Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics, Justice, and the Human Beyond Being

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

Edited by Robert Bernasconi University of Memphis A ROUTLEDGE SERIES

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

ROBERT BERNASCONI, General Editor INTUITIONS AS EVIDENCE Joel Pust TELEOLOGY AND THE NORMS OF NATURE William J.Fitzpatrick PROBLEMS OF COMPOSITIONALITY Zoltán Gendler Szabó LOGIC AND LANGUAGE IN WITTGENSTEIN’S TRACTATUS Ian Proops THOUGHT EXPERIMENT On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases Tamar Szabó Gendler BETWEEN DEFLATIONISM AND CORRESPONDENCE THEORY Matthew McGrath THE RELEVANCE OF PHENOMENOLOGY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND MIND Sean D.Kelly RISK, AMBIGUITY, AND DECISION Daniel Ellsberg THE EXPLANATIONIST DEFENSE OF SCIENTIFIC REALISM Dorit A.Ganson NEW THOUGHTS ABOUT OLD THINGS Krista Lawlor ESSAYS ON SYMMETRY Jenann Ismael DESCARTES’ METAPHYSICAL REASONING Roger Florka ESSAYS ON LlNGUISTIC CONTEXT SENSITIVITY AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE Steven Gross NAMES AND NATURE IN PLATO’S CRATYLUS Rachel Barney

iii

REALITY AND IMPENETRABILITY IN KANT’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE Daniel Warren FREGE AND THE LOGIC OF SENSE AND REFERENCE Kevin C.Klement TOPICS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF POSSIBLE WORLDS Daniel Patrick Nolan UNDERSTANDING THE MANY Byeong-uk Yi ANTHROPIC BIAS Observation Selection Effects Nick Bostrom THE BEAUTIFUL SHAPE OF THE GOOD Platonic and Pythagorean Themes in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment Mihaela C.Fistioc MATHEMATICS IN KANT’S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY Reflections on Mathematical Practice Lisa Shabel REFERENTIAL OPACITY AND MODAL LOGIC Dagfinn Føllesdal

EMMANUEL LEVINAS Ethics, Justice and the Human beyond Being Elisabeth Louise Thomas

ROUTLEDGE New York & London

Published in 2004 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2004 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Elisabeth Louise, 1967– Emmanuel Levinas: ethics, justice, and the human beyond being/ Elisabeth Louise Thomas. p. cm.—(Studies in philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-97124-1 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Lévinas, Emmanuel. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in philosophy (New York, N.Y.) B2430.L484T49 2004 194—dc22 2004002090 ISBN 0-203-50497-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-58092-3 (Adobe eReader Format)

for Jean Thomas

Contents

Abbreviations

x

Acknowledgments

xii

Introduction

xiii

1.

Subjects of Being

1

1.

The Question of Being and the Human

1

2.

Humanism in Crisis

7

3.

Originary Insufficiency: Thrownness, Evasion and Enchainment

10

4.

Pleasure: From Triumph to Shame

17

5.

Nausea and Anxiety

19

2.

Hypostasis: Il y a/Existent

24

1.

Ontological Separation versus Ontological Difference

25

2.

The Impersonal and its Other

31

3.

Il y a and the Impossible Instance

33

4.

Il y a and the Duality of Hypostasis

36

5.

Beyond Hope: Death, Time and Autrui

39

3.

Enjoyment: Subject and World

43

1.

Being Hungry: The Salvation and Sincerity of Life

43

2.

Enjoyment and Intentionality in Totality and Infinity

45

3.

Enjoyment, World, Exteriority

48

4.

The Subject of Enjoyment and Il y a

54

viii

5.

Enjoyment: Light and Distance

57

4.

The Ambiguous Economy of Dwelling

61

1.

Dwelling: The Gift of Time

61

2.

Recollection and Welcome: Sexual Difference

67

3.

Possession and/or Representation

71

4.

Realms of Light: New Visions

74

5.

Representation, Sensibility and the Face

77

5.

Eros, Ethics and the Social Totality

82

1.

Eros and Plato s Social Totality

83

2.

From Eros to the Face

88

3.

Eros and the Production of the Infinite

94

6.

Ethics is Justice

99

1.

The Other and Social Justice

99

2.

Freedom and the Face

104

3.

The Subject of Justice and the Arrival of the Third

109

4.

Two Kinds of Justice

114

7.

Ethics, Ontology and Justice

121

1.

Truth and Being’s Justice

121

2.

Ethics and Being’s Justice

128

3.

Language and Affectivity

132

4.

The Said and the Saying of the Said

136

8.

Subjectivity and Tertiality: Il y a and Illeity

141

1.

Ethical Amphibology

141

2.

The Ethical Impossibility of Justice: Illeity and the Third Party

149

3.

Ethics and Il y a

159

Postscript

167

ix

Bibliography

169

Notes

183

Index

202

Abbreviations

ABBREVIATIONS OF WORKS BY LEVINAS AE BW CP DE DEHH DF DMT DVI EV EE EFP EI EN Ent EPP GDT HAH IEA MB OB PM RPH

Autrement qu’être ou au-delà, de l’essence Basic Philosophical Writings Collected Philosophical Papers De l’existence à l’existant En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism Dieu, la Mort et le Temps De Dieu qui vient à l’idée De l’évasion Existence and Existents Ethics as First Philosophy Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre Entretien Ethique comme philosophie première God, Death and Time Humanisme de l’autre homme Intention, Ereignis und der Andere Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence The Paradox of Morality: an Interview with Emmanuel Levinas Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism

xi

SB TA TaI TeI TIH TN TO WO

Sur Maurice Blanchot Le Temps et l’autre Totality and Infinity: An Essay in Exteriority Totalité et Infini: Essai sur Lextériorité The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology In the Time of the Nations Time and the Other me and the Other Wholly Otherwise

ABBREVTATIONS OF WORKS BY HEIDEGGER AF BT KPM LH UH

Anaximander Fragment Being and Time Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Letter on Humanism Über den Humanismus

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Robert Bernasconi and Paul Johnson of Routledge for inviting me to be part of this series. This book was originally a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Sydney in 1999. I wish to acknowledge the support of the University and the APRA scholarship which enabled its completion. I would also like to thank a number of people who encouraged me in the project which culminates here: in Sydney, Moira Gatens, Simon Lumsden, Linnell Secomb, Ros Diprose, Paul Patton and Paul Redding; in Amsterdam, Hent de Vries and Karin de Boer; and in Bochum, Professor Bernhard Waldenfels. I am grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst who gave me a scholarship to study in Bochum in 1997–8 and the Australian Academy for the Humanities for a travel grant in 1999. Thanks also to Michael Burnie, Cate and Andrew, Robin, and Barbara and Durno who all helped make the research trips possible; to Richard and Trish in Sydney who put up with me for extended periods; and especially Linda for her friendship and hospitality. Finally, a huge embrace for Michelle, Ingrid and Peter who incessantly demanded a response, calling me back to the task of friendship and love.

