposability would also exist in a person who has come to view himself in functional terms, or one who is blinded by a purely technical worldview. In contrast to Spinoza’s superbia—an exaggerated opinion of oneself arising from self-love, which Marcel insists is really only vanity—pride consists in believing that one is literally self-sufficient.76 It consists in drawing one’s strength solely from oneself. ‘‘The proud man is cut off from a certain kind of communion with his fellow men, which pride, acting as a principle of destruction tends to break down. Indeed, this destructiveness can be equally well directed against the self; pride is in no way incompatible with selfhate . . .’’77 A proud person comports himself as if he were an island, Gabriel Marcel
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asking for no assistance from any other person and, consequently, as often as not denying such succor to others. Marcel insists that such alienation from others results directly in an alienation from oneself. The proud person is incapable of being present to other people and incapable of benefiting from the presence of other people. ‘‘To be incapable of presence is to be in some manner not only occupied but encumbered with one’s own self.’’78 This encumbrance is not necessarily the result of preoccupation with a certain object (the self) but is to be preoccupied in a certain way: one does not have oneself as the object of self-centeredness so much as one is self-centered. The real contrast here being between a person who is dense or opaque and one who is permeable or translucent. For the person who is indisponible, other people are reduced to examples of other persons rather than being encountered qua other. Instead of encountering the other person as a Thou, the other is encountered as a He or She, or even as an It. If I treat a Thou as a He, I reduce the other to being only nature; an animated object which works in some ways and not in others. If, on the contrary, I treat the other as Thou, I treat him and apprehend him qua freedom. I apprehend him qua freedom because he is also freedom and not only nature.79 When I treat the other person as a He or She, it is because he or she is kept at arm’s length but within my grasp, outside of the circle that I form with myself in my cogito but inside the circle of ‘‘my world.’’ The other, in so far as he is other, only exists for me in so far as I am open to him, in so far as he is a Thou. But I am only open to him in so far as I cease to form a circle with myself, inside which I somehow place the other, or rather his idea; for inside this circle, the other becomes the idea of the other, and the idea of the other is no longer the other qua other, but the other qua related to me . . .80 When I treat the other person as a He, I treat him not as a presence, but as an object or an example. However, here’s the rub: when I treat the other as a He or She rather than as a Thou, I become incapable of seeing myself as a Thou. In deprecating the other I deprecate myself. If I treat the other person as purely external to me—as a Him, a generic Mr. X—I encounter him ‘‘in fragments’’ as it were. I encounter various aspects of the other person, elements that might be used to fill out a questionnaire or form (name, occupation, age, etc.). I am 74
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not present to the other person, and I am closed off and indifferent to the presence he offers me. In encountering the other person in this manner—not as another person but as a case or example of certain functions, roles, or characteristics—I myself cease to be a person but take on the role, speaking metaphorically, of the pen that would record these disparate elements onto the form. Any other person could encounter the other in this impersonal manner. If this is the case, I myself have become interchangeable, replaceable. I have ceased to encounter him in the absolutely unique communion of our two persons. This functional view of the other and, consequently, of the self, is a direct result of the spirit of abstraction. When the other is encountered as a generic case, I who encounter am myself a generic case in the encounter. But the situation can be otherwise. ‘‘The characteristic of the soul which is present and at the disposal of others is that it cannot think in terms of cases; in its eyes there are no cases at all.’’81 The person who is disponible, who is available or disposable to others, has an entirely different experience of his place in the world: he acknowledges his interdependence with other people. Relationships of disponibilite´ are characterized by presence and communication between persons qua other, qua freedom—a communication and communion between persons who transcend their separation without merging into a totality; that is, while remaining separate to some degree. ‘‘It should be obvious at once that a being of this sort is not an autonomous whole, is not in [the] expressive English phrase, self-contained; on the contrary such a being is open and exposed, as unlike as can be to a compact impenetrable mass.’’82 To be disponible to the other is to be present to and for him, to put one’s resources at his disposal, and to be open and permeable to him. It will perhaps be made clearer if I say the person who is at my disposal is the one who is capable of being with me with the whole of himself when I am in need; while the one who is not at my disposal seems merely to offer me a temporary loan raised on his resources. For the one I am a presence; for the other I am an object.83 Being With Thus, while I encounter objects in a manner that is technical and objectifying, the encounter with the other person offers another, unique possibility: I can have a relationship ‘‘with’’ another person. Gabriel Marcel
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When I put the table beside the chair I do not make any difference to the table or the chair, and I can take one or the other away without making any difference; but my relationship with you makes a difference to both of us, and so does any interruption of the relationship make a difference.84 In fact, Marcel claims, it is the intersubjective realm to which the word ‘‘with’’ properly applies. While relationships ‘‘to’’ things are external, relationships ‘‘with’’ persons are not merely external, but encroach on that mysterious territory to which we have alluded, where the boundaries of the self and the other become blurred. The word ‘‘with,’’ taken with its full metaphysical implication, corresponds neither to a relationship of separation and exteriority, nor to a relationship of unity and inherence. Rather, ‘‘with’’ expresses the essence of genuine coesse—that is, of pluralism, of separation with communion.85 As indisponibilite´ is illustrated with the example of pride, disponibilite´ is best illustrated in the relations of love, hope, and fidelity. Marcel, pace Kant, does not shy away from declaring that the participation in a relationship with someone has a significant affective element. It is not knowledge of the other that initially binds us to another person—though we may indeed grow to know something of the other—but ‘‘fraternity,’’ the sense that the other is beset by joys and sorrows common to the human family.86 It is that which allows us, upon seeing the misfortune of another, to say, ‘‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’’ To go to someone’s side or to assist another out of a sense of duty is precisely not to be present to him. The person who is disponible does not demure from saying that he truly does desire the best for the other person and that he truly desires to share something of himself with the other.87 In fact, because disponibilite´ is only a philosophical way of describing what we mean by love and trust, disponibilite´ is inconceivable without this affective element. Where could we find an example of love—be it eros, agape, philia, or caritas—in which there is not an affective element on the part of the lover? Reciprocity As implied in the emphasis on ‘‘with’’ and shown in the description of indisponibilite´, it is not enough for one person to be disponible in order for the full communion of disponibilite´ to occur. It is entirely possible for one person to come to an encounter in a completely open 76
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and available manner, only to be rebuffed by the total unavailability of the other person. However, the openness and presence of disponibilite´ require that both sides approach each other in a manner that is disponible and that their openness manifest itself in two senses. Disponibilite´ requires both openness to(ward) the other and openness to the influx of the presence of (from) the other; that is, the openness to the openness of the other. Availability is two-sided: openness toward the other, and openness to the openness of the other. Thus, disponibilite´ involves a reciprocity that is qualitatively different than the actionreaction relationships one has with things. The interdependent nature of this involvement means that the relationship does not reside in one or the other of the participants in the relationship; rather, it exists between the two participants as a ‘‘shared secret’’ to which only they have access.88 What is the nature of the reciprocity demanded by disponibilite´? At the very least I must be open and available and the other must be open to my availability, open to the influx of my presence. Ideally, of course, both persons are open and available to each other in a somewhat equal measure.89 It should be noted, however, that Marcel does not insist on perfect mirror image reciprocity. There are relationships—which may or may not become transcendent—that are not equal, nor should they be (e.g., teacher and student). The point is not that reciprocity demands equal contribution and identical benefit; rather, it is that both sides must give something of themselves in order to participate in the formation and maintenance of an intersubjective relationship. Importantly, the fact that reciprocity is necessary in an intersubjective relationship does not mean that reciprocity may be demanded of such a relationship. Disponibilite´ does not insist on its rights or make any claim on the other whatsoever. It is analogous to the situation of ‘‘a being awaiting a gift or favor from another being but only on the grounds of his liberality, and that he is the first to protest that the favor he is asking is a grace [que cette graˆce demande´e est une graˆce], that is to say the exact opposite of an obligation.’’90 Nevertheless, the fact that disponibilite´ does not demand reciprocity and the fact that some kind of relationship is indeed possible without such reciprocity do not alter that fact that such reciprocity must be present if the relationship is to fully flower. Marcel is perfectly willing to acknowledge that there are varying levels of openness and reciprocity in our relationships with other people. Our most intimate relationships are characterized by both Gabriel Marcel
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‘‘projective’’ openness (toward the other) and ‘‘receptive’’ openness (to the openness of the other toward me) in both persons in the relationship.91 Nevertheless, relationships may fall short of this ideal in a number of ways. ‘‘One might therefore say that there is a hierarchy of choices, or rather invocations, ranging from the call upon another which is like ringing a bell for a servant to quite the other sort of call which is really like a kind of prayer.’’92 While my comportment toward the other, or his comportment toward me, may take place in a deficient manner that degrades the both of us, it can also be the case that such a relationship can allow us to surpass ourselves, to transcend our solipsistic selves. What is relevant is the act by which I expose myself to the other person instead of protecting myself from him, which makes him penetrable for me at the same time as I become penetrable for him. Whereas objectification, particularly for the him, implies a dialogue between me and myself, hence a triadic relation, in the presence of the thou, I attain an inner unification which makes possible a dyadic relation.93 Relating to the other person as a She or He, as only a case or example of a genus, I engage in a discourse with myself about the other. I encounter the other like a thing and ask myself about its position relative to other things in the world. However, when the other and I meet each other in the reciprocal openness of disponibilite´, the case is entirely different. When I encounter the other qua other, as a Thou, he is someone with whom I can have a dialogue and this frees me from the monologue of self to self characteristic of encounters with things. In this way, the triadic relationship of ‘‘me to myself about the other’’ can be transcended by the dyadic relationship of ‘‘me with the other’’—and this is how the encounter with the other allows me to re-unify myself in recollection. The encounter with the other person can, by virtue of my unavailability or his, interpose the other between me and myself, making me a stranger to myself. However, this alienation can be transcended in the encounter with the other qua presence, an encounter that refreshes my inner being, giving me to myself, and making me more fully myself than I would be without such a relationship.94 One cannot free oneself from self-obsession, but the presence of the other accomplishes this miracle.95
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Growth in the Disponible Self The two kinds of openness—‘‘projective’’ and ‘‘receptive’’—necessary for an intersubjective relationship are themselves illustrative of the ways in which such a relationship affects those within it. My presence and openness toward the other is the gift of myself (charity) and my openness to the other is my permeability to his presence. Together, projective and receptive openness induce a sort of growth in the person by which he or she becomes more fully human. The presence and openness required by availability lead to a growth of the self, an augmentation of one’s own being. Because disponibilite´ implies receptive openness to the other qua other—that is, openness to the influx of the other’s presence—it makes possible my growth through contact with that which is other than myself. ‘‘The word influx conveys, though in a manner which is far too physical and spatial, the kind of inner accretion, of accretion from within, which comes into being as soon as presence is effective.’’96 The presence of the other ‘‘makes me more fully myself than I would be without it.’’97 In contrast, indisponibilite´—withdrawal from others, withholding one’s presence, and cutting communication, etc.—not only frustrates the growth possible through participation, but also causes an actual atrophy of the self due to the unavailability of these resources. This is because in the state of indisponibilite´ my resources are unavailable for use by either the other or myself. While receptive openness to the other does make recollection and ‘‘inner accretion’’ possible, the real marvel of disponibilite´ is only evident when we consider the projective aspects of openness and presence. Projective openness, putting oneself at the disposal of the other, also induces a growth of the self—although just how this occurs will only come to light in the course of discussing ‘‘creative fidelity’’ below. At present, suffice it to say that Marcel writes—quoting Karl Jaspers, with whom he agrees on this point—that ‘‘I am never more certain that I am myself than when I am completely disposable with respect to the Other, so that I become myself because the Other, in the course of a struggle for self-revelation, also becomes himself.’’98 ‘‘Being human’’ is a vocation rather than a nature; it is in responding to the call of a presence that we become fully human. Marcel characterizes disponibilite´ as charity bound up with presence: the gift of oneself. And therefore, at the extreme limit, the projective aspect of disponibilite´ would consist in a total spiritual
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availability that would be pure charity, unconditional love, and disposability. However, a problem arises here insofar as Marcel has insisted on an affective element in disponibilite´. How is such a gift of self possible for temporal beings, persons for whom the vicissitudes of time may alter feelings or opinions? Before addressing this question directly, a brief digression is necessary. In order to understand creative fidelity, we must understand the distinctions between opinion, conviction, and belief. Opinion, Conviction, Belief Marcel draws a sharp distinction between opinion and belief. Opinion always concerns that which we do not know, that with which we are not familiar. It occupies a position between impression and affirmation. To have an opinion is to ‘‘maintain that . . .’’ However, when questioned as to why we maintain a given opinion, we frequently find the roots of the opinion in question to be deep, convoluted, and not entirely clear, even to ourselves. It is often the case that opinions have a ‘‘false’’ basis, which is most clear in the case of stereotypes and prejudices (‘‘everybody knows that . . .’’).99 Furthermore, opinions are invariably external to the things to which they refer. I have an opinion about something only when I disengage myself from it and hold it at arm’s length. Nevertheless, we hold or maintain these opinions in front of others, and given the elusive foundations on which these opinions are based, it is easy to see how an opinion slides slowly from an impression we have to a claim that we make. This transition generally takes place due to an absence of reflection on the given subject and the entrenchment of the opinion due to repetition. Opinions are often unshakable precisely because of the lack of reflection associated with them. While opinions are unreflective and external, convictions are properly speaking the result of extensive reflection and invariably concern things to which one feels closely tied. Like opinions that have entrenched themselves to the point of becoming actual claims, convictions are felt to be definitive, beyond modification. However, when I claim that nothing can change my conviction, I must either affirm that I have already anticipated all possible future scenarios and no possible event can change my conviction, or else affirm that whatever events do occur—anticipated or unanticipated—they will not shake my conviction. The first possibility is arrogant pretension to the point of absurdity. The second possibility is based on a deci80
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sion; a decision to remain constant whatever may come. Upon reflection, such a decision seems as over-confidant as the claim to have anticipated the future. By what right can I affirm that my inner conviction will not change in any circumstance? To do so is to imply that, in the future, I will cease to reflect on my conviction. It seems that the most I am able to say is that my conviction is such that, at the present moment, I cannot imagine an alteration in it. How then does it stand with belief? Belief is akin to conviction—it is, however, distinguished by its object. Marcel insists in many places that proper use of the term ‘‘belief’’ applies not to things ‘‘that’’ we believe, but to things ‘‘in which’’ we believe. Belief is not ‘‘belief that . . .’’ but is ‘‘belief in . . .’’ Marcel uses the notion of ‘‘credit’’ in order to illustrate the difference between belief that and belief in. Belief that might be better characterized as a conviction rather than a belief; however, to believe in something is to extend credit to it, to place something at the disposal of that in which we believe. The notion of credit placed at the disposal of the other is another way of speaking about disponibilite´. ‘‘I am in no way separable from that which I place at the disposal of this X . . . Actually, the credit I extend is, in a way, myself. I lend myself to X. We should note at once that this is an essentially mysterious act.’’100 This is what distinguishes conviction from belief. Conviction refers to the X, takes a position with regard to X, but does not bind itself to X. While I have an opinion, I am a belief—for belief changes the way I am in the world, changes my being. We can now see how belief refers to the other, and how it is connected to disponibilite´: belief always applies to ‘‘personal or supra-personal reality.’’101 It always involves a thou to whom I extend credit—a credit that puts myself at the disposal of the thou—and thus arises the problem of fidelity.102 Creative Fidelity The discussion of creative fidelity, both here and in Marcel’s own work, is perhaps the single best place to find a unification, or at least a conjunction, of the various parallel ideas discussed above. Ontological exigence, mystery, second reflection, presence, and disponibilite´ all build toward the discussion of creative fidelity, which in turn attempts to illustrate how we can experience these mysterious realities in more or less concrete terms. The ‘‘problem’’ posed by fidelity is that of constancy. Recall that fidelity—a belief in someone—requires presence in addition to constancy over time, and presence implies an Gabriel Marcel
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affective element. Mere constancy over time is not enough because ‘‘a fulfillment of an obligation contre-coeur is devoid of love and cannot be identified with fidelity.’’103 But this raises the question of how we are able to remain disponible over time. How can we provide a guarantee of our ‘‘belief in’’ someone? Perhaps the best way to address this complex idea is to address its constituent parts: the problem posed by fidelity and the answer given by creativity. The extension of credit to another is a commitment, an act whereby I commit myself and place myself at the disposal of the other. In extending credit to the other I am also placing my trust in him, implicitly hoping that he proves worthy of the credit I extend to him. However, is it not the case that we sometimes misjudge others in thinking too highly of them, just as we at other times misjudge by underestimation? Others sometimes fall short of our expectations. If there is an affective element of spontaneity involved in disponibilite´, how can I assure that I will remain faithful to my present belief in the other? Like the question of conviction over time, my present fidelity to another can be questioned in terms of its durability. Although I presently feel inclined to credit the other, to put myself at his disposal, how can I assure the other or myself that this feeling will not change tomorrow, next month, or next year? Furthermore, because I have given myself to this other person, placed myself at his disposal, when he falls short of my hopes for him—hopes implicit in my extension of credit to him—I am wounded. I find myself alienated because, as tied to the other, when the other disappoints my hopes I myself am disappointed. However, the ‘‘failure’’ of the other to conform to my hopes is not necessarily the fault of the other. My disappointment or injury is generally the result of my having assigned some definite, determinate quality to the other person or defined him in terms of a characteristic that, it turns out, he does not possess. But by what right do I assign this characteristic to him, and by what right do I judge him to be wanting? Such a judgment drastically oversteps—or perhaps falls short of—the bounds of disponibilite´. In doing so, it demonstrates clearly that I, from the outset, was engaged in a relationship to my idea of the other—which has proved to be wrong—rather than with the other himself; that is, that this encounter was not with the other, but with myself. If I am injured by the failure of the other to conform to an idea that I had of him, this is not indicative of a defect in the other. It is the result of my inappropriate attempt to determine him by insisting that he conform to this idea. When I begin to doubt my com82
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mitment to another person, the vulnerability of my belief in that person to these doubts is directly proportional to the residue of opinion still in it.104 Opinions eventually admit of doubt and change when confronted with contrary evidence. In contrast, belief can be unwavering because of hope. Hope introduces the possibility of an unconditional love—a gift that will not be revoked. However, at this boundary, that of an absolute love, thought comes up against the relation between love and faith, and between human and divine love.105 Nevertheless, practically speaking, there are innumerable times when my hopes for the other are not in fact met, when my extension of credit to the other—which is nothing less then the disposability of myself—results only in a demand for ‘‘more’’ by the other. Such situations invariably tempt me to reevaluate the credit I have put at the disposal of the other and to reassert the question of durability concerning the affective element of my availability to the other. The mystery of fidelity is also the question of commitment over time. Both conviction and belief present us with a problem insofar as they seem to imply either that there exist no possible future circumstances that would shake my conviction or belief, or that, no matter which future possibilities become actualities, I have decided that they will not alter my conviction or belief. Again, the first prospect is absurd because we cannot see the future. The issue then becomes centered on my ability to make the sweeping claim that my inner disposition will not change. Yet again, I seem to lack the warrant to make such a claim. To do so entails a refusal to reflect with regard to future events. However, Marcel distinguishes conviction from belief. ‘‘In short, how can I test the initial assurance that is somehow the ground of my fidelity? But this appears to lead to a vicious circle. In principle, to commit myself I must know myself, but the fact is I really only know myself when I have committed myself.’’106 However, in the case of fidelity (i.e., a belief in . . .) what appears to be a vicious circle from an external point of view is experienced from within, by the person who is disponible, as a growth and an ascending. Reflection qua primary reflection attempts to make the experience of commitment understandable in general terms that would be applicable to anyone, but this can only subvert and destroy the reality of commitment, which is essentially personal and therefore, accessible only to secondary reflection if it is accessible at all. There are no techniques or formulas for commitment; every case is unique. Returning to the question of durability over time, Marcel insists that, if there is a possible assurance of fidelity, it is because ‘‘disposGabriel Marcel
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ability and creativity are related ideas.’’107 To be disposable is to believe in the other, to place myself at his disposal and to maintain the dual receptive and projective openness required by disponibilite´. Creative fidelity consists in actively maintaining ourselves in a state of openness and permeability, in willing ourselves to remain open to the other and open to the influx of the presence of the other. The fact is that when I commit myself, I grant in principle that the commitment will not again be put into question. And it is clear that this active volition not to question something again, intervenes as an essential element in the determination of what in fact will be the case . . . it bids me to invent a certain modus vivendi . . . it is a rudimentary form of creative fidelity.108 Therefore, the truest fidelity is creative; that is, a fidelity that creates the self in order to meet the demands of fidelity. Such fidelity interprets the vicissitudes of ‘‘belief in . . .’’ as a temptation to infidelity and sees them in terms of a test of the self rather than in terms of a betrayal by the other: if fidelity fails, it is my failure rather than the failure of the other. Where does one find the strength to persevere, to continue to create oneself and meet the demands of fidelity? The fact is that, on the hither side of the ontological affirmation—and the attendant appeal of hope—fidelity is always open to doubt. I can always call into question the reality of the bond that links me to another person, always begin to doubt the presence of the person to whom I am faithful, substituting for his presence an idea of my own making. On the other hand, the more disposed I am toward the ontological affirmation, toward the affirmation of Being, the more I am inclined to see the failure of fidelity as my failure, resulting from my insufficiency rather than that of the other. Hence the ground of fidelity that necessarily seems precarious to us as soon as we commit ourselves to another who is unknown, seems on the other hand unshakable when it is based not, to be sure, on a distinct apprehension of God as someone other, but on a certain appeal delivered for the depths of my own insufficiency ad summam altitudinem . . . This appeal presupposes a radical humility in the subject.109 Thus, creative fidelity invariably touches upon hope. The only way in which an unbounded commitment on the part of the subject is conceivable is if it draws strength from something more than itself, from 84
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an appeal to something greater, something transcendent—and this appeal is hope. Note the Augustinian character of this humility: I myself am too weak, too fickle to be the full guarantor of my fidelity. The only way in which I can vouchsafe my fidelity is in hope; that is, in the appeal to that which is transcendent, to Being itself. ‘‘Perhaps it should further be said that in fact fidelity can never be unconditional, except where it is Faith, but we must add, however, that it aspires to unconditionality.’’110 Hope Hope is the final guarantor of fidelity; it is that which allows me not to despair, that which gives me the strength to continue to create myself in availability to the other. But this might appear to be nothing more than optimism—frequently misplaced, as events too often reveal—that things will turn out for the best. Marcel insists that this is not the case. Following a now familiar pattern, he makes a differentiation between the realm of fear and desire on one hand and the realm of despair and hope on the other. Fear and desire are anticipatory and focused respectively on the object of fear or desire. To desire is ‘‘to desire that X’’ and to fear is ‘‘to fear that X.’’ Optimism exists in the domain of fear and desire because it imagines and anticipates a favorable outcome. However, the essence of hope is not ‘‘to hope that X,’’ but merely ‘‘to hope.’’ The person who hopes does not accept the current situation as final; however, neither does he imagine or anticipate the circumstance that would deliver him from his plight, rather he merely hopes for deliverance. The more hope transcends any anticipation of the form that deliverance would take, the less it is open to the objection that, in many cases, the hoped-for deliverance does not take place. If I desire that my disease be cured by a given surgical procedure, it is very possible that my desire might be thwarted. However, if I simply maintain myself in hope, no specific event (or absence of event) need shake me from this hope.111 This does not mean, however, that hope is inert or passive. Hope is not stoicism. Stoicism is merely the resignation of a solitary consciousness. Hope is neither resigned, nor solitary. ‘‘Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.’’112 While hope is patient and expectant, it remains active; and as such it might be characterized as an ‘‘active paGabriel Marcel
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tience.’’ The assertion contained in hope reveals a kinship with willing rather than desiring. ‘‘Inert hope’’ would be an oxymoron. No doubt the solitary consciousness can achieve resignation [Stoicism], but it may well be here that this word actually means nothing but spiritual fatigue. For hope, which is just the opposite of resignation, something more is required. There can be no hope that does not constitute itself through a we and for a we. I would be tempted to say that all hope is at the bottom choral.113 Marcel frequently emphasizes that hope is really only possible on the level of a ‘‘we’’ or ‘‘us.’’ It is impossible to rise to the level of hope in a solitary or selfish egoism. Only love can hope, for hope takes place on what might be called the plane of agape. Thus, ‘‘I hope’’ is perhaps most authentic when expressed in terms such as ‘‘I place my hope in you’’ or ‘‘I hope in thee for us.’’114 These formulations emphasize the other-regarding aspect of hope. Finally, it should be no surprise that ‘‘speaking metaphysically, the only genuine hope is hope in what does not depend on ourselves, hope springing from humility and not from pride.’’115 And here is found yet another aspect of the withering that takes place as a result of indisponibilite´ in general and pride in particular. The same arrogance that keeps the proud person from communion with his fellows keeps him from hope. While such a person may well despair, this despair will never be ‘‘what is was for Nietzsche [and Marcel] . . . the springboard to the loftiest affirmation.’’116 This example points to the dialectical engagement of despair and hope—where there is hope there is always the possibility of despair, and only where there is the possibility of despair can we respond with hope. Despair, says Marcel, is equivalent to saying that there is nothing in the whole of reality to which I can extend credit, nothing worthwhile. ‘‘Despair is possible in any form, at any moment and to any degree, and this betrayal may seem to be counseled, if not forced upon us, by the very structure of the world we live in.’’117 Hope is the affirmation that is the response to this denial. Where despair denies that anything in reality is worthy of credit, hope affirms that reality will ultimately prove worthy of an infinite credit, the complete engagement and disposal of myself. This, then, is the way that hope informs fidelity and protects it from despair. Hope allows me to see the ‘‘failure’’ of the person to whom I am committed as a trial or test of my fidelity rather than as 86
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a betrayal of that fidelity. Hope makes possible the creativity that in turn allows for continued openness and disposability in the face of a changing reality. Or, perhaps, hope connects me to a greater reality. As such, hope—and through it fidelity—always has reference to a ‘‘higher fidelity.’’118 It is from this higher fidelity—to which hope refers—that all our other fidelities become possible. Love and Justice Given the preceding discussion, it is obvious that love—in the form of openness, availability, and communion with the other—plays the principal role in Marcel’s thought. However, justice, while not enjoying the prominent role that love does, lurks in the background of much of Marcel’s thought. In Man Against Mass Society, Marcel makes clear that he sees an ‘‘unbreakable link’’ between his philosophical thought and ‘‘social and political life.’’119 Love implies and depends upon a foundation of justice. In Marcel’s eyes, the primary concern of justice is the recognition, protection, and fostering of human dignity. We cannot love someone in whom we do not first recognize both the general dignity due all human beings and the unique and sacred individuality that this specific person embodies. Love While there is such a thing as ‘‘love of one’s fellow man,’’ Marcel insists that love really applies most properly to a relationship with a specific individual. He notes, quoting Charles Pe´guy, ‘‘The person who loves only humanity does not love; he only loves who loves a specific human being.’’120 In order for me to relate to the other as a unique individual, I must encounter the other as a thou rather than as a he or she. A being that I love cannot be a ‘‘third person’’ (vous).121 ‘‘I have purposely used the second person singular’’—one can only believe in, extend credit to, or love a ‘‘toi.’’122 The love of humanity is, in some sense, merely an extrapolation and expansion of our love for individual humans. Marcel’s understanding of love has already been treated in the discussion of disponibilite´ and fidelity, which are its manifestations. However, the emphasis on reciprocity, communion, the realm of ‘‘we,’’ and the hazy demarcation of the boundary of the self may lead to some serious misunderstandings of Marcel’s position. As the discussion of disponibilite´ illustrated, love implies reciprocity. Nevertheless, Gabriel Marcel
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love can indeed begin in one person, directed toward another who remains hard-hearted and indisponible. However, while love without response is certainly possible, for love to fully flower some kind of response, some level of reciprocity, is required. Existential love, in the measure that it is extended in time, cannot be the peaceful e´clat of two souls, the one shining in the light of the other. At best this would be but an uncomprehending debauchery of feeling concealing the reality which lies behind. Existential love implies an ardent and mutual questioning. We are readily aware of the degraded manifestations of which his conflict is capable . . .123 To love anybody is to expect something from him, something which can neither be defined nor foreseen; it is at the same time in some way to make it possible for him to fulfill this expectation. Yes, paradoxical as it may seem, to expect is in some way to give: but the opposite is none the less true; no longer to expect is to strike with sterility the being from whom no more is expected, it is then in some way to deprive him or take from him in advance what is surely a certain possibility of inventing or creating [himself]. Everything looks as though we can only speak of hope where the interaction exists between him who gives and him who receives, where there is that exchange which is the mark of all spiritual life.124 These passages, especially the latter one, are central to Marcel’s understanding of intersubjectivity. Love is service, not slavery. At one extreme, we must assert that love cannot be the unidirectional homage of one person to another person who dominates the relationship as a despot—even if such is the desire of the servant. Between humans, such unilateral abasement is pathological and obsessive on the part of the servant and, furthermore, is detrimental to the person who is served. At the other extreme, we must maintain that the other can in no way ‘‘belong’’ to me, for in giving myself to the other, I no longer even belong to myself. It should rather be said that the other and I transcend ourselves in our love, but that we do this without either losing ourselves or possessing each other. It is true that to love the other person is to put oneself at the disposal of the other person and this service is unconditional; that is, it does not demand response or reciprocity. However, love does hope for a response, it patiently awaits a response and actively works to 88
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create an environment in which the other will be able to respond. When nothing is expected of the other person, when obsessive servitude attempts to take care of every facet of the other’s reality, service is in fact a disservice—my creative growth imposes upon the other a situation in which his growth is stunted. ‘‘Under what conditions can love be known to be genuine? . . . love is more authentic according as I love less for my own sake, that is for what I can hope to obtain from another, and more for the sake of the other.’’125 To love the other is to say to him ‘‘be who you are . . . be who you are given to be.’’ Love hopes the best for the other and, in this hope, expects that the other will grow to become the best he can be. However, true love goes hand in hand with a deep humility with regard to my ability to know what is good for the other. I hope for the good of the other but—precisely because the other is other—I cannot know the good for the other. Despite our inability to know the other, Marcel warns against interpreting the division between the self and the other in terms of a clear or definitive demarcation. And here we are presented with one of the great mysteries of love. The other remains, and always will remain, opaque in some sense; nevertheless, in another sense, love transcends the boundaries of the self and the other. In love, the other and I reveal what we are to each other (though of course only in part).126 We reveal something of ourselves to each other. Our relationship is, as Jaspers says, a ‘‘loving struggle of communication.’’ In this struggle for openness, the opposition of autonomy and heteronomy is transcended.127 Both autonomy and heteronomy are modes of having; they are administrative distinctions that are more applicable to desire than to love. Desire can be autocentric or heterocentric, even both. ‘‘But we know very well that it is possible to transcend the level of the self and the other; it is transcended both in love and in charity. Love moves on a ground which is neither that of the self nor of the other qua other; I call it the Thou.’’128 Justice What then is the role for justice in this philosophy, which is so focused on love? In spite of all of his efforts to illuminate the conditions of love, Marcel claims in conversation with Paul Ricoeur that it has become ‘‘more and more clear to me that the problem of justice is the supreme problem . . .’’129 Nevertheless, the topic of justice is more Gabriel Marcel
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often than not implicit rather than overt in Marcel’s thought. Ricoeur notes that Marcel’s ongoing concern with justice is not immediately apparent because the connection between justice and the rest of his thought is one expressed in negative terms; that is, in denouncing that which is unjust and, by so doing, circumscribing justice itself. It could also be noted that Marcel’s liberal use of examples might have worked against him here. In discussing current events as examples of justice or injustice, Marcel often polarized his audience, sometimes to his credit—as when his essays on human dignity and fidelity were banned by the Vichy government—and sometimes to his expressed regret—as in the case of his ‘‘misunderstanding what was fundamentally just in certain demands the Popular Front aimed to satisfy.’’130 This negative circumscription of the just alerts us to the general characteristics of justice in Marcel’s thought. The central element of justice is the recognition of a ‘‘core of the sacred’’ in man, and a concern with protecting the integrity of this core against political and technological injustices.131 Thus, for Marcel, justice should be addressed in terms of juridical thought only secondarily—the more important emphasis being on the level of propriety and the respect for the human capacity for the sacred. Justice begins with respect for the sacred in other persons—only then can it move on to address social and political equity. Institutions will be just when and only when they are focused on preserving and fostering this sacred element in human beings.132 Just institutions should be guided by a love for humanity, which itself is a reflection of, or extrapolation from, our love for other individuals. Ricoeur also notes that Marcel’s discussion of commitment, in which he distinguishes between fundamental and partisan commitment, is reminiscent of Max Weber’s distinction between an ethics of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) and an ethics of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik).133 Marcel claims that a fundamental commitment has to do with the very structural conditions of personal existence, while partisan commitments are merely contingent and pragmatic. Our fundamental commitments condition who we are, they condition our being. My commitment to justice—in the form of respect and propriety in regard to the sacred core in other persons—is perhaps the fundamental commitment. Other fundamental commitments include those to people to whom I have in some way sworn fidelity. In Weber’s terminology, an ethics of conviction is one aimed at an abstract principal or principles—it is, in some sense, an ideal ethics. In contrast, an ethics of responsibility is aimed at consequences, at 90
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the real results that our choices may bring about. Weber further postulates that there are different ‘‘value spheres,’’ each with its own internal logic. For example, in parliamentary debate where an ethics of responsibility rules, an ethics of conviction (or an ethics of responsibility from a different value sphere) might be misapplied. In such a case, we might compromise our ethics of conviction in order to secure a more desirable outcome (thus applying our ethics of responsibility). However, there are extreme cases in which an ethics of conviction is ignored in favor of an ethics of responsibility that actually contradicts the ethics of conviction. In such cases, a person compromises his ethics of conviction by ‘‘rationalizing’’ why it ‘‘does not apply’’ in the given situation.134 In his conversation with Ricoeur, Marcel confesses that he is unfamiliar with the details of Weber’s thought and defers to Ricoeur’s comparison. However, while the comparison is no doubt sound, it is unlikely that Marcel would ever acquiesce to ‘‘rationalization,’’ to bracketing one’s ethics of conviction. Rather, it seems likely that he would insist that—if we must allow that there are real and ideal ethical spheres—it is our solemn duty to bring our ethics of responsibility in line with our ethics of conviction as much as possible. It is a human duty, and the duty of the philosopher in particular, to respond to the fundamental commitment to justice. As such, it should be clear that it is, for example, ‘‘out of the question not to condemn absolutely every kind of racism. Likewise, religious intolerance is absolutely out of the question.’’135 It is on this point that Marcel faults Heidegger. The very fact that Heidegger was ‘‘at one point more than indulgent to a nascent Hitlerism’’ is symptomatic of a deep-rooted ‘‘philosophical deficiency.’’136 The philosophical deficiency that Marcel identifies in Heidegger is none other than that identified by Levinas: the unjust treatment of the other.
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4
Transcendental Philosophy
I want to utter you. I want to portray you / not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple / bark. / There is no image I could invent / That your presence would not eclipse. Rilke, Book of Hours Close! Stand close to me . . . let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God . . . Herman Melville, Moby Dick
The preceding chapters should illustrate both that Marcel and Levinas philosophize in an exceedingly similar, though by no means identical, manner and that there are several significant details on which they are in diametric opposition. Building on these propaedeutic chapters, we must address these points of convergence and divergence, and the underlying assumptions made by each thinker that lead to such radical differences in otherwise similar philosophies. Bringing Levinas and Marcel into dialogue must take place in two spheres: the transcendental and the concrete. This method makes sense, indeed it is suggested, if we consider the critical voice of each of these thinkers. Levinas’s critique of the tradition is indeed ethical, but it is formed in transcendental terms—he says as much in Totality and Infinity.1 He claims that philosophy cannot account for the other and that, without the other, philosophy cannot account for fundamental conditions grounding subjectivity, freedom, truth, language, 92
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etc. In contrast, Marcel’s criticisms are generally ‘‘concrete’’ in nature, in the sense laid out in the previous chapter. That is, he attacks philosophies that cannot account for the fullness of our experience— philosophies that, giving in to the spirit of abstraction, address parts of persons as if the parts were the whole person.2 Neither this chapter nor the next should be taken as an exhaustive exploration of either the criticisms or rebuttals associated with these philosophies. Rather, both the present chapter and the next are meant to pose questions specific to the philosophy of intersubjectivity as described by both these thinkers; to find, where possible, grounds for agreement or reconciliation and, where reconciliation is not possible, to sharpen and define what is at stake in the difference. First, then, we will take up the question of otherness on a transcendental level, bracketing concrete questions until the next chapter. As I noted briefly, the transcendental character of Levinas’s thought is a hotly debated topic.3 Therefore, ‘‘transcendental’’ should be taken here in a general sense, indicating the analysis or description of the conditions for the possibility of . . . (experience, truth, subjectivity, world, etc.) and the general project of ‘‘working back’’ toward and focusing on these conditions. Levinas’s transcendental critique argues (1) that sociality is prior to ontology, and (2) that sociality requires a distinct and separate other who is absolutely other prior to an encounter with the self. In the wake of Levinas’s transcendental critique of the tradition, we are unable to ignore the necessity of being able to account for, or encounter, the other on the most fundamental level. Only after determining how these thinkers fare in this transcendental analysis can we move on to consider each in terms of the concrete manifestations of his thought. In reflecting on the transcendental aspects of Levinas’s and Marcel’s philosophies, I will tend toward a critical consideration of Marcel because: (1) Levinas’s philosophy is more or less explicitly transcendental while Marcel’s is not, and (2) Marcel is one of several philosophers who is a specific target of Levinas’s transcendental critique. This task will be complicated by the fact that, while there are numerous places in which Levinas discusses Marcel, Marcel is essentially silent regarding Levinas. He neither treats Levinas directly nor responds to the criticisms Levinas levels against him. Therefore, the approach of this chapter will be a critical assessment of Marcel’s work through the eyes of Levinas—with the dual goals of attempting to answer some of Levinas’s criticisms and, simultaneously, bringing into sharper relief those issues on which sigTranscendental Philosophy
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nificant disagreement remains. However, we should not lose sight of the larger goal of questioning otherness per se. In comparing and contrasting the two philosophies, we ought to keep in mind that, in addition to the unique relevance of these thinkers and the way in which their philosophies are mutually illuminating, we are discussing Levinas and Marcel as archetypes or advocates of two different ways of thinking the other: absolute and relative. Although there are other assessments of Marcel’s work by Levinas, the essay ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy’’ is the most direct and clearly articulated criticism.4 This essay is characteristic of Levinas’s general position with regard to Marcel, which is alternately laudatory and critical. In this essay, as in many of his assessments of Marcel’s work, Levinas chooses to address Marcel’s thought alongside another similar philosopher, in this case Martin Buber. This practice allows Levinas to acknowledge the ways in which these thinkers parallel or anticipate his own thought while simultaneously differentiating between their contributions. Even a casual reader of Levinas’s work can hardly fail to notice the apparent thematic parallels that he shares with thinkers such as Buber and Marcel. Although both Buber and Marcel operate within the ontological tradition, both thinkers also challenge, and perhaps even attempt to break from, this tradition in a manner that appears very similar to Levinas’s. Levinas in turn is well aware that these philosophies seem to anticipate his own contribution, and he is quick to acknowledge their revolutionary character. For example, during the course of his last regular teaching duties at the Sorbonne, Levinas noted that thought in contemporary Europe had finally begun to see the significance of a ‘‘meaning before knowledge’’; and, while there were ‘‘conceptual potentialities’’ of this in Heidegger, these possibilities ‘‘began to be articulated before him: since Kierkegaard, since Feuerbach in a certain sense, in Buber, Rosenzweig, Gabriel Marcel, or Jean Wahl.’’5 Levinas groups these last four thinkers together under the designation ‘‘philosophers of dialogue’’ or ‘‘dialogical thinkers.’’ His various treatments of Marcel, therefore, propose to question ‘‘how the traditional privilege of ontology is affected by this new [dialogical] approach, in which the source and model for the meaningful are sought in interhuman relations.’’6 In other words, he asks if the so-called dialogical thinkers succeed in overcoming the ontological obsession with the self and philosophize in a manner that is able to encounter the other as other. 94
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Philosophers of Dialogue Levinas sees a remarkable similarity between Buber and Marcel and, reading between the lines, acknowledges their proximity to his own thought. Like Levinas, Marcel and Buber emphasize ‘‘the originality of sociality with respect to the subject-object structure, the latter not even being necessary to the grounding of the former.’’7 However, in addition to the points on which Levinas, Marcel, and Buber are in agreement, there are several important issues on which the latter two philosophers are more similar to each other than they are to Levinas. The several congruencies between Buber and Marcel will prove to be significant in what follows. However, one example relevant to the discussion at hand is the affirmation that the intersubjective relationship—which Buber describes as an I-Thou relationship and Marcel describes in terms of disponibilite´—is characterized by intimacy and reciprocity.8 Given what we know of Levinas’s transcendental critique, the issue of reciprocity in Buber and Marcel is obviously significant. It indicates that no matter how close these thinkers appear to be to Levinas, their versions of intersubjectivity are fundamentally incompatible with his. The division of human relationships into two general types— which might loosely be called immanent, or objective, and transcendent—is a hallmark of both Buber’s and Marcel’s philosophy. Both thinkers are critical of objective thinking when this mode of thought dominates man’s existence, as has tended to happen in science, technology, and Western philosophical thought. Objective thinking is not wrong per se—in fact it is necessary and beneficial in its own way— but its proper application is limited. It is misapplied and inappropriate when it is used to address properly existential questions such as being, love, fidelity, etc. Thus, both Buber and Marcel search philosophically for an ‘‘ecstatic fullness of existence,’’ one that is not limited by strict objectivity. But for [Buber and Marcel], the ‘‘ekstasis’’ around which concrete human plenitude gathers is not the thematizing intentionality of experience, but the addressing of the other, a person-toperson relation, culminating in the pronoun ‘‘thou.’’ It is not truth that is the ultimate meaning of the relation, but sociality, which is irreducible to knowledge and truth.9 In addition to the contributions common to the philosophers of dialogue, Levinas identifies contributions specific to Marcel’s work, in Transcendental Philosophy
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particular the possibility of a ‘‘new rationality.’’ He sees in Marcel’s discussion of the broken world ‘‘language admitting its inability to synchronize the life of things . . . as if the Platonic anamnesis that maintained the unity of representation were becoming amnesia.’’10 This characterization is highly significant given the clear opposition between Levinas’s own philosophy and anamnesis. A unity of representation generally locates truth in the self—which is the case not only with Platonic anamnesis but also with the Heideggerian hermeneutic circle—which ipso facto marginalizes the other. However, from the ruins of the broken world rises the possibility of a new beginning, sensitive to the diachrony of time, a new wisdom or rationality that acknowledges the central role played by the other.11 For Marcel, the analysis of the broken world reveals that human subjectivity is a dialogue; it is a response to the other. With regard to this dialogue, it ‘‘is always within the power of each of us . . . to draw up a balance sheet which is at least an approximation of our situation: it must further be added that we are, and always should be, much clearer about our debts than our assets . . .’’12 To be a person is to be indebted; it is to respond and to be responsible. Responsible to whom? ‘‘We must reply that I am conjointly responsible to both myself and to everyone else, and that this conjunction is precisely characteristic of an engagement of the person, that it is the mark proper to a person.’’13 To be a person is to be responsible—responsible for oneself in the sense of acknowledging oneself as the author of one’s acts and in the sense of owing something to oneself; responsible to the other in the sense of responding to the other (me voici, Here I am) and in the sense of owing something to the other. As Levinas sees it, the essential discovery of Buber and Marcel is the affirmation that ‘‘human spirituality . . . lies in the fact of the proximity of persons, neither lost in the mass nor abandoned to their solitude.’’14 Levinas finds in this discovery an acknowledgment of the religious significance of interhuman relations, a significance that he himself never tires of pointing out. Although he takes issue with the reciprocity implicit in the I-Thou relationship—affirmed by both Buber and Marcel—Levinas acknowledges that this encounter is one that is ‘‘fundamentally other than the perception of the other in his or her nature or essence.’’15 However, while Buber and Marcel were indeed revolutionary, and both acknowledge in some significant way the indispensable role played by the other person, Levinas ultimately insists that they were not radical enough in their attempt to break from the totality of 96
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the same that is pervasive in Western thinking. In other words, Buber and Marcel ultimately place the other under a totality that does not do justice to the other qua other. Thus, while there is some superficial similarity between the thought of Buber, Marcel, and Levinas, this overt similarity may distract casual readers of these thinkers from the subterranean, and infinitely more complex, differences between them.16 For Levinas, the most important of these differences has to do with the extent to which Buber and Marcel are able to escape ‘‘the ontological’’ and retain the purity of their insights concerning the other person. As chapter 2 illustrated, Levinas’s critique of the tradition hinges on its obsession with the same and its inability to account for otherness; that is, its inability to account for the other as other, or for absolute otherness. This critique, which takes ontology as its archetypal example of totalizing philosophy, is highly sophisticated and only gains depth as it is developed after Totality and Infinity. However, for purposes of his relationship to Marcel, we may characterize Levinas’s critique as having two general forms: those general criticisms of the tradition as a whole, and those criticisms addressed specifically to Marcel’s work. Levinas and Marcel It should be clear to anyone reading Marcel’s work that he sincerely desires to gain insight into the profound significance that the other person has for the self, and to ascertain how one should encounter and relate to the other person so that his or her integrity is respected. Levinas also sees this, and concedes that Marcel attempts to do something philosophically similar to his own project insofar as he stresses the dignity of the other and maintains that meaning is intersubjective rather than solipsistic. In fact, it might accurately be said that the entire spirit of Marcel’s thought is one of dialogue rather than monologue or solipsism. Given Marcel’s apparent intent, Levinas’s objections are certainly not objections to the spirit of Marcel’s philosophy. Rather, his reservations with Marcel concern the way in which this spirit is articulated and developed. Levinas believes that, in spite of some well-intentioned attempts to acknowledge and honor the other, Marcel ultimately remains within the pale of the ontological and, therefore, ultimately remains unable to do justice to the other qua other. Although Levinas enumerates several criticisms specific to Marcel’s thought, in other places he simply labels Marcel ‘‘ontological’’ and leaves it at that, assuming that the criticisms leveled against Transcendental Philosophy
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ontology elsewhere are sufficient evidence of the seriousness of this charge. We must acknowledge at the outset that, to the charge that he remains within the pale of the ontological tradition, Marcel must answer ‘‘guilty.’’ He is unashamedly a philosopher of ‘‘being’’ and of man’s relation to being. However, it must be added that this admission of guilt is not an unqualified one, and the mere fact that Marcel uses terms like ‘‘being’’ and ‘‘presence’’ does not mean that Levinas’s general critiques of ontology effectively address Marcel’s unique position within the tradition. It remains to be seen if the criticisms born of an ‘‘incessante attention a` Sein und Zeit’’ are equally applicable when directed at Marcel.17 Thus, we must address the extent to which the generic criticisms of the ontological apply to Marcel and, in addition, examine the direct critiques specific to Marcel’s philosophy. Unfortunately, just as there are no direct assessments of Levinas’s philosophy in Marcel’s work, there are no replies to the criticisms leveled by Levinas to be found there. Therefore, Levinas’s criticisms of Marcel demand that we re-examine, at the risk of being repetitive, certain aspects of Marcel’s thought in light of the Levinasian critique. This also means that the Marcelian replies to Levinas’s criticisms will not be direct replies, necessitating a sort of hypothetical dialogue— one that focuses on the spirit of each thinker’s philosophy without, it is hoped, losing sight of the letter of Levinas’s specific critiques of Marcel. These Marcelian replies are not meant to imply that Marcel and Levinas are in hidden accord on these subjects, nor to imply that Levinas’s criticisms are wholly inappropriate or incorrect. Rather, they are intended to both illustrate the ways in which Marcel’s position may be closer to Levinas’s than the latter may have realized and, again, to sharpen the differences for which there is no resolution. The Generic Critique The general thrust of Levinas’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition is, we have seen, that this tradition is unable to account for otherness. As a result, Levinas sees all Western philosophical thinking—with a few notable exceptions (moments of illumination in Plato, Descartes, etc.)—as a variation on the theme of Greek, totalizing philosophy. Nevertheless, it is true that Levinas uses ontology as the archetypal example of the genus of totalizing philosophies; therefore, when he refers to thinkers as ‘‘ontological,’’ he means to classify 98
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them as thinking within this Greek, totalizing tradition. Ontological thinkers are thinkers of totality, thinkers who are unable to account for the other. Chapter 2 briefly summarized several of the arguments that Levinas uses to show that ontology is unable to encounter the other as other and offered Levinas’s account of a non-totalizing relationship to the other—the face-to-face encounter—which provided further support for his objections. However, most, if not all, of Levinas’s objections to the tradition are variations on the same theme. Recall the arguments Levinas uses in challenging ontology’s primordiality: ontology comprehends the other and situates the other in a system in reference to the same; lacking the other, ontology is barred from critique and, thus, from truth; ontological transcendence is not truly transcendent but merely a return to self rather than a (infinite) journey toward the other; ontology is the philosophical affirmation of the arbitrary freedom of the same; ontology understands things only in relation to the same, bestowing meaning on the other and thereby determining the being of the other. The list goes on, but all the arguments hinge on the ability, or inability, of thought to encounter the other; and this is the thrust of Levinas’s ‘‘generic’’ critique: the inability to encounter the other as other. Attempting an exhaustive analysis of the Levinasian critique of the tradition and its applicability to Marcel’s thought is beyond the scope of this project and indeed is not necessary. Rather than attempting such an examination, it will suffice for the moment to ascertain the extent to which this far-reaching critique applies to Marcel through an examination of its general premise: the inability to account for the other as other. Is this critique of the tradition applicable to Marcel’s thought? Or does Marcel’s philosophy acknowledge the otherness of the other; that is, can we find a safeguard for protecting the other in Marcel’s thought? Certainly there is no difficulty in finding extensive discussion of the other person and of the relation between persons in Marcel’s work. Indeed, vast sections of his work are occupied with this very subject and it is, in some sense, one of the threads that unite the disparate topics of his philosophizing. However, it is not enough to locate a discussion of the other, or of otherness, in Marcel’s philosophy; Heidegger, the archetypal representative of totalizing philosophy for Levinas, also speaks of the other and of the relation of the self to the other. Rather, a Marcelian retort to Levinas must attempt to show the manner in which the other is encountered as other in Marcel’s work. Transcendental Philosophy
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Although it is fairly clear that Marcel intends to respect the alterity of the other person in his descriptions of disponibilite´, creative fidelity, and hope, the question is whether or not he succeeds in doing so. He goes to great lengths to insist that the other person possesses an inner reality and dignity that is wholly independent of his or her relation to the self. However, while the inner reality of the other person is independent of the self, in the sphere of intersubjectivity the other person also participates in a reality that is not independent. Intersubjectivity requires participation between the two persons in the relationship and, therefore, it implies a dependence—specific only to the intersubjective relationship—rather than an independence of persons. Persons in such a relationship are therefore both independent of each other and dependent on each other. ‘‘Existential categories bridge the subject-object gap, and an opposition is established between a domain of separation and a domain, not, perhaps, of unity, but of connection—I would even prefer to say participation.’’18 Between separation and totality lies the possibility of a participation that is never fully unification, even if it aspires to such unification. We can participate with other persons in a shared reality, a reality shared to a greater or lesser degree depending on the degree to which the persons involved are permeable to each other. However, even the most open, permeable, available relationship is not a merger. The two persons remain distinct and there is an aspect of each from which the other is forever barred. For Levinas, the possibility of such communion points to the possibility of totality under the rubric of the neutral third term that the self and the other share. However, Marcel asserts that there is no contradiction between saying that the other person is other and maintaining that there is a possibility for communion between the self and the other that bridges the distance between them in participation. Marcel maintains that to hold that the other person is both other than the self and capable of participation with the self in a shared reality is not to hold contradictory positions, but to acknowledge the mystery presented by other persons.19 The independent inner reality of the other person is not violated or diminished by his participation in an intersubjective relationship with the self, a relationship that takes place in a shared reality. Unlike Levinas, Marcel does not believe that participation in shared reality—even a universally shared reality—necessarily means the loss of independent, individual realities or otherness: universality is not totality.20 100
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The differentiation between universality and totality is crucial for understanding how Marcel avoids, or thinks he avoids, a totalizing philosophy. In the course of discussing reality and the ens realissimum, Marcel notes that traditional ontology is confronted with almost insoluble problems as soon as it posits being as a solid, undifferentiated, Parmenidian mass.21 Here [when attempting to speak of being] more than anywhere else we see how the idea of totality can be misused. Bergson has said with admirable lucidity that there can be totalization only of that which is homogeneous; it is not by any means everything that can be treated as a unity susceptible of being added to other unities, though there can be no totalization where such an addition is not feasible.22 Human beings are just such non-totalizable ‘‘unities’’; they cannot be added, subtracted, or interchanged as if they were homogeneous. Each person is unique—irreplaceable and non-interchangeable. Each person is his or her own ‘‘center.’’23 By emphasizing that other persons are beings who are their own centers, this position—one not very far from that taken by Husserl in the fifth Cartesian Meditation— illustrates that they are incapable of being understood as homogeneous and, consequently, incapable of being subsumed under a totality.24 Such groups of beings, neither wholly heterogeneous nor wholly homogeneous, and capable of unity without being susceptible to totality, Marcel calls ‘‘constellations.’’ To say that another person is his or her own center is to say both that the other person has a perspective on our shared world that I will never be able to fully understand or appreciate, and that the other person has an interior life, a private world, that I will never fully penetrate. Even the most intimate intersubjective relationships are not unions in the full and literal sense of the term and are, perhaps, better thought of in terms of communio rather than unio. There is an aspect of the other person that is forever closed and foreign to me, an aspect that is absolutely other than myself. Nevertheless, Marcel is quick to point out that the rejection of homogeneity and autonomy need not be the affirmation of heterogeneity. ‘‘The self can and should be transcended without there being any need for heteronomy to replace autonomy in consequence.’’25 While there is an aspect of the other person that is absolutely other, there is also a sense in which the other person is—especially when dealing with a relationship of disponibilite´—not that ‘‘other’’ at Transcendental Philosophy
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all. Indeed, there are aspects of the other that he shares with me, aspects he shares with all people insofar as they are aspects of the human condition. Thus, there is a sense in which the other person is absolutely other, and yet another sense in which he is—or can be— not foreign at all, and is even similar to the self. For example, while there is an aspect of a person that is forever closed to his or her spouse, it would be very strange indeed to describe one’s spouse as foreign, strange, or unknown in an absolute sense. Absolute otherness or totalizing homogeneity? Neither of these descriptions is strictly true on its own. Marcel rejects both atomized individualism and the collective of a ‘‘mass society’’—both of which are incapable of real community.26 Rather, he claims that there are aspects of the self and the other that are shared alongside aspects that can never be shared. This is not, insists Marcel, a contradiction. Rather, the otherness of the other person is a mystery, both absolutely other and not-other-at-all. And, as Marcel notes in the context of discussing another mystery: ‘‘All these relationships are true at once, which amounts to saying that each one taken by itself is false, that [taken by itself] it does not so much translate as it traduces a certain fundamental unity.’’27 Thus, Marcel insists that concrete philosophy—which, for him, is the proper philosophical endeavor—cannot ever be reconciled with a totalizing view. Concrete philosophy is inextricably bound up with a consideration of intersubjectivity; that is, with the relationships between non-homogeneous, non-totalizable entities. It is a philosophical position (or process) that does not admit an external view of reality that would capture it in a homogeneous totality.28 Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the rejection of totality is not the rejection of unity. While there is no way to properly conceive of reality as a totality, Marcel insists that there is a unity of reality. Marcel addresses the problems associated with homogeneity and totality through a discussion of equality, which is only one manifestation of the attempt to capture beings in a totality. The reciprocity that characterizes disponibilite´ does not, as Levinas claims, result in a relationship where the terms can be read indiscriminately from ‘‘left to right and right to left.’’ Disponibilite´ is characterized by fraternity rather than equality—two terms representing ‘‘contrary directions of the heart.’’29 Rather than the ‘‘I am your equal, I am just as good as you’’ that characterizes equality and homogeneity, disponibilite´ says to the other, ‘‘You are my brother.’’ Equality is self-centered insofar as it is occupied with asserting the rights of the self, but fraternity is 102
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focused on the other to the degree that the self can recognize the superiority of the other with genuine joy as part of a comparison that is creative rather than competitive.30 In concrete social terms, such strict equality is almost always obtained by a process of ‘‘leveling down.’’31 However, this equality often comes at the cost of a loss of freedom—not the freedom of an uninhibited ability to act (which Levinas rightly critiques), but the freedom to create oneself. Chapter 3 illustrated the indispensable role played by creativity in intersubjective relationships for Marcel. The fraternal relationship of disponibilite´ requires the possibility of creativity on the part of the person, or persons, who are disponible. In leveling down differences, equality curtails the ability of the individual to change, to create himself, and thus destroys the possibility of fidelity or faith. Strict equality is symptomatic of a totality and would sound the death knell for creativity and intersubjectivity because it curtails individuality and creativity. Equality, homogeneity, and totality are the antithesis of intersubjectivity, disponibilite´, and fraternity. True fraternity, in contrast, is only possible where there is difference rather than equality or homogeneity. Fraternity is therefore incompatible with heterogeneity and homogeneity; rather, fraternity indicates true pluralism and the possibility of unity among disparate beings.32 It may seem paradoxical that fraternal unity requires difference rather than homogeneity, insofar as fraternal relationships are our primary mode of access to universal truths. Somehow the universal, because it applies to everyone, leads us to conclude that people are homogeneous—at least with regard to such universal truths. However, such a conclusion is another example of mistakenly equating totality, which requires homogeneity, and universality, which admits of difference. Universality is not totality. Non-homogeneous beings are not subject to totalization, but they may be—and in fact are, according to Marcel—susceptible to universalization, to communion without union. [U]niversality is to be found primarily in the most inexhaustible of interpersonal experiences and expressed under the sign of fraternity . . . Thus, universality cannot be regarded as a possession so much as an ongoing task. . . . the universal is to be taken as a direction for a journey, not as a resting place.33 The fraternal experiences of love, fidelity, and hope are examples of these ‘‘most inexhaustible of interpersonal experiences.’’ The univerTranscendental Philosophy
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sal is approached—though never concretely achieved or grasped—in the search for unconditional truths in these experiences. It is the very inexhaustibility of these experiences that clues us in to their potential for accessing the universal and, paradoxically, is also the reason that such universality is ever beyond our grasp.34 ‘‘Mysterious’’ and ‘‘inexhaustible’’ are adjectives that Marcel often uses when discussing being, hope, faith, and other similar ideas— adjectives that echo Levinas’s description of the Infinite.35 Like the desire for the infinite, mysterious or inexhaustible phenomena are incapable of satisfaction by their very nature.36 We approach inexhaustible phenomena as mysteries, for their mysterious nature is the source of their inexhaustibility. A merely immensely difficult problem is not inexhaustible, just beyond our (current) reach. Truly inexhaustible phenomena are mysterious and, therefore, by definition outside of or beyond our knowledge. Thus, for Marcel, ‘‘inexhaustible’’ and ‘‘mysterious’’ are terms that go hand in hand, cognates if not synonyms. However, while mysterious realities cannot be known, they are not meaningless. They correspond to certain exigencies or needs. Moreover, they allow us to approach the universal, even through an exclusive relationship with another person. Our exigence for realities that are inexhaustible or mysterious— and therefore, ironically, non-satisfiable—leads Marcel to characterize man as ‘‘homo viator’’: man-on-the-way. He notes: There is an order where the subject finds himself in the presence of something entirely beyond his grasp. I would add that if the word ‘‘transcendent’’ has any meaning it is here—it designates the absolute, unbridgeable chasm yawning between the subject and being, insofar as being evades every attempt to pin it down.37 These remarks, originally made in 1930, were later incorporated into Being and Having. They are not meant to address only the ‘‘unbridgeable chasm’’ between man and God (Being as the Absolute Thou), but the chasm between subjectivity and other beings capable of being encountered in terms of being; that is, other persons encountered qua presence. In the realm of having we can assimilate that which is other; that is, the difference between the subject and the other can be more or less fully bridged: the other can be comprehended, grasped, situated in my system by a meaning I give it.38 However, in the realm of being—the realm in which we encounter other human beings qua 104
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freedom and qua presence—such assimilation is not only undesirable, it is de facto impossible. In terms of being, there is a chasm between the self and the other. Not a Levinasian chasm of complete, absolute distance and difference, but a chasm insofar as being can never be ‘‘pinned down,’’ known, or grasped. This chasm may be larger, in the case of being qua Absolute Thou, or smaller, in the case of the presence of an other person.39 In any case, the partial bridging of this chasm is never the result of a movement of having, knowing, or grasping, but one of being, presence, participation, mystery, and love. The tragedy of having invariably lies in our desperate efforts to make ourselves as one with something which is not, and cannot, be identical with our beings; not even with the being of him who really does possess it. This, of course, is most strikingly so in the case where what we want to possess is another being who, just because he or she is a being, recoils from the idea of being possessed.40 Being, then, is inexhaustible and mysterious; and beings who we encounter qua presence—rather than qua object, as in the case of having—are similarly mysterious: encountered, but never fully comprehended. While having implies possession and assimilation, being and presence are characterized by participation and dialogue.41 Although there are modes of communion and participation across the gap between the self and the other, these relationships operate as bridges rather than as a fill-in and never fully close this gap. Other persons are not comprehensible, are never identical with the self, and, therefore, are incapable of being brought under a totality with the self. The other is, and will always remain, other than the self. It is here, in the realm of being, that human being is itself found to be oriented toward that which is other, and it is here that transcendence—a movement from the self toward the other—becomes possible. ‘‘What defines man are exigences,’’ says Marcel.42 If human beings are defined by exigence, then they are defined by the relation toward otherness. Or, in other words, humans are defined by transcendence. That is to say we are defined by our needs, by that which we lack, that which is other, rather than by that which we have or possess. When Marcel uses ‘‘need’’ or ‘‘lack’’ in this context, his meaning is much closer to what Levinas calls ‘‘desire.’’ In Marcelian terms, humans are most accurately described in terms of being, not having—in Transcendental Philosophy
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terms of what one is rather than what one has. Thus, the otherness for which we have an exigence is not lacking in the sense that it might someday be recaptured, assimilated, or satisfied—for that would only be possible in terms of having. Rather, the exigence that characterizes humans is articulated in terms of being: ontological exigence. This exigence directs us toward otherness and cannot be satisfied. Exigence and transcendence are terms only applicable to the realm of being, and being is mysterious and inexhaustible. Thus, transcendence is a journey or a task that will never be completed, a journey that, in some sense, cannot be completed. Thus, we seem to be drawn toward something ‘‘that does not satisfy . . . and can in no way be satisfying, an assurance that cannot be commuted into evidence.’’43 Being—qua Absolute Thou or qua the presence of another being—cannot be grasped and known, only affirmed and invoked. Caution must be exercised here. The fact that transcendence is never complete does not indicate that it is not experienced. While transcendence is an unending journey there must be the possibility of an experience of transcendence if the term itself is to be meaningful in any way.44 However, this raises a problem. Marcel notes that the term ‘‘transcendence’’ corresponds to otherness—that is, transcendence is only possible if it is a (vertical) movement toward otherness—and otherness, qua otherness, seems by definition to fall outside of my experience. In other words, the possibility of experiencing otherness would seem to compromise its status as other. This is in fact one issue that Levinas claims distinguishes Buber from Marcel. He claims that, in contrast to Marcel, ‘‘the originality of [Buber’s] I-Thou relation . . . proposes that sociality is irreducible to the experience of sociality—that, as extreme rectitude, it does not inflect back on itself as does the esse of being . . .’’45 The implication being that Marcel, because he insists on the possibility of the experience of sociality or transcendence, remains within a tradition that comprehends and grasps the other of sociality or transcendence. Levinas believes that ‘‘recollection’’ and ‘‘assuming’’ are both necessary and sufficient conditions for an ‘‘experience,’’ and that these conditions evidence the proximity of experience and totality.46 For Levinas, experience interprets things in terms of being, presence, and immanence—which from his perspective clearly demonstrates its inadequacy for the discussion of transcendence. Marcel, however, would insist that this objection is the result of a misunderstanding of what it means to ‘‘experience’’ something. Only an inappropriately objective understanding of experience could ex106
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clude the possibility of an experience of transcendence. Experience only compromises otherness if experience is understood objectively in terms of an assimilation or absorption of the thing experienced. However, Marcel insists that this is not necessarily the case. Experience does not necessarily imply completion, comprehension, grasping, or any other ‘‘having-oriented’’ way of interaction. He takes pains to show that the experience of something is not equivalent to the absorbing of that thing, but is more appropriately a straining oneself toward it—thus already pointing toward the exigency and transcendence that define personhood for Marcel.47 The act of transcendence, in the fullest sense of the term, is characterized by the fact that it is oriented; in phenomenological terms, we can say that it entails intentionality. But while it is an exigence and an appeal, it is not a claim; for every claim is autocentric; and the transcendent is no doubt definable in terms of the negation of all autocentrism.48 Transcendence, then, is a movement toward the other, toward otherness. Correlatively it is a movement away from the self, or away from self-centeredness. Although the rejection of autocentrism need not entail a demand for pure heterocentrism; there is also the possibility of polycentrism. The journey of transcendence is never complete. The other is encountered but not grasped, known but not understood. There are—in a decidedly non-dualist sense—two ‘‘aspects’’ of the other person: an aspect with which participation and communion are possible and another aspect which remains absolutely other and unknowable to me. There remains—even in the most open, permeable, and intimate intersubjective relationship—an element of the other person that is forever foreign to the self.49 Thus, not only does Marcel attempt to philosophize in a manner that acknowledges that the other person is in some sense inviolable— that the other somehow remains other despite the intimacy possible in disponibilite´ and creative fidelity—but it is possible to argue, even in light of Levinas’s critique of ontology, that he succeeds in securing a sense of absolute alterity in the encounter with the other person, an aspect of otherness secure from even the most intimate relationship of disponibilite´. The extent to which Marcel’s philosophy does indeed allow the other person to remain other hinges on deeper differences between Marcel and Levinas, which will be addressed in due course. At present it may be said that a reader sympathetic to Marcel may downplay, if not disregard, the generic criticisms of ontology and move Transcendental Philosophy
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on to consider the criticisms specific to Marcel’s work; and the reader sympathetic to Levinas may concede, as Levinas does, that, while the generic criticisms are still legitimate, they are somewhat uncertain when applied to philosophers of dialogue such as Marcel and Buber. Ultimately, Levinas himself recognizes that some of his more general criticisms of ontology do not apply—at least not clearly—to Marcel. In fact, Levinas’s relationship to Marcel is an ambiguous one, alternately critical and laudatory. Like Plato’s to agathon and Descartes’s ‘‘idea of infinity,’’ Levinas sees in Marcel’s philosophy of dialogue an implicit, at times even explicit, recognition of the otherness of the other and the necessity of hospitality, generosity, and service on the part of the self. However, again like Plato (anamnesis) and Descartes (God as the highest being), Marcel does not break radically enough from the tradition—in Levinas’s opinion—to safeguard the integrity of his insights concerning the otherness of the other. Thus, while Levinas recognizes something of a kindred spirit in Marcel, he ultimately finds him to be too caught up in the language of ontology to effectively transcend it. The Specific Critiques While the general critiques of the tradition do not seem to apply seamlessly to Marcel’s thought, this in itself does not free Marcel from the charge that his philosophy remains totalizing. In addition to the general charge of remaining ontological, Levinas has several critiques more specifically aimed at Marcel and his work. The division of the Levinasian criticism into generic and specific variants is not meant to imply a disjunction. The thrust of the specific critiques very often boils down to a variation of the generic critique; that is, to a claim that a given aspect of Marcel’s thought precludes the other from being encountered as other. As was the case with the generic critique, it must be acknowledged that Marcel is guilty as charged with respect to some of Levinas’s more specific criticisms. Again, however, the fact that Marcel would have to acknowledge the veracity of certain characterizations of his thought does not mean that he would agree with Levinas regarding the negative ramifications of these characteristics. Reciprocity One of the most obvious points of contention between Marcel and Levinas is the issue of reciprocity within the intersubjective relation108
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ship. Marcel insists on reciprocity, while Levinas maintains with equal fervor that reciprocity cannot enter into the account. In fact, Levinas expressly critiques Marcel on the topic of reciprocity.50 However, despite the centrality of reciprocity in differentiating Marcel and Levinas, the topic of reciprocity will be deferred for the moment, to be taken up again in the context of Levinas’s thought. This is because the rejection of reciprocity in the relationship between the same and the other has resulted in significant critiques of Levinas. These critiques will prove central to the examination of Levinas’s thought, and because Levinas’s objections to reciprocity in Marcel are, more or less, another way to charge him with a lack of deference to the otherness of the other, reciprocity is more appropriately addressed in the context of Levinas’s thought. The Between I noted that one of Levinas’s most direct critiques of Marcel is the essay ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy.’’ This essay praises Marcel for his attempts to break from tradition and acknowledge the other, and simultaneously criticizes him for the ways in which Levinas thinks his break was not radical enough. The first objection raised in this essay is that Marcel characterizes the meeting of the self and the other as taking place ‘‘between’’ the two persons. Both Buber and Marcel explicitly state that the relation with the other—as I-Thou or disponibilite´—takes place between the two persons. Marcel sometimes refers to this ‘‘between’’ in terms of the metaphysical value of the word ‘‘with’’ and sometimes as a ‘‘shared secret.’’51 In an essay on Buber, Marcel notes their agreement on this point. ‘‘The meeting does not take place in any sense in one or the other participant, nor in a neutral unity embracing both, but in the truest sense between them in a dimension accessible to them alone.’’52 Marcel is well aware of the potentially exclusionary character of the notion of a shared secret. Nevertheless, he insists that the notion of a shared secret is a common phenomenon of intersubjective relationships. For example, people can become closer and more intimate as the result of a shared trial or suffering, which unites them with a bond that cannot be shared by those who did not endure it with them. The exclusionary character of a shared secret is, perhaps, mitigated in light of the ‘‘secrets’’ that are shared by all persons insofar as they are human beings, incarnate, mortal, and in the human situation. Remember that Marcel searches for, and insists we have an exiTranscendental Philosophy
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gence for, a universal truth—one that is encompassing but not totalizing. It is in fact the secrets shared by all humans that Marcel would identify as the richest and most profound—secrets that, in a sense, trump any less universal secrets. However, Levinas sees something more problematic in the concept of a between: the reversion to ontology, with all its attendant problems. Although Buber and Marcel, in their description of the Meeting or the Relation, as Buber calls it, break away from an ontology of the object and of substance, both characterize the I-Thou relation in terms of being. ‘‘Between’’ is a mode of being; copresence, co-esse. If we are to go by the letter of the texts, being and presence remain the ultimate support of meaning.53 Thus, the criticism that Marcel locates the encounter with the other person in a shared region between the two is really a specific example, located in Marcel’s work, of Levinas’s generic ontological critique. Between is a mode of being, and being totalizes the other. Marcel allows, even insists, that intersubjectivity bridges the gap between the same and the other, not just to the point of crossing the frontier that separates them, but even to the point of positing a region of joint sovereignty, so to speak. Certain intersubjective phenomena only make sense if there is ‘‘a region where the words I and You cease to denote two nuclei quite distinct from each other . . .’’54 When viewed in light of Levinas’s insistence that the alterity of the other precludes even a common frontier that would demarcate its difference from the same, the notion that there is a shared region between the self and the other takes on a character quite contrary to Levinas’s work. Thus, in the notion of a between, Levinas not only sees a relationship in which the third is excluded from a secret shared by the self and the other, but also a reversion to ontology in which the alterity of the other is not absolute. The manner in which Marcel would argue that his philosophy not only describes the encounter with the other, but in fact safeguards the otherness of the other as his own ‘‘center,’’ should be clear in light of the summary of his thought and need not be rehearsed here. I will return to this issue in seeking to ascertain why exactly Marcel and Levinas remain at odds on this subject. However, another criticism comes to light as a result of Levinas’s objections to the between. While criticizing both Marcel and Buber for positing a region between the self and the other, Levinas goes on to ask whether both thinkers resort to this ontological language for 110
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the same reason. He asks, ‘‘whether, in Buber, the break with ontology does not intimate a more radical rupture—whether the persistence of ontology in his work is not more anomalous than in Marcel’s.’’55 Levinas goes on to suggest that this is indeed the case, citing two specific positions that keep Marcel rooted more firmly within the ontological than Buber: those on language and on the idea of God. Ontological Language Recall the special role played by language in Levinas’s philosophy. His radical separation of the self and the other requires a way in which a relationship can take place without contact, and he finds such a possibility in language. Again, he claims, ‘‘Language, which does not touch the other, even tangentially, reaches the other by calling upon him or by commanding him, or by obeying him, with all the straightforwardness of these relations.’’56 According to Levinas, alternative forms of interaction with the other—those that claim to contact or commune with the other person—result in relationships that inevitably degrade the otherness of the other. Given the unique role that Levinas assigns to language, the role played by language in any other thinker’s work is highly telling from his perspective; thus, Levinas claims the treatment of language is illustrative of significant differences between Marcel and himself. He believes that, beneath the ontological language, Buber’s fundamental thesis is ‘‘in the beginning was the Relation’’ and that the ‘‘concrete mode in which that relation is accomplished is language.’’57 This is no doubt because Buber refers to I-Thou and I-It as the two ‘‘primary words’’ which man can speak.58 The dialogical character of the ‘‘primary word’’ IThou is not, Levinas insists, a metaphor. There is, he continues, a ‘‘movement inherent in the word, which cannot be accommodated within the speaker.’’59 This perspective leads Levinas to conclude that, for Buber, ‘‘the word is the between par excellence.’’ That is, while the between represents a mode of being, of co-esse, in the work of Marcel, the between of which Buber speaks is none other than language.60 Marcel, however, claims that his differences with Buber are differences of detail rather than orientation.61 Postponing for the moment an analysis of Levinas’s interpretation of Buber, we must ask how Marcel’s thought stands with respect to language and the between. Levinas insists that it is Marcel’s position with regard to language Transcendental Philosophy
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that is most telling in terms of distinguishing his ontological tendencies from Buber’s. This is in part because Marcel questions whether language can ever really adequately express the intuition he feels Buber and he share regarding the other person and God. Levinas notes, ‘‘Marcel has a Bergsonian mistrust of language. In his view, language is inadequate to the truth of inner life, whereas the I-Thou is lived as immediacy of co-presence itself and, consequently, above the level of words, above dialogue.’’62 In other words, Buber’s I-Thou corresponds to Levinas’s discussion of the discourse that underlies any expression in natural languages. In contrast, Marcel eschews the respectful distance of language for the intimacy of participation, which of course has a linguistic element, but is not limited to the linguistic. For Levinas, the preference for the ‘‘lived immediacy of copresence’’ reveals Marcel’s ontological allegiance. It is true that Marcel has significant reservations about the ability of language to convey the truth of mystery, transcendence, presence, or being. He notes: It is in effect unavoidable—and Buber himself has forcefully insisted upon it—that each Thou become a thing [It] or lapse into thinghood (Dinghaftigkeit). But this is still not saying enough: I would add for my part that it is of the essence of language to effect this transformation.63 Language, for Marcel, leads to objectification. However, it is not clear that Marcel’s reservations reject language in toto as a means of communication or even communion between persons. Moreover, it is not clear that the ‘‘lived immediacy of co-presence’’ to which Levinas refers is one that is non-linguistic in the sense that Levinas himself favors language. Marcel’s point seems to be that language is a clumsy and inadequate tool for the communication of essential existential truths—especially when language is used conceptually, with an eye to only the objective or denotative. According to Marcel, objective thought, and the language that expresses objective thought, is inadequate to a reality that cannot be grasped by concepts or precisely described with literal terms—just as language, for Levinas, institutes thematization and ‘‘betrays’’ a more fundamental discursive reality.64 Nevertheless, while conceptual language is inadequate to the experience of, say, presence or being, it is the most common form of currency in communication. While language will never be fully adequate to these truths, language is the tool we have for communi112
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cation, and it is a tool that we frequently use in a clumsy, literal, objective way. However, the objective use of language is not the only tool we have for communication. There are less conceptual, less objective, less logo-centric kinds of linguistic communication such as literature, drama, poetry, and art. These uses of language are connotative rather than denotative. They are able to suggest, point to, or indicate truths without claiming to grasp, possess, or deliver truths. As we noted, despite his relative success in philosophy and his relative lack of success in the arts, Marcel actually favors the treatment of certain existential themes in his plays over the more strictly philosophical treatment given in his lectures. He finds the creative process of drama, music, and art to be inherently intersubjective, and therefore more adequate (or, perhaps, less inadequate) for the communication of essential truths.65 While language is inadequate to express universal existential truths, some forms and uses of language are more appropriate for this task than others.66 What we need to avoid, especially when speaking of intersubjectivity and related topics, is the notion that language fully describes, corresponds to, or grasps the essential reality. To do so reduces, or attempts to reduce, a transcendent reality to the status of immanence, of thinghood. Thus, Marcel’s views on communication are not to be taken as a blanket rejection of language or dialogue, but as recognition of the limitations of language and as a marked preference for one kind of language. So, while it is impossible to argue that Marcel’s reservations regarding language are making the identical point as Levinas’s, it is not inappropriate to note the way in which the spirit of Marcel’s reservations parallel Levinas’s. In general, we might say that Levinas distinguishes between two sorts of language. Broadly speaking, Levinas privileges language as discourse—that is, as vocative, interpellative, and accusative on the part of the other and responsive and apologetic on the part of the self—but acknowledges the inevitable thematizing uses to which language lends itself: the nominative, denotative, etc. The development of his thought reveals a constant attention to language as demonstrated, for example, by Otherwise than Being, which attempts to avoid, to do without, the ontological language that Totality and Infinity used to challenge the conatus essendi.67 In his later work, the distinction between discourse and thematizing language is developed to indicate the inability of language qua Said (le dit) to capture the meaning of the Saying (le dire). In order to better approximate the meaning of the original Saying, the Said must be un-Said and reTranscendental Philosophy
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Said.68 When Marcel questions the ability of language to do justice to experience, he is making, I believe, a comparable claim. Indeed, this is why he expresses a preference for dramatic language or, barring that, commonplace examples expressed in everyday language. A dramatic work can ‘‘say’’ and ‘‘re-say’’ the same thing many times, from many perspectives, enabling it to approach an experience ‘‘from many sides,’’ as it were. Experiential examples can do the same. The ‘‘descriptive approximation’’ that characterizes much of Marcel’s work is not wholly unlike the strictures put on the Said, which require un-Saying and re-Saying in order to approximate the meaning lost in moving from the Saying to the Said. Indeed, this is a possibility that Levinas himself suggests in his more generous reading of Buber.69 Thus, while Levinas’s linguistic critique of Marcel is significant, it is not insurmountable or devastating to his position. Indeed, in the final analysis, Levinas acknowledges that, while Marcel’s mistrust of language is a significant shortcoming, it is perhaps not a fatal flaw. Even if Marcel thinks he must trace the I-Thou back to a prior connection, deeper and not dialogic (to the structure of incarnation and the ontological mystery), is not his criticism of language . . . independent of his fundamental position [which is, I noted ‘‘the affirmation that human spirituality—or religiosity—lies in the fact of the proximity of persons, neither lost in the mass nor abandoned in their solitude,’’ a position ‘‘fundamentally other than the perception of the other in his or her nature or essence’’]?70
God as Absolute Thou What have Athens and Jerusalem to do with each other? The final specific criticism of Marcel’s thought is also one that Levinas leveled against the entire Greek, ontological tradition of philosophy. In addition, Levinas specifically identifies Marcel as a perpetuator of the tradition in this respect. Levinas accuses the Western philosophical tradition of equating God with the ‘‘highest being.’’71 While this identification began in the philosophy of ancient Greece, it further penetrated the Western mind as the works of Plato and Aristotle became incorporated into Jewish and Christian thinking. In time, the biblical God of revelation became identified with the Being of philosophy and came to be thought of as the ‘‘highest being.’’ Heidegger identified this tradition as one of ‘‘onto-theo-logy.’’ 114
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The tradition of ‘‘onto-theo-logy consists in thinking of God as a being [e´tant] and in thinking being [eˆtre] on the basis of this superior or supreme being.’’72 Although Heidegger critiques ontotheology, Levinas sees Heidegger’s critique as misguided. He asks: ‘‘Did ontotheo-logy’s mistake consist in taking being for God, or rather in taking God for being?’’73 What, or Who, has been betrayed here? Is ontotheological thought mistaken for thinking of being in terms of God, or mistaken for thinking God in terms of being? Clearly, Levinas feels that the latter characterization is the more significant: God is not the highest being, but ‘‘is’’ being’s other.74 To characterize God or the Infinite in terms of being is to place a limit on God. Even if it extends to an ‘‘infinitely’’ large horizon, such a limit remains a limit and, therefore, reduces or denigrates the otherness of God. Levinas applies his critique of ontotheology to Marcel and criticizes him for perpetuating the tradition by describing God in terms of being. Marcel appears to continue the high Western tradition for which the supreme characterization of the Divine amounts to identifying it with being; and for which all relation with being is, in the final analysis, reducible to an experience (that is, to knowledge), and remains a modality of that being.75 If we accept Levinas’s modification of the Heideggerian critique of ontotheology—which finds fault with thinking of God in terms of being, rather than vice versa—what are we to make of Marcel’s position? Certainly one of the ways in which Marcel thinks of being is in terms of an Absolute Thou; that is, in terms of God. However, in light of the various ways in which he qualifies this statement, it is not clear that this identification results—as Levinas claims—in either a finite conception of God or the possibility of experiencing the divine in the sense of ‘‘knowing’’ God. Robert Rosthal notes that ‘‘Marcel’s being is an ‘Absolute Thou’, [which is] not the whole of reality, [or] a particular being, [or] being in general.’’76 In other words, it is not immediately clear that Marcel’s way of thinking of being and God results in the degradation of the otherness of God.77 Of course, Marcel does say that we are able to have an experience of the transcendent. However, it is not clear that Marcel’s use of ‘‘experience’’ leads to a finite conception of God. As we have seen, Marcel notes that many misconceptions of his work can be traced to an unnecessarily objective view of experience. While we can have an experience of this mysterious reality, we do not experience it in the Transcendental Philosophy
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sense in which Levinas uses ‘‘experience’’ to critique Marcel. Experience as used by Marcel does not imply objectification, grasping, or assimilation. In fact, he insists repeatedly that we can never know, grasp, or assimilate being; we can only affirm it. We have a relationship with the Absolute Thou, but we do not grasp or comprehend the Absolute Thou. Thus, it is not clear that Marcel’s use of ‘‘experience’’ leads to ‘‘knowledge’’ of God, at least not knowledge in the sense of comprehension.78 Although Marcel uses the term ‘‘being’’ to identify an Absolute Thou, he also reiterates again and again that being is mysterious, inexhaustible, and always beyond our grasp. Being, presence, and related terms are always referred to by Marcel as mysterious, as non-objective phenomena or experiences that can never be known completely or adequately conveyed with conceptual language. We cannot grasp the other that is God. We invoke that other. There is, therefore, good reason to think that Marcel’s version of ontology, although it speaks of being in terms of an Absolute Thou, does so in a manner that recognizes the role played by alterity and leaves space for the otherness of the other. Being itself is indefinable, and the Absolute Thou, God, whom Marcel identifies with being, is not the object of a rational theology: any attempt to prove his existence or define his nature is futile. It is in the mutuality or reciprocity of personal relationship, of which fidelity is the supreme example, that we gain access to being, that we can have some intimation of the Absolute Thou.79 Being, God as the Absolute Thou, is never something that is known or experienced in the sense that Levinas uses the term in his critiques. Being is experienced only in the sense that it may be approached, never in the sense that it is gained. God remains inexhaustible, other, and infinite. Like Levinas, Marcel affirms that we are able to encounter God through our relationships with other people. In fact, intersubjective relationships of love and fidelity are the primary ways in which we encounter God. Our fidelity to other persons is an approximation or imitation of faith in the Absolute Thou. Paradoxically, it is only through faith in a ‘‘higher reality’’ that this fidelity to other persons becomes possible. ‘‘Beginning with that absolute fidelity which we may now call faith, other fidelities become possible.’’80 In other words, it is impossible to separate faith (in an Absolute Thou or, at least, in a ‘‘higher reality’’ of some sort) from fidelity (to other per116
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sons). Faith and fidelity are interconnected: the warp and weft of intersubjectivity, made possible by hope. However, Marcel does not put the exclusive emphasis that Levinas does on this connection, or insist that it is only through such relationships with other persons that we can approach God.81 Levinas’s initial reply to this hypothetical defense is obvious: the merely inexhaustible is not the infinite. The incomprehensibility of being, in the sense of a magnitude greater than we are capable of comprehending, is not the same as the incomprehensibility of the infinite, which stems from its utterly foreign nature rather than from a superlative degree of existence, goodness, etc. However, this objection assumes that ‘‘incomprehensibility’’ is, for Marcel, only the result of a magnitude surpassing the horizon of human knowing. On the contrary, Marcel explicitly affirms that the mysterious is more than an incomprehensibly large problem. He acknowledges an alterity like that of Levinas’s infinite—that is, one of kind rather than one of degree—in mysterious realities. ‘‘Mystery’’ does not correspond to something that is inexhaustibly grand, a massive problem that we might solve with infinite time and infinite reflection. It is not unknowable as a limitation of our knowledge—such a reality is merely problematic—rather it is unknowable as inappropriate for knowledge, as other than the knowable. Mystery corresponds to something that is unknowable and ungraspable in its very essence, something completely other than things we know conceptually. Knowledge will never grasp the mysterious—although, approached properly, humbly, and with open hands and hearts, experience will allow us to participate in it. Being appears always as still veiled, as something that can only be approached. This prudent and discreet position implies that humility is a primordial metaphysical virtue, inimical to Hegel’s panlogical hubris. . . . In this idea of philosophical humility we have the foundation for a criticism of the idea of totality . . .82 Thus, we have again, from an entirely new direction, a refutation of totality in Marcel’s thought. A totality is possible only among that which is homogeneous, and if totality is by definition impossible it is because the terms or beings in question are not homogeneous. If totality is impossible, it can only be because there is a sense in which the terms are heterogeneous; that is, if they are other. Thus, the impossibility of totality with others or with God points to the otherness in persons and in being. Although there is an aspect Transcendental Philosophy
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of similarity with others, this aspect exists alongside other aspects of absolute alterity. The self and the other are neither homogeneous nor heterogeneous, but are characterized by aspects, so to speak, of homogeneity and heterogeneity. The unknowability of the Absolute Thou (being) is the result of an element of true heterogeneity, not the result of our ignorance or of an obscurity that might be clarified with infinite time and reflection. Being is a mystery and, qua mystery, it is foreign. A mystery points me beyond any system of mine, that is, to an other system. Being presents us with the possibility of communion and participation, but also with an otherness that will remain forever beyond our grasp and, in that sense, absolute. The alterity of being is not just an incomprehensibly large difference; it is a mystery, an element of true alterity—in Levinas’s terminology, ‘‘a land foreign to the self.’’ An Uneasy Kinship: Marcel and the Transcendental Critique As noted, Marcel never replied directly to the criticisms that Levinas leveled at him. While I believe that the replies given above are legitimate and true to the spirit of Marcel’s thought, they are hypothetical insofar as they are drawn from various texts that seem to speak to the individual critiques that Levinas raises. Given this, a more convincing statement of Marcel’s basic concordance with Levinas can perhaps be found in the words of Levinas himself. Levinas is by no means universally critical of Marcel. Indeed, he praises Marcel as a person and as a philosopher. Levinas sees the seed of the infinite in Marcel’s thought, as he does with Plato, Descartes, Buber, and others. As a result, he frequently appears torn between, on the one hand, seeing Marcel as a kindred spirit and focusing on the remarkable similarities in their thought and, on the other, attacking the points on which he and Marcel diverge as if the similarities were insignificant. It might be noted, as Husserl reminds us, that ‘‘there is nothing to which one is more severe than the errors that one has just abandoned’’; or, it might be added, those who appear so close to abandoning those ‘‘errors’’ along with us, yet do not do so.83 In spite of their differences, Levinas knows that Marcel is also answering a call that comes from the other, and he sees the potential for a ‘‘new rationality’’ in Marcel’s discussion of the broken world. When Marcel notes that ‘‘the only relationship that can be said to be 118
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spiritual is that of a being with a being . . . What really matters is spiritual commerce between beings, and that involves not respect but love,’’ Levinas responds: ‘‘An essential text!’’84 In the same talk, given in 1975, Levinas goes on to note that, despite his reservations with Marcel’s language—overtly ontological, unabashedly emphasizing love, and excessively spiritual—this text (the Metaphysical Journal) is very close to his own work. Being here is not consciousness of self, it is relation with the other than self and awakening. And is not the other than self the Other Person? And love, above all, means welcoming the other person as thou, that is to say, not empty-handed. The spirit is not the Said, it is the saying which goes from the Same to the Other, without suppressing the difference. Despite the continued use of so many set phrases and so many traditional institutions in Marcel’s writings, from the time of the writing of the Journal on, his sublime work is obsessed with and inflamed by this new signifying of the meaningful [in nonindifference]. It is rich enough to be relieved of its bad spiritualism without harm.85 Levinas’s conflicted relationship with Marcel’s thought is apparent here: simultaneously admiring and critical, recognizing kinship and yet rejecting affiliation, wanting Marcel to be in complete accord with his own thought yet knowing that he is not. As in his more generous readings of Plato and Descartes, Levinas occasionally reads Marcel as fundamentally congruent with his own thought, but lacking the ability to properly express the philosophical insight they shared.86 Is not the philosophy of dialogue precisely—by reference to that which, outside of all ontology, otherwise, but just as rigorously, has the value of source of meaning—the affirmation that it is impossible to encompass within a theory the Meeting with the other as if it were an experience whose meaning reflection could recover? . . . Has not the philosophy of dialogue made us attentive to the ambiguity or the enigma of thoughts that think the world and the other person, knowledge and sociality, being and God together?87 In passages like these, when he offers a somewhat more sympathetic or generous reading, Levinas seems to affirm an underlying kinship between himself and Marcel, a unity of spirit if not one of detail. Transcendental Philosophy
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Finally, in addition to the defense of Marcel articulated above and to Levinas’s own words of praise for and guarded agreement with Marcel, there exist other subtle points of intersection between the two thinkers. These points are interesting insofar as they reinforce the intuition that Levinas and Marcel are philosophizing on a remarkably similar topic in remarkably similar ways. One begins to get the feeling that their differences are more incongruous than their similarities. For example, in Difficult Freedom, Levinas recounts the encounter between Marcel and Le´on Brunschvicg at the 1937 Descartes Congress.88 Gabriel Marcel launched a fiery attack on those thinkers ‘‘deprived of any gift of inner life,’’ blind to God, blind to death. At which point Brunschvicg, still with that air of having no air, said: ‘‘I think that the death of Le´on Brunschvicg preoccupies Le´on Brunschvicg less than the death of Gabriel Marcel preoccupies Gabriel Marcel.’’89 An interesting exchange to be sure. However, while Brunschvicg’s comments would no doubt have been well directed at, say, Heidegger, they failed to see the point of Marcel’s concern with death. In turn, Levinas is remiss in failing to recount Marcel’s reply to Brunschvicg, for it reveals Marcel to be much closer to Levinas than the latter might realize. Marcel replied that Brunschvicg had misunderstood his concern with death and noted that ‘‘the only thing worth preoccupying either one of us [is] the death of someone we [love].’’90 Characteristically, he later gives this position concrete relevance, noting that ‘‘experience has confirmed my thought in the most sorrowful and inexorable way,’’ and adding, ‘‘It is at this point that I am most radically opposed not only to Heidegger and Sartre but to most earlier philosophers as well.’’91 It is somewhat curious that Levinas does not mention Marcel’s emphasis on the death of the other, an emphasis that he should have found highly significant. Levinas states elsewhere that ‘‘This is the fundamental difference between my ethical analysis of death and Heidegger’s ontological analysis. Whereas for Heidegger death is my death, for me it is the other’s death.’’92 The distinction between my death and the death of the other is emblematic of Levinas’s break with the tradition; it is the fundamental difference between ethical metaphysics and ontology. Elsewhere Levinas notes that ‘‘The fear for the death of the other is certainly at the basis of the responsibility for him.’’93 In colloquial terms, we might ask if the self is the ‘‘center of 120
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the universe,’’ the most important being around which others revolve, or if the other holds this central position. Levinas and Marcel agree to this extent: the self does not hold the central position.94 If the concern for the death of the other represents a ‘‘fundamental’’ break with the tradition, a break that is the foundation for Levinasian responsibility and one that distinguishes Levinas from the vast majority of philosophical thinkers who came before him, it is a break that Marcel has made also. There are other significant similarities between these two thinkers. The parallels between Levinas’s reading of Abraham’s journey and Marcel’s homo viator are particularly apparent. The similarities between Levinas’s belief that we can only ‘‘postpone the day of our betrayal’’ of the other and Marcel’s statements that we only glimpse being and communion ‘‘through the cracks and openings which are to be found in the armor of Having which covers us’’ and that hope is ‘‘perhaps not unconditional’’ here on earth, are likewise compelling.95 These congruencies and those presented above represent only a sampling of many parallel—perhaps even asymptotic—lines of thought in Levinas and Marcel. In fact, to the careful reader, parallels between these two thinkers are quite common. Nevertheless, despite all the similarities and points of agreement, we inevitably return to the stumbling block presented by the different characterizations of the otherness of the other person. Levinas insists the other is absolutely other, while Marcel would clearly reject such a black and white distinction. We too will have to return to this issue. However, first we must address Marcel’s ‘‘existential’’ critique and consider certain ambiguities in Levinas’s thought.
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5
Concrete Philosophy
Personally, I am inclined to deny that any work is philosophical if we cannot discern in it what may be called the sting of reality. Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity It would generally be a decisive refutation of a moral philosophy to show that moral agency on its own account of the matter could never be socially embodied; and it also follows that we have not yet fully understood the claims of any moral philosophy until we have spelled out what its social embodiment would be. Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
The previous chapter examined Levinas’s transcendental critique, assessed its applicability to Marcel’s work, and offered some hypothetical Marcelian responses. This critique argued for the transcendental priority of the infinite over being—that is, the priority of the Infinite as the condition for the possibility of truth, subjectivity, transcendence, etc.—and took the form of an accusation regarding the inability to account for the other as other. Levinas’s transcendental critique of the tradition (and of Marcel) looks for the other qua other in the tradition and finds the tradition wanting. Marcel’s work, however, takes a different tack. Some of his harshest criticism is reserved for those philosophies that cannot account for the fullness of experience or those that do not address the wholeness of human nature 122
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and the human situation.1 While Levinas’s critique is transcendental, Marcel’s is ‘‘concrete’’ or ‘‘existential.’’ Marcel’s existential critique takes two general forms, although, for all intents and purposes, they amount to the same thing. He either attacks the ‘‘spirit of abstraction’’ that thinks it can understand the whole by abstracting and analyzing a part, or, without explicitly accusing a philosophy with abstraction, points out that it does not account for the fullness of lived experience. If the previous chapter, which examined the transcendental argument for the priority of the infinite over being, put Marcel on the defensive against Levinas’s critique, this chapter will turn the tables. Although Marcel never explicitly applies his concrete critique to Levinas, it is appropriate to do so by extension. Levinas must answer this challenge because one of the more frequent criticisms of his position is that it is inapplicable, unlivable, and utopian; that is, that there is a disconnect between his philosophy and our life.2 Both Levinas and Marcel have, in differing degrees, already provided us with accounts of their concrete moral or ethical positions. Nevertheless, these overt statements must be examined alongside the unspoken implications of their transcendental positions in order to ascertain more fully how each of these philosophical positions would manifest itself in concrete human action. How would each theory manifest itself in praxis? Although Marcel and Levinas are unusual ethical thinkers, qua ethicists, they must be held responsible for the way in which their respective philosophies apply to actual life. Marcel’s philosophy, because it makes such liberal use of examples, is full of concrete ethical exploration. Although his thought is not expressed in deontological terms, an ethical imperative is contained in the very descriptions Marcel uses when providing concrete examples.3 Even when the issue in question is not expressed, for example, as a commandment of the sort ‘‘Thou shall remain open and permeable to your fellow man,’’ the elucidation of the concrete consequences of failing to do so makes clear what the ethical command of the other person is. Pessimism is rooted in the same soil as the inability to be at the disposal of others. . . . The capacity to hope diminishes in proportion as the soul becomes increasingly chained to its experience and to the categories which arise from it, and as it is given over more completely and more desperately to the world of the problematic.4 Concrete Philosophy
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In contrast to the captive soul we have [just] described, the soul which is at the disposal of others is consecrated and inwardly dedicated; it is protected against suicide and despair, which are interrelated and alike, because it knows that it is not its own, and that the most legitimate use it can make of its freedom is precisely to recognize that it does not belong to itself; this recognition is the starting point of its activity and creativeness.5 It does not take an especially keen or insightful reader to understand what is being urged of us in these passages—especially when they are read in light of Marcel’s treatment of disponibilite´, hope, despair, problem, mystery, and especially creativity. If the consecrated soul of disponibilite´ is the starting point of freedom and creativity, those who have not understood the relationship with others are doomed to stagnation and despair. Only hope and creativity can liberate us from despair. Because his argument is transcendental in nature, Levinas philosophizes in what are, by comparison with Marcel’s liberal use of examples, abstract terms.6 He only infrequently gives examples of the actual way in which the ethical relation manifests itself—in fact he seems to deliberately avoid this topic—and more often reaffirms that it is the condition for the possibility of everything else manifesting itself. Nevertheless, Levinas and many of his admirers seem to feel that his is an accurate account of the encounter with the other. Moreover, Levinas—often in the context of interviews or dialogues—does attempt to provide us with some insight into the concrete application of his philosophy. Despite these attempts at clarification, however, both the style and the emphasis of his philosophy lead to questions of a practical nature, which continue to plague Levinas’s thought in the secondary literature. While it would be possible for Levinas or those who might want to defend him to defer answering such questions on the argument that he is doing transcendental philosophy rather than normative ethics, such a position is not tenable. First, we have Levinas’s own claims that his phenomenology describes a ‘‘commonplace’’ moral experience, evident in ordinary acts such as the ‘‘apre`s vous’’ when holding the door for someone.7 Second, such a dismissal sounds too much like Heidegger’s evasions of ethics, which rested on the claim that his ontological questions were more fundamental than ethics.8 Even if the transcendental arguments for the primordiality of the other and the infinite are, to be redundant, more primordial than practical ethi124
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cal considerations, this does not exempt Levinas from responsibility for these concrete and pragmatic considerations any more than it does Heidegger. It only seems fair that Levinas be held to the same standard he insists we apply to the author of Sein und Zeit. Finally, in purely scholarly terms our understanding of any ethical system is incomplete—as the second epigraph to this chapter notes—until we understand how and to what extent that system can be concretely, socially embodied.
Levinas and his Readers Despite the radical challenge that his philosophy presents to the tradition—which constitutes a massive irruption, a veritable ‘‘shock wave’’9—Levinas’s work has, on the whole, been remarkably well received. The originality and difficultly of his thought have spawned a substantial secondary literature. Although he certainly has his critics, most notably among those scholars who remain committed to ontology in one form or another, much of this secondary literature is more or less laudatory.10 These assessments seek to interpret and clarify Levinas’s challenging texts more frequently than they try to undermine or modify his thought; and, when they do attempt such modification it is often concerning details of his thought rather than the underlying theme. Such analyses run the gamut of Levinas’s thought, from the possibility of a pre-originary an-archic self (ipseity) to the roles of the economic, responsible, and social ‘‘selves’’; from the inescapability of my responsibility to the inevitability of my betrayal; and from the role of language in Levinas’s philosophy to the place of nonhuman animals in it. In addition to those works that address the details of Levinas’s thought, there are numerous essays that investigate his relationship with the tradition he so vigorously attempted to overcome. Today it seems unlikely that there is any aspect of this revolutionary philosophy that has not been the focus of an essay or lecture at some time.11 Indeed, even a partial list of Levinas’s readers, students, and interlocutors is a remarkable indication of the importance of his thought—so revolutionary that it practically demands a response by anyone attempting to think ethically or ontologically (perhaps even philosophically) in his wake—and is also, perhaps, an indication of the longevity his influence may enjoy.12 While the extent of the secondary literature is daunting, our field of interest is narrowed by the questions at hand. Concrete Philosophy
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Although the careful reader of Marcel’s work will detect the presence of what I have called the ‘‘existential critique’’ in many of his works, Marcel—in his typically unsystematic fashion—nowhere codifies this critique. In addition, Marcel does not explicitly criticize Levinas. We are left with a general critique, backed up by many specific examples to be sure, that must be brought to bear on the present dialogue between Levinas and Marcel. Fortunately, we have an extensive secondary literature inspired by Levinas’s thought, which can furnish us with a few criticisms that are in the Marcelian spirit, yet are more concisely articulated. Of course, my focus will remain guided by Marcel’s critique. The secondary criticisms will be augmented, where appropriate, with Marcel’s own words and will also be organized and addressed in terms of my thematic goal: comparing the intersubjective accounts of Marcel and Levinas—their respective emphases on love and justice, and their differing accounts of alterity—with the intent of questioning otherness itself and its role in intersubjectivity, ethics, and theology. Therefore, this chapter will focus on issues at a confluence of two dialogues. First, between Marcel and Levinas on the question of the existential accuracy of their respective accounts of intersubjectivity and alterity. Second, between Levinas and his (explicit) interlocutors and critics regarding those criticisms in line with the first dialogue. In other words, the topics at issue will be those aspects of Levinas’s thought that are both points of disagreement with Marcel and topics of criticism in the secondary literature on Levinas. Marcelian Critiques There are (at least) two points on which Marcel would certainly criticize Levinas, which also intersect contemporary critiques. These two points, in turn, give rise to a third issue related to, but independent of, this hypothetical Marcelian critique. First, Marcel and Levinas clearly disagree on the issue of reciprocity in intersubjective relationships. This divergence, put off in the previous chapter, will be taken up here under the rubric of ‘‘blind servitude,’’ which Marcel claims is destructive for both the master and the servant. Second, Marcel’s criticism of the spirit of abstraction is also something with which Levinas will have to contend. Marcel demands not only that philosophy should begin with life, insofar as it begins with our experience, but also that it should return to life, insofar as it advises and informs how we should live our lives. His method consists of ‘‘work126
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ing . . . up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, so that [he] may try to throw more light upon life.’’13 Philosophies that abstract part of reality, or our experience of it, and then address that abstraction as if it is fundamental or primordial are guilty of falling victim to the spirit of abstraction. Third, and finally, the question of philosophically ‘‘returning to life’’ begs the question, asked by several critics, of whether or not Levinas’s thought is utopian and, thus, unrealizable. This chapter will examine both Levinas’s answers to these questions and the answers provided by some of his students and readers. Reciprocity and ‘‘Blind Servitude’’ In the previous chapter, I noted briefly that the issue of reciprocity within intersubjective relationships was one that appeared to present an unbridgeable chasm in terms of a full Marcel-Levinas reconciliation; however, the discussion of reciprocity was deferred, to be taken up again in the discussion of Levinas’s position. Of course, I could have discussed reciprocity in terms of Marcel’s thought. Levinas critiques him specifically on this point and it is a significant aspect of the schism between them. However, the reason Levinas critiques reciprocity in Marcel (and Buber and other similar thinkers) can be, and was, treated in both the ‘‘generic’’ critique and under the rubric of ‘‘the between.’’ I have yet to deal with reciprocity in a sustained manner, and now is the time to do so. In addition to Marcel’s differences with—and, therefore, hypothetical objections to—Levinas’s position on reciprocity, this issue arises repeatedly in the secondary literature on Levinas, and does so with particular clarity in the work of Adriaan Peperzak.14 Therefore, reciprocity satisfies the two criteria for issues to be examined in this chapter: it is an issue on which Marcel and Levinas disagree, and it is a topic taken up in the secondary literature on Levinas. Levinas’s position on reciprocity is in keeping with his stringent requirements regarding the inviolability of the other person. He claims that to insist intersubjective relationships are, or ought to be, reciprocal is to dominate or determine the other in some significant way. In contrast, ‘‘the relation [of the same to the other] connects not terms that complete one another and consequently are reciprocally lacking to one another, but terms that suffice to themselves.’’15 An appropriate citation from Totality and Infinity will serve to reemphasize Levinas’s opposition to reciprocity. Concrete Philosophy
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The metaphysician and the other do not constitute a simple correlation, which would be reversible. The reversibility of a relation where the terms are indifferently read from left to right and from right to left would couple them one to the other; they would complete one another in a system visible from the outside. The intended transcendence would thus be reabsorbed into the unity of the system, destroying the radical alterity of the other.16 Levinas claims that to insist on reciprocity is to say ‘‘I am to you what you are to me.’’ Such a correlation reduces the other to the same by comprehending him under the denominator of reciprocal obligation. However, as we will see, strict non-reciprocity, like absolute alterity, will prove to be a problematic assertion for Levinas. Indeed, Levinas’s overt rejection of reciprocity is complicated, and perhaps moderated, by other passages and statements in which he seems to imply or allow something like a reciprocity between the same and the other. But before searching for any implicit acknowledgment of reciprocity in Levinas, we should address some of the difficulties with a strict and literal reading of his insistence on non-reciprocity. Levinas claims that non-reciprocal, asymmetrical responsibility is the very thing that individuates me—it is precisely qua responsible that I am unique and irreplaceable. The summons [to responsibility arising from the encounter with the other] exalts the singularity precisely because it is addressed to an infinite responsibility. The infinity of responsibility denoted not its actual immensity, but a responsibility increasing in the measure that it is assumed; duties become greater in the measure they are accomplished. The better I accomplish my duty the fewer rights I have; the more I am just the more guilty I am. The I, which we have seen arise in enjoyment as a separated being having apart, in itself, the center around which its existence gravitates, is confirmed in its singularity by purging itself of this gravitation, purges itself interminably, and is confirmed precisely in this incessant effort to purge itself.17 This raises interesting questions regarding the uniqueness of the other person. Although my responsibility may well individuate me in calling me specifically to responsibility and substitution, it has precisely the opposite effect on the other. The other person is ‘‘dis-individuated,’’ so to speak. Why? Because the other is absolutely other for Levinas. Qua other, I cannot distinguish between the various oth128
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ers I actually encounter. To do so would be to grasp them, or some aspect of them, with knowledge, in order to distinguish one from the other. If, qua other, every other calls me to infinite responsibility, any human face would have elicited the same reaction in me. Moreover, if responsibility is the individuating element of subjectivity, and we cannot say that the other person is also responsible, where are we to locate the uniqueness of the other person?18 It cannot be in any knowledge or affective tie to the other person, for Levinas rejects these as grasping and totalizing. Nor can it be in the command or call to responsibility, for such a call issues from every human face. Any human face, every human face, calls me to responsibility and substitution. Therefore, strangely, in terms of my status as responsible, other people are in some sense interchangeable.19 Although Levinas insists that his concern is always with an autrui—a concrete person here before me rather than an example or case of the genus of humanity—the very alterity of the face of the other is related to its standing in the trace of the infinite, in which all faces stand. Paradoxically, the unique alterity in the face of the other is an alterity present, in the same way, in any other human face. While Levinas insists on the uniqueness of an autrui, it is difficult to see how this uniqueness is maintained when all other persons elicit the same ‘‘response’’ in the self: responsibility to the point of substitution. This extreme responsibility—a responsibility to the point of substitution and captivity—raises additional difficulties for the description of the self because of the astonishing demands such responsibility puts on the self. Among the most shocking claims of Levinas’s already challenging non-reciprocal responsibility is the assertion that the responsibility for the other goes so far as to include ‘‘responsibility for the responsibility of the other.’’ This responsibility applies even to the other who persecutes me, and for the very persecution I suffer.20 ‘‘The persecuted one is liable to answer for the persecutor’’ and ‘‘for the persecution.’’21 These are extraordinary positions indeed from someone for whom ‘‘the presentiment and memory of the Nazi horror’’ were life-defining experiences, someone who lost his entire family with the exception of his wife and child to this very same horror.22 Levinas is, however, cognizant of the ‘‘inhuman’’ aspect of such a demand for responsibility and cautions that these are ‘‘extreme formulas which must not be detached from their context.’’23 In fact, the excess of this demand is exactly the point: full responsibility, even to the point of substitution. Concrete Philosophy
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Levinas is well aware of the problems attending such an uncompromising demand. In the question of the ‘‘face’’ of the executioner, torturer, or oppressor he sees the ‘‘whole problem of evil.’’24 He maintains that I am responsible even before the very person who executes or oppresses me—only a passivity this passive could be absolute—which seems to imply responsibility for my own victimization. However, the presence of the ‘‘third’’ again modifies this most extreme formulation of ethical responsibility, and it is only in light of this modification that responsibility for the other can be understood. When I am witness to the execution or oppression of others I am called to action by the same structures that demand justice in the name of the third. ‘‘I am responsible for the persecutions that I undergo. But only me! My ‘close relations’ or ‘my people’ are already others and, for them, I demand justice.’’25 While I may undergo suffering or subjugation in the name of my responsibility for the other, the others, the thirds, demand justice; and justice takes precedence over responsibility, limiting or modifying its application. In these extreme situations, seemingly contrary to the entire thrust of Levinas’s thought, the person who threatens my neighbor ‘‘calls for violence’’ rather than substitution and, in this sense, ‘‘no longer has a face.’’26 For Levinas, it only becomes proper to speak of reciprocity after the move from the ethical to the moral and, finally, to the political. The political realm may make use of reciprocity to insure the equality of persons under the law, but the ethical realm of the intersubjective, of the same and the other, is prior to the political, prior even to the moral.27 This means, however, that reciprocity is strictly speaking not ethical, because reciprocity remains antithetical to the relation of the same to the other. Nevertheless, the ‘‘arrival’’ of the third and concern with justice does inaugurate comparison, thematization, society, and, thus, the political and reciprocal. While there is an appropriate place for the reciprocal, this place is neither ethical nor primordial.28 Rather, the appearance of reciprocity announces the end of the ethical. Thus, irreversibility (non-reciprocity) seems to lead to interesting aporias. The first deals with the uniqueness of the other, the second with the otherness of the unique other. First, the ethical encounter is always with a unique other before me (autrui), but within the ethical, the uniqueness of the other is lost due to the irreversibility of individuating responsibility. Speaking ethically—that is, in terms of an irreversible, asymmetrical relationship of responsibility toward an absolute other—all others are, in a sense, identical. They each elicit 130
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the same response from me, calling me to an infinite responsibility. Second, if we try to escape the first aporia by allowing reciprocity to enter into the account, we again lose the ethical. Once we allow for a measure of reciprocity or reversibility, we have de facto left the ethical for the just or the political, in which others are compared and, thus, in which others are no longer absolutely other. We never encounter a unique other, for either the other is not unique (because the other is indistinguishable within the ethical sphere that insists all others are absolutely other) or she is not, by Levinas’s own definition, truly other (because the other is subjected to thematization and comparison in the just or political spheres). Thus, one can never be ethical. These difficulties, and others as well, insure that Levinas’s insistence on a non-reciprocal asymmetry is the focus of much discussion in the secondary literature—there are many essays on this topic, and many others that mention it in the course of addressing a different topic. Adriaan Peperzak provides one of the more thorough and sustained examinations of reciprocity in Levinas’s work. Like other readers, he critically examines Levinas’s literal or overt position on the issue of reciprocity. In addition, Peperzak offers an alternative reading of Levinas’s position that uncovers a covert or esoteric possibility for reciprocity and avoids many of the critical attacks on the literal position.29 In the course of discussing the subsection of Totality and Infinity entitled ‘‘The Other and the Others,’’ Peperzak focuses on a phrase from Dostoevsky to which Levinas frequently alludes: the Elder Zosima’s claim that ‘‘each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.’’30 Levinas uses this as a literary example of the asymmetrical relationship of responsibility that he is elucidating philosophically. However, as Peperzak notes, ‘‘the meaning of ‘more’ [guilt or responsibility] in this sentence is not immediately clear, and it does not suffice for a rejection of all symmetry because, if it is true, it is valid for all possible egos, who, therefore, must confess that they are more obliged than all other egos.’’31 I might add that the very statement which Levinas is so fond of quoting begins by claiming, ‘‘each of us is guilty in everything before everyone,’’ though he chooses to emphasize the qualification that I am the most guilty all.32 In addition, the passage immediately preceding the one in question claims that ‘‘we must all serve each other’’ and that ‘‘it is not possible that there be no masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me.’’33 Concrete Philosophy
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It is clear, to the careful reader, that Levinas himself alludes to the possibility of reciprocity, despite his generally trenchant insistence that the obligations of the other ‘‘never enter into the account.’’ For example, he writes, ‘‘If the other can invest me and invest my freedom, of itself arbitrary, this is in the last analysis because I myself can feel myself to be the other of the other. But this comes about only across very complex structures.’’34 Discussing similar passages in Levinas’s work, Jeffrey Dudiak notes, ‘‘it is of paramount importance to recall that [such] quotations are drawn from works whose predominant stress is upon the philosophical priority of asymmetry, and that such asymmetry is carefully reaffirmed by Levinas after each of these quotations.’’35 In spite of these allusions, the fact remains that, for Levinas, my own responsibility is all-encompassing: ‘‘responsibility for you, for others, for all the others, and also for me.’’36 Although Levinas notes enigmatically that there is a sense in which ‘‘I am the other of the other,’’ he is for the most part silent with regard to this possibility.37 He insists that the responsibility of the other person is ‘‘his own business.’’38 My own ‘‘otherness,’’ and the sense in which others are obligated to me as other, seems to come about only as part of the development forced on the responsibility by the appearance of the third. That is to say, only the appearance of the third—who inaugurates sociality, thematization, and totalization—brings about a social sense in which I too am other. I am ‘‘other’’ only posterior, as it were, to the very event that degrades otherness in the act of comparing the incomparable. On the hypothetical desert island inhabited by the same and the other, the other is other and the self is always the self, the servant of the other. The ‘‘gradient of transcendence’’ assures that the untraversable distance between the same and the other is asymmetrical and irreversible. However, while Levinas is highly reluctant to speak of the other’s (autrui) responsibility to the self, he does note that the other is responsible to other others. The poor one, the stranger, presents himself as an equal. His equality within this essential poverty consists in referring to the third party, thus present at the encounter, whom in the midst of his destitution the Other already serves. He comes to join me. But he joins me to himself for service. . . .39 This admission raises difficult questions. Peperzak notes that as soon as I know that my other (autrui) is claimed in responsibility by another other (my ‘‘third’’) the detour by the third ‘‘seems to become 132
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unnecessary.’’40 Either the reasons for the other’s responsibility are identical with the reasons that I am responsible, or the relation between my autrui and the third is identical to my relationship to the other (autrui).41 If this is the case, it becomes difficult to see why all others are not, along with myself, reciprocally obliged and responsible. In the name of its essential asymmetry, Levinas constantly denies the reciprocity of the metaphysical relation, but this rejection seems to rest on an illegitimate identification of the category reciprocity with another category that should be called ‘‘double asymmetry’’: when A is infinitely obliged by B, B can still be infinitely obliged by A. This reciprocity does not necessarily entail that A is allowed to claim as much from B as the existence of B claims from A (nor that B may claim from A the same sacrifices the existence of A demands from B). Reciprocally the existence of A and of B as others demand much more from the ego (of B or A) to which they reveal themselves than that which these egos are allowed to claim for themselves.42 Peperzak claims that this double asymmetry—which reveals the asymmetrical relationship to be universal and, thus, universally reciprocal—excludes neither alterity nor asymmetry, and is not reducible to a simple symmetry.43 The responsibility I demand of the other is not the responsibility I demand of myself—I always demand, or ought to demand, more from myself than I do from others.44 Thus, double asymmetry specifically avoids Levinas’s criticism that a reciprocal demand of self-sacrifice imposed on the other constitutes ‘‘human sacrifice.’’45 Although Levinas is reticent when addressing the responsibility of the other, Peperzak is not as restrained, insisting that certain aspects of the other’s responsibility must be explicitly acknowledged rather than merely alluded to.46 [W]e cannot deny that my Said (‘‘I am responsible for the Other’’) also holds, and in the same way for the Other. The altruistic remark that the Other, not I, should be aware of the Other’s responsibility for me cannot suffice in philosophy. For, the truth that the Other’s responsibility for me ‘‘is his business’’ implies—and I cannot ignore it—that he also must know and practice it for the same reason as me.47 Peperzak goes on to suggest thinking of the relationship of double asymmetry as a chiastic one of reciprocal esteem and devotion, in Concrete Philosophy
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which ‘‘you and I are simultaneously hostage and divine for one another.’’48 This interesting characterization of the intersubjective relationship, in which each person views the other as if ‘‘on a height’’ and views himself as a servant disposable to the other, does not seem at all far from Marcel’s description of disponibilite´.49 In addition, Peperzak notes—again, in a manner very like Marcel—that the chiasm formed by a double asymmetric devotion between the same and the other does not exclude more ‘‘extreme’’ forms of intersubjectivity, forms which are more asymmetrical than they are double. He notes that ‘‘the existence of saints—or should I say, the belief that saints are possible?—bears witness to the wonder of gratuitous devotion’’ and points to the possibility of a more unidirectional dis-interested service to the other.50 Thus, double asymmetry is offered as an addition to, or modification of, Levinas’s absolutely asymmetrical responsibility, rather than a wholesale rejection of it—one that illustrates how reciprocity of a special kind should be possible within the schema of ethical responsibility. There are many kinds of interhuman encounters. As Marcel notes, ‘‘One might therefore say that there is a hierarchy of [relationships], or rather invocations, ranging from the call upon another which is like ringing a bell for a servant to quite the other sort of call which is really like a kind of prayer.’’51 In such a hierarchy, there are many ways to dominate or violate the other, but there are also many different ways to foster, respect, serve, and put oneself at the disposal of the other. For Marcel, the interhuman relationship closest to a prayer is characterized by love, hope, creative fidelity, and, indeed, by service. However, this transcendent relationship is not one of obsession, which would be pathological. On Levinas’s account, obsession is fundamental to responsibility, which is clear when we take responsibility to the point of responsibility for the responsibility for the other; that is, to the point of substitution. However, Marcel detects another possibility in obsession. [The obsessed person] becomes increasingly a prisoner of an obsession of which the other being is less the object than the excuse, since he evades the grasp not only of intuition but of all knowledge worthy of the name. I see a being so much the less the more I am obsessed by him, for my obsession tends to substitute itself for him.52 We should read Marcel’s words in light of our critique of Levinas above, which points out that it is entirely possible that the infinite 134
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responsibility that individuates me also leads to a situation in which all others are equal and interchangeable. The other becomes an occasion for my responsibility. Absolute otherness leaves us no way to distinguish between others. Note how Levinas and Marcel speak of obsession with the other in similar terms—prisoner, hostage, situating the other absolutely beyond knowledge, the inability to see the other person, etc.—yet draw radically different conclusions from such a relationship. Levinas sees these characteristics as insurance for the alterity of the other, and therefore indicative of the utmost respect for him; but Marcel sees these characteristics as indicative of an impersonal, objective, and ultimately selfish relationship. For Marcel, obsession with another person is quite capable of being a selfish act. As the villainous Iago of Shakespeare’s Othello notes, there is more than one kind of servant. Though some serve faithfully and lovingly, ‘‘Others there are / Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, / Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves . . . [they] do themselves homage.’’53 Iago claims membership in this latter class of ‘‘servants,’’ and his treachery marks one of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies. Thinkers such as Kant and Levinas disparage the affective element of duty and service. Kant insists that moral worth is associated with actions done from the motive of duty, which is most easily distinguishable when our inclinations actually run contrary to duty.54 Levinas, for his part, insists that ‘‘the personal relation is in the rigor of justice that judges me and not in love that excuses me.’’55 But, while the rigid exclusion of an affective element in ethics or morality has a purpose within each thinker’s philosophy, it leaves them with no way to exclude selfish (even villainous) service. In contrast, Marcel asserts that the mere outward manifestations of service are sterile without the inner, affective elements of love and fidelity.56 Levinas claims that responsibility to the other must take the form of concrete, material sacrifice rather than mere sympathy for the other. Well and good; however, while material aid or sacrifice is no doubt necessary, Marcel maintains that service to the other is barren, even false, absent such sympathy.57 Although Marcel stresses the fundamentally reciprocal nature of intersubjectivity, he is aware of the potential problems with such a characterization and he anticipates and addresses some of Levinas’s objections to reciprocity. Care must be taken to avoid allowing a relationship that is reciprocal from becoming characterized as one that is symmetrical. As Peperzak has shown, reciprocity does not necesConcrete Philosophy
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sarily entail symmetry. While a fully developed intersubjective relationship is characterized by reciprocity, Marcel maintains that the ‘‘true’’ intersubjective relationship is an unselfish one, one which is characterized by disponibilite´ and creative fidelity, made possible by my hope in and for the other. Although the reciprocal nature of the relationship means something is required of both participants in it, the claim placed on the other person is (in line with Levinas’s demand) unlike the claim I place on myself in obligating myself to him. The claim on the other is a claim of hope rather than a claim of demand and, in this sense, is not a claim at all. ‘‘Hope shows the originality and, I must add, the supreme dignity of never claiming anything or insisting upon its rights.’’58 Nevertheless, Marcel acknowledges the potential dark side of reciprocal relationships. I should however add that here, as everywhere for that matter, a certain slipping or degradation inevitably tends to come about. ‘‘To hope in’’ becomes ‘‘to expect from’’ then ‘‘to have due me,’’ that is to say ‘‘to count on’’ and finally ‘‘to claim’’ or ‘‘to demand.’’59 Nevertheless, the potential (even inevitable) degradation of this relationship does not vitiate the fundamentally reciprocal nature of it. While there is great risk in allowing for reciprocal intersubjective relationships, it is a risk that makes possible the greatest possible gain: the full flowering of reciprocal love and fidelity between two people. Does this mean we must reject Levinas’s version of intersubjectivity? No, at least not entirely. While more explicit and more clearly articulated, Peperzak’s line of reasoning is not entirely foreign to Levinas’s thought, though it should not be taken to be entirely synonymous with it. Totality and Infinity claims that the command of the other ‘‘commands me to command.’’60 In ‘‘The Ego and the Totality,’’ Levinas elaborates. ‘‘To show respect cannot mean to subject oneself; yet the other does command me . . . But for this command not to involve humiliation . . . the command I receive must also be a command to command him who commands me.’’61 However, even while acknowledging a way in which I ‘‘command’’ the other, Levinas limits this commanding to a command that commands the other to command me, or again, a definitive placing of the self at the command of the other. When he acknowledges the possibility of a sort of reciprocity across ‘‘very complex structures,’’ Levinas seems to imply that, while there would be some value in examining the notion of reciprocity, the 136
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danger of opening such a Pandora’s Box is too great. Such a relationship must be secondary to the simple, immediate encounter of asymmetrical responsibility. The sense of our whole effort lies in affirming not that the Other forever escapes knowing, but that there is no meaning in speaking here of knowledge or ignorance, for justice, the preeminent transcendence and the condition for knowing, is nowise, as one would like, a noesis correlative of a noema.62 The point here seems not to be that knowing, reciprocity, love, or intimacy is impossible. Rather, the point is that asymmetry, responsibility, and justice are more fundamental, more universal—and the precondition for these more reciprocal relations. Responsibility is the condition for the possibility of such relationships. Love presupposes justice and responsibility. ‘‘Socialite´ premie`re: le rapport personnel est dans la rigueur de la justice qui me juge et non pas dans l’amour qui m’excuse.’’63 Justice, and the non-reciprocal asymmetry on which it is founded, is the ‘‘socialite´ premie`re’’—the primary, or first, social relation—not the only social relation. Given the various allusions to reciprocity in Levinas’s work, we might say that the preceding comments offer an alternative reading of the strict Levinasian position on asymmetry and reciprocity within the intersubjective relationship. It seems possible—contrary to Levinas’s explicit insistence but in keeping with some of his more enigmatic statements—to offer a reading of responsibility in which the terms are indeed read both from ‘‘right to left’’ and from ‘‘left to right.’’ Of course, these comments borrow and build on Peperzak’s claim that double asymmetry allows us to read responsibility as oriented in both directions, as it were. Double asymmetry is not mirrorimage reciprocity: both participants in such a relationship encounter each other as ‘‘on a height.’’ Thus, it introduces reciprocity without symmetry. However, this novel possibility of double asymmetry does not yet fully address Levinas’s position on reversibility/irreversibility. Irreversibility does not only mean that the same goes unto the other differently than the other to the same. That eventuality does not enter into account: the radical separation between the same and the other means precisely that it is impossible to place oneself outside the correlation between the same and the other so as to record the correspondence or the non-correspondence of Concrete Philosophy
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this going with this return. Otherwise the same and the other would be reunited under one gaze, and the absolute distance that separates them filled in.64 Because Levinas himself addresses, albeit briefly and indirectly, the possibilities of reciprocity inherent in the relationship between the same and the other, the mere elucidation of the ‘‘complex structure’’ across which such reciprocity is possible does not significantly alter the primordiality of the asymmetry upon which Levinas insists. For even if Peperzak has succeeded in identifying the complex structure required for reciprocity, ‘‘this possibility does not even enter into the account,’’ says Levinas. There is no neutral, encompassing point of view from which one could verify the unique sense of reciprocity for which Marcel, Buber, and Peperzak advocate. Perhaps ‘‘double asymmetry,’’ ‘‘disponibilite´,’’ or the ‘‘primary word I-Thou’’ is in fact an accurate description of intersubjectivity. However, as I can only vouch for my own responsibility, the other’s responsibility being ‘‘his own business,’’ who is to say? There is no encompassing view or position that can verify the responsibility of both parties, so I can only speak authoritatively of my responsibility for the other. This further claim by Levinas introduces more difficulties. The position that underlies this very claim seems to contradict itself. If, as Levinas says, ‘‘it is impossible to place oneself outside the correlation between the same and the other so as to record the correspondence or the non-correspondence of this going with this return,’’ then it seems difficult to see how Levinas can insist that the asymmetrical relationship is non-reciprocal. The same limitation or restriction that prevents us from verifying reciprocity prevents us from verifying non-reciprocity. The hypothetical reciprocity or non-reciprocity between the self and the other must, if this is the case, remain unverified. Like Schro¨dinger’s Cat, the relationship remains both reciprocal and non-reciprocal, and simultaneously neither reciprocal nor nonreciprocal, pending inspection by an outside observer who could verify one state or the other.65 However, both Marcel and Levinas explicitly reject the notion that such an ‘‘outside’’ point of view is possible in the case of the intersubjective relationship. We do not have a third person perspective of relationships in which we are involved. Thus, it seems that the argument concerning reciprocity or non-reciprocity must remain unverified. At best we can assess the coherence of either position within the given thinker’s philosophy as a sort of inductive proof of 138
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the validity of the position. Here, again, we reach an impasse. Levinas insists that subjectivity, truth, transcendence, etc. are all dependent on the asymmetrical and non-reciprocal encounter with the other qua absolutely other. Marcel is equally vociferous in maintaining that these same phenomena are rooted in participation with or permeability to the other and, hence, that alterity cannot be absolute. ‘‘Absolute’’ Alterity and the Spirit of Abstraction Another frequently discussed aspect of Levinas’s thought—closely related to, and ultimately the reason for, characterizing the intersubjective relationship as both asymmetrical and irreversible—is his insistence that the other person is absolutely other than the self. In fact, we will soon see that this claim is the root of those differences between Marcel and Levinas that are irreconcilable. For the moment, however, let me confine my remarks to Levinas’s assertion that the other is absolutely other, along with some of the criticisms associated with this claim. Intersubjectivity, speaking loosely, concerns all our relationships with other subjects; that is, with personal others. However, Levinas and Marcel appear to have different experiences when they encounter another person. For Levinas, the encounter with the face is one that reveals an absolute alterity that produces the infinite. Marcel’s encounter is entirely different. For him, the face of the other person is, while remaining other, capable of illuminating an intuition of some similarity, of something common. Indeed, one might point out that the very language of Levinas’s description reveals this common ground. The face of the other is, for Levinas, that of the ‘‘widow,’’ ‘‘orphan,’’ or ‘‘stranger.’’ But these situations are ones to which I can relate, despite their location in another person.66 The widow is someone similar to myself, if I were ever to lose my wife. The orphan is somehow analogous to me, but without parents. The stranger’s situation is something akin to what I have experienced living in a strange land.67 The similarity of these persons to myself is what allows me to understand them as needy, vulnerable, and destitute—otherwise the alterity of the other would only present the other as on a height and I would have no way of understanding his need, which would remain unapparent to me. If I could not appreciate what is vulnerable and destitute in the other, I would not hear the call to responsibility. Only the similarity of the same and the other allows me to see the other as needy and to respond to his need. Concrete Philosophy
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In fact, my inability to sympathize or empathize with the other is not the most challenging aspect of this claim. If the other is absolutely other, completely foreign, without any characteristic that is familiar, how can I even encounter the other at all? Is the language of ‘‘absolute alterity’’ merely hyperbolic? The very possibility of an encounter with absolute alterity is a significant obstacle. In chapter 2 it was noted that, if the other is absolutely other, we seem to be confronted with a variation of Meno’s Paradox. How can we encounter something absolutely foreign to all concepts and comprehension? Although Levinas’s novel interpretation of sensibility coupled with his appropriation of Descartes’s Third Meditation provided an answer to this question, it is an answer that has not satisfied all of Levinas’s readers. Philosophers including Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Marion, Adriaan Peperzak, Robert Bernasconi, Bernard Waldenfels, and Dominique Janicaud have addressed the issue of the absolute alterity of the other in Levinas’s work. Fortunately, while the secondary literature on this topic is extensive, the matter at issue here will not require an exhaustive review of it. The spirit behind many of these criticisms is remarkably similar. Moreover, we will have occasion to return to the question of alterity and whether it is best characterized in absolute or non-absolute terms. For the moment we will be well served by developing a preliminary sketch of the critiques leveled against Levinas through an examination of some of Jacques Derrida’s early work. Therefore, in lieu of a line-by-line account of the secondary literature on the topic of alterity, we will briefly look at some of Derrida’s criticisms. Derrida’s work suggests itself because Levinas took it seriously—it gave birth to a well-known exchange between the two, an exchange so significant that it has spawned a secondary literature of its own. Derrida’s critique began with ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’—a criticism of Totality and Infinity—which was answered, in part, by Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, in particular by the fourth section of this work, ‘‘Substitution.’’ The dialogue continued in Levinas’s ‘‘Wholly Otherwise’’ and Derrida’s ‘‘At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am,’’ and even into the very eulogy given by Derrida at Levinas’s funeral, ‘‘Adieu.’’68 Although even the basic texts of this dialogue are substantial, a brief examination of some of the criticisms of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ will suffice to illustrate a few potential problems with characterizing the other person as absolutely other than the self. 140
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As noted, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ is a critical assessment of Levinas’s thought in the form in which it is found in Totality and Infinity, which was answered in part by Otherwise than Being. Therefore, those who read a Kehre into Levinas’s thought might dismiss this criticism in light of Levinas’s clarification of his position in ‘‘Substitution’’ and ‘‘Wholly Otherwise.’’ However, as Levinas himself rejects the idea of a Kehre in his thought, these later works should be read as elaborations of a position that has remained constant in his thought; thus, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ remains a criticism worth examining, even if such examination must take place in light of later exchanges in the Levinas-Derrida dialogue.69 Although the critique of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ is substantial, covering several interrelated topics, Derrida’s comparison of Husserl’s fifth Cartesian Meditation with Levinas’s position is of particular interest for the question of the alterity of the other person.70 As noted, while Levinas’s survey of the tradition critiques more thinkers than it praises, certain thinkers are singled out as representative of specific kinds of totalizing excess. Husserl’s phenomenological intentionality is one such example: in the correlation of noesis and noema, Levinas sees a totalizing encounter predestined to absorb the other under the same. Derrida, however, questions Levinas’s reading of Husserl and, in doing so, questions whether Levinas’s own account of the alterity of the other is coherent. Derrida maintains that Husserl does in fact address the otherness of the other and does so in a way that avoids certain complications inherent in Levinas’s own position. Rather than leading to a totalization of the other, the characterization of the other as an alter ego guarantees the recognition of the other person as an absolute origin in his or her own right and assures the alterity of the other.71 Thus, Derrida seems to claim that ‘‘Husserl’s phrase ‘alter ego’ says alterity better than Levinas’s appeal to ‘the absolute Other’.’’72 Husserl’s most central affirmation concerns the irreducible mediate nature of the intentionality aiming at the other as other. It is evident, by an essential absolute and definitive self-evidence that the other as transcendental other (other absolute origin and other zero point in the orientation of the world) can never be given to me in an original way and in person, but only through analogical appresentation.73 This, the radical separation of absolute origins, is where we can find the distance of alterity and the respect for the other as other in HusConcrete Philosophy
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serl and, it might be added, in Marcel.74 Like the appresentation that mediates between consciousness and other things—to which Husserl ascribes a kind of irreducible alterity that Levinas does not— appresentation in the case of other egos allows us to approach the other qua other by analogy. The incomplete perception, so to speak, of other things is provisional and there remains the theoretical possibility of full comprehension, of complete correlation of noesis and noema.75 However, an originary presentation of the hidden otherness—a theoretical possibility with regard to other things—is rejected as a matter of fact in the case of other egos. The alterity of the transcendent thing, although already irreducible, is such only by means of the indefinite incompleteness of my original perceptions. Thus it is incomparable to the alterity of Others, which is also irreducible, and adds to the dimension of incompleteness (the body of the Other in space, the history of our relations, etc.) a more profound dimension of nonoriginality—the radical impossibility of going around to see things from the other side.76 When I sit at a table, I perceive the table from one perspective. I can see the tabletop, but cannot see the bottom of the table. Nevertheless, I constitute the table as table and ‘‘fill in’’ the bottom. Moreover, at any time, I can bend over, change my perspective, and look under the table to directly perceive the bottom and verify the way in which I have constituted the table. When I make this change in my perspective, however, I lose direct perception of the top of the table. The intuition of the thing is never adequate to my intention and, thus, there is an element of otherness in things because I never ‘‘have’’ the whole thing at once. I never directly perceive the entire table. When I encounter another person face to face, I see her eyes, nose, and mouth, but I do not perceive the back of her head. As with the table, I can always change my perspective, walk behind the person and directly perceive the back of her head, her hair, etc. However, and this is the point, no change in perspective will ever allow me to directly perceive the consciousness of another person. Thus, Derrida essentially claims that the other person is ‘‘doubly other’’ in the Husserlian schema: first, because intuition is never adequate to intention, even with physical objects; and, second, because no perspective will ever give us a direct, unmediated perception of another consciousness. 142
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The other is protected as a matter of course from the possibility of an original or complete apprehension of the other by the same. ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ goes beyond the defense of the alterity of the other in Husserl’s work to question Levinas’s own description of otherness. Levinas insists that the other must be absolutely other than the self, rejecting the characterization of the other as alter ego. However, ‘‘if the other [is] not recognized as a transcendental alter ego, it would be entirely in the world and not, as ego, the origin of the world.’’77 Only another ego can be an absolute origin of the world rather than a thing constitutive of my world, the world of which my ego is origin. If the other is not (an alter) ego, then the other, if it appears to me, must be a thing. Thus, Derrida claims it is the very status of the other as ego that makes him other than a thing in my world or, in Levinas’s terms, makes him irreducible to the self. ‘‘The other . . . would not be what he is (my fellow man as foreigner) if he were not [first] alter ego.’’78 Levinas does recognize the necessity of accounting for the other person appearing within my horizon: ‘‘No human or interhuman relationship can be enacted outside of economy.’’79 However, within economy, the other is no longer absolutely other, but is other relative to the self to whom the other reveals himself. This, in turn, seems to imply that the other is never really absolutely other. Of course, Levinas will insist that before we can have a relationship with an other, there must ‘‘be’’ an other with whom we will have a relationship. The other as other (and the self as independent and satisfied) must precede the relationship with the other if the relationship is to be with an other. Sociality and alterity precede economy and ontology. Nevertheless, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ points to a persistent problem for Levinas: accounting for the appearance of something that, strictly speaking, cannot appear. Contemporary manifestations of this problem emerge in the debates arising from Dominique Janicaud’s Phenomenology and the ‘‘Theological Turn.’’80 To put the question of absolute alterity in more strictly Marcelian terms, we might say that speaking of absolute alterity in the way in which Levinas does is symptomatic of the spirit of abstraction. Levinas is not abstracting in the manner of, for example, philosophers who speak about the mind without reference to embodiment. In fact, both the solitary ego of enjoyment and the absolutely other are abstractions.81 However, by speaking of alterity in absolute terms, Levinas hypostatizes, so to speak, something that is only an aspect or part of a whole. This is why ‘‘Levinas gives us very few examples for the Concrete Philosophy
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ethical in his work, as if it could not be translated into empiricism.’’82 Absolute otherness itself does not exist. Or, if it does exist, it could never be encountered as absolute alterity. Levinas claims, ‘‘L’absolument Autre, c’est Autrui,’’ but any autrui who crosses my path is encountered precisely insofar as he is not absolutly other. Any encounter with any other is made possible by the crossing of otherness with similarity. That is, any encounter with any other is an encounter with something or someone who is relatively, not absolutely, other. Levinas has abstracted otherness from its chiasmic crossing with similarity in order to make his point, but fails to adequately acknowledge that this is merely an abstraction. It is not an account of the way things actually are. Yes, the other is absolutely other than the self, but he is also similar to the self. We will have occasion to return to the Marcelian charge of abstraction in what follows; however, returning to Derrida’s essay, it becomes clear that this criticism is more a point of clarification and a question of language than it is a rejection of Levinas’s position. Bernasconi notes that, ‘‘[Derrida’s] quarrel with Levinas is ultimately not that Levinas fails to recognize that there can be no ‘absolute other’ so much that he is inconsistent in allowing talk of the ‘absolute other’ while rejecting the phrase ‘alter ego’.’’83 Only another ego is capable of being its own ‘‘absolute origin’’ rather than merely something within the orbit of my world, thus only the term ‘‘alter ego’’ accurately describes something absolutely other than the self. The fact that Derrida goes on to the nuanced and interesting question of how it is possible to speak of alterity lends credence to Bernasconi’s reading. He does this through a retrieval of Plato’s Sophist and the assertion that ‘‘alterity can be thought of only as negativity, and above all, can be said only as negativity . . .’’84 There is a difference between how the other is ‘‘spoken of’’ or ‘‘thought’’ and how the other ‘‘is.’’ Language betrays us in the preceding sentence, just as it does in Levinas’s own works.85 For Levinas, the other ‘‘is’’ absolutely other, otherwise than being (i.e., otherwise than ‘‘is’’), and therefore, to say the ‘‘other is . . .’’ is to betray the otherwise of the other. The distinction may perhaps be approached by noting that because we are thinking and speaking philosophically, and because philosophical thinking and speaking is ‘‘Greek’’ and logo-centric, the attempt to think or speak of the other inevitably betrays him as other. What is ‘‘said’’ of the other is never adequate to what the other ‘‘is.’’ It is precisely in this sense that Levinas’s later writing answers the critique 144
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of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ with the distinction between the Saying and the Said and the analysis of the spirit of skepticism.86 Although Derrida’s essay raises many other issues highly significant for an understanding of the development of Levinas’s thought, the passages of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ that address the issue of the alter ego are more significant for our present purposes than those that focus on the proper language for describing the other, given that both Levinas and Marcel take for granted the inability of language to adequately speak of the other person. While Levinas may have answered the linguistic questions raised by ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ to some degree, Derrida’s essay remains a legitimate critique and highlights a significant issue regarding the status of the other person, in addition to the different but related question of how we talk about the other person. Is the other person relatively other or absolutely other? Is it proper—is it possible—to think or speak of the other person as absolutely other, even in the qualified language of saying, unsaying, and resaying? Levinas’s entire corpus is based on the belief that this is not only possible—though perhaps in only a limited manner and with significant difficulties—but necessary. Nevertheless, Derrida’s defense of Husserl illustrates the possibility that a philosophy of the other as alter ego—either as absolute origin (Husserl) or center (Marcel)—and, thus, as only relatively other, cannot be immediately rejected as incapable of encountering the other as other. Utopianism and Concrete Applicability Like the questions of reciprocity and absolute alterity, the issue of the concrete applicability of Levinas’s ethical philosophy has persisted over the years, despite several attempts on the part of Levinas to qualify his position on the topic. Multiple critics have questioned the possibility of an actual manifestation of Levinas’s radical responsibility—one that demonstrates the non-reciprocal, asymmetrical, obsessive obligation that his philosophy seems to demand of us.87 I noted at the outset of this chapter that Levinas, or his advocates, cannot be allowed to avoid this question by asserting the ‘‘more primordial’’ nature of Levinas’s transcendental project. Levinas must be held accountable for the real-world ethics possible within his transcendental philosophy, just as Heidegger is held responsible by Levinasians. Fortunately, while impulsive advocates of his thought may sometimes resort to such a lazy defense, Levinas himself does not hide from this issue.88 Concrete Philosophy
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Richard Kearney puts this question to Levinas directly, asking, ‘‘Is not the ethical obligation to the other a purely negative ideal, impossible to realise [sic] in our everyday being-in-the-world?’’89 Levinas agrees immediately. This is a fundamental point. Of course we inhabit an ontological world of technological mastery and political self-preservation. Indeed without these political and technological structures of organization we would not be able to feed mankind. This is the great paradox of human existence: we must use the ontological for the sake of the other; to ensure the survival of the other we must resort to the technico-political systems of means and ends.90 Thus, the material needs of the other (such as food)—the satisfaction of which is my own spiritual need—require that political and ontological systems of totalization be imposed on the other. Or again, to feed the others, I am required to totalize the others and, in so doing, cease to encounter them as other. Levinas likens this paradox to the one presented by speaking of revelation in philosophical terms.91 We must resort to technical and political systems of totality when we are forced by the appearance of the third to compare the incomparable, just as we are required to ‘‘speak Greek’’ when we philosophize— including when we philosophize about that which philosophical language inevitably distorts and betrays. ‘‘The treason (trahison) that the idea of infinity suffers by becoming a dimension of the world is its necessary translation into the concreteness of human action.’’92 Done properly, justice is the attempt to remain (quasi)ethical after the end of ethics. In some sense, the utopian character of the ethical is precisely the force and source of the ethical. As Richard Cohen notes in his introduction to Ethics and Infinity, ‘‘What ought to be’’—the subject’s response to the Other— relates to ‘‘what is’’—being, essence, manifestation, phenomenon, identity—not by some subtle or crude conversion into ‘‘what is,’’ but by haunting it, disturbing it, raising it to a moral height of which it is not itself capable.93 The fact that the ethical is not the way things are is precisely the point; for it is from its unattainable, unsatisfiable demand that the ethical draws its power. Not necessarily a power that claims it is stronger than the ontological, but one that is better than the ontological.94 146
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Is there then no possibility for an everyday morality that would reflect the ethical demand that Levinas identifies in the face of the other? On the contrary, Levinas insists that the relation between the infinite ethical demand and a concrete morality is one that must be emphasized. ‘‘As prima philosophia, ethics cannot itself legislate for society or produce rules of conduct whereby society might be revolutionized or transformed. It does not operate on the level of the manifesto or rappel a` l’ordre; it is not a savoir vivre.’’95 While ethics is dis-inter-estedness, morality is that which operates in the world of interestedness and morality is, or ought to be, founded on the ethical relationship of asymmetrical responsibility. ‘‘The triad of you, me, and the third, contains the human universe in nucleo. It could and should be developed in a theory of the intertwinings of intersubjectivity and sociality in ethics, politics, and history.’’96 In this sense, morality is ethics after ethics is forced into the political realm by the appearance of the third. The norm which must continue to inspire and direct the moral order is the ethical norm of the interhuman. If the moral-political order totally relinquishes its ethical foundation, it must accept all forms of society including the fascist or totalitarian, for it can no longer evaluate or discriminate between them.97 This, however, seems to indicate that the ethical relationship that so challenges the philosophical tradition—the ethical encounter with absolute alterity in the face of the human other to whom I am infinitely, non-reciprocally, and asymmetrically obligated—is nothing more than a utopian ideal. When confronted with this question, Levinas accepts the critique, but disagrees with respect to its meaning for his thought. He responds: This [charge of utopianism] is the great objection to my thought. ‘‘Where did you ever see the ethical relation practised [sic]?’’ people say to me. I reply that its being utopian does not prevent it from investing our everyday action of generosity or good will towards the other: even the smallest and most commonplace gestures, such as saying ‘‘after you’’ as we sit at the dinner table or walk through a door, bear witness to the ethical.98 The ethical is utopian in the sense that it is u-topos—out of place—in the world. The ethical is out of place in the world just as the ethical Concrete Philosophy
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relationship of substitution is contrary to the conatus essendi of being. The foreign and utopian character of the ethical does not, however, prevent it from influencing the world and manifesting itself in the world—if only partially and imperfectly. This brings up another interesting question. If Levinas’s ethical relationship is purely utopian, what distinguishes it concretely from other ethical philosophies? Levinas acknowledges that the ethical ideal is utopian, which indicates that it is never fully realized in the world. Therefore, the value of such an ideal would seem to lie in its partial realizations: in our generosity toward and sacrifices for other people, and in the moral and political spheres insofar as we are able to base them on the ethical ideal. If the concrete, lived value of Levinas’s elucidation of the ethical relationship to the other lies in its ability to guide our individual actions and influence our political institutions, it seems to beg the question of how Levinas’s philosophy will differ concretely from, for example, Marcel’s, Buber’s, or Kant’s. If the transcendental arguments of all four of these thinkers induce us to the same actions, what significant concrete difference is there between them? Such a question, obviously, must bracket the issue of whether or not one of these philosophies is, transcendentally speaking, ‘‘True’’ and address them all in terms of how they influence our actual conduct. Although the debate as to the transcendental truth or falsity of a given philosophy may (and should) continue, it is difficult to see how two philosophies differ concretely if they both lead us to the same generous, hospitable, and responsible conduct toward our fellows. We need not become full-fledged pragmatists—claiming that ‘‘to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce . . . that conduct [being] its sole significance’’—in order to see the significance of this question.99 The pragmatic position—which states that, when confronted with a choice, ‘‘if I can find nothing [in the world] that would become different, then the alternative has no sense’’—is a position that carries force in the realm of ethical conduct, especially if the question of the transcendental truth of a given position is bracketed.100 Confining the comparison to the two thinkers who play the central role in this inquiry, we may ask what, if any, would be the concrete or pragmatic difference between conducting ourselves in accordance with Levinas’s philosophy as opposed to Marcel’s. The fact is that it is not immediately clear that there would be any significant difference. Both Marcel and Levinas present us with ethical ideals charac148
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terized by generosity, hospitality, and disposability to the other person. Further, both maintain that this same generosity, hospitality, and disposability cannot be demanded of the other person. Finally, both philosophers acknowledge that this ideal ethical relationship is somewhat utopian given that we are confronted by multiple others for whom we cannot be equally available, and the additional fact that we, as imperfect human beings, are bound to fall short of this ideal in actual fact. While Marcel and Levinas have substantial differences, it is unclear that many of their significant transcendental differences actually transfer into a significant difference in conduct. The philosophizing of both thinkers revolves around the other person, around respect and care for the other person, and around the gift of oneself to the other person.101 This gift of self takes the form of hospitality, generosity, and sacrifice even to the point of self-sacrifice—a sacrifice made possible only because the death of the other is of greater concern than my own death. In other words, both philosophers urge us to a life oriented around other persons, a life of service to others, a life that is sanctified by this very service. Nevertheless, the mere fact that there would likely be very little pragmatic difference between the application of Levinas’s thought and Marcel’s thought to our interpersonal behavior does not immediately indicate that there is no significant difference between these philosophies. Although a strict pragmatist might maintain that both these philosophies have the same ‘‘meaning’’ since they induce identical—or, at the very least, nearly similar—behaviors, this is not a definitive measure of truth or meaning outside the pragmatist camp. Certainly both Levinas and Marcel would maintain that there remains a significant discrepancy between their philosophies, even if it is the case that both philosophies bring about similar conduct in their ‘‘adherents.’’ Thus, even in the face of practical or pragmatic similarity, we are confronted by and must deal with the transcendental differences. Not only do these transcendental differences manifest themselves in some level of concrete or practical difference—thus preventing total pragmatic correspondence—but these differences demand further examination in their own right.