Introduction

…humanity is, perhaps, the putting in question of the good conscience of being which perseveres in being. (DVI 11) In Otherwise than Being, Levinas writes: Modern antihumanism, which denies the primacy that the human person, free and for itself, would have for the signification of being, is true over and beyond the reasons it gives itself. It clears a place for subjectivity positing itself in abnegation, in sacrifice, in a substitution which precedes the will. (OTB 127/AE 163) While accepting an anti-humanist position which questions the primacy of free will and the security of an attachment to a pregiven universal reason, Levinas adds that humanism does not have to be denounced because of the failure of freedom, but because it is “not sufficiently human” (OTB 128/AE 164). It is impossible to overlook a reference to Heidegger in these lines, who, in his 1947 Letter on Humanism, claimed that humanism must be rejected for not thinking the humanitas of the human high enough (UH 19/LH 210). For Heidegger, the failure to understand the signification of humanitas arises from the unavoidable forgetting of being.1 To think out of an affirmative relation to this forgetting is to take on the task of a more originary thinking of the truth of being which Heidegger aligns with “originary ethics” (UH 41/LH 235).2 The relation between Levinas’ philosophy and this originary ethics is complex. There is little doubt that Heidegger’s fundamental ontology provides the point of departure for Levinas. As the quote above suggests, the critique of the idealist conception of subjectivity in ‘antihumanist’ philosophy clears a place for his own thinking. For Levinas,

xiv

Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein challenged the idealist conception of the subject, revealing the radical finitude of existence. Levinas took this critique of subjectivity extremely seriously. However, as early as 1935, in the essay De l’évasion, Levinas announced that it was necessary to renew the question of being for the sake of the dignity of the human. Rather than continue along the Heideggerian path toward the thinking of being in terms of time, it is already apparent in this early paper that Levinas considered the radical finitude of Dasein (or the existent as he would come to call it) as the only possible starting point for a rethinking of the meaning of the human. For Levinas, the declaration of the end or death of the Subject, Man and God only deepens the crisis of meaning experienced in Europe in the twentieth century. The question of the signification of humanity does not disappear but poses itself with a renewed force. As such, Levinas soon considered it necessary to go beyond Heidegger without a return to a pre-Heideggerian position. The question of the meaning of being would have to face the question of the meaning of the human. Thus, for Levinas, the meaning of the human is also entangled with the question of being and the meaning of ethics in its originary sense. Unlike Heidegger, however, the originary sense of ethics is considered as a movement of departure from and interruption of being. The human marks the non-place of this departure/interruption. What first awakens the sense of the human is an encounter with the Other [Autrui]. While Dasein poses or inhabits the question of the meaning of being, the Other introduces the question of right, challenging the existent’s right to be.3 The meaning of ethics and the human is to be thought starting from this engagement with the Other who questions my right to be. The ego is the very crisis of the being of beings [de l’être de l’étant] in the human domain. A crisis of being, not because the sense of this verb might still need to be understood in its semantic secret and might call on the powers of ontology, but because I begin to ask myself if my being is justified, if the Da of my Dasein is not already the usurpation of somebody else’s place. (EFP 86/EPP 50–1) While the critical engagement with Heidegger around the question of ethics and being is well known, the question of justice introduced here in terms of a questioning of my right to be is not so well understood. Here the question of justice is thought in an ontological sense as a

xv

questioning of the passive but, nevertheless, secure locus of Dasein. Yet, Levinas insists that the question cannot arise spontaneously in the relation to being but only in the relation to another. It is in the ethical encounter that the subject is first awakened to the question of justice. Justice thereby has an ethical sense. Towards the end of this paper, Ethics as First Philosophy, Levinas claims that the question of being is “not the ontology of that extraordinary verb, but the ethics of its justice” (EFP 87/EPP 51). Recognising the distinction between an ethical and an ontological justice is crucial to an understanding of Levinas’ work. It not only brings out the complex nature of the relation between ethics and ontology, but in doing so challenges the notion that Levinas’ philosophy merely opposes ethics to ontology and the inevitable question of justice in the political domain.4 As such, I consider the question of justice to be an essential guiding element of Levinas’ work. In a second preface to Totality and Infinity in 1987, Levinas writes that in this work there is as yet no distinction between “mercy” as the source of a right of the other before me, and justice as a source of a right of the other before the third, that is, another other (EN 232).5 In an interview at this time, he claims that ethics and justice are “the same word, the same question, the same language” (PM 171). In making ethics and justice the “same language” he introduces us to the very close connection between the two. As Levinas elaborates in another interview: …the word “justice” applies much more to the relation with the third than the relation with the Other. But in reality the relation with the Other is never uniquely the relation with the Other: the third is always and already represented in the Other; in the very apparition of the Other I already regard [me regard] the third. And all this renders an extremely close connection [rapport] between responsibility in regard to the Other [à l’égard d’autrui] and justice. (DVI 136) The introduction of the question of justice also introduces us to another complex idea in Levinas’ work—the concept of the third. The third appears here in all its ambiguity. Is the third another Other, or the manner of appearing of the other, or other than the Other? All of these senses of the third can be found in Levinas’ work and all of them have a relation to justice. Paradoxically, while the third party marks the advent of justice, the third person, as an excluded middle, marks a certain impossibility of justice. All of these relations will be considered. The

xvi

relation between the Other and the third is present very early on in Levinas’ work and should be seen as an essential element in his development of the ethical relation. In the paper The Ego and the Totality, the Other, or the face, breaks the form of their appearance as a third and thereby introduces the question of justice. The analysis of the face to face relation in Totality and Infinity should be read in this light. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas suggests that it is in the face to face relation that the subject is called to justice. For Levinas, the question is not a question by the already singular and unique subject, either as a first sponta neous utterance nor as a response to something or someone else. Rather, it constitutes the uniqueness of the subject itself. Levinas argues elsewhere that this is not a response, but a question, “there where there is no place for a response, there where a response does not suffice” (DVI 136). The question is neither ‘by’ nor ‘of’ the ontological subject, but marks the limits of the ontological relation and the advent of the ethical. While in the early works there is an apparently oppositional formulation of the relation of ethics and ontology in which justice appears synonymous with ethics, and freedom synonymous with being, this reflects Levinas’ early concern for the ethical dimension of justice which he argues is subordinated to truth and the freedom of the “I” It would not be surprising then, that Levinas’ first task is to explain the ethical dimension. However, it would be incorrect to suppose that this task only involves the completion of a reversal of truth and justice, or more controversially, the subordination of the freedom of the “I” to another and a renewal of asceticism. The reversal is only the first step in a complex reconfiguration and revaluation of ethics, justice and being. While in Totality and Infinity, justice is thought in terms the ethical event, it is also contrasted with justice as the “straight line of the law” (TaI 245/TeI 223). This is a justice that now must be approached from out of the ethical relation and which appears because the relation to the Other always remains within the context of a social whole—the relation to the Other must always and already regard the third. The development of the ethical relation is concerned with the question of the value and meaning of subjectivity with regard to the social whole and not just with describing a realm of personal relations from which we can derive an ethics of good will that is transposed into a condition of peaceable and non-violent social totalities. The relation of ethics and justice complicates this question. Thus, while for Levinas, the ethical relation is linked integrally to justice, it is of utmost importance that the one is not reduced to the other.

xvii

In his last major work, Otherwise than Being, Levinas links justice firmly to the realm of ontological significations which he calls “the said” and insists on the necessity of this justice and the priority of significations in the said. I will argue that, for Levinas, the play of significations in the said, which are conceived by Heidegger in terms of the dispensation of justice, leaves the question of the necessity and sufficiency of justice itself to an assumed internal necessity which reveals the hidden relation to being. Levinas considers this insufficiency positively as a “sign” of an impossibility inherent in justice itself and links this impossibility to the ethical realm as a unique affectivity or sensibility. Ethical sensibility is not thereby to be conceived of as a new ground of meaning but rather, is the excessive moment of any meaninggiving act which refuses to let itself sink into the essences that it has thematised (OTB 163/AE 208). The necessity of justice, of thematisation and the said, is conceived out of the ethical perspective, expressed in Otherwise than Being as an ethical materiality of “the saying.” This ethical saying has an infinite sense which Levinas’ discusses in terms of the excluded third, an immemorial past of “illeity,” which only ever leaves a trace in being. This ethical tertiality of illeity does not negate being but can be regarded as the incessant interruption of the human into being—an interruption which is always and already a continual withdrawal or departure from being. The human beyond being accomplishes a departure from being which does not only mark the finitude of subjective identity; is not an experience of the radical finitude of subjectivity in being-toward-death, but opens this finite being and the interminable play of justice and injustice to the infinity of the human. This book traces the movement in Levinas’ work from a critical attempt to rethink the relation of human subjectivity and being to the notion of the human as an excessive concept of a singular universal, beyond being. However, this is not to suggest that the human does not come into contact with what ‘there is’.6 The re/depositioning of the human beyond being entails a specific, perhaps unique or extraordinary, relation to being. Thus, in tracing the development of notion of the human beyond being, I attempt to reveal the very close connection between the questions of ethics, justice and being. Chapter One deals with the early encounter with Heidegger in which, heightened by the background of a political crisis for European humanism, Levinas announces the need for a renewal of the question of being in the essay De l’évasion. I argue that this essay is an attempt to