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6
The Other and God
One of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘‘Which commandment is the first of all?’’ Jesus answered, ‘‘The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’’ Mark 12:28–32 Assurance of resolution is always the covert reason for paradox: in a certain way we are always confident of the unity of what we break up as we conceive of it. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature
The preceding chapters have portrayed Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel as two philosophers who share a similar vocation, although it is a vocation that manifests itself in dissimilar—even contradictory—ways in their respective philosophies. This shared vocation reveals itself in the emphasis, common to both thinkers, placed on the other. However, in spite of this common inspiration, significant discrepancies remain. If one examines the intractable differences between Marcel and Levinas, it quickly becomes apparent that these issues all derive from divergent conceptions of otherness. 150
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Of course, differences also arise from other sources, such as those stemming from their dissimilar approaches—respectively transcendental and concrete—to philosophy. Nevertheless, the impasse between Marcel and Levinas can, without oversimplification, be addressed in terms of the way in which each thinker characterizes otherness. Obviously, the nature of the other’s alterity dictates the kind of relationships possible with the other. The kinds of relationships possible with an other who is absolutely other are different than the kinds of relationships possible with an other whose alterity is less-than-absolute. Furthermore, the way in which one conceives of otherness plays a significant role in determining which relationships have, or ought to have, precedence over others; it helps us to form a hierarchy of relationships and responsibilities. For example, Levinas’s insistence on absolute otherness leads, in ethical terms, to a concern for maintaining the alterity of the other and, thus, to an emphasis on justice. In contrast, Marcel’s view of otherness as relative leads to a hope for communion with the other and, thus, to an emphasis on love.1 We should begin by addressing alterity in terms of intersubjectivity. Is the autrui, the other person here before me, ‘‘l’absolument Autre’’; or is he rather an ‘‘alter ego,’’ an other like me but with his own ‘‘center’’? One might be tempted to minimize the importance of this question based, for example, on the practical similarity of the two positions. It is not at all clear that the actual ethical conduct of a ‘‘Levinasian’’ and a ‘‘Marcelian’’ would be substantially different; therefore, reconciliation might still be possible in ‘‘pragmatic’’ terms. In addition, the claims of both Marcel and Levinas seem to have been moderated by the dialogue between their respective positions in chapters 4 and 5, which address the concerns of each thinker and the criticisms each could (or did) level against the other. Chapter 4 located a sense of absolute otherness in Marcel in the emphasis on the other as his or her own ‘‘center,’’ and chapter 5 made a concomitant attempt to locate a sense of reciprocity in Levinas by discussing the sense in which my other (autrui) is himself part of a web of responsibility in which he is also responsible for other others (the third) and, perhaps, for me. Nevertheless, if the previous chapters have given us hope for a kind of philosophical de´tente, they also illustrate how persistently the differences between Marcel and Levinas reappear, frustrating full reconciliation. Pragmatic correspondence and partial reconciliations notwithstanding, Marcel and Levinas remain incompatible on a funThe Other and God
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damental level. The extent to which these philosophies resist full harmonization is directly related to the way that each philosopher conceives of otherness and the degree to which these conceptions are incompatible. It is precisely the different conceptions of otherness— and, correspondingly, the possibilities for relating to others—that form the barrier that prevents a full reconciliation between these two thinkers. Ultimately, any attempt to deal with Levinas and Marcel must come to terms with the underlying difference between them— either to dismiss the difference as insignificant, to fully reconcile the two thinkers by explaining how their different positions are not really different, or to strike a decisive blow for one position. This is the task at hand. Before we proceed to this central issue, a subsidiary but illuminating issue should be dealt with. I have circumscribed some of the ways in which Levinas and Marcel differ in their characterizations of intersubjectivity and have pointed toward their respective treatments of alterity as the axis around which these differences pivot. Prior to addressing the veracity of either claim, which I will undertake in the following chapter, we should stop and ask ourselves why they differ in this respect when so many other aspects of their philosophies seem to suggest similarity rather than difference. Both men share a similar vocation insofar as each attempts, in his own way, to develop a philosophy that will do justice to the other and to the role of the other in the life of the self. Furthermore, they are contemporaries, and both are French-speaking, European intellectuals educated in the philosophical tradition of the West. Beginning from a similar background, with similar inspirations and similar goals, Marcel and Levinas author philosophies that, while indeed similar, are thought to be fundamentally incompatible. Why? A Brief Review: Justice and Love We should begin by reexamining each thinker’s treatment of ethical intersubjective relationships—especially the relationships of love and justice, which I indicated would be particularly telling in terms of the question of otherness. At the beginning of this inquiry, I noted that the tension between justice and love, taken as general types of relationships, helps to illuminate the question of otherness. The crosscultural presence of this conflict in works of literature and art speaks to the pervasiveness of its influence on the human condition. Moreover, the tension between justice and love, or more specifically, the 152
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relationship one chooses to favor, says something important about one’s view of otherness itself. Thus, the emphasis on one relationship or the other is far from trivial. The import of choosing to favor either justice or love is magnified by the generally steadfast insistence with which Levinas and Marcel defend their respective choices. Levinas characterizes the relation of the same to the other primarily in terms of justice and responsibility, while Marcel describes disponibilite´ primarily in terms of love and hope. The basics of each philosopher’s position seem clear. However, the previous chapters also have brought to light passages in which each thinker seems to moderate his primary position, suggesting that neither position is as dogmatic as it appears. The primary reading of Levinas appears to emphasize justice. For Levinas, justice overrides responsibility and responsibility overrides love—if by ‘‘love’’ we mean eros, or any other relationship in which the passions are involved.2 As we have seen, he is explicit in this respect: ‘‘Socialite´ premie`re: le rapport personnel est dans la rigueur de la justice qui me juge et non pas dans l’amour qui m’excuse.’’3 Although there may be some ambiguity or complexity with respect to the relationship between justice and responsibility (politics and ethics), love’s subordinate, even disparaged, position within this hierarchy is clear. For his part, Marcel is equally vociferous in maintaining the primacy of love. He notes, ‘‘It might perhaps . . . be shown that the domain of the [mysterious] coincides with that of love, and that love is the only starting point for the understanding of such mysteries as that of the body and soul, which, in some manner, is its expression.’’4 It is from the perspective of love that we are able to experience mystery, which includes not only the body and soul, but also creativity, fidelity, and God. Love is the medium, so to speak, that enables us to genuinely relate to both other people and ourselves. In contrast to Levinas’s relegation of love to the bottom of the relational hierarchy, Marcel insists that it is only because of love that other ethical and just relationships are possible. It is love, the ‘‘love of one’s neighbor,’’ that is capable of manifesting itself as justice on either an individual or societal scale. On one hand, both thinkers appear quite trenchant in their respective opinions. However, after exploring each philosopher’s position in detail, these overt assertions of the primacy of justice or love seem to be moderated by a covert, or at least under-emphasized, acknowledgement that the other relationship (either love or justice) has a legitimate place in intersubjective relationships. While for the most The Other and God
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part Levinas appears to stress justice and Marcel seems to stress love, other statements indicate that these are emphases in each philosophy rather than monolithic or dogmatic positions. Each thinker addresses both justice and love as modes of relating to the other person, and the attention paid to the less-emphasized mode of relation—in Marcel’s case, justice, and in Levinas’s case, love—appears to moderate or otherwise introduce ambiguity into each philosopher’s principal emphasis. However, in each case, what might appear to be moderation or ambiguity is in fact further entrenchment of the principal position through a reinterpretation of either love or justice. For example, in spite of his overriding concern with justice, Levinas notes that ‘‘justice comes from love’’ and that ‘‘love is originary’’—which seems to invert his principal position emphasizing justice.5 These statements must, however, be read in light of what Levinas means by ‘‘love.’’ He is highly suspicious of love and its implications—‘‘I don’t very much like the word love, which is wornout and debased’’6 —and generally criticizes any relation in which the passions hold sway or in which one other is given unjustified preferential treatment over other others. For Levinas, love, in its ethically significant form, is the ‘‘love of one’s neighbor.’’ However, love of one’s neighbor is itself nothing other than responsibility.7 Therefore, when Levinas says, ‘‘love is originary,’’ he is in fact speaking of disinter-ested love, love without eros; that is, responsibility. ‘‘Love is originary’’ means ‘‘responsibility is originary.’’ It is love qua responsibility that concerns Levinas—a responsible love that both informs and submits to the justice that must supersede it in society. Justice and responsibility remain the ethically significant modes of relation to the other for Levinas. Likewise, Marcel acknowledges the importance of justice despite his principal emphasis on love, noting later in his life that it had become ‘‘more and more clear . . . that the problem of justice is the supreme problem . . .’’8 However, as with Levinas’s admission that ‘‘love’’ is originary, one does well to ask just what Marcel means by ‘‘justice’’ in this context. For Marcel, justice is first and foremost respect for the ‘‘core of the sacred’’ in other persons and is only secondarily distributive justice, rectificatory justice, or the maintenance of just institutions. The primary sense of justice (qua respect for the sacred in other people) is really an aspect of love, and the secondary sense of justice (qua distributions, rectification, or just institutions) depends on the primary sense. For Marcel, justice is based on love 154
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of humanity, which is itself an extension of our love for other individuals. Thus, what appear to be ambiguities in each thinker’s treatment of intersubjectivity are, under closer inspection, nothing of the sort. On the one hand, Levinas, who stresses justice, notes that ‘‘love is originary’’; Marcel, who underscores love, sees justice as ‘‘the supreme problem.’’ On the other hand, these uncharacteristic statements are, when fully unpacked, merely segues into discussions that further emphasize and entrench each thinker’s principal position. Levinas makes it clear that while love (i.e., love without eros, love qua responsibility) is originary, justice has priority over love.9 Marcel is equally clear, noting that the love of humanity is an extrapolation of our love for other individual persons—although this individual love is itself paradoxically dependent on just treatment of these individual others in terms of respect for the core of the sacred in them. The disagreement concerning love and justice reveals not only a difference regarding which of these relationships is given priority over the other, but also raises questions concerning the very nature of each kind of relation. What does it mean to be just? To love the other? For Levinas, love of one’s neighbor is really nothing other than responsibility for him. Ethically pure responsibility, however, only ‘‘exists’’ theoretically (or, more specifically, quasi-transcendentally): in the real world, we cannot be fully responsible to the other (autrui) because of the third. The best we can achieve is a necessarily thematizing justice that is shaped and formed by responsibility. If love is another name for responsibility, it is only manifested in justice. Love is justice. On the contrary, for Marcel—although the opposition between justice and love is, perhaps, not felt as keenly in his thought—justice is a manifestation of love.10 Levinas reduces love to an example or kind of justice; Marcel reduces justice to a kind of love we have for others. This digression is philosophically useful in terms of relating justice and love to the more fundamental question of otherness. The shared concern for love and justice, and the divergent opinions that cause each thinker to consistently favor one relationship over the other, overshadow another important similarity: it remains significant that both thinkers equate justice and love en passant, as it were. The divergent accounts of the primacy of love or justice hide a fundamental similarity between the two accounts. Although I have shown that the apparent ambiguities in each thinker’s position on love and justice are in fact further entrenchments of that position, the complexity of The Other and God
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each position and the intricacy with which they diverge remain a testament to the intertwined nature of justice and love. For both Marcel and Levinas, it appears difficult to speak of one relationship—love or justice—without noting the role of the other, and although each thinker consistently awards primacy to one of these two modes of relation, the second mode is always in the background, waiting to be acknowledged. Again we must ask why this is the case. Why, given the complexity of human relationships and the apparent interdependence of justice and love, does Levinas come down unfailingly on the side of justice, and why does Marcel, with equal predictability, affirm the priority of love? The answer lies in how each philosopher conceives of otherness. The characterization of the other as absolutely other leads to a concern for maintaining the integrity of this sharp demarcation, which manifests itself in Levinas’s concern for justice. However, the characterization of the other person as incompletely other leads to an intuition of similar experiences or situations and a desire to empathize or commune with one’s fellow, which leads to Marcel’s emphasis on love. The conflict concerning the priority of justice or love is the result of two different understandings of the otherness of the other. Marcel and Levinas arrive at different understandings of the otherness of the other person because they have different understandings of otherness itself, or what it means to say that something or someone is ‘‘other.’’ Absolute Alterity and Relative Alterity: A Preliminary Sketch The import of the distinction between absolute alterity and relative alterity should not be surprising, for it has played a part in each of the preceding chapters. From Levinas’s insistence that the other must remain absolutely other, to Marcel’s insistence that we remain open to the influx of the other; from Levinas’s account of distance and proximity, to Marcel’s description of presence, each chapter has built toward a fundamental disagreement that, in hindsight, seems inevitable and obvious. Each similarity that unravels to reveal a divergence points to the same underlying issue and seems to indicate that the differences between Marcel and Levinas can, in no small measure, be attributed to their underlying disagreement as to the status of the otherness of the other. Marcel and Levinas seem to have planted their standards on opposite sides of this debate. And the problem may run deeper than a mere difference of opinion with re156
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spect to the otherness of the other, wherein Levinas argues for absolute otherness and Marcel argues for relative otherness. Although this distinction is legitimate, one may ask if this is a disagreement, a misunderstanding, or both. Do Marcel and Levinas disagree with respect to agreed upon terms, or do they misunderstand each other because they use the term ‘‘other’’ in ways that are incommensurable rather than contradictory? In Levinas’s thought, otherness is either absolute or it is, ultimately, not other at all: ‘‘The same and the other at the same time maintain themselves in relationship and absolve themselves from this relation, remain absolutely separated. The idea of Infinity requires this separation.’’11 Otherness requires nothing less than absolute separation. That which is merely other relative to something else— inevitably the self—is no longer really other. Thus, ‘‘relative otherness’’ is an oxymoron insofar as that which is relative to the self is no longer really other than, or foreign to, the self. Otherness relative to me is other on my terms, not its own. The problem is how we might speak of absolute otherness given that speech inevitably uses logos and, in so doing, moves us from discourse to monologue, from the saying to the said. Levinas’s work is an ongoing struggle to philosophize about the other without violating the otherness of the other, to maintain himself in the paradoxical space of a ‘‘philosophical discourse.’’12 In the course of doing so, he resorts to two general metaphors for the otherness of the other: height and proximity.13 Height addresses the alterity of the other in terms of the alterity traditionally ascribed to God as Tre`s-Haut or El Alyon and, as such, refers to the infinite. Proximity, on the other hand, emphasizes alterity by focusing on the approach to that other that is only approach, never arrival or contact.14 Like the mythological tortoise of Xeno’s Paradox, the distance between the same and the other, while it may be reduced, is never— indeed can never—be closed or bridged. While height is a dimension of infinite distance, proximity is a dimension of infinite approach, perhaps of ‘‘infinite-simally’’ smaller distances that never fully close the gap between the same and the other.15 Interestingly, Levinas’s later characterizations of otherness in terms of proximity sound much more like Marcel’s description of other persons, who are known in stages of deepening intimacy though never fully comprehended. Nevertheless, while proximity may sound more congruent with Marcel’s position, Levinas’s underlying insistence on the absolute alterity of the other remains firm. In either case—height or proxThe Other and God
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imity—the other remains absolutely other than the self: always above, always distant, and never reached. If, within Levinas’s schema, otherness is an all-or-nothing proposition, within Marcel’s schema it might be characterized as a neitherall-nor-nothing proposition. Marcel seems to affirm precisely the sort of relative otherness that Levinas insists is not otherness at all. Marcel’s philosophy does make some acknowledgment of the (absolute) alterity of the other person that Levinas is trying to honor. He makes a substantial effort to insist that the other is not other relative to me. However, Marcel does think that real communion is possible between the self and the other, who can participate in meaningful ‘‘constellations’’ without forming totalities. In an attempt to characterize this intermediate sense of otherness, which is less-than-absolute but not merely relative to me, I spoke in terms of aspects of alterity to indicate otherness that harbors both aspects of absolute alterity and aspects of similitude.16 While the other person is like me, and he and I can share a significant number of experiences and participate to a certain extent in a shared reality, there is also a sense in which the other person remains utterly, absolutely beyond my knowledge and grasp. There is a sense in which the other person is only relatively other, a fellow sojourner—and there is simultaneously a sense in which he is absolutely other and foreign. Marcel’s claim is that, in the openness of intersubjectivity, ‘‘we reveal what we are (though of course only in part) . . .’’17 It is the ‘‘unrevealed’’ part of the other that constitutes the other qua his or her own ‘‘center,’’ which remains foreign and other, even in participation and presence. However, a moment ago, I suggested that the divergence between Marcel and Levinas might be more complex than a mere difference of opinion with respect to the otherness of the other person, and in some sense this does seem to be the case. To some extent, these two philosophers, both writing in French, are not speaking the same language when it comes to otherness. That is, they do not merely take opposing positions with respect to agreed upon terms; rather, they actually mean different things when they say ‘‘autre.’’ ‘‘Other’’ has different—though not entirely incongruent—meanings for Levinas and Marcel. Levinas identifies two possibilities for otherness: absolute alterity or mere modulation of the same. Marcel does not feel constrained by these choices and detects another, mysterious alternative. Where Levinas sees the alternatives of other and same, Marcel finds the possibilities of other, same, or both. 158
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Why is this the case? How do two men, contemporaries, both French, both educated in the philosophical tradition of the West, arrive at such divergent understandings of something as familiar and common as otherness?18 The answer lies not in their respective intellectual and philosophical heritage—which was relatively similar— but in their different religious heritage. While their different emphases on justice and love prove to be manifestations of different ways in which otherness per se is understood, this understanding is itself directly related to the way in which each thinker characterizes the otherness of God. The Alterity of the Other and the Alterity of God The idea that Marcel and Levinas each associate the relationship with other people with the relationship with God is both fairly obvious and, at first glance, inconsequential. It is obvious because there are numerous examples of each philosopher addressing the interconnected nature of these relationships; and, given their respective religious commitments, this should be no surprise. It appears inconsequential because Marcel and Levinas, as Catholic and Jew, share a great deal of religious heritage. Both would affirm a version of human nature created imago dei. Both can affirm the conjunction of interhuman relationships to human-divine relationships in reference to biblical precedent—in either the Torah, halakhah, and Talmud, or in the Old and New Testaments. For example, the first epigraph of this chapter refers to the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor and to love God, and this injunction is found in both the Torah and the New Testament.19 The interconnectedness, even interdependence, of the alterity of other persons and the alterity of God is clearly present in both Marcel’s and Levinas’s work. Levinas clearly affirms the connection between divine and human alterity by claiming that both the alterity of the other person and the alterity of God are absolute. The otherness of metaphysical desire is ‘‘understood as the alterity of the Other and of the Most-High [Tre`sHaut, El Alyon].’’20 Derrida, however, perceives a priority of the alterity of God in Levinas’s work, noting that, ‘‘The face-to-face . . . is not originally determined by Levinas as the vis-a`-vis of two equal and upright men. The latter presupposes the face-to-face of the man with bent neck and eyes raised toward the God on high.’’21 The otherness of God is the model for the otherness of others. ‘‘God is, in a sense, the other, par excellence . . .’’22 Levinas maintains that the ‘‘relationship The Other and God
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between men’’ and the ‘‘idea of God’’ are both ‘‘non-synthesizeables,’’ things outside the totality of things that we can know.23 As such, ‘‘the problem of transcendence and of God and the problem of subjectivity irreducible to essence, irreducible to essential immanence, go together.’’24 In fact, not only is the otherness of others modeled on the archetypal otherness of God—implying, as we saw, a philosophical claim not unlike imago dei—but in addition the otherness of others is the point of access, so to speak, for the otherness of God. The otherness of the other person is an image of the otherness of God, and the otherness of God is only encountered in the otherness of the face of the other person. The only mode of access we have to God, the only relationship possible with the divine, is via the face. ‘‘Going towards God’’ is not to be understood here in the classical ontological sense of a return to, or reunification with, God as the Beginning or End of temporal existence. ‘‘Going towards God’’ is meaningless unless seen in terms of my primary going towards the other person. I can only go towards God by being ethically concerned by and for the other person.25 It is not possible to have an individual relationship with God. The religious is in this sense dependent on the ethical. ‘‘The existence of God is not a question of an individual soul uttering logical syllogisms. It cannot be proved. The existence of God, the Sein Gottes, is sacred history itself, the sacredness of man’s relation to man through which God may pass.’’26 The interconnectedness of the relationships with other persons, and the relationship with God, is equally evident in Marcel’s work, although interhuman relationships do not have the same monopoly on access to God that they enjoy in Levinas’s philosophy. For Marcel, it is our relationship with individual beings that orients us toward being as such, toward an Absolute Thou; that is, toward God. Our ability to encounter other persons as ‘‘thou’’ is the guarantee of the union that holds us together and is possible, in the final analysis, only in reference to an Absolute Thou. Robert Rosthal notes, in his introduction to Creative Fidelity, that Marcel asserts that he came to the question of being in terms of particular beings and their relations. . . . Our understanding of being is restricted to our understanding of interpersonal relations with particular beings in the relationships of love and 160
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fidelity . . . It is in the mutuality or reciprocity of personal relationships, of which fidelity is the supreme example, that we gain access to being, that we can have some intimation of the Absolute Thou.27 Again, in a manner not so unlike Levinas’s treatment of divine and human alterity, fidelity toward a human thou gives us, because of the role played by creativity, insight into faith in an Absolute Thou. Conversely—though paradoxically—faith in an Absolute Thou is the guarantor, as it were, of our fidelity to other persons. So both thinkers affirm the interconnectedness of our relationships with other persons and our relationship with God. However, while the idea of God may not cause either thinker to think of otherness in a specific way, each thinker’s idea of God is incompatible with certain forms of otherness. For example, Marcel’s participatory, incarnational understanding of God is certainly incompatible with a God who is absolutely, wholly other. For both Marcel and Levinas, the otherness of God and the otherness of people are inextricably linked by the notion of otherness itself. This interconnectedness, in turn, points toward a connection between the alterity of other persons and the alterity of God. The relationships we have with other beings are dependent on how they stand in relation to us, on how foreign they are to us. The type of alterity found in an other—be that other human or divine—demarcates to a certain extent the kinds of relationships possible with that other. The manner of relating to something, or someone, who is absolutely other is different than the manner of relating to the same entity understood as merely relatively other. While the preceding chapters detailed how Marcel and Levinas differ with respect to our relationships with other persons—a difference played out in terms of love and justice, reciprocity and nonreciprocity, symmetry and asymmetry, etc.—these differences are themselves manifestations of each thinker’s understanding of the way in which the other person stands in relation to the self. Levinas insists that the relationship between the same and the other is non-reciprocal and asymmetrical because the other person is absolutely other for him. Marcel describes disponibilite´ as permeability or porosity because he sees the other as merely relatively other. In other words, the possibilities for a given relationship depend, in a large part, on just how other the other is. Although both Marcel and Levinas see a connection between our relationships with each other and our relationship with God, the relaThe Other and God
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tion between these two relationships—the interhuman and the human-divine—is anything but clear. How are our relationships with other persons tied to our relationship with God? What is the nature of the connection between these relationships? The complexity of this issue is evident in the biblical passages alluded to above. Take, for example, the epigraph to this chapter: ‘‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’’ The command might as well exhort us to ‘‘love the Lord your God with all your love.’’ However, the very next sentence apparently demands a love other than the love of God and, thus, we are confronted with the paradox of love of God and love of neighbor.28 A similar tension exists in the Jewish tradition, where we find ‘‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might’’ (Deuteronomy 6:5) coupled with the wonderful story of Rabbi Hillel who, when challenged by someone who promised to convert if he could be taught the entire Torah while the Rabbi stood on one leg, lifted his leg and said, ‘‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your friend. This is the entire Torah; the rest is interpretation, which you must go and learn’’ (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat, 31A).29 However, despite the potential tension between love of God and love of neighbor, few would want to admit that justice and love are strictly incompatible. We feel that the apparent incommensurability of these two loves is at root paradoxical rather than contradictory; that is, that these two loves are in fact commensurable. The paradox is present in the answer to the scribe’s question, which asked for the first (i.e., the most important) commandment. In answer, Jesus cites two commandments—not one—forcing us to ask ourselves what the relationship between these two commandments of love is, and in what way they are, together, the first commandment. In steadfastly maintaining a connection between the otherness of God and the otherness of other persons, Levinas and Marcel specifically represent these two loves—love oriented toward the divine and love toward our fellow humans—as intertwined. Both thinkers perceive that one cannot love God without loving one’s fellow man, and that one cannot love one’s fellow man without loving God. For these philosophers, the relationships we have with other persons are the mode of access—either primarily (Marcel) or exclusively (Levinas)—that we have to God; and this is the clearest indication that the alterity of the other person and the alterity of God are related. Therefore, for each of these thinkers, by starting with an understand162
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ing of the types of relationships possible with an other person, we can work backward to the otherness of the other person, and from there to otherness per se, and from there to the otherness of God and the relationships possible between humans and God.
Two Ways of Encountering God30 The distinction between absolute and relative otherness in Levinas’s and Marcel’s work is most readily apparent in their respective accounts of the relationship with an other person. However, this distinction has its foundation in two different conceptions of the divine and—because the alterity of a person or thing dictates how we relate to it—in two different understandings of how we relate to the divine. As Levinas notes, the alterity of God is prior to the alterity of other persons.31 It is for this reason that both Marcel and Levinas— consciously or unconsciously—order their understanding of the alterity of the other person on their understanding of the alterity of God. Although both thinkers attempt to draw distinctions between their philosophy and their faith, their respective religious convictions are evident throughout their philosophical work.
Christian and Jewish Encounters with God The first distinction which leaps to mind when considering the possible differences between Levinas’s and Marcel’s understanding of the alterity of God is the fact that Marcel is a Christian and Levinas is a Jew; in fact, there are some relevant distinctions to be made here. On the one hand Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all affirm the (absolute) alterity of God. On the other hand, it is easy to see that the religious orientation of Christianity differs from the other biblical religions with respect to the absolute or relative alterity of God. The Christian belief in the incarnation of God as Christ immediately introduces a sense of non-absolute alterity into the otherwise absolute alterity of God. Qua Christ, God is both man and God, both profoundly like me and utterly unlike me; that is, both relatively and absolutely other. For the Christian, God can sit at supper and break bread with men and women. He can fear and suffer, and He can die. In contrast it would appear at first blush that for the Jew, God, while He is just and loving, remains distant and remote. Levinas, for one, firmly emphasizes this remoteness. The Other and God
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In [the] ethical turnabout . . . God is pulled out of objectivity, out of presence and out of being. He is neither object nor interlocutor. His absolute remoteness, his transcendence, turns into my responsibility for the other—the non-erotic par excellence— for the other. God is . . . transcendent to the point of absence, to the point of his possible confusion with the agitation of the there is [il y a].32 God is remote indeed if He can be confused with the nothingness of the il y a, which Levinas characterizes as ‘‘impersonal,’’ ‘‘silent,’’ ‘‘anonymous,’’ ‘‘alien,’’ and ‘‘menacing.’’33 Of course this is an inevitable difficulty associated with absolute alterity—there is no way to distinguish between others who are absolutely other. For a Jew, there are, insists Levinas, no numinous, individual encounters with God. Accordingly, ‘‘No relationship with God is direct or immediate. The Divine can be manifested only through my neighbor. For a Jew, Incarnation is neither possible, nor necessary.’’34 Or again, ‘‘The direct encounter with God, this is a Christian concept. As Jews, we are always a threesome: I and you and the Third who is in our midst. And only as a Third does He reveal Himself.’’35 On this reading the encounter with God, the religious encounter, is the ethical encounter with the other person. ‘‘We know since Maimonides that all that is said of God in Judaism signifies through human praxis. . . . Religious experience, at least for the Talmud [and, thus, for the Jew], can only be primarily a moral experience.’’36 Kierkegaard and Levinas The apparent differences between Jewish and Christian understandings of how one can encounter God are evident not only in the difference between Levinas and Marcel, but also, significantly, in the relationship between Levinas and Søren Kierkegaard.37 If the Jewish-Christian distinction is a legitimate one here, it is not surprising that Levinas and Kierkegaard would be on opposing sides of the debate. Why, then, is the distinction between Levinas and Kierkegaard a ‘‘significant’’ one? Why bring in Kierkegaard rather than proceeding with Marcel? Because, in terms of directly and overtly confronting the issues of absolute versus relative alterity, Kierkegaard is an excellent representative of the Christian perspective in juxtaposition to Levinas. Not only does Kierkegaard speak directly to the issue of relative and absolute alterity, but, furthermore, there are remarkable 164
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parallels between Levinas and Kierkegaard that merit close attention. In fact, if our main concern lies in assessing the possibility of a relationship with someone who is absolutely other than the self, the omission of Kierkegaard’s account would be conspicuous, particularly because of the striking resemblance it bears to Levinas’s relationship of the same to the other. This resemblance fairly demands our attention if we are to unravel the relationship between encountering an absolute other versus encountering a merely relative other. Kierkegaard, recall, was included along with Marcel, Buber, and Rosenzweig in the list of important philosophers that Levinas called ‘‘dialogical thinkers.’’ Nevertheless, he is mentioned infrequently in Levinas’s major works.38 While Levinas does comment on Kierkegaard’s influence on Western philosophy at some length in ‘‘Existence and Ethics,’’ these comments tend to address Kierkegaard’s influence on the philosophical tradition, rather than on Levinas’s personal development as a philosopher.39 However, the similarities between the Levinasian and Kierkegaardian accounts of the encounter with absolute alterity are striking. Although a full comparison would necessitate a book-length study, the identification of a few key parallels between Totality and Infinity and Philosophical Fragments will help to illuminate important issues for our consideration of otherness.40 This choice of texts will lead us to an analysis of what Levinas calls the relationship between the same and the other, which appears remarkably similar to Kierkegaard’s description of the relationship of God (or ‘‘the god’’) to the individual.41 The similarity of these two descriptions of the encounter with alterity would present nothing more than an interesting historical footnote if not for the fact that Kierkegaard is describing the relationship of the subject to the single Divine Other, and Levinas insists that this very same relationship describes the relationship to all human others. Both Kierkegaard and Levinas are describing the relationship with absolute alterity, and doing so in nearly the same manner; however, they locate this alterity in entirely different others. The Philosophical Fragments propose to ask if ‘‘a historical point of departure [can] be given for an eternal consciousness’’ and, thus, immediately invokes the issue of immanence and transcendence.42 Can God appear in history? Access to this issue is to be had by taking up the long-standing philosophical question of whether or not the truth can be learned (or taught, as the Danish læres indicates). The two obvious interlocutors for such a meditation are Plato’s ‘‘Meno’’ and St. Augustine’s De Magistro.43 However, a discussion of Augustine is The Other and God
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conspicuously absent from the Philosophical Fragments, and Kierkegaard conducts his ‘‘thought-project’’ using the example of Socrates and Platonic recollection. As we will see, the reason that Kierkegaard does not take up Augustine is that, in terms of the human teacher qua ‘‘occasion,’’ Augustine has not surpassed Socrates in a significant way.44 For Kierkegaard, like Levinas, the Platonic version of recollection has one significant consequence: if the teacher is merely supportive, merely the catalyst for anamnesis, then both the identity of the teacher and the time of the lesson become nothing more than occasions for uncovering the truth that I already possess in an inchoate form. The identity of the teacher loses its significance because the teacher does not give me the truth. Rather, I already possess the truth and merely need to recollect that which I already know. Any number of individuals could prompt this recollection.45 Further, ‘‘[t]he temporal point of departure is a nothing because in the same moment I discover that I have known the truth from eternity without knowing it, in the same instant the moment is hidden in the eternal.’’46 In this situation both the other (interlocutor) and the time of recollection become trivial. However, Kierkegaard asks us to consider the possibility that the moment in which we acquire the truth does have ‘‘decisive significance’’; if so, what then?47 Now if the moment is to acquire decisive significance, then the seeker up until that moment must not have possessed the truth, not even in the form of ignorance, for in that case the moment becomes merely the moment of occasion; indeed, he must not even be a seeker.48 If the seeker does not have the truth—and is not, properly speaking, even a seeker—then he must be outside the truth, that is to say, in the untruth. But if this is the case, if the truth is not already with each of us, how is one to learn the truth? First, if the student is to find the truth the teacher must bring it to him. Second, the teacher must provide the student with the condition for understanding the truth.49 What would such a teacher—one who gives the student the truth—be called? ‘‘Savior,’’ ‘‘deliverer,’’ ‘‘reconciler,’’ and ‘‘judge’’ would all apply to such a teacher, but never ‘‘occasion.’’ The student, in turn, views this transition from the untruth to the truth as a qualitative change, a conversion whereby the student becomes a new person, born from the not-to-be of untruth into the to-be of truth.50 Contrary to the situation in Platonic-Socratic midwifery, such a re166
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birth—while it too owes nothing to other humans—owes everything to the divine teacher who has given the truth and the condition for understanding the truth. Given that the relationship between the teacher and the student must resemble the one described above, if the moment is to have decisive significance, how can such a relationship take place? In the Platonic relationship, neither the teacher nor the student owes the other anything exceptional, as the other individual was merely the occasion and, as such, is infinitely interchangeable with any number of other people who could have played a similar role. Here an important difference between Levinas and Kierkegaard becomes evident. Unlike Levinas, Kierkegaard applies the title of teacher only to ‘‘the god’’; he maintains that the Platonic relationship is the highest interhuman relationship. However, the relationship between the god and the person reborn from untruth into the truth is precisely not an interhuman relationship. In this relationship, the truth is not found within the student, but is given by the god. Although the pupil needs the god in order to gain the truth, ‘‘the god needs no pupil in order to understand himself, and no occasion can act upon him in such a way that there is just as much in the occasion as in the resolution.’’51 The god is not moved by the other, is not moved by need, but must move himself. What could cause this movement? Only love, ‘‘for love does not have the satisfaction of need outside itself but within. [The god’s] resolution, which does not have an equal reciprocal relation to the occasion, must be from eternity, even though, fulfilled in time, it expressly becomes the moment.’’52 Love of the learner moves the god to resolve to bestow upon him the truth and the condition for understanding it. ‘‘Only in love is the different made equal, and only in equality or in unity is there understanding.’’53 Nevertheless, this love—and the teaching that results from it—is not without its difficulties. ‘‘This love is basically unhappy, for [the god and the learner] are very unequal, and what seems so easy— namely, that the god must be able to make himself understood—is not so easy if he is not to destroy that which is different.’’54 The unhappiness of this love comes not from the inaccessibility of the ‘‘lovers,’’ but from the two not being able to understand each other. Love desires communication and understanding, but understanding comes with the implication of some measure of equality. How, then, is the god to make himself understood (i.e., become the equal of the The Other and God
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learner)—which, out of love, he does indeed want to do—without destroying the difference (i.e., while remaining the god)?55 The god is immeasurably ‘‘higher’’ than the learner, the learner immeasurably ‘‘lower’’ than the god. The inequality inherent in this situation must be overcome either by the ascent of the learner or by the descent of the god. However, the unity brought about by the ascent of the learner to equality with the god is ultimately impossible, as illustrated by Kierkegaard’s story of the love of the king and the maiden.56 Both the god and the learner know—if they are given cause to reflect on the situation—that the learner is ‘‘lower’’ than the god, to whom he owes everything. In every unfolding of unity by ascent, the god sees through the delusion of such a communion, even when the learner is fooled. While, in these scenarios of equality by ascent, the love of the learner may seem to be happy, the love of the god remains unhappy, for he sees the delusion and deception that necessarily apply to such an impossible transformation. Given that the unity required for understanding cannot be accomplished by an ascent, it must—if it is to be possible at all—be accomplished by a descent on the part of the god. The god undertakes this descent because he loves, because he desires understanding—and therefore union—with people, even the lowliest of people. ‘‘He will appear, therefore, as the equal of the lowliest of persons. But the lowliest of all is one who must serve others—consequently, the god will appear in the form of a servant.’’57 The god does not ‘‘appear’’ as a servant, as the king in Kierkegaard’s story might do in order to be with his beloved. A mere disguise used to effect the relationship would be nothing more than a deception in this case. Rather, the god becomes the servant out of love, in order to be understood by the learner. He becomes the lowliest of the lowly and, therefore, he suffers prior to his death (for if he becomes human he must, as all men do, die). This is the terror of the situation, that the god has abased himself out of love, in order to give the gift of truth to the person in the untruth. The transformation on the part of the learner is fraught with terror, ‘‘for it is indeed less terrifying to fall upon one’s face while the mountains tremble at the god’s voice than to sit with him as his equal, and yet the god’s concern is precisely to sit this way.’’58 The love of the god for the learner is not merely a love that assists him in possessing the truth—if it were, it would be merely Platonic. The love of the god is a procreative love, a love which is not maieutic, but is creative; which gives truth and (re)birth to the learner, who moves from the not-to-be of the untruth to the to-be of the truth. The 168
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Platonic student owes the teacher nothing, for the teacher is only the occasion. However, the learner taught by the god owes the god everything, for the god has given the learner his very being. ‘‘But that which makes understanding so difficult is precisely this: that [the learner] becomes nothing and yet is not annihilated; that he owes [the god] everything and yet becomes boldly confident; that he understands the truth and the truth sets him free.’’59 What form does the teaching of the god take? Kierkegaard assures the reader that ‘‘the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision . . . to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.’’60 The unknown that the understanding cannot think is the difference of the god, the otherness of the god. The human cannot grasp this unknown, which exists as a frontier beyond which the understanding cannot go and which might be called the ‘‘absolutely different.’’ The understanding, however, cannot even think the absolutely different. Therefore, if the human is to know something of the difference, this knowledge, again, cannot come from itself but must come from the god. In Kierkegaard’s terminology, the difference or otherness of the god, though posited or caused by man (sin), must be revealed by god (via the paradox) for anything to be understood about the difference (consciousness of sin). Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Transcendence The similarities between Kierkegaard’s description of the relationship of the individual to the god and Levinas’s description of the relationship of the same to the other should be evident in even this brief summary. In Levinas we find the other who is absolutely other and who cannot be understood by the self. Nevertheless, the other does reveal itself to the self, coming from a height in order to teach the self. The instruction by the other calls the self into question, arousing guilt and responsibility. While performing slightly different functions, these same elements can be found in Kierkegaard’s work. The other who is radically other corresponds to the god who is absolutely different; both are incomprehensible, both approach a person from a height, and both descend in order to teach the person. The teaching, in both cases, reveals an ‘‘infinite’’ that cannot be thought and evokes guilt and responsibility in the learner. The awareness of guilt and acceptance of responsibility in Levinas’s work correspond to the consciousness of sin and repentance in Kierkegaard’s. Even the The Other and God
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Levinasian analysis of the relationship of time to the unique encounter with absolute alterity resembles Kierkegaard’s work.61 The number of parallel elements between these two accounts suggests more than mere coincidence: the teacher who descends, unanticipated, from a height, to teach the ethical lesson of the difference, which brings me to awareness of my responsibility and guilt. Kierkegaard and Levinas provide remarkably similar accounts of the encounter with absolute alterity, but with two significant differences. First, Levinas locates this alterity in other persons, while Kierkegaard locates it in ‘‘the god.’’ Second, Levinas maintains that the relationship with the absolutely other takes place via a unique revelatory encounter with the absolute alterity of the other, while Kierkegaard maintains this relationship is possible because the other condescends to a measure of equality with the individual for the sake of understanding—that the other becomes relatively other within his absolute alterity, so to speak. Although Levinas appears to have modeled his description of the relationship to absolute alterity on Kierkegaard’s work, he has several significant problems with Kierkegaard’s characterization of this relationship. Levinas is clearly in dialogue with the Kierkegaard of the Philosophical Fragments when he writes, in ‘‘Existence and Ethics,’’ [T]he idea of truth as suffering utterly changes the nature of the search for truth. It converts relations to exteriority into inward dramas. Any relation between truth and outwardness comes to be marked by indiscretion and scandal. When the discourse of truth addresses the external world it is filled with anger and invective. It is merciless. The suffering truth does not open us to others, but to God in isolation.62 Perhaps Levinas’s main critique of Kierkegaard is concisely summed up in one of the few overt references to him in Totality and Infinity: ‘‘It is not I who resist the system, as Kierkegaard thought; it is the other.’’63 While Kierkegaard takes pains to emphasize the individual nature of the relationship with the god, for Levinas there are no strictly individual encounters with absolute alterity. Language as the presence of the face does not invite complicity with the preferred being, the self-sufficient ‘‘I-Thou’’ forgetful of the universe; in its frankness it refuses the clandestinity of love, where it loses its frankness and meaning and turns into 170
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laughter or cooing. The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other—language is justice.64 An individual or exclusive encounter with one other is, by definition, exclusionary with respect to all the other others. And, in any case, Levinas insists that such an encounter is impossible, for the presence of other others confronts us in every encounter that pretends to such exclusivity. It is the presence of these others—both autrui and the third—which allow a relationship with God. The infinite is not ‘‘in front of’’ me; it is I who express it, but I do so precisely in giving a sign of the giving of signs, of the ‘‘forthe-other’’ in which I am dis-interested: here I am [me voici]. A marvelous accusative: here I am under your gaze, obliged to you, your servant. In the name of God. Without thematization! The sentence in which God comes to be involved in words is not ‘‘I believe in God.’’ . . . It is the ‘‘here I am,’’ said to the neighbor . . .65 God becomes involved in the world, not through any individual encounter or revelation, but through human service. And not service directed at God, but service to the human other. Under the strict ethical demand, ‘‘Here I am’’ ceases to be the response of an individual before God, and becomes my response to the faces of other persons.66 Thus, while Levinas uses the model or framework of Kierkegaard’s relationship of the individual to the absolutely other, he cannot sanction its exclusivity. He adopts this framework on his own terms, not Kierkegaard’s—that is, not as a relationship between the single individual and the god, but as a relationship between the same and (all) human others. Given his strong objections to the ‘‘results’’ of Kierkegaard’s thought-project in the Philosophical Fragments, why would Levinas choose to adopt the relationship—or at the very least, to imitate the relationship—that was developed to achieve these results? The answer lies in Levinas’s relationship to Platonic recollection. It is clear why Levinas must reject Platonic recollection in its entirety, for the other person is of almost no significance in anamnesis. The primacy of the same was Socrates’ teaching: to receive nothing of the Other but what is in me, as though from all eternity I was in possession of what comes to me from the outside—to receive nothing, or to be free. . . . The ideal of Socratic The Other and God
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truth thus rests on the essential self-sufficiency of the same, its identification in ipseity, its egoism. Philosophy is an egology.67 Plato describes learning as a process of recollection, an inward-looking process whereby an individual rediscovers the truth that he already possesses in an inchoate form. However, in doing so, Platonic recollection reduces the human other to the role of the midwife, to a role that is supportive at best and can never be participatory or procreative. If truth is possible on an individual level then it is possible outside of any relationship with the other; and, as Kierkegaard notes, in such a situation the other becomes the eminently forgettable occasion for my self-discovery. If the other is to remain sacrosanct, merely describing the need for a relationship that respects the significance of the other is not sufficient. Levinas must provide some reasonable description of how such a relationship can take place—a requirement that seemed to raise the question of Meno’s Paradox. Levinas provides a twofold answer to Meno’s Paradox by providing a novel account of sensibility—one that can account for revelation—and by invoking Cartesian arguments from the celebrated Third Meditation. It is commonly recognized—indeed, he makes an explicit acknowledgment of it—that Levinas draws on Descartes in an attempt to reject Platonic recollection. Mais dans le discours de Totalite´ et infini n’a pas e´te´ oublie´ le fait me´morable que, dans sa troisie`me Me´ditation de la primie`re philosophie, Descartes rencontrait une pense´e, une noe`se, qui n’e´tait pas a` la mesure de son noe`me, de son cogitatum. Une ide´e qui donnait au philosophe des e´blouissements au lieu de se loger dans l’e´vidence de l’intuition.68 Descartes claims, and Levinas agrees, that infinity is an idea that I have which cannot have come from myself. Thus, Platonic recollection cannot provide us with the idea of infinity. The idea of infinity is not within us as something that we have, but comes to us from without as something that is given by an other.69 Thus, the most significant contribution of Descartes, according to Levinas, was to recognize the impossibility of Platonic maieutics. For although the idea of substance is in me by virtue of the fact that I am a substance, that fact is not sufficient to explain my having the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite, unless 172
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this idea proceeded from some [other] substance which really was infinite.70 Descartes’s hyperbolic doubt—if we accept his argument for the moment—seems to have destroyed Platonic anamnesis by producing an example of an idea that cannot have its origin in the isolated subject. My idea of infinity must have come from elsewhere, from some other. ‘‘The cogito in Descartes rests on the other who is God and who has put the idea of infinity in the soul, who had taught it, and has not, like the Platonic master, simply aroused the reminiscence of former visions.’’71 Descartes, as interpreted by Levinas, seems to have overcome anamnesis by locating an idea that cannot have its origin in the self. Now this position is all well and good, except for the fact that there is a thinker who has already dealt with both of these very issues: St. Augustine’s De Magistro addresses both the issue of recollection—and the ‘‘occasionalist’’ view of human others that accompanies it—and the idea of God (i.e., the idea of infinity). Concerning [those things] of which we can have knowledge, we do not listen to anyone speaking and making sounds outside ourselves. We listen to Truth which presides over our minds within us, though of course we may be bidden to listen by someone using words.72 Augustine’s version of teaching and learning encompasses, in some sense, both the Platonic and Cartesian positions. It is a version of introspective self-uncovering of truth like Platonic anamnesis which, like the philosophy of Descartes, can account for the idea of infinity. However, while these ‘‘truths’’ were given to me by God (the divine Other) as part of my creation, they exist within me awaiting my discovery of them and, therefore, the philosophy of Augustine still reduces the (human) teacher to a mere occasion. De Magistro can account for every idea, every truth—including the idea of infinity—and still reduce the human teacher to a mere occasion for the introspection that consults the inner truth.73 The truth is both always-already within me and a gift from the divine Other. Thus, Augustine stands as a significant obstacle to the Levinasian reading that declares a Cartesian victory over maieutics—an obstacle that Levinas must overcome in order to develop the primacy of his ethical demand.74 How is Levinas to overcome this significant obstacle? Fortunately for Levinas, Kierkegaard provides him with an alternative account to the Augustinian and Platonic versions of teachThe Other and God
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ing.75 While Kierkegaard himself is in keeping with Augustine because he considers the Platonic the highest interhuman relationship and applies the role of teacher only to the god, Levinas is able to use the Kierkegaardian account of the encounter with absolute alterity and apply it to interhuman relationships. Levinas needs an argument against the occasionalism of Platonic maieutics, which reduces all others to mere occasions for my recollection—but without overcoming Platonic occasionalism only to lapse into an Augustinian version of occasionalism, which reduces all human others to mere occasions to uncover the truth given to me by the Divine Other. The Cartesian infinite may circumvent Plato, but it plays into Augustine. An appeal to Descartes, on its own, would only overcome one system that reduces the human other to insignificance (Platonic anamnesis) in favor of another system that does the same thing (such as Augustine’s De Magistro). Levinas needs an alternative description of the encounter with absolute alterity in order to firmly close the door on maieutics. The Philosophical Fragments provide just such an argument.76 Here is the reason that Levinas takes up a model for teaching that he ultimately rejects—in order to defeat the greater specter of Platonic maieutics, which sees the other as an occasion, as a mere means to the end of self-awareness and enlightenment. While Levinas uses the Kierkegaardian framework to overcome the Platonic one, it is clear by now that he cannot remain Kierkegaardian. Although Kierkegaard does develop the relationship that Levinas needs, he applies this schema only to the relationship between the individual and the god. In terms of interhuman relationships, Kierkegaard maintains that the Platonic relationship is the highest. [Socrates] was and continued to be a midwife, not because he ‘‘did not have the positive,’’ but because he perceived that this relation is the highest relation a human being can have to another. And in that he is indeed forever right, for even if a divine point of departure is ever given, this remains the true relation between one human being and another . . .77 From Levinas’s point of view, Kierkegaard wins back the dependence of the individual on the other only to abandon human others in the name of the individual’s relation to God. According to Levinas, an individual relationship with God leads to an abandonment of other persons by its very nature. This is why Levinas is adamantly opposed to such relationships, which would allow one to focus on 174
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one’s own individual salvation, bracketed from the salvation of one’s fellows. The texts of Ezekiel take aim at the impossibility of private righteousness; of the righteousness of the righteous who save their own selves, who think of their own selves and their own salvation. The existence of evil people by their side attests, in fact to the defect in their righteousness. They are responsible for the evil that remains.78 The contrast with Kierkegaard could not be more striking. Kierkegaard claims that, ‘‘You do not carry the responsibility for your wife, nor for other men, nor by any comparative standard with other men, but only as an individual . . .’’79 Kierkegaard focuses on the relationship between an individual and God wherein the absolute difference of God is overcome by God’s condescension to equality with—that is, mere relative difference from—humans. Levinas, however, insists that the only access we have to the absolute alterity of God is through the face of the human other, who, standing in the trace of God, shares the absolute alterity of God. Thus, while Kierkegaard helps Levinas to move beyond Plato, Levinas must himself move beyond Kierkegaard. In juxtaposing these Christian philosophers with Levinas on the issue of absolute and relative alterity, it is perhaps worth noting that the only place Marcel speaks of ‘‘substitution’’ in a manner at all like Levinas is with respect to the human relationship with God.80 Levinas is well aware of this parallel, and addresses it in detail in his essay ‘‘A Man-God?’’81 In this essay, Levinas affirms the commonality of these two versions of substitution and meditates on the closeness of this ‘‘Christian version of substitution,’’ so to speak, to his own. Despite the obvious differences, he concludes that in ‘‘the transubstantiation of the Creator into the creature, the notion of a Man-God affirms the idea of substitution.’’82 It is curious that both philosophers attribute an interaction as intimate as substitution to the unique case of encountering an other who is absolutely other than the self— perhaps indicating, in agreement with Kierkegaard, that ‘‘substitution’’ is the only manner in which a relationship is possible with one who is absolutely other. Nevertheless, difficulties persist insofar as Levinas and Marcel are still in opposition when it comes to the issue of just where such absolute alterity can be found. Levinas needs the Kierkegaardian framework of the relationship to an absolute other to apply to human others, and this is in fact what The Other and God
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he uses it for.83 By positing that other people are as radically and absolutely other as Kierkegaard maintains that the god is, Levinas uses the Kierkegaardian relationship to fit his philosophy. However, this very appropriation of Kierkegaard is, if not the cause, at least a symptom of the uncanniness, perhaps even the inhumanity, of Levinas’s ethics.84 What, then, does this parallelism between Kierkegaard and Levinas say in terms of rooting out differences between the Christian and Jewish versions of the encounter with the divine— and, thus, the differences between their respective understandings of otherness? The parallels between these two accounts, along with the striking differences between them, illustrate some general characteristics that differentiate the Christian and Jewish versions of the encounter with absolute alterity, and point to some of the disagreements that underlie the divergence of Marcel’s and Levinas’s thought. Each of the Christian philosophers mentioned above— Marcel, Augustine, and Kierkegaard—locates any absolute sense of alterity in God, maintaining that other humans are like the self and merely relatively other. Furthermore, these Christian thinkers also claim that there is a sense of relative alterity in God, insofar as God is also Christ, and qua Christ, is man. In contrast, Levinas sees both other persons and God as absolutely other than the self—the absolute alterity of other persons being the only mode of access to the even ‘‘greater,’’ so to speak, absolute alterity of God. Thus, the anonymity of other persons is an indication of the anonymity—in the literal sense of ‘‘unnameability’’ or ‘‘unknowability’’—of God in the Jewish tradition. The face of the autrui stands in the trace of the Infinite, of God, and it is thus that both confront me with something absolutely other than my self. However, while this inquiry into the differences between a Christian and a Jewish view of the alterity of God has illuminated several important distinctions concerning the differences between Marcel and Levinas, it may well be that the differences between a Christian view of alterity and a Jewish view of alterity are not the most significant differences at work here. Mystical and Non-mystical Encounters with God Although the different perspectives on the alterity of God can be addressed in terms of Marcel’s Christianity and Levinas’s Judaism, this distinction is, in its very obviousness, perhaps an overly facile one. While this distinction has no doubt provided some significant in176
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sights into why Marcel and Levinas develop their intractably different descriptions of intersubjectivity, the differences between a ‘‘Christian view’’ and a ‘‘Jewish view’’ do not penetrate deeply enough to unearth the roots of this Levinas-Marcel non-correspondence. This is evident, if for no other reason, because Levinas no more speaks for all Jews than Marcel does for all Christians. There are elements in the Christian tradition that are allied with Levinas’s position and elements of Jewish tradition that are allied with Marcel. Moreover, the analysis of the differences between a Christian view and a Jewish view of God’s alterity already seems to indicate that the real matter at issue is the possibility of a numinous, individual, or mystical encounter with or experience of God, an encounter that would undermine the notion of absolute alterity taken in a strict, literal, or inflexible sense.85 In what follows, I will classify religious perspectives as either generally ‘‘mystical’’ or ‘‘non-mystical’’ in nature. By ‘‘mystical’’ I mean to indicate a perspective that either (1) acknowledges the possibility of experiencing the transcendent, (2) can potentially be individual rather than communal, or (3) involves the emotive as well as the cognitive faculties. The converse position would be one that (1) denies the possibility of experiencing the transcendent, (2) insists that religious expression is essentially communal in nature, or (3) affirms the cognitive and rational over the emotive or affective. Using ‘‘mysticism’’ in this somewhat looser sense avoids certain problems that might arise with a more specific definition of mysticism—such as distinguishing a beatific vision in this life from the relationship with God in the next life—while maintaining a distinction that will be helpful in contrasting Levinas and Marcel. Under this definition, mysticism does not entail perfect, transparent knowledge of God, nor does it imply union or fusion with God; it merely asserts that there is the possibility of an intimate experience of the divine. Given these qualifications, it would be fair to characterize Marcel as mystical and Levinas as non-mystical. The mystical position would have a difficult time affirming categorically the absolute alterity of God, while the non-mystical position can, and in fact tends to, think of the alterity of God in categorically absolute terms. To reduce the divergence of Levinas and Marcel to a JewishChristian split would be to forget not only Jewish mysticism—to which we will turn in a moment—but also non-mystical aspects of the Christian tradition. While my previous characterization of the divergence of Marcel and Levinas seemed to indicate that Christianity The Other and God
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advocates a personal relationship to God while Judaism advocates a communal relationship, there are communal aspects of Christianity and aspects of Judaism that underscore a more personal relationship to God. So, while Levinas asserts that Judaism is essentially communal and non-mystical, other accounts reveal aspects of the Jewish tradition that are more passionate, personal, and mystical than Levinas would be comfortable with. Likewise, while from one perspective Christianity can be viewed as an essentially personal and mystical religion, other perspectives reveal a faith that is fundamentally communal and non-mystical. For example, to characterize Christianity as essentially mystical or concerned exclusively with the private and personal relationship to God is to miss or ignore a significant part of the Christian tradition. The communal aspects of Christianity can be seen in the earliest Christian groups, as told in 1 John: Those who say, ‘‘I love God,’’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:20–21) The communal aspect of Christian life, and of the Christian relationship to God, is also emphasized in the Lord’s Prayer, which is addressed not to ‘‘Father,’’ or ‘‘the Father,’’ or ‘‘my Father,’’ but to ‘‘Our Father.’’ And again when Christ tells us, ‘‘where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’’ (Matthew 18:20). And again when Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, compares the Christian community to a body, noting that in a body, ‘‘if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.’’ In order to remove any doubt that the community of believers is such a unified ‘‘body,’’ he tells them, ‘‘you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’’ (1 Corinthians 12:27). These passages and others like them illustrate aspects of the Christian tradition that are essentially communal and, thus, support Levinas’s claim that there are no purely individual relationships with God. Levinas rejects the notion of mystical encounters in which God is present in favor of an exegetical, juridical, and intellectual relationship to God in, ‘‘Loving the Torah More than God.’’ Here I believe we see the specific face of Judaism: the link between God and man is not an emotional communion that takes 178
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place within the love of a God incarnate, but a spiritual or intellectual [esprits] relationship which takes place through an education in the Torah.86 Adriaan Peperzak points out that, in emphasizing the impersonal (i.e., communal) and non-mystical nature of the human relationship to God, ‘‘one thing is clear, and throughout all his publications Levinas does not get tired of insisting on it: intimacy with God is primarily and basically obedience to his commandments . . .’’87 However, this is echoed in the Christian tradition in 1 John, which tells us, ‘‘This is what the love of God is: keeping his commandments’’ (1 John 5:3). While there are legitimate reasons for Levinas’s claim that Christianity is, from his perspective, an essentially mystical religion, there are aspects of the Christian tradition that are hostile to, or at least impatient with, undue focus on mysticism and personal encounters with God. Christianity has long recognized the difference between faith and reason, and, predictably, certain thinkers emphasize one over the other, even to the exclusion of the other. The at times dry scholasticism of the late medieval period is in sharp contrast with the mysticism and fideism of other Christian sects. Notable examples of the non-mystical tendency in Christianity are evident in many of the thinkers accused, justly or unjustly, of ‘‘ontotheology’’ by post-Heideggerian thought. This is especially true in thinkers who engage in speculative thought about ‘‘demonstrations’’ of God’s existence (e.g., Aquinas, Anselm, Scotus). Marcel himself frequently criticized the Catholic theology of his day, particularly in its triumphalist, legalistic, dogmatic, or overly rational forms.88 His conversion to Catholicism was marked by few of the ‘‘excesses . . . that one notices rather often in converts.’’89 Coming to terms with his new faith, he confronted the ‘‘superstition’’ and ‘‘legalism’’ that were ‘‘refractory’’ to his thought, and ‘‘dogmatism’’ that aroused in him ‘‘unalterable protest.’’90 His relationship with the man who gave him his initial instruction in the Catholic faith was soured by a conversation in which Marcel ventured, ‘‘After all, we do not know what God thinks of the Reformation,’’ to which Abbot Altermann replied, ‘‘I, I know!’’91 Marcel did not endorse faith with pretensions to certitude or faith that failed to recognize the limits of human reason. The failure of reason to derive the affirmation of being from the structure of thought is evidence of these limits. This failure marks the fork in the road where Marcel’s thought diverges from Thomism. He refuses to admit that there is any The Other and God
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deductive path from the structure of thought to being. Being is not revealed at the end of a process of judgment, deduction, or analogy but is mediated through our encounters with individual beings as they become present to us in love. Love, not knowledge, leads us to being.92 This might be read as indicating a sense in which Marcel is more ‘‘mystical’’ than the ‘‘intellectual’’ or ‘‘rational’’ tradition of Thomism. However, while aspects of Marcel’s thought seem to indicate that he has mystical tendencies—he rejects any approach to being or the Absolute Thou that is solely rational or intellectual—Levinas does not view Marcel as a mystic in a narrowly literal sense, nor does Marcel think of himself as one, although he certainly placed strict limits on what reason could reveal and affirmed a whole range of experience beyond these limits.93 The variety of views within the Christian tradition—and within the Jewish tradition, as we will see—suggests that the significant distinction here is not the difference between two religious traditions, but the distinction between mystical and non-mystical relationships to God. The issue of absolute or non-absolute alterity hinges on the possibility of encountering God, not on membership in a particular synagogue, church, or temple. Is God encountered in a way that affirms absolute alterity, relative alterity, or some combination of the two? Although I have indicated some aspects of the Christian tradition that are more communal than individual, and more intellectual than mystical in nature, discussing at length the various mystical and non-mystical traditions of both Christianity and Judaism would likely mire us in a variety of issues that do not bear on the question at hand: can the difference between Marcel and Levinas be reduced to the difference between a Jewish and a Christian view of alterity, or is there another, more subtle distinction to be made? Rather than undertaking an exhaustive study of these two traditions, this discussion will focus on the mystical/non-mystical distinction within the Jewish tradition. This course suggests itself for several reasons. First and foremost, even in its non-mystical manifestations, the Christian tradition is inherently more mystical than Judaism from Levinas’s point of view. It is, he claims, a ‘‘Christian idea’’ that one can have a direct individual encounter with God, and, therefore, both non-mystical and mystical traditions of Christianity are mystical from his perspective. The juxtaposition of a more intellectual, less mystical version of Christianity with Marcel would still leave us with 180
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two versions of Christianity more mystical than Levinas’s position and, thus, a distinction based on a Christian-Jewish difference rather than one that uncovers the root of the issue. Second, Levinas himself took pains to distinguish his philosophical position from that of Martin Buber, and in the course of his critique he notes the parallels between Buber’s position and Marcel’s. Buber’s I-Thou philosophy is, of course, one representative of a mystical tradition within the larger Jewish tradition. Thus, in Buber’s philosophy we have both a Jewish thinker who, generally speaking, aligns himself with a mystical element in Judaism that is anathema to Levinas and, in addition, a Jewish thinker whose philosophy bears some striking parallels with Marcel’s. Because Buber’s thought is allied with Marcel in several significant ways, the examination of the Jewish mystical tradition will provide a contrast to Levinas’s position that will prove illuminating for the comparison with Marcel. By locating a mystical aspect within Judaism I hope to illustrate that the important distinction between the two ways of thinking the otherness of God—absolute and non-absolute—is not fundamentally a Jewish-Christian opposition, but is a conflict rooted in the possibility of mysticism.
Mystical and Non-mystical Approaches to God in the Jewish Tradition94 Although Levinas’s philosophy is in many ways indicative of an antimystical standpoint in Judaism, this perspective is by no means universal within the Jewish tradition. Levinas himself acknowledges alternative trends within Judaism when, in Difficult Freedom, he refers to the Talmudic passage that states: ‘‘God never came down from Sinai, Moses never ascended to heaven. But God folded back the heavens like a cover, covered Sinai with it, and so found Himself on earth without having even left heaven.’’95 However, he immediately critiques this imagery, reasserting his anti-mystical position by stating, ‘‘there is here a desacralization of the Sacred.’’96 Martin Buber— one of the ‘‘dialogical thinkers’’ Levinas admires and a very influential Jewish philosopher and theologian—is a good example of a Jewish thinker who is much closer to Marcel than he is to Levinas on several significant issues, including reciprocity and the nature of alterity. Buber’s thought is closely tied to Hasidism and he therefore provides a philosophical example of the mystical elements of Judaism that Levinas rejects.97 The Other and God
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In order to understand the vigor with which the mystical and nonmystical traditions oppose each other in Judaism a brief historical digression is in order. This will aid in juxtaposing Levinas’s religious background with Buber’s and in indicating some of the ways in which each thinker’s philosophical and religious position—especially his position on the question of otherness—might have been influenced by his theological presuppositions. Of course, this summary historical examination of Judaism does not pretend to be comprehensive or even inclusive of all the various manifestations of the Jewish tradition. However, it will be satisfactory for our purposes if we examine some of the relationships between mystical and non-mystical Judaism insofar as they influence Levinas—whose own relationship to Judaism is unique when seen in light of his equally exceptional relationship with the philosophical tradition now inextricably interwoven with it. Like many traditions, Judaism has experienced its share of divisions—theological, philosophical, and political. The division that concerns us, however, is that between mystical conviction and non-mystical conviction within the Jewish tradition. This distinction could also be made in terms of the mystic’s belief in the possibility of an intimate experience (cognitive, emotional, or corporeal) of God and the converse position that rejects such experiences in favor of relations that emphasize distance rather than intimacy, such as scriptural exegesis and study. These non-mystical elements in the Jewish tradition could also be referred to as ‘‘rationalist’’ or ‘‘intellectualist.’’98 Although the distinction has complex roots, the Medieval period marks a convenient place, in both the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition, to consider the encounter of biblical faith and Greek philosophy and, therefore, the tension between faith and reason, mystical and rationalist approaches to faith, etc. The Middle Ages saw an increased interest in a non-mystical approach to issues of faith in both the Christian (e.g., Peter Abelard) and the Jewish (e.g., Moses Maimonides) traditions—an approach that favored the rational over the affective or emotive elements of faith. This rationalist, intellectual tradition was distinguished by its coupling with concepts from Greek philosophy, as was the case with Maimonides, R. Abraham ibn Daud, and much later—though in a significantly different vein—Levinas himself. Within this non-mystical movement, biblical revelation was examined and equated with philosophy, and biblical terms were often identified with philosophical concepts. For example, Maimonides equates ma’aseh bereshit with physics and ma’aseh 182
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merhabah with metaphysics.99 The Jewish manifestation of this rationalist tendency is evident in the extreme exegetic or hermeneutic foci of thinkers like Maimonides, which argued for reading difficult or ambiguous passages of the Bible as parables or allegories representing philosophical positions. Although the encounter with Greek philosophy led to a growth of rational or intellectual movements in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the existing Jewish culture made it particularly receptive to the development of intellectual movements. Already a scholarly religion, a religion of the book, Judaism was profoundly influenced by its encounter with the rationalism of Greek philosophy. Jewish opposition to Mohammed’s claim to prophecy, on the one hand, and to Christian Trinitarianism, on the other, combined with moods that in the ninth century began to make their way from classical Greek philosophy into Moslem and Jewish thought, particularly the Platonic, neo-Platonic and Aristotelian influences. This combination accentuated the rational basis of the Jews’ religious stand . . . [By] the tenth century we have internal evidence from various currents of Jewish thought indicating that this [rationalist] approach predominated among most of the [Jewish] leaders . . .100 The already scholarly, learned, and intellectual tradition of the Jews was ripe for the encounter with Greek philosophy, and, therefore, the rationalist developments enjoyed widespread success amongst various sects. However, as the rationalist developments became more and more extreme, there was a backlash against the demand for a faith based on the intellectual and rational, which took the form of a movement based on the desire to come closer to God rather than to understand Him.101 Who knows where an extreme rationalist reading of the Torah qua allegory might lead? Perhaps even to a negation of required observance of the Ten Commandments?102 The Jewish reaction against the extremes of rationalism came in the form of the mysticism of Kabbalah and the Hasidic movement, the seeds of which can be detected as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—although Hasidism in its fully fledged development did not appear until the eighteenth century.103 While clearly a mystical movement, the kabbalists were not entirely unlike the rationalist Jews they were reacting against, insofar as they too looked for hidden and symbolic meaning within the language of the Torah. For the kabbalist, in the divine language of the The Other and God
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Torah ‘‘there is a symbolic significance even in the musical rhythm of the vowels, the letters, the punctuation and the cantillation marks of the biblical text.’’104 However, unlike the rationalist, the kabbalist does not seek symbols representing philosophical concepts or positions, but symbols indicating the significance of non-rational, nonphilosophical mysteries. Kabbalah does not seek to explain, for example, miracles in natural terms.105 Rather, as a mystic, the kabbalist holds that God, miracles, Creation, etc., cannot be explained within any natural system. Although Kabbalah arrived on the scene first, insofar as it pertains to our encounter with Levinas, the more significant Jewish mystical movement is the one that originated within the Ashkenazi Jews of Poland: Hasidism. The Hasidim, or ‘‘pious ones,’’ developed a strict, even severe, standard of behavior designed to aid one in living a moral life—though they were also admirably lenient with regard to the customs of those Jews outside the Hasidic community.106 As in other Jewish sects, the Hasidic tenets were to a certain extent codified; however, the texts of this movement aimed to influence the heart or imagination of the reader more often than the intellect or reason and, as such, presented a strong counter-position to the rationalism dominant in the Judaism of the day. The distinguishing feature of the Hasidic movement was the role played by the leader of the community. Traditionally, Jewish rabbis were studious, scholarly men—men of the Talmud, men of exegesis. In contrast, leaders of Hasidic communities were not solitary scholars, but engaged leaders of the community who emphasize the joy of spiritual worship. R. Israel be Eliezer Ba’al Shem Tov—the driving personality behind the Hasidic movement in the early 1700s—was a ba’al shem, or ‘‘miracle worker,’’ prior to his development of the Hasidic sect. Under his influence individual kabbalists of the Polish Ashkenazi community moved from private study and self-castigation to leadership of their community.107 Such a leader, the zaddik or ‘‘righteous one,’’ had a unique spiritual connection to God, but one that was expressed through his spiritual leadership of a community. The zaddik enjoyed a state of devekut (attachment or communion) with God on the one hand and the community on the other, thus acting as a memuza, or intermediary, between the community and God.108 In contrast to the intellectualism of traditional Judaism and the more ascetic manifestations of earlier Jewish mysticism, Hasidism placed a strong emphasis on the joys of divine worship. 184
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The asceticism and sorrow of a devout few only evoked the Divine attribute of stern justice . . . for the world was thereafter condemned for failing to resemble them. It is quite possible that this stress on joy and the special hasidic way of life arising from it helped to attract the masses, and particularly the young, to Hasidism.109 Because Hasidic prayers followed the Sephardi prayerbook adopted by R. Isaac Luria in Safed, which differed from the established Ashkenazi version, Hasidim also emphasized inner devotion (kavvanah), which sometimes manifested itself as fervor during worship, including ‘‘cries and strange movements.’’110 Hasidism differed from traditional Judaism in many other ways—in the observance of dietary laws, for example—however, the important distinction for our purposes has been identified. On the one hand, there is the established Jewish tradition of learning, scholarship, and textual analysis, a tradition that was further entrenched by its contact with Greek philosophy. On the other hand, Hasidism is characterized by inner devotion, joy during worship (including singing and dancing), and communion or contact with God. These two movements characterize, within Judaism, two different ways of relating to and encountering God and, thus, two different understandings of how God is other or, correlatively, how other God is. As is the case with many counter-cultural movements, the dominant position—in this case the rationalism of the intellectuals— mounted its own counterrevolution, so to speak. The resistance of traditionalists within the Jewish community to the novelty of the Hasidic movement is certainly attributable to a variety of factors: the reluctance of any entrenched, traditional community to embrace radical change; issues of cultural and political power within the community; and, of course, the simple fact that the traditional Jewish community against which Hasidism was reacting viewed the Hasidic innovations as wrong (the wrong way to run a community, the wrong way to worship God). This final point is instructive and relevant to the discussion of Levinas. A significant aspect of the reaction to Hasidism is the result of the suspicion with which the traditional Jewish establishment viewed mysticism. The reaction to Hasidism was no doubt fueled by the change in the role of the community leader from rabbi to zaddik and by Jewish sensitivity to ‘‘false messiahs,’’ a residue of the series of messianic claims made in and around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that ultimately proved unThe Other and God
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successful.111 Non-Hasidic Jews saw Hasidism as a cult of personality formed around men who were at best blasphemous in their enthusiasm and at worst charlatans or false messiahs. In fact, the traditional Jewish sects reacted so strongly against Hasidism that they came to be defined in contrast to it, taking the name mitnagdim, or ‘‘opponents.’’ The reaction against the mysticism and emotional ‘‘excesses’’ of Hasidism took the form, predictably, of a renewed emphasis on intellectualism and textual scholarship of the tradition. The renewed emphasis on the study of sacred scripture helped to unify the mitnagdim in opposition to Hasidism, and led to the establishment of new yeshiva—academies for religious study. This quickly led to the rise of a new leadership for mitnagdim Jewry; one that was firm, confident, and unified in its opposition to the Hasidic influence.112 While there were many complex reasons for the split within the Jewish community, one of the single most polarizing issues revolved around the intellectualist insistence on the study of sacred texts for their own sake (hence the emphasis on the establishment of new yeshiva) and the Hasidic rejection of this practice in favor of inner devotion. Thus, while all Jewish sects emphasize learning, there is a meaningful distinction within Judaism between the intellectual-textual tradition and the mystical-emotional tradition. As we are concerned with contrasting Levinas’s position with other, more mystical aspects within the Jewish tradition, the details of the counter-reaction to Hasidism need not overly trouble us—the opposition of these two positions has been sufficiently illustrated. In Hasidism and related mystical movements, we have uncovered within the Jewish tradition an element of mysticism that runs counter to many of Levinas’s characterizations of Judaism. However, a final point of historical significance regarding Levinas’s position within this schema merits mention. The Hasidic movement, which began in Poland, spread quickly to Galacia, Russia, and Lithuania. However, the resistance to this new mysticism was particularly strong in Lithuania, and ‘‘the campaign against Hasidism began in Vilna,’’ where Hasidic Jews were first uncovered and exposed, then excommunicated.113 The strong and unified reaction against Hasidic mysticism consolidated Lithuanian Jewry, and this was the religious climate into which Levinas was born. If Levinas’s life was ‘‘dominated by the presentiment and the memory of the Nazi horror,’’ it was also marked by the Hebrew Bible studied during his ‘‘childhood years in Lithuania.’’114 Although the aggressive anti-Semitic current of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is clearly the dominant characteristic of the 186
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milieu within which the Jewish people have been forced to redefine themselves over the past two hundred years, the stringent opposition to mysticism that permeated the climate of the Lithuanian mitnagdim into which Levinas was born left an indelible mark on him, as is evident from many of the essays in Difficult Freedom.115 Levinas and Judaism What, then, is Levinas’s understanding of Judaism? The preceding chapters have made it clear that, if we stick to a somewhat simplistic division of Judaism into mystical and rational camps, Levinas would certainly remain firmly within the rationalist, anti-mystical camp. In fact, if it is important to understand that Judaism influences many of the philosophical moves made by Levinas, it is no less important to understand the kind of Judaism with which Levinas associates himself. In understanding the thought of [Levinas] it is essential to understand . . . that Levinas is drawing on Jewish sources and themes. . . . It is necessary, however, to keep in mind that Levinas’ Judaism exhibits a ‘‘Lithuanian’’ distrust of the charismatic. If Christianity valorizes the moment when an individual feels the charismatic presence of the Savior entering into his/her life, Judaism, as Levinas presents it, distrusts the charismatic.116 The ‘‘distrust of the charismatic,’’ of mysticism, and of participation—as well as dislike for concepts associated with participation, such as ‘‘love,’’ ‘‘presence,’’ and ‘‘communion’’—permeates Levinas’s thought, including, if we were to allow such a distinction, both the philosophical and the confessional works.117 First, for Levinas, Judaism is an essentially intellectual and exegetical religion. Judaism is characterized by an ‘‘oral tradition of exegesis [that is] crystallized in the Talmud and its commentaries.’’118 Judaism is not a religion of ‘‘enthusiasm,’’ numinosity, or rapture, which would imply a loss of control, offending human freedom and responsibility. Rather, Judaism is a religion of study, ritual, responsibility, and justice. As a result, it ‘‘has decharmed the world, contesting the notion that religions apparently evolved out of enthusiasm and the Sacred. Judaism remains foreign to any offensive return of these forms of human elevation. It denounces them as the essence of idolatry.’’119 Levinas characterizes his interpretation of Judaism as a ‘‘religion for adults’’ in contrast to more ‘‘primitive’’ religions that still The Other and God
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rely on or include ‘‘myths’’ in their worldviews. Of course, the notion that one can only come to an adult faith by passing through the ‘‘atheism’’ or ‘‘death of God’’ that marks the end of childlike faith is not unique to Levinas.120 The relatively recent turn of postmodern philosophy to religious topics does not tire of emphasizing that the death of God is to be interpreted in terms of the death of the ‘‘God of metaphysics’’ and, thus, as the possibility of embarking toward or returning to God prior to contamination by philosophy—the God of faith; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However, while Levinas remains a central and influential figure within post-metaphysical debates about divinity, he occupies a uniquely rational space (in the sense established above) within these debates, which separates him from many of his interlocutors and reveals the idiosyncratic nature of his thoughts on God and alterity. Second, Levinas insists that the relationship with God is one that is social rather than individual or personal. There are no individual encounters with God. ‘‘No relationship with God is direct or immediate. The Divine can be manifested only through my neighbor. For a Jew, Incarnation is neither possible, nor necessary.’’121 And again, ‘‘The direct encounter with God, this is a Christian concept. As Jews, we are always a threesome: I and you and the Third who is in our midst. And only as a Third does He reveal Himself.’’122 Any individual or supernatural encounter with God leaves open the possibility that my salvation is independent of the salvation of my neighbor, or at the very least the possibility that I might address the problem of my salvation independent of my relation to my neighbor. Such salvation is impossible because it is unethical. Individual salvation would still leave me responsible for the other and for the evil that remains. Third, Levinas views Judaism as a religion that is essentially ethical (i.e., responsible and just). This, he maintains, means that Judaism is fundamentally opposed to mystical or numinous (or, as Levinas sometimes says, thaumaturgic) religious claims. Levinas prefaces the beginning of one collection of his essays on Judaism, Difficult Freedom, with an epigraph from Rachi’s comments on Leviticus 10:2, ‘‘Let them not enter the sanctuary drunk.’’123 Prayer and other ritual observances are to be undertaken with the same ‘‘sobriety’’ that one approaches study, rather than the ‘‘drunken’’ emotional excesses that characterize mystical, mythical, or incarnational religions. ‘‘Nothing, in fact, is more opposed to a relation with the face than ‘contact’ with the Irrational and mystery.’’124 Any movement toward the divine can only be a movement toward the other to whom 188
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I am responsible. I go toward God by serving the other—the widow, orphan, or stranger. We only relate to God in and through the trace (of God) in the face of the other. The face of God always remains hidden, as Exodus 33:20 reminds us, and the alterity of God is not open to direct experience. God is utterly transcendent: unknowable, unnamable, invisible, unimaginable—the apex of alterity. Again, In [the] ethical turnabout . . . God is pulled out of objectivity, out of presence and out of being. He is neither object nor interlocutor. His absolute remoteness, his transcendence, turns into my responsibility for the other—the non-erotic par excellence— for the other. God is . . . transcendent to the point of absence, to the point of his possible confusion with the agitation of the there is [il y a].125 Although Levinas does appear to recognize the validity of mysticism when he notes that Judaism needs a ‘‘Kierkegaard’’ or a ‘‘Saint Teresa,’’ this concession must be viewed in light of what follows. He rightly notes that Judaism has its own mystical tradition, which can be found in Hasidism and Kabbalah; however, Levinas views these traditions as secondary variations of the essential intellectual and exegetical nature of Judaism, for ‘‘Hassidism and Kabbalah are established in the Jewish soul only where that soul is full of talmudic science.’’126 Buber and Judaism Of course, as I noted above, Levinas’s understanding of Judaism is idiosyncratic; it is the opinion of one man—a deeply religious, thoughtful, and highly learned philosopher and scholar to be sure, but a single person nonetheless. The way in which Levinas characterizes Jewish faith and Jewish philosophy is not uncontroversial, if we are to believe other, contrary testimonies. Against the generally rationalist reading of Judaism that Levinas advocates, there are other sects and trends that reveal a mystical element in the Jewish tradition. Because Levinas’s own understanding of the Jewish faith developed in a climate opposed to it, Hasidism is perhaps the most useful example of Jewish mysticism, particularly as it is manifested in the philosophy of Martin Buber. Buber’s philosophy provides a particularly appropriate foil for Levinas in the context of our inquiry into alterity: Levinas is dialectically engaged with Buber—whom he respects and draws on, even as he critiques him—and Buber remains The Other and God
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philosophically close to Marcel. ‘‘The true community does not arise through peoples having feelings for one another (though indeed not without it), but through, first, their taking their stand in living mutual relation with a living Centre, and, second, their being in living mutual relation with one another.’’127 This passage is, in spirit, aligned with both Levinas and Marcel; however, the manner of its articulation would be foreign to the former and entirely reasonable to the latter. If Levinas’s Judaism is characterized by Talmudic exegesis, study, responsibility, and community, Buber’s Judaism is characterized by intimacy, reciprocity, and communion, which illustrates that the matter at issue, the crux of the difference between Levinas and Marcel, the nature of otherness, has its roots in two different understandings of the otherness of God that are not confined to a particular confessional faith, but are options within both Judaism and Christianity. While aspects of Buber’s I-Thou relationship echo Levinas’s philosophy, in particular the Levinasian discussion of metaphysical desire, Buber’s philosophy displays certain characteristics that are difficult, if not impossible, to square with a Levinasian reading. It is true that Levinas has an enormous amount of respect for Buber. However, while he correctly identifies an element of Buber’s thought that is congenial to his own, he also, perhaps because of his respect, tends to overemphasize the congruencies between Buber and himself while minimizing the differences. Nevertheless, Levinas does criticize Buber, especially where the philosophical articulation of the intersubjective meeting is concerned or where Buber’s connection with Hasidism is most prevalent. Regarding the latter, Levinas notes, ‘‘it is undeniable that Buber reads the Bible as if he possessed the entire Holy Spirit all by himself.’’128 He goes on to caution that ‘‘the interpretation of the Bible by Buber, appealing by preference to etymology and the most archaic elements, and to the relatively recent Hasidic experience, omits the talmudic contribution.’’129 These differences between Levinas and Buber take on a more urgent tone with respect to our current inquiry when one realizes that on several key points—reciprocity or irreversibility, distance or proximity, separation or participation, etc.—Buber appears closer to Marcel than he does to Levinas. With respect to philosophy and intersubjectivity, we should note that the three specific critiques of Marcel discussed in chapter 4—reciprocity, the between, and ontological language—all apply with equal facility to Buber. The I-Thou relation is (1) articulated in expressly ontological terms, and is a rela190
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tionship of (2) presence and (3) reciprocity. Each of these points aligns Buber more closely with Marcel (the ‘‘mystical’’ thinker) than Levinas (the ‘‘rational’’ thinker). First, Buber’s philosophy is fully immersed in ontological language. Although Levinas invariably reads Buber in such a way as to emphasize dialogue and minimize the significance of ontological language—as in ‘‘Martin Buber’s Thought and Contemporary Judaism’’ and ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy’’—the fact remains that Buber’s philosophy is expressly ontological. Prior to reading Buber’s ontological language as an unfortunate expression of what is essentially a dialogical relationship, Levinas points out that Buber characterizes the I-Thou relation in terms of being. ‘‘ ‘Between’ is a mode of being: co-presence, co-esse. If we are to go by the letter of the texts, being and presence remain the ultimate support of meaning.’’130 Second, Buber speaks of the relationship with the other-as-Thou as a relationship of presence to and with the other. Where Levinas claims that the Same, as distinct from the Other, is not preceded by the ‘‘Same-and-the-Other,’’ Buber tells us ‘‘there is no I taken in itself, but only the I of the primary word I-Thou and the I of the primary word I-It.’’131 Moreover, I-Thou ‘‘by its nature precedes I.’’132 While Levinas asserts, ‘‘no relationship with God is direct or immediate,’’133 for Buber, ‘‘the relation to the Thou is direct.’’134 In addition, Buber is clear that the I-Thou relation, like disponibilite´ and creative fidelity, includes an affective element lacking in Levinasian responsibility. ‘‘[One] may clothe the naked and feed the hungry all day and it will remain difficult for him to say a true Thou. If all were well clothed and well nourished, then the real ethical problem would become wholly visible for the first time.’’135 The presence that is essential to the I-Thou relation cuts to the very heart of Buber’s divergence from Levinas, for it means that Buber does not see otherness in absolute terms, whether we are speaking of other people or of God. ‘‘Of course God is the ‘wholly other’; but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows; but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.’’136 Finally, Buber maintains in the strongest possible terms that the I-Thou relationship is reciprocal. If Levinas tends to favor reading Buber in terms of ‘‘in the beginning is relation,’’ it must be read in the context of, ‘‘relation is mutual.’’137 Reciprocity is an essential characteristic, a hallmark, of Buber’s thought: ‘‘Between you and it The Other and God
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there is a mutual giving: you say Thou to it and give yourself to it, it says Thou to you and gives itself to you.’’138 Nevertheless, he takes issue with Levinas’s objection that such reciprocity implies reversibility. ‘‘Only in relation is he my Thou; outside the relation between us this Thou does not exist. It is, consequently, false to say that the meeting is reversible. Neither is my Thou identical with the I of the other nor his Thou with my I.’’139 How do these digressions, first into certain Christian views of the divine, second into Jewish history, and third into the divergent Jewish views of the divine represented by Levinas and Buber, bear on the discussion of otherness? Although Levinas does see the idea of a personal or individual encounter with God as a ‘‘Christian’’ idea, there is ample evidence for the argument that he is really reacting against mysticism in general, of which Christianity is one specific example. He insists that, ‘‘The ethical relation, the face to face . . . cuts across every relation one could call mystical.’’140 And Derrida notes, ‘‘The complicity of theoretical objectivity and mystical communion [is] Levinas’s true target.’’141 If this is the case—if the philosophically significant distinction is to be made not between any two religious traditions, but between two manners in which God is encountered—it may shed light not only on Levinas’s (and Marcel’s) position, but also on some enduringly enigmatic statements. For example, Levinas’s quip to Derrida regarding the difference between Andre´ Neher and himself: ‘‘You see, he’s the Jewish Protestant, and I’m the Catholic.’’142 Derrida notes that this comment called for ‘‘long and serious reflection.’’143 However, if the distinction I have emphasized has any validity, Levinas may be addressing the extent to which he and Neher believe in or allow for individual contact with God—the ‘‘Protestant’’ who, in affirming an absolutely individual and independent relation with his God, tends to be more open to mysticism than the ‘‘Catholic’’ with his tradition, ritual, Church hierarchy, philosophy, etc.144 Faith and the Irreducibility of First Principles Where does this leave us? Having worked our way through the philosophical consideration of otherness to the theological consideration of otherness, one might argue that we are left at an impasse. Here at last we have the reason behind the singular difficulty, the seeming impossibility, of forging a reconciliation between these two tantalizingly similar philosophies: each thinker’s philosophical position on 192
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otherness is based, at least in part, on his theological understanding of otherness. Philosophical arguments about the nature of God and qualifying statements as to the independence of their philosophy from their theology notwithstanding, both Levinas and Marcel have faith-based assumptions as to the nature of otherness—and these two philosophers subscribe to different faiths. As Jew and Catholic respectively—and, further, as believers with their own unique positions within these traditions—Levinas and Marcel begin philosophizing with different understandings of the nature of God, the alterity of God, and God’s relation to man. These different understandings, in turn, manifest themselves in divergent conceptions of ‘‘otherness’’ and, consequently, different ideas of what is required for an other person to remain other than the self. Although both thinkers begin with a vocation to philosophy that attempts to acknowledge the unique role played by the other person, their different understandings of otherness insure that their shared (or similar) vocation achieves dissimilar, though not entirely inharmonious, manifestations. We are left, after a lengthy discussion and exploration, as tantalizingly close to, and as frustratingly far from, reconciliation as we were when we began. Having arrived at faith-based assumptions of Marcel and Levinas, one might argue that philosophy’s task is at an end. Although we could proceed to consider philosophically the coherence of either view of alterity—absolute or non-absolute—at the end of the day a first principle based in religious faith is well neigh irrefutable, especially when both of the faiths in question explicitly reject the notion that human reason can completely grasp transcendent truth. The theological understanding of otherness serves, for both Marcel and Levinas, as a philosophical first principle and, as Aristotle tells us, there is no arguing about first principles, only arguing from first principles. ‘‘For the starting point or first principle is the fact that a thing is so; if this be satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so. . . .’’145 The problem is that for each thinker the nature of God’s alterity has been ‘‘satisfactorily ascertained,’’ in part, through faith. Thus, because there is no demonstration with respect to first principles—either one accepts a given assumption or one does not—we seem to have arrived at a situation in which, along with Wittgenstein, we must acknowledge, ‘‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.’’146 Perhaps; but, then again, perhaps not. The Other and God
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The entire tradition of apophatic theology, which has enjoyed a renaissance in the work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo, is a testament to our drive to say what cannot be said. In fact, contemporary Continental philosophy is coming to grips with what Richard Kearney calls the ‘‘simultaneous necessity and impossibility’’ of telling certain stories.147 Theology, ethics, and other encounters with others are governed by the dual imperative to communicate, to tell our stories, and to remain silent in the face of the incommunicable. Granted, perfect communication, a one-to-one correspondence between our stories and reality, is an unattainable goal. However, if our inability to communicate leads us to Wittgenstein’s position, we will remain silent about not only God and theology, but also about ethics, death, love, faith, forgiveness, and a great many other things that are arguably the most important issues of life and that generate the most significant questions for philosophy. The importance of these questions demands that we speak, even though we cannot speak of them. ‘‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’’ as Kearney says, quoting Beckett’s The Unnamable.148 Levinas himself seems implicitly aware of this dual imperative to, on one hand, remain silent in the face of that which cannot be said and, on the other, to speak the truth. He struggled with this difficulty when speaking during the Week of Catholic Intellectuals in Paris, in 1968: How . . . can I deal philosophically with a notion [the incarnation of Christ] that belongs to the intimate sphere of hundreds of million of believers—the mystery of mysteries of their theology— that for nearly twenty centuries has united people whose fate I share along with most of their ideas, with the exception of the very belief in question here this evening?149 Levinas answers his own question by choosing to speak about several of the meanings—that is, the implications—associated with the idea of a ‘‘Man-God,’’ rather than having the ‘‘effrontery to enter an area forbidden to those who do not share the faith.’’150 Like Levinas, I am acutely aware of the tension between effrontery and engagement when treating notions that belong to the intimate sphere of believers. On the one hand, I share his reluctance to ‘‘enter an area forbidden to those who do not share the faith.’’ However, on the other hand, we must engage Levinas—whose work on otherness has become essential to understanding ethics and theology in contemporary Continental philosophy—and, therefore, we must engage not 194
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only his philosophy, but also the assumptions that undergird it. As we have seen, Levinas’s categorical insistence on absolute alterity is by no means uncontroversial, and it should go without saying that this engagement is with Levinas and with other philosophers who think otherness in absolute, all-or-nothing terms, rather than with the entire Christian or Jewish tradition per se. In going forward, I take comfort in the knowledge that, as was the case with Levinas’s 1968 talk, this engagement is a response to an invitation—in this case one offered graciously by Levinas in Otherwise than Being. No doubt this [philosophical itinerary] is not completely disengaged from pre-philosophical experiences, and many of its byways will appear well-worn, many of its thrusts imprudent. But a fine risk is always something to be taken in philosophy. . . . [The naivety of the philosopher calls] for the critique exercised by another philosopher, whatever the imprudences that that one will have committed in his turn, and the gratuity of his own saying. Philosophy thus arouses a drama between philosophers and an intersubjective movement which does not resemble the dialogue of teamworkers in science, nor even the Platonic dialogue which is the reminiscence of a drama rather than the drama itself. It is sketched out in a different structure; empirically it is realized as the history of philosophy in which new interlocutors always enter who have to restate, but in which the former ones take up the floor to answer in the interpretations they arouse, and in which, nonetheless, despite this lack of ‘‘certainty in one’s movements’’ or because of it, no one is allowed relaxation or a lack of strictness.151 I intend to respond to this invitation to critique gratefully and humbly, but also seriously, and to bring the insights gained from the study of Marcel and Levinas to bear on a single point: the possibility of a relationship with absolute alterity.
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7
The Nature of Otherness
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk / I caught the sudden look of some dead master / Whom I had known, forgotten, half-recalled / Both one and many; in the brown baked features / The eyes of a familiar compound ghost / Both intimate and unidentifiable. T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
The title of this work promises more than a confrontation between the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel, and the time has come to make good on that promise. The comparison of Levinas and Marcel has, to be sure, been interesting in terms of addressing the perplexing incompatibility of two philosophers who are in many ways quite similar. Moreover, tracing the development of these divergent accounts of otherness to the theological soil in which they are rooted is significant both in terms of understanding Levinas and Marcel, and in terms of a broader grasp of the way in which one’s understanding of otherness has a global effect on philosophical issues in which otherness is a concern. However, although locating and analyzing these two competing characterizations of otherness in the work of Levinas and Marcel was a singularly effective way to illustrate the convergences and divergences between these positions, the development of these two perspectives did not end with Marcel or Levinas.1 Bringing Marcel and Levinas back into dialogue is more than a grand exercise in comparing and contrasting two important 196
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thinkers; it is more significant than an exercise in comparative philosophy or the history of ideas. The question of the otherness of the other is no mere historical footnote; it is central to understanding ethical (the relation between the self and other humans), socio-political (the relation to or between groups of persons), and theological (the relation between the self and God) questions. In one sense, I have been using Marcel and Levinas as representatives of two opposing views of otherness. The comparison of these two views was made easier because Marcel and Levinas were contemporaries with similar—though, we have seen, not identical— cultural, linguistic, and philosophical presuppositions. However, the decision to focus on Marcel and Levinas will prove shrewd for other reasons, in particular because it is possible to trace each philosopher’s influence to contemporary manifestations of the question of otherness. Both Marcel and Levinas exerted a significant influence on philosophical discourse in the latter half of the twentieth century, and the conflict between their different ways of characterizing otherness has been taken up by the thinkers they influenced. The revolution that began with Levinas’s Totalite´ et infini in 1971 has continued unabated; indeed, if anything, it has gained momentum. It would be difficult to overstate Levinas’s significance for contemporary Continental philosophy, or the importance of his contributions to ethics. However, despite the remarkably positive reception of his provocation to the tradition, Levinas’s revolution has not gone unchallenged. As with the juxtaposition of Levinas and Marcel, many of the ongoing debates concerning Levinas’s thought can be traced without oversimplification to the characterization of otherness in absolute terms. Even among the many philosophers who admire Levinas’s unquestionably laudable philosophical intention—to philosophize in a manner that does justice to the other as other—there remains considerable doubt as to the validity and merit of thinking otherness in absolute terms. The divergence that existed between Marcel and Levinas continues to fuel a lively philosophical debate, and the jury is still out with respect to the question of the otherness of the other. Thus, there are several tasks before us in this final chapter. First, after briefly reiterating some of what is at stake in the question of the otherness of the other, I will offer two possible reconciliations of the conflict between absolute and relative characterizations of otherness: one from the perspective of Levinas, another from the perspective of Marcel. Second, I will trace the development of these two accounts The Nature of Otherness
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of otherness—absolute and relative—from their reemergence in Levinas and Marcel to their contemporary manifestations in order to illustrate the enduring challenge posed by this problem and the contributions of Levinas and Marcel to its current expression. Finally, it will be necessary to decide, at the end of this long road, which of these positions is superior in terms of its ability to account for the fullness of our experience and in terms of its ability to account for the other as other. Absolute Otherness and Relative Otherness: Two Potential Reconciliations The stakes associated with the question of otherness have only risen in its contemporary, postmodern expression, where the issue of ‘‘the other’’ has taken on a special urgency. As the world gets smaller in a metaphorical sense due to advances in transportation and communication technologies that allow us to cross the distance to our neighbors almost instantaneously, the world gets smaller in the more literal sense of that distance shrinking daily due to population pressures. Of course, simplicity and solitude have never really been effective ways to escape otherness, for there is always an element of otherness even within the self. Even the anchorite is confronted with otherness. Nevertheless, the contemporary situation has made the encounter with otherness even more commonplace. There are fewer and fewer places in the world, physical or intellectual, where we are not confronted in a very obvious way with issues related to what it means to be other. Theologically and philosophically, the mixing of wisdom traditions and religious traditions has created a situation where the question ‘‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’’ hardly scratches the surface. What has Athens to do with Beijing? Jerusalem with Mecca? Washington, Cairo, Paris, or Lima with Katmandu, Moscow, London, or Dar es Salaam? While philosophical and theological questions of otherness have recently enjoyed a resurgence in academic circles, thanks in part to the work of six philosophers we will discuss shortly—Marcel, Levinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, Caputo, and Kearney—many questions have yet to be asked, much less answered. For the most part, each of these philosophers addresses Judeo-Christian theologies and Western philosophies, although recently the dialogue has begun to expand to include some non-Western thought. Questions of otherness within this sphere need to be revisited and devel198
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oped, as both interreligious conflict and interreligious dialogue hang on philosophical and theological questions of otherness. Socially, questions of otherness are central to issues of identity, multiculturalism, and nationalism. As economic and social globalization continue to reshape the way and extent to which different people interact, questions of otherness will become even more central to issues of identity. And as the world becomes more interdependent, there will inevitably be crises of identity as old modes of selfunderstanding break down and new modes rise to take their place. Multi-racial families and dual-nationality citizens are two obvious examples of relatively new sorts of identity. As a general class these questions present a challenge to our understanding of identity—our own and others’. Who are the others with whom we interact? Who am I? What, if anything, do we have in common? Within the various narratives of identify lurk other questions related to what it means to be other and the possibility of understanding otherness. Can an upper-class, white, heterosexual man understand what it means to be black or female or gay in the United States today? Is he completely barred from understanding in these cases? Or is there the possibility of some sort of imperfect understanding? These questions of identity apply cross culturally as well. Globalization will continue to challenge traditional formulations of cultural and national identity, which must expand to include questions of what it means to be a good citizen of the world. As cities and nations become more and more demographically cosmopolitan, they will be challenged by questions of otherness that will lead them to become either more and more virtuously cosmopolitan or more and more fractured and conflicted. These social manifestations of the question of otherness are related to political manifestations. What, for example, does it mean to be French or British in the European Union? Under the International Criminal Court? The United Nations? The economic integration of global society is not always matched by social cosmopolitanism or political inclusiveness. The recent reemergence of an overly simplistic ‘‘us and them’’ political-cultural discourse, implying that ‘‘you are either with us (that is, fundamentally like us) or against us (that is, overtly or covertly with ‘them’),’’ sets up a dangerously inflexible dichotomy. The misapplication of such dichotomies not only polarizes international relations but also encourages nightmares of a ‘‘fifth column,’’ which in turn leads to changes in the way we think about patriotism, privacy, and civil liberties. The Nature of Otherness
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Finally, technological advances not only confront us with otherness by metaphorically and literally reducing the distance we must travel to be confronted with conspicuous examples of otherness; technology, in provocative and potentially troubling ways, also presses up against the issue of what it means to be other. Advances in artificial intelligence, while far from the science fiction dreams of sentient silicon life, nevertheless continue to push the boundaries of what constitutes reason, and to question whether or not reason is unique to human beings. Biology is also generating difficult questions of what self and other mean—and it is possible, even likely, that many readers of this book will be confronted with the reality of a cloned human being in their lifetime. In this global marketplace of ideas, where numerous others are involved in any given situation, different narratives come into conflict: religious narratives, national narratives, ethnic narratives, and cultural narratives. In these conflicts the so-called Grand Narratives—those overarching systems that give meaning to our world as, for example, oriented teleologically toward the return of Christ, or cyclically as the repetition of samsara, or as non-teleological, noncyclical matter and motion—are called into question by other Grand Narratives. In his famous ‘‘report on knowledge,’’ Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard characterized this situation as one of paralogy.2 The postmodern landscape, replete with contradictory and competing cultures, faiths, political systems, etc., is one in which the Grand Narratives in which we find meaning and around which we construct institutions lose their efficacy. This conflict, which calls into question any overarching explanation, produces no victor other than a Pyrrhic one. Postmodernity has not killed the dominant Grand Narrative, but the very idea that there could be such a narrative. The demise of the Grand Narrative leads to a situation in which we are left with a variety of ‘‘petite narratives,’’ perspectives that tell part of the story but do not offer an overarching coherence, for there is none to be found. Given the numerous questions that hang on the issue of otherness, the importance of coming to an accurate or efficacious understanding of what otherness is, is clear. Is otherness absolute or relative?3 Which characterization is closer to our actual lived experience of otherness? Which is more efficacious in coming to terms with the contemporary, supposedly paralogical, situation? Before we choose between absolute otherness and relative otherness, we should consider two possible ways in which these competing perspectives might be reconciled.4 200
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A Possible Levinasian Read One possible resolution of the differences between Levinas and Marcel—that is, between absolute and relative accounts of otherness— would focus on the transcendental-empirical distinction. That is, one might claim that the conflict between these two thinkers is the result of inadequately maintaining the distinction between the transcendental and the empirical. Although the transcendental aspects and the empirical aspects of a given philosophy should, one would hope, fit together, it may be the case that Marcel and Levinas are speaking out of nearly identical concerns for the other, but articulating this concern in different ways. Thus, what appears to be a contradiction is really the result of failing to recognize the different methods used by these two thinkers. If, for the moment, we take Levinas as a transcendental philosopher, and I have argued that we would be justified in doing so, we can think of him as articulating the conditions for the possibility of ethics. These conditions include egoism, the autarchic independence of the self, and alterity, the absolute otherness of the other. However, while he argues for the absolute otherness of the other, Levinas has never denied the necessity and the inevitability of engaging the other in a relationship that reduces or mitigates this alterity. Transcendentally, the other may be absolutely other; concretely, even Levinas acknowledges that absolute alterity is eclipsed or lost. Ultimately, we can only postpone the hour of our treason.5 The ethical relationship is primordial, but the ethically treasonous relationships of morality, politics, and justice characterize our actual interactions with others. When ethics is betrayed by justice, even if justice takes into account its indebtedness to ethics, we enter a region wherein I can and must compare incomparable others, and wherein the rights of the self are also an issue. In the everyday world of justice, I am justified in taking myself into account; I can expect that I am also regarded as an other by others, and reciprocity is appropriate. ‘‘As citizens we are reciprocal, but [this] is a more complex structure than the Face to Face.’’6 Nevertheless, it is necessary that the moral, the political, and the just be based on the more fundamental ethical relationship. If this were not the case, we would be forced to ‘‘accept all forms of society including the fascist or totalitarian, for [we could] no longer evaluate or discriminate between them.’’7 Thus, Levinas is not denying that we are in reciprocal relations with others, and that others are responsible to the self in a sense. However, such structures are derivative rather than original. The Nature of Otherness
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Now, given the (quasi-)transcendental nature of Levinas’s ethical project and his admission that reciprocity is a fact of the world of morality and justice, one might read Marcel’s philosophy as articulating one possible manifestation of Levinas’s transcendental ethics. In other words, Marcel’s work takes place in the sphere of what Levinas calls morality or justice rather than on the level of ethics per se. Marcel’s position—which, I have argued, is characterized by thinking of otherness in relative terms while trying to maintain respect for aspects of absolute alterity—is nothing more than an attempt to articulate an empirical ethics that takes into account Levinas’s transcendental ethics, which is exactly what Levinas hoped would happen. Marcel articulates one way in which we might talk about actual ethical relationships in light of Levinas’s transcendental ethical critique. When the relationship with the other moves from the infinite responsibility arising from the shock of absolute alterity, to the responsibility limited by the third, and finally to the sphere of justice in which I take myself into account as well as the other, we are left with something like disponibilite´ and creative fidelity. Likewise, Marcel’s emphasis on hope, which awaits the response (reciprocity) of the goodness of the other without insisting upon it, is an indication of the ethical priority of the other, even if Marcel did not fully realize the import of this insight.8 This assessment of the divergence between Levinas and Marcel bears more than a passing similarity to Richard A. Cohen’s defense of Levinas from Paul Ricoeur’s sharp criticism.9 In a moment, we will see that similarity between a critique of Marcel and a critique of Ricoeur vis-a`-vis Levinas should not be surprising. Cohen claims, at several different points, that Ricoeur’s harsh treatment of Levinas is the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the way in which Levinas’s thought operates on a level beneath or prior to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics. In a similar way, one could claim that Marcel fails to understand that he is operating on a level too late to glimpse the other as other, a level on which even Levinas acknowledges that there must be some sort of reciprocity and on which the other is judged by the self. Essentially, such a reworking of Marcel’s thought would entail a rehabilitation of his ontology in light of Levinas’s ethics. Remember that Levinas is not rejecting ontology, but calling into question its position as prima philosophia. For Levinas, ontology arrives on a scene that is already fundamentally dialogical or discursive, and therefore already ethical. Adriaan Peperzak notes, ‘‘Totality and the Infinite pro202
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claimed the necessity of thinking beyond the physis of ontology in a meta-physics of the beyond.’’10 According to Peperzak, Otherwise than Being repeats the same claim: One should neither ignore nor neglect the dimension of Being (though we might criticize the ontological factually unfolded within that dimension), but any and all ontologies must be developed in the awareness that the essence is relativized from the outset by a beyond to which it owes its most radical significance.11 Thus, from a Levinasian perspective, we need not reject Marcel, but merely rehabilitate his thought via an awareness of the ethical encounter with the other that underlies it. It is in this spirit that Levinas claims, Despite the continued use of so many set phrases and so many traditional institutions in Marcel’s writings, from the time of the writing of the Journal on, his sublime work is obsessed with and inflamed by this new signifying of the meaningful [the saying which goes from the Same to the Other, without suppressing the difference]. It is rich enough to be relieved of its bad spiritualism without harm.12 The attempt to rework Marcel’s philosophy in light of Levinas’s is, it might be argued, just such an attempt to relieve Marcel of his ‘‘bad spiritualism’’ in order to recover the ‘‘richness’’ of the dialogical core of his thought. Once relived of the bad spiritualism that ties Marcel too closely to the ontological language of being and presence, the Levinasian would be able to rework themes such as ‘‘hope’’ in light of the ethical foundation to which they must refer. This interpretation is tempting, if only because of all the parallels we have uncovered between Marcel and Levinas. It does not take too much imagination to draw a connection between Marcel’s treatment of hope and Levinas’s comment that I am an other to the other ‘‘thanks to God’’; reading the former in light of the latter would, in one sense, merely make explicit an (supposedly) inchoate possibility in Marcel’s philosophy.13 It is just such a possibility that drives Levinas to acknowledge the fundamentally other-regarding core of Marcel’s thought. Of course, fully developing this position would necessitate a radical reworking of many of Marcel’s key terms in such a way as to acknowledge the priority of the Levinasian ethical sphere; such a development constitutes a Levinasian rereading of Marcel rather than a true reconciliation of Levinas and Marcel. The Nature of Otherness
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A Possible Marcelian Read The hypothetical Levinasian reading of the convergence-divergence of Marcel and Levinas suggests that Marcel’s work might be rehabilitated by refiguring it through the lens of Levinas’s. If we carried out this project, we would have to alter all of Marcel’s language of relative otherness and reciprocity to take into account its dependence on a prior condition of absolute otherness and irreversible asymmetry. However, if we look at the issue from a Marcelian perspective, we see, predictably, a different take on how these philosophies might be addressed. From a Marcelian perspective, Levinas has given in to the spirit of abstraction in a way that is not immediately apparent, although several of Levinas’s critics do focus on this issue indirectly. Levinas’s abstraction is not as shocking as it might be for a couple of reasons. First, the problem here is not one of obvious or clumsy abstraction, such as addressing a person only in terms of her role as a worker, citizen, or consumer. The technically-focused examples of abstraction favored by Marcel are no doubt illustrative, but they do not apply to Levinas, who commits a more subtle kind of abstraction. This abstraction is not the technical or objective view of others that is normally the object of Marcel’s critique, but rather in the degree to which Levinas has taken something that is a legitimate aspect of human experience (otherness) and hypostatize it to the extent that he speaks of absolute alterity as if it existed apart from its manifestation in similitude. Second, Levinas’s abstraction does not arouse our indignation in the way that more common objectifying or domineering forms of abstraction tend to do: we instinctively recoil at abstractions that reduce persons to functions or impersonal cases. On the contrary, Levinas’s abstraction is difficult to notice precisely because the motivation for the abstraction is noble and ethical rather than technological or functional. We are less likely to object to the abstraction precisely because it serves an ethically good end. We want Levinas to be right. We want to find, at the root of everything, goodness rather than the cold nocturnal menace of the il y a, and if such an affirmation comes by way of a slightly overzealous focus on the otherness of others, so be it. Nevertheless, from the Marcelian perspective Levinas is guilty of succumbing to the spirit of abstraction, even if he does so in an unusual way and for laudable reasons. In order to analyze this criticism and how it points toward an alternative reading of the differences 204
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between Levinas and Marcel, let’s briefly review the spirit of abstraction. Both primary and secondary reflection are necessary elements in the process of thinking. Primary reflection abstracts from experience and allows us to focus on an interesting or important element of the matter at issue; secondary reflection ‘‘recoups the unity of experience’’ by placing the abstracted element back into relation to the whole from which it was abstracted. However, the focus gained by the initial act of primary reflection has the unfortunate tendency to fascinate, leading to a kind of idolatry. Such is the case when a physician begins to view patients as examples or cases of a given disease. No doubt isolating the disease through this sort of abstraction leads to significant advances in the technological aspects of medicine (e.g., more accurate diagnosis, targeted therapies, etc.). However, we all know that that very abstraction can lead to significant lapses in actual patient care by physicians who no longer view their patients as unique human beings, but as examples of a particular kind of ailment. The abstraction that allows us to focus on, for example, the digestive tract of someone with stomach cancer is good insofar as it leads to a better treatment of the cancer; but it is bad, inexcusably so, if it also leads to the dehumanization and objectification of the patient. We have succumbed to the spirit of abstraction when we engage in primary reflection without proceeding to the synthesizing, recollecting act of secondary reflection. Although Marcel’s examples of abstraction tend to be ones of technological objectification or social alienation, the spirit of abstraction may become manifest in a variety of ways. In the present case, Levinas has abstracted (absolute) alterity from the chiasmus in which it is encountered, speaking of alterity as if it were both distinct from and independent of similitude. ‘‘As soon as we accord to any category, isolated from all other categories, an arbitrary primacy, we are victims of the spirit of abstraction.’’14 Let’s begin in typical Marcelian fashion by looking at our actual experience with others. One thing we notice is that in every relationship we have with others, the other or others in question must be encountered; they have to be present to me in some way, partial though it may be. In other words, the other must ‘‘show up’’ within my horizons in order for me to acknowledge, hear, obey, or serve her—and nothing that shows up is absolutely other. Even God must be manifest in some way (perhaps incomplete or indirect) if there is to be some sort of relationship. Even outside explicitly incarnational faiths, a burning bush is visible, and a booming voice is audible.15 No other I encounter, no other with whom I can have a relationship, The Nature of Otherness
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can be so utterly alien that there is no common ground whatsoever. Anything to which I relate in any way must show itself to me, even if this revelation is minimal or indirect. In order to think philosophically about the relationship between the self and an other, Levinas has used abstraction to isolate certain aspects of this relationship and analyze them. Of course, abstraction is a completely legitimate way to investigate a phenomenon. The problem is not that Levinas engages in abstraction in order to look more clearly at the otherness of the other and the egoism of the self. The problem lies in the fact that he fails to adequately reunify these two aspects of the relationship in a way that acknowledges the original abstraction as abstraction. Having abstracted alterity from the original site in which we encounter and experience it—that is, in its crossing with similitude—Levinas fails to follow this act of primary reflection with the equally important act of secondary reflection, which would return to the original experience of otherness with a new, heightened, more nuanced understanding. As Marcel notes, when one gives in to the spirit of abstraction in such a way, one can become convinced that the abstracted reality is in fact originary; that is, one can come to forget that the abstraction of primary reflection is, however appropriate in the course of the inquiry, merely an abstraction and not the primordial phenomenon. Having abstracted alterity from the chiastic crossing with similitude in which it is always encountered, Levinas speaks as though alterity and similitude are, like oil and water, both distinct from and independent of each other.16 While Marcel would certainly affirm the former, he cannot follow Levinas in the latter assertion. There is merit in abstracting absolute alterity from our experience of otherness in order to (fail to) describe it. The problem with abstraction lies in its ability to fascinate, its tendency to draw us into thinking that the abstraction itself is the reality in which we move and relate. In this case, the abstraction of alterity from its crossing with similitude has allowed Levinas to focus on otherness and allowed philosophers following him to focus on the ‘‘non-programmable’’ characteristics of ethics and faith. However, Marcel maintains that such abstraction is only valid or virtuous if it is done in the service of an eventual second reflection that would recoup the unity of experience and acknowledge that the abstraction is merely an abstraction. Abstraction without this return to the concrete is ultimately sterile. The motivation for this abstraction is noble; however, this does not obvi-
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ate the need to resituate so-called absolute alterity in the ‘‘natural’’ environment of otherness in which it is found, that is, in its chiastic crossing with similitude. There are, to be sure, aspects of alterity that are more or less (likely even absolutely) foreign; however, such aspects of alterity are not independent of the similitude that allows us to encounter them. If absolute otherness—absolute alterity distinct from its crossing with similitude—did exist, it would not even be a noumenon or an area about which, with Wittgenstein, we would remain silent. We could hear no call from such an other and, therefore, could never respond. Being absolutely unaware of such an other, we would not love it (as God) or fear it (as in the nocturnal menace of the il y a). Moreover, we would not write philosophy books or hold philosophical conferences about it. Beyond the God of apophatic theology, beyond the impossible of Derrida’s deconstruction, otherness that is absolute tout court is something that would go unnoticed and unmentioned. No analogy can do justice to this problem, because no words—not even poetic words, indirect words, or words of negation—can say that which cannot be for us. Like a plane flying beneath our radar (an image that gets nowhere near the mark) such an other would remain absolutely beyond relationship, encounter, perception, induction, etc. Absolute otherness is, at least as far as humans are concerned, impossible (not the impossible of postmodern debate). Otherness is not absolute, it is relative; it is the crossing of (absolute) alterity and similitude. Some others are more other and less similar than other others, but no other is absolutely other. Thus, while it is possible to attempt to work though the differences separating Levinas and Marcel, full reconciliation inevitably distorts one position or the other. Despite the similarity of their philosophies, Marcel and Levinas cannot be reconciled without substantial alteration to one philosophy or the other; even ‘‘Marcelian’’ and ‘‘Levinasian’’ positions seem resistant to reconciliation. Fortunately, contemporary philosophers have picked up the standards carried by Levinas and Marcel, and continued the dialogue and debate surrounding the question of otherness. Although the philosophies of Levinas and Marcel, at once tantalizingly close and frustratingly incompatible, appear to be resistant to reconciliation, perhaps one of the more contemporary variants of either position will prove more flexible.
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Otherness and the Contemporary Debate The question of the otherness of the other is one that presents an enduring challenge to philosophy, and, while Marcel and Levinas represent a particularly intriguing moment in the development of this question, neither disponibilite´ nor responsibility is the last word in this exchange. However, both Marcel and Levinas exert some influence on the contemporary debate surrounding the question of otherness, at least as it is articulated in the Continental tradition. Thus, our enhanced understanding of Levinas and Marcel will help to shed light on certain issues central to current debates concerning otherness. Although I insisted that tracing the conflict between Marcel and Levinas to contemporary accounts of otherness is not merely historical or genealogical, if we are to show that these different accounts of otherness have been transmitted to the contemporary debate, a brief genealogical detour is in order. In order to illustrate the influence exerted by Levinas and Marcel on the contemporary philosophical landscape, we will follow the characterization of otherness in absolute terms from Levinas to Jacques Derrida, and then to John D. Caputo. A similar connection can be seen in the case of relative alterity from Marcel to Paul Ricoeur, and then to Richard Kearney. A few words should be said about this choice of philosophers. First, I do not mean to claim that the transmission of one or the other conception of otherness proceeds unaltered in either of these two sequences. Each of these six philosophers is an original and important thinker in his own right, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Continental thought will attest. Derrida is no mere disciple of Levinas, nor Caputo of Derrida. Likewise, Ricoeur demonstrates significant differences from Marcel, and Kearney from Ricoeur.17 Nevertheless, we will see that there are important aspects common to the three thinkers in each group. Second, just as I do not mean to imply that either Levinas or Marcel constructed his understanding of otherness ex nihilo, I do not mean to imply that Caputo and Kearney are the sole voices in the contemporary debate concerning otherness. However, these two philosophers suggest themselves for several reasons: (1) Caputo and Kearney can be linked philosophically and genealogically to Levinas and Marcel respectively; (2) both are respected voices in the contemporary debate on the question of otherness; (3) because of the close and ongoing dialogue between them, Caputo and Kearney provide the same sort of juxtaposition found between Marcel and Levinas (that is, contemporaries with appar208
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ently similar concerns who author philosophies that, while tantalizingly close in certain aspects, remain frustratingly, fundamentally at odds in others); and (4) the major disagreement between Caputo and Kearney turns, as it did with Levinas and Marcel, on the question of otherness. Finally, the focus here is the difference between two general ways of characterizing otherness, rather than the particular differences between these six, or any two, thinkers. Thus, we need not concern ourselves here with an exhaustive analysis of the interrelations of these thinkers. Rather, the detour tracing the absolute conception of otherness from Levinas to Derrida to Caputo, and the relative conception of otherness from Marcel to Ricoeur to Kearney, will provide us with an enriched understanding of what is implied in either position, insofar as Derrida/Caputo and Ricoeur/Kearney actualize important philosophical possibilities that remained latent in Levinas and Marcel.
Absolute Otherness: From Levinas . . . In his eulogy for Levinas, Derrida notes that we cannot ‘‘measure in a few words the oeuvre of Emmanuel Levinas. It is so large that one can no longer glimpse its edges.’’18 He predicts that ‘‘centuries’’ of scholarship will be devoted to understanding and coming to terms with Levinas’s provocation to philosophy. This provocation hinges on the infinite demand of responsibility, the excess of otherness; that is, on the absolute otherness of the other. In fact, among the many important contributions that Levinas made to the contemporary philosophical landscape, perhaps none is more significant than the claim that otherness, at least as encountered in divine and human persons, is absolute. At this stage the reader is well familiar with Levinas and his philosophical position. With respect to the question at hand, he continually asserts the primordial nature of the absolute alterity of the other—so primordial as to be an-archic—this despite ambiguities introduced by issues such as the femininity of the dwelling, the third, justice, and the grace of God by which I may be an other to the other. In every situation where Levinas seems to moderate or limit the absolute otherness of the other, the careful reaffirmation of the absolute nature of otherness makes clear his position.19 The other, in order to remain other, must be wholly other. ‘‘It is other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other. . . . The absolutely other is the Other.’’20 The Nature of Otherness
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. . . through Derrida . . . The links between Levinas and Jacques Derrida are well known.21 The personal and professional friendship between these two eminent philosophers sparked a fruitful dialogue that continued even to Derrida’s funeral eulogy for Levinas. This moving tribute, both personal and philosophical, is a testament to the relationship between these two men. I will never stop beginning or beginning anew to think [with the thoughts of Levinas] on the basis of the new beginning they give me, and I will begin again and again to rediscover them on just about any subject. Each time I read or reread Emmanuel Levinas, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration, overwhelmed by this necessity, which is not a constraint but a very gentle force that obligates, and obligates us not to bend or curve otherwise the space of thought in its respect for the other, but to yield to this other, heteronymous curvature that relates us to the completely other . . . according to the law that thus calls us to yield to the other infinite precedence of the completely other.22 Philosophically, there are numerous convergences between the thought of Levinas and that of Derrida; in fact, there are ‘‘areas of Derrida’s thought which are fundamentally Levinasian.’’23 However, the most pertinent, and I would argue most significant, aspect of Levinas’s thought upon which Derrida draws is revealed in the passage from ‘‘Adieu’’ cited above: the radical conception of the otherness of the other. For both Levinas and Derrida, philosophy is (or should be) concerned with the absolute, unknowable otherness of the other, which ‘‘haunts’’ all of our neat and tidy hypotheses and systems. However, if Levinas emphasizes the absolute otherness of the other and bequeaths this emphasis to deconstruction, deconstruction takes this conception of otherness and runs with it, drawing out several challenging implications. Informed as it is by sources other than Levinas’s philosophy—for example, Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition—deconstruction takes the absolute alterity of Levinas’s autre and hyperbolizes it beyond anything Ricoeur might have accused Levinas of.24 Ultimately, Levinas’s ‘‘other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other’’ becomes deconstruction’s tout autre est tout autre, ‘‘every other is wholly other.’’25 The claim that tout autre est tout autre is central to Derrida’s work. Seen variously as ‘‘diffe´rance,’’ 210
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‘‘the impossible,’’ ‘‘khora,’’ and ‘‘undecidability,’’ the absolute otherness of the other is a key element of Derrida’s writing, including the themes of religion, hospitality, death, and the gift.26 ‘‘Everything turns on this [claim]’’; it ‘‘is the very tip of Derrida’s stylus.’’27 An example, one among many possibilities, may help. In 1996, Derrida’s thought turned to the theme of ‘‘hospitality,’’ which he addressed with his characteristic creativity, but also in his abiding fascination with the impossible; that is, with the absolute otherness of the other.28 Bob Plant has argued well that Derrida’s account of hospitality is fundamentally shaped by Levinas’s account of the dwelling in Totality and Infinity.29 ‘‘Derrida agrees with Levinas that the ‘separation’ between the self and the other ‘is the condition of the social bond’.’’30 The self and the other must be distinct in order to protect the otherness of the other from being violated by the thematization of the same. The independence of the same from the other and the other from the same is required for the ethical relationship to take place. If the other is absolutely other, then the encounter between the self and the other cannot be foreseen. The absolute otherness of the other requires that the other comes, or calls, from outside the systems that constitute the horizons of the self. The call of the other breaks in upon the satisfied life of jouissance, calling the self out toward the unknown, toward a ‘‘land not of our birth,’’ out of economic existence into responsibility. The most that the self can do is to respond to the other when the other calls, as Abraham replied to the unanticipated call from God: hineni, Here I am. As is the case with responsibility, Derrida’s hospitality requires that the arrival of the other is unanticipated, without restrictions placed by the self. Hospitality is not found in even the most generous invitation, which merely asks the other to come into the domain of the self at the time of least inconvenience. An invitation is a permission to trespass, given by the master—the master, at least, of one’s own home and the comings and goings of those admitted to that home (oikonomos)—to the person who is permitted to trespass. In contrast, hospitality lies in the unrestricted welcome of the stranger who arrives on one’s doorstep unanticipated and unannounced; it is not the issuance of an invitation, but the response to a visitation.31 The arrival of the other is always a surprise, never the response to an invitation. Like Levinasian responsibility for the responsibility of the other, even for the torturer, the unrestricted openness to the other required by pure hospitality includes the possibility of exposure to aggression The Nature of Otherness
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or violence from the other. The unannounced visitor might come in goodwill; however, such an other might also bring trouble, or come bearing ill will, or with violent intentions. ‘‘For unconditional hospitality to take place you have to accept the risk of the other coming and destroying the place, initiating a revolution, stealing everything, or killing everyone.’’32 The absolute otherness implied in infinite responsibility means that nothing is known of the other; the absolute otherness required by pure hospitality means that nothing is asked of the other. However, Derrida’s ‘‘pure’’ hospitality is, like Levinas’s ‘‘infinite’’ responsibility, quasi-transcendental in nature. In actual fact, hospitality and responsibility are limited in such a way that we do ask questions of the unannounced stranger, and we do deny succor to some others. Derrida limits the possibility of pure hospitality just as Levinas limits responsibility; that is, by the presence of other others who also make demands on me. There is no pure relationship of responsibility or hospitality existing in some one-on-one relationship, outside society. Thus, if I am protecting x from the violence of y, then my inhospitality to y becomes an essential component of my hospitality toward x (that is, my inhospitality toward y constitutes the conditions of the possibility of my being hospitable toward x). It is in this way that there remains a necessary mutual contamination between the ‘‘unconditional law of hospitality’’ [required by the non-violent, ethical relationship to the absolute alterity of the other] and the ‘‘conditional . . . laws of hospitality.’’33 We have seen how Levinas acknowledges that, with the arrival of the third (who is in fact always already present in the face), the infinite responsibility of the self toward the other is limited by the demands of all the other others. Pure responsibility is impossible; hence the infinite demand of responsibility. However, Derrida further radicalizes this aspect of Levinas’s thought as well. ‘‘What Derrida draws to our attention is the way a Levinasian ethics of ‘pure’ generosity is not merely (in actual fact) impossible, but necessarily so.’’34 Although one might argue that the necessity of the impossibility of the other is present in Levinas’s thought, Derrida clearly makes this more explicit. Of course, while Derrida may be ‘‘fundamentally Levinasian’’ in certain respects, he and Levinas differ on significant issues. We have already seen one important critique of Levinas by Derrida in chapter 212
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5: the essay ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics.’’ In this (relatively) early essay—which seems, perhaps, less in character with Derrida’s more recent work—Derrida calls into question Levinas’s characterization of the other. The essential question to ask is: ‘‘How is alterity to be experienced if it surpasses all our phenomenal horizons of experience?’’35 We will have occasion to return to this issue below; however, there is a more significant difference between these two advocates of absolute alterity. Derrida and Levinas differ most explicitly in terms of something we have come to understand as absolutely central to Levinas’s thought: Judaism. While Derrida might be characterized as a quasi-Augustinian, quasi-Jewish, quasi-religious figure, these quasi-characteristics must be read against his own claim that he ‘‘quite rightly passes for an atheist.’’36 While we might parse the nuances and mine the potential value of ‘‘passing’’ for an atheist, ‘‘addressee-less’’ prayers, and ‘‘messianicity without messianism,’’ the contrast with Levinas is quite clear. Derrida ‘‘quite rightly passes for an atheist’’; however, no one could mistake Levinas for anything other than a very sincere theist. This points to one important way in which deconstruction’s tout autre est tout autre goes beyond Levinas’s ‘‘other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other.’’ Even when Levinas claims that the absolute otherness of others means that one might mistake God for the il y a, it does not diminish his certainty that he is talking about the trace of God in the face of the other or his conviction that he is speaking about the good beyond being (epekeina tes ousias) and that it is distinct from the khoral night despite its resemblance to it. ‘‘Levinas’s resignation has its limits; he is resigned, not to denying the experience of alterity or rendering it incoherent, but to betraying it by saying it, as in negative theology.’’37 Just as the apophasis of negative theology is always already sure that it is addressing God in spite of its most elaborate negations, Levinas is, because of his faith, already oriented ethically and theologically in a way that Derrida is not. This theological and ethical orientation means that Levinas’s account is ‘‘too metaphysical’’ for deconstruction, which claims that he has not escaped ‘‘classical (Neoplatonic and mystical) metaphysics’’ and is guilty of a ‘‘higher and more rarified form of hyper-essentialism.’’38 ‘‘Levinas is vulnerable to all of the criticisms that beset metaphysics, for this is metaphysics indeed, a metaphysics of the Good not the true, a metaphysical ethics, not a deontology, but metaphysics still.’’39 Despite these differences, it remains clear that Levinas’s view of otherness was bequeathed to Derrida, where it took on an unquesThe Nature of Otherness
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tionably central role in the development of deconstruction. Levinas demonstrates that ‘‘nothing can so profoundly solicit the Greek logos—philosophy—than the irruption of this tout autre.’’40 Taking up the standard of absolute otherness, deconstruction further radicalizes the question. What if otherness is really, absolutely other—what would that imply? Among other things, it would mean that we cannot know anything about it, that anything we say about it must immediately and unceasingly be unsaid, erased, translated, or otherwise undone. Everything about deconstruction requires that we let the tout autre tremble in undecidability, in an endless, open-ended, indeterminable, undecidable translatability, or substitutability, or exemplarity, where we are at a loss to say what is an example of what, what is a translation of what.41 If we say anything about the other, the other is no longer the other, for the other must remain absolutely other in order to remain other at all. This, I would argue, is not an appropriation of Levinas’s thought so much as a development of the implications inchoate in it. Deconstructive undecidability is the natural development of a philosophy that asserts the absolute otherness of the other, wherein the absolute alterity of monstrous il y a and the absolute alterity of divine justice are indistinguishable precisely because they are both wholly, absolutely other. If we endorse a philosophy of absolute otherness, we will arrive, sooner or later, in the desert of khora. Of course, according to deconstruction, we have not ever and can never leave. . . . to Caputo The association of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo is so well known as to need no special illustration. Few contemporary philosophers are as closely tied to the name of Jacques Derrida as is Caputo. Deconstruction plays a prominent role in Caputo’s scholarship and philosophy from Radical Hermeneutics—which he calls his ‘‘first try’’ at coming to terms with a ‘‘certain Jewish Augustine’’—onward.42 The prominence of this role is perhaps most closely associated with the groundbreaking The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. It is with this latter book that Caputo offers one of the most challenging and inspired readings of Derrida’s work, clearly establishing himself as the principal advocate of the ‘‘religious reading’’ of deconstruction. However, while Caputo is certainly an excellent scholar and inter214
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preter of Derrida, he is no mere Derridian exegete and, in fact, the primary difference between Derrida and Caputo is the very same difference we saw between Derrida and Levinas: religion. Granted, the difference between Derrida and Caputo may not be as sharp as the difference between Levinas and Derrida. Nevertheless, this distinction cannot be overlooked. In what sense is deconstruction ‘‘religious,’’ and how do Derrida and Caputo understand this religiosity? The ‘‘religious’’ character of Derrida’s thought has become more explicit in his recent work, although to the careful reader these same quasi-religious themes are also evident, if less overt, in his earlier work. Deconstruction’s emphasis on the impossible—tout autre sans savoir, sans avoir, sans voir, something that is always a`-venir—has important similarities to religious faith. ‘‘Deconstruction is itself a form of faith, a faith in the viens, a hope in what is coming, one which says we are always a little blind and it is necessary to believe. Il faut croire.’’43 Derrida points out that, ‘‘very early on I was accused of . . . resifting the procedures of negative theology.’’44 Given the force of Caputo’s interpretation in Prayers and Tears, it is understandable that one might come to think of Derrida as an essentially religious philosopher, even elevating him to the status of a sort of quasi-apostolic, postmodern Pope of deconstruction. However, we should take care not to co-opt Derrida’s work for religion, ‘‘distorting his insights, or above all confining the energy of deconstructive analysis within the limits of a determinate faith.’’45 Caputo is aware of this temptation and of the fundamental error that succumbing to it represents. He warns us against this too simple reading in the very first section of Prayers and Tears, called ‘‘God is Not diffe´rance.’’46 He knows that deconstruction is not religion, at least in the way we normally use that word; it is a ‘‘religion without religion’’ that is ‘‘messianic without messianism.’’ But Caputo is not claiming that diffe´rance is God, or that Derrida is religious in the traditional sense of the word. He acknowledges that deconstruction is ‘‘religious’’ only ‘‘by a certain analogy,’’ which is indeed not ‘‘the only possible analogy.’’47 ‘‘I am not trying to get Derrida to go back to Hebrew school or to start attending synagogue.’’48 Nevertheless, the religious reading of Derrida has won many converts, not all of whom are as circumspect about the qualifications of this religious analogy as Caputo. Moreover, I suspect that, even for Caputo, the religious analogy is not merely one possible analogy among others. Reading Prayers and Tears, it is clear that he feels his is a better analogy than that provided by a thoroughly atheistic or nihilistic view of deconThe Nature of Otherness
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struction: it is better to read Derrida with Levinas (or Kierkegaard) than with Nietzsche.49 This, however, begs the question: Prayers and Tears firmly establishes that the religious reading of Derrida is at least as valid as other readings, but is it a more valid reading? Caputo returns to the religious analogy because it is the analogy he favors. He is comfortable speaking of undecidability in theistic, even Judeo-Christian, language, in keeping with his close familiarity with Kierkegaard, Eckhart, and other Christian thinkers. But Derrida is not Christian, is not even a theist, and if deconstruction’s more-negative-than-thou apophasis is to be taken seriously, the religious analogy and language are no more appropriate than the strictly atheistic readings of Derrida. Again, however, I suspect that Caputo favors the religious analogy for deconstruction because he thinks that it is a better analogy. Better, for example, at defending against the charges of relativism and sophistry that regularly get thrown against the deconstructive ramparts. This, of course, is not to deny that there are religious aspects to Derrida’s thought, nor to claim that Caputo’s preference for the religious reading of deconstruction is unjustified. Derrida himself, who ‘‘quite rightly passes for an atheist,’’ is somewhat reluctant to plant deconstruction’s banner too firmly in the field of religion, although he agrees that it has several important religious characteristics.50 Rather, pointing out the difference between Derrida and Caputo with respect to the degree to which deconstruction is religious merely illustrates that Caputo is not Derrida, and that Derrida’s version of deconstruction may not be quite as religious as Caputo’s. Curiously, Caputo’s awareness of the differences between himself and Derrida leads, on at least one reading, to the latter being more willing to allow ‘‘uncharted crossings’’ between deconstruction and messianic faiths.51 One hypothesis could be that Caputo is so keen to make connections between deconstruction and theology that he bends over backwards not to give in to his own urge to rush his fences and secure a premature synthesis. He wants at all costs to respect Derrida’s right to declare himself an ‘‘atheist.’’ As though Caputo, a crypto-theist, is desperately trying not to evangelize deconstruction by turning it into a crypto-theology. A case, perhaps, of the theist does protest too much.52 Aware of the strength of his own theological reading of deconstruction and of the resulting temptation to think too easily of deconstruc216
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tion as theology, Caputo asserts again and again that deconstruction is religion only by analogy—diffe´rance is not God. However, these protestations serve to highlight the difference between the subject of Prayers and Tears (Derrida, who quite rightly passes for an atheist) and its author (Caputo, the crypto-theist). Nevertheless, just as we found a fundamental continuity from Levinas to Derrida with respect to the otherness of the other, the differences between Derrida and Caputo are not significant enough to undo the fundamental concordance between them regarding the otherness of the other. This concordance is summed up in the challenging claim, endorsed by both thinkers, that tout autre est tout autre. The understanding of otherness as absolute is most clearly evident in Caputo’s own ‘‘religion without religion,’’ formulated, if not codified, in the conclusion to Prayers and Tears: (1) ‘‘I do not know who I am or whether I believe in God’’; (2) ‘‘I do not know whether what I believe in is God or not’’; (3) ‘‘I do not know what I love when I love my God.’’53 This final formulation, which is the formula over which Caputo has ‘‘organized [his] life’s task,’’ points him toward the impossible, firing his passion for God.54 When something unforeseeable and unknowable, unpossessable and impossible drives us mad, when the tout autre becomes the goal without goal, the object without object, of a dream and a desire that renounces its own momentum of appropriation, when the impossible is the object of our love and passion, is that not what we mean by ‘‘my God’’?55 Here we see the abiding theme in the thought of Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo resurface: the tout autre. The appropriateness of calling either Derrida or Caputo religious, and the degree of religiosity one might find in either thinker, differs; however, both philosophers are firmly within the contemporary camp that, tracing its lineage to Levinas, asserts the absolute otherness of the other. Relative Otherness: From Marcel . . . As was the case with Levinas, by now the reader has more than passing familiarity with Marcel and his work. Nevertheless, again, it is worth a moment to review his understanding of the otherness of the other, especially as Marcel’s unsystematic approach makes his position a bit more elliptical than Levinas’s clear insistence on absolute alterity. First, we can make the negative assertion that Marcel’s charThe Nature of Otherness
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acterization of otherness is not absolute; that is, whatever we may say of the other we should not assert that the separation of the other from the self is absolute. Rather, there is an underlying unity that links the same and the other, allowing for relationship. Second, however, we must add that the other always eludes any attempt by the self to comprehend, grasp, or otherwise pin it down. There is no possibility of comprehending the other, and the unity that links the same and the other can never be a totality. The self and the other are parts of a ‘‘constellation’’ of beings, clearly distinct from each other, yet nevertheless linked in a meaningful way. These two assertions frame Marcel’s understanding of ‘‘relative’’ otherness: (1) an otherness that is limited and, therefore, not absolute, but (2) an otherness that is not limited due to my determination or comprehension of the other, and is not part of a totality. The other is not part of ‘‘my’’ system, but neither is she entirely outside my horizons of experience and understanding. Although the links between Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo are generally more well known than those between Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney, the latter trio are more directly linked than the former in one obvious way: Ricoeur was a student, albeit an informal one, of Marcel’s; Kearney was a student of Ricoeur’s. Ricoeur participated in Marcel’s ‘‘Friday evening’’ gatherings, and Kearney took his Ph.D. under Ricoeur’s direction at the University of Paris X. So, while the philosophical links between Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney may be less understood and appreciated, the student-teacher link between these three makes it very likely that there were important influences exerted by the older philosophers at decisive stages in the philosophical development of the younger ones. This linkage is supported by the fact that Kearney acknowledges Ricoeur’s influence on his thinking, and Ricoeur acknowledges Marcel’s place in his own development. Of course, as in the case of Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo, this does not mean that either Kearney or Ricoeur are Marcelian simpliciter.