xviii

insinuate an impossibility in the midst of human being’s attachment to being and represents a first attempt to relocate the human in relation to being through its implicit critique of the place of Dasein in the fundamental ontology. The implicit critique of Heidegger becomes explicit in Levinas’ postwar writings Existence and Existents and Time and the Other. In these essays, Levinas attempts a reformulation of the meaning of being, focusing on the impossible instant of the subject’s (the existent’s) attachment to existence. Chapter Two examines Levinas’ rethinking of being in the notion of “there is”[il y a]. Levinas locates the origins of signification in a moment of the postponement of the anonymity of il y a, described as an originary hypostasis. While the existent appears as the instant of the effectuation of postponement, Levinas questions whether we should conceive of this as spontaneous self-positing which attributes certain powers to the existent, or whether the possibility of a singular instant arising from the anonymity of being might not point to a new event, beyond this initial attachment of existence and the existent. Levinas thereby attempts to undermine any notion of the subject’s having any inherent capacity for signification or meaning-giving in its attachment to being. Nevertheless, this impersonal attachment to being as il y a is not to be conceived of as a negative moment that will be overcome in a dialectic of being and alterity. Levinas explores this relation in greater depth in Totality and Infinity, where he develops the notion of subjectivity as an ‘interval of separation’. In Chapter Three, I examine Levinas’ phenomenology of enjoyment as both a critique of Husserlian intentional consciousness and also as a first attempt to think the materiality of this subjectivity, beyond its attachment to anonymous being, without reducing it to a purely physical substratum. Levinas attempts to rethink the manner of the subject’s relation to the world, beyond the Heideggerian modes of “being-in-the-world” and thus begins his development of a notion of subjectivity which is not conceivable solely in terms of an inherently meaning-giving relation to the world. In Chapter Four, I discuss Levinas’ notion of “the dwelling” as an alternative account of place, which affirms the notion of a primary alienation or separation from the “world” and being. This subjectivity is not beyond being although it is always in relation to being across the interval of separation. As such, the subject of dwelling maintains a very different relation to being than that described by Heidegger in terms of being-in. For Levinas, the subjectivity of dwelling is a reconfiguration of the originary hypostasis such that this has a signification with regard to

xix

an encounter with another, and not only with regard to being. This signification is explored in terms of the encounter with feminine alterity. Levinas’ account of the feminine here is problematic for a number of reasons. I will discuss his use of feminine alterity in more detail in Chapter Five. However, in Chapter Four I focus on Levinas’ attempt to offer a philosophical account of the difference between the sexes. The introduction of sexual difference in dwelling attempts a critique of the neutrality of Dasein and ontology, and links sexual identity to an ambiguous “unicity” of the subjectivity. This self is now conceived of as beyond the subject of intentionality and beyond the modes of being attributed to Dasein, but nevertheless remains ambiguously attached to being. Levinas attempts to describe the intimacy of the attachment to being which is at the same time an exile or extraterritoriality with regard to being. The rethinking of the being of subjectivity has consequences for the question of the production of meaning and leads to the introduction of the Other beyond the being of the subject. However, before the introduction of the Other, I attempt to trace the philosophical moves that lead Levinas away from the encounter with feminine alterity as the ethical event par excellence, as he calls it in his early essays. The main concern of this early account of feminine alterity is a rethinking of the nature and structure of the social totality and it is this concern which also lies behind the move from feminine alterity and eros, to the face to face relation in Totality and Infinity. The difference of the sexes appeared to be a unique example of a relation which did not require a principle of unity and did not produce a totality—where each subject enters the relation from a unique position and engages with the other without negating this unicity. Levinas is concerned to rethink the structure of social totality and the relation of the individual to this totality is apparent in this early work, yet becomes even more explicit in The Ego and the Totality. Beginning with a critique of the JudeoChristian concept of the love of the neighbour, he argues that any relation that cannot recognise the offence done to the third, cannot be ethical. Levinas’ move away from eros and away from sexual difference as a model of alterity reflects a concern for the question of the relation of ethics and justice. However, unlike the duo-solitude of the love of the neighbour, eros produces a specific relation to the third which is crucial to the analyses in Totality and Infinity. In The Ego and the Totality, Levinas discusses of the question of tertiality in terms of justice and the face of the Other. Chapter Six addresses Levinas’ account of the face to face relation in Totality and

xx

Infinity, reading this relation in the context of Levinas’ expression of a concern for justice and the third person in The Ego and the Totality. In this paper, Levinas explores the ambiguity of the relation of the face and the third, describing the apparition of the face as the breaking through the form of the appearance of the other as a third party. Read in this context, the alignment of ethics and justice that occurs in Totality and Infinity reflects the concern that the relation to the Other does not occur in a world detached from the conditions of the social totality, but in fact redefines the bases of these relations, without relying on a pregiven universal. Two questions emerge from this alignment of ethics and justice: the question of the relation of the subject to the Other, and the question of the relation of the ethical event to the social whole. In Totality and Infinity, the first takes form as a question of the subject in the ethical relation who, before the other, discovers the contingency of its freedom, and is called to justice. The response to this call is not described as a moment of the subordination of oneself to another in an act of ascetic self-denial—the call is to speak. Thus Levinas suggests that the unique demand of the Other calls me to attest to the whole of humanity. This does not entail a new capacity on the part of the subject, but reveals that the universal generated in the response exceeds any intentions I have with regard to the world and with regard to the Other. Being just, which is to say, responding ethically, would thus seem to entail a negation of the Other, rather than a negation of all the others, including myself. Levinas discusses this problem in terms of the necessity of “ceasing the apology” to the Other without thereby negating the initial demand to speak. The inevitable possibility of death — of the finitude of subjectivity—leads Levinas to ask if there is not another way in which one can conceive the end of the apology and still affirm the Other. In Totality and Infinity, the possibility of affirming the Other is conceived of as a victory over death thought of in terms of eros and fecundity. I suggest that, in his later work, Levinas reconfigures ethics, justice and being to address the question of the possibility of a victory over death, which is to say, of an affirmation of life and the human beyond being, which neither takes from death its sting, nor reduces the erotic to a metaphor for the production of the infinite. Chapter Seven discusses Levinas’ rethinking of justice and ethics, introducing the discussion with Heidegger’s analysis of the Anaximander fragment. In this paper, Heidegger makes a connection between being and justice. I consider that Levinas has this analysis in mind when he claims that: “being qua being is a function of justice,” in his account of the said in

xxi

Otherwise than Being (OTB 162/AE 207). In Levinas’ understanding of Heidegger, an interminable play of justice and injustice calls the violence and persistence of the present into question. However, Levinas finds the coming to be and passing away of being to belong to the essential amphibology of being in the said. His analyses suggest that the moment of passing away is a moment of the “unsaid” or the “saying teleologically turned toward the said,” where such a moment has already effaced a difference and an exigency coming from elsewhere. A further difference, between the unsaid and the saying, is then introduced through a discussion of the relation of language and affectivity. This discussion suggests that Levinas points to a notion of affectivity open to a dimension of signification beyond the subjective relation to being and the play of meaning in the said. Chapter Eight addresses the question of the subjectivity of the saying, revealing the impossibility in any direct approach in the methodological excess of the saying itself. I suggest that Levinas’ concern in Totality and Infinity to explain how the apology does not negate the demand of the Other now becomes a question of the saying, and how, despite the betrayal in the said, saying is not reduced to an ontological event. This discussion is linked to Levinas’ thinking of tertiality in Otherwise than Being in its ontological and ethical significations. Despite the betrayal, Levinas claims that there remains a trace of proximity in the said. “Illeity” names an absolute susceptibility of subjectivity, the trace of an absolute infinite and introduces a notion of the third that is defined as the grammatical third person. This form of tertiality is further distinguished from the ontological third, where the latter is understood as another other who interrupts the infinite susceptibility of the subject’s relation to the singular Other, thereby introducing the question of justice. In a concluding discussion of the relation of the “il” of il y a, or the anonymity of being, and the “il” of illeity, I suggest that illeity cannot be thought as another other, nor the otherness of the Other. Naming neither the “God” of onto-theology nor the neutrality of being of Heideggerian ontology, illeity names the excessive concept of a singular universal which is based an absolute susceptibility of being to the human beyond being. If, in his early work De l’évasion, Levinas sought a new way to leave being, in his later work he focuses on the question of how the beyond of ethical materiality remains effective in the ontological dimension. It is not a matter of leaving being, but rather of how being remains susceptible to the ethical saying. Justice is a necessity that entails a betrayal of the saying. However, betrayal has a positive signification

xxii

which does not leave the anonymous play of justice intact. This justice, and being in its perseverance, is ultimately in the service of the human. If, for Heidegger, being needs the human, for Levinas, the human is a desire beyond being. The interruption of the human in the realm of signification does not negate the interminable play of justice and injustice, but interrupts in a radical new sense, so that the meaning of human subjectivity cannot be reduced to a relation to an oblivion. …there is question of the said and being only because saying or responsibility require justice. Only in this manner will justice be done to being. Only in this manner will the affirmation be understood— strange taken literally—that through injustice “all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” (OTB 45/AE 58 (translation modified)

CHAPTER 1 Subjects of Being

1. THE QUESTION OF BEING AND THE HUMAN Levinas’ published dissertation, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930) and his essay Martin Heidegger and Ontology (1932) are not only significant for bringing the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to the attention of French thinkers.1 These works also demonstrate some of Levinas’ early philosophical concerns. While The Theory of Intuition offered an introduction to Husserl, it was already influenced by Heidegger as Levinas acknowledges in the introduction to this work (TIHP xxxiii). This influence is also apparent in Levinas’ suggestion toward the conclusion of the book that Husserl falls prey to a certain intellectualism.2 Regarding the phenomenological reduction, Levinas claims that it has the goal of presenting us with “our genuine self, although it presents it only to a purely contemplative and theoretical sight which considers life but is distinct from it” (TIHP 149). This early critique of Husserl mirrors Heidegger’s own critical engagement with Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger’s development of the notion of “factical historical life” and the problematic of its own selfinterpretation was guided by the question of the relation between intentionality and lived experience and began by questioning “anew the traditional mode of conceptualisation from the ground up” (Pöggeler 1989: 29). The existential analytic of Dasein in Being and Time offered Levinas an insight into the new methodology—a new critical approach to the problem of the relation between the transcendental ego and ‘life’. While the development of his approach occurred primarily in the encounter with Husserl, this by no means remained the only context of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger. Heidegger was also undertaking a critical reinterpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, bringing

2 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

him into conflict with the neo-Kantian philosophy dominant in Germany during this period. For Levinas, present at the famous Davos encounter between Cassirer and Heidegger in 1929, Heidegger’s work challenged the last bastion of Enlightenment humanism and idealism.3 This encounter and its consequences gave weight to the apparently more theoretical problem of the relation of theo retical intentionality and lived experience, for the Heideggerian reading of Kant provides an explicit discussion of the question of the relationship between the question of being as he introduced it in Being and Time and the question of the relation between the human [der Mensch] and being.4 The following examines this issue before turning to Levinas’ own work. In Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes a brief discussion of the relation of the analytic of Dasein to philosophical anthropology with the intention of distancing his work from the latter. He writes that not only is the analytic solely “oriented toward the guiding task of working out the question of being” and thus in this sense is not guided by the question of the human, but furthermore, it cannot even be understood as providing a preparatory analysis of the human which would provide the condition of a future philosophical anthropology. At the very least, it may provide some not inessential “pieces” and is not only “incomplete” but “provisional”—“[i]t merely brings out the being of this entity, without Interpreting its meaning” (BT38/H17). It would seem that this interpretation of the human can only begin—can only properly take place—once the proper method of interpretation [Auslegung] itself has been worked out in the questioning of being as such. It could be assumed that only after this repetition of the analytic on a“higher and authentically ontological basis” (BT38/H17) could the ontological conditions of any future question of the meaning of the human be completely and unprovisionally established. However, this is probably going too far as it projects the question of being ultimately back to the question of the human. While it is clear that Heidegger is not concerned with explicitly addressing the question of the human in Being and Time it might still be argued that there remains an unavoidable “tension” or “magnetisation” with regard to the question of the relation of fundamental ontology and the question of the human in so far as the project has any pretensions to provide even some of the “proper” and essential conditions of any future thinking or approach to the question of the human.5 There is little doubt that Heidegger was acutely aware of this tension as this debate around the relation of Being and Time and its relation to philosophical anthropology began immediately on its publication. Michel Haar points

SUBJECTS OF BEING 3

out that by the time of the publication of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik in 1929 there is already a discernible shift in Heidegger’s discussion of Dasein.6 Haar writes that Heidegger: …impatiently repatriates a difference in[to] man that Being and Time had understood more prudently as an extrinsic distinction, or an opposition between man of the tradition and being-in-theworld. (Haar 1993:xxxii) Haar goes on to suggest that Dasein increasingly becomes the intimate essence of the human reflected in such expressions as the “Dasein in man” [Dasein im Mensch] used in the Kant book (Haar 1993:xxxii). What then does Heidegger have to say in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics? Fundamental ontology, Heidegger claims, includes “the problem of the finitude in Man as the decisive element which makes the comprehension of being possible” (KPM § 42 209/240). For Heidegger, rather than shed light on the signification of the human this linking of the question of the human to the question of being sharpens the need for something like a “philosophical anthropology.”7 In the fourth and find part of Heidegger’s reading of Kant the problematic nature of the question itself is explored, that is, the question of the relation of the two questions—of the human and of being. Heidegger argues that Kantian philosophy reveals an insight into “the necessary connection between anthropology and metaphysics” (KPM §36 213) and that this is furthermore confirmed in Kant’s own claims that reason concerns itself with three questions: What can I know?, What must I do?, What may I hope for? (KPM §36 214). According to Heidegger this takes anthropology to the metaphysical level for these questions do not determine the human “as a natural being but as a ‘citizen of the world’” (KPM §36 214). To these three questions, Kant will add a fourth: What is the human? when discussing the “field of philosophy pertaining to world citizenship” (KPM §36 214) and he will add that since the first three are all related to the last they can all be classified as anthropology.8 For Heidegger, while Kant distances himself from empirical anthropology, he inadvertently uncovers a ‘necessity’ that governs thinking itself—an internal connection between the question of the human and metaphysics. Kant puts the question of human ‘nature’ on hold so to speak. Yet for Heidegger, in this suspension or separation, Kant merely intensifies the question of the human and metaphysics and the need to pursue the “development of a ‘philosophical anthropology’”

4 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

and furthermore to determine the idea of such an anthropology beforehand (KPM §36 215). Moving his analysis away from Kant toward an exploration of the significance of this connection for any future understanding and accomplishment of philosophical anthropology, Heidegger suggests that it no longer concerns the exploration of the essence of the human. The connection between metaphysics and anthropology does not lie simply in the fact that the human being chooses to refer these questions back to its own existence. On the contrary there is a necessity which governs the referential nature of the relation before hand. These questions, in some necessary yet unknown manner, already refer themselves to the human: …wherein lies this ground of this necessity? In the fact that the central problems of philosophy arise out of “Man,” not only in the sense that man poses them, but rather in so far as in their inner form they already have a relation to him? To what extent do the central problems of philosophy find themselves housed in the essence of man? What are the central problems and where does their centre lie? What is it to philosophise such that this problematic has its centre housed in the essence of Man? (KPM § 37) This quote introduces what might be called the inversion of the question of the human toward fundamental ontology and the question of being. Before anything is said about the essence of the human a new sense or question has been introduced. This is precisely the question of the relation of questioning to the human which Heidegger argues cannot rely on any presumptions about the essential nature of subjectivity. That the “inner form” of questioning has a relation to the human is not disputed but the nature and signification of the “relation” remains governed by a necessity, the meaning of which is yet to be systematically explored. Furthermore, before the question of the relation itself can be answered, the inner form must be systematically outlined in fundamental ontology itself which begins, not with the human as such, but with the Dasein im Mensch. In this context, the analytic of Dasein in Being and Time can be understood as elucidating the inner form of the questioning of being as such. This is not a question of the manner of the self-sufficient subject’s possession of being, instead it is an analysis of the manner of “possession” or belonging to being of Dasein as preparation for an ontologico-temporal understanding of questioning as such. This