. . . through Ricoeur . . . Marcel’s influence on Paul Ricoeur is well established, if underemphasized. Ricoeur is fastidious to a fault in acknowledging his intellectual debts, and he mentions Marcel frequently in his writing, from Le Volontaire et l’involontaire onward.56 Responding to the ques218
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tion, ‘‘Among French philosophers, which one did you most feel the presence of?’’ Ricoeur does not hesitate. Gabriel Marcel is by far the person with whom I maintained the deepest relationship, beginning in the year of my aggre´gation, 1934–5, and again later, visiting him periodically up to his death in 1973. During his famous ‘‘Friday evenings,’’ which I began to attend in 1934 . . . I tasted a kind of discussion that was completely lacking at the Sorbonne . . .57 This deep relationship exerted an important and lasting influence on Ricoeur, which manifests itself in several important ways. Boyd Blundell claims that the unending dialectic of primary and secondary reflection is ‘‘the single most important characteristic that Ricoeur absorbed from Marcel, and it proceeded to shape the way he pursued his own philosophical research.’’58 The influence of primary and secondary reflection is evident in the pattern of ‘‘detour and return’’ that distinguishes the ‘‘long route’’ of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics from the ‘‘short route’’ of Heidegger’s. While the numerous detours taken by Ricoeur over his philosophical career have brought him into dialogue with an almost unprecedented number of philosophers, it is ‘‘important to note the pervasiveness of Marcel’s influence; while there is inevitably another philosopher or group of philosophers in the foreground of any given detour, Marcel is invariably present in the background.’’59 Blundell goes on to locate Marcel’s influence in four of Ricoeur’s major detours: through Husserl’s phenomenology, through the critique of ideology, through structuralism, and through analytic philosophy. Always there is present in Ricoeur’s thought Marcel’s concern to begin with and return to the concrete embodied subject. Selfhood, in fact, is a dominant theme in the work of both Marcel and Ricoeur. When Marcel contrasts the ‘‘witness’’ and the ‘‘onlooker’’ precisely in terms of participation, and Ricoeur places selfhood, attestation and ontology in an interpenetrating relationship in the closing study of Oneself as Another, we can see that at the ‘‘deep level of conviction,’’ to recall Ricoeur’s description, he has remained faithful to Marcel all along.60 This fidelity to Marcel points toward another important influence of Marcel on Ricoeur. Keeping one’s promises is developed as an essential part of personal identity in Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another. For much of the discussion of promise keeping, Ricoeur is in dialogue with anaThe Nature of Otherness
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lytic philosophers and with Kant. However, it was from Marcel’s work on creative fidelity, not from analytic philosophy, that Ricoeur first learned the philosophical import of promise keeping. Ricoeur thinks personal identity as the intersection of idem identity (sameness) and ipse identity (selfhood). Idem identity is evident in character, the set of lasting dispositions by which a person is recognized. Ipse identity, however, is evident in the self-constancy required by promise keeping.61 Although both idem and ipse are important, it is clear that ipse identity is what is essential in terms of personal, narrative identity and in terms of ethics. However, such a central role for promise keeping returns us to now-familiar objections: how can one keep promises over time? The obligation to maintain one’s self in keeping one’s promises is in danger of solidifying into the Stoic rigidity of simple constancy, if it is not permeated by the desire to respond to an expectation, even to a request coming from another.62 Constancy is monologic and, clearly, promise keeping is dialogical in character; it involves at least two persons. Ricoeur proceeds here by citing Marcel’s Being and Having. But here arises the alternative: ‘‘At the moment of my commitment, I either (1) arbitrarily assume a constancy in my feeling which it is not really in my power to establish, or (2) I accept in advance that I shall have to carry out, at a given moment, an action which will in no way reflect my state of mind when I do carry it out. In the first case I am lying to myself, in the second I consent in advance to lie to someone else.’’ How is one to escape this double bind of self-constancy? We know Gabriel Marcel’s response: ‘‘All commitment is a response.’’ It is to the other that I wish to be faithful. To this fidelity, Gabriel Marcel gives the beautiful name of disponibilite´ . . .63 Promise keeping is central to Ricoeur’s understanding of personal identity and ethics as articulated in Oneself as Another, and the importance he attaches to promise keeping, the way in which he problematizes it, and the way in which he responds to these problems all bear the mark of his association with Marcel. Of course, there are many other areas of convergence between Marcel and Ricoeur: religious faith, which Blundell argues is central to any discussion of Marcel’s influence on Ricoeur64; the common sense of the tragic aspect of the 220
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human condition65; and the importance of ethical reciprocity in both philosophers’ work. However, despite Ricoeur’s proximity to Marcel on numerous points, there remain significant differences between them. In fact, Ricoeur’s philosophical development led Marcel to level against him the very critique we have put to Levinas: the spirit of abstraction. Ricoeur admits, ‘‘[w]hen I wrote my book on Freud, I have to say, however, that [Marcel] disavowed me. He told me very clearly that I had given in to what he called ‘the spirit of abstraction’.’’66 In fact, with respect to Freud and Philosophy, Ricoeur admits that this criticism may have some merit. In focusing on Freud’s most theoretical texts, Ricoeur admits that he failed to pay enough attention to the actual experience of analysis. However, he makes no apologies for the direction his philosophy has taken, or for the systematicity and abstraction that are part of it: ‘‘As for the systematic spirit Gabriel Marcel cautioned me about, I continue to claim it, even if it tends toward a certain didacticism . . . I confess that I have always needed order and, if I reject any form of totalizing system, I am not opposed to a certain systematicity.’’67 One wonders what Marcel might have made of Ricoeur’s work since 1973, especially the turn to ethics in Oneself as Another, but also La Me´morie, l’histoire, l’oubli and the two volumes of Le Juste.68 Blundell speculates, It is regrettable but all too common that great teachers do not live to see their students’ greatest accomplishments, and this is particularly poignant in the case of Marcel and Ricoeur. The difference in their philosophical dispositions could be characterized in terms of patience. Marcel was impatient with the detour through primary reflection, mainly due to his fear that it would become a Siren’s call that would prevent a completion of the philosophical journey, and he constantly urged a return to the concrete. Ricoeur is a much more patient and rigorous philosopher, and has always insisted on exploring the detours to the very last step possible. This patience is what allowed Ricoeur to make his series of consecutive detours, but unfortunately, Marcel passed away while he was in the middle of this series, and was never to see the return.69 Thus, while Ricoeur’s thought is a departure from Marcel’s in many ways, they remain in agreement on certain fundamental issues, including the question of otherness. Ricoeur sees the question of otherness as properly situated at the ‘‘crossroads of ethics and ontology.’’70 The Nature of Otherness
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This mirrors his description of Marcel’s thought, in which ‘‘e´thique et ontologie se nouent.’’71 Curiously, in Oneself as Another he acknowledges his indebtedness to Levinas on this very same issue: another indication of how close these two camps can be at times.72 However, despite this closeness, with respect to the matter at issue Ricoeur is ultimately unambiguous in planting his standard alongside Marcel, in the camp that characterizes otherness in relative terms. . . . to Kearney Richard Kearney’s relationship to Paul Ricoeur was quite close, as those familiar with his work know. A student of Ricoeur’s at the University of Paris, Kearney was clearly influenced by his teacher’s hermeneutic approach to philosophy. His attachment to the hermeneutic method is evident from his Poe´tique du possible right through to Strangers, Gods and Monsters.73 While fundamentally original, Kearney’s most recent work—the trilogy On Stories; The God Who May Be; and Strangers, Gods and Monsters—still bears the mark of Ricoeur’s influence.74 This trilogy has put him in the thick of contemporary debates on the question of the other, alongside and in dialogue with philosophers such as Derrida, Caputo, Merold Westphal, Jean-Luc Marion, Dominique Janicaud, and others. In these debates, Kearney has consistently held to a hermeneutic, relative account of otherness. In the final installment of his trilogy of philosophy ‘‘at the limit,’’ Kearney reaffirms his closeness to Ricoeur on this point: [A]s Ricoeur has remarked, there can be no relation to the other that does not in some respect transform the absolute other into a relative other—an other for another self (pros heteros). The notion of an absolute manifestation of the other qua absolute (kath’ auto) is impossible. There is no way for the other to find its way into the hermeneutic circle without entering the web of figuration, however ‘‘passive’’ or ‘‘pre-conscious’’.75 This position follows not only Ricoeur, but Marcel as well. On the one hand, any other with whom there is a relation cannot be absolutely other. However, on the other hand, we never get beyond the need for interpretation to some sort of epistemological transparency. The other cannot be comprehended; all otherness requires interpretation. There is no otherness so exterior or so unconscious, on this reading, that it cannot be at least minimally interpreted by a 222
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self, and interpreted in a variety of different ways—albeit none of them absolute, adequate or exhaustive. The other is not so traumatically estranging as to hold me hostage. Nor is it so miserably abject as to make me imperious.76 Nevertheless, despite the many close parallels between Ricoeur and Kearney, the latter is his own philosopher and there are differences between them (and even more differences between Kearney and Marcel). Notable in the context of our current inquiry, Kearney is perhaps more well disposed toward Levinas and Derrida than his mentor. Many find Ricoeur’s critique of Levinas—which accuses him of hyperbole and even paroxysm—very sharp indeed, even excessive. However, if Kearney’s critique of the hyperbole of Caputo and Derrida follows a similar pattern, it manages to maintain its philosophic punch without striking below the belt. This is, I suspect, because Kearney has some sympathy for what the advocates of absolute alterity are up to. Charles Regan reports that Ricoeur mentioned in passing some concerns with the ‘‘deconstructionist’’ claims in Kearney’s thought during a conversation in 1980, perhaps indicating an awareness of some of Kearney’s sympathies for Levinas, Derrida, and others.77 Of course, it would be ill-advised to make too much philosophical hay out of a comment made in passing. Certainly Kearney and Ricoeur are very close both methodologically and philosophically, especially on the question of the otherness of the other. Nevertheless, there is something to be said of Kearney’s rapport with Caputo and of his close familiarity with and admiration for Levinas and Derrida. In fact, Caputo calls Kearney a ‘‘truly great reader of Levinas’’ and notes that Kearney’s recent work marks a point where he ‘‘touches fingers’’ with Jacques Derrida, bringing together Kearney, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Levinas.78 Still, in spite of his sympathies for certain elements of the deconstructive position, Kearney’s position remains fundamentally committed to a relative account of otherness in the tradition of Ricoeur and Marcel. None of these philosophers thinks that we can speak meaningfully about ‘‘absolute’’ otherness independent of the similitude in which it is encountered. Any other with whom we can have a relationship must be an other that is relatively, not absolutely, other. Interestingly, a recent development in Kearney’s thought marks a point where the spirit of his thought seems quite close to Marcel himself (as opposed to Marcel’s influence as transmitted through the influence of Ricoeur). His recent trilogy of philosophy ‘‘at the limit’’ The Nature of Otherness
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not only makes a strong argument for a hermeneutic, relative account of otherness—which places it in the tradition of Ricoeur—it also points the way (back) toward concrete, embodied life via what Kearney calls the ‘‘4th Reduction’’ of phenomenology.79 Following Husserl’s transcendental or eidetic reduction, Heidegger’s ontological reduction, and Marion’s (and others’) dosological reduction, this 4th or ‘‘eschatological’’ reduction does not so much aim to abolish the first three as to radicalize and supplement them. This we call the eschatological reduction in that it leads us beyond the horizons of ‘‘essence,’’ ‘‘being’’ and ‘‘gift’’ back to existence, that is, back to the natural world of everyday embodied life where we may confront once again the other as prosopon. The 4th Reduction reverses the reversals and brings us right back to the beginning: the face-to-face of our everyday world.80 Although he acknowledges that this rallying cry may sound like Levinas to many of his readers, Kearney points out several important differences in his position. The eyes of Kearney’s prosopon are embodied, living, sensible, colored eyes and, as such, bear more resemblance to the haecceitas of Scotus than Levinas’s featureless, quasi-transcendental face. Moreover, while Levinas aims to direct us beyond being, Kearney’s position is a return to being, albeit from beyond being.81 Indeed, while the 4th Reduction may sound like Levinas to ears accustomed to the successes of Levinas’s account of otherness, to ears attuned to the parallel tradition that influences Kearney, the tradition of Ricoeur and Marcel, the 4th Reduction sounds not unlike secondary reflection. The 4th Reduction brings us back to ‘‘the natural world of everyday embodied life,’’ as does secondary reflection. ‘‘Roughly, we can say that where primary reflection tends to dissolve the unity of experience which is first put before it, the function of secondary reflection is essentially recuperative; it reconquers that unity.’’82 It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that Kearney’s affinities can be traced through Ricoeur to Marcel. He characterizes his own take on relative alterity as less a question of Hegelian synthesis [of the self and the other] than of multiple traversals between seeming incompatibles. It does not signal recourse to some speculative metaphysical system that would wrap opposites into some happy ending. Nor does it summon us to the call of a ‘‘Last God,’’ as Heidegger 224
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might have us believe. Nor, finally, need such translation revert to a model of scholastic compromise, setting out middle-range rules and then settling for the median mark. It is more a matter of gracious affinities. Constellations. Interlacings of alterities.83 ‘‘Constellations.’’ This evocative word, the very word used by Marcel to describe a non-totalizing collectivity of unique beings, indicates the closeness of Kearney’s thought to Marcel’s, at least in terms of the spirit with which each philosopher approaches the question of the otherness of the other.84 Of course, it would be false to say that the 4th Reduction is secondary reflection; Kearney has many influences other than Marcel. Husserl, Heidegger, and Marion are mentioned by name in the development of this 4th phenomenological Reduction, which may share the same spirit as secondary reflection, but is subject to greater philosophical rigor. I noted in chapter 3 that Marcel is a phenomenologist in a quite peculiar and qualified sense; strictly speaking he was not making use of even the first, transcendental reduction of the phenomenological movement proper. However, given what we know of Marcel’s philosophy, and the way in which that philosophy—or more precisely the spirit of that philosophy—may have influenced Kearney through Ricoeur, it is difficult to deny important similarities between the spirit of secondary reflection and this most recent phenomenological reduction. The Contemporary Landscape The value of this genealogical detour lies not only in showing the influence of Marcel and Levinas on contemporary questions of otherness, but also in the opportunity to draw out some possibilities inchoate in both philosophies. The original philosophical contributions of Ricoeur, Derrida, Caputo, and Kearney are made in the context of a commitment to either an absolute or a relative conception of otherness. Given this commitment, each of these four thinkers can be read in terms of drawing out the implications of one or the other kind of otherness. Where does the absolute otherness of Levinas’s thought lead us? What does Marcel’s insistence on relative alterity demand? Absolute otherness, we have seen, leads us from ‘‘other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other’’ to ‘‘tout autre est tout autre.’’ If the other is truly, wholly, absolutely other, and if otherness is constitutive of the other as other, it seems very difficult indeed The Nature of Otherness
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to avoid the progression to deconstruction’s claim that every other is wholly other. If otherness is absolute, Derrida and Caputo are spot on. Absolute otherness cannot but result in undecidability, substitutability, translatability, etc. Deconstruction is the logical result of the perspective that thinks otherness in absolute terms. Relative otherness, in contrast, asserts that there are aspects of the other that are other and aspects of the other that are somewhat recognizable or understandable (more on this in a moment). However, if these complex interlacings or blendings of otherness and similarity are to avoid falling into either the dogmatism of totalitizing thought or the undecidability of absolute otherness, any relative account of otherness must address how one is to understand the other without comprehending the other. Relative otherness calls for some kind of discernment, aided by what Kearney calls ‘‘acute hermeneutic vigilance,’’ in order to maintain the dynamic tension between these seeming incompossibles.85 It is in this spirit of discernment that both Ricoeur and Kearney draw on Aristotelian phronesis as a model for practical judgment. Relative otherness calls for interpretation. Insofar as deconstructive undecidability and discernment appear incompatible, we are led to the very cusp of the contemporary debate surrounding the otherness of the other. While there are many important participants in this debate, we will be well served, for the reasons noted above, by focusing on Kearney and Caputo (without, of course, forgetting Ricoeur, Derrida, Marcel, or Levinas). Although the dispute is lively it remains congenial, and I daresay that the potential for rapprochement that is (mostly) inchoate in the debate between Levinas and Marcel has found fuller expression in the debate between Kearney and Caputo. This is no doubt due in part to the differences that distinguish these thinkers from their predecessors: (1) Kearney’s openness to and familiarity with postmodernity in general and deconstruction in particular, which makes him sympathetic to some of its claims even when he finds them excessive, and (2) Caputo’s abiding interest in the religious aspects of deconstruction, which inclines him toward a specificity (the religious analogy) that is, perhaps, not present in other accounts of deconstruction. Nevertheless, rapprochement is not concordance and, despite the general spirit of de´tente that characterizes the development of these two positions from Levinas and Marcel, through Derrida and Ricoeur, to Caputo and Kearney, the underlying disagreement as to the nature of otherness remains a sticking point that leaves these two positions incommensurable. 226
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The position that otherness is absolute finds its expression in the deconstructive mantra, embraced by Caputo, that tout autre est tout autre. Although deconstruction allows a conceptual difference between the divine and the monstrous, it denies any phenomenological difference.86 The impossible is undecidable, endlessly substitutable, and infinitely translatable. Thus, to the question ‘‘khora or God,’’ Caputo answers: ‘‘our experiences of the two are not necessarily so widely divided, for in both cases we experience a certain confusion (Levinas), a kind of bedazzlement (Marion), or what Derrida and I . . . would call an ‘undecidability’ . . .’’87 In contrast, hermeneutic accounts of otherness as relative maintain that, while there is no One, True, Final interpretation of the other, the other is interpretable and some interpretations are better than others. Thus, Kearney maintains that ‘‘[t]here is no otherness so exterior or so unconscious . . . that it cannot be at least minimally interpreted by a self, and interpreted in a variety of different ways— albeit none of the absolute, adequate or exhaustive.’’88 There must be some difference between the bewildering alterity of monstrous injustice and the dazzling alterity of messianic justice and, if so, ‘‘surely it is important to tell the difference, even if it’s only more or less; and even if we can never know for certain, or see for sure, or have any definite set of criteria.’’89 So we see that the divergence that separates Marcel and Levinas, which hinges on the characterization of otherness as either relative or absolute, is far from a dead issue. On the contrary, the question of whether otherness is best characterized as absolute or relative is one that is thriving and of the utmost relevance to contemporary questions of ethics, politics, and theology. Moreover, we can now see the extent to which Levinas and Marcel have helped to shape the current debate, and the extent to which they continue to contribute to this debate. What is left then, having laid the groundwork for both positions, but to take a stand and choose between these two divergent approaches? Alterity, Similitude, Otherness We can better appreciate now, on the other side of this brief genealogy, the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) influence exerted by Emmanuel Levinas and Gabriel Marcel on the contemporary question of otherness. However, even as the distance between the posiThe Nature of Otherness
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tions championed by these two philosophers diminishes in the present-day dialogue between Kearney and Caputo, there remains a fundamental, irreconcilable difference that leaves us with a choice as we approach the question of otherness: Is otherness absolute or relative? The contemporary debate, as shaped by the philosophies of Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo, leaves us with an either/or precisely because absolute otherness is an all-or-nothing proposition. As soon as we speak in terms of absolutes, something either conforms or does not conform to the criteria in question. Either the other is absolutely other or it is not. It is my contention that we must endorse the latter claim: otherness is not absolute. Why? First, absolute otherness leads to what might be called ‘‘absolute aporias,’’ aporias that cannot be dealt with or even engaged. The hyperbole in which absolute accounts of otherness are expressed generates these absolute aporias, which has led others to accuse such accounts of paroxysm. In contrast, a relative, chiastic account of otherness avoids paroxysmal aporias. While relative otherness acknowledges aporias, it seeks to engage them, to work through them, or to traverse them via alternative interpretations.90 Simply put, absolute otherness is a nonstarter for epistemology, for ethics, and even for faith. Second, we can secure most, if not all, of the benefits of an absolute account of otherness with a properly formed account of relative otherness. Much of what absolute accounts of otherness seek to protect is worthy of protection. This is why I would say that, if absolute accounts of otherness are hyperbolic, the charge of paroxysm against them is itself hyperbolic. Any reasonably charitable reading reveals that there is much to be taken seriously in the deconstructive account, even though it is in need of moderation or supplementation. These two recurring issues, which could be summed up as the ‘‘excessive’’ and ‘‘unnecessary’’ hyperbole of absolute otherness, will be addressed in the three subsections that follow. Although I will address absolute otherness and relative otherness as general claims, the focus will tend toward the juxtaposition between deconstruction and hermeneutics. In the contemporary debate, absolute otherness is represented by deconstruction and relative otherness is represented by hermeneutics. While in one sense this seems to conflate the philosophies of Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo on the one hand and Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney on the other, the preceding discussion should indicate the degree to which this is legitimate. 228
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Otherness Is Chiastic First, we ought to reemphasize the distinction between relative otherness traditionally construed and relative otherness as I am using the term. Marcel and those philosophically aligned with him do not intend to imply that the otherness of the other is relative to me in the sense that it is determined by me or must conform to a system I have created, or to one of which I have comprehensive knowledge— otherness is precisely that which does not conform to my system. The point is rather that the otherness of the other is not complete or absolute; therefore, it might be helpful to think of relative otherness in terms of non-absolute otherness. Rejecting an all-or-nothing account of otherness, this position maintains that, while there may be some aspects of the other that are foreign and even absolutely obscure to the self, these aspects exist alongside others that are in some measure familiar. Moreover, the two are inextricably intertwined such that it is impossible to treat either aspect in isolation, except by way of abstraction. Second, while until now I have been using the terms ‘‘alterity’’ and ‘‘otherness’’ in a loose and more or less interchangeable fashion, for the sake of clarity it will be necessary to make explicit some distinctions implied in earlier chapters and differentiate between otherness and alterity. Similitude is that aspect of things, and others, that is in some way familiar or understandable. On the most basic level, this means that any other I encounter appears or manifests itself in some determinate way. It also means that meaningful communication with the other is possible, and justifiable, if provisional, judgments can be made about the other. Alterity is that aspect of things, and others, that is (absolutely) unfamiliar, alien, or obscure. There are always aspects of any other to which I have no clear or direct access. Otherness, then, is the chiastic relationship of alterity and similitude. Thus, qua alterity, the other is that which can reveal or bring about something new and unforeseen; however, qua similitude, the other is also susceptible to some measure, imperfect though it may be, of understanding. No other is wholly, absolutely other because any other with which or with whom we are in relationship is both other-qua-alterity and other-qua-similitude. This is not an easy resolution, nor is it comfortable or safe. Rather, it is a dynamic tension, wherein the push and pull of the two arms of the chiasmus never come to a final, comfortable rest—one that requires us to constantly adjust and reevaluate as we feel our way across uncertain ground. The Nature of Otherness
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Neither alterity nor similitude actually exists independently (for us). No other we experience or relate to is either completely foreign or perfectly intelligible. Alterity and similitude are always encountered together as aspects of otherness, the otherness in ourselves or the otherness of the other. Thus, Ricoeur maintains that selfhood and otherness ‘‘cannot [be] thought of without [each] other . . . instead one passes into the other,’’91 and Kearney’s goal is to ‘‘make the foreign more familiar and the familiar more foreign.’’92 Advocates of absolute otherness are certain to jump on the use of the parenthetical qualifier ‘‘for us,’’ asserting that absolute otherness ‘‘exists’’ as the other—using now-familiar phrases such as ‘‘tout autre est tout autre’’ and ‘‘Other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other’’93 —and, therefore, certainly does not ‘‘exist for us.’’ However, this would miss the point. Any other with whom we have, or could have, a relationship cannot be absolutely other. If there were such a thing as an other that is wholly, absolutely other, we would not know about it either directly or indirectly. Absolute otherness cannot surprise us, jolt us out of economic existence, call us into question, question the naı¨ve spontaneity of freedom, found freedom, found discourse, or any other such thing because otherness qua absolute alterity cannot be encountered, experienced, or revealed. Absolute otherness, being absolutely incommensurable with the world in which we perceive and think, would not register on our radar screens, so to speak, not even as a ‘‘trace.’’ As I noted above, being absolutely unaware of such an absolute other, we would not love it (as God) or fear it (as in the nocturnal menace of the il y a). We would not be called into question by its vulnerability or challenged by the undecidability of it. Moreover, we would not write philosophy books, even under erasure, or hold philosophical conferences about it, even to speak negatively or to unsay what we have said. Beyond the God of apophatic theology, beyond the impossible of Derrida’s deconstruction, otherness that is wholly, absolutely other is something that would go absolutely unnoticed, unmentioned, and unthought. However, it is important to distinguish, to some degree, Levinas from Derrida and Caputo on this point. Derrida’s ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ takes up this very issue, and Caputo returns to it in Prayers and Tears.94 Where Levinas tends to insist on otherness outside my horizons of experience, Derrida (and Caputo) prefer to speak in terms of otherness intruding on, disturbing, or shocking my horizons. ‘‘[T]he tout autre comes but it comes relative to a horizon of expectation which it shocks and sets back on its heels [because it 230
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is unexpected], instead of confirming and reinforcing this horizon in its complacency.’’95 This, it seems, indicates that Derrida and Caputo are in agreement with me. We only encounter otherness within our horizons—that is, as relatively other. We can only be surprised or instructed within these horizons. However, several crucial differences remain that prevent the deconstructive position from joining the hermeneutic one. Derrida’s otherness is always a`-venir; it never arrives. Hence the concept of ‘‘the impossible.’’ ‘‘Derrida is dreaming of what is not and never will be present, what is structurally to come (a`-venir).’’96 Thus, we seem to have a problem. If the tout autre does in fact arrive, it is no longer absolutely other because it must arrive and be experienced within our horizons. The tout autre that arrives is tout autre no more. However, if the tout autre is always a`-venir then it is, as Kearney puts it, ‘‘like waiting for Godot, not just in two acts but forever.’’97 If we look at deconstruction’s discussion of ‘‘pure phenomena’’ such as hospitality, we might allow that it is possible to dwell in a home leaving the doors and windows open to any other who might show up. One could even go so far as to sit with one’s back to the open door, insuring that any other who did arrive would do so unanticipated, unquestioned, and unchallenged. Nevertheless, even in this extreme case the fact remains that any other who arrives at the door, any other who enters the (not even ‘‘my’’ in this case) dwelling, cannot be absolutely other. If we encounter each other in the dwelling, the other is not absolutely other but relatively other, for she calls to me in the context of appearing in the dwelling in which I dwell. Beyond the fact that any other who arrives at the door cannot be absolutely other, there lies the question of whether such openness is always a virtue. Even Levinas and Derrida admit that we ought to question the stranger in the night, if only to protect the other others who are in our charge. We cannot respond to a call from absolute otherness because absolute otherness issues no call we could hear. As Kierkegaard pointed out, the call of the other—human or divine—can only be answered if it is heard, and it can only be heard if otherness is made relative rather than absolute. ‘‘Only in love is the different made equal, and only in equality or in unity is there understanding.’’98 Levinas’s own account of the relationship with the other is modeled on Kierkegaard’s; however, Levinas fails to acknowledge, as Kierkegaard does, that absolute otherness cannot enter into relation.99 Any other we relate to in any way—including the deferred relationship of diffe´rance The Nature of Otherness
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and the indeterminate faith of deconstruction—is always already relatively other. Absolute otherness can communicate nothing, not even, pace Levinas, Derrida and Caputo, its own alterity. However, this does not mean that we should toss out the baby with the bathwater. The contributions of Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo are important and useful. While absolute otherness can issue no call, otherness as the chiastic crossing of alterity and similitude can and does. Here lies the first of several important contributions made by philosophers who advocate for absolute otherness: it is the alterity (which they often call otherness) of the other that is capable of calling into question the egoism of the same and, in so doing, calls us toward an ethical life. Nevertheless, it is in the crossing with similitude, and only in this crossing, that we can encounter, hear, or be confronted with alterity. While Kierkegaard realized that it is otherness that calls into question the confident and self-assured egoism of the self, he also realized that in order for human beings to have any kind of relationship with (absolute) otherness, the alterity of the other would have to be reduced by some measure of similitude. The other must be(come) relatively other. Kierkegaard is well aware that a relationship with otherness runs the risk of destroying either the other or the self. How could the self encounter or relate to an other that is absolutely other? How could the other become similar to the self without destroying its very otherness? Either the alterity of the other is destroyed by being subsumed in comprehension by the self, or the self is destroyed by the overwhelming alterity of the other. Kearney sees a similar danger in the polarized climate of contemporary philosophy, which seems to offer a choice between a ‘‘traditional,’’ Grande Histoire account of otherness that leads to the destruction and enslavement of the other and a postmodern, absolute account of otherness that tends toward the destruction or enslavement of the self. What we ought to seek is a middle path between a ‘‘congenial fusion of horizons and [an] apocalyptic rupture of non-communion,’’ one that acknowledges the ‘‘difference between the self and other without separating them so schismatically that no relation at all is possible.’’100 What we need, as both Kierkegaard and Kearney realize, is an account of otherness that destroys neither the alterity of the other nor the self that relates to that other. Such an account is only possible in terms of a relatively other other. Of course, advocates of absolute otherness may attempt to slip this critique by asserting that I have changed the issue in differentiating otherness and alterity. It will be objected that Levinas and those 232
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philosophically aligned with him use alterity and otherness more or less interchangeably. Moreover, because some of these thinkers do acknowledge the fact that the other shows up as face, or trace, or eikon, they may well allow that ‘‘alterity’’ is revealed in concrete encounters with ‘‘otherness’’ without acknowledging that anything other than terminology has changed in the process. The face of the other and the messianisms inhabited by messianicity attest to the postmodern acknowledgement of the manifestation of the other, which certainly takes place within the horizons of the self. Levinas did not deny that the other ‘‘shows up,’’ that she has a body, that she feels hunger, etc., especially after the Derridian critique of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics.’’ These concrete aspects of the other, which might be called similitude, play an essential part in his philosophy. This is even more the case with Caputo, who is at pains to emphasize that the messianicity of the relationship with the tout autre is always found within concrete messianisms that it inhabits and haunts. There is no pure responsibility, no pure hospitality, and no true an-khora-ite. But even this response does not take seriously enough the necessity of alterity’s crossing with similitude. The alterity of the other is not independent of the similitude in which it is encountered; but the excessively hyperbolic language used by philosophers of absolute otherness implies, through its unbroken emphasis on the alterity of the other, such a distinction. For these thinkers, to be other is to be absolutely other, wholly other, other with an alterity constitutive of its content as other, etc. These formulations—especially the last one which appears to distinguish alterity from otherness and to posit alterity as the essence of otherness—indicate that it is the alterity of the other that is philosophically significant. Speaking in language reminiscent of Thomistic-Aristotelian substance and accidents— alterity being the substance that makes the other what it is (other) and similitude being the contingent and relatively insignificant accident of how the other reveals itself—the advocates of absolute otherness seem to imply that alterity is different than, independent of, and more important than similitude. Thus, while Levinas acknowledges various sorts of similitude, none of them is ethically significant. Similarity is a topic for morality, or politics, or justice. Kinship, insofar as it is ethically significant, is stated in ‘‘my responsibility before a face looking at me as absolutely foreign . . .’’101 Because advocates of absolute otherness tend to conflate otherness and alterity, even when they acknowledge that otherness must be encountered within the horizons of the self, the tone of the discourse The Nature of Otherness
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indicates that the coincidence of otherness (i.e., alterity) and similitude is necessary, but lamentable. A philosophy of absolute otherness seems at times to imply that alterity and similitude are not only different, but are also independent, existing side by side as in the case of a glass containing oil and water. Even if the glass of water is ‘‘contaminated’’ by the oil, they do not mix and are distinguishable from each other, even if their interface is messy.102 This mischaracterization is the result of the unique spirit of abstraction into which they have fallen. A better image of otherness would be that of water itself. To talk about a relationship with absolute alterity is something like talking about drinking hydrogen from a mountain spring. In one sense it makes sense, for in drinking the water I am drinking the hydrogen; however, in another equally important sense, it makes no sense, for I cannot drink the hydrogen without drinking the oxygen at the same time. I do not drink hydrogen; I do not drink oxygen; I drink water. Of course, the abstraction that allows us to focus on the hydrogen apart from the oxygen and apart from the water from which it is abstracted is useful on some level. However, to talk about ‘‘drinking hydrogen’’ generally obfuscates things, taking me away from the experience rather than taking me toward the experience and fostering an understanding of it. In a like manner, to talk about a relationship with the tout autre as if absolute alterity existed independently of its crossing with similarity is, unless the abstraction is clearly acknowledged as abstraction, a tactic that gets us farther from the truth of the experience rather than closer to it. While we cannot drink water without drinking both hydrogen and oxygen, this does not obviate the necessity or usefulness of looking at hydrogen or oxygen as distinct from the water. Likewise, the fact that we cannot encounter the other outside of the crossing of alterity and similitude, does not mean that it is wrong to talk about otherness or similitude abstracted from each other—as long as we keep in mind that it is an abstraction, and that such abstractions must be acknowledged if they are to illuminate rather than obfuscate the originary phenomenon or experience. However, if Levinas and the philosophers thinking in his wake have erred in overcompensating for the excesses of the Western philosophical tradition, we ought not return the favor by propelling the pendulum too far in the other direction. We cannot return to philosophy before Levinas, Derrida, or Caputo, nor should we want to. We cannot privilege either branch of the chiasmus—alterity or similitude—but have to acknowledge both as essential. As Kearney notes, ‘‘we disregard others not just by ignoring their transcendence but 234
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equally by ignoring their flesh-and-blood thereness.’’103 This is true whether we are speaking concretely, where there are clearly aspects of both alterity and similitude, or transcendentally. If alterity is, or resembles, a transcendental condition for the ethical relationship, it is no more so than similitude. If the alterity of the other plays a special role in conditioning the ethical aspect of ‘‘ethical relationship,’’ the similarity of the other plays an equally important role in conditioning the relational aspect of ‘‘ethical relationship.’’ Both speaking about alterity without reference to similarity and speaking about selfhood without reference to alterity are abstractions that fail to do justice to our experience of otherness. Ethics, Epistemology, and Otherness The position that otherness is relative has been under more or less constant attack since the publication of Levinas’s Totalite´ et infini. However, in the back and forth between advocates of absolute otherness and those of relative otherness, we can detect several common themes. One of the most frequent critiques of relative otherness—even in the well-intentioned, non-objective accounts of philosophers like Marcel—is that it arrives too late, so to speak, to glimpse the other. Levinas’s claim, and others like it, operates on a pre-epistemological, pre-ontological level, a level that conditions epistemology and ontology. To say that the other must show up to enter into relation with the same is to miss the point. Combining Levinasian and Derridian language, we might say that all accounts of relative otherness are preceded by an ‘‘an-archic’’ encounter with or relationship to absolute otherness that ‘‘haunts’’ the reciprocal, thematizing, logocentric relationship with relative otherness. There are numerous examples of this criticism. In his ‘‘Moral Selfhood: A Levinasian Response to Ricoeur on Levinas,’’ Richard A. Cohen asserts that Ricoeur’s critique of Levinas—which claims that the emphasis on absolute otherness is hyperbole that ends in the paroxysm of substitution—misses the point because it does not operate on a sufficiently fundamental ‘‘level.’’104 Likewise, Caputo cautions Kearney for thinking that it is possible to ‘‘get beyond’’ undecidability in a way that would allow us to distinguish between the absolute otherness of the divine and that of the demonic.105 The general claim here is that, while it is appropriate to speak of otherness in relative terms in certain cases (justice, politics, etc.), these relationships are secondary to a primary relationship with the other as tout autre. The Nature of Otherness
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There are several ways one might address this objection, including by arguing that absolute otherness is a simple impossibility, as I did in the previous section. However, given my contention that absolute, all-or-nothing accounts of otherness have at their core a valid philosophical concern, a second option appears. The an-archic priority of otherness is not something that philosophers of absolute otherness pulled out of a hat. There are reasons that these thinkers assert we must think otherness in absolute terms and benefits that accompany thinking otherness in these terms. If for a moment we look at philosophies of absolute otherness in general rather than any single doctrine, we are able to discern certain concerns common to philosophies that think otherness in absolute terms. What are such philosophies after? It cannot be Truth. Absolute otherness leads to undecidability, which undermines that goal—there is no ‘‘privileged access to The Secret.’’106 Indeed, ‘‘the secret is, there is no Secret.’’107 It cannot be the Good. The same undecidability undermines our ability to distinguish good from evil. Pure hospitality demands that we not ask anything of the other, even her identity. There are, I suggest, two spheres in which we might find an answer to this question. Ethically, characterizing otherness as absolute otherness seeks to protect the uniqueness of the other, and in so doing to reshape our assumptions about ethics and justice. Epistemologically, characterizing otherness as absolute otherness seeks recognition of the limitations of human knowing, which is always incomplete, imperfect, perspectival, contextual, etc., and, in some cases, seeks to rehabilitate faith as an alternative, ‘‘non-epistemic’’ epistemological category, so to speak.108 The concern is to insure that there is a degree of looseness or play within the tradition or system, to guard against ossification or closure. That the epistemological concern frequently serves the ethical concern can be seen in Derrida’s interest in hospitality, friendship, forgiveness, and similar themes. Given these two laudable goals, the relevant question is: do we need absolute otherness in order to achieve either one? What if a relative account of otherness could satisfy the concerns that lead philosophers to think of otherness in absolute terms? What if relative otherness could offer the same benefits without the obstacles and drawbacks? In fact it is not at all self-evident that we need the extreme hyperbole of absolute otherness in order to get the benefits that Levinas, Derrida, and Caputo want. Certainly one way to avoid the excesses of totalizing ontology is to subvert ontology itself and develop an ethical responsibility for or respond-ability to the other to take the place 236
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of ontology as prima philosophia. Likewise, epistemology can be undermined by undecidability in favor of a radical translatability and substitutability. But are these strategies the only ways to safeguard the ethical and epistemological payoff of absolute otherness? We have seen some of the difficulties associated with thinking otherness in absolute, all-or-nothing terms. Are these philosophies of radical otherness the only ways to safeguard ethics and to reign in logocentrism? Ethics First, let’s address the ethical concern. Have we been ‘‘duped’’ by traditional moralities that are in fact immoral or that at the very least fail to understand the ethical ground on which morality is based?109 Does the other need to be absolutely other in order to be uniquely other, or in order to escape the domination of the same? Are not the uniqueness and independence of the other preserved equally well by the crossing of alterity and similitude? Even if something of the other is understood, such a crossing affirms that complete understanding of the other is categorically out of the question. As we saw earlier, absolute otherness actually has a leveling and homogenizing effect on the uniqueness of the other.110 If all others are absolutely other (tout autre est tout autre) my relationship with any other ought to be identical to my relationship with any other other. All others are the same as far as I am concerned. While this may have some ethical advantage in terms of loving all others as imago dei, or in terms of social justice, or in terms of removing (at least philosophically) the foundations of racism and nationalism, it also eliminates any basis for distinguishing between others. In certain cases this may be laudable. However, it should be clear that in other cases it is disastrous. For example, we ought distinguish between murder and manslaughter through negligence. Likewise, we have to distinguish between the various marginalized, different, unloved, un-included groups that deconstruction rightly exhorts us to love and include, and to differentiate between justified and unjustified exclusions. In each case, only confronting each other as a unique individual allows us to do so. The concrete particularity of an individual, her proper name, her haecceitas, requires distinguishing the individual other from other others; it requires that we do justice to both the transcendence and the concrete particularity of the other.111 This position does not require us to maintain that such distinctions are black and white, nor does it The Nature of Otherness
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imply that such judgments are programmable and without anxiety. However, it does maintain that there are some relevant, discernable differences in play. Ethically, the uniqueness of and respect for the other are better preserved by relative otherness than by absolute otherness. Absolute otherness is a leveling account of others. Relative otherness—the unique crossing of alterity and similitude in any other that we encounter—truly preserves the uniqueness of the other, not the homogenizing distance of absolute otherness. It is precisely the uniqueness of the other that requires both alterity and similitude. An exclusive emphasis on either aspect of the chiasmus leads to a situation in which the other is either absorbed into the familiarity of the system or homogenized to the point of complete diffusion in a dark sea of alterity. Advocates of absolute otherness assume that any account of otherness in relative terms must by default do violence to the alterity of the other and so, in the name of ethics and justice, they place the emphasis on the alterity of the other at the expense of the similarity of the other. ‘‘[T]o love is to respect the invisibility of the other . . .’’112 However, a relative account of otherness need not ignore the transcendent alterity of the other. Marcel’s image of constellations, of non-totalizing relationships between beings that are neither absolutely heterogeneous nor fundamentally homogeneous, is able to acknowledge similitude without sacrificing alterity. The self and the other participate in a relationship, and this implies that the distinction between what is ‘‘in me and what is before me’’ breaks down to some extent.113 Nevertheless, [t]he other as other exists for me only insofar as I am open to him (insofar as he is a thou), [and] I am only open to him insofar as I cease to form a circle with myself within which I somehow place the other, or rather, the idea of the other; for in so doing, the other becomes the idea of the other, and the idea of the other is no longer the other as such, but is the other qua related to me, as fragmented, as parceled out or in the process of being parceled out . . .114 Rather than simply fulfilling a role in my system, the other person remains her own ‘‘center,’’ even as she participates with me in a relationship of presence. This relationship of simultaneous proximity and absence achieves exactly the same ethical goal desired by Levinas and other philosophers of absolute otherness—absolving the other from absorption into a totality—but without resorting to the hyper238
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bole of absolute otherness. Openness toward the other achieves a measure of communion, but beings who are their own centers ‘‘[cannot] be [seen] as simple unities in a totality.’’115 Epistemology It is equally dubious that the second, epistemological concern requires an all-or-nothing account of the other as absolutely other. It is not obvious on the face of it that the other must be absolutely unknowable in order to be incomprehensible. Nor is it clear that all knowledge, especially imperfect knowledge, leads to ‘‘programmability,’’ obviating the need for faith. In fact, the association of knowledge and comprehension is a generally modern notion, one that postmodern thought has not sufficiently overcome precisely because of its obsessive concern with distancing itself from the Enlightenment emphasis on reason and knowledge. That is, in rejecting overly optimistic Enlightenment confidence in the power of reason, postmodernity has bought into the modern conception of knowledge. Only recently has postmodern thought begun to take seriously alternative epistemological strategies. The common postmodern view still demonstrates a fairly allergic reaction to talk of ‘‘knowledge’’ or ‘‘understanding.’’ Of course, the visual-representational model for knowing has premodern roots, as Plato’s ‘‘Analogy of the Sun’’ illustrates: ‘‘as the good is in the intelligible region with respect to intelligence and what is intellected, so the sun is in the visible region with respect to sight and what is seen.’’116 However, despite its ancient origin, it is the phenomenological movement that adopts the visual metaphor for knowledge and through its influence makes this model the preferred metaphor for knowledge in contemporary (Continental) thought. ‘‘It is Husserl who transforms relations into correlatives of a gaze that fixes them and takes them as contents.’’117 Levinas’s own phenomenological training, as well as his admiration for both Heidegger and Husserl, causes him to view the Western tradition through the lens of this dominant contemporary metaphor for knowledge.118 In response, Levinas draws the attention of contemporary philosophy to the oral-aural metaphor for ‘‘knowledge’’ in the prophetic tradition of the Torah. Nevertheless, there are numerous examples between Jerusalem and Freiburg that speak to non-visual, non-totalizing, non-comprehending ways of ‘‘knowing.’’ Modernity and postmodernity share a common assumption in their vision of what it means to be human. . . . For both, it is The Nature of Otherness
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intellectual rather than spiritual activity that defines rationality. Indeed, spiritual activity lies, practically by definition, beyond reason. Accordingly, religion deals with what we cannot understand. This sort of conclusion springs from a too-secularized view of human reason . . . Postmodernist philosophers attempt to overcome the binary, either/or approach of modernity. However, because postmodern thinkers too often share the basic assumptions of modernity about what it means to be rational, in their response they struggle with the issue of transcendence, either for scientific knowledge or for knowledge of God. Thus, in rejecting the absolutism of science, postmodernism can too easily reject any higher dimension accessible to human reason and reflection. All perspectives are equal and equally horizontal.119 Both modernity and postmodernity tend to equate ‘‘knowing’’ and ‘‘representational thinking,’’ although the former sees this equivalence as illustrative and the latter feels it is essentially deceptive and violent. However, in remaining committed to a representational model of knowledge, postmodernity develops an unhealthy allergy to alternative modes of knowing and fails to consider adequately the possibility of knowledge other than that described by visual metaphors, such as narrative or poetic understanding. While such alternatives still operate within language and therefore do not completely escape the limitations of our facticity, their alternative strategies for experiencing and communicating are substantially different from those of visual, representational modes of understanding. This allergic relationship to knowledge causes a blind spot in the postmodern view that fails to do justice to non-syllogistic, inductive, or practical kinds of knowing. If it is true that human knowing is incapable of rising to an apodictic, comprehensive God’s-eye view of the other—to say nothing of the Good, the Beautiful, or the True—it is also true that not all types of knowledge make such claims. An Alternative Offering Might there be philosophies that avoid both the main thrusts of these ethical and epistemological objections and the problems associated with the solution of absolute otherness? Before we correct the excesses of the tradition by pushing the philosophical pendulum to the opposite but equally excessive extreme, we should consider other 240
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possibilities, seeking a more balanced path between philosophies of totality and those of absolute otherness. We do not need a radically heterocentric philosophy in order to overcome the traditional autocentric modes of thought that do violence to the other; polycentrism can accomplish the ethical and epistemological goals of philosophies of absolute otherness without the hyperbole and paroxysm with which they have been charged. It was Ricoeur who, in a controversial move, accused Levinas of hyperbole to the point of paroxysm for insisting on the absolute otherness of the other.120 This (in)famous accusation is nothing if not direct, and is considered by some to be too sharp a criticism.121 In challenging Ricoeur’s critique, Cohen points out that not all hyperbole is bad or misleading. Hyperbole can be either bad or good, depending on whether it employs exaggeration as caricature or exaggeration as prophecy.122 Ricoeur does make a similar distinction but he does not, wrongly on Cohen’s view, think Levinas’s hyperbole is of the legitimate kind. In response, Cohen points out that Levinas’s hyperbole is precisely the prophetic sort, because it is intended to communicate the excess of otherness and the priority of goodness over being. Ethical language actually requires hyperbole. Fair enough. Speaking of otherness requires a sort of hyperbole, and in fact both the excess of the other and the priority of goodness over being ought to remain important topics in philosophizing about the other. Derrida and Caputo follow Levinas in this, and, I would argue, Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney are in agreement as well. The question is whether the otherness of the other is excessive to the point of admitting no common ground whatsoever (caricature) or excessive to the point of preserving some principle element of unknowability and mystery (prophecy). The former leads to what I have called absolute aporias, aporias that not only frustrate neat and tidy solutions, but also frustrate any attempt to engage them. The latter, while it may encounter aporias, moves through them by considering alternative interpretations or narrative accounts, bridging them partially via the ‘‘multiple traversals’’ of which Ricoeur and Kearney speak. Marcel, Ricoeur, Kearney, and similar philosophers of relative otherness do not arrive ‘‘too late’’ to catch the relationship with the absolutely other. There is no such relationship. There is no relationship with absolute otherness, not even an an-archic or transcendental one, prior to the encounter and relationship with the relatively other other. The ‘‘level’’ that the philosophies of relative otherness are accused of missing is not prior or more fundamental; it is a hyperbolic The Nature of Otherness
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abstraction that comes after the encounter with the other, not before.123 Whether that hyperbole is good and prophetic or bad, exaggerated, and paroxysmal depends largely on whether we understand that it is an abstraction. As abstraction, the so-called absolute otherness of the other ought to be followed by a move that undoes the abstraction, returning us to the concrete, embodied life in which that initial encounter takes place. If this second, recuperative move does not take place, absolute otherness is hypostatized, which results in a misleading account of otherness that is unnecessarily exaggerated hyperbole, if not paroxysm. Although the uniqueness and ethical priority of the other may require some degree of hyperbole, the use of such hyperbole for securing the ethical priority of the other would be much less paroxysmal were it not achieved via an account of otherness that flirts with a sort of nihilism. Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney are concerned, each in his own way, with the ethical priority of the other. However, philosophies of relative otherness distinguish between ethical priority and (absolute) epistemological undecidability, and affirmation of the former does not require an excessive or dogmatic version of the latter. It is the too-narrow and generally modern view of knowledge accepted by Levinas and others that leads them, ironically, to apply their critique more broadly than is appropriate. Adriaan Peperzak, for example, writes: I personally believe that Levinas’s critique of what he calls ‘‘ontology’’ can be expressed in another, somewhat less aporetic way. The philosophical theories of his work, especially Hegel’s systematics and Heidegger’s thought, do not exhaust the possibilities of ontology. It is perhaps true that the Western—or the modern—tradition of thought has neglected, forgotten, or suppressed the otherness of autrui . . .124 . . . [however], this does not mean that ontology is exhausted or is essentially incapable of taking the neglected phenomena into consideration.125 Later, addressing the critique of ontotheology by Levinas and others, Peperzak points out that a ‘‘careful reading of Plotinus, Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Bonaventure, and Kant—to name only a few pillars of Western spirituality—shows that they have never seen the transcendent as the highest of all beings.’’126 If Tertullian was on to something in pointing out that Greek philosophy and JudeoChristian revelation combined in ways that frequently muddied the 242
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water, it is nevertheless also true that many philosophers were able to find novel ways to speak philosophically about transcendence. If we insist on calling such thinkers ‘‘ontotheological’’ we should keep in mind that they ‘‘dedicated the utmost energy to showing that the ‘theion’ could not be grasped by the patterns of ontology, and that there was infinitely more difference between God and phenomenal being than between a highest being and the rest, just as there was an infinite abyss between God and reason . . .’’127 Jeffrey Kosky makes a similar point in his Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, asking why Levinas’s ethical critique of totality, effective though it may be, is heralded as the unique corrective to other phenomenological accounts of subjectivity. [I want] to pose a question that I believe is not asked frequently enough when reading Levinas. To the degree that it reaches an ultimate figure of the subject where phenomena appear, Levinas’s phenomenology constitutes a first philosophy. However, it is not entirely clear why this subject has to be thought in terms of ethics. When Levinas claims ‘‘no language other than ethics could be equal to the paradox that phenomenology enters’’ when it practices a reduction to the ultimate figure of subjectivity, one should immediately wonder: why no language but ethics? What is so special about ethical language that it can relieve phenomenology in this way? Might there be another horizon in which the subject is structured in ways similar to that of responsibility such that it too could play the role of nonoriginary origin? . . . I suggest that there is no reason why the new phenomenological ultimate needs to be described in ethical terms. The same figure of the subject could be presented in existential terms . . .128 This point is brought home in a particularly relevant way for our present inquiry when Kosky, after arguing for a fundamental structural similarity between Heidegger’s Dasein and Levinas’s accused and responsible subject, locates the key difference between the two in the different way each relates to death.129 The relationship to death as either ‘‘my ownmost possibility’’ or as ‘‘the death of the other’’ is the fundamental difference between Heidegger and Levinas, between existential subjectivity and ethical subjectivity. However, if this is true, Marcel presents an interesting case insofar as he is unabashedly ontological, and so one might think Heideggerian, but his concern with death clearly lies with the death of the ‘‘loved other.’’ The Nature of Otherness
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Perhaps Levinas’s legitimate concerns with Heideggerian ontology, and his confessed ‘‘incessant’’ attention to Sein und Zeit, might have blinded him to the transcendent possibilities inherent in Marcel’s (and others’) ontology. I noted above the curious blind spot Levinas seems to have for Marcel’s own critique of Heideggerian Sein zum Tode, a critique that Levinas not only shares, but one he acknowledges as central to his philosophy. If Marcel, an overtly ontological philosopher, can come around to the insight that is ‘‘fundamental’’130 to Levinas’s own ethical philosophy and forms the ‘‘basis of responsibility,’’131 perhaps there are other overlooked philosophers in the tradition who also tap into transcendent, ethical, ontological possibilities. Is all ontology inherently totalizing? Might not Marcel’s unsystematic and other-regarding critique of indisponibilite´, pride, despair, and self-centered philosophies provide such an alternative ontology, such an existential ethics? Doesn’t Marcel’s beautiful image of constellations avoid the trap of a modern, objective view of knowledge in a way as radical as, perhaps more radically than, Levinas’s? Relative Otherness and Absolute Otherness in the Contemporary Debate The contemporary debates surrounding the question of otherness take on several forms, but given the way in which Levinas and Marcel have influenced these debates, the most interesting and illustrative conflict is that between hermeneutics and deconstruction. Of course, neither of these movements offers a monolithic system—for example, Caputo thinks of one aspect of his work as a hermeneutics ‘‘more radically conceived’’—but for our purposes we only need consider that the former thinks otherness in relative terms while the latter insists on the absolute otherness of the other. In one sense, we can think of deconstruction as the result of adopting Levinas’s perspective on otherness in the postmodern situation of paralogy. It is this dual affinity that transforms Levinas’s ‘‘other with an alterity constitutive of the very content of the other’’ into deconstruction’s ‘‘tout autre est tout autre.’’ It has been frequently emphasized that deconstruction is not destruction pure and simple, but more of a de-construction that unravels and analyzes a text. However, having undermined the meanings and significations within the text, what are we to do? We could try reconstructing the text ‘‘prior’’ to deconstruction—prior in the sense of prior to our own conscious deconstructing of the text—but how 244
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could we place any faith in the meanings of such a text, which would now appear arbitrary?132 This is no second naı¨vete´. Without a subsequent method (such as secondary reflection) of reweaving the text with our new ‘‘post’’-deconstructive understanding, we are left with an unraveled tapestry, a pile of pretty thread. Alternatively we could keep weaving, unraveling, and reweaving the thread, but subsequent tapestries are merely different than previous ones and we have no way of meaningfully comparing them to each other. In any case, postmodernity emphasizes and valorizes the unraveling rather than the weaving or reweaving. As Jameson notes in his forward to The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard’s ultimate vision of science and knowledge [is] a search, not for consensus, but precisely for ‘‘instabilities,’’ as a practice of paralogism, in which the point is not to reach agreement but to undermine from within the very framework in which the previous ‘‘normal science’’ had been conducted.133 This observation could be applied equally well to deconstruction. The emphasis is placed squarely on deconstructing the narrative of the Grande Histoire, without much thought as to the benefit, legitimacy, or veracity of the resulting petites histoires—the point is deconstruction, not reconstruction. Calling into question unreflective assent to traditional systems of knowledge, belief, culture, or language is certainly useful; indeed, it is necessary. Deconstruction is a legitimate part of a mature and critical evaluation of one’s beliefs and assumptions. However, many postmodern philosophers follow in the footsteps of Lyotard in asserting, or at least implying, that deconstruction itself is the point of the exercise, rather than a legitimate moment in the (ongoing) reevaluation of our assumptions and convictions. This exclusive focus on absolute otherness and deconstruction leads to a situation in which paralogy is perhaps overstated.134 As Lyotard is discussing a ‘‘pragmatics of knowledge,’’ it is appropriate to note the relevance to this discussion of a distinction made by William James. While James agrees that truth is a moving target, subject to reevaluation and revision as the context in which it is applied changes, he also makes an important distinction between two epistemological impulses: avoiding error and seeking truth. There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion,—ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown The Nature of Otherness
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very little concern. We must have the truth; and we must avoid error.—these are our first and great commandments as wouldbe knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth A, we escape as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A.135 The problem with fueling one’s deconstructive or pragmatic skepticism with the impulse to avoid error rather than the impulse to seek truth is simply that it will not get you anywhere. Skepticism is useful; however, elevated to the level of first commandment it tends to be something of a nonstarter. Philosophies of absolute otherness are fueled by just such a desire to avoid epistemological or ethical error. They do not want to assert knowledge of the other improperly or to interact with the other in such a way as to do violence to the otherness of the other. Ironically, because we cannot avoid judging the other (‘‘undecidability is not indecision’’) and all relationships with others are in fact relationships with relativized others (‘‘one can see nothing without thematization’’136), philosophies of absolute otherness reduce all relationships with others to ‘‘betrayals’’ that do ‘‘violence’’ to the other. In contrast, philosophies of relative otherness tend to be motivated by a desire for understanding and, therefore, by the motivation to seek truth rather than to avoid error. In seeking understanding of otherness, such philosophies are capable of seeking truth or goodness, even if they are never completely or definitively grasped. Moreover, if we go about things with proper humility and an appreciation of our limitations, seeking truth is entirely capable of bringing about some measure of understanding without compromising the integrity of the otherness of the other. Not all understanding is violent. Of course, seeking truth and possessing truth are different matters. None of the philosophers of relative otherness whom we have examined claim to have a certain or complete grasp of the True or the Good. Nevertheless, each tends to operate with the spirit that seeking truth is at least as important as avoiding error. And, as the passage from James points out, while seeking to avoid error will rarely if ever get us the truth, seeking truth (or goodness) also helps us to avoid error. Philosophers of absolute otherness will no doubt say that it is the very existence of Truth that deconstruction and like-minded philoso246
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phies put into question. But what is being claimed here? Are we questioning the existence of truth or our ability to lay claim to it? The Enlightenment model would have us believe that truth exists and that we can have access to it. ‘‘Sapere Aude!’’ is the motto with which Kant exhorts us to free ourselves.137 In stark contrast, deconstruction claims that there is no truth, or are no truths that can be compared and evaluated against each other in a meaningful way. ‘‘The secret is . . . there is no Secret.’’138 However, between these two positions lies the possibility that there is in fact truth, but our access to it is imperfect. While our grasp of the truth can be better or worse, it is never absolute or comprehensive. We never get a final interpretation or the full closure of the system. Such a middle path seeks to avoid relativism and determinism on the one hand (more on this in a moment) and dogmatism on the other. As we have been looking at a pragmatics of knowledge, one example of such a claim is C. S. Peirce’s assertion that there is a difference between knowing something and knowing that we know it.139 Peirce optimistically asserts that there is truth and that we will one day grasp it: ‘‘The opinion that is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.’’140 On this model we will know what truth and reality are once we reach consensus and not before. If we remove the too-confident teleology from this assertion, we might affirm that there is truth out there and that we are capable of understanding aspects of it, although we are not ‘‘fated’’ to grasp it and we can move closer or farther from it. Such a middle path seems to me well suited to a hermeneutic account of otherness. It is meaningful to talk about the true and the good, and while we are incapable of knowing either perfectly, this does not alter the fact that we can understand something of each. Moreover, while the task of understanding the true and the good is open-ended and subject to ongoing reinterpretation, our partial understanding is enough to make some limited but nevertheless legitimate claims about truth and goodness. If it is true that ‘‘there are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in [our] philosoph[ies],’’141 this does not mean that we cannot say anything accurate about heaven or earth, reducing our lives to ‘‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’’142 Indeed, what counts as ‘‘knowledge’’ or ‘‘understanding’’? What amount of certitude is the critical mass for legitimately saying something is true or for saying we understand something? Apodictic, a The Nature of Otherness
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priori certainty? Mathematic (deductive) proof? Scientific (inductive) proof? The deconstructive account seems to imply that anything short of apodictic, tautological knowledge (perhaps even that) is open to theoretical doubt and, therefore, saturated with undecidability. However, if there are no criteria under which it is proper to say we ‘‘know’’ something, then we should just do away with all formulations of ‘‘to know,’’ which would end in relativism or nihilism. Along with diffe´rance, khora, and the impossible, undecidability is one of the quasi-concepts most frequently associated with deconstruction. Undecidability refers to the structural indeterminacy of our knowledge, which on deconstruction’s account becomes the motivation for placing very severe limitations on knowledge in order to make expansive room for faith. Of course, faith and the question of the other go hand in hand; however, the absolute otherness of the other on which deconstruction insists leads to an equally absolute undecidability. Again, Everything about deconstruction requires that we let the tout autre tremble in undecidability, in an endless, open-ended, indeterminable, undecidable translatability, or substitutability, or exemplarity, where we are at a loss to say what is an example of what, what is a translation of what.143 Further, while we ‘‘cannot say what is a translation of what . . . the point is that it does not matter.’’144 Of course, this makes it seem as if undecidability is merely a way of putting off deciding; that is, undecidability is nothing more than philosophically sophisticated indecisiveness, the vacillation of Hamlet. However, Caputo asserts—and reasserts in answer to the objections of Kearney and others—that ‘‘undecidability is not indecision.’’145 Rather, undecidability is the condition for the possibility of decision, and for faith.146 Decisions are only required when we are not certain of which course to take. Faith comes into play precisely where we cannot know. In the same vein, he clarifies that infinite translatability ‘‘does not say that everything can be translated but that translation cannot be stopped.’’147 In other words, infinite translatability does not mean that anything can mean anything else, that good can be evil or that justice can be injustice, but that the messianic justice of the impossible is always open, subject to never-ending translation. However, if deconstruction is concerned with an open-ended translation of justice—but one that, nevertheless, will never be translated into injustice—it has fallen into the very ‘‘double bind/double save’’ of which 248
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it accuses apophatic theology.148 Just as negative theologians know very well that it is God of whom they can say nothing, that all their negations are in the service of a higher affirmation, deconstruction appears to be already oriented toward justice, hospitality, and generosity when it sets about deconstructing the Grand Narrative. While there is a ‘‘risk’’ that the viens of deconstruction can be ‘‘co-opted into the rallying call of the worst violence,’’ in the end some things, such as justice, are not deconstructable. Deconstruction’s ‘‘religion’’ is not really ‘‘without religion’’ after all.149 And if deconstruction is a ‘‘faith’’ that has already sided with a determinate ethical position—for example, one that advocates hospitality (Derrida) or civility (Caputo) or justice (both)—then it becomes more difficult to grasp the coherence of deconstruction’s critique of less ‘‘radical’’ forms of hermeneutics. However, the internal coherence of deconstruction and undecidability aside, there are several problematic aporias generated by thinking otherness in absolute, all-or-nothing terms. Building on my claim that absolute otherness leads to the assertion that tout autre est tout autre and, sooner or later, to the desert of khora and undecidability, I would like to point out two related and disturbing implications flowing from an absolute conception of otherness. If deconstruction’s account of otherness (tout autre est tout autre) and undecidability (we cannot say what is a translation of what, but the point is it does not matter) is right, I find it very difficult indeed to see how it avoids relativism (that is, there is no really legitimate reason for choosing A rather than B), determinism (that is, I choose A rather than B only because of the circumstances into which I have been thrown), or both. Of course, these charges are not new and I do not mean to imply that absolute otherness necessarily results in philosophies that are overtly relativistic or deterministic; rather, absolute otherness encourages a much easier, but equally dangerous, covert or ‘‘soft’’ relativism and determinism. Soft Relativism If undecidability does decide (and Caputo’s arguments along with common sense have led me to believe that deconstruction does in fact decide, if for no other reason than we cannot avoid making some sort of judgment about the other), it does so without a real reason, without why. Deconstruction judges because it must rather than because it should. Deconstruction views judgment as a (unfortunate) necessity rather than as a (fortunate) gift. Here, judgment is a necessity rather The Nature of Otherness
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than a virtue, and deconstruction can never quite bring itself to make a virtue of this necessity. This, however, flirts dangerously with relativism. As Kearney points out in his On Stories, We all know objective truth is not obtainable . . . but we must still believe that objective truth is obtainable; or we must believe that it is 99 per cent obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we must believe that 43 per cent objective truth is better than 41 per cent. We must do so because if we don’t we’re lost, we fall into beguiling relativity, we value one liar’s version as much as another liar’s, we throw up our hands at the puzzle of it all, we admit that the victor has the right not just to the spoils but also to the truth.150 Deconstruction is not a hard relativism, and neither Derrida nor Caputo is himself a relativist. A deconstructive ethics does not say or claim that all positions are equally valid, because it has chosen and repeatedly affirms one position rather than another. Caputo and Derrida invariably speak of undecidability in ethical terms of justice, hospitality, and generosity. However, if deconstruction does not overtly embrace a hard relativism, it covertly supports a soft, but still dangerous, version of relativism. That is, it does not believe that there is any real warrant for choosing A over B and, therefore, must acknowledge that choosing either A or B is equally [in]valid. Even if deconstruction does not claim that all positions are equally valid, if there is no reason for choosing A over B—other than those reasons relating to my facticity, my being born in a certain time and place— the effect is the same. Soft Determinism The soft relativism of undecidability leads to a kind of soft determinism precisely because there is no reason for choosing A over B other than those reasons relating to my being born in a certain time and place, into a certain tradition and culture, with a particular language, etc. Of course I believe that I am the product of my environment, my culture, my tradition(s), and my history—but I am not merely that. I believe in justice because my tradition believes (in word if not in deed) in justice, but not merely because of my tradition. I believe in justice because I have thought about it, considered it, spoken to others about it, heard stories about it, told stories about it, and, especially, because I have seen injustice. Deconstruction threatens to 250
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leave me in a kind of cultural determinism where the only thing that leads me to affirm A over B is the tradition and circumstances into which I am thrown. It is frequently pointed out that even though we believe certain things, we have to acknowledge that if we had been born elsewhere, ‘‘elsewhen,’’ or otherwise, we would believe other things with equal fervor. Well, yes and no. Of course our beliefs are culturally conditioned; however, that does not mean that they are culturally determined in the manner of a Greek tragedy.151 If deconstruction implies the latter, it must contend with several objections. First, we would have to come up with a convincing explanation for conversion to an ‘‘alien’’ culture or belief. We all know examples of people who overcome or transcend their traditions in substantial ways—I certainly do—without feeling the need to claim that such people actually step outside their traditions to view them from some neutral and objective perspective. How would we explain radical ‘‘paradigm shifts’’ in ethics and politics? Or our ability to reject what we have been taught to love, or come to love what we have been taught to hate? It might be said that we never choose a new interpretation or new narrative in a vacuum, that we always operate within a web of dominant and marginal narratives. Conversions and paradigm shifts are merely the result of choosing to affirm a secondary or marginal narrative over the dominant one.152 However, such a claim simply pushes the question back another step. How can we convincingly explain conversion experiences from the dominant narrative to a marginalized narrative in the cases of persons to whom the dominant narrative is congenial? On what basis would such a person possibly choose the marginal narrative when the former is more universally accepted and believed, easier to accommodate oneself to, politically and personally safer, etc.? Second, I suspect that deconstruction does, as Kearney notes, protest too much. If undecidability really leaves us without landmarks in the desert of khora, in which we are at a loss to say what is an example of what, why is it that the examples that Caputo and Derrida unfailingly use are ethical examples? Why is absolute otherness ethical, just, generous, hospitable, or responsible, to name just a few of the values that deconstruction uses to characterize the impossible? Why not equally vicious, unjust, greedy, inhospitable, or selfish?153 Is Caputo a kind and generous man only because of his culture, tradition(s), upbringing, education, etc.?154 Or are there further reasons The Nature of Otherness
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that his passion for the impossible is an ethical rather than an unethical one? Unless we are willing to embrace a fairly robust kind of determinism—which would be nothing less than the very programmability that deconstruction so reviles—we must acknowledge that there are reasons (some more valid than others) that we assert that A is better, more just, or more ethical than not-A, or than B. Failing to do so undermines the very concern with civility, justice, and ethics that deconstruction claims to love. Of course we can say anything we want, including that everything is absolutely undecidable; but, as Peirce notes, just because we can say something or imagine something, does not mean we can doubt or believe it. Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business.155 A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian [or Derridian] maxim. Let us not doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.156 Although we can imagine almost anything, it is impossible to doubt certain things. Of course, such a claim walks a fine line between dismissing affected Cartesian doubt on the one hand and allowing, or worse encouraging, an unreflective or smug certainty concerning those matters we do not doubt ‘‘in our hearts’’ on the other hand. Let it not be said that philosophies of relative otherness always result in such unreflective complacency. There is a position between ‘‘triumphalism, dogmatism [and] the illusion that we have been granted secret access to the Secret’’ and the always hyperbolic, at times spurious skepticism that issues from absolute otherness.157 While the passion of deconstruction may indeed decide and commit itself to some historically determinate messianism, to some more or less concrete system of ethics, or to a particular ethical value (e.g., justice, hospitality, or civility), there is no real reason to commit to one value rather than its opposite. Although I may judge that some action is ethical—say, for example, stopping a cold-blooded murder—there are no ultimately justifiable reasons for choosing this ‘‘ethical’’ ‘‘perspective’’ rather than some an-ethical perspective such as that taken by the pseudonymous Felix Sineculpa of Caputo’s Against Ethics, who writes, ‘‘Auschwitz is not Evil . . . Auschwitz is 252
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not a fact but a perspective . . . There is no Evil here, just stronger and weaker forces . . .’’158 Now, in all fairness, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this is not Caputo’s position. Felix is a ‘‘dramatis persona for Zarathustra, who is in turn a dramatis persona for Nietzsche (I suppose).’’159 Caputo, good man that he is, insists that Felix is nothing more than another ‘‘perspective’’ that ‘‘haunts’’ his days and nights.160 Haven’t we all experienced the temptation to nihilism? Nevertheless, as merely one perspective among others, it is very difficult to discern why this option is less virtuous or true than others. This is especially true when one considers that Caputo emphasizes, in a recent article, that we must allow that two good people may well do the opposite thing in a given circumstance.161 Merold Westphal points out that ‘‘nothing about deconstruction requires us to side (as I think Derrida himself does) with Levinas against Nietzsche’’162 or, I might add, with Caputo’s Johanna de Silencio against his Felix Sineculpa.163 However, this begs the question of why Derrida and Caputo ceaselessly do side with the themes one would traditionally call ‘‘good’’ rather than those one would call ‘‘evil.’’ Is this merely a factically contingent personal choice that can be reduced to a merely factically contingent personal faith? If so, why exhort others? Why hospitality rather than isolationism, colonialism, slavery, or genocide? On what basis? Shouldn’t we choose the former over the latter? Isn’t the former better than the latter? And, if so, mustn’t it be better on the basis of some (partially, imperfectly) determinable characteristic? While it is certainly true that two good people can (and indeed will) act differently in a given situation, it is a very different thing to say that they will choose opposite actions, actions that affirm opposing meanings or values. There are many ways to be good, but many is not the same as any, and surely the ‘‘m’’ matters here. We need to exclude, at least provisionally, certain paths. Caputo and Derrida are right. The sublimity of the agathon and that of the khora can resemble each other but they are not completely indistinguishable, and it is the task of hermeneutics and the task of ethical beings to distinguish them as best we are able. If our judgments are imperfect and fallible, deconstruction focuses, to the point of obsession, on the imperfection. In contrast, a hermeneutics of relative otherness (a pleonasm perhaps) acknowledges the imperfection, but copes with it as best it can in order to move through it.164 Even when philosophers of absolute otherness do address the chiastic mix of alterity (or ‘‘otherness’’) with similitude, they view such a crossing as an unfortunate necessity, a ‘‘failure’’ or ‘‘betrayal’’ resulting from The Nature of Otherness
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one’s selfish egoism, or a ‘‘lack of courage’’ that leaves one unable to face up to the bewildering undecidability of alterity. Hermeneutics is happy that we are able to judge, imperfectly to be sure, between good and evil, because therein lies the possibility of a good life. Deconstruction seems to lament judgment as a necessary, because inevitable, violation of the other. Hermeneutics sees judgment as the condition for the possibility of an ethical life, while deconstruction views judgment as the death of ethical life. Of course, judgment is a tricky business. We can and do judge wrongly, and therefore hermeneutic discernment remains a risk to be sure, but a beau risque. Not good because the odds are good (which could apply to Russian roulette), but good because it seeks the good.165 It does not, as Caputo fears, grasp the beau at the expense of the risque—we can and do fail in our quest for the good. Avoiding the twin perils of absolutism and relativism/determinism—either of which would be fatal to ethical action—a critical hermeneutics of discernment offers an alternative to the deconstructive position. It does not ignore the contingent and contextual nature of our choices, judgments, and actions. Rather, it supplements undecidability—and therefore retains a deconstructive moment—and in so doing grapples with these limitations through a critical process of discernment. Otherness can and must (and should) be interpreted. Phronesis and the Postmodern Condition Caputo points out that the opposite of undecidability is not decision, but programmability.166 However, it would be false to think of hermeneutic interpretation as programmed. Hermeneutics does not embrace the radical undecidability of deconstruction; but it does not provide an answer that is either preordained or final—it is not a philosophy of ‘‘totality or closure.’’167 Between programmability and undecidability lies discernment. Between the encompassing ‘‘program’’ of totalizing systems—that would reduce free agents to mere cogs of the system—and the barren homogeneity of the khoral night, lies the actual concrete world where others who are both ‘‘intimate and unidentifiable’’ exhibit alterity and similitude.168 Discernment is an essentially phronetic and hermeneutic task—which is why a narrow, fundamentally modern model for knowledge misses the point—but an essential task if we are to have any chance of living good lives. Because diacritical hermeneutics seeks to walk a middle path between dogmatism and relativism, it is naturally disposed to practical 254
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models of understanding such as Aristotle’s phronesis, Kant’s reflective judgment, and Ricoeur’s narrative understanding.169 The inexact and improvisational nature of these models ought to sit well with both hermeneutics and deconstruction. In fact phronesis is the model adopted by Kearney to describe hermeneutic understanding and by Caputo to describe the decisions made in the midst of undecidability. [Kearney:] There is a kind of understanding specific to narrativity in general [that] corresponds to what Aristotle called phronesis—namely, a form of practical wisdom capable of respecting the singularity of situations as well as the nascent universality of values aimed at by human actions.170 [Caputo:] Undecidability means that human judgment and decision-making are required, which means entering into an idiosyncratic situation that is not covered by the rules; undecidability was first recognized by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, where phronesis was precisely the acquired skill of figuring out what to do in the situations that are unique enough to fall below the radar of rules and universals.171 The appealing aspect of phronesis for both diacritical hermeneutics and deconstruction is that phronesis makes judgments—judgments that help us to act, in cases that do not fall into neat categories under clear, universal rules. Rather, phronesis is the ability to judge and act at what Kearney might call the ‘‘limit’’ and in what Caputo calls undecidability. Both deconstruction and diacritical hermeneutics are concerned with the spirit of phronesis rather than the letter of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; nevertheless, Aristotle’s Ethics provides the logical starting point for understanding phronesis. Phronesis is the capacity to choose the correct means for securing the good life. It deliberates, not about things that are invariable (the province of nous) or about things that are demonstrable (the province of episteme); rather, it is a ‘‘true and reasoned state or capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man.’’172 Thus, phronesis does not choose to aim at the good; that is the province of virtue. Rather, phronesis helps us to succeed in acting in accordance with our choice for or inclination toward the good in the midst of all the vagaries and variables of any given situation. Phronesis has a transcendent value or goal— human good, flourishing, or well-being—that orients rather than The Nature of Otherness
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programs its judgment. In other words, phronesis helps those who are oriented toward the good to maintain that course by wisely choosing the means to reach the good. Barring such an orientation, says Aristotle, phronesis is mere cleverness. Cleverness can be applied to vicious ends, but phronesis can only be applied toward virtuous ends. ‘‘Virtue aims at the right mark and practical wisdom (phronesis) makes us take the right means.’’173 On Caputo’s reading, however, this leads to an insurmountable problem in the wake of postmodern paralogy. Because phronesis was a virtue of the ‘‘homogeneous, top down, aristocratic, rigidly closed little society’’ that was Aristotle’s Athens, it assumes an agreement regarding ethical schemata and a univocal view of the right way to live that are simply lacking in the postmodern milieu. As Caputo notes, ‘‘even Aristotle . . . would have a tough time telling us who the phronimos is today . . .’’174 Indeed! Today, says Caputo, phronesis must be replaced by meta-phronesis: ‘‘the wit to move about in a world where there is no agreement about the good life, where there are many competing good lives, too many to count and tabulate, a world where there is no agreement about the person of practical wisdom, or the schemata.’’175 Meta-phronesis is concerned with mediating between various versions of the good life, while phronesis is concerned with how to actualize a specific version of the good life. However, Caputo’s preference for meta-phronesis over phronesis merely addresses the question at one remove, so to speak. Virtue gives phronesis a goal or orientation, but what orients meta-phronesis? At times, Caputo appears willing to offer us something that sounds suspiciously like a transcendent value or external criterion that guides us in the undecidability of the paralogical situation. Metaphronesis is more or less synonymous with ‘‘civility,’’ which itself must be practiced with ‘‘humility,’’ ‘‘compassion,’’ and a ‘‘strong sense of suspicion.’’176 But this again begs the question of why. How is such an obviously prescriptive ethical claim grounded in the darkness of khora? Why should I be civil? If all versions of the ‘‘good life’’ are merely competing perspectives, what makes the perspective that values civility the meta-perspective? Why not be dogmatic (especially if the Grand Narrative in place is congenial to you)? Why listen to other narratives that might make one uncomfortable or challenge one’s complacency? Surely civility points toward some ethical schema that Caputo believes is correct. Just as phronesis remains mere cleverness if it is not oriented toward virtuous ends, metaphronesis must have some orientation that guides its mediation be256