SUBJECTS OF BEING 5

questioning is not guided by the anthropological question but rather is completely dominated by the question of being itself. In other words, fundamental ontology, which takes the form of an existential analytic of Dasein in Being and Time, is directed by what is yet to be thought with regard to the question of being. From this point of view the question of the relation of the two questions—of being and the human— appears secondary to the ontological analysis. However, on closer analysis, the two are intertwined in a radical new way. Without doubt it is possible to read Levinas’ early engagement with Heidegger as preoccupied with this issue. A cursory reading of Levinas’ paper Martin Heidegger and Ontology reveals Levinas’ starting point and subsequent focus to be the question of being and the critique of the metaphysical subject by Heidegger in Being and Time. According to Levinas, Heidegger not only reveals the presuppositions regarding the concept of the subject as thinking substance but also uncovers the latent intellectualism of the idealist position. Levinas writes that the idealist position: …seeks to know man, but it means to do so through the concept of man, leaving aside the effectivity [Fakticität] of human existence and the sense of this effectivity. (MO 31/430)9 Levinas also explains the distinction between a subject understood as a being [l’étant ici-bas] (the ontic) and a subject conceived in the manner of its being [être ici-bas] (the ontological) (MO 17/405).10 This is not to reduce ontology to yet another philosophy of subjectivity for while it is the “ontological analysis of the subject” that provides the starting point, this analysis is logically subsequent to and: …entirely dictated by his [Heidegger’s] fundamental ontological preoccupation, which consists in determining the meaning of the word ‘being’.” (MO 15/403) While Levinas writes that effectivity, or facticity, refers to the manner of being of subjective being, this is not to reduce the former to an attribute of the latter but to point out the difference and distinction between the ontic subject and the ontological facticity of Dasein. Dasein does not describe the essence of that entity called the subject but asks about the meaning of its existence or its mode of being [l’être]. In other words, facticity refers to the manner of Dasein’s engagement with its own existence. Dasein is a fundamental event of being.

6 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Levinas’ exegesis in Martin Heidegger and Ontology reflects an understanding of the complexity of the question of the relation between fundamental ontology and the question of the human: For Heidegger, the understanding of being is not a purely theoretical act but, as we will see, a fundamental event where one’s entire destiny is at issue; and consequently, the difference between these modes of explicit and implicit understanding is not simply that between clear and obscure knowledge, but is a difference which reaches unto the very being of man. (MO 16/ 403) Is there some bias and an intentional slippage back to the question of subjectivity here? While Heidegger refuses the term altogether, the vocabulary of Levinas’ commentary clearly does not reflect this. It might be argued that in its very nature as an introductory exegesis Levinas’ commentary will construct a bridge between a metaphysics of subjectivity and the analytic of Dasein, thus risking a reduction of the analytic of Dasein to a form of philosophical anthropology while not necessarily performing that reduction. Yet this already affirms a certain interest on the part of Levinas—a certain concern for the ‘place’ and signification of subjectivity in the full light of the existential analytic. It can be argued, in other words, that Levinas is concerned with the tension between the question of being and the question of the human. In fact for Levinas this question of the human threatens to implode the fundamental ontology. While not made explicit in Martin Heidegger and Ontology this threat will become more clear in subsequent work, as we shall see below. If this early paper reflects a primary interest it lies in the emphasis on the radical nature of Dasein’s finitude. For Levinas, Dasein is “riveted to its possibilities” (MO 24/417). He adds: Having been thrown into the world, abandoned and delivered up to oneself—such is the ontological description of ‘fact’. (MO 24/ 417) It is not so much the emphasis on the thrownness and abandonment which is of interest here as both are Heideggerian terms describing Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Rather it is the description of Dasein as riveted to its possibilities which is somewhat novel and while at this point he may be referring merely to the radical thrownness of Dasein’s

SUBJECTS OF BEING 7

being-in-the-world this notion is soon to be applied to the relation to being as such. The followingwill try to trace the reasoning behind this movement. 2. HUMANISM IN CRISIS In the paper Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism published two years after Martin Heidegger and Ontology, Levinas examines the crisis of value confronting the idealist and humanist traditions of Western Europe in the context of a discussion of the rise of Nazi ideology. For Levinas, Nazi ideology is a perverted form of response to the already existing crisis of value. It does not so much participate in the critique and destruction of idealism as reflect a society that has lost touch with its “true ideal of freedom” and thus accepts degenerate forms of the ideal (RPH 70). Replacing a universal humanism with a universalism of blood and race “[i]t questions the very principles of a civilisation” (RPH 64). Levinas provides a dense account of the critique of idealism suggesting that one of the significant elements of this critique is that it accords the “body” an importance “with which the Western spirit has never wished to content itself” (RPH 69). His account rejects all dualisms of mind and body and redefines spirit’s essence as enchainment to the body. The sufferings of embodied existence, as a consequence, do not signify the essentially evil nature of that existence but reveal the absolute position of “the soul” and a new conception of the human whose essence is not in freedom but in enchainment. This presents a challenge to the idealist conception of the soul as a “noumenal nature that is protected from the attacks launched by a world in which concrete man nonetheless is placed” (RPH 66). This new conception of the human challenges the power of a thinking being to withdraw into a realm in which the human is free according to the universal principles of reason. The universal is compromised and along with it the universality of “humanity” which defines liberal Europe (RPH 71). Although representing the most “degenerate form of the ideal,” Hitlerism nevertheless stands as the expression of a crisis of idealism which confronts a radical undermining of its fundamental inspiration: the desire for transcendence. National Socialism finds a new truth in the absolute attachment to the body. Awakening a secret nostalgia for the “German soul” it “discovers” that one is already linked to a certain

8 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

number of ideas as a consequence of one’s birth. As such the contingency of humanity is overcome in the conception of the Aryan race “anchored in [its] flesh and blood” (RPH 70). Levinas ends the paper with the claim that racism does not stand in opposition to liberal culture nor does it represent a particular dogma—it is the “very humanity of man” (RPH 71). This radical racism affirms the humanity of one race while at the same time condemning others to an inescapable and imposed fatality. “One can flee it no more,” Levinas writes with regard to the signification of Judaism and the test with which it is confronted by Hitlerism (IRA 4).11 Putting the two papers side by side we can begin to discern the underlying concerns of Levinas’ early work. Without suggesting that he misreads Heidegger we can nevertheless see that he is focused primarily on the consequences of the analytic of Dasein for our understanding of finite subjectivity and the meaning of the human. As well while he takes the existential analytic seriously there is little doubt as we will see below that he is preoccupied with a different question to that which preoccupied Heidegger. For while Heidegger pursued the meaning of being, Levinas has already turned to the question of the human albeit with regard to its relation to being. This question arises out of a concern for the consequences of the fundamental ontology for the idealist and humanist aspirations for transcendence. In his later version of Martin Heidegger and Ontology, Levinas writes with regard to the ontological meaning of transcendence that: The progress towards the eternal that the western conscience believes accomplished with the supratemporal point of view of the sciences, is not a victory won by the spirit over concrete and temporal existence, but a moment of the very drama of that existence. That leap towards the eternal does not transcend this drama to give a new birth to individuals, it does not transfigure them by an act of grace coming from the exterior. But on account of the integral element of existence, it is completely dominated by this drama. (DEHH 70) According to Levinas this reduction of time—of all that could be called supertemporal and of existence; of all that could be called “relation”—is the project of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Levinas characterises this as a transcendence of the “etant” of a being, towards "être” being (DEHH 65). Levinas explains that, for Heidegger, this movement of transcendence is a movement of Dasein from implicit to explicit