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tween competing schemas, narratives, messianisms, etc. If meta-phronesis does have such an orientation—and it is fairly clear that it does—then it is only phronesis applied in a postmodern context.177 If meta-phronesis does not have such an orientation, it is merely metacleverness. In contrast, Kearney’s reading of phronesis includes a transcendent orientation toward the good, which preserves the ethical orientation of phronesis and prevents it from degenerating into mere cleverness. Moreover, because his reading of phronesis is postmodern rather than premodern, cosmopolitan rather than specifically Greek, Kearney appropriates phronesis in such a way that he avoids the other extreme of claiming exact knowledge of a certain, complete, or closed model for virtue. Certainly Aristotle would have trouble identifying a modern-day phronimos, but where Aristotle seeks a phronimos with a comprehensive understanding of human well-being, I am willing to allow for an imperfect and incomplete understanding of virtue and the good. We do not need to identify an actual contemporary phronimos in order to disqualify certain candidates, or in order to say with accuracy that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a better man than Josef Stalin. This apophatic move is certain to be less-than-satisfying to those who desire the comfort of a certain and easily achievable model for truth or virtue, and it may remain too confident and specific for deconstructive philosophers and other apostles of undecidability; however, this median level of specificity is exactly what we ought to expect from philosophies that take phronesis seriously as part of a sincere quest for the good life, ethical action, and just judgment. Conclusion This book offers an analysis and assessment of the two philosophical positions that compete for dominance in contemporary discussions of otherness. These positions did not originate with Levinas and Marcel, nor will they end with Caputo and Kearney. Nevertheless, following an arc of sorts from Levinas and Marcel, through Derrida and Ricoeur, to Caputo and Kearney has given us a unique insight into the development of each position—development that took place in the process of transmission (as, for example, the absolute conception of otherness changed as Derrida and Caputo radicalized Levinas’s position) and in the process of dialogue (as, for example, both Kearney and Caputo continue to nuance their respective positions in dialogue with each other). The Nature of Otherness
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I have argued that, ultimately, a relative account of otherness articulated on a hermeneutic-chiastic model is best able to account for the encounter with the other. Such an account can address the main ethical and epistemological concerns of philosophies of absolute otherness, and can do so without lapsing into the excessive or unnecessary hyperbole that leaves us with absolute aporias. Moreover, when paired with a sufficiently deep humility and equipped with what Kearny refers to as an ‘‘acute hermeneutic vigilance,’’ we have good reason to believe that relative accounts of otherness can also avoid lapsing into the hegemonic, dogmatic, absolutist positions that postmodern philosophies of otherness rightly seek to transcend. By way of conclusion there are three final points worth bringing up: one of summary, another of clarification, and a third of reiteration. Marcel’s Contributions The character of this alternative view of otherness clearly has much in common with the hermeneutic philosophy of Kearney and, perhaps less clearly, Ricoeur. Therefore, it is worth a moment to recall the substantial contributions that Marcel—who I have maintained is a sorely neglected philosopher—has made to this alternative view. Marcel, who also gives us the beautiful image of constellations—the meaningful relationship of non-totalizable unities that, in a sense, sums up his view of otherness—contributes four distinct elements to this position.178 The first contribution that Marcel makes is his analysis of the spirit of abstraction. Marcel demands that philosophy address the wholeness of our lived experience. Abstraction from the whole is appropriate, and necessary, in the course of thinking; but giving in to the spirit of abstraction—which becomes fascinated with the abstraction itself and ceases to acknowledge it as abstraction—is an error. Focusing on transcendence to the neglect of immanence disfigures both phenomena, which, in any case, are not really separable. However, having addressed this issue at length, it should be clear in what sense the spirit of abstraction applies to philosophies of absolute otherness. Building on Marcel’s insight, we can say that the movement of abstraction—which, in the case of this abstraction, is the move that focuses on the other as other, shaking up our trust with suspicion—is a necessary move in a hermeneutic philosophy of relative otherness; but it is a move that must be augmented or supplemented by another movement that resituates the abstraction in the unity (qua constella258
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tion, not qua totality) from which it was abstracted. The result is not a neat, tidy, comfortable trust that will never again be troubled by suspicion, but a ‘‘ferocious tension’’ that holds together suspicion and trust, justice and love, alterity and similitude.179 Second, following from the analysis of the spirit of abstraction, is Marcel’s demand for concrete grounding of philosophy. The concrete ground of philosophy is the wholeness from which abstraction proceeds and to which it should return, and so Marcel’s method is one of ‘‘working . . . up from life to thought and then down from thought to life again, [in order] to throw more light upon life.’’180 Such a grounding is the best way to insure that philosophy remains attuned to the good and the evil (Kearney), the joys and disasters (Caputo) that are its proper concern. Marcel tells us that no work in which ‘‘we cannot discern in it what may be called the sting of reality’’ is truly philosophical.181 On my reading the sting of reality is not just the undeniable tragic aspect of our condition, which Marcel addresses at length, but includes the positive sense of stimulation, electrification, or bracing shock that is associated with the ‘‘bite’’ of reality, the concrete experiences that provoke thaumazein. To this end, Marcel’s philosophy is liberally sprinkled with examples, a characteristic that is noticeably lacking, for example, in Levinas. Examples of absolute otherness are understandably hard to come by. Third, while Marcel acknowledges that despair is an ever-present possibility given the tragic element of our situation, he ultimately brings a rich philosophy of hope to the postmodern dialogue. Despite several thoroughly Kierkegaardian elements in deconstruction, it seems at times to harbor a Nietzschian core. Faith is a way of grappling with the disaster of the way things actually are, a way of dealing with the cold indifference of the cosmos. ‘‘Il y a la` cendre. Not even that.’’182 However, if such skepticism were paired with an equally affirmative account of hope, such as Marcel’s, we also leave open the possibility that ‘‘there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.’’183 As Merold Westphal puts it: ‘‘If you’re Kierkegaard, then your deepest commitment, your deepest faith is that there is an underlying unity. And if you’re Nietzsche, your deepest faith is that there is not’’; however, building on Marcel in light of deconstruction’s contributions, we might hope to form ‘‘a philosophical methodology [that does not exclude] the possibility of either Kierkegaard or Nietzsche, but one that [leaves open] the possibility of both of them so that they can join in the discussion.’’184 Cosmos or The Nature of Otherness
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chaos? Certainly both absolutism and relativism are to be feared, and it is true that the historical track record of absolutism is much worse. Nevertheless, a responsible philosophy must guard resolutely against both excesses. Even if deconstruction does not advocate relativism (and it does in any case flirt with it) it focuses relentlessly on the critique of absolutism, its critique of relativism residing almost exclusively in its response to critics who charge deconstruction with relativism. Finally, Marcel supplements the demand for openness with an equally important analysis of and emphasis on fidelity. Fidelity does not supplant openness, just as hope does not supplant skepticism, and secondary reflection does not supplant primary reflection; rather the former relationships supplement the latter. All the philosophers we have been considering—Levinas, Marcel, Derrida, Ricoeur, Caputo, and Kearney—emphasize the need for openness to the other; however, while philosophies of absolute otherness do well to stress the necessity of openness to the other, they do less well when called to account for fidelity. Caputo claims that the faithful affirmation of deconstruction (Viens! Oui, Oui!) says yes, puts its hands to the plow and, without looking back, says yes again.185 However, the blind (‘‘without looking’’) repetition of the first yes in the second comes up against all the problems addressed under the rubric of constancy in Marcel’s work, but without a supplementary account such as creative fidelity that expresses how such repetition avoids a dogmatism (in deconstruction!) that refuses to reflect on new situations or hubristic confidence in one’s ability to foresee all possible future situations. In any case, the ‘‘fidelity’’ of putting one’s hands on the plow without looking back (oui, oui), seems undermined by the absolute uncertainty generated by an absolute account of otherness (peut-eˆtre bien; que oui, peut-eˆtre bien que non). This is not to question the relationship between undecidability and indecision, but between undecidability and fidelity. For whom does deconstruction speak? For the other? If deconstruction is a preference for the marginalized or excluded, and it insists on maintaining the absolute otherness of the other, can it remain faithful to any other? Assume we have three excluded or marginalized groups or individuals: A, B, and C. Because we are finite agents we cannot save everyone at once, and we must choose which marginalized other to assist based on some determinate criteria, which already indicates that the other must be only relatively other. Otherwise, we choose randomly (which runs the risk of soft relativ260
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ism) or we choose in a manner that is thoroughly contingent and conditioned (which becomes a sort of soft determinism). If we do compare and choose one marginalized group (group A) for some particular, determinate reason, we then work to bring that marginalized voice back into dialogue with the tradition. However, once that voice has been introduced, it is no longer marginalized, or at least is not marginalized to the extent of the other marginalized voices, B and C, that we initially passed over in favor of A. If deconstruction is a preference for the marginalized other, the preferential option for the suffering and the least among us, would it not abandon the partially rehabilitated group (A) in favor of more oppressed others (B and C)? A parallel problem is that the absolute otherness of the other leaves us unable to distinguish, even provisionally and imperfectly, between justified and unjustified exclusions. You Can’t Have It Both Ways Now, it might be argued that some hermeneutic critiques of postmodernity and deconstruction, including this one, are actually quite close to the deconstructive position. Indeed, I have already acknowledged, even embraced, the fact that a hermeneutic philosophy of otherness requires a deconstructive move. However, no matter how closely these two positions approach each other, there are important distinctions that must be maintained.186 Deconstruction’s central claim, tout autre est tout autre, on which ‘‘everything turns,’’ seems problematic any way you slice it. One the one hand, if we take a literal reading of absolute otherness, then all the criticisms I have leveled (and, indeed, the criticisms that Derrida himself levels in ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’) must be answered. Absolute otherness never shows up; we cannot encounter it, think it, welcome it, desire it, love it, or fear it. Even if this position were modified to allow, somehow, such otherness to show up, we run into the problems of soft relativism and soft determinism. On the other hand, if one were to argue that deconstruction is fundamentally in line with my thesis—that otherness is a chiasm of alterity and similitude—the question becomes why one would need to assert the absolute otherness of the other (tout autre est tout autre). We have spent some time considering the first possibility and establishing that it cannot stand; however, having just reemphasized the role played by hope in Marcel’s philosophy, it might be useful to return to this position under the rubric of hope and despair. Despite The Nature of Otherness
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protestations to the contrary, it is difficult to discern why deconstruction is not a pessimistic philosophy; at the very least it is not optimistic (although, again, Derrida may well be, and Caputo certainly is). There is nothing in deconstruction that requires us to side with a Kierkegaardian rather than a Nietzschean reading.187 In fact, there is much to recommend the latter. In the final chapters of Against Ethics, a fairly early text, Caputo argues for a ‘‘minimalist metaphysics’’ of the es gibt, the ‘‘there is’’ of ‘‘events that happen’’ without a ‘‘why.’’ ‘‘Events happen without ‘why.’ There is no ‘why’ outside what happens, no Meta-event that dominates other events, that serves as the point and purpose behind what happens. . . . What happens is what there is (es gibt). That is all.’’188 But doesn’t this breed a sort of Stoic resignation rather than the passionate faith that is so central to Caputo’s work? Sure, events happen; but surely some events are better than others? Surely the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was a better event than the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850? But Caputo writes, ‘‘My meditations on il y a leave me in a permanently an-archic state, tormented by the truth of skepticism.’’189 The truth of skepticism. Here, at least, Caputo appears to occupy a very non-hermeneutic, nonchiastic position, wherein absence, skepticism, and difference are the essential truths, not the contamination of presence with absence, of skepticism with faith, and of difference with similitude. Of course, Caputo does not assert the Truth of skepticism—the absolute Truth at which all knees must bend, or, perhaps, all shoulders sag—and one might think that skepticism is one truth among other petite truths, none of which has an absolute claim.190 Caputo himself does not remain in this abyss. His is a faith of passion, a faith that someone is looking back at us, someone who stands with those who suffer.191 Caputo condemns Auschwitz. Nevertheless, the pessimistic tone continues. Proper names happen in the abyss. They happen for awhile, They happen for the while that they happen. Then they die out like a lost language belonging to a lost time. In the long run, that is what they are and that is what our language is or will amount to. Eventually, as the little star grows cold, the noises of our language will disappear into the stellar night.192 However, if this is in fact the way things are, in truth, we are left with nothing but resignation. It may be a content, even happy resignation. It may be a passionate resignation. But it remains resignation, for it 262
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asserts that in the end everything will be lost, irretrievably, without remainder. Caputo rightly critiques a too-comfortable, too-certain trust that everything will be saved and redeemed, pulled into a finished, coherent tapestry with all the loose ends tied up, without remainder. However, this vision of the cold indifference of the stars and the ultimate, inevitable reduction of everything to the vacuum of space is nothing but the negative of the too-rosy picture of untroubled faiths. Faced with such a situation, faith is merely pragmatic; we believe in order to avoid facing the consequences of the meaningless, cold, dark, stellar night of the il y a. ‘‘Il y a la` cendre. Not even that.’’193 So, in addressing their ethical and epistemological concerns, absolute versions of otherness run the risk of soft determinism, soft relativism, and resignation. However, while there are good reasons (good in both the sense of ethical and reasonable) that some philosophers want to think otherness in absolute terms, we can address those concerns without resorting to the excessive and unnecessary hyperbole of absolute otherness. A properly circumscribed philosophy of relative otherness can accomplish these goals. I do not want to confidently assert knowledge of some ultimate telos that orients and redeems all the complexity, and especially the suffering, of our world, or to assert some unmediated access to an arche. However, a philosophy of relative otherness does not require me to do so. To say some events are better than others merely requires some legitimate criteria on which to base that judgment. The ‘‘maximum metaphysics’’ that Caputo critiques is far too certain of where we are going and what must be done; however, the various iterations of Caputo’s ‘‘minimum metaphysics’’ seem to offer no criteria other than the subjective experience of an event as a ‘‘joy’’ or ‘‘disaster,’’ which is, I submit, too minimal.194 I want a ‘‘median metaphysics,’’ a metaphysics that is a mean (mesoteˆs) between the maximum and minimum, and which calls for phronesis. If, like an Aristotelian virtue, this median is closer to one extreme (the minimal) it nevertheless remains distinct from it. Such a metaphysics has no transparent telos, no clear and complete map to salvation, or truth, or the good; but is led by a guiding star, one that orients us toward a horizon, and one that, at the very least, orients where we are going to some extent through a rejection of some of the places we have been. One difficulty for such a hermeneutic philosophy is articulating the nature of the partial common ground it implies. How, for example, can I assert that there is no final, absolute, comprehensible truth to which I have access and simultaneously assert that it is possible to The Nature of Otherness
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accurately judge some agents, or actions, or stories to be better than others? Such a claim would require evidence of some common and universal human experience and, more problematically, some evidence of at least quasi-consensus (to borrow a deconstructive linguistic strategy) about the meaning of certain experiences. This seems very difficult in a postmodern, supposedly paralogical world; however, it is not impossible. Kearney has pointed to examples of consensus such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights. In fact, Caputo himself acknowledges that there are some common and universal reactions to (i.e., interpretations of) certain experiences. In critiquing James Marsh for an ‘‘overly formalistic’’ ethical account, he says, At one point you talk about kidnapping, and your objection against kidnapping is that it violates the third or fourth condition of rationality or something like that. I must say I read that with some amusement. What is the status of an observation like that? What is it doing other than explicating in some very formalistic and, pardon my saying so, rather artificial way something that everyone knows, whether there ever was a Habermas or a theory of the validity claims. All you are doing is formalizing something which in human experience is experienced as an abomination and as a violence.195 Putting aside Caputo’s objections to Marsh’s formalism, which the two debate at length, the point here seems to be that Marsh’s account of a universal interpretation of a particular human experience—‘‘everyone knows’’ that kidnapping is a ‘‘violent abomination’’—is too formal and artificial. It remains, however, that all people, apparently, experience kidnapping in similar terms. Because hermeneutic philosophies think otherness in relative terms, they are able to consider such examples—whether the specific case of kidnapping or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights works is less important—but philosophies of absolute otherness can only see such consensus in terms of contingency and chance, not in terms of a phenomenon universally experienced as an abomination. On the other hand, if deconstruction agrees that otherness is a chiasm of alterity and similitude, if all others must show up within our horizons to be encountered, what is the value in asserting that otherness must be absolute? Advocates will argue that deconstruction only rejects the notion of ‘‘pure’’ love, or giving, or hospitality, etc., in the name of affirming actual, impure loves, or gifts, or acts of hos264
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pitality. However, if this is the case, it does so in an exceedingly awkward manner. While it is true that the initial point is often that the ‘‘pure’’ relationship is impossible, the language is such that the skepticism and critique inevitably bleed into even the impure, imperfect manifestations of the relationship in question. ‘‘O my love, there is no love.’’196 If one demurs by asserting that the point is merely that, for example, we are never perfectly loving, or generous, or hospitable, this could be accomplished with a merely relative conception of otherness. There is a difference between saying that I never love perfectly and saying ‘‘O my love, there is no love.’’ This is especially true given that deconstruction acknowledges that the ‘‘pure’’ phenomena are impossible; there are no pure loves, or pure gifts, or pure acts of hospitality. In describing the relationship between a horse and a unicorn, it wouldn’t make sense to define a horse as a ‘‘unicorn without a horn’’ simply because the unicorn is the pure or ideal animal and the horse is the real but ordinary animal. It makes much more sense to say that a unicorn is (an imaginary animal resembling) a horse with a horn, because a horse is real and a unicorn is not. Likewise, in the course of pointing out human fallibility and fault, there is, I think, an important difference between saying that we could always be more loving, and saying, even in a qualified sense, there is no love. So, if the deconstructive point is merely to deny that the pure relationship to the other is possible, it is not clear why the language of absolute otherness is necessary for this task. A hermeneutic-chiastic account of otherness agrees that we are not perfect, and that perfection (as perfect love, or perfect understanding) is, without God, impossible; however, it does so without resorting to excessively hyperbolic language that argues or implies that anything short of perfection is equally flawed. Not all actual loves are equally imperfect. Or, stated positively, some loves are better than others. Likewise, some gifts are more selfless than others, some examples of hospitality are more genuine than others, some instances of forgiveness are more sincere than others, and some examples of understanding an other are better than others—and, in each case, only a relative account of otherness will allow us to maintain this distinction.197 Ultimately, one can’t have it both ways. Either otherness is absolute or it is a chiastic mix of alterity and similitude; if one affirms the former, one rejects the latter. If one accepts the latter, then otherness is merely relative, which opens up the possibility of relating to the other in ways that are not reducible to violence. In this case, no other The Nature of Otherness
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is ever reduced to the same, and the system never closes in a clear and comfortable manner; however, one can come to understand something of the other, and some understandings are better—again, in both the ethical and veridical sense—than others. A Final Word It should be clear that this work is not a blanket rejection of Levinas, Derrida, or Caputo, each of whom is owed a debt of gratitude by philosophers concerned with otherness. Nor, strictly speaking, is it a rejection of absolute alterity, for even absolute alterity has a place in a philosophy that affirms relative otherness. Levinas’s insistence on the absolute otherness of the other has helped to awake an entire tradition from its dogmatic slumber and, like the other that occupies such a central place in his thought, to confront it and call it into question. This critique is necessary, as Caputo points out in Radical Hermeneutics, recalling the ‘‘trouble-making’’ tendencies of Johannes Climacus, Constantin Constantius, and other Kierkegaardian pseudonyms who are resolved to make difficult the comprehensive summaries of Enlightenment thinkers seeking the ‘‘easy way out’’ of paradoxes and aporias.198 If these philosophies do lapse into hyperbole it is perhaps necessary that they do so, confronting as they do a remarkably entrenched tradition. Nevertheless, we must take care to insure that the prophetic hyperbole of absolute alterity does not lapse into the exaggerated hyperbole of absolute otherness. A recuperative move along the lines of Marcel’s secondary reflection, or the return path from Ricoeur’s various detours, or Kearney’s 4th phenomenological reduction is necessary if philosophy is to remain grounded in our lived experience rather than lost in abstractions. Such recuperative movements return us to lived experience with a new, expanded understanding of that which the abstraction, detour, or epoche allowed us to address. Thus, in the case of otherness, we ‘‘return’’ to the lived world in which otherness is relative, but do so with a deeper appreciation of the otherness of the other. Although philosophies of absolute otherness sometimes flirt with such a return—as when Levinas admits that the role of ethics is to inform morality and politics, or when Derrida insists that pure hospitality is impossible, or when Caputo acknowledges that an-khoral faith is quasi-transcendental and unlivable—they never quite live up to this promise, because the insistence on absolute otherness does not allow such a return. Absolute otherness is an abstrac266
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tion from our lived experience of otherness, and a return to that experience would require a reinsertion of the abstraction that acknowledges its artificiality—a useful and instructive artificiality, but artificial nonetheless. Lacking such a moderating or supplementary movement, philosophies of absolute otherness will be frustrated by absolute aporias. In terms of dialogue, philosophical or otherwise, absolute otherness is a nonstarter. If the otherness of the other is absolute, why listen? Why be civil? Why tell stories? Why engage in political debate? If I cannot by definition understand the other in ways that are better or worse, what is the point of dialogue? The otherness of the other instructs me in its otherness; that is, it teaches me that the other is other and not the same. But if this is the extent of communication, the extent of what I can learn from the other, dialogue is doomed. As Plato notes, the ‘‘isolation of everything from everything else means a complete abolition of all discourse.’’199 In contrast, relative otherness asserts that the otherness of the other, no matter how alien and shocking, is never without a measure of similitude that provides a legitimate context for dialogue and understanding. Philosophies of relative otherness encourage dialogue because there is real hope of understanding better. This claim is unlike Enlightenment confidence in the unlimited power of reason, and it is made with humility rather than hubris. It articulates the hope of understanding. Properly understood, this goal is entirely different from the certitude or guarantee of knowing the other. Hope, Marcel points out, desires without demanding; it supports conviction but not certitude. Our hope may in fact not be fulfilled or answered as we wish. Likewise, Aristotle, Ricoeur, and Kearney all differentiate between the claims of practical, phronetic understanding and those of apodictic, syllogistic, deductive, or epistemic knowledge (and Marcel maintains a similar distinction). Granted, we may never reach our goal, and, in the process of struggling to understand others and ourselves, we are likely to err in any number of ways. However, such is the price of the beau risque of dialogue and the understanding it makes possible. We may never finish the journey and become hermeneutic phronimoi, but certainly we must start walking. ‘‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’’200 Of course, there are other difficulties with which any hermeneutic position characterizing otherness in relative terms must contend. Marcel notes that hope and fidelity are ‘‘leaps’’ (of faith) and, just like the bets they resemble, they can fail.201 The humility of hope is The Nature of Otherness
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difficult to maintain. If it begins as the hopeful awaiting of a gift or grace from an other, it is often the case that ‘‘to hope in’’ becomes ‘‘to expect from,’’ ‘‘to have due me,’’ and finally ‘‘to demand or claim.’’ The perpetually recurring difficulties which a philosophy of hope encounters are for the most part due to the fact that we have a tendency to substitute for initial relationship, which is pure and mysterious, a subsequent relationship no doubt more intelligible, but at the same time more deficient as regards the ontological content.202 However, while hope is susceptible to despair and other forms of degradation, it is not fated to such ruin. We can and do hope in others and such hope is directly tied to the independence of the other from the demands of the self; that is, to the otherness of the other. [I]ntersubjectivity is openness to the other, an openness which is perpetually threatened because at every moment the self may close itself again and become prisoner of itself, no longer considering the other except in relation to the self. But the possibility of opening to others . . . is clearly one of the key certitudes I have come to.203 Likewise, the pattern of detour and return that Ricoeur inherited from Marcel’s secondary reflection appears to constitute a vicious circle. The impossibility of stepping out of the hermeneutic circle seems to indicate an inherently perspectival aspect of all interpretation, perhaps even suggesting the soft relativism or soft determinism of which I have accused deconstruction. However, Ricoeur is after understanding modeled on phronesis rather than knowledge modeled on episteme. What appears to be a vicious circle is really a virtuous circle, or better, a virtuous spiral. Each time we return to our ‘‘starting point,’’ we do so at a ‘‘higher level,’’ with enriched understanding. If it is true that we will always experience the world perspectively, this does not indicate that our perspective is fixed. Our perspective can evolve; it can be enriched and changed by dialogue with other perspectives in such a way that we come to understand something of others. Finally, when Kearney suggests that we ‘‘supplement the critique of self with an equally indispensable critique of the other’’ he acknowledges that such a ‘‘double critique requires a delicate balance.’’204 This tricky balancing act requires us to move between the ‘‘romantic hermeneutics’’ of a congenial fusion of horizons, and the 268
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extra-horizonal obsession of deconstructive ‘‘radical hermeneutics.’’ But if the disorientation produced by our contemporary situation makes balance difficult, we are encouraged by the fact that it has not stripped us of our desire for and ability to narrate, which is the very tool that helps us to balance as we move between these two critiques.205 Our situation may be postmodern, but it is not paralogical in the strong sense. Neither possibility of hope’s degradation, nor the supposed circularity of hermeneutics, nor the difficulty of balancing the critique of self and the critique of the other alters the fact that each of these experiences can actually be lived, unlike themes tied to absolute otherness such as infinite responsibility, pure hospitality, or an-khoral faith. The account of relative otherness toward which Marcel, Ricoeur, and Kearney point is not one that fears uncertainty or otherness.206 I am all for the prophetic, disturbing character of philosophy; my hermeneutic-chiastic account of otherness does not fear novelty, surprise, or the unknown. In fact, if one loves novelty and surprise, one ought to love relative, not absolute, otherness. Even when we desire ‘‘otherness’’ without qualification—that is, even when we cannot name that for which we hope and so resign ourselves to hoping for ‘‘we know not what’’—our desire is not for absolute otherness. Imagine the person beset with non-specific, existential angst, or with a sort of global malaise or ennui. Or, indeed, imagine a person filled with a passion for God, or justice, or for any of the other translations of the impossible that philosophies of absolute otherness use as examples. Such a person may well desire something unexpected or novel to come and shake things up. However, this is not a desire for absolute otherness, for the person in question desires a change in her situation, a change within the world she inhabits. And a change in the world one inhabits is not an encounter with absolute otherness but with relative otherness; that is, with aspects of alterity imbedded in or interwoven with aspects of similitude. Likewise, one’s desire is rarely, if ever, for any change whatsoever. Some changes can be much, much worse than the status quo. The desire for something new (i.e., other) is, even when it appears to be without content, frequently a desire for some indeterminate change for the better. In any case, it is implicitly a desire for a change that is not worse. This is why Derrida and Caputo construe the messianic a`-venir in terms of justice rather than injustice. The Nature of Otherness
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The question of otherness has led us on a long and labyrinthine path from love and justice, to religion, to otherness itself. Along the way we have been accompanied by distinguished philosophers of otherness—first Levinas and Marcel, and later Derrida, Ricoeur, Caputo, and Kearney. Of the many issues associated with the question of otherness, none looms as large as the question of whether or not otherness is absolute. The way in which this question is answered has implications far beyond any specialized academic or philosophical audience; it lies at the very roots of practical questions of ethics, justice, interculturalism, and religious dialogue. These questions, in turn, lie at the heart of life in what is called the ‘‘postmodern’’ condition. If absolute otherness wins the day, then even if we hope passionately for something, all that lies before us is an unending, khoral, paralogical night. But, upon consideration, ‘‘[isn’t the] radical characterization of paralogy overplayed?’’207 If there is any point at all to ethical dialogue, political dialogue, intercultural dialogue, or religious dialogue, there must be the possibility of understanding, at least partially, other perspectives. Such understanding is only possible if otherness itself is relative, not absolute. It is fitting that the final words in a study committed to understanding otherness be voiced through the mouths of others, especially those others who have contributed, in the spirit of philosophical dialogue, to my own understanding of otherness. Thus, let me conclude by acknowledging, with Levinas, that my philosophical itinerary ‘‘is not completely disengaged from pre-philosophical experiences, and many of its byways . . . appear well-worn, many of its thrusts imprudent. But a fine risk is always something to be taken in philosophy . . .’’208 However, if this risk is a Socratic one, in the spirit of a ‘‘magnificent venture,’’ let us also hope with Marcel, for whom ‘‘hope and journeying are not two different things . . . hope is what makes the passage something more than just simple wandering.’’209
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Notes
1. The Question of Otherness 1. Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1984), xxiv. 2. There are numerous other examples of human confusion resulting from encounters with divine otherness: Exodus 33, where Moses is denied sight (i.e., knowledge) of God; Job 3:23, where Job laments his apparently evil and unjust fate; Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia, which parallels the story of Abraham and Isaac; and the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna questions the duty and station that require him to kill his own family members. Of course, we can find many other examples of problems arising from encounters with otherness, or conflicts arising from incompatible obligations to others: Chushingura, Japan’s famous tale of duty, which speaks to the very heart of that nation’s narrative identity; Antigone’s choice between her obligation to the state and her obligation to her brother Polynices; and, finally, the inscrutability of our own nature, which confronts us with the otherness in our very selves, as both Freud (via dream interpretation and the ego, superego, and id) and Socrates (who asked himself if it was possible to satisfy the Delphic exhortation to ‘‘Know Thyself’’ in the Phaedrus [230b]) saw. We encounter otherness anytime we come up against or are confronted with our own limits and anytime events or others we have not foreseen surprise us. Anything beyond the ken of the self—either externally as in the case of other persons or the limitations of mortality, or internally as in the case of obscure motivations—confronts us with otherness. Thus, God, evil, death, identity, the unconscious, and other people are all examples of topics 271
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where the question of otherness is of central importance. Nevertheless, for our purposes the case of Abraham and Isaac is a particularly appropriate illustration, given the importance that Levinas places on the hineni, the ‘‘Here I am’’ or ‘‘me voici,’’ of Abraham. Furthermore, the allusion in this story not only draws our attention to the surprise, and thus the otherness, of God’s call to Abraham, it also addresses issues of love and justice (which will prove to be an abiding concern in what follows), and the relationships between the human and the divine (which foreshadow issues I will address in chapter 6). 3. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 9–14. These four initial interpretations of Abraham’s story are examples of ‘‘many’’ others that Johannes de Silentio has considered; however, only these four are offered, along with ‘‘faith in the absurd’’ as a fifth interpretation. 4. Plato, ‘‘Meno,’’ in Five Dialogues, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1981), 69 [80de]. Or, as Socrates rephrases the point: a man ‘‘cannot search for what he knows—since he knows it, there is no need to search—nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.’’ Ibid., [80e] 5. Ibid., 69 [81d]. 6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Richard Hope (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 3 [980a21]. 7. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover, 1956), 63. 8. William James, Pragmatism (New York: Dover, 1955), 24. 9. Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite´ et infini: essai sur l’exte´riorite´ (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1971). Levinas’s initial attempts to break from the ontological tradition began well before the publication of Totality and Infinity. See Jacques Taminiaux, ‘‘The early Levinas’s reply to Heidegger’s fundamental ontology,’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 23, no. 6:29–49. Nevertheless, it is this text, along with Otherwise than Being (1981), that announced his break with the tradition to a wider audience. 10. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 39. 11. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 19–20. 12. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ in Outside the Subject, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 20. The actual text of this citation refers to the philosophies of both Buber and Marcel. 13. ‘‘It would be useless to ask what position Gabriel Marcel would take today between Heidegger and Levinas on the question of knowing if ontology is constituted without ethics or ethics without ontology.’’ Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Entre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´,’’ in Gabriel Marcel: Colloque or272
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ganise´ par la Bibliothe`que Nationale et l’association Pre´sence de Gabriel Marcel, ed. Michele Sacquin (Paris: Bibliothe`que Nationale, 1989), 157. 14. That is, ethics and ontology are tied, or joined. Ricoeur feels that Marcel’s meditations on disponibilite´ have both ethical and ontological aspects and, therefore, walk a line between ethics and ontology (Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Entre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´,’’ 158). However, in light of the discussion that follows, it is worth noting that in Oneself as Another Ricoeur points out that the question of otherness is properly situated at the ‘‘crossroads of ethics and ontology’’ and goes on to acknowledge his indebtedness to Levinas on this point (Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992], 189). 15. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 25; and Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being: Reflection and Mystery, vol. 1, trans. G.S. Fraser (London: Harvill Press, 1951), 41. 16. What exactly each thinker means by ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘justice’’ is clarified in chapters 2 and 3, but it is worth noting that this is a matter of emphasis rather than exclusion for both Levinas and Marcel. Each philosopher has much to say about both sorts of relationships. 17. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 304. 18. Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1964), 136. 19. While Marcel’s thought also departs from the traditional perspective that emphasizes freedom, self-sufficiency, and rationality at the expense of the otherness of the other, from Levinas’s perspective Marcel falls short of breaking free from the tradition. The notion that we can ‘‘make sense’’ of the other plays right back into Levinas’s critique. The special sense in which Marcel might claim that otherness is ‘‘relative’’ is one of several issues to which we will turn our attention in the pages that follow. 20. John D. Caputo notes, in one of his characteristically compelling turns of phrase, ‘‘My idea is to confess that I know of no way beyond the neutrality and indifference of the stars . . .’’ (John D. Caputo, Against Ethics [Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993], 71). This image is drawn from Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lying in the Extramoral Sense—a reading that Caputo ‘‘never recovered from.’’ Against Ethics is, drawing on Aristotle, Kant, and Nietzsche, full of images of celestial navigation. I understand the experience of the cold indifference of the stars; it is something with which any reasonably reflective person must grapple. As I confess later, we are all tempted by nihilism. However, the starry night has also elicited a different reaction in me, one that is neither despondent that in 4.5 billion years this solar system will grow cold and dark nor one that finds, as Aristotle and Kant perhaps did, an easy confidence that the universe operates on laws and that it will, given enough time, make sense. Nevertheless, while this celestial metaphor for meaning in the world parallels the matter at issue in this book—the nature of otherness—a direct treatment will have to await another time. Notes to Pages 7–10
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2. Emmanuel Levinas 1. Richard Kearney, States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 187. 2. For those seeking a more complete treatment of Levinas’s thought, excellent summaries can be found in Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000); Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997); and Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993). 3. The choice to focus on Totality and Infinity rather than Otherwise than Being is due to the respective foci of these two books. Although arguing the same general thesis, Totality and Infinity concentrates on the epiphany of the other’s face (alterity)—which is our guiding question and concern—while Otherwise than Being concentrates on ethical subjectivity and the selfhood of the subject. 4. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, ix. Wyschogrod attributes this remark to Levinas himself. Nevertheless, the temptation to read such a turn into Levinas’s thinking is strong, and others insist that there is a turn in his work between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being. See, for example, Jacques Rolland, God, Death, and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 2n1; Richard A. Cohen, translator’s introduction to Time and the Other (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987) 10–11; and Fabio Ciaramelli, ‘‘ Levinas Ethical Discourse Between Individuation and Universality,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 86. 5. Levinas himself is not at all consistent in his capitalization of ‘‘same,’’ ‘‘other,’’ and ‘‘autrui.’’ Therefore, unless directly quoting a passage in which Levinas does capitalize one of these terms, this treatment will render these terms without capitalization. 6. Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘Rereading Totality and Infinity,’’ in The Question of the Other: Essays in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, ed. Arleen B. Dallery and Charles E. Scott (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), 23–34; Theodore de Boer, ‘‘An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy,’’ in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 83–115; and Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001). 7. Many readers have trouble with this ambiguity. For example, Patricia Werhane notes that ‘‘at times Levinas conflates the descriptive and the normative . . .’’ (Patricia H. Werhane, ‘‘Levinas’s Ethics: A Normative Perspective without Metaethical Constraints,’’ in Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, ed. Ad274
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riaan Peperzak [New York: Routledge, 1995], 59 and 65–66). Levinas himself admits that his method risks appearing to ‘‘confuse theory and practice’’ (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 29). 8. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being; or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998); and Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 53. Regarding the necessity of moving from a ‘‘transcendental’’ ethics to a ‘‘concrete’’ or ‘‘empirical’’ morality, see Kearney, States of Mind, 195. 9. ‘‘L’absolument Autre, c’est Autrui.’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite´ et infini: essai sur l’exte´riorite´ [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1971], 28). Autre is the ‘‘other’’ in a general sense, but autrui is ‘‘this particular other,’’ ‘‘this personal other,’’ ‘‘you here before me,’’ etc. Levinas here, as elsewhere, insists that ‘‘the other’’ with whom he is concerned is never ‘‘others’’ in general, but always this particular other person here before me. 10. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 24–25. 11. Ibid., 25. Of course what is at issue in the work of Bernasconi, deBoer, and Dudiak is precisely the import of the word ‘‘resembles.’’ 12. Although it is clear that Levinas includes—with a few notable exceptions—the entire Western philosophical tradition in the category of ‘‘totalizing philosophies,’’ it is also true that he singles out Heidegger for special attention. This is, no doubt, attributable in part to the confluence in Heidegger of a totalizing philosophical position and a disastrous personal history. Levinas notes, ‘‘One can forgive many Germans, but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990], 25). Nevertheless, the criticisms leveled against ontology could apply to Hegel, Aristotle, and many others with equal facility. To avoid needless repetition, and because it is a legitimate representation of Levinas’s own work, I will use Heideggerian fundamental ontology as the paradigmatic example of totalizing philosophy. 13. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1962), 156–157. 14. Plato, ‘‘Meno,’’ in Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981); and St. Augustine, De Magistro, trans. Peter King (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995). 15. Heidegger, Being and Time, 265. 16. Rene´ Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations of First Philosophy, 3rd ed., trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1993), 59. 17. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 98. 18. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 49. Emphasis mine. 19. Heidegger, Being and Time, 58. Notes to Pages 13–17
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20. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 42. The use of gendered language presents particular problems when discussing otherness, particularly in the present context. First, the use of ‘‘its’’ as a neutral pronoun is unacceptable insofar as it is important to draw a distinction between persons and things, between ‘‘whos’’ and ‘‘whats.’’ Second, the vast majority of thinkers dealt with in this work use ‘‘he’’ as a gender-neutral pronoun, and correcting this would litter the text with enough ‘‘sics’’ to seriously impede the flow of the prose. Finally, because the language used by Levinas to describe the other is gendered, it would be misleading to use ‘‘she,’’ which could imply the ‘‘feminine other’’ of the dwelling, rather than ‘‘he’’ which Levinas used when discussing ‘‘ethical alterity’’ of the face-to-face; and while there are certainly many nuances which could be added to this distinction, it is the latter relationship that most concerns this study. Thus, it seems necessary to maintain the use of the masculine pronoun, at least until we move to consider relative and absolute otherness in the contemporary debate, with the explicit caveat that this usage should be taken in a gender-neutral sense in every case except: (1) when used to refer to an actual male philosopher, and (2) when the other of the face-to-face is being distinguished from the other of the dwelling. On this latter distinction, see Tina Chanter, Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); and Stella Sanford, ‘‘Levinas, feminism and the feminine,’’ in the Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 21. Ibid., 70. 22. Ibid., 43. 23. Bracketing for the moment the question of whether or not Jean-Paul Sartre is a good interpreter of Heidegger, it is clear that the Sartrean picture of intersubjectivity could only be developed in a post-Heideggerian climate (see Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes [New York: Washington Square Press, 1993]). In particular, Sartre’s notion that we fear objectification in the eyes of the other, which in turn leads us to objectify the other as a ‘‘preemptive strike’’ to protect ourselves, seems to have a kinship with Levinas’s description of logocentric comprehension in Heideggerian ontology. As ontology comprehends the other to avoid critique (Heidegger), the self objectifies the other in order to avoid objectification (Sartre). 24. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 43. 25. Ibid., 45. Emphasis mine. Note that Levinas emphasizes that justice precedes freedom, that is, that freedom exists in light of justice. Levinas is not excluding the possibility of ontology, freedom, love, etc. Rather, he is articulating the transcendental structures on which these other concepts and phenomena are based. 26. Ibid., 43. This analogy is inverted in order to illustrate the point. 27. Ibid., 65–66. 276
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28. Levinas’s relationship to Plato, Descartes, and other thinkers whom he reads as somehow anticipatory of his own thought is both complex and ambiguous. For example, Levinas adopts Descartes’s idea of the infinite from the Third Meditation, but glosses over the fact that Descartes uses this idea to conceive of God in an onto-theo-logical fashion. However, ‘‘that Descartes conceives of God onto-theo-logically is not something that can readily be subtracted from Descartes’ text’’ (Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Silent Anarchic World of the Evil Genius,’’ in The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years, ed. G. Moneta, J. Sallis, J. Taminiaux [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998], 259). Although one may argue that Levinas does not adopt the ‘‘concept’’ of infinity from Descartes, but a ‘‘style of thinking’’ about the infinite (ibid., 264). 29. Peperzak, Beyond, 91. See also Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 4. We see in this quotation the postmodern concern with thinking God ‘‘without’’ or ‘‘beyond’’ Being. See, for example: Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); God, the Gift and Postmodernism, eds. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Questioning God, eds. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); John D. Caputo, On Religion (New York: Routledge, 2001); and Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 30. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 34. 31. Heidegger uncovers only what we already possess, and is therefore in the same situation as Plato (Meno) or Augustine (De Magistro). 32. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 33–34. 33. Ibid., 34–35. The ‘‘trans-ascendence’’ of metaphysical desire for the other is not an apostasy that abandons the relationship between the same and the other for a new totality. Neither is it an ecstasis that leads to a loss of self in which the distance between the same and the other is lost. Transcendence is neither apostasy nor ecstasy. Rather, transcendence is an apology in which the same recognizes the validity of the critique contained in the face of the other. 34. ‘‘One can see nothing without thematization, or without the oblique rays which it reflects back, even when it is a question of the nonthematizable’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Wholly Otherwise,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991], 6). 35. There are obviously other important distinctions that might be made here, including the distinction between otherness as it confronts me in the face of the other and otherness as it welcomes me in the home (see above, note 20). Regarding otherness as it applies to the self, see Levinas, Otherwise than Being, chap. 4 passim. Notes to Pages 20–23
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36. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 102. 37. Plato, Symposium, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, trans. Michael Joyce, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 526–574. 38. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 103. 39. Ibid., 134. 40. Ibid., 115. 41. Ibid., 58. 42. Ibid., 111. 43. Ibid., 144. 44. See for example, Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 115– 117. Violence to the body is capable not only of wounding the body, but of wounding the subjectivity so incarnated. ‘‘Violence not only offends subjectivity, but bends the will, forces us to do what we do not wish to do.’’ Ibid., 117. 45. Ibid., 116. 46. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 117. Note that this will also raise the possibility of distinguishing: (1) my economic self from (2) my self as responsible for the other and substituted for him, both of whom are myself— thus introducing the way in which I can be other to myself. 47. Ibid., 82. 48. Descartes, Meditations, 77. 49. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 35. 50. See below, 282–286. 51. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 90. The key, of course, is whether or not we believe this is possible. Is there a way in which we can encounter the other ‘‘otherwise’’? Many thinkers would agree that this is possible, that there is more than one way of encountering and more than one way of knowing. The crux of the matter is whether we can encounter Levinas’s other, the absolutely other, in a manner other than the way we encounter other things and persons, in a manner that leaves the absolute alterity of the other intact. 52. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 187. It is the traditional account of sensibility that has led to the Western emphasis on visual and tactile metaphors for knowledge which, in turn, have entrenched knowing as something that grasps and destroys otherness. 53. Ibid., 187–188. 54. Ibid., 188. 55. Ibid., 187–193 passim. ‘‘There is’’ in the sense of ‘‘there is rain.’’ The il y a is Levinas’s term for Being without beings, which, contrary to the Heideggerian es gibt, is menacing and threatening rather than gifting. 56. Ibid., 49. 57. Ibid., 194. 58. Ibid., 39. 278
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59. Ibid., 74–75. 60. Ibid., 38. To represent the other by describing, labeling, or naming the experience of the other is to know and grasp something of the other— and thus to dominate him by destroying his otherness. This unwillingness to describe or name the other gives us clear insight into the core of Levinas’s difficulties with the descriptive method of phenomenology. 61. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 62. Emphasis mine. And, again, ‘‘Absolute difference, inconceivable in terms of formal logic, is established only by language. Language accomplishes a relation between terms that breaks up the unity of a genus.’’ Ibid., 195. 62. Ibid., 194. 63. Ibid., 198. 64. Ibid., 203. 65. Ibid., 88. Unjustified freedom is not freedom at all. Only freedom that has been justified, freedom that has been called to justice and responsibility can properly be called freedom. 66. Ibid., 86–87. 67. Ibid., 53. 68. Ibid., 200. 69. Ibid., 35–36. 70. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Ethics as First Philosophy,’’ in The Levinas Reader, trans. Sean Hand and Michael Temple, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 83. 71. Ibid., 82. This characterization, while extreme, shines a critical— though no doubt appropriate—light on the lifestyles of most citizens of Western industrialized nations in the twenty-first century. 72. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, xix. 73. Ibid., 112. Also Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu’eˆtre ou au-dela` de l’essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 143. See also Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 78. 74. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 201. Wyschogrod notes that this idea—that the more responsible a person becomes, the more she feels the weight of her guilt—is a recurring motif in rabbinical thought. 75. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 245. 76. Kearney, States of Mind, 190. 77. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 74. 78. Kearney, States of Mind, 191. This is in fact a key similarity between Levinas and Marcel. 79. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, xx. Emphasis mine. Levinas recognizes the severity of this claim. ‘‘It . . . is hard; I leave the whole consoling side of this ethics to religion’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav [New York: Columbia University Press, 1998], 108). 80. Ibid., 184. Notes to Pages 30–38
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81. Ibid., 117. 82. See Alphonso Lingis, translator’s introduction to Otherwise than Being, xxviii. 83. Peperzak, Beyond, 109. 84. See for example, Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 14–15. 85. Ibid., 14. The analysis is significantly more complex, and doing justice to the subtleties of Levinas’s argument would require more space than is appropriate here. The analysis of substitution is tied to the notion of diachronic time, which not only makes substitution possible, but also illustrates how I can be ‘‘given to myself’’ by the other and introduces the possibility of pardon or atonement. 86. Ibid., 15. 87. Ibid., 119. 88. Ibid., 68–69. 89. And, thus, Judaism is a ‘‘religion for adults.’’ See Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘A Religion for Adults,’’ in Difficult Freedom, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 11–23. The meaning of ‘‘I’’ in various translations of Levinas must be determined from the context, as Levinas alternates between the use of ‘‘je,’’ ‘‘Je,’’ ‘‘Moi,’’ ‘‘moi,’’ etc. See Levinas, God, Death and Time, especially 136–139. 90. Me voici corresponds to the biblical hineni, ‘‘Here I am,’’ of Abraham. Hineni is derived from hine, a word used only presentationally. Thus, hineni is the speech act whereby I present myself and make myself available to another. See Hillary Putnam, ‘‘Levinas and Judaism,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33–62. 91. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 103. 92. Ibid., 102. 93. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 90. 94. See for example, Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 212–214. 95. Ibid., 212. 96. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 210. 97. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 159. 98. Levinas, Entre Nous, 107. 99. Ibid., 213. 100. Ibid., 84. It is these ‘‘very complex structures’’ that will be questioned in subsequent chapters. 101. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 126. 102. While the title of this section is borrowed from Jeffrey Bloechl’s book of the same name, the analysis within is indebted to the work of Adriaan Peperzak and Edith Wyschogrod. Of course, any misinterpretations or misrepresentations are the fault of the author. Furthermore, this is only a preliminary characterization of Levinas’s meditations on the interrelated topics of God, transcendence and the other, which will be explored in detail in chapter 6. 280
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103. Kearney, States of Mind, 189. 104. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 12. See also Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘The Trace of the Other,’’ trans. Alphonso Lingis, in Deconstruction in Context, ed. Mark Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 345–359. 105. Levinas, ‘‘The Trace of the Other,’’ 358. 106. Ibid., 355–357. 107. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 12–13. Also see Totality and Infinity, 195. 108. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 162–163. Exodus 33, and its significance for Levinas, is echoed in 1 John: ‘‘No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us’’ (1 John 4:12). 109. For one example of Jewish scholarship on this topic, of which Levinas would certainly be aware, see Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Chaim Rabin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995), bk. 1, chap. 54 passim. In addition, see Levinas’s own work on the Talmud in: Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); New Talmudic Readings, trans. Richard Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999); and in Difficult Freedom. 110. Peperzak, Beyond, 106. See also Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 12. 111. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 17. ‘‘[T]he perfection of man in which he can truly glory is that achieved by him who has attained comprehension of God to the extent of his powers, and knows in what manner God provides for His creatures in creating them and governing them, and who after comprehending this aims in his own conduct at mercy, justice, and righteousness, so as to imitate God’s actions . . .’’ (Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, bk. 3, chap. 54). 112. Wyschogrod, Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 170. 113. Peperzak, Beyond, 147–148. 114. Ibid., 20. See again, Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, bk. 3, chap. 54 passim. 115. Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other, 176. 116. In Totality and Infinity, erotic love is addressed in terms of fecundity, which produces the child. The child is one way that transcendence and pardon are possible. Because the child is both the same and the other, the child is a continuation of myself beyond death, and so allows me to escape death and the judgment of the synchronic and totalizing time of history. 117. Peperzak, To the Other, 194. 118. Levinas, Entre Nous, 103. 119. ‘‘This is the primary sociality: the personal relation is in the rigor of justice that judges me and not in love that excuses me’’ (Levinas, Totalite´ et infini, 340). 120. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Toward the Other,’’ in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 12–29. Levinas does address the importance of being able to account for pardon and atonement in this essay. Notes to Pages 44–48
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121. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 213. 122. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 157. 123. Ibid., 158. 124. Ibid., 157 n. 85. 125. For example, Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 35. 126. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 159. The disinterestedness in the tension between justice and responsibility is highly reminiscent of Kantian ethics, in particular the disinterestedness of duty and the formula of the endin-itself. 127. Kearney, States of Mind, 197. 128. See for example, Levinas, Entre Nous, 104. 129. Ibid., 107. ‘‘Why are there two accounts of creation? Because the Eternal—called Elohim in the first account—wanted at first (all that is only a fable of course) to create a world sustained solely by justice. It didn’t hold up. The second account, in which the Tetragrammaton appears, attests to the intervention of mercy.’’ Ibid., 108. 130. Kearney, States of Mind, 194–195. 3. Gabriel Marcel 1. After passing his agre´gation in 1910, Marcel taught philosophy intermittently in Sens, Paris, and Montpellier; however, his main professional occupations were that of drama critic (for Europe nouvelle and later for Nouvelles litte´raires) and editor (for the Feux croise´s series at Plon). 2. ‘‘As one reads [Marcel’s autobiographical statement], one wonders whether Marcel would not have much preferred to go down in history as a great playwright and perhaps even actor rather than as philosopher. He really does not mince words about this preference.’’ Paul Arthur Schillp, preface to The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, by Paul Arthur Schillp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), xv. See also Marcel’s ‘‘Autobiographical Essay’’ (3–68), and E. M. Cioran’s ‘‘Gabriel Marcel: Notes for a Character Sketch’’ (71–79) in the same volume. 3. For example, he notes that his theatrical works helped to extract his philosophical thought from a spirit of abstraction and idealism. Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘An Essay in Autobiography,’’ in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 108. 4. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 235. Thus, philosophy divorced from examples runs the risk of becoming sophistry. This statement also implies that philosophy, for Marcel, addresses certain pre-linguistic or pre-logical experiences, which has parallels with Levinas’s claim that the encounter with the other is characterized by a response that precedes the concepts of concrete linguistic communication. 5. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. S. Fraser (London: Harvill Press, 1951); The Mystery of Being, vol.. 282
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2, Faith and Reality, trans. Rene Hague (London: Harvill Press, 1951); and, The Existential Background of Human Dignity, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963). 6. Roger Troisfontaines, De l’e´xistence a` l’eˆtre: la philosophie de Gabriel Marcel (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1968), 376. 7. Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘On the Ontological Mystery,’’ in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1995), 5. 8. See Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964), ix. 9. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 175. 10. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, xxxi. 11. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 41. 12. See Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, trans. Katherine Farrer (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 158; and Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 224. Also see Boyd Blundell, ‘‘Creative Fidelity: Gabriel Marcel’s Influence on Paul Ricoeur,’’ in Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrium, ed. Andrzej Wiercinski (Toronto: Hermeneutic Press, 2003), 93–95. Obviously, Levinas is also a peculiar phenomenologist insofar as he is attempting to philosophize about something that cannot, by definition, show itself as it is within my horizons of expectation and experience: the absolutely other. Levinas’s awkward relationship with phenomenology prefigures the debates surrounding the work of Jean-Luc Marion. 13. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 180. 14. Marcel, Homo Viator, 13; and Marcel, Being and Having, 158. 15. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 251. 16. Marcel, ‘‘Autobiographical Essay,’’ 48. 17. Thus, when we discuss the ‘‘transcendental’’ and ‘‘empirical’’ aspects of Levinas and Marcel, we will have to keep in mind that ‘‘empirical’’ must be understood in light of the non-objective view of experience that Marcel holds, just as ‘‘transcendental’’ must be viewed in light of Levinas’s claim that his philosophy ‘‘resembles’’ the transcendental method. See Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Creative Fidelity, x. 18. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 15. 19. See for example, Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 34. Thus, the broken world, like Levinas’s life of jouissance, does not necessarily refer to a postlapsarian state of affairs (although it would be difficult to deny that both these thinkers are dialectically engaged with the Fall in their thought). 20. Ibid., 36–37. And the refusal to reflect is linked to the grip of desire and fear—as distinct from hope and despair—on people today (See Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery). 21. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 11. Notes to Pages 54–56
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22. Ibid., 9. 23. Exigence is sometimes translated as ‘‘need,’’ however, the term has a richer texture in French and, while remaining a need of sorts, carries the force of a demand. Therefore, I will retain the French term in order to emphasize this additional meaning. Ontological exigence, as a need for transcendence, would be something like Levinas’s metaphysical desire. 24. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 34. 25. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 15. ‘‘Il faut qu’il y ait ou il faudrait qu’il y euˆt de l’eˆtre . . . ’’ 26. Marcel concedes that it may be the case that ontological exigence is never fully satisfied, and cannot be fully satisfied. See Tragic Wisdom, 50. 27. Sam Keen, ‘‘The Development of the Idea of Being,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, The Library of Living Philosophers vol. 17 (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 105. 28. See Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 39. The term ‘‘trans-ascendence’’ (also adopted by Levinas) is originally that of Marcel’s longtime friend Jean Wahl. Although Marcel also expresses some reservations about the term (ibid., 45), it seems clear that his ‘‘vertical transcendence’’ has more in common with transascendence than difference. 29. Ibid., 46. 30. Ibid., 47. Like Levinas, Marcel is suspicious of visual metaphors for knowledge or experience. However, because Marcel offers alternative descriptions of ways in which we can come to know something of an other person, it might be argued that Marcel is actually less wedded to modern epistemological assumptions. In other words, Levinas, in rejecting modern epistemologies that equate knowing with comprehension, remains dialectically tied to the very assumptions he seeks to overcome. In contrast, thinkers like Marcel, who assert that there are multiple epistemic modes, are less concerned that one or more of these modes might be comprehensive, dominating, or oppressive, for there are other modes that do not equate knowing with comprehension. For these latter thinkers, the task is not to reject knowing as comprehension, but to relegate it to its proper place and to insure that it is not misapplied in areas foreign to its sphere, such as ethics and theology. 31. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 193. 32. Marcel notes that certain philosophers have tried to make this distinction by using e´tant as a substantive and eˆtre as a verb. However, this practice never caught on, and the ambiguity of eˆtre often remains a problem of context. Marcel’s own use of eˆtre is frequently less than clear. See Troisfontaines, De l’e´xistence a` l’eˆtre, 42–48; and Kenneth T. Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (New York: Fordham University Press, 1962), chap. 4 passim. 33. Like William James, Marcel contends that it is our actions and conduct that evidence a disposition to the transcendent rather than our confes284
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sion of such a disposition. We are our beliefs; we are our hopes. For example, atheists can act—and therefore be—more like Christ than certain churchgoers. Nevertheless, while we can be disposed toward the ontological without acknowledging an Absolute Thou, being qua being remains such a thou for Marcel. 34. Marcel is far from consistent is his use of Being and being. The capitalized form is frequently found in those passages where Marcel does refer to Being and God. Confusingly, the uncapitalized form is used both for the being of man, being qua Absolute Thou and, sometimes, in these selfsame passages about God. Thus, the sense of ‘‘being’’ Marcel means to stress must often be gleaned from the context in which it is used. 35. Marcel, Being and Having, 83. Thus, having exhibits parallels with Levinas’s discussion of jouissance and nourishment. 36. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 12. 37. Marcel, Being and Having, 117. 38. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 213. 39. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 19. 40. Marcel, Being and Having, 118. 41. Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964), xxv. 42. Marcel, Being and Having, 114. Thus, Marcel asserts that participation is not the insertion of something spurious or alien (that is, my system, my ideas or concepts, etc.) into transcendence, which is what Levinas will claim. In fact, Marcel’s notion of participation will attempt to incorporate something akin to Levinas’s notion of interpellation (the interruption by the other, the call or address of the other). 43. Ibid., 172. 44. Ibid., 127–128. 45. Ibid., 126. 46. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 23. 47. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 83. 48. Ibid., 82–83. 49. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 25. 50. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 79–80. A sentiment that echoes Karl Jasper’s characterization of philosophy as a ‘‘loving struggle of communication’’ (see Karl Jaspers, Way to Wisdom, trans. Ralph Manheim [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954]; and Philosophy of Existence, trans. Richard F. Grabau [Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1971]). 51. Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G. S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962), 155. 52. Blundell, ‘‘Creative Fidelity: Gabriel Marcel’s Influence on Paul Ricoeur,’’ 90. The two passages Blundell cites here are from Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, 155 and 156 respectively. 53. Ibid. Notes to Pages 60–67
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54. Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, 1. 55. Ibid., 159. 56. See Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 182. 57. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 23. 58. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 114. 59. Ibid., 208. 60. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 191. 61. Ibid. 62. For an excellent treatment of the ego and the person in Marcel, on which the above elaboration of the ego and the person is based, see John E. Smith, ‘‘The Individual, the Collective, and the Community,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, The Library of Living Philosophers vol. 17 (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 338–349. 63. And furthermore, even here, ‘‘it is necessary to see what I call my ego in no way as an isolated reality . . . but as an emphasis which I give, not of course to the whole of my experience, but to . . . part of it’’ (Marcel, Homo Viator, 15). 64. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 88. 65. Joe McCowan, Availability: Gabriel Marcel and the Phenomenology of Human Openness (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978), 43. 66. See for example Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 87. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 88. Emphasis mine. It would be worth investigating and fleshing out Marcel’s use of eccity with respect to Levinas’s term ipseity. 69. See John E. Smith, ‘‘The Individual, the Collective and the Community,’’ 343. 70. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 38. 71. Or, perhaps, a possibility not generally present in our interaction with things. Martin Buber, for example, extends the possibility of I-Thou relations to things as well as other persons. See Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1958), 7. 72. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 182. 73. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 2, 57. Marcel maintains this opposition to totality in all his works. For example, ‘‘Here, as is so often the case, we must avoid the considerable intellectual temptation to think of this reality as a totality. It is essential to existential philosophy, as I conceive it at least, to take a stand against the pretensions of totalizing thought. I do not at all believe in the possibility of a reconciliation between existential philosophy and [philosophies of totality]’’ (Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 179). 74. Marcel, Being and Having, 155. 75. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 40. 76. Ibid., 32. 77. Ibid. 286
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78. Ibid., 42. 79. Marcel, Being and Having, 106–107. While the natural aspect of the other and myself may be similar (for example, biological similarity), the other and I are completely different qua freedom. It is as freedom that the other is other. 80. Ibid., 107. 81. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 41. 82. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 145. 83. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 40. Marcel, unlike Levinas, speaks of both the availability of the self and the availability of the other. It is worth noting here the difference Heidegger sees between two kinds of solicitude (Fu¨rsorge): one that liberates (‘‘leaping ahead’’) and one that dominates (‘‘leaping in’’) (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson [San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1962], 158– 159). The former liberates the other, while the latter subjugates her. 84. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 181. 85. See Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 39. 86. See, for example, Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 8. 87. Ibid., 154. 88. Marcel is aware of the problem that a shared secret presents, insofar as another person might be made to feel excluded by virtue of not ‘‘being in on the secret.’’ Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that intimate, loving relationships do include such secrets—for example, the ‘‘inside jokes’’ of a married couple, or the camaraderie of those who have suffered and faced danger together (Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 181). 89. Martin Buber concurs with Marcel on much of the material we have just summarized. Presence is a critical aspect of the I-Thou relationship, as is the highest level of involvement. ‘‘The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being’’ (Buber, I and Thou, 3). In addition, Buber specifically comments on the reciprocity of the I-Thou relationship: ‘‘Between you and it there is a mutual giving: you say Thou to it and give yourself to it, it says Thou to you and gives itself to you’’ (ibid., 33). 90. Marcel, Homo Viator, 55. 91. The terms ‘‘projective openness’’ and ‘‘receptive openness’’ are mine, not Marcel’s. However, great care should be taken in characterizing Marcel’s notion of intersubjectivity with spatial metaphors. He specifically says that the communication within such relationships cannot be characterized as a message from a transmission post to a receiving post, for such a characterization invariably views the body in objective, mechanistic terms. ‘‘Secondary reflection is forced to recognize that our primary assumptions must be called into question, and that sensation, as such, should certainly not be conceived on the analogy of the transmission and reception of a message’’ (Mystery of Being, vol. 1., 105–124). Notes to Pages 74–78
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92. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 179. 93. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 36. 94. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 205. Note however that Marcel does not intend to imply a dualism of the self. There is nothing like an empirical and an abstract self, or a phenomenal and noumenal self (see Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 1, 132). 95. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 51. 96. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 38. 97. Gabriel Marcel, Presence and Immortality, trans. Michael A. Machado (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967), 238. 98. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 227. 99. Ibid., 125. ‘‘False’’ is to be taken here in either the sense of ‘‘untrue,’’ as in the case of ignorance or a conscious lie, or in the sense that a trunk may have a ‘‘false’’ bottom, that is, when the apparent bottom of the tree, the trunk, obscures or hides the true bottom (the roots). There are several reasons we might hold to an opinion based on falsehoods: conditioning, pride, or stubbornness may cause us to hold an opinion we know to be false in a more or less conscious way; ignorance can cause us to hold untrue opinions; finally, and much more frequently, we may hold opinions that are false in the sense that the reasons we hold the opinions are subconscious or otherwise unclear to our own reflection (that is, as in the example of the tree and the roots, we are not conscious of the real reasons we hold a given opinion—we have not gotten to the root of the matter). 100. Ibid., 134. 101. Ibid., 135. 102. It should be emphasized here that fidelity always implies otherness. It would seem somehow to speak of fidelity to oneself in the sense that Marcel uses the term. Also see John E. Smith, ‘‘The Individual, the Collective and the Community,’’ 337–449. 103. Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Creative Fidelity, xxii. 104. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 136. 105. See Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 135–147. 106. Ibid., 163. 107. Ibid., 53. 108. Ibid., 162. 109. Ibid., 167. 110. Marcel, Homo Viator, 133. However, it is very often the case that ‘‘to hope in’’ becomes ‘‘to expect from,’’ ‘‘to have due me,’’ and finally ‘‘to demand or claim.’’ ‘‘The perpetually recurring difficulties which a philosophy of hope encounters are for the most part due to the fact that we have a tendency to substitute for the initial relationship, which is pure and mysterious, a subsequent relationship no doubt more intelligible, but at the same time more deficient as regards the ontological content’’ (Marcel, Homo Viator, 56). Here we see the contrast between the mysterious and the problematic expressed in terms of intelligibility. 288
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111. The fact that hope and despair do not have an object should not lead one to imagine that despair is something like Heideggerian angst of beingtowards-my-ownmost-possibility. On the contrary, Marcel objects very strongly to this aspect of Heidegger, and—in line with Levinas—insists that the significance of my death pales before the significance of the death of the other. See below, note 136. 112. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 28. 113. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 143. 114. Marcel, Homo Viator, 41 and 60. 115. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 32. 116. Ibid., 29. 117. Ibid., 26. 118. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 158. ‘‘It cannot be a matter of counting on oneself, on one’s own resources, to cope with this unbounded commitment; but in the act in which I commit myself, I at the same time extend an infinite credit to Him to whom I did so; Hope means nothing more than this’’ (Creative Fidelity, 167). 119. Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, 1. 120. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 229. ‘‘Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also’’ (1 John 4:20–21). 121. Ibid., 33. 122. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 2, 78. This obviously stands in sharp contrast to Levinas’s position on vous and tu (see above, page 56–57). 123. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 249 124. Marcel, Homo Viator, 49. 125. Marcel, Mystery of Being, vol. 2, 98. 126. Marcel, Being and Having, 135. 127. Ibid., 131. 128. Ibid., 167. 129. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 246. 130. Marcel, ‘‘Autobiographical Essay,’’ 35. The essay ‘‘Obedience and Fidelity’’ (found in Homo Viator) was one such article banned by the Vichy government. 131. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 247. 132. Ricoeur notes that disponibilite´ walks a fine line between ethics and ontology; and that, if it constitutes an ethics, it is an ethics of fidelity, the gift (of oneself) and of grace, not an ethics of legislation. ‘‘La disponibilite´ . . . sera donc au-dela` de la legislation . . .’’ (Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Entre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´,’’ in Gabriel Marcel: Colloque organise´ par la Bibliothe`que Nationale et l’association Pre´sence de Gabriel Marcel, ed. Michele Sacquin (Paris: Bibliothe`que Nationale, 1989), 160. Notes to Pages 85–90
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133. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 249. 134. Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber, An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960); and, Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977). 135. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 248. 136. Ibid., 249. ‘‘I am brought back to the criticism of Sein zum Tode: that this notion radically minimizes the death of the other, the death of the loved person. In my opinion this defect seriously affects Heidegger’s entire work, and ends by imprisoning him in an existential solipsism . . . In such a view, what becomes of agape and all that it implies?’’ A person is not only beingtowards-his-own-death, but ‘‘much more profoundly and intimately toward the death of the being whom he loves and for him counts infinitely more than himself, to the point of his being, not by nature but by vocation, decenterd or polycentered’’ (Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, 211–212). Marcel notes in the same conversation that Weber—from what Marcel knows of him—was ‘‘irreproachable in these terms’’; and he notes elsewhere that a philosophy such as that of Karl Jaspers would never have allowed the moral lapse that characterized Heidegger’s association with the Nazis. 4. Transcendental Philosophy 1. ‘‘For the way we are describing to work back and remain this side of objective certitude resembles what has come to be called the transcendental method . . .’’ Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 25. 2. Of course, Marcel also engages in abstraction in his philosophy. However, for Marcel, abstraction (primary reflection) is only a stage en route to recovering a fuller unity (secondary reflection). Abstraction itself is never the goal and abstraction alone will never uncover any essential existential truths. 3. See above, chap. 2, 20–22. See also, Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘Rereading Totality and Infinity,’’ in The Question of the Other: Essays in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, ed. Arleen B. Dallery and Charles E. Scott (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989), 23–34; Theodore de Boer, ‘‘An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy,’’ in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. Richard A. Cohen (New York: State University of New York Press, 1986), 83–115; and Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001). 4. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ in Outside the Subject, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 20–39. Other assessments of Marcel can be found, for example, in Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘A New Rationality: On Gabriel Marcel,’’ in Entre Nous, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New 290
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York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 61–62. Levinas also mentions Marcel by name in Alterity and Transcendence; Of the God who Comes to Mind; Difficult Liberty; Proper Names; Time and the Other; Totality and Infinity; God, Death and Time, and several other works. 5. Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 142. 6. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 20. In the actual essay this question refers to both Buber and Marcel. 7. Ibid., 21. 8. Chapter 3 made specific reference to Marcel’s comments regarding reciprocity. Buber concurs with Marcel on this topic, and comments specifically on the reciprocity of the I-Thou relationship. ‘‘Between you and it there is a mutual giving: you say Thou to it and give yourself to it, it says Thou to you and gives itself to you’’ (Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith [New York: Collier Books, 1958], 33). He also notes that, like the relationship of disponibilite´, the primary word I-Thou is one that is difficult, even impossible, to maintain indefinitely. ‘‘This is the exalted melancholy of our fate, that every Thou in our world must become an It’’ (Ibid., 16). And again, ‘‘the It is the eternal chrysalis, the Thou the eternal butterfly’’ (Ibid., 17). Finally, Buber also speaks to the issue of presence toward the other person, noting that, ‘‘The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being’’ (Ibid., 3). This assertion is fundamentally congruent with Marcel’s belief that we cannot be completely ourselves outside of the intersubjective relationship, that is, that we become less ourselves in the withdrawal of indisponibilite´. I am only my ‘‘whole being’’ in speaking the primary word I-Thou. 9. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 23. 10. Levinas, ‘‘A New Rationality: On Gabriel Marcel,’’ 61. The problems surrounding the Platonic theory of anamnesis are, obviously, central to Levinas’s reading of the tradition, and play a key role in his relationship to the tradition. 11. Ibid., 62–63. 12. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 141. 13. Ibid., 21. 14. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 21. 15. Ibid., 22. See below, chapter 5 (207–222) for a detailed discussion of reciprocity in the work of Levinas and Marcel. 16. However, Derrida, Buber and others feel that Levinas exaggerates the distance between Buber and himself. See John Llewellyn, ‘‘Jewgreek or Greekjew,’’ in The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years, ed. G. Moneta, J. Sallis, J. Taminiaux (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 275. This would be significant, for if Buber is closer to Marcel than Notes to Pages 94–97
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Levinas on many issues (as I claim), it would follow that Levinas exaggerates the distance between himself and Marcel as well. 17. ‘‘Ce livre qui se veut et se sent d’inspiration phe´nome´nologique proce`de d’une longue fre´quentation des textes husserliens, et d’une incessante attention a` Sein und Zeit’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite´ et infini [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1971], 1). This is not to imply that Levinas’s critique applies only to Heidegger or to fundamental ontology in the form it takes in Being and Time. The critique of totality extends beyond Being and Time to the later Heidegger and, as noted, to the entire Western tradition with a few notable exceptions. Nevertheless, Marcel presents a unique manifestation of this tradition, one which is itself not entirely allied with it. If Levinas’s critique of totality does apply to Marcel, it does not apply in the same manner in which it applies to Heidegger, which Levinas seems to indicate when he continues, in Totalite´ et infini, ‘‘Ni Buber, ni Gabriel Marcel ne sont ignore´s dans ce texte ou` Franz Rosenzweig est e´voque´ de`s la pre´face.’’ Ibid. 18. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 35. 19. Marcel does not, to my knowledge, use the term ‘‘absolutely other.’’ However, he does speak of the ‘‘other as such’’ (Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965], 115) and the ‘‘other qua other’’ (ibid., 107). In addition, he uses his own language to address the topic. For example, he asks rhetorically, ‘‘Must we not grant to idealism that the other person, as such, must always remain unknown to me . . . ?’’ Marcel, Homo Viator, 129. 20. Levinas acknowledges a similar distinction, not in his ‘‘philosophical works’’ but in his readings of the Talmud. See ‘‘Desacralization and Disenchantment’’ along with the translator’s introduction in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990). 21. This is interesting, given comments made by Levinas in his course on God and Onto-theo-logy. ‘‘If being itself is a task, if it is to-be or to-abandon . . . then it is no longer the being of the Greeks, the Platonic ‘being.’ And the ‘being’ of the pre-Socratics would be close to a biblical, and singularly Christian, conception.’’ Levinas, God, Death and Time, 136. 22. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, Faith and Reality, trans. Rene Hague (London: Harvill Press, 1951), 50. Hence Marcel’s horror at the functional treatment of human beings, which does treat them as unities susceptible of being added, subtracted or interchanged with one another. 23. See Marcel, Mystery of Being, 2:57. 24. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 89–151. 25. Marcel, Being and Having, 174. 26. See John E. Smith ‘‘The Individual, the Collective, and the Community,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis 292
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Edwin Hahn, The Library of Living Philosophers vol. 17 (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 344. 27. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, 69. ‘‘Each one taken by itself is false’’ because it is merely an abstraction. The mystery that Marcel is discussing in this quote is the mystery of ‘‘my body.’’ However, the application of this analysis to the mystery of intersubjectivity is not without sanction by Marcel, who notes that the mysterious relationship we have with others is not entirely unlike the mysterious relationship we have with our bodies. See Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964), xvii. 28. See Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. S. Fraser (London: Harvill Press, 1951), chap. 9 passim. 29. Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), 206. 30. Ibid., 207. 31. See Gabriel Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:31. 32. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 2:32. Marcel claims that a lack of fraternity is indicative of either atomization (separation to the point of solipsism) or leveling, homogeneous equality. Real fraternity is a pluralism of different beings. Compare this to Levinas’s treatment of fraternity—which requires the ‘‘commonness of a father’’—in Totality and Infinity (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 214). See also Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 158–159. 33. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick, translator’s introduction to Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), xxvii. See, in the same volume, the ‘‘Conversations with Paul Ricoeur’’ (especially 252– 253). The emphasis on journeying rather than on the destination, which Marcel sums up in characterizing man as homo viator, echoes Levinas’s distinction between the journey of Abraham and that of Odysseus. 34. The totalization of non-homogeneous beings, such as humans, is ethically objectionable and, in any case, ultimately impossible. The attempt to totalize such beings invariably fails to address them as the unique beings they are, which, as Levinas points out, results in murder rather than domination. In contrast, the unity of non-homogeneous beings like humans is desirable. However, it may be the case that while this hoped-for unity is theoretically possible, it is practically impossible. 35. ‘‘Mystery is not, as it is for the agnostic, construed as a lacuna in our knowledge, as a void to be filled, but rather as a certain plenitude . . . as an expression of a will, an exigence . . . [the appetite to know] is transcended rather than satisfied in the apprehension of mystery.’’ Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964), 152. Notes to Pages 102–104
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36. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, chap. 4 passim. Thus, Marcel claims that being can only be ‘‘evoked,’’ never ‘‘defined.’’ Ibid., 51. 37. Ibid., 193. Marcel originally made this comment in 1930 in a talk to the Fe´de´ration des associations d’e´tudiants chre´tiens. However, by the time of the publication of Tragic Wisdom almost forty years later, he noted that, while he still stood by the spirit of the statement, the character of these remarks now struck him as ‘‘too strictly religious.’’ Ibid. 38. Note that these are not Levinasian terms put into the mouth of Marcel, but are further evidence for the remarkable similarity for which this work argues. For example, Marcel claims that ‘‘we must be on our guard against all these metaphors which have been incorporated into the very flesh of language and which consist in assimilating the fact of being conscious to modes of physically gathering or taking. Such verbs as ‘seize’ and ‘grasp’ are very revealing from this point of view.’’ Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:52. 39. See Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 16. 40. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:98. 41. See Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 5ff. 42. Ibid., 34. 43. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 50. 44. Levinas recognizes a similar disjunction between two kinds of ‘‘experience’’: ‘‘The relation with infinity will have to be stated in terms other than those of objective experience; but if experience precisely means a relation with the absolutely other, that is, with what always overflows thought, the relation with infinity accomplished experience in the fullest sense of the word.’’ Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 25. Thus, Levinas himself acknowledges the possibility of an ‘‘ethical experience.’’ 45. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 24. 46. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 66. By identifying experience with recollection, Levinas is referring back to Platonic anamnesis, which is clearly a relationship that diminishes the other. 47. The experience of transcendence, more than any other, fits Marcel’s description of experience as ‘‘a straining oneself towards something, as when, for instance, during the night we attempt to get a distinct perception of some far-off noise.’’ Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:47. 48. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 144. The claim that transcendence is intentional, but not autocentric has some interesting implications for a contemporary appropriation of Marcel’s position. The fact that transcendence is characterized by intentionality is qualified by the assertion that this intentionality is not autocentric. Therefore, this kind of intentionality cannot be the totalizing intentionality that is the target of Levinas’s critique. Neither is this version of intentionality a strictly heterocentric, reverse intentionality as would be the case with Marion’s saturated phenomenon (See God Without 294
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Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991].). Rather, Marcel’s understanding of transcendence lies between the autocentricity of traditional phenomenology and heterocentricity of reverse intentionality. Like reverse intentionality, it is a response to the unanticipated call of the other; however, as traditional phenomenology claims, the call of the other must manifest itself within my horizons in some way if I am able to hear it at all. 49. See Marcel’s journal entry of February 27, 1933: ‘‘We shew [sic.] what we have; we reveal what we are (though of course only in part) . . .’’ Marcel, Being and Having, 135. 50. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 22. See also Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 68. 51. See Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 39; and Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:178. 52. Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘I and Thou’’ in The Philosophy of Martin Buber (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press, 1967), 41. Buber would be in agreement with this characterization, which is why Levinas critiques both Marcel and Buber on this issue. 53. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 23. 54. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:182. 55. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 23. 56. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 62. Emphasis mine. 57. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 24. 58. Martin Buber, I and Thou, pt. 1 passim. Note, however, that these primary words are spoken with a person’s being. ‘‘The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being . . .’’ Ibid., 3. 59. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 24. 60. Ibid. 61. See Marcel’s essay ‘‘I and Thou’’ and, in addition, Martin Buber: L’homme et la philosophie (Brussels: Editions de l’Institut de Sociologie de l’Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, 1968), 17–41. Also see Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 25. 62. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 25. 63. Marcel, ‘‘I and Thou’’, 44. 64. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, xviii. 65. See, for example, Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:9ff.; and Marcel, Tragic Wisdom, xxvii, 6 and 14. In the preference for connotative language over denotative language, we can see in Marcel an alliance with the semiotic or hermeneutic turn in Continental philosophy, despite his own doubts associated with aspects of the hermeneutic turn of his most famous student, Paul Ricoeur. 66. In a similar vein, see Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘‘Ce´zanne’s Doubt,’’ in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 9–25; ‘‘Eye and Mind,’’ Notes to Pages 107–113
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in The Primacy of Perception, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 159–190; ‘‘Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence,’’ in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 39–83. 67. Preface to the German edition of Totality and Infinity in Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 197. 68. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, especially 5–7 and 45ff. 69. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 32ff. 70. Ibid., 32. Emphasis mine. The bracketed clarification of Levinas’s perception of Marcel’s position is from Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 21–22. 71. For example, ‘‘We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is.’’ Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b. 72. Levinas, God, Death and Time, 160. As Peperzak notes, ‘‘The Western attempt to master human destiny has always been connected with a movement of transcendence, but the traditional way consisted in the absolutization of one being, such as God, Substance, Idea, Spirit, or Eternity. Heidegger accomplished a revolution by arguing that the question of Being itself precedes the question of a highest being. He continued the Western tradition insofar as he subordinated all ontic truth to ontology . . . ’’ Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 49. But he adds, ‘‘A careful reading of Plotinus, Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Bonaventure and Kant—to name only a few pillars of Western spirituality—shows that they have never seen the transcendent as the highest of all beings. . . . [However], it is also true that Christian theology had a lot of trouble trying to prevent its combination of biblical revelation and Greek (onto)logic from degenerating into an absolutization of philosophy.’’ Ibid., 147. 73. Ibid., 124. 74. The literature related to various attempts to discuss God ‘‘after metaphysics’’ is too vast to note here, but Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being is one, perhaps archetypically Levinasian, representative of the contemporary work on this topic. See also, Questioning God, eds. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); God, the Gift and Postmodernism, eds. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); and Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001). 75. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 23. Levinas also claims that, ‘‘there is in Marcel the concern to prolong traditional 296
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ontology: God is Being. The idea that God is something other than being . . . must have frightened him.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous, 119. 76. Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Marcel, Creative Fidelity, xii. 77. However, and this is of absolutely central importance, the otherness of God is thought of in different terms by Marcel and by Levinas; and, in fact, chapter 6 will argue that it is precisely this different conception of the otherness of God that leads to a different understanding of otherness per se and, therefore, of the otherness of the other person. 78. According to Levinas, Totality and Infinity challenges ‘‘presence grasped in representation and the concept’’ (Entre Nous, 198). Is there a possibility of a presence that is not so grasped, that is, a presence that would not, by virtue of being present, be absorbed and assimilated, grasped and understood in terms of my concepts or forms, a presence that remains independent? This, it would seem, is exactly what Marcel is trying to describe. 79. Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Marcel, Creative Fidelity, xxi. 80. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 167. 81. Again, Buber is closer to Marcel on this issue than he is to Levinas. Buber extends the transcendence of the I-Thou relationship beyond the interhuman sphere, allowing for the possibility of I-Thou relationships with things; for example, a tree. See Buber, I and Thou, pt. 1 passim. 82. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, xxxiv. 83. Goethe as cited by Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 43. 84. Marcel’s assertion can be found in Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysical Journal, trans. Bernard Wall (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), 211. Levinas cites this passage and comments on it in Entre Nous (62–63). It is curious to note that—not unlike his emphasis on Being and Time over the later Heideggerian works—Levinas almost invariably refers to Marcel in terms of his very early work, in particular the Metaphysical Journal. This early assessment of Marcel’s position may, perhaps, account for why Levinas does not mention fundamental parallels with his own work to be found in Marcel’s later work. 85. Levinas, Entre Nous, 63. Emphasis mine. Note this final sentence, a bold statement that points toward one of the things influencing Levinas’s and Marcel’s different understandings of otherness: spirituality, religion, and the relationship possible between persons and God. 86. Levinas is, perhaps, not as guilty as Heidegger in this regard. He does not claim to know Marcel better than Marcel knows himself. Levinas does not claim to find in Plato, Descartes, or Marcel an unproblematic mirror of his own thought, or a parallel dialogue merely awaiting translation into Levinasian terms. Rather, he sees in these thinkers a seed or inchoate formulation of the Infinite as it appears in his own thought. Nevertheless, Notes to Pages 115–119
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Levinas does occasionally return to philosophers in whom he sees a parallel or anticipation of his own thought, and read them as if this inchoate seed were a fully formed flower. 87. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ 39. 88. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘The Diary of Le´on Brunschvicg,’’ in Difficult Freedom, trans. The Athlone Press (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 39–45. Marcel refers to the location of this encounter as the ‘‘International Philosophy Convention’’ in Tragic Wisdom, 131. 89. Levinas, ‘‘The Diary of Le´on Brunschvicg,’’ 44. 90. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 131 91. Ibid. Emphasis mine. 92. Richard Kearney, States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 191. 93. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 119. Emphasis mine. Jill Robbins claims that ‘‘ceding one’s place to the other is paradigmatic of the kind of gesture that Levinas terms ethical’’ (Is it Righteous to Be?: Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], 1). Again, this is surely a gesture that is often repeated by Marcel. 94. Marcel argues for a decentered or polycentered ‘‘universe’’ while Levinas places the other squarely in the ‘‘center’’ position. 95. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 35; Marcel, Homo Viator, 62 and 133. 5. Concrete Philosophy 1. For example, certain philosophies are unable to account for the plenitude our exigence seeks (see Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, trans. Katherine Farrer [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965], 86 n. 1; Creative Fidelity, trans. Robert Rosthal [New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964], 152; and, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973], 51–53). Other philosophies hypostasize parts of a person or fail to account for some significant aspect of the human condition, such as tragedy. 2. Certainly this accusation will strike some as unkind, even unfair. Levinas himself insists that his account, including the demand for absolute, non-reciprocal alterity describes a ‘‘commonplace’’ moral experience (Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969], 53). Nevertheless, it will become clear that Levinas’s position is problematic, even in his own eyes. 3. Otto Friedrich Bollnow classifies disponibilite´ as a novel ‘‘human virtue.’’ Otto Friedrich Bollnow, ‘‘Marcel’s Concept of Availability,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Edwin Lewis Hahn, The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17 (La Salle, Ill.: Open 298
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Court, 1984), 182. If this is the case, disponibilite´, hope and creative fidelity are ethical insofar as they are essential parts of living well. 4. Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘On the Ontological Mystery,’’ in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1995), 43. 5. Ibid. Although Levinas also has such ‘‘implied imperatives’’ in his thought, they are complicated by the seemingly unattainable demand of his ethics. An imputed, unattainable ethical demand is intuitively less plausible than an imputed, accessible demand. Nevertheless, we will come to see that Levinas’s demand is perhaps not as inhuman as is commonly thought, or at least that its inhumanity is not problematic in the way it is commonly supposed to be. 6. ‘‘If we could use the word ‘foundation’ without immediately becoming conscious of its inadequacy with regard to the ‘pre-original’ or ‘an-archic’ character of Levinas’s main concepts, we could maintain that his philosophy is a philosophical ‘foundation’ of ethics, or a ‘fundamental’ ethics, not so very unlike Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason.’’ Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 222. 7. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 53; and Richard Kearney, States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 195. 8. See, for example, Martin Heidegger, ‘‘The Letter on Humanism,’’ in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997), 217–265 (and especially 255ff.). 9. Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 12. 10. One typical criticism from this camp is that Levinas’s ethical ‘‘ought’’ is tied up with an ontological ‘‘is.’’ In other words, his ethical metaphysics either is itself, or presupposes the development of, an ontological account of what is. 11. A few examples will suffice to hint at the extent of Levinas’s influence and the diversity of his readers. Adriaan Peperzak questions the meaning of asymmetry and reciprocity in To the Other (To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas [West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993]); and in Beyond, Jacques Derrida engaged in a long-term, collegial debate with Levinas, which included ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 79–153; ‘‘At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, trans. Ruben Berezdivin, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 11–48; and ‘‘Adieu,’’ in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 1–13. Fabio Ciaramelli attempts to balance the demands of individual and social responsibilities in ‘‘Levinas’s Ethical Discourse: Between Individuation and Universality,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (IndianapoNotes to Pages 123–125
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lis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 83–108. Edith Wyschogrod treats the topics of time, language and the relationship between Levinas’s faith and his philosophy, among others, in Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). Multiple interviews have been recorded and published, including those by Richard Kearney, Philippe Nemo, and R. Fornetand A. Gomez (Kearney, States of Mind [1995]; Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985]; Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Philosophy, Justice, and Love,’’ in Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav [New York: Columbia University Press, 1998]). Robert Bernasconi questions the difference between the strange and the alien in ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien’’; his ‘‘ ‘Only the Persecuted . . .’: Language of the Oppressor, Language of the Oppressed’’ addresses Levinas’s claim that we are responsible even for those who persecute us (Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien,’’ in The Face of the Other and the Trace of God, ed. Jeffery Bloechl [New York: Fordham University Press, 2000], 62–89; and ‘‘ ‘Only the Persecuted . . .’: Language of the Oppressor, Language of the Oppressed,’’ in Ethics as First Philosophy, ed. Adriaan Peperzak [New York: Routledge, 1995], 77–86). Bernhard Waldenfels also questions the limit of our responsibility for the other in ‘‘Response and Responsibility in Levinas,’’ in Ethics as First Philosophy, ed. Adriaan Peperzak (New York: Routledge, 1995), 39–52. Finally, Levinas’s implications for feminism and feminist philosophy have been questioned by Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Tina Chanter (Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley [New York: Random House, 1963], xxii; Luce Irigaray ‘‘Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley [Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991], 109–118; Tina Chanter, ‘‘Antigone’s Dilemma,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley [Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991], 130–146). 12. Derrida notes that the extent and import of Levinas’s oeuvre—which is so large that we can ‘‘no longer glimpse its boundaries’’ and is already an integral part of the way we think philosophically today—will provide ‘‘centuries’’ of scholars with work (Derrida, ‘‘Adieu,’’ 1). In addition to those already cited in the previous note, a partial list of such readers would include: John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, John Llewelyn, Jean-Luc Marion, Hilary Putnam, William Richardson, Paul Ricoeur, John Sallis, Jacques Taminiaux, and Merold Westphal. 13. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:41. 14. Reciprocity plays a significant role in both Beyond (120–170) and To the Other (171–177). Insofar as the irreversibility of the ethical relationship is the result of Levinas characterizing otherness in absolute terms, see also: Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: Univer300
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sity of Chicago Press, 1992), 297ff.; Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger,’’ 78–79; Bernhard Waldenfels, ‘‘The Other and the Foreign,’’ in Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (1995): 5–6; and Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 66–67, 71, etc. 15. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 103. 16. Ibid., 35–36. 17. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 244–245. 18. Levinas explicitly affirms the locus of individuation, noting that, ‘‘On the famous problem: ‘Is man individuated by matter, or individuated by form,’ I support individuation by responsibility’’ (Levinas, Entre Nous, 108). However, we cannot say that the other person is responsible, and therein lies the difficulty. Of course, Levinas does recognize that we must compare people, and this is why he acknowledges that justice supercedes responsibility. However, justice—particularly when we move into the political realm— also dispenses with the demand for irreversibility. Here, considering the irreversibility of responsibility to which I am called by absolute otherness, I am left with identical relationships with every other other, for if these relationships were not identical, they would differ from each other in some detectable way and the other would no longer be absolutely other. 19. In contrast, Buber and Marcel do not think that every encounter with other persons rises to the level of I-Thou or disponibilite´. 20. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being; or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), 117. 21. Ibid., 111 and 166 respectively. Although Levinas also claims that this servitude and substitution is not slavery (ibid., 68–69). 22. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Liberty: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 291. 23. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 99. Levinas himself applies the terms ‘‘utopian’’ and ‘‘inhuman’’ to his extreme demand in the same interview (ibid., 100). 24. Levinas, Entre Nous, 105. 25. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 99. This position might be read as a potential response to the remarkable encounter and problematic issue raised by William Richardson’s essay, ‘‘The Irresponsible Subject,’’ in Ethics as First Philosophy, ed. Adriaan Peperzak (London: Routledge, 1995), 123–136. 26. Levinas, Entre Nous, 105. Though it is perhaps reassuring to find that we are allowed, even called, to resist injustice, this exceptional encounter with another person who is ‘‘faceless’’ is nothing short of shocking in light of Levinas’s uncompromising insistence on an an-archic responsibility to the other. 27. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 63–64, where he notes, like Marcel, that the equal (the political) is not the just (the ethical or the social). See also Kearney, States of Mind, 177–199 for some of Levinas’s thoughts on the relation between the ethical and the moral. Notes to Pages 127–130
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28. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 68, where he makes this point specifically in relation to reciprocity as it appears in Buber and Marcel. 29. The extent to which this is an ‘‘alternative reading’’ of Levinas and an elucidation of a covert or esoteric element in his thought is open to debate. Peperzak may in fact be read as either critiquing Levinas for his position on reciprocity or illuminating a more subtle position on reciprocity already within Levinas’s thought. In actuality, it is likely that he is doing both. 30. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 212–215; and Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Random House, 1991), 289. Note, however, that these are in fact not the words of the Elder Zosima, but the words of his deceased older brother Markel, as related to Alexi by the Elder Zosima on his own deathbed. Thus, this phrase is related to us by the unnamed ‘‘narrator’’ of The Brothers Karamazov, who reports Alexi’s account of the Elder Zosima’s deathbed recollection of words spoken by the long-dead Markel. In fact, both the ‘‘authorship’’ of this phrase and the appropriateness of Levinas’s use of it in his philosophy are open questions. 31. Peperzak, To the Other, 171. 32. Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, 289. 33. Ibid. Emphasis mine. 34. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 84. Emphasis mine. 35. Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 326–327. 36. Peperzak, Beyond, 66. This sentence is footnoted in Peperzak’s text with multiple references to responsibility in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, along with the warning that the responsibility for oneself is something that is ‘‘not emphasized’’ by Levinas. The extent to which I am responsible for myself is tied to the other(ness) in me and to the possibility of seeing myself with a disinterested love for myself (ibid., 128). 37. Peperzak notes that when Levinas affirms that I am an ‘‘Other for the Others,’’ this is ‘‘not because of a primordial equality of all human individuals who share one common essence, but thanks to the ‘pre-original’ structure of transcendence, i.e., ‘thanks to God’ (graˆce a` Dieu)’’ (Peperzak, To the Other, 183). 38. Levinas, Entre Nous, 105. 39. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 213. 40. Peperzak, To the Other, 171. Also see Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 212. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 172. 43. Peperzak, Beyond, 126. That is, while it refutes non-reciprocity, it preserves asymmetry. Or, as Bernasconi puts it, ‘‘Alongside the empirical asymmetry by which the Other is Other to me, there is another empirical 302
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asymmetry by which I am Other to the Other. Together they constitute a ‘strange symmetry,’ ‘the transcendental symmetry of two empirical asymmetries’ ’’ (Bernasconi, ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien,’’ 70). Bernasconi cites Derrida’s ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ (126) in this excerpt. 44. Marcel takes this one step further by claiming that I cannot demand anything of the other—further insuring the asymmetry of the relationship (while simultaneously preserving a sense of reciprocity). Any claim made against the other, any requirements concerning his or her behavior or conduct, should be articulated purely in terms of hope, never in terms of demand. 45. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 126. 46. Richard Kearney makes a related point, to which we will return below: ‘‘A basic problem with the approach of Levinas and Derrida, as I see it, is that it fails to distinguish adequately between different kinds of otherness. (A poetic license perfectly fitting for poets but somehow ill-befitting philosophers.)’’ (Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 108). 47. Peperzak, Beyond, 125–126. Peperzak suggests that speaking ‘‘philosophically’’ seems to require full elucidation, which Levinas appears unwilling to give. Levinas sidesteps the question of the other’s responsibility to the self by stating that that ‘‘is his own business; for me, he is above all the one I am responsible for’’ (Levinas, Entre Nous, 105). However, in the same vein, he notes ‘‘I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity. . . . Reciprocity is his affair’’ (Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 98). This seems to imply that there may well be reciprocity in the relationship of the same to the other. However, it is a non-verifiable reciprocity and therefore should not distract me from my primordial responsibility to the other. 48. Peperzak, Beyond, 226. 49. Thus a ‘‘perfect’’ disponibilite´, wherein the openness that one person has toward the other is matched not only by an equal receptivity to this openness, but a reciprocal openness—freely given, not demanded—toward the first person, would constitute the intersection of the lines of service and devotion on the hypothetical chiasm. Each person sees him- or herself as a servant of the other and simultaneously as the subject of the other’s devotion. Paradoxically, the equality of this situation is brought about by the very inequality each person feels within it. 50. Peperzak, Beyond, 227. This should not be read as conceding the point to Levinas. The possibility of saintly giving does not degrade the value of less-than-saintly (e.g., reciprocal) giving. 51. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:179. 52. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 59. 53. Shakespeare, Othello, act 1, scene 1. Emphasis mine. 54. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Patton (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), 64–68. Notes to Pages 133–135
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55. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 304. 56. See chapter 3 (114–115) regarding the affective element required for disponibilite´ and fidelity. Marcel calls us to service of the other, but service— which requires the said affective element—can take varied forms. ‘‘We must re-learn how to serve, but this does not simply mean we must re-learn how to obey, for to obey is only one way of serving. There are others . . .’’ (Marcel, Homo Viator, 127). 57. ‘‘A fulfillment of an obligation contre-coeur is devoid of love and cannot be identified with fidelity’’ (Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Creative Fidelity, xxii). 58. Marcel, Homo Viator, 54. 59. Ibid., 56. Marcel and Levinas (and Buber) concur insofar as they agree that we inevitably fall short of ideal ethical behavior, that is, that there is an element of utopianism in the ethical demand. 60. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 213. 61. Levinas, ‘‘The Ego and the Totality,’’ in the Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 43. Jeffrey Dudiak reads this, and similar passages, as a ‘‘prophetic discourse’’ that is able to simultaneously speak philosophically without betraying Levinas’s ethics of alterity (that is, while remaining, in a very special sense, un-philosophical). Dudiak identifies three interrelated facets of Levinas’s thought: (1) ethics, in which I am alone and irremissibly responsible for the other; (2) justice, where my absolute responsibility to the other is transformed into a concern for all (including myself) in society; and (3) prophetic discourse, wherein I appeal to the goodness of the other. See Dudiak, Intrigue of Ethics, 325 and 332ff. Dudiak’s reading of the idea of discourse in Levinas is well developed, and follows Levinas’s texts very closely. However, in uncovering or elaborating the way in which the self can command the other or call the other to his responsibility, Dudiak reads Levinas in a manner that allows for a kind of reciprocity and acknowledges an otherness that is less than absolute. Therefore, if Dudiak’s reading saves Levinas from some of these criticisms, it does so by reading Levinas in a more Marcelian manner (accounting for reciprocity, for calling the other to goodness, etc.). One of the more striking examples of the Marcelian spirit of Dudiak’s reading of Levinas is his reading Levinas’s use of eschatology in terms of ‘‘hope’’ and even ‘‘expectation,’’ which comes very close to Marcel’s language when talking about creative fidelity. Prophetic discourse is then neither the violence of the category imposed, nor an adherence coerced, but a pacific solicitation. It asks, in ‘‘eschatological’’ hope and in the experience of grace, ‘‘Are you not good?’’ or ‘‘Have you not already testified to your own goodness?’’ and expects a positive response—for its testimony is always ‘‘You have already been good’’—but can never forsake this interrogative for 304
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either the indicative ‘‘You are called to be good’’ or the imperative ‘‘You must be good’’ . . . (Dudiak, Intrigue of Ethics, 332). Compare this to Marcel’s concept of creative fidelity, which hopes for the goodness of the other without insisting or demanding. 62. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 89–90. Emphases mine. That is, here, in this context, where Levinas is concerned with establishing the fundamental primordiality of social justice. 63. ‘‘This is the primary sociality: the personal relation is in the rigor of justice that judges me and not in love that excuses me.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite´ et infini: essai sur l’exte´riorite´ (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing 1971), 304. 64. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 35–36. Emphasis mine. 65. ‘‘Schro¨dinger’s Cat’’ is the name for the thought experiment conceived by Erwin Schro¨dinger to illustrate certain curious implications of quantum mechanics. The eponymous cat, enclosed in a box with a device that has a fifty percent chance of killing it by a given time ‘‘x’’ is, at that time ‘‘x,’’ paradoxically in a state between realities wherein it is both alive and dead and neither alive nor dead, pending the verification of one state or the other by an outside observer. Hence, the analogy to a non-verifiable reciprocity. 66. Jill Robbins notes, in her excellent introduction to Is it Righteous to Be?, that the terms widow, orphan, and stranger ‘‘are not categorical determinations of the other. They refer to the other’s defenselessness, to the other as someone about whom one worries’’ (Jill Robbins, ed., Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], 11). Nevertheless, even if these terms are non-categorical and refer only to vulnerability and defenselessness per se, I must understand that the other is vulnerable and defenseless and understanding requires some common ground, marginal though it may be. The absolutely other would not appear defenseless, or vulnerable, or threatening, or desirable, because the absolutely other cannot appear at all. 67. It is the affective element, the ability to imagine the other’s suffering and fear as mine, which allows me to see the misfortune of others. 68. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Wholly Otherwise,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, trans. Simon Critchley, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 3–10. The development or evolution in this dialogue does not, in itself, imply that there is a ‘‘turn’’ in Levinas’s thought. 69. Llewelyn notes, for example, that Levinas did not revise his thesis with respect to Heidegger or Husserl after the publication of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ (Llewelyn, ‘‘Jewgreek or Greekjew,’’ 286). Again, insofar as the status of the possibility of absolute (human) alterity remains an open topic, the criticisms of ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ remain unanswered, or Notes to Pages 137–141
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not fully answered. None of the work on this difficult topic can yet be said to be the last word on human otherness, which remains undefined. 70. Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 123–129. 71. Ibid., 124. 72. Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien,’’ 72. 73. Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 124. 74. Marcel’s characterization of the other person as his or her own ‘‘center’’ parallels very closely the Husserlian characterization of an alter ego as another absolute origin. 75. While this remains a theoretical possibility in Husserl’s early work, the Husserl of the Crisis seems to have acknowledged that a complete eidetic insight into a thing is not possible. 76. Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 124. 77. Ibid., 125. 78. Ibid., 127. 79. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 172. 80. Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology and the ‘‘Theological Turn’’: The French Debate, trans. Bernard G. Prusak (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). 81. Jeffrey Dudiak, Intrigue of Ethics, 391. 82. Jill Robbins, ed., Is it Righteous to Be?: Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 5. 83. Robert Bernasconi, ‘‘The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien,’’ 73. He continues to note that ‘‘it should be clear that at the time of ‘Violence and Metaphysics’ the issue between Levinas and Derrida is more about the appropriate language for saying the Other than about the validity of Husserl’s account.’’ Ibid. 84. Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 127. This, of course, prefigures Derrida’s association with negative theology, ‘‘general apophatics,’’ etc. 85. Levinas notes: ‘‘But although philosophy is essentially Greek, it is not exclusively so. It also has sources and roots which are non-Greek. What we term the Judeo-Christian transition, for example, proposed an alternative approach to meaning and truth [i.e. revelation]. The difficulty is, of course, to speak of this alternative tradition given the essentially Greek nature of philosophical language.’’ Kearney, States of Mind, 184. 86. See Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 37–53 and 165–171. 87. In fact, Levinas’s own conduct has been scrutinized in terms of the ability of a human being to live the infinite responsibility that an ethical relationship with the absolutely other demands. See William Richardson, ‘‘The Irresponsible Subject,’’ 123–131. 88. Though he does state, ‘‘My task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning . . . One can without doubt construct an ethics in function of which I have just said, but this is not my own theme.’’ Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 90. 306
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89. Kearney, States of Mind, 193. 90. Ibid. 91. This is not, insists Levinas, a contradiction. Like the skeptical challenge to philosophy, the possibility of encountering the other qua other in a world that Levinas himself insists is ontological is evidence for the diachronic temporality opened by otherness, which separates the other from the synchronic time of totality. Thus, paradoxically, the ontological world does not prohibit or eliminate otherness, but testifies to its character as other, as otherwise than being. 92. Peperzak, To the Other, 183. 93. Richard A. Cohen, translator’s introduction to Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 13. 94. Ibid., 14. 95. Kearney, States of Mind, 194. 96. Peperzak, Beyond, 169. 97. Kearney, States of Mind, 195. A not-so-subtle reference to Heidegger. 98. Ibid., 197. The utopian character of this thought is not at all foreign to philosophy, especially in the field of ethics. Levinas is in good company here, as Plato, Augustine, Kant, James, Marcel, and many other ethical thinkers all affirm the concrete and pragmatic benefits of a goal or ethical standard that may in fact be unattainable. 99. William James, Pragmatism (New York: Dover, 1955), 18. 100. Ibid., 19. And especially given that both philosophers freely admit the utopian character of their respective ethical demands. 101. See, for example, Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 74; and Marcel, Mystery of Being, 2:118–126. 6. The Other and God 1. I should note here that the use of the term ‘‘relative alterity’’ is problematic, insofar as it is loaded—particularly in the contemporary, post-Levinasian discourse about alterity—to imply otherness ‘‘relative’’ to me in the sense of ‘‘determined by me’’ or ‘‘in reference to my system of understanding.’’ It should be clear that Marcel attempts to distance himself from thinking of the other in terms of the system or horizon of the self. However, attempts to find a designation for the kind of otherness Marcel has in mind are either cumbersome, artificial, or both. ‘‘Non-absolute’’ reciprocity, ‘‘imperfect’’ reciprocity, ‘‘partial’’ reciprocity, and ‘‘incomplete’’ alterity all have the same kind of unfortunate connotation. Using a neologism (e.g., ‘‘anabsolute’’ alterity) or borrowed imagery (e.g., ‘‘thick’’ versus ‘‘thin’’ alterity) could be helpful, but would certainly interfere with the accessibility of the argument and, furthermore, would violate Marcel’s own dictum to try to philosophize in ordinary language. Thus, despite the significant problem of the unwanted connotations of relative alterity, I will stick with this term, Notes to Pages 146–151
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asking the reader to keep in mind Marcel’s sense of alterity, which I have argued contains aspects of both (absolute) alterity and aspects of similarity. 2. Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 103. Note that neither Marcel nor Levinas is much concerned with love in terms of erotic love. Although both do discuss this kind of love in their work, they both agree that eros is ambiguous. In classical terms, the goal or object of erotic love is less than clear. Furthermore, erotic love is subject to multifarious sorts of perversion and degradation. Thus, when we read ‘‘love’’ in either philosopher’s work, we would do well to consider what sort of love is being discussed (eros, agape, philia, caritas, etc.). See, for example, Richard Kearney, States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 188; and Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 2, Faith and Reality, trans. Rene Hague, (London: Harvill Press, 1951), 9. 3. ‘‘This is the primary sociality: the personal relation is in the rigor of justice that judges me and not in love that excuses me.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite´ et infini: essai sur l’exte´riorite´. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1971), 304. 4. Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘On the Ontological Mystery,’’ in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1995), 20. 5. Levinas, Entre Nous, 108 6. Ibid., 103. 7. Ibid. 8. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 246. 9. Levinas, Entre Nous, 107–108 and 120–121. Justice has priority over responsibility and, thus, priority over substitution; and love taken in any sense other than love qua responsibility is superseded by all these other relations (ibid., 104). 10. Marcel does not see a strong opposition between justice and love, certainly not in the way that Levinas does. Levinas opposes the passionate, interested, intimacy of love to the materially oriented, dis-interested, distance of responsibility. Marcel, however, tends to think of justice and love as two manifestations of the same relationship. Nevertheless, it is clear that, for Marcel, while justice may be the ‘‘supreme problem,’’ love is the more primordial relationship and is the appropriate ‘‘solution’’ to the problem of justice. 11. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 102. 12. See Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), chap. 5 passim. 13. Levinas tends to use metaphors of height earlier in his work (e.g., Totality and Infinity) and only later chooses to emphasize the theme of prox308
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imity—a transition partially explained in the essay ‘‘God and Philosophy’’ (Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘God and Philosophy,’’ in Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998], 55–78). 14. In this, Levinas is following Hermann Cohen. ‘‘The Jewish desire for nearness with God, as expressed in the psalms and elsewhere, is not the mystical union, or any sort of ascent into the godhead but a recognition that God will always be otherwise than human, and that drawing near to God is the highest possibility for us.’’ Robert Gibbs, ‘‘Jewish Dimensions of Radical Ethics,’’ in Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, ed. Adriaan Peperzak (New York: Routledge, 1995), 19. See also Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1971), 225. 15. For an excellent analysis of height and proximity in Levinas’s thought, see Robert Gibbs, ‘‘Jewish Dimensions of Radical Ethics,’’ 17ff. 16. Again, in the interest of clarity, the characterization of otherness as having aspects of absolute alterity and aspects of similitude is not to be found, specifically, in Marcel’s work. Rather, the notion of ‘‘aspects of alterity’’ comes from my own, significantly post-Levinasian, reading of Marcel. I am indebted to a conversation with Michael Barber of the University of St. Louis, which helped me to clarify my own position on this point. 17. Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 135. Emphasis mine. 18. Although Levinas was a naturalized citizen of France and Marcel was marginally Levinas’s elder, the general characterization of his common background with Marcel stands. The significant differences between the two are discussed below. 19. For example, Mark 12:28–32 and Deuteronomy 6:4. While there are obviously significant differences between Judaism and Christianity, they are both biblical religions. Marcel and Levinas therefore certainly have more in common with each other in terms of religious traditions than either would have with, say, a Japanese Shinto practitioner or an animist from Papua New Guinea. 20. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 34. Levinas once said to Derrida, ‘‘You know, one often speaks of ethics to describe what I do, but what really interests me in the end is not ethics, not ethics alone, but the idea of the holy, the holiness of the holy.’’ Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale Anne-Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 4. 21. Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 107. 22. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Toward the Other,’’ in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 16. However, elsewhere Levinas seems to acknowledge that the alterity of Notes to Pages 157–159
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God is other than the alterity of man. ‘‘God is not simply the ‘first other,’ or the ‘other par excellence,’ or the ‘absolutely other,’ but [is] other than the other, other otherwise, and other with an alterity prior to the alterity of the other . . .’’ Levinas, Entre Nous, 69. 23. Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 77. 24. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 17. 25. Kearney, States of Mind, 189. 26. Ibid., 183. In some places, Levinas seems to say that the face of the other is the detour through which we must relate to God. However, in other places he seems to indicate that God ‘‘is’’ the ethical relationship between human beings. See Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 106ff. 27. Robert Rosthal, translator’s introduction to Creative Fidelity, by Gabriel Marcel (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964), xxi. 28. For a more focused discussion of this paradox, see my ‘‘Plus de Secret: The Paradox of Prayer,’’ in The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). 29. A sentiment echoed by Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: ‘‘My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarized in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself.’’ Galatians 5:13–14. 30. The following pages look at various descriptions of the relationship with God, and group these relationships into two different types. This is a general typology, not a specific theological argument. The various religious orientations discussed herein—‘‘Christian,’’ ‘‘Jewish,’’ ‘‘mystical,’’ or ‘‘intellectual’’—are used in the context of this discussion. Marcel no more speaks for all Christians than Levinas does for all Jews. 31. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 69. 32. Levinas, Of the God Who Comes to Mind, 69. 33. Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1978), 22–23; Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 44–50; ‘‘There Is: Existence without Existence,’’ in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 31. This radical and absolute version of otherness can be seen in other postmodern versions of religion. See especially: Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Sauf le Nom,’’ in On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr., and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 71; The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 49; ‘‘Circumfesssion,’’ in Jacques Derrida, 310
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Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 151ff; and John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). Below I will argue that, if radical alterity of God resembles the radical alterity of the il y a, this does not mean that they are indistinguishable, for alterity is not otherness; alterity is not all there is to the experience of God. 34. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Jewish Thought Today,’’ in Difficult Freedom, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 159. 35. Levinas, ‘‘Ideology and Idealism,’’ in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 247. This ‘‘Divine Third’’ relates to the same and the other as a father to siblings. ‘‘Human fraternity has then two aspects: it involves individualities whose logical status is not reducible to the status of ultimate differences in a genus, for their singularity consists in each referring to itself . . . on the other hand, it involves the commonness of a father, as though the commonness of race would not bring together enough. . . . Monotheism signifies this kinship.’’ Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 214. 36. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, 14–15. 37. In the course of this sub-section (‘‘Christian and Jewish Encounters with God’’) the ‘‘Jewish perspective’’ will be synonymous with Levinas’s perspective—a somewhat misleading artifice given the diversity of Jewish opinion on this subject evidenced in the next subsection. Nevertheless, as we are trying to get to the heart of these two different ways of encountering God, contrasting Levinas’s position with that of Kierkegaard and Marcel in terms of ‘‘Jewish’’ and ‘‘Christian’’ perspectives seems warranted. 38. That is, Existence and Existents; Time and the Other; Totality and Infinity; and Otherwise than Being or, Beyond Essence. To my knowledge, ‘‘Kierkegaard’’ (or ‘‘Kierkegaardian’’) appears three times in Totality and Infinity, twice in Time and the Other, and not at all in Existence and Existents or in Otherwise than Being. 39. ‘‘Existence and Ethics,’’ in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, ed. Jonathan Re´e and Jane Chamberlin (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 26–38. 40. Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). For purposes of the comparisons that I am trying to draw, I will ignore the problems associated with the pseudonymous nature of Philosophical Fragments— the ‘‘First and Last Explanation’’ of Concluding Unscientific Postscript notwithstanding—and, within reason, take Kierkegaard at his word in his description of the relationship between the god and the follower. 41. It seems strange that an author so caught up in his Christianity would alternate the use of Gud and guden (the second used with the definite article) so casually. It would appear that guden is used in most of Kierkegaard’s philosophical texts to emphasize that philosophy—in the tradition of Plato and Notes to Pages 164–165
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Aristotle—is taking place, and to bracket the potential issues of a Christian versus non-Christian debate. The important point in Philosophical Fragments may not be that the reader understands that the god (guden) who descends to equality with man out of love is God qua Christ, even though this is clearly what Kierkegaard has in mind. See Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 10 n. 13. 42. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 1. This question implies the immanent-transcendent distinction by asking if an eternal consciousness (i.e., transcendent god) can be in history (i.e., be immanent). 43. Plato, ‘‘Meno,’’ in Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981); and St. Augustine, De Magistro, trans. Peter King (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995). 44. In this sentence, and in those that follow, the terms ‘‘occasion’’ and ‘‘occasionalist’’ are used in a loose sense. For our purposes, ‘‘occasionalist’’ should be taken as referring to a relationship wherein the human other, the time of the relationship, or both are merely occasions or opportunities for the subject to discover something that he already possesses and not in the more specific use of the term as referring to the philosophy of Geulinex, Malebranche, and other like-minded philosophers. This terminology is in keeping with that employed by Kierkegaard in the Philosophical Fragments. 45. A more nuanced reading of Plato—and of Augustine’s De Magistro— would acknowledge that, while human others are only occasions for selfdiscovery, there are some dialogical partners who are better catalysts for this inquiry than others. Some people are better at the indicating (De Magistro) or questioning (‘‘Meno’’) that will bring about the autodidactic moment. Nevertheless, human ‘‘teachers’’ remain trivial occasions strictly speaking, because the truth is already within each of us. 46. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13. 47. Note that Kierkegaard merely asks his reader to imagine what the situation would be like if the situation were different, if the moment does have decisive significance. This is why the elaboration of the ‘‘thought-project’’ is referred to as a ‘‘poetical venture’’ (that is, an imaginary construction that can articulate the implications of going beyond Socrates). 48. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13. Emphasis mine. And again, ‘‘If the situation is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it . . . because the eternal, previously nonexistent, came into existence in that moment.’’ Ibid. Note that the Philosophical Fragments begin with the propositio that ‘‘The question is asked by one who in his ignorance does not even know what provided the occasion for his questioning in this way.’’ Ibid., 9. Compare Kierkegaard’s propositio with the non-anticipatory character of the encounter with the other in Levinas. 49. ‘‘Now, inasmuch as the learner exists, he is indeed created, and, accordingly, God must have given him the condition for understanding the 312
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truth.’’ Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13. However, as the learner is in the untruth, he must lack this condition. Furthermore, the only explanation for why he lacks this condition is that it is the result of his own action. The state of being in the untruth through one’s own fault is, says Kierkegaard, sin. The teacher is the god and existence in untruth is the state of sin. The sinner has used his own freedom to bind himself and, therefore, is no longer free. 50. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 18–21. 51. Ibid., 24. This, of course, will present a difficulty if we affirm, as Levinas does, that the other person is absolutely other. For, while critique and truth may well be dependent on an encounter and relationship with otherness, we would not generally think that the other person herself is already in possession of the truth (if, in the postmodern context, we may even speak of such a thing in the singular). It would seem more likely that the other is also in need of (my) otherness (from her perspective) to call into question her naı¨ve spontaneity and her freedom, which requires some measure of reciprocity. 52. Ibid., 24–25. 53. Ibid., 25. This is, obviously, a key difference between Kierkegaard and Levinas. The former maintains that understanding requires a measure of equality and thus deduces that the truth must be given to a person by the descent of the god to equality with the learner. However, Levinas maintains that there is no understanding in this situation; rather the relationship is one of revelation and command, which do not require understanding and, thus, do not require equality. In fact, equality would mitigate the force of the command. This is exactly why Levinas rejects any knowledge or understanding of the other (at least any significant knowledge)—because knowledge or understanding is only possible in equality. Note also that Kierkegaard explicitly ties love to understanding and equality, which is why love does not play a central role in Levinas’s schema. 54. Ibid. 55. In the case of the god and the follower, not to disclose is the death of love. However, to disclose (fully) is the death of the beloved (‘‘ ‘But,’ [the Lord] said, ‘you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.’ ’’ Exodus 33:21). In the first case deception destroys the love, in the second case the enormity of the difference destroys the lesser of the lovers. Kierkegaard addresses both these scenarios of unity—either the god draws the person to himself (which proves to be impossible) or he appears to the person in all his glory, making the person forget himself (and, in this sense, causing the ‘‘death’’ of the person). 56. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 26ff. 57. Ibid., 31. 58. Ibid., 35. 59. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 31. Note that when Kierkegaard points out that the learner ‘‘becomes nothing and yet is not annihilated’’ he Notes to Pages 166–169
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is not contradicting the assertion that the learner has moved from the notto-be of untruth to the to-be of truth. Rather, he is pointing out that, because the learner owes the god everything, the learner is nothing in comparison to the god. 60. Ibid., 37. 61. That is, Levinas’s description of the ‘‘instant’’ is very similar to Kierkegaard’s description of the ‘‘moment.’’ Indeed, Wyschogrod notes that Levinas’s ‘‘view of the relationship between the instant and eternity can, I believe, be seen as restating the Kierkegaardian position. . . .’’ Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics, 4. Emphasis mine. 62. Levinas, ‘‘Existence and Ethics,’’ in Proper Names, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 30. 63. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 40. 64. Ibid., 213. This could be read as a criticism of Marcel, Buber, or Kierkegaard. 65. Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, 75. Emphasis mine. 66. Hilary Putnam notes that part of the paradox of hineni, of the ‘‘Here I am’’ of Abraham—to which Levinas’s me voici always refers—is that Abraham says hineni to both God (22:1) and to Isaac (22:7). Hillary Putnam, ‘‘Levinas and Judaism,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, ed. Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33–62. 67. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 43–44. 68. Levinas, Totalite´ et infini, iv. ‘‘But in the discourse of Totality and Infinity the memorable fact has not been forgotten, that in his third Mediation of First Philosophy, Descartes encountered a thought, a noesis, which was not the measure of its noema, of its cogitatum. An idea that dazzled the philosopher instead of placing itself in the evidence of intuition.’’ 69. ‘‘The idea of infinity is exceptional in that its ideatum surpasses its idea, whereas for things the total coincidence of their ‘objective’ and ‘formal’ realities is not precluded; we could conceivably have accounted for all the ideas, other than that of Infinity, by ourselves.’’ Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 49. Emphasis mine. 70. Rene´ Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993), 77. 71. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 86. Emphasis mine. Note, however, that the ‘‘other’’ in Descartes is precisely the divine other, that is, God. Literally taken, Descartes is much more in line with Augustine or Kierkegaard than he is with Levinas because the only other required by the idea of the infinite is God. 72. St. Augustine, De Magistro, 95 (§38). Emphasis mine. See especially the end of the dialogue (§ 38–46). 73. Thus, Augustine and Kierkegaard would seem compatible insofar as they both emphasize the relationship to God and, in so doing, relegate other persons to a supportive, Platonic role. 314
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74. Although Levinas’s discussion of Descartes is more nuanced (see especially Totality and Infinity, 90–101), we cannot recapitulate this complex relationship here. 75. While it might appear that Kierkegaard and Augustine are in agreement insofar as they both claim that an individual is indebted to God alone for any understanding of the truth, they differ in one significant respect. Where Augustine says that humans are created with a ‘‘blueprint,’’ as it were, of truth, Kierkegaard focuses on a conversion to truth wherein God ‘‘teaches’’ an individual. This emphasis by Kierkegaard on the gift of the (divine) other’s teaching is what Levinas is able to use in overcoming both Plato and Augustine. 76. Note, however, that the Philosophical Fragments hardly provide an argument against Platonic maieutics. Rather, Kierkegaard merely asks us to consider, for the purposes of his thought project, the possibility that the situation is different and that the moment has decisive significance. ‘‘If the situation is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it . . .’’ Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 13. 77. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, 10. 78. Levinas, ‘‘Damages Due to Fire,’’ in Nine Talmudic Readings, 188. Levinas is referring to Ezekiel 3:20 and the surrounding passages, which he quotes in one of the five epigraphs to Otherwise than Being. ‘‘Or if a righteous man turn from his righteousness and do what is wrong, and I make that the occasion for the bringing about his downfall, he shall die; because you did not warn him, he shall die for his sin, and the righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood will I require at your hand’’ (Ezekiel 3:20). This passage, the last clause of which is sometimes translated ‘‘but I shall hold you responsible for his death,’’ is certainly significant. However, the larger message of Ezekiel seems to be that each person is responsible for his own sins, a message that directly challenges Levinas’s reading. While I am not trained as a biblical exegete or Talmudic scholar, I suggest that we should read Ezekiel 3:20 in light of Ezekiel 14:13–14 (‘‘Son of man, when a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I point my finger at it and destroy its supply of food, inflicting famine on it and denuding it of human and animal, even if the three men, Noah, Danel and Job, were living in it, they would save no one but themselves by their uprightness . . .’’) and Ezekiel 18:20 (‘‘The one who has sinned is the one who must die; a son is not to bear his father’s guilt, not a father his son’s guilt. The upright will be credited with his uprightness, and the wicked with his wickedness’’). Certainly these latter passages are not unimportant. In themselves they do not refute Levinas’s reading of responsibility for the other—‘‘uprightness’’ may well demand responsible relationships with others. However, there do appear to be connotations that introduce an element of ambiguity into such a reading. In examining several different translations Notes to Pages 173–175
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of Ezekiel, I came across the following assessment: ‘‘Ezekiel calls the exiles to conversion: they can forget the failings of their ancestors, for all are now responsible for only their own sins.’’ The New Jerusalem Bible (New York and London: Doubleday, 1990), 1019. Emphasis mine. 79. Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession, trans. Douglas V. Steere (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1956), 187–188. 80. Robert Gibbs, ‘‘Substitution: Marcel and Levinas,’’ in Philosophy and Theology 4, no. 2 (1984): 171–186. In addition, the extent to which two people ‘‘overlap’’ while maintaining independent ‘‘centers’’ might be seen as a mode of substitution, although one unlike Levinas’s version of this relation. 81. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘A Man-God?’’ in Entre Nous, 53–60. 82. Ibid., 58. Emphasis mine. 83. Clearly this is a simplified characterization of the relationship of Levinas to Kierkegaard. Things are not as simple as Levinas taking up the Kierkegaardian framework, striking Gud or guden, and replacing it with Autre, autre, or Autrui. Nevertheless, the similarities between the Kierkegaardian relationship of the god to the follower and the Levinasian relationship of the same to the other are too strong to dismiss as mere coincidence. 84. Or, perhaps, we should note the inhumanity of the (normative) ethics that are possible within Levinas’s metaphysics. As chapter 5 noted, the inhumanity of Levinas’s ethics stems from the likelihood that the ethical possibilities within Levinas’s metaphysics are not concretely livable. They are inhuman insofar as they are too demanding—except, perhaps, in the case of a few saints—for human application. However, from Kierkegaard’s perspective, such a relationship was never meant to apply to humans, therefore it is, of course, inhuman. 85. And, if the alterity of God is no longer understood or described in absolute terms, it seems difficult to see how we would be warranted in describing any other sort of alterity in absolute terms. For theists like Marcel and Levinas, a non-absolute account of God’s alterity would mean that the alterity of the other person—which for these two thinkers is modeled on the alterity of God—is also less-than-absolute. However, understanding or describing God in less-than-absolute terms has a much wider significance for philosophy, especially in the forms of postmodernism and deconstruction. 86. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 144. 87. Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 20; ‘‘The attributes of God are given not in the indicative, but in the imperative. The knowledge of God comes to us like a commandment, like a Mitzvah.’’ Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 17. See also, Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Chaim Rabin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995), bk. 3, chap. 32 passim. 88. Marcel always had difficulty with excessive rationalism or dogmatism—the latter especially as he encountered it in Thomism and scholasti316
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cism. See, for example, Gabriel Marcel, ‘‘An Autobiographical Essay,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn, The Library of Living Philosophers vol. 17 (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 29–31. 89. Ibid., 31. 90. Ibid., 29 and 30. 91. Ibid., 30. 92. Sam Keen, ‘‘The Development of the Idea of Being,’’ in The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 103. 93. Levinas notes that the ‘‘obsession with the inexpressible, the ineffable, the unsaid’’ implicit in Marcel’s discussion of the broken world ‘‘is not mysticism.’’ Levinas, ‘‘A New Rationality: On Gabriel Marcel,’’ in Entre Nous, 62. 94. Like Emmanuel Levinas, the author does not have ‘‘the effrontery to enter an area forbidden to those who do not share the faith’’ (see below, 321, note 150, and Levinas, Entre Nous, 53). And, like Adriaan Peperzak, I ‘‘cannot speak in the name of Jews about the meaning of their mode of existence and thought’’ (Peperzak, Beyond, 19). Thus, this examination takes place from the perspective of one who has no special insight into the Jewish faith itself and makes significant use of Levinas’s own characterization of Judaism and secondary sources commenting on this characterization. In addition to Levinas’s own words on the Jewish faith—in, for example, Difficult Freedom and Nine Talmudic Readings—this historical sketch is indebted to H. H. Ben-Sasson’s colossal work: A History of the Jewish People, ed. H. H. Ben-Sasson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). While any undertaking as substantial as this one will inevitably have its critics, this excellent and comprehensive work is, according to colleagues in the field, one of the standard texts for students in Jewish Studies. 95. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 18. 96. Ibid. 97. Among Buber’s works are numerous studies in Hasidim, including: Tales of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken Books, 1947); Hasidim and the Modern Man (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958); Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996); and The Origin and Meaning of Hasidim (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1988). 98. Such a characterization is made by H. H. Ben-Sasson in ‘‘The Middle Ages,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 538. This is not to imply that Levinas is a rationalist in the sense that he specifically rejects, the sense in which Western philosophical rationalism is grasping, comprehending and dominating. Rather, ‘‘rationalist’’ and ‘‘intellectualist’’ should be taken herein as in contrast to the passionate, emotional and generally non-intellectual aspects of mysticism. In this second sense, Levinas is very clearly a rationalist, as we will see. Notes to Pages 179–182
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99. Maimonides claims that the biblical ‘‘Account of the Beginning [Genesis] is identical with natural science and the Account of the Chariot [Ezekiel 1 and 10] with divine science . . .’’ Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, 6. 100. H. H. Ben-Sasson, ‘‘The Middle Ages,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 442. 101. A similar backlash occurred in Christianity, evident in thinkers like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bonaventure, and others. 102. H. H. Ben-Sasson, ‘‘The Middle Ages,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 539. 103. Shmuel Ettinger, ‘‘The Modern Period,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 768. 104. H. H. Ben-Sasson, ‘‘The Middle Ages,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 541. 105. See, for example, Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, 124. 106. Interestingly, the severity of the Hasidim is the result, in part, of contact with severe forms of Christian asceticism, which was itself influenced by Stoicism. However, for Jewish mystics, severe self-mortification and asceticism had to be balanced against the demands and responsibility of family life, which was the foundation of Jewish moral life. Celibacy, for example, was out of the question. See, H. H. Ben Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, 546. 107. Shmuel Ettinger, ‘‘The Modern Period,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 768ff. 108. Ibid., 769. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 770. 111. For example, Shabbetai Zevi (1625–1676), a kabbalist who claimed the title of Messiah and attracted a large following. When he was taken before the sultan in 1666, his followers believed he was entering the palace to remove the sultan’s crown and lead the people. However, under threat of torture, Zevi converted to Islam (H. H. Ben Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, 703–706). See also Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schoken Books, 1954), 288ff. Scholem feels that Hasidism was an attempt to keep the popular appeal of mystical kabbalism without its messianic elements. However, the entrenched, conservative elements of Judaism certainly did not see it in such a light. 112. Shmuel Ettinger, ‘‘The Modern Period,’’ in A History of the Jewish People, 843. 113. Ibid., 772. 114. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Signature,’’ in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 291. 115. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990). Also see Annette Aronowicz, translator’s introduction to Nine Talmudic Readings by Emmanuel Levinas 318
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(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), ix–xxxix; and Hilary Putnam, ‘‘Levinas and Judaism,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 116. Hilary Putnam, ‘‘Levinas and Judaism,’’ 46. He adds, ‘‘obviously, Levinas’s notion of ‘Judaism’ is both selective and idiosyncratic . . .’’ Ibid. 117. Although, as the prior sections of this chapter indicate, I agree with Jeffrey Kosky when he claims that the division of Levinas’s work into ‘‘confessional’’ and ‘‘philosophical’’ works is an oversimplification that leads to a fundamental misreading of Levinas. See Jeffrey Kosky, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), xix–xx. 118. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 13. 119. Ibid., 14. 120. Among many relevant examples—Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney—Merold Westphal offers an exceptionally well-developed and clearly-articulated attempt to appropriate philosophical atheism and postmodernity in the service of confessional faith. See, for example, Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998); and Overcoming Ontotheology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001). 121. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Jewish Thought Today,’’ 159. 122. Levinas, ‘‘Ideology and Idealism,’’ 247. This ‘‘Divine Third’’ relates to the same and to the other as a father to siblings. ‘‘Human fraternity has then two aspects: it involves individualities whose logical status is not reducible to the status of ultimate differences in a genus, for their singularity consists in each referring to itself . . . on the other hand, it involves the commonness of a father, as though the commonness of race would not bring together enough . . . . Monotheism signifies this kinship.’’ Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 214. 123. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 1. 124. Ibid., 9. 125. Levinas, Of the God Who Comes to Mind, 69. 126. Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 6. 127. Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Collier Books, 1958), 45. 128. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber’s Thought and Contemporary Judaism,’’ in Outside the Subject, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 13. 129. Ibid., 14. 130. Levinas, ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy,’’ in Outside the Subject, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 23. 131. Buber, I and Thou, 4. Notes to Pages 187–191
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132. Ibid., 22. 133. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Jewish Thought Today,’’ 159. 134. Buber, I and Thou, 11. 135. Martin Buber, ‘‘Replies to my Critics,’’ in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1967), 723. This is in sharp contrast to Levinas, for whom the concrete sacrifice of the bread from my mouth is the ‘‘real ethical problem.’’ 136. Ibid., 79. 137. Ibid., 18 and 8, respectively. 138. Ibid., 33. 139. Martin Buber, ‘‘Replies to my Critics,’’ 697. 140. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 202. It is clear, if merely implicit, that Levinas has Kierkegaard in mind here. He mentions the ‘‘fear’’ and ‘‘trembling’’ of mysticism on the following page. 141. Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 87. 142. Derrida, ‘‘Adieu,’’ 12. Neher was a noted Jewish thinker who wrote on the Jewish culture of Prague, mysticism and its relation to the astronomy of the Marahal of Prague, novel interpretations of the Genesis story, and the ‘‘inexhaustible reservoir of Being’’ into which human hope retreats. 143. Ibid. 144. Such a claim must be read in light of, and is tempered by, the distinctions made with respect to both Judaism and Christianity in ‘‘Ethics and Spirit’’ in Difficult Freedom, 3–10. 145. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (1095b). One does not argue deductively for a first principle, but arrives at first principles via assumption and induction. ‘‘Now induction supplies a first principle or universal, deduction works from universals; therefore there are first principles from which deduction starts, which cannot be proved by deduction; therefore they are reached by induction’’ (1139b). Aristotle makes this latter claim with respect to episteme—the demonstrative knowledge of the necessary or eternal—in book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics. 146. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London and New York: Routledge, 1922), 189. 147. Richard Kearney, ‘‘Narrative and the Ethics of Remembrance,’’ in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 19. Although ‘‘Narrative and the Ethics of Remembrance’’ is about stories as they relate to memory, and Kearney notes that memory is a different thing as it relates to literature and history, the aesthetic and the ethical, I would argue that a similar dynamic is implied in Kearney’s most recent work in ‘‘philosophy at the limit.’’ See the trilogy: On Stories (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); and The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001). 320
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148. Or we might note that such silence would be, as Kearney puts it elsewhere, ‘‘a poetic license perfectly fitting for poets but somehow ill-befitting philosophers.’’ Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 108. 149. Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘A Man-God?’’ in Entre Nous, 53. Emphasis mine. A more concise statement of our problem could not be made. Levinas here notes that there are theological positions which remain in some sense secure from philosophical speculation; and he further notes that the crux on which the differences between the Jewish idea of God and the Christian idea of God turns is the possibility of direct encounter with God (that is, the possibility of God-as-man, or of God as relatively other). 150. Ibid. We should all have such restraint. 151. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 20. Or, as Peperzak writes (in reference to this passage from Otherwise than Being): ‘‘The author of a philosophy is steeped in her own experience which is partially unfolded in her theory. Other philosophers are needed to bring out the weak point of that theory . . .’’ Peperzak, Beyond, 120. 7. The Nature of Otherness 1. Nor do I mean to imply that either of these positions began, ex nihilo, with Marcel or Levinas. Clearly the characterization of otherness in relative terms can be traced back at least as far as Plato’s Sophist. Likewise, the characterization of otherness as absolute has its roots in biblical accounts of alterity and, we will see, in apophatic theologies. 2. Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 3. Although I trust that the caveats regarding the use of ‘‘relative’’ are now well fixed in the reader’s mind, the qualifications noted above bear repeating, if only for emphasis. See chapter 6, note 1. 4. Note that the following two readings of the differences between Marcel and Levinas are ‘‘Levinasian’’ and ‘‘Marcelian’’ respectively, as opposed to ‘‘Levinas’s’’ or ‘‘Marcel’s.’’ That is, these possible reconciliations are the in spirit of Levinas’s and Marcel’s philosophies respectively. 5. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 35. 6. Emmanuel Levinas, Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 107. Jeffrey Dudiak goes even further in his discussion of ‘‘prophetic discourse’’ in Levinas’s work. ‘‘And does my testimony to the glory of the Infinite not presuppose the testimony of the other—in the mode of the feminine—who across her graciousness to me has already testified to the glory of the Infinite? Is my testimony not then already, even as I testify to the infinite across my own responsibility, a testimony to the testimony of the other? My testimony to the Infinite through responsibility to the other is Notes to Pages 194–201
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already a testimony to the other’s responsibility for me, and thus to the other’s involvement in the intrigue of transcendence.’’ Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 345. Of course, this reciprocity in which I find that the other regards me as an other, in which the other is responsible for me in the same manner that I am responsible to her, is not something that I can demand or count on, rather it happens. In the betrayal of the an-archic relationship with illeity a new (reciprocal) relationship arises. However, ‘‘it is only thanks to God that, as a subject incomparable with the other, I am approached as an other by the others, that is, ‘for myself.’ ‘Thanks to God’ I am an other for the others.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 158. Note that, the more generously one reads Levinas in terms of reciprocity the more the difference between Levinas and Marcel tends to collapse. To say that I am an other to the other by the ‘‘grace of God’’ and that this reciprocity, which reveals the goodness of the other has ‘‘already happened’’ (Dudiak, Intrigue of Ethics, 330), approaches very closely Marcel’s own account of the goodness of the other in terms of hope. 7. Richard Kearney, States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 195. 8. A similar claim could be made about Levinas’s relationship to Descartes (the idea of the infinite) or to Plato (the good beyond being). 9. Richard A. Cohen, ‘‘Moral Selfhood: A Levinasian Response to Ricoeur on Levinas,’’ in Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, ed. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 127–160. 10. Adriaan Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 78. 11. Ibid. Emphasis mine. 12. Levinas, Entre Nous, 63. 13. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 158. 14. Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G. S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962), 155. Richard Kearney is implicitly critical of this abstraction (absolute otherness) when he notes that ‘‘we disregard others not just by ignoring their transcendence but equally by ignoring their flesh-and-blood thereness.’’ Richard Kearney, The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 11. 15. The biblical account most evocative of Levinas’s position is, perhaps, 1 Samuel 3:1–10. During a time when the word of the Lord was ‘‘rare’’ and ‘‘there was no frequent vision,’’ the boy Samuel is awoken in the Temple by the call of God. Three times Samuel is woken up; and three times he mistakes the source of the call, thinking that Eli had called him. This is explained, in part, by the fact that Samuel ‘‘did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.’’ Even in this in322
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stance, however, Samuel hears God; something is communicated (concerning the future and the downfall of Eli’s house). If Samuel’s encounter had been with absolute otherness, it could not have even occurred. 16. One might object that Levinas does account for the concrete ‘‘incarnation’’ of the other by locating the site of revelation in the face; however, the face of the other is not, necessarily, an actual face. Absolute otherness does not have a particular eye color. Matthew Edgar notes that, ‘‘the more [Levinas] stresses the otherness of the other, especially in opposition to dialogical co-presence, the less the capital ‘O’ Other has to do with this concrete other.’’ Matthew Edgar, ‘‘The Other Speaking in My Voice: On the Suppression of Dialogue in Otherwise than Being,’’ Philosophy Today 47, no. 5 (2003): 23. Moreover, especially when speaking of God, Levinas makes no secret of his view of incarnation. ‘‘No relationship with God is direct or immediate. The Divine can be manifested only through my neighbor. For a Jew, Incarnation is neither possible, nor necessary.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Jewish Thought Today,’’ in Difficult Freedom, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 159. Thus, while Levinas does address certain aspects of the concrete manifestation of the other as autrui this is done amidst the incessant focus on the otherness of the other. Likewise, for Derrida and Caputo there is a conceptual difference between the divine and the monstrous other, but there is no phenomenological difference. John D. Caputo, ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm: A Philosophical Exploration of The God Who May Be,’’ in Modern Theology 18, no. 1 (January 2002): 92. 17. Caputo is not a Levinasian, nor Kearney a Marcelian, in a simple or unqualified sense. However, within the very strict sense with which we are concerned—the construal of alterity in either absolute or relative terms— these labels do apply. This genealogy is not a deterministic one; the latter thinkers do not merely repeat the positions of the earlier ones. I mean to imply that either grouping represents a cohort of thinkers that is in accord on every issue relating to the question of otherness. This inquiry is primarily philosophical, not historical, and my interest in these two opposing camps lies in the general characterization of otherness as absolute or relative rather than in the details of such a characterization in any one thinker’s thought. Therefore, we need only to demonstrate (1) that the positions of Levinas and Marcel respectively have been transmitted to the current generation of Continental philosophers in a manner that, though transformed in the transmission, retains significant aspects of the original philosopher’s position; and (2) that the terms of this conflict—absolute versus relative alterity—are ones with significant contemporary import. 18. Jacques Derrida ‘‘Adieu,’’ in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 3. 19. Dudiak asserts as much in discussing the primacy of asymmetry in Levinas’s account of the ethical relationship (Dudiak, Intrigue of Ethics, 326–327). Notes to Pages 206–209
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20. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 39. 21. See, for example: Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); John Llewelyn, Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); and Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (West Lafayette, Ind.: Perdue University Press, 1992). 22. Derrida, ‘‘Adieu,’’ 9–10. The personal loss that Derrida feels at Levinas’s passing is moving: ‘‘I would simply like to give thanks to someone whose thought, friendship, trust and ‘goodness’ . . . will have been for me, as for so many others, a living source, so living, so constant, that I am unable to think what is happening to him or happening to me today, namely, this interruption of a certain non-response in a response that will never come to an end for me as long as I live.’’ Ibid., 5. 23. Bob Plant, ‘‘Doing Justice to the Derrida-Levinas connection: A response to Mark Dooley,’’ in Philosophy and Social Criticism 29, no. 4:436. 24. For Ricoeur’s critique of Levinas see, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 25. See, for example, Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Sauf le nom,’’ in On the Name, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavy, Jr., and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 74. 26. See, Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Diffe´rance,’’ in Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Given Time, I: Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kaumf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); ‘‘Khora,’’ in On the Name, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavy, Jr., and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 89–127; and ‘‘Sauf le nom,’’ 35–88. This is not to say that khora, the impossible, undecidability, or absolute otherness are the ‘‘same thing’’; however, they are, on deconstruction’s own account, substitutable translations of each other. 27. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 48 and 52. Emphasis mine. 28. Jacques Derrida, De l’hospitalite´ (Paris: Calmann-Le´vy, 1997); Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 29. Plant, ‘‘Doing Justice to the Derrida-Levinas connection,’’ 427–450. 30. Ibid., 440. Plant cites Derrida, ‘‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility,’’ 71, in this passage. 31. See Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley, ‘‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility: An interview with Jacques Derrida,’’ in Questioning Ethics (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 70. 32. Ibid., 71. However, Derrida does acknowledge that he is not sure if pure hospitality is possible (ibid., 70), which certainly links his understanding of hospitality to his ‘‘religious’’ works and the key terms of ‘‘the impossible,’’ ‘‘undecidability,’’ ‘‘khora,’’ etc. 33. Bob Plant, ‘‘Doing Justice to the Derrida-Levinas connection,’’ 442. Plant cites Derrida, Of Hospitality, 79, in this passage. 324
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34. Ibid., 443. 35. Kearney, The God Who May Be, 76. ‘‘The other cannot be what it is, infinitely other, except in finitude and mortality (mine and its).’’ Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 114–115. 36. Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Circumfession,’’ in Jacques Derrida, by Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 155. 37. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 24. 38. Kearney, The God Who May Be, 72. However, deconstruction may well be open to the very critique it levels against apophatic theology—that its negation is in the service of an affirmation. See below, 399. 39. Caputo, ‘‘Hyperbolic Justice,’’ in Demythologizing Heidegger (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 200–201. 40. Jacques Derrida, ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ 152. Cited by Caputo in Prayers and Tears, 24. 41. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 25. 42. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987). Also see More Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000); Against Ethics (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993); Deconstruction in a Nutshell (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997). The characterization of this work as Caputo’s first grappling with Derrida comes from Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 331, and from note 1 to the conclusion. 43. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 18. 44. Jacques Derrida, Derrida and Negative Theology, trans. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 74. 45. Questioning God, eds. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 2. 46. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 1–19. 47. Ibid., 148. Both Caputo and Derrida are well aware of the difficulties and challenges presented by their position, and acknowledge these challenges in practically every written treatment of deconstruction. 48. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 337. 49. This suspicion is shared by Merold Westphal (‘‘Postmodernism and Ethics: The Case of Caputo,’’ in A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed. Mark Dooley [New York: State University of New York Press, 2003], 153–170), and by Richard Kearney (‘‘Khora or God?’’ in A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed. Mark Dooley [New York: State University of New York Press, 2003], 107–122). 50. Derrida, Circumfession, 155. Notes to Pages 212–216
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51. Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 209. Although, to be fair, Caputo does insist on the interrelationship of (deconstructive) messinaicity and concrete, determinate messianisms. 52. Ibid. 53. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 331–332. 54. Ibid., 332. 55. Ibid. 56. Paul Ricoeur, Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (Paris: Aubier, 1950). Translated by E.V. Kohak as Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966). 57. Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 23. 58. Boyd Blundell, ‘‘Creative Fidelity: Gabriel Marcel’s Influence on Paul Ricoeur,’’ in Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrium, ed. Andrzej Wiercinski (Toronto: Hermeneutic Press, 2003), 92. 59. Ibid., 92–93. 60. Ibid., 100–101. 61. See Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 115–125; and ‘‘Narrative Identity,’’ in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. David Wood (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 188–199. 62. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 267. 63. Ibid., 267–268, with citations from Marcel’s Being and Having, 50 and 46. 64. Blundell, ‘‘Creative Fidelity: Gabriel Marcel’s Influence on Paul Ricoeur,’’101. 65. Of various possible examples, see Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 191; and Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond: Including Conversations Between Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel, trans. Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 199–213; ‘‘On the Ontological Mystery,’’ in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 27. 66. Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 24. See also Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970). 67. Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 25. 68. Paul Ricoeur, Le Juste (Paris: Esprit, 1995) and Le Juste, vol. 2 (Paris: Esprit, 2001). Volume 1 translated as The Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 69. Blundell, ‘‘Creative Fidelity: Gabriel Marcel’s Influence on Paul Ricoeur,’’ 101–102. 70. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 189. 71. That is, ethics and ontology are tied, or joined. Ricoeur feels that Marcel’s meditations on disponibilite´ have both ethical and ontological as326
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pects and, therefore, walk a line between ethics and ontology. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Entre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´,’’ 158. 72. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 189 n. 24; and Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Entre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´,’’ in Gabriel Marcel: Colloque organise´ par la Bibliothe`que Nationale et l’association Pre´sence de Gabriel Marcel, ed. Michele Sacquin (Paris: Bibliothe`que Nationale, 1989). Given that Ricoeur associates this crossing of ethics and ontology with the philosophies of both Levinas and Marcel, as well as his own, it is even more curious (and, I believe, somewhat misguided) that he warns us ‘‘[Ce serait vain] de se demander quelle position Gabriel Marcel prendrait aujourd’hui entre Heidegger et Le´vinas sur la question de savoir si l’ontologie peut se constituer sans e´thique ou l’e´thique sans ontologie.’’ Ibid., 157. ‘‘It would be useless to ask what position Gabriel Marcel would take today between Heidegger and Levinas on the question of knowing if ontology is constituted without ethics or ethics without ontology.’’ 73. Richard Kearney, Poe´tique du Possible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984); and Strangers, Gods and Monsters. 74. Richard Kearney, On Stories (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); The God Who May Be; and Strangers, Gods and Monsters. 75. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 79–80 (also see 2, 25 n. 14, and 59). 76. Ibid., 81. 77. Regan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 55–56. 78. John D. Caputo, ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm,’’ 87–88. 79. Richard Kearney, ‘‘The 4th Reduction,’’ in After God, ed. John Manoussakis (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 2. 80. Ibid. Emphases mine. 81. Ibid. 82. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. S. Fraser (London: Harvill Press, 1951), 83. 83. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 12. Emphasis mine. 84. While I am quite fond of (and comfortable with) Marcel’s image of constellations, another useful image might be that of ‘‘clusters.’’ Insofar as it might be argued that constellations are a human imposition on an otherwise indifferent cosmos (or chaos), ‘‘clusters’’ removes the human perspective and merely acknowledges that some celestial bodies are closer to each other than they are to other celestial bodies. It makes little difference whether or not we call Orion’s Nebula ‘‘Orion’s.’’ Nevertheless, it remains a fact that the bodies within the nebula have something in common, something similar that they share with each other and not with, say, the planets of the terrestrial solar system. However, one might argue that removing the human perspective is, again, a sort of abstraction, so the image of constellations is one well worth defending. 85. Kearney—unlike fellow apostles of the impossible Levinas, Derrida and Caputo—asserts that configuration does not necessarily imply violence, Notes to Pages 222–226
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although the potential for violence (or idolatry) requires an ‘‘acute hermeneutic vigilance’’ (Kearney, The God Who May Be, 85). 86. Caputo, ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm,’’ 92. 87. Ibid. 88. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 81. 89. Kearney, The God Who May Be, 76. 90. To say that we ‘‘pass through an aporia’’ does not mean that we pass beyond all aporia to arrive at some comfortable, unambiguous certitude. Rather, to pass through aporia or to move beyond (an) aporia is to move through to a new aporia, which may be none other than the same aporia engaged on a higher level, so to speak. The narrative interstices and chiasms that allow us to engage, grapple with, and move through an aporia do move us beyond to apodicticity. Rather, such struggle changes us, and because all aporias worthy of the name involve us—they are mysterious in the Marcelian sense—a change in the subject means a change in the aporia. As the subject grows, the aporia changes. We encounter aporia, engage it hermeneutically, and emerge from that struggle with both a new understanding and a new relationship to the aporia. Absolute otherness leads to absolute aporia; but relative otherness leads to relative aporias, which nevertheless retain their aporetic character. However, this is not (just) an acknowledgement of a deconstructive undecidability, but the affirmation of a hermeneutic spiral. The deconstructive moment or aspect in hermeneutics should not lead us to abandon a commitment to hermeneutic discernment. Otherness is not absolute and we can come to understand something of others, or our world, and of our situation without claiming to fully comprehend any of them. 91. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 3. 92. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 11. 93. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 39. 94. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears, 20ff. Levinas does respond to ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ acknowledging that ‘‘one can see nothing without thematization, or without the oblique rays which it reflects back, even when it is a question of the nonthematizable.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘Wholly Otherwise,’’ in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 6. 95. Ibid., 22. 96. Ibid., 73. A second ‘‘crucial difference’’ is addressed below. See 415–421. 97. Kearney, The God Who May Be, 73. 98. Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 25. This is exactly why Levinas will reject any knowledge or understanding of the other (at least any significant knowledge)—because knowledge or understanding is only possible within a unity of some kind.