SUBJECTS OF BEING 9

comprehension of being and describes the Heideggerian movement of transcendence as a “leave-taking of oneself” [sortir de soi-même] that constitutes oneself [soi-même]. As suggested above, Levinas interprets Heidegger as discovering that transcendence is not something a subject achieves with regard to knowledge but a movement that constitutes its being. The passage from implicit and inauthentic understanding to explicit and authentic understanding, with its hopes and its failures, is the drama of human existence. To pass from implicit comprehension of being to explicit comprehension; this is to propose a task of mastery and domination in the midst of a naive familiarity with existence that will perhaps leap from the very security of that familiarity. (DEHH 57)12 The second sentence of the quote above and the phrase in italics were added by Levinas when the essay was republished in 1949. In comparing the original 1932 passage in which Levinas talks of the fundamental drama of human existence and emphasises the radicality of this way of thinking of humanity in terms of this “primary characteristic” of “be-ing,” it can be suggested that, for Levinas, what becomes crucial with regard to this drama is how one conceives of the leap out of the familiar and its ultimate effect on the possibility of mastery. In other words the very meaning of transcendence must be rethought. This is precisely the task of his 1935 study De l’évasion.13 Levinas does not mention Heidegger explicitly in De l’évasion but announces a renewal of the question of being which Heidegger had raised less than ten years before in Being and Time.14 …the need of evasion—full of chimerical hope or not is of little importance—leads us to the heart of philosophy. It permits the renewal of the ancient problem of being qua being…[i]s it (being qua being) the foundation and limit of our preoccupations, as certain modern philosophers claim? Is it not on the contrary nothing but the mark of a certain civilisation, settled in the accomplished fact [fait accompli] of being and incapable of leaving it? (EV 74)15 Jacques Rolland suggests that we should understand this as a repetition and renewal of the question (Rolland 1982:16–17). In repeating it,

10 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Levinas affirms the radical perspective of the Heideggerian approach. However, the argument of the text implicitly suggests that Heidegger’s preoccupation merely reflects the crisis of European thought and values without adequately addressing it. As the quote below suggests this divergence has to do with the question of transcendence. It is a matter of leaving being in a new manner [sortir de l’être par une nouvelle voie], at the risk of overturning certain notions that to the common sense and wisdom of the nations, seem most evident. (EV 99)16 For the Levinas of De l’évasion, the force and signification of finite subjectivity appears as an imposed fatality. Considered ontologically this fatality is not a modality of being but measures the weight of being itself. Thus, for Levinas, Heidegger’s attempt to think transcendence in terms of a movement of being itself does not grasp this radical sense of finality nor recognise the exigency to think the signification of transcendence beyond our attachment to being. The important distinctions that Levinas begins to draw occupy the remainder of this chapter in which an exegesis of De l’évasion reconstructs the implicit engagement with Heidegger in that work. 3. ORIGINARY INSUFFICIENCY:THROWNNESS, EVASION AND ENCHAINMENT De l’évasion might have carried the subtitle: “Concerning Impossibility,” as the crucial characteristic of the “need of evasion” [besoin de l’évasion] is the impossibility of its achievement. For Levinas, impossibility or powerlessness [impuissance] is the positive constitutive moment of the need of evasion which points to an ambivalence inherent in Dasein’s attachment to being. The significance of this notion of impossibility lies in it being linked in this essay to the internal structure of being. As Hent de Vries suggests, De l’évasion attempts the disruption of ontological imperialism revealing the powerlessness in the internal structure of being itself (de Vries 1995: 248–252). While de Vries is right to add that this critique of ontological imperialism is directed explicitly at idealism, one can also discern elements of an implicit critique of the Heideggerian philosophy in Levinas’ analysis. The impossibility of an evasion of being has

SUBJECTS OF BEING 11

consequences for our thinking of Dasein. As suggested above, Levinas brings the fundamental ontology of Being and Time back to the question of the “dignity of man” in the form of a repetition and renewal of the question of being. Beginning with an analysis of the relation of the social totality and the individual Levinas argues that in the present epoch no-one is left on the margins of life. “Life” is understood as a universal order—the social totality within which autonomous, self-sufficient persons reside. Within this order, the individual is assigned an identity in relation to all others and thereby takes up a position. One is mobilised, posited, or positioned within the functioning totality and may even feel a sense of power that comes from having conquered this position (EV 70). Nevertheless, Levinas insists that a sense of insecurity haunts the individual. What menaces the universal order is not the uncertainty of the future, or the possibility of suffering, as both of these are contingencies that can be overcome by the powers inherent in the autonomous subject. Within the social totality the subject already has the means available to it to postpone this menace. Introducing the ontological perspective, Levinas claims that the insecurity which plagues this self-sufficient subject arises from the fundamental discovery of the “elemental truth that there is being” [il y a de l’être] (EV 70). Rather than render displeasure by the threat of suffering, this ‘presence’ reveals the ground of suffering as the impossibility of the interruption of it and an “acute sense of being riveted” (EV 70). Levinas suggests that this “acute sense” is attested to in innumerable moments of modern life thereby taking on the character of a mal du siecle [Weltsckmerz/world weariness]. While there is little doubt Levinas relies on a methodology adopted from Heidegger, his starting point is completely different.17 Rather than turning to a critical analysis of philosophy—Heidegger’s philosophy and concepts in particular—in a somewhat radical move he attempts to interweave (rather than simply apply) this ontological perspective with the contemporary literary expression of a mal du siecle expressed as a desire for escape or evasion.18 Levinas’ recognition of a possible ontological signification in this experience of evasion does not merely extract the literary event from its context, it also reveals the unique manner in which it repeats or renews the question of being.19 For Levinas, the many forms of the literary expression of evasion or the desire for transcendence—the desire to escape the basest realities; to break with social convention; to be liberated from the body, or to search for the wonderful or sublime—are all “variations of a theme” which

12 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

they cannot equal in profundity. Rather they harbour and displace this ‘profound’ ontological thematic—“[t]hey translate a certain de-finition of our being, not being as such” (EV 70). In this translation, being as such is overlooked precisely because it has been harboured, or hidden, through a displacement. An answer to the question of why this might have happened would remain at the level of psychology. What is required is the recognition that this desire is already a displacement of a necessity governing being as such. For Levinas, this desire for escape has transposed an acute sense of being riveted into a search for refuge. Levinas’ analysis attempts to uncover the ontological dimension and reveal a “permanence” [inamovibilité] in our attachment to being which belies and undermines the search for refuge. This introduces the notion of an insufficiency at the heart of subjective being which calls the conception of power and self-sufficiency itself into question (EV 70). Levinas suggests that the outward movement of the subject has no teleology, no object and no end. The movement is structured as a return and does not break its attachment to being. The need of evasion expresses a desire to leave being and the impossibility of such a desire finding fulfilment. As an impossible escape from being it challenges a conception of finitude as a limit that can be transcended as well as a conception of need conceived of as a lack in a finite being. The need of evasion is also a first questioning of Heidegger’s notion of Dasein as that being which has transcendence as its very mode of being. In the light of the notion of evasion it can be suggested that, for Levinas, there is no leave-taking in this movement but rather a description of Dasein in its inescapably self-centred attachment to being. Levinas finds that we are required to look elsewhere for the ultimate meaning of transcendence. The need of evasion arises in the attachment of the human to being and expresses a desire for escape. However, while this desire for escape appears to be a veiled reference to the Heideggerian notion of the fleeing of Dasein into the everyday, the need of evasion cannot be equated with this fundamental characteristic of Dasein. As Sheffler Manning suggests, superficially, it might appear that Levinas is describing Dasein’s fleeing from its authentic being-in-the-world, however: For Levinas, the self does not initially find in Being potentialities for itself either to actualise or to escape from. What the self finds in Being, according to Levinas, is the weight, the heaviness of

SUBJECTS OF BEING 13

Being that weighs upon the self and enchains the self to itself. (Sheffler Manning 1993:31)20 There is no doubt that Levinas finds Heidegger’s uncovering of the question of being to reveal the profound weight of existence. In other words existence is not merely an accomplished fact—a being—but is a drama that dominates Dasein.21 Nevertheless, the need of evasion is not merely synonymous with Heidegger’s notion of fleeing. According to Heidegger, in being-in-the-world Dasein is always already thrown into its ownmost possibilities but flees in the face of these. Dasein’s fleeing is always a fleeing of its ownmost being. The possibility it flees most is its death—the possibility of not being, or its impossibility. For Levinas, however, evasion is not a fleeing from one’s thrown attachment to being and thus of the self from its ownmost potentiality of being-toward-death, instead it is a desire to break the irremissible attachment to being itself. Although it is not explicitly articulated in De l’évasion, the notion of evasion is a first criticism of what Levinas sees as a superficial division of being and world in which the duality of Dasein’s being is conceived in terms of a “double directionality” of affectivity (MO 29/426). As Levinas explains in Martin Heidegger and Ontology, every affective disposition is characterised in terms of a movement toward or attachment to the world [Wovor] and as a movement toward oneself as the one “for whom” [Worum] affectivity is disposed (MO 29/426). As the discussion of anxiety below shows and as the following chapters suggest, Levinas does not give up on this notion of a double directionality which he will call a “double intentionality” [double “intention”] in his republished version of Martin Heidegger and Ontology but rather continues to develop his critique of its dialectical structure and it originary status (DEHH 73). For Levinas, it is not death as a possibility that gives finitude its tragic and fearful expression but the fact of the irremissible attachment to being and the inability to escape it. Fleeing, which is a fleeing into the world away from an attachment to death in authentic being, covers over a more fundamental event. While thrownness introduces a certain passivity with regard to Dasein in so far as it has been abandoned to these possibilities, for Levinas, the weight of the imposition arises in the attachment to being and not the being-toward-death of Dasein. For Heidegger, in fleeing Dasein is pursued constantly by the “uncanniness” which lies in Dasein as thrown being-in-the-world (BT 233–234). Furthermore he insists that fleeing into the familiarity of the everyday is, from an existential-ontological point of view, merely a

14 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

mode of Dasein’s uncanniness. In other words, “uncanniness,” or thrown being-in-the-world is the “primordial phenomenon” and fleeing is always in the face of the uncanny which is not overcome in the everyday but merely “dimmed” (BT 234). Alternatively, for Levinas, this primordial phenomenon is conceived of as a suffering of enchainment to being. While Heidegger points to the weight in terms of the imposition of possibilities for Dasein, for Levinas, it could be suggested that the subject of evasion—the human—reaches the “limit of the possible in suffering” in an event covered over by the Heideggerian analyses.22 The need of evasion can be conceived of as a reinterpretation of thrownness. However, as Jacques Rolland suggests this is a thrownness which paralyses all possibility of projecting and thus also challenges the Heideggerian notion of the authentic [eigentlich] being of Dasein (Rolland 1982:22). In suggesting that Levinas is questioning the possibility of authenticity, Rolland does not claim that Levinas is concerned solely with the everyday or with the inauthentic dispersion into the “they.” Rather, the “paralysis” which Rolland speaks of is a suspension of the authentic-inauthentic distinction. What, however, is the significance of this distinction and the consequence of this suspension? I suggest that this attempted suspension is the first moment in which Levinas challenges Heidegger’s rethinking of the concrete mode of being. As a preliminary conclusion it could be suggested that Levinas is undertaking a ‘reduction’ of the authentic-inauthentic distinction to the double structure of evasion. However, this reduction must not be understood as a working back to the unconditioned ground, instead, it moves to the point in which the conditions break down—the originary but insufficient relation to being. As we shall see below, Levinas reinterprets “projection” as an insatiable need—the need of evasion for the evasion of enchainment to being. This is not to return to being as essence but the introduction of a notion of the human as a “species of duality” and the “originary insufficiency” of being. The necessary relation of enchainment and transcendence underlies the conception of a need of evasion. This need arises in the attachment to being but marks the insufficiency of being as an infinite projection of possibility. De l’évasion introduces a conception of “need” which insinuates itself “within” the unfolding drama of existence and reveals the originary tragedy, or the tragedy of origins, governing the drama of existence.

SUBJECTS OF BEING 15

Thus evasion is the need of leaving itself [le besoin de sortir de soi-même], that is to say, to break the most radical, most irremissible enchainment— the fact that the ego [moi] is itself [soimême]. (EV 73)23 Levinas writes that this referentiality of the ego to “itself” describes the human as a “species of duality” which is not reducible to the logical tautology: I am I (EV 73). The tragedy and the drama of the enchainment to existence lies in the impossibility of origins in the sense that it reveals that there can be no absolute identity as a starting point. The relation of the human and being, in terms of enchainment and need of evasion, is not a relation of two terms. That is, the relation of the ego to itself does not describe the essence, or constitute the manner of human being. The ego and itself are not two entities or parts which together constitute the whole which could be called being. Rather, the “origin” and the relation to being is already doubled in the referentiality of the ego to itself. Levinas replaces the authentic-inauthentic structure of double intentionality referring to an exterior world and an interior self with a duality of enchainment and transcendence. In the identity of the ego [moi], being reveals itself as enchainment, appearing as suffering, which already invites evasion. However, while suffering invites evasion it cannot produce it. The ontological drama takes its dramatic form in this “non-relationship” which is fundamentally unresolvable. Suffering is not overcome by the introduction of the need of evasion. Nor is the need of evasion reducible to enchainment. The unsatisfiability of this need, characterised as a pure aspiration to leave, does not suggest a lack at the heart of existence which would be understood as nothingness or negation. Enchainment, paradoxically, undermines the solid ground of subjectivity. In other words, the fact of being riveted does not point to a new ground of subjectivity in terms of a finite or infinite being understood as cause or origin. In introducing a “species of duality” into existence, enchainment would not distinguish the human as the “accomplishment” or concrete condition of what we call “origins,” instead, it would introduce the question of the possibility of any such accomplishment. As such, we are conducted to the heart of philosophy to renew the question of being. The renewal of the question is necessary since: …it seems to us incontestable that the nothing is the fact of a thought essentially turned towards being. But this does not resolve

16 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

the problem which lies elsewhere: is being sufficient to itself? The problem of the origin of being is not the problem of its procession from nothing, but that of its sufficiency or insufficiency. (EV 95) Levinas’ apparent emphasis on the question of the manner of the human attachment to being does not ignore the question of the meaning of being. However, he does suggest that the manner of Heidegger’s approach already reveals a bias or interest with regard to the meaning of being. Levinas insists that the question of origins is a question of the sufficiency or insufficiency of being itself and not just a “banal finding that man by the order of his birth is engaged in an existence that he neither willed nor chose” (EV 93). Thus for Levinas, the question of being is not only a question of the possibility or meaning of being as origin but also one of the sufficiency of being to overcome the need of evasion. In De l’évasion, Levinas is not only questioning the ability of the human to transcend itself, he is also attempting to show that it is in being itself that this impossibility lies. For Heidegger, from the outset of the questioning of origins the distinction between being and Dasein is blurred. Levinas’ introduction of the human as a “species of duality” does not avoid this problem of beginning with Dasein as that being for whom “being is an issue,” for he is concerned precisely with the manner of this relation and the distinction. As Levinas writes: It is in being itself that commences and not in its relationship with its cause that the paradox of being that begins to be resides, that is to say, the impossibility of disassociating in it what accepts the weight from the weight itself. A difficulty that does not disappear with the death of the prejudice according to which being would have preceded from nothing. (EV 94–95 my italics) According to Levinas, the origin of being—or being as origin—is not incomprehensible because it emerges from nothing: “for it is absurd to postulate amongst the conditions of being that of a work that supposes it already constituted” (EV 94). Rather, the incomprehensibility or “dialectical impossibility” of conceiving of the origin lies in the impossibility of adequately distinguishing being from that which takes on the weight of being. This impossibility is not a problem that can be solved. Rather, for Levinas, it becomes the mode in which being reveals itself. Being in its impossible “purity” is revealed in its “impower” [impuissance] (EV 92). Furthermore this is not to define the essence of the human but to describe the manner of its attachment to being.