328
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99. See my ‘‘God and the Other Person: Levinas’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Otherness,’’ in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001). 100. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 18 and 9. 101. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 214. 102. The messy and complex nature of any tradition, culture, or system is something Caputo insists on. See, for example, Modernity and Its Discontents, eds. James L. Marsh, John D. Caputo, and Merold Westphal (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 136, 140–141. However, if in some places contamination is emphasized, which implies that there is no way of purifying the mutually contaminated elements, in other places the monotonous emphasis on alterity and on impossible ‘‘pure’’ relationships seems to imply that alterity can be addressed independent of similitude. That is to say, while one might argue that the ‘‘contamination’’ of alterity and similitude is very similar to the argument I have been making, in deconstruction, contamination is expressed as part of a philosophy that relentlessly emphasizes otherness as if it, rather than similitude, is what really matters, implying that alterity and similitude are distinguishable and not so cross-contaminated after all. The trick—which ultimately requires a relative, hermeneutic account of otherness—is to acknowledge that things get messy, but to keep everything from becoming just a mess. Caputo himself recognizes that ‘‘the problem for a quasi-transcendental philosophy [like deconstruction] is how to keep things from running into each other and contaminating everything.’’ Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 13. 103. Kearney, The God Who May Be, 11. 104. For example, Cohen, ‘‘Moral Selfhood,’’ 127–160, especially 133–134. 105. For example, Caputo, ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm.’’ 106. Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, 1. 107. Ibid. 108. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 103. 109. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21. 110. Infra., chap. 5, 180–182. 111. It has been argued that deconstruction is concerned precisely with the haecceitas of the other—the ‘‘proper name’’ of the ‘‘singular event,’’ the ‘‘effanineffables’’—rather than universals or generalities; this point is made in the context of justice, not love (See Caputo, Against Ethics, chap. 4 passim), that is, in the context of the necessary comparison of incomparables that violates the absolute otherness of the other. But this means we are not longer really encountering the other as other. Again, as we have seen, it is difficult to talk about love in terms of absolute otherness without (1) using ‘‘love’’ as synonym for justice, or (2) using it as a term for the passion for the impossible, which is always a`-venir, not for the haecceitas of the concrete other here before me. In either case, absolute
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otherness is at pains to accentuate the distance and difference of the other, viewing any intimacy in terms of violence of one sort or another. ‘‘O my love, there is no love’’ (a play on a statement attributed to Aristotle by Montaigne—‘‘O my friend, there is no friend’’—which Derrida uses as a tapestry for his meditations on friendship in The Politics of Friendship). 112. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 49. 113. Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, trans. Katherine Farrer (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 117. 114. Ibid., 155. 115. Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol.. 2, Faith and Reality, trans. Rene Hague (London: Harvill Press, 1951), 57. Marcel maintains this opposition to totality in all his works. For example, ‘‘Here, as is so often the case, we must avoid the considerable intellectual temptation to think of this reality as a totality. It is essential to existential philosophy, as I conceive it at least, to take a stand against the pretensions of totalizing thought. I do not at all believe in the possibility of a reconciliation between existential philosophy and [philosophies of totality].’’ Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 179. 116. Plato, the Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 188 (508c). 117. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 95. 118. Ibid., 64. 119. Sister Mary Beth Ingham, C.J.S., Scotus for Dunces: An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute Press, 2003), 140–141. Ingham points out that John Duns Scotus identifies both an intuitive, non-representational cognitive act as well as a representative, abstracting intellect; therefore, ‘‘the human mind has some non-representational access to the extra-mental world.’’ Ibid., 144. Of course, in discussing the otherness of the other it would be problematic to affirm such an intuitive knowledge of the other. However, if Ingham’s explanation of Scotus’s thought does not entirely avoid Levinas’s criticisms and concerns, it certainly illustrates one of many non-visual, non-representational accounts of knowledge in the tradition. Levinas and the postmoderns he influenced remain too wedded to the visual metaphor for knowing, even as they struggle to overcome it. 120. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 337ff. However, others make a similar point in noting that Levinas’s obsessive focus on abstract, quasi-transcendental, absolute otherness leads him to neglect concrete, empirical others. See, for example, Bernhard Waldenfels, ‘‘The Other and the Foreign’’ in Philosophy and Social Criticism 21, no. 5–6 (1995). 121. To varying degrees, see Cohen, ‘‘Moral Selfhood: A Levinasian Response to Ricoeur on Levinas’’ and Peter Kemp, ‘‘Ricoeur between Heidegger and Levinas,’’ in Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, ed. Richard Kearney (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 41–46; and Patrick L. Bour330
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geois, ‘‘Ricoeur and Levinas: Solicitude in Reciprocity and Solicitude in Existence,’’ in Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, ed. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002), 109–126. 122. Cohen, ‘‘Moral Selfhood,’’ 151–153. 123. I do not encounter absolute otherness and then objectify, dominate, name, limit, or otherwise do violence to it by reducing it to a relatively other. In fact, if the other was absolutely other, there would be no encounter with the other. The other is already relatively other if I am shocked, or if I hear the call of the other, already relatively other because that is the only kind of otherness that can shock or call to me. Although Derrida makes a similar argument in ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics,’’ there remain several crucial differences between the deconstructive version of this objection and the hermeneutic objection made here. 124. Peperzak, Beyond, 84. 125. Ibid., 85. 126. Ibid., 147. This point is not lost on postmodern philosophers— including Derrida, Caputo, and Kearney—many of whom are turning to pre-modern thinkers as source of inspiration for critiques of modern and postmodern philosophy. Saint Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, John Duns Scotus, and Nicolas of Cusa are examples of thinkers who have been ‘‘recovered’’ by postmodern philosophy. 127. Ibid., 147. 128. Jeffrey Kosky, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), xxii–xxiii. 129. Ibid., 123ff. 130. Richard Kearney, States of Mind, 191. 131. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 119. 132. Derrida asserts that deconstruction is not a tool we use, but an event that happens (Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 9). Nevertheless, if the elements of deconstruction lie within the text itself, they are in a sense dormant until activated by a reader. The deconstructing of a text is still something a philosopher does. Derrida has made a career of it. 133. Frederic Jameson, forward to Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xix. Emphasis mine. 134. While most reasonable persons would acknowledge the legitimacy of deconstructing the Grande Histoire of the European colonization of the Americas writ along the lines of the ‘‘White Man’s Burden’’ in favor of various petites histoires that illustrate the complexities of the European arrival on this continent, few would be in favor of opening the route to legitimacy for the petites histoires associated with the racist ‘‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’’ and Mien Kampf without significant qualifications. Granted that an Notes to Pages 241–245
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unreflective endorsement of Grande Histoire may be narrow-minded, constricting, and potentially racist; nevertheless, without some overarching way of comparing petites histoires, we are left with no way to discern between Mien Kampf and The Story of a Soul. 135. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 18. 136. ‘‘One can see nothing without thematization, or without the oblique rays which it reflects back, even when it is a question of the nonthematizable.’’ Levinas, ‘‘Wholly Otherwise,’’ 6. 137. Immanuel Kant, ‘‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’’ in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis and Cambridge, Mass.: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 41. 138. Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, 1. 139. See C. S. Peirce, ‘‘Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,’’ in The Essential Writings of C. S. Peirce (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998). 140. C. S. Peirce, ‘‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear,’’ in Charles S. Peirce: The Essential Writings (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998), 155. Lest the word ‘‘fate’’ be adopted by absolutists or attacked by relativists, Peirce points out that ‘‘Fate means merely that which is sure to come true, and can [in no way] be avoided. It is a superstition to suppose that certain sorts of events are ever fated, and it is another to suppose that the word fate can never be freed from its superstitious taint. We are all fated to die.’’ Ibid. 141. From Hamlet, act 1, scene 5. The haunting of the other is evident in Levinas, ‘‘Ethics of the Infinite,’’ 63–64 and in Derrida’s interests in ghosts (e.g., Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kaumf [Routledge, 1994]). 142. Macbeth, act 1, scene 5. 143. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 25. 144. Ibid., 338. 145. See, for example: John D. Caputo, ‘‘What Do I Love When I Love My God? Deconstruction and Radical Orthodoxy,’’ in Questioning God, ed. John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 296; Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 338; and ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm,’’ 93. 146. I have noted elsewhere the parallels and divergences between deconstruction and pragmatism on the topic of leaps of faith. Certain leaps of faith need conviction in order to succeed. While Caputo will claim that deconstruction is all about passion, that it is passionate through and through, I fail to see how the unwavering emphasis on undecidability and the clarion, yet monotonous, call of ‘‘tout autre est tout autre,’’ could fail to affect one’s resolve. As William James points out, the irresolute leap is doomed to failure. Deconstruction’s passion seems to be for undecidability as much as the impossible. Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is by a 332
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terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll into the abyss. In such a case (and it belongs to an enormous class) . . . refuse to believe and you will be right, for you shall irretrievably perish.’’ (James, The Will to Believe, 59). A leap of faith, whether religious, ethical, or political, is doomed to failure if the leap is made irresolutely. An irresolute leap will not make one a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Buddhist (the religious), nor will it allow one to love one’s spouse (the interpersonal and ethical), nor will it allow the Israelis and Palestinians to come to some sort of agreement allowing them to live side by side (the just and political). Each of these ‘‘leaps’’ must be made ‘‘as if’’ success (i.e., verification) is assured, otherwise the leap will fail (i.e., failure is guaranteed). If one is resolute, the leap may succeed, but if the leap is irresolute, the leap is doomed to fail (see my ‘‘The God Who May Be: Quis ergo amo cum Deum meum amo?’’ in After God, ed. John Manoussakis [New York: Fordham University Press, 2005]). James identifies passion as the essential element of faith—it is, on my reading, the passion that elevates the leap of faith above the status of mere wager—and Caputo will reply that deconstruction is overflowing with passion, that it is passionate through and through. However, deconstruction’s passion is for the impossible itself, for the dizzying subliminity of khora, which, despite the similarities, seems fundamentally different from the possibility of the impossible (Matthew 19:26). Deconstruction loves the impossibility, loves the undecidability—‘‘the impossibility is the object of our love and passion’’ (Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 332)—rather than loving the possibility of the impossible, the decision that moves (provisionally) beyond the impossibility. Passion for the dizzy disorientation of undecidability itself, however, presents serious problems, as Kierkegaard noted in a journal entry about Johannes Climacus. The plan of this narrative was as follows. By means of the melancholy irony, which did not consist in any single utterance on the part of Johannes Climacus but in his whole life, by means of a profound earnestness involved in a young man’s being sufficiently honest and earnest to do quietly and unostentatiously what the philosophers say (and thereby becomes unhappy)—I would strike a blow at [modern speculative] philosophy. Johannes does what we are told to do—he actually doubts everything—he suffers through all the pain of doing that, becomes cunning, almost acquires a bad conscience. When he has gone as far in that direction as he can go and wants to come back, he cannot do so. He perceives that in order to hold on to this extreme Notes to Page 248
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position of doubting everything, he has engaged all his mental and spiritual powers. If he abandons this extreme position, he may well arrive at something, but in doing that he would have also abandoned his doubt about everything. Now he despairs, his life is wasted, his youth spent in deliberations. Life has not acquired any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy (cited in the ‘‘Supplements’’ to Søren Kierkegaard, Johannes Climacus, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985], 234–235). 147. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 54. 148. Ibid., 45. I wish to acknowledge the benefit derived from discussing these issues with the students of my Postmodernism class at Loyola Marymount University and especially to acknowledge the contributions of Mr. Jesse Mills on this topic. 149. In fact, deconstruction’s ‘‘religion without religion’’ is neither; that is, neither religion nor without religion. It exhibits all the shortcomings of historical messianisms—belief in a determinate version of the impossible, in this case a hopeful and just version—without having resource to their strengths and benefits—faith, i.e., belief that aspires to unconditionality while remaining humble regarding its limits. 150. Richard Kearney, On Stories, 149 (citing Julian Barnes’s History of the World in 10 and a Half Chapters). A parallel thought is evident in William James’s distinction between the epistemological drive to avoid error (which seems to characterize deconstruction) and to seek truth (which might, in a certain sense, be attributed to hermeneutics). 251. If I were born in another time, place, or circumstance, certainly my beliefs would be cloaked in what deconstruction would call a different concrete messainism; my beliefs would take a somewhat different form. However (if we can assume for the moment that I would remain a generally good, fairly introspective, and somewhat skeptical and critical fellow), there is a good chance that I would come to some form of a concrete messainism that, while different, would not be the opposite of my current beliefs. We all start within traditions we are thrown into, traditions that influence us in ways we never fully get away from; but we can comport ourselves in a better or worse manner within these traditions, which changes us in ways others are not changed. What, other than openness to change and willingness to question (i.e., the very ‘‘civility’’ for which deconstruction argues) and to compare (i.e., critically compare, evaluate, judge and condemn) allows one middle-class white kid from a conservative, northern family to drop everything to head for the march in Montgomery while his mother, father, and twin brother sit at home bad-mouthing the marchers on television? 152. As Merold Westphal notes, we cannot step outside the tradition to critique it, ‘‘we are always appealing to the tradition against itself,’’ we use the tradition to critique the tradition (Modernity and Its Discontents, 137). 334
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Nevertheless, we need to develop some account that will help us to work out which aspects of the tradition need critiquing and which need affirming. Simply saying, ‘‘affirm the marginalized or disenfranchised other’’ only pushes the question back one remove, for we will need a way of deciding which marginalized voice we are to help rehabilitate. I am not implying that the good and bad parts of the tradition are always discrete and identifiable; I agree with Westphal and Caputo that these elements contaminate each other (although I might choose a different language here). Still, if part of ethical conduct includes leveling skepticism and critique against one’s tradition, surely it makes a difference how and where one levels that critique. As I tell my undergraduate students, the ‘‘Johnny Strabler’’ approach—Q: What are you rebelling against? A: Whattya got?—may seem alluring, but it won’t get you anywhere. 153. Caputo is right that Kearney’s critique of undecidability tends to focus on the dark, the monstrous, and the terrible. Personally, I do not have a problem with this critique of undecidability; in fact, I think it is rhetorically effective because Caputo himself is a good man and would certainly not want to be taken for an evil man. However, rhetorical effectiveness aside, Kearney’s point about undecidability and evil could be applied with equal facility to undecidability and good. Just as we cannot (on the deconstructive account) distinguish the murderer, rapist, or terrorist from John Everyman in order to censure them, we cannot distinguish the hero, saint, or martyr in order to praise them. Both evil and goodness are ultimately lost in the mist of undecidability. 154. Caupto himself does not think so. ‘‘I don’t take the sorts of things that I say about ethics and politics to arise from caprice or personal opinion or personal circumstance . . .’’ Modernity and Its Discontents, 131. But where then does he get the ‘‘ought’’ that inclines him, and should incline us, to the other, to justice? In the same dialogue, he later points out that ‘‘there is never a moment when I take myself to be outside the influence of the tradition.’’ Ibid., 135. If we are always within our tradition (or our traditions), but choose our positions (and choice means our tradition does not determine us) on the basis of something other than caprice, than it appears that otherness must be relative and that some aspects of a tradition are better than others, and can be judged to be so on the basis of some (perhaps imperfectly) determinate criteria. 155. C. S. Peirce, Essential Writings, 268. Peirce continues, ‘‘But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.’’ 156. Ibid., 86. 157. Caputo, ‘‘Abyssus Abyssum Invocat,’’ 127. 158. Caputo, Against Ethics, 186–189. Merold Westphal takes issue with Felix Sineculpa’s disturbing ‘‘perspective’’ in his ‘‘Postmodernism and EthNotes to Pages 251–253
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ics: the Case of Caputo,’’ in A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed. Mark Dooley (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 153–170. 159. John D. Caputo, ‘‘ ‘O Felix Culpa,’ This Foxy Fellow Felix: A Response to Westphal,’’ in A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, Mark Dooley, ed. (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 171–172. 160. Ibid., 171–174. 161. John D. Caputo, ‘‘Hauntological Hermeneutics and the Interpretation of Christian Faith: On Being Dead Equal Before God,’’ in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 291–311. Caputo is here aligning himself with aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought (ibid., 295). 162. Westphal, ‘‘Postmodernism and Ethics: The Case of Caputo,’’ 162. In a much earlier text Westphal notes that deconstruction’s commitments to motifs such as suffering and justice seem rather ad hoc, and may result from the personal commitments of Derrida (or Caputo) rather than from any real connection to the poststructuralist critique of logocentrism (Modernity and Its Discontents, 125). Juxtaposing these two comments indicates that he has not been convinced by subsequent protestation or clarifications from deconstructive philosophers. 163. Two of the pseudonyms used by Caputo in Against Ethics. 164. There must be some difference between the bewildering alterity of monstrous injustice and the dazzling alterity of messianic justice that allows Derrida and Caputo to unfailingly choose the ethical rather than the evil example. And, if so, ‘‘surely it is important to tell the difference, even if it’s only more or less; and even if we can never know for certain, or see for sure, or have any definite set of criteria.’’ Kearney, The God Who May Be, 76. I think Kearney is on to something when, citing Simon Critchley, he asks how, if the deconstructionists are right, we can affirm that alterity is ethical. ‘‘Why is it not rather evil or an-ethical or neutral?’’ Simon Critchley, Very Little . . . Almost Nothing: Death, Possibility and Literature (London: Routledge, 1997), 80. Again, it cannot be repeated frequently enough, this does not mean that we move beyond uncertainty to apodicitity, or from imperfect human knowledge to perfect divine knowledge. 165. See ‘‘Caputo’s Example’’ and ‘‘On Being Left Without a Prayer: A Response to Thomas Carlson,’’ in A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed. Mark Dooley (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003). 166. See, for example, Caputo, ‘‘Richard Kearney’s Enthusiasm,’’ 93. 167. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 10. 168. See the epigraph to this chapter, by T. S. Eliot. 169. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 100. 170. Ibid., 143. 171. Caputo, ‘‘Abyssus Abyssum Invocat,’’ 126. Caputo aligns Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, and Gadamer with this reading of phro336
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nesis. Of course, elsewhere Caputo critiques the concept of phronesis (cf. Radical Hermeneutics). But see Shaun Gallagher, ‘‘The Place of Phronesis in Postmodern Hermeneutics,’’ Philosophy Today 37, no. 3 (1993): 298–305 on Caputo’s critique of phronesis and development of meta-phronesis in relation to Lyotard. 172. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 142. 173. Ibid., 155. 174. Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, 182. 175. Ibid., 183 176. See John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, 258–262. 177. This is the position taken by Shaun Gallagher in ‘‘The Place of Phronesis in Postmodern Hermeneutics.’’ 178. This image is echoed in Kearney’s work (Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 12.) and, interestingly, although in another context, in Caputo (see Modernity and Its Discontents, 146). 179. See comments by Merold Westphal in Modernity and Its Discontents, 160. Holding trust and suspicion in such a tension does not mean that the good (ethical or veridical) aspects of the tradition that we should trust and the bad (ethical or veridical) aspects of which we should be suspicious are easily or uncomplicatedly distinguished from each other. 180. Marcel, Mystery of Being, 1:41. 181. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 64. 182. Caputo, Against Ethics, 227. 183. Marcel, On the Ontological Mystery, 28. 184. Modernity and Its Discontents, 160–161. 185. Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 64. 186. The first of these distinctions revolves around the claim that the other is always a`-venir. See above, page 376. 187. Westphal, ‘‘Postmodernism and Ethics: The Case of Caputo,’’ 162. 188. Caputo, Against Ethics, 223. 189. Ibid., 226. 190. See, for example, Caputo, Prayers and Tears, 90–91. 191. Caputo, Against Ethics, 245. The theme of suffering remains a powerful one in Caputo’s thought, and it is reflected in his more recent work. 192. Ibid., 226. 193. Caputo, Against Ethics, 227. 194. Ibid., 221. 195. Modernity and Its Discontents, 131–132. 196. A play on a statement attributed to Aristotle by Montaigne (‘‘O my friend, there is no friend.’’), which Derrida uses as a tapestry for his meditations on friendship in The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London: Verso, 1997). 197. In addition to the pure/impure distinction, philosophies of absolute otherness prevent the closure of thinking into a neat system in which all the Notes to Pages 255–265
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elements are accounted for; it keeps things messy in a productive sort of way, shaking things up and preventing ossification, insuring a degree of looseness in the system. However, again, such closure can be prevented without resorting to a claim of absolute otherness. A chiastic account of alterity and similitude cannot lapse into a rigid systematicity that would close the system; a hermeneutic tension (between alterity and similitude, for example) is not a Hegelian synthesis. 198. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, 2. 199. Plato, Sophist, 259e. Kearny refers to this passage and others from the Sophist in Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 14–15. ‘‘The complete separation of same and other, of being and what is other than being, would be the obliteration of all speech’’ Ibid., 15. 200. Daodejing, chap. 64. 201. Marcel, Creative Fidelity, 135. 202. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 56. 203. Gabriel Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 253–254. 204. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 10–11. 205. Ibid., 230. 206. For example, Levinas ventures that Marcel was ‘‘frightened’’ by the idea of God otherwise than Being (Levinas, Entre Nous, 119) and, although he also protests his own fear and trembling, Caputo at times characterizes deconstruction in terms of facing up to undecidability, khora, and the cold indifference of the stars. 207. Shaun Gallagher, ‘‘The Place of Phronesis in Postmodern Hermeneutics,’’ 302. 208. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 20. 209. Marcel, Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, 255–256.
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Kosky, Jeffrey. Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001. Levinas, Emmanuel. Autrement qu’eˆtre ou au-dela` de l’essence. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. ––––––. Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. ––––––. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Translated by Sean Hand. London: Athlone Press, 1990. ––––––. Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other. Translated by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ––––––. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985. ––––––. ‘‘Existence and Ethics.’’ In Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader. Edited by Jonathan Ree and Jane Chamberlin. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. ––––––. Existence and Existents. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1978. ––––––. ‘‘Un e´veil qui signifie une responsabilite´.’’ In Gabriel Marcel et la pense´e allemande. Paris: Aubier, 1979. ––––––. God, Death and Time. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. ––––––. The Levinas Reader. Edited by Sean Hand. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. ––––––. Nine Talmudic Readings. Translated by Annette Aronowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. ––––––. Of God Who Comes to Mind. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. ––––––. Otherwise than Being; or, Beyond Essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998. ––––––. Outside the Subject. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. ––––––. Proper Names. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. ––––––. Time and the Other. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. ––––––. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne Studies Philosophical Series, vol. 24. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.
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––––––. Totalite´ et infini: essai sur l’exte´riorite´. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1971. ––––––. ‘‘Wholly Otherwise.’’ In Re-Reading Levinas. Translated by Simon Critchley. Edited by Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991. Llewelyn, John. Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. ––––––. Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics. London: Routledge, 1995. Lyotard, Jean-Franc¸ois. The Postmodern Condition. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1984. Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Chaim Rabin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995. Manoussakis, John. After God. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. Marcel, Gabriel. ‘‘An Autobiographical Essay.’’ In The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Translated by Forrest Williams. Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984. ––––––. Being and Having. Translated by Katharine Farrer. Westminster, U.K.: Dacre Press, 1949. ––––––. Creative Fidelity. Translated and with an introduction by Robert Rosthal. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1964. ––––––. The Existential Background of Human Dignity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. ––––––. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. Translated by Emma Crawford. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962. ––––––. ‘‘I and Thou.’’ In The Philosophy of Martin Buber. Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 12. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1967. ––––––. Man Against Mass Society. Translated by G. S. Fraser. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962. ––––––. Martin Buber: L’homme et la philosophie. Brussels: Editions de l’Institut de Sociologie de l’Universite´ Libre de Bruxelles, 1968. ––––––. Metaphysical Journal. Translated by Bernard Wall. London: Rockliff, 1952. ––––––. The Mystery of Being. Vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery. Translated by G. S. Fraser. London: Harvill Press, 1951. ––––––. The Mystery of Being. Vol. 2, Faith and Reality. Translated by Rene´ Hague. London: Harvill Press, 1951.
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––––––. Philosophical Fragments 1909–1914 and the Philosopher and Peace. With an introduction by Lionel A. Blain. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965. ––––––. The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by Manya Harari. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995. ––––––. Presence and Immortality. Translated by Michael A. Machado. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967. ––––––. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond. Translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick. Publication of the Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Edited by John Wild. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Marsh, James L., John D. Caputo, and Merold Westphal. Modernity and Its Discontents. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. McCowan, Joe. Availability: Gabriel Marcel and the Phenomenology of Human Openness. Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Primacy of Perception. Edited by James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ––––––. Sense and Non-Sense. Translated by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. ––––––. Signs. Translated by Richard C. McCleary. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Moneta, Giuseppina, John Sallis, and Jacques Taminiaux, eds. The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Horace Gregory. New York: Viking Press, 1958. Peirce, C. S. Charles S. Peirce: The Essential Writings. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998. Peperzak, Adriaan. Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997. ––––––. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993. Peperzak, Adriaan, ed. Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature, and Religion. New York: Routledge, 1995. Plant, Bob. ‘‘Doing Justice to the Derrida-Levinas connection: A response to Mark Dooley.’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 29, no. 4. 346
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Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Translated by Michael Joyce. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. ––––––. Five Dialogues. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1981. ––––––. The Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1968. Regan, Charles. Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ricoeur, Paul. Critique and Conviction. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ––––––. ‘‘E´ntre e´thique et ontologie: la disponibilite´.’’ In Gabriel Marcel: Colloque organise´ par la Bibliothe`que Nationale et l’association Pre´sence de Gabriel Marcel. Edited by Michele Sacquin. Paris: Bibliothe`que Nationale, 1989. ––––––. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Translated by Erazim V. Kohak. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966. ––––––. Freud and Philosophy. Translated by Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. ––––––. Le Juste. 2 vols. Paris: Esprit, 1995–2001. ––––––. The Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. ––––––. ‘‘In Memorium: Emmanuel Levinas.’’ Philosophy Today 40, no.3 (1996). ––––––. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ––––––. Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984–88. Robbins, Jill, ed. Is It Righteous to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Rolland, Jacques. God, Death, and Time. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Schilpp, Paul Arthur, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of Martin Buber. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1967. ––––––. The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 17. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984. Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Selected Bibliography
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Shakespeare, William. The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare. New York: Chatham River Press, 1984. Tallon, Andrew. ‘‘Intentionality, Intersubjectivity, and the Between: Buber and Levinas on the Dialogical Principle.’’ Thought 53, no. 210:292–309. Taminiaux, Jacques. ‘‘The Early Levinas’ Reply to Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology.’’ Philosophy and Social Criticism 23, no. 6:29–49. Taylor, Mark, ed. Deconstruction in Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Treanor, Brian. ‘‘Constellations: Gabriel Marcel’s Philosophy of Relative Otherness.’’ American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2006). ––––––. ‘‘God and the Other Person: Levinas’s Appropriation of Kierkegaard’s Encounter with Otherness.’’ In The Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001). ––––––. ‘‘The God Who May Be: Quis ergo amo cum Deum meum amo?’’ In After God. Edited by John Manoussakis. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. ––––––. ‘‘Plus de Secret: The Paradox of Prayer.’’ In The Phenomenology of Prayer. Edited by Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Troisfontaines, Roger. De l’Existence a` l’Eˆtre: La Philosophie de Gabriel Marcel. Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1968. Waldenfels, Bernhard. ‘‘The Other and the Foreign.’’ In Philosophy and Social Criticism 21, 5–6, (1995). Westphal, Merold. Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith. New York: Fordham University Press, 2001. ––––––. Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C.K. Ogden. London and New York: Routledge, 1922. Wood, David. ‘‘Some Questions for My Levinasian Friends.’’ In Addressing Levinas, ed. Eric Sean Nelson, Antje Kapust, and Kent Still. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2005. Wood, David, ed. On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Wyschogrod, Edith. Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000.
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Index
Abraham, 2–3, 21, 27, 31, 121, 188, 211 R. Abraham ibn Daud, 182 absolute otherness, 8, 53, 93–94, 130, 135, 139–45, 156–59, 197–200, 207, 209–17, 225–28, 236–41, 244–49, 313n51, 331n123 Absolute Spirit, 5 Absolute Thou, 59–60, 104, 114–18, 160–61, 285n33. See also God abstraction, 242, 290n2 fascination of, 206 method of, 67 spirit of, 67–68, 75, 123, 139–45, 204–6, 221, 258–59 ‘‘Adieu’’ (Derrida), 140 Against Ethics (Caputo), 262 agape, 86 agathon, 253 alter ego, 141, 143–45, 151 alterity, 12, 24, 29–30, 52, 100, 116–18, 227–28, 264–65. See also other absolute, 139–45, 156–59, 164, 175, 180, 193, 195, 202, 206, 266 Christian vs. Jewish views of, 176 experience of, 213 of God, 159–63, 175, 193, 316n85 otherness vs., 229, 232–33
of other vs. of God, 159–63, 170 privacy and, 41 relative, 156–59, 180, 307n1 similitude and, 207, 227–30, 309n16 of transcendence, 142 anamnesis, 5, 28, 96, 108, 166, 173–74 anti-Semitism, 186 apophatic theology, 194, 207, 230, 249, 321n1 aporias, 228, 241, 328n90 Aristophanes, 24 Aristotle, 3–4, 17, 114, 226, 255–57 asymmetry, 132–34, 137–39, 204 ‘‘At This Very moment In This Work Here I Am’’ (Derrida), 140 ataraxy, 25–26 atheism, 25, 188, 213, 319n120 Augustine, Saint, 14, 20, 165–66, 173–74 autonomy, 89 autrui, 23, 26, 41–43, 49–50, 129, 132, 151, 171, 176. See also other availability. See disponibilite´ being, 98, 104–5, 116, 148 with, 75–76 as Absolute Thou, 59–60 349
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beyond, 224 clearing of, 5 goodness vs., 241 having and, 60–62 human, 79 question of, 63 Being and Having (Marcel), 104, 220 Being and Time (Heideggger), 17, 125, 244 belief, 60, 80–81, 83, 285n33, 334n151 Bernasconi, Robert, 12, 140, 144 between, 109–11 biology, 200 blind servitude, 127–39 Blundell, Boyd, 67, 219 body, 61 Boer, Theodore de, 12 broken world, 56–58, 62, 64, 96, 118 Brunschvicg, Le´on, 120 Buber, Martin, 35, 44, 118, 138, 148, 165, 181–82, 287n89, 297n81 Judaism and, 189–92 Marcel and, 6, 94–97, 106, 108 call, 6–8, 18, 34–35, 37, 43, 47, 78–79, 118, 129–31 Caputo, John D., 10, 194, 208–9, 214–17, 222–23, 226–28, 230–32, 241, 248, 250–57, 262–64, 269–70, 273n20, 323n17 Cartesian Meditations (Husserl), 101, 141 cases, people as, 74–75, 78 Le chemin de creˆte (Marcel), 53 chiasm, 134, 261, 303n49, 328n90 child, 281n116 Christ, 162, 176, 178 Christianity, 114, 159, 163–64, 175–83, 190, 195, 310n30, 311n37, 318n106, 321n149 Cohen, Richard, 146, 202, 235, 241 command, 31–33, 42–43, 313n53 commitment, 83–84, 90–91 communion, 87, 100, 103, 187, 190, 239 community, individualism vs., 102 compassion, 46 concrete applicability, 145–49 concrete philosophy, 54–56, 66, 92, 102 conduct, 148–49, 151 350
constellations, 72, 101, 158, 218, 225, 238, 327n84 conviction, 80–81, 83, 90–91 Copernican revolution, 18 creative fidelity, 79–85, 100, 107, 134, 136, 202, 220 Creative Fidelity (Marcel), 54, 160 creativity, 113, 124, 153 critique ontology and, 17–20 transcendental vs. concrete, 123 truth and, 17–20 Dasein, 14 De Magistro (Augustine), 165, 173–74 death of God, 188 of love, 313n55 of loved other, 243 of other, 120–21 decisions, 248 deconstruction, 223, 226–28, 237, 244–45, 251–55, 259–62, 331n132 pessimism of, 262 religion and, 215–16, 334n149 Derrida, Jacques, 10, 140–41, 143–45, 159, 192, 194, 207–18, 222–23, 226–28, 230–32, 241, 250–51, 257, 261, 266, 269–70 Levinas and, 216 religion and, 215–16 Descartes, Rene´, 15, 27, 30, 98, 108, 118–20, 140, 172–74, 277n28 desire, 22, 26–28, 85, 89, 159, 190 despair, 86, 124, 289n111 destitution, 33–34, 42–43, 49, 139 determinism, 249 cultural, 251 soft, 250–54, 261, 263, 268 dialogue, 95–97 diffe´rance, 215–17, 248 Difficult Freedom (Levinas), 120, 181, 187–88 disponibilite´, 72–84, 95, 100–103, 107, 124, 134, 136, 153, 161, 191, 202, 208, 220, 289n132, 303n49 divinity, 23, 25. See also God dogmatism, 19–20, 254, 256
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Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 131, 302n30 double asymmetry, 137–38 doubt, 10, 84 Dudiak, Jeffrey, 12, 132, 304n61 durability, 83 duty, 135 economy, 24–26, 143 ‘‘The End of Ego and the Totality’’ (Levinas), 136 ekstasis, 95 encounter with God, 163–64 internal vs. external, 71 mystical vs. non-mystical, 176–81 with other, 99 with other persons, 61 social vs. individual, 188 enjoyment, 25, 29, 40 Enlightenment, 10, 239, 247, 266–67 epistemology, 235–37, 239–40 equality freedom vs., 103 totality and, 102–3 eros, 153–54 ‘‘An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy’’ (de Boer), 12 ethical resistance, 31–33 ethics, 19, 123–24, 146–48, 176, 201–2, 235–39, 251–52 of conviction, 90–91 language and, 243 metaphysics and, 22, 316n84 morality vs., 147 ontology vs., 11, 202, 221, 273n14, 289n132, 326n71 philosophy and, 4–5, 20 of responsibility, 90–91 Ethics and Infinity (Levinas), 146 eˆtre, 60 evil, 63 exaggeration. See hyperbole example, 53, 123 exigence, 56–60, 81, 104–6, 109–10, 284n23, 298n1 existentialism, 55 The Existential Background of Human Dignity (Marcel), 54
experience, 55, 115–16, 205, 258, 264, 266–67, 294n44 of alterity, 213 of God, 44 language and, 114 living of, 269 of mystery, 65 of sociality, 106 of transcendence, 59, 107 exteriority. See alterity; otherness face, 27–32, 42, 44–47, 51, 99, 130, 142, 159, 175, 189, 233 faith, 105, 117, 192–95, 239, 248–49, 253, 262, 332n146 fear, 85, 207 Fear and Trembling (Kierkegaard), 2 fidelity, 260 creative, 79–85, 100, 107, 134, 136, 202, 220 faith and, 117 guarantee of, 83, 85 higher, 87 first principles, 192–95 Fourth Reduction, 224–25, 266 fraternity, 293n32 freedom, 63, 72, 132, 230 equality vs., 103 failure of, 32 promotion of, 33–34 responsibility and, 35 Freud and Philosophy (Ricoeur), 221 functional person, 56–58, 292n22 generosity, 149, 249 Gifford Lectures, 54 globalization, 198–99 God, 23, 60, 104, 111, 153, 157, 159, 169, 207, 227, 230, 269, 271n2 as Absolute Thou, 114–18 after metaphysics, 296n74 alterity of, 159–63, 175, 193, 316n85 Christian encounter with, 163–64, 176, 321n149 death of, 188 diffe´rance and, 215–17 experience of, 44 history and, 165 Index
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Jewish encounter with, 163–64, 176, 181–87, 321n149 knowledge of, 240 mystical vs. non-mystical encounters with, 176–81 reason and, 243 relationship with, 160–63, 171, 174–75, 178 social vs. individual encounters with, 188 trace of, 44–47, 175, 189 The God Who May Be (Kearney), 222 goodness, 241, 246–47 Grandes Histoires. See Grand Narratives Grand Narratives, 1–2, 200, 245, 249, 256, 331n134 Greek tradition, 19–20, 26, 31, 98–99, 114, 144, 146, 182–83, 185, 214, 242, 257, 306n85 Habermas, Ju¨rgen, 264 haecceitas, 224, 237, 329n111 Hasidism, 183–86, 189–90, 318n106 having, being and, 60–62 He, 74, 78 Hebrew tradition, 26, 31, 46. See also Judaism Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 5, 22 Heidegger, Martin, 5, 7, 14–17, 20–22, 38, 54–55, 94, 99, 114–15, 120, 124–25, 224–25, 242–44, 273n12, 287n83, 290n136 height, 33–34, 157–58, 170 hermeneutic circle, 21, 96, 268 hermeneutics, 244, 247, 253–55, 261, 263, 267 romantic vs. radical, 268–69 hermeneutic vigilance, 258 heteronomy, 89 R. Hillel, 162 Him, 74 hineni, 211, 280n90 Un homme de Dieu (Marcel), 53 homogeneity, 102–3, 117–18 homo viator, 104, 121 Homo Viator (Marcel), 54 hope, 60, 83–87, 100, 104, 124, 134, 153, 267–70, 288n110, 289n111, 322n6 352
despair and, 86 love and, 89 stoicism vs., 85–86 hospitality, 149, 211–12, 233, 249, 253, 264 Husserl, Edmund, 13, 15–16, 54–55, 101, 141–43, 219, 224–25, 239 hyperbole, 228, 235, 241–42, 258, 266 L’Iconoclaste (Marcel), 53 idea, 24 ideatum vs., 17, 28–29 of infinity, 108 of other, 82 ideatum, 17, 28–29 identity. See also self crisis of, 2 ipse vs. idem, 220 I–It relationship, 111, 191, 287n89 illeity, 12, 45–46, 49 il y a, 164, 204, 230, 262–63 imago dei, 45, 159–60, 237 immanence, 59, 95, 258 implied imperatives, 299n4 impossible, 207, 211, 215, 217, 227, 230–31, 248, 251–52 incarnation, 163–64, 188 incohesion, 69–70 indisponibilite´, 72–76, 79, 86, 88, 244 individualism, community vs., 102 inexhaustibility, 104, 106 infinity, 27–30, 104, 108, 157 intellectualism, 184–86, 310n30. See also rationality intentionality dogma of, 29 inversion of, 40 intersubjectivity, 52, 69, 71–72, 76, 100, 110, 117, 134, 152, 155, 158 concrete philosophy and, 102 love vs. justice as, 8 of meaning, 97 intimacy, 95, 107 The Intrigue of Ethics (Dudiak), 12 ipseity, 12, 40, 45, 125 irreversibility, 35 is, 299n10 Isaac, 2–3, 188
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R. Isaac Luria, 185 Islam, 163 R. Israel be Eliexer Ba’al Shem Tov, 184 I–Thou relationship, 95–96, 109, 112, 114, 138, 181, 190–91, 286n71, 287n89 James, William, 245–46 Janicaud, Dominique, 140, 143, 222 Jaspers, Karl, 53, 79, 89 Jesus. See Christ jouissance, 25–26, 32–33, 40, 211. See also enjoyment Journal me´taphysique. See Metaphysical Journal Judaism, 21, 114, 159, 163–64, 176–78, 180–81, 195, 281n109, 310n30, 311n37, 317n94, 318n106, 321n149 Buber and, 189–92 Levinas and, 159, 176–77, 187–89 mystical and non-mystical, 181–87 judgment, 135, 253–57 Le Juste (Ricoeur), 221 justice, 23, 35, 89–91, 130, 146, 187, 201–2, 249, 269–70 love and, 8, 47–51, 87, 137, 152–56, 273n16, 308n10, 329n111 responsibility and, 282n126, 301n18 Kabbalah, 183–84, 318n111 Kant, Immanuel, 18, 76, 135, 148, 220, 247, 255 kath’auto, 17, 27 Kearney, Richard, 10, 146, 194, 208–9, 222–28, 230–32, 234–35, 241–42, 250–51, 257, 266–67, 269–70 kehre, 141 khora, 211, 214, 227, 248–49, 253, 324n26 kidnapping, 264 Kierkegaard, Søren, 2–3, 216, 231–32, 259, 266 Levinas, and, 164–69 transcendence and, 169–76 knowledge, 239–40, 242, 245–48, 267 Kosky, Jeffrey, 243 labor, 26 La Condition postmoderne (Lyotard), 4
language, 48, 125, 144–46 as discourse, 113 ethics and, 243 experience and, 114 games, 2 gendered, 276n20 hyperbole and, 241 objectification and, 112–13 ontological, 111–14 other and, 30–31 Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Kosky), 243 Levinas, Emmanuel, 4–5, 230, 233–36, 241–44, 270 asymmetry in, 33–34 critiques of Marcel, 108–18 Derrida and, 216 economy in, 24–26 ethical resistance in, 31–33 face in, 27–31 generic critique of, 98–108 influence of, 299n11 irreversibility in, 35 Judaism and, 159, 176–77, 187–89, 310n30 justice and, 8, 47–51 Kierkegaard and, 164–69 Lithuanian childhood of, 186–87 love in, 47–51 Marcel and, 5–10, 92, 108–21, 149, 151–52, 196–98, 203 Marcel’s critiques of, 126–49 Marcel vs., 23, 97–98, 126–49, 193, 207 metaphysics and transcendence in, 20–23 ontology and otherness in, 15–17 otherness and, 201–3, 209 readers of, 125–26 responsibility, 35–38 revelation in, 31 secondary literature on, 140 specific critiques of, 108–18 substitution in, 38–41 third in, 41–44 transcendental philosophy of, 12–15, 123, 151, 169–76, 201–2 Lingis, Alphonso, 36 Index
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logocentrism, 237, 336n162 logos, 157 Lord’s Prayer, 178 love, 63, 87–89, 105, 134–35, 151, 187, 207, 237–38, 270 death of, 313n55 existential, 88 hope and, 89 justice and, 8, 47–51, 87, 137, 152–56, 273n16, 308n10, 329n111 kinds of, 47, 76, 153, 162 Platonic, 167–68 pure, 264–65 reciprocity and, 87–88 as service, 88, 134 unconditional, 83 Lyotard, Jean-Franc¸ois, 1, 200, 210, 245 maieutics, 27–28, 172–74, 315n76 Maimonides, 46, 164, 182–83 Man Against Mass Society (Marcel), 87 Man-God, 194 Marcel, Gabriel, 44, 138, 148, 165, 228, 238, 241–42, 266–70 Absolute Thou in, 59–60 being with in, 75–76 belief in, 80–81 broken worlds and functional persons in, 56–58 Buber and, 6, 94–97, 106, 108 Catholicism of, 159, 176–77, 179, 310n30 concrete philosophy of, 54–56 contributions of, 258–61 creative fidelity in, 81–85 critiques of Levinas, 126–49 disponibilite´ and indisponibilite´ in, 72–75 examples in, 53, 123 existential philosophy of, 123, 126, 151 growth in, 79–80 hope in, 85–87 intersubjectivity in, 71–72 justice in, 89–91 Levinas and, 5–10, 92, 108–21, 149, 151–52, 196–98, 203 Levinas’s critique of, 108–18 354
Levinas vs., 23, 97–98, 126–49, 193, 207 love and, 8, 87–89 ontological exigence in, 58–59 opinion in, 80–81 otherness and, 204–7, 217–18 participation and presence in, 68–71 philosophical method of, 53, 56 primary and secondary reflection in, 65–67 problem and mystery in, 62–65 professional occupations of, 282n1 reciprocity in, 76–78 spirit of abstraction in, 67–68 transcendental critique and, 118–21 Marion, Jean-Luc, 140, 222, 224–25 Marsh, James, 264 ‘‘Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy’’ (Levinas), 94, 109 Master Narratives. See Grand Narratives meaning, 97, 264 La Me´morie, l’histoire, l’oubli (Ricoeur), 221 Meno’s Paradox, 3, 28, 140, 172 metanarratives. See Grand Narratives Meta-phronesis, 256–57 Metaphysical Journal (Marcel), 54, 119, 203 metaphysics, 4, 19, 26–27, 40, 263, 296n74 ethics and, 22, 316n84 ontology and, 12–15, 20–23, 35 transcendence and, 20–23 Miteinandersein, 14 mitnagdim, 186–87 Mitsein, 14 Mohammed, 183 Le Monde casse´ (Marcel), 53 monism, 71 morality, 147, 164, 201–2 ‘‘Moral Selfhood: A Levinasian Response to Ricoeur on Levinas’’ (Cohen), 235 Moses, 45–46, 181 multiculturalism, 199 murder, 32–33. See also death; violence The Mystery of Being (Marcel), 54
Index
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mystery, 62–65, 81, 104–6, 117–18, 124, 153, 293n27 mysticism, 176–87, 310n30 narratives dominant vs. marginalized, 251 Grand, 1–2, 200, 245, 249, 256, 331n134 petite, 1, 200, 245, 331n134 narrative understanding, 255 nationalism, 199 needs, of other, 146 Neher, Andre´, 192 Neo-Socratism, 55–56 new rationality, 96 New Testament, 159 Nicomachean Ethics, 255 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 86, 216, 253, 259 nihilism, 248, 253 noema, 15, 17, 44, 141–42 noesis, 15–17, 44, 141–42 nourishment, 25–26 numinousness, 46, 188 objectification, language and, 112–13 objectivity, 59, 62 occasion, 166–67, 173–74 Ockham’s Razor, 15 oikonomos, 21, 25, 211 Old Testament, 159 Oneself as Another (Ricoeur), 219–22 on-theo-logy, 114–15 ontological exigence. See exigence On the Ontological Mystery (Marcel), 54 ontology, 7, 98, 143, 307n91 critique and, 17–20 as dogmatism, 19–20 ethics vs., 11, 202, 221, 273n14, 289n132, 326n71 language of, 111–14 metaphysics and, 12–15, 20–23, 35 otherness and, 15–17 sociality and, 93 transcendence and, 20–23 truth and, 17–20 openness, 84, 260, 303n49 projective and receptive, 77–79, 287n91
opinion, 80–81 other, 119. See also alterity as alter ego, 141, 143–45, 151 alterity of, 159–63 aspects of, 107 availability to, 73–75 as case, 74–75, 78 command by, 42–43 command of, 31–33 death of, 243 encounter with, 99 face of, 44–47 generic, 74–75 killing of, 32 needs of, 146 permeability to, 70, 84 same and, 5, 23–24, 27, 110, 191, 218 self and, 23, 41, 70, 71–72, 102, 105, 232 self, separation from, 211 self, similarity with, 139, 144 similarity of, 139, 144 uniqueness of, 131 otherness, 116, 235–37 absolute, 8, 53, 93–94, 130, 135, 139–45, 156–59, 197–200, 207, 209–17, 225–28, 236–41, 244–49, 313n51, 331n123 alterity vs., 229, 232–33 alternative offering of, 240–44 an-archic priority of, 236 chiastic, 229–35, 253, 258, 264–65, 269 conclusions regarding, 257–70 contemporary, 198 contemporary debate on, 208–27, 225–27, 244–49 destruction and, 232 divergent conceptions of, 193 excess of, 241 of God, 169 Grand Narratives and, 2 idea of, 82 intermediate, 158 interpretation of, 254 Levinas and, 201–3, 209 Marcel and, 204–7, 217–18 meanings of, 23 Index
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ontology and, 15–17 of people vs. of God, 159–63 preservation of, 5, 8, 228, 236 qua alterity vs. qua similitude, 227–30 relative, 8, 53, 94, 145, 156–59, 198–200, 207, 217–29, 236, 244–49, 253, 258, 263, 266, 331n123 social and political manifestations of, 199 traditional view of, 3–4 transcendence and, 21, 106 truth and, 20 understanding vs. comprehension of, 226 others, 142. See also third ‘‘The Other and the Others’’ (Peperzak), 131 Otherwise than Being (Levinas), 38, 46, 113, 140–41, 195, 203 ought, 299n10 paradigm shifts, 251 paralogy, 1, 200, 244–45, 256, 269–70 paroxysm, 228, 235, 241–42 participation, 61, 65, 68–71, 100, 105, 187, 238 passion, 333n146 Pe´guy, Charles, 87 Peirce, C. S., 247 Peperzak, Adriaan, 46–47, 127, 131–33, 135–38, 140, 179, 202, 242, 302n29 permeability, 70, 84 personal choice, 253 petite narratives, 1, 200, 245, 331n134 petites histoires. See petite narratives phenomenology, 15–16, 22, 55, 124, 219, 224–25, 279n60 Phenomenology and the ‘‘Theological Turn’’ (Janicaud), 143 Philosophical Fragments (Levinas), 165–66, 170, 174 philosophy analytic, 219–20 ethics and, 4–5, 20 Greek, 19–20 ontology and, 7 356
primordial, 14 as vocation, 6 phronesis, 226, 254–57, 268, 337n171 phronimoi, 257, 267 Plant, Bob, 211 Plato, 14, 17, 20, 28, 98, 108, 114, 118–19, 119, 144, 165, 172–75, 239, 267, 277n28, 312n45 Platonic relationship, 166–68, 173–74 pluralism, 76 Poe´tique du possible (Kearney), 222 politics, 130–31, 146–47, 199 polycentrism, 107 porous unity, 66 postmodern condition, 254–57, 270 The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard), 210, 245 postmodernity, 10, 239–40 poverty, 42–43 The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (Caputo), 214–17, 230 presence, 61, 68–72, 81, 98, 105, 187, 287n89, 297n78 pride, 73–74 primary reflection, 65–68, 205–6, 219 problem, 62–65, 124 programmability, 239, 254 promise keeping, 220 proximity, 157–58 pure phenomena, 231 racism, 91 Radical Hermeneutics (Caputo), 214, 266 rationality, 91. See also intellectualism reason, 55, 179, 182, 184, 193, 200, 239–40, 267 reciprocity, 76–78, 87–88, 95, 108–9, 126–39, 190–92, 201–2, 221, 291n8, 303n49 recollection, 66, 172 reductions, of phenomenology, 224–25 reflective judgment, 255 Regan, Charles, 223 relationships, 238 with Absolute Thou, 116 communal, 178 ethical, 235
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with God, 159, 160–63, 171, 174–75, 178 immanent vs. transcendent, 95 with other persons, 160–63 Platonic, 166–68, 173–74 pure, 329n102 relative otherness, 8, 53, 94, 145, 156–59, 198–200, 207, 217–29, 236, 244–49, 253, 258, 263, 266, 331n123 relativism, 56, 216, 247–48, 254, 260 hard, 250 soft, 249–50, 261, 263, 268 religion, 60, 96, 159, 213, 249, 270. See also Christianity; Judaism deconstruction and, 215–16, 334n149 wisdom traditions vs., 198 representational thinking, 240 ‘‘Rereading Totality and Infinity’’ (Bernasconi), 12 responsibility, 12, 23, 34–44, 49, 96, 128–29, 132–33, 153–54, 175, 187, 201–2, 209, 211–12, 233 assumption of, 39 asymmetrical, 137 enjoyment vs., 40 ethics of, 90–91 extreme, 129 freedom and, 35 infinite, 131, 212 justice and, 282n126, 301n18 subjectivity and, 129 revelation, 31, 313n53 Ricoeur, Paul, 7, 10, 89–91, 140, 202, 208–9, 218–22, 226, 228, 241, 257–58, 266–70, 270 Rosthal, Robert, 115, 160 Said, 113–14, 133, 145 same, other and, 5, 23–24, 27, 110, 119, 191, 218 Samuel, 322n15 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 32, 120, 276n23 Saying, 113–14, 145 Schro¨dinger’s Cat, 305n65 secondary reflection, 65–68, 81, 205–6, 219, 224, 266, 268 Sein und Zeit. See Being and Time
self, 219 centrality of, 101, 121 density of, 70 economic, 24–25 as ego, 69, 206 enjoyment vs. responsibility of, 40 gift of, 149 growth in, 79–80 movement away from, 107 other and, 23, 41, 70, 71–72, 102, 105, 232 other, separation from, 211 other, similarity with, 139, 144 as person, 69 porous unity of, 66, 69 as psychism, 27 truth in, 96 sensation, 29 separation, 100, 211 shared secret, 77, 109–10, 287n83 She, 74, 78 signification, 38–39 similarity, 139, 144 similitude, 204–7, 227–30, 234, 264–65, 309n16 Sineculpa, Felix, 252–53 skepticism, 145, 262 sociality, 12, 93, 106, 143 Socrates, 3, 55, 166, 171 soft determinism, 250–54, 261, 263, 268 soft relativism, 249–50, 261, 263, 268 solicitude, types of, 287n83 sophistry, 216 Spinoza, Baruch, 73 spirit of abstraction. See abstraction spirituality, 66, 96, 203 stoicism, hope vs., 85–86 On Stories (Kearney), 222, 250 Strangers, Gods and Monsters (Kearney), 222 structuralism, 219 subjectivity, 243 responsibility and, 129 transcendence and, 37–38 unicity and, 37 subject-object model, 29 substitution, 12, 23, 38–41, 49, 129, 134, 175, 235, 248 Index
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‘‘Substitution’’ (Levinas), 140–41 superbia, 73 Symposium (Aristophanes), 24 Talmud, 159, 164, 181, 187, 190 technics, 57–58 technology, 198, 200 thaumazein, 259 thematization, 49–51 theoria, 17–18, 30 thereness, 235 third, 23, 41–44, 49, 51, 87, 100, 130, 164, 171, 212 Third Meditation, 27, 140, 172 Thomism, 180 Thou, 74, 78 to agathon, 108 Torah, 159, 162, 183–84, 239 totality, 72, 117, 158, 218, 241 equality and, 102–3 universality vs., 100–101, 103 Totality and Infinity (Levinas), 4, 12–13, 24, 47, 92, 97, 113, 127, 131, 136, 140–41, 165, 170, 197, 202, 211 totalization, 50, 98–99, 146, 293n34 trace, 44–47, 175, 189, 230, 233. See also face Tragic Wisdom and Beyond (Marcel), 54 transcendence, 26, 92–93, 118–21, 201–2, 234–35, 237–38, 243, 257, 277n33, 283n17, 294n48 alterity of, 142 experience of, 59, 107 immanence vs., 59, 95, 258 Kierkegaard and, 169–76 Levinas and, 12–15, 123, 151, 169–76 metaphysics and, 20–23 ontology and, 20–23 otherness and, 21, 106 subjectivity and, 37–38 transcendental phenomenology, 12–15 trust, 337n179
358
truth, 15, 148, 166–68, 173, 236, 245–47, 250, 262 critique and, 17–20 ontology and, 17–20 other and, 20 in self, 96 universal, 110 Ulysses, 21, 27 unavailability, 73. See also indisponibilite´ undecidability, 211, 227, 236–37, 242, 248–51, 254–55, 335n153 understanding, 246–47, 270 universality, totality vs., 100–101, 103 utopianism, 127, 145–49 violence, 212, 246 ‘‘Violence and Metaphysics’’ (Derrida), 140–41, 143, 145, 213, 230, 233 vocation, 6, 79, 150, 152 Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (Ricoeur), 218 vous, 41 vulnerability, 42, 49, 139 Waldenfels, Bernard, 140 Weber, Max, 90–91 Western philosophy, 19–20, 22, 95, 97–98, 114, 198, 239, 275n12. See also Greek tradition Westphal, Merold, 222, 253, 259, 319n120 ‘‘Wholly Otherwise’’ (Levinas), 140–41 William James Lectures, 54 wisdom traditions, religious traditions vs., 198 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 193, 207 wonder, 57, 59 Wyschogrod, Edith, 28 Xeno’s Paradox, 157 Zevi, Shabbetai, 318n111
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Perspectives in Continental Philosophy John D. Caputo, series editor
1. John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. 2. Michael Strawser, Both/And: Reading Kierkegaard—From Irony to Edification. 3. Michael D. Barber, Ethical Hermeneutics: Rationality in Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation. 4. James H. Olthuis, ed., Knowing Other-wise: Philosophy at the Threshold of Spirituality. 5. James Swindal, Reflection Revisited: Ju¨rgen Habermas’s Discursive Theory of Truth. 6. Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Postmodern. Second edition. 7. Thomas W. Busch, Circulating Being: From Embodiment to Incorporation—Essays on Late Existentialism. 8. Edith Wyschogrod, Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. Second edition. 9. Francis J. Ambrosio, ed., The Question of Christian Philosophy Today. 10. Jeffrey Bloechl, ed., The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. 11. Ilse N. Bulhof and Laurens ten Kate, eds., Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Theology. 12. Trish Glazebrook, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Science. 13. Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology, and Philosophy.
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14. Mark C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard. Second edition. 15. Dominique Janicaud, Jean-Franc¸ois Courtine, Jean-Louis Chre´tien, Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, and Paul Ricoeur, Phenomenology and the ‘‘Theological Turn’’: The French Debate. 16. Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt. Introduction by Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. 17. Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies. Translated with an introduction by Thomas A. Carlson. 18. Jeffrey Dudiak, The Intrigue of Ethics: A Reading of the Idea of Discourse in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas. 19. Robyn Horner, Rethinking God as Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of Phenomenology. 20. Mark Dooley, The Politics of Exodus: Søren Keirkegaard’s Ethics of Responsibility. 21. Merold Westphal, Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith: Overcoming Onto-Theology. 22. Edith Wyschogrod, Jean-Joseph Goux and Eric Boynton, eds., The Enigma of Gift and Sacrifice. 23. Stanislas Breton, The Word and the Cross. Translated with an introduction by Jacquelyn Porter. 24. Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena to Charity. Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. 25. Peter H. Spader, Scheler’s Ethical Personalism: Its Logic, Development, and Promise. 26. Jean-Louis Chre’tien, The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For. Translated by Jeffrey Bloechl. 27. Don Cupitt, Is Nothing Sacred? The Non-Realist Philosophy of Religion: Selected Essays. 28. Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena. Translated by Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud. 29. Phillip Goodchild, Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy. 30. William J. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought. 31. Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning. 32. Jean-Louis Chre´tien, Hand to Hand: Listening to the Work of Art. Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. 33. Jean-Louis Chre´tien, The Call and the Response. Translated with an introduction by Anne Davenport. 34. D. C. Schindler, Han Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation. 35. Julian Wolfreys, ed., Thinking Difference: Critics in Conversation.
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36. Allen Scult, Being Jewish/Reading Heidegger: An Ontological Encounter. 37. Richard Kearney, Debates in Continental Philosophy: Conversations with Contemporary Thinkers. 38. Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Heidegger, Ho¨lderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language: Towards a New Poetics of Dasein. 39. Jolita Pons, Stealing a Gift: Kirkegaard’s Pseudonyms and the Bible. 40. Jean-Yves Lacoste, Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man. Translated by Mark Raftery-Skehan. 41. Charles P. Bigger, Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor’s Metaphysical Neighborhood. 42. Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology ‘‘Wide Open’’: After the French Debate. Translated by Charles N. Cabral. 43. Ian Leask and Eoin Cassidy, eds. Givenness and God: Questions of JeanLuc Marion. 44. Jacques Derrida, Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. Edited by Thomas Dutoit and Outi Pasanen. 45. William Desmond, Is There a Sabbath for Thought? Between Religion and Philosophy. 46. Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba, eds. The Phenomoenology of Prayer. 47. S. Clark Buckner and Matthew Statler, eds. Styles of Piety: Practicing Philosophy after the Death of God. 48. Kevin Hart and BarbaraWall, eds. The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response. 49. John Panteleimon Manoussakis, After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy. 50. John Martis, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: Representation and the Loss of the Subject. 51. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image. 52. Edith Wyschogrod, Crossover Queries: Dwelling with Negatives, Embodying Philosophy’s Others. 53. Gerald Bruns, On the Anarchy of Poetry and Philosophy: A Guide for the Unruly.
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