SUBJECTS OF BEING 17

While it could be argued that Heidegger already outlines the dramatic nature of duality when he conceives of Dasein as that being which has the understanding of being as its mode of being, Levinas finds that there is a profound disturbance that is prior to this being-in-question with regard to the meaning of existence. Levinas’ renewal of the question of being implicitly opens a new dimension of meaning with regard to the human which acknowledges an irremissible attachment to being but does not therefore reduce the signification of the human to being. The meaning of the human as a “species of duality” goes beyond a doubling of Dasein and being. For Levinas, the anxiety revealing the essential not-at-homeness of our being-in-the-world reveals an essential rending of self and world but not the rending of the “here” of “being” (the “da” of “Sein”). The question of being is therefore conditioned by a more “profound need” which does not fit the categories of the existential analytic of Dasein. Implicit in Levinas’ approach is the question concerning whether the pre-ontological understanding of being—a state of which Dasein “is surely not a stranger” (BT 1)—is the the condition of the question of being or whether the question only arises in the experience of being in its strangeness.24 In other words, it is with regard to the analysis of “strangeness,” considered as an estrangement from being, that we first note a divergence between Heidegger and Levinas. In De l’évasion, Levinas explores estrangement in an analysis of shame and nausea in which he implicitly contrasts an “experience of pure being” to the Heideggerian notion of anxiety felt in the encounter with the pure nothingness of being. Levinas’ early re-formulation of this relation in De l’évasion, which shall be discussed in the remainder of this chapter, leads to the reinterpretation of the relation of subjectivity and being and to the notion of an impossibility or impower in this relation. These are constant themes in the following chapters and are crucial to Levinas’ critique of subjectivity, leading to the introduction of his notion of alterity. 4. PLEASURE: FROM TRIUMPH TO SHAME Evasion has been introduced as an essentially unsatisfiable need. However, Levinas must now demonstrate how this insufficiency does not merely point to a lack in the constitution of a finite human being. Levinas discusses the contrasting affective states of pleasure and suffering with the aim of revealing the inadequation of pleasure to the

18 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

satisfaction of the need of evasion. Insufficiency, he claims, is habitually interpreted as a lack or weakness in the human. Pleasure, conversely, is conceived of as the restoration of a natural plenitude (EV 77). Levinas’ critique also suggests that the psychology of need, in which pleasure is conceived of as the overcoming of need through the restoration of a natural plenitude, fails to recognise the insatiable quality of the need of evasion. This is an insatiability that is not dissipated in a moment in which a finite being momentarily overcomes its sense of lack or limitation through pleasure. According to Levinas, the need of evasion becomes urgent when it becomes “malaise”—the essentially dynamic state of being not at ease: “mal à son aise” (EV 78). This dynamic state appears as an effort to leave an untenable situation and it is the indetermination of its goal that first proposes the departure (EV 78). In other words, the desire for departure does not have any externally derived cause or aim, but is understood in its pure activity as an effort or endeavour to depart. For Levinas, this malaise does not indicate a lack of fulfilment. At the same time, however, this fulfilment cannot be equated with satisfaction. That is, satisfaction is possible but it does not overcome the need of evasion (EV 79). Satisfaction, in the affective guise of pleasure, also finds itself enchained to being. Pleasure is described as a movement that increases in intensity to the point of its own annihilation (EV 82). It is the feeling of being emptied of one’s substance—becoming light in intoxication and dispersion. In pleasure, Levinas recognises an abandon—a loss of self and an ecstasy beyond the self. This ecstasy is equal to a promise of evasion. In other words, pleasure is not a passive state but paradoxically opens a dimension where malaise “catches sight” of evasion in a movement of the undoing [denouement] of malaise (EV 83). Pleasure is tantamount to a promise of evasion, however, it is not an act which fills the need announced in evasion. This failure of pleasure to fulfil evasion occurs because pleasure is an unending process of leaving being. Pleasure is an affectivity with pretensions to break the forms of being without recognising its unending need for being. Thus Levinas writes that this pretension to breaking from being is a deception. The increase in the intensity of pleasure is described as: …an increase in promises that become richer by the measure in which they attain paroxysm, but these promises are not kept. (EV 84)

SUBJECTS OF BEING 19

In other words, the failure of pleasure is not due to its being conditioned by need, but because deception is constitutive of its internal becoming. The moment of its triumph is also the moment of its annihilation or failure. This failure appears as “shame” (EV 84). Levinas begins by distancing shame from its moral connotations. Rather than being a particular affective response to an act, shame is considered to have an ontological significance. The acuity of shame lies in the impossibility of not identifying with that being [être] that is already strange to us—strange not simply because we do not comprehend its motives for action but also because it is the very revelation of being in incomprehension. For Levinas, shame is linked to a moment in which a comprehending being confronts the limit of its understanding. This is not a moment of conscious recognition of the limits of the cognising subject but is thought in relation to Dasein. Shame then points to a limit in Dasein’s transcendental trajectory. Levinas describes the strangeness of being experienced in shame in terms of nudity. Shame makes transparent the nudity of an existence incapable of concealing itself (EV 86). The nudity which induces shame does not concern the body as a material thing, but as “the irremissible presence of the ego to itself” (EV 87). This presence is shameful not merely because of an inca pacity to cover up this nudity but because “[w]hat shame discovers is being that dis-covers itself” (EV 87). Shame does not reveal a lack, it reveals the inevitable return to oneself—the failure of evasion. While the notion of shame and the metaphor of nudity appear in Levinas’ later work with regard to a notion of a transcendence beyond being, in De l’évasion Levinas restricts his discussion to what he calls a specific kind of shame in “nausea” linking it to an experience of an impossibility in relation to being. It is in nausea that Levinas discovers a fundamental impower, or impossibility, in the human existent’s manner of being. From this basis he implicitly questions the Heideggerian notion of Dasein. 5. NAUSEA AND ANXIETY With the notion of nausea, Levinas returns to the question of the meaning of malaise, no longer having to juxtapose it with pleasure. As a form of malaise, nausea is characterised as a refusal which is itself a positive event. Levinas claims that it refers to the “effort to leave or depart” from the existential weight. This effort, however, is always and

20 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

already in despair. In nausea, one discovers the impossibility of being what one is while at the same time being riveted to oneself. This, Levinas claims, is “the very experience of pure being” (EV 90). It is the experience of an internal antagonism and an evasion that is imposed (EV 90 my italics). This imposition differs fundamentally from Heidegger’s notion of anxiety which individualises Dasein in bringing it face to face with itself as being-in-the-world. Heidegger explains that as Dasein falls into the world it also draws back—familiarity collapses and “beingin enters into the existential mode of the ‘not-at-home’” (BT 233). But while Levinas agrees that from “an existential-ontological point of view, the ‘not-at-home’ must be conceived of as the more primordial phenomenon” (BT 234), this does not mean that the anguish of nausea can be reduced to Heideggerian anxiety. Levinas explains anxiety as the comprehension of the indeterminacy — the insignificance—of things or in other words as the nothing of things (MO 30/427). This insignificance it not merely a theoretical negation but essentially anxiety: Anxiety, in bringing existence back to itself, saves it from its dispersion into things, and reveals to it its possibility of existing in a particularly acute fashion as Being-in-the-world. (MO 30/428)25 However, in De l’évasion, nausea is associated with the manner of attachment to being rather than an encounter with beings in their nothingness. In the event of nausea: The pleasant joy of life loses its charactcr of joy. Not because the suffering which menaces it renders it unpleasurable, but because the basis of suffering is the fact of the impossibility of interruption and an acute feeling of being riveted. (EV 70) In other words, Heidegger’s discovery of anxiety rescues us from dispersion and the loss of self in the world of things—from Dasein’s inauthenticity—and returns Dasein to “its isolation, to its initial possibility of being-in-the-world” (MO 31/429).26 That is, anxiety returns Dasein to authenticity. Levinas does not suggest that this is a release from the tragic finitude of being. He recognises that anxiety occurs in the face of thrownness and is a concern for our potentiality for being-in-the-world (as thrown).27 Anxiety individualises Dasein in being-toward-death—death is the ownmost/authentic possibility of Dasein. As a possibility it is imposed and as always-already-beyond-

SUBJECTS OF BEING 21

itself Dasein is always already projected towards anxiety. However, as already suggested, Levinas finds that anxiety in the face of death has already covered over the nausea and shame in the face of the bare fact of being—il y a l’être: “[n]ausea as such, only discovers the nudity of being in its plenitude and in its irremissible presence” (EV 90). For Levinas, Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety points to the anonymity of being that haunts authentic existence itself. However, Heidegger’s analysis of the authentic mode of being as the anxiety of being-towarddeath and its juxtaposition with the inauthenticity of our affective relation to the world ignores shame as the original form of nausea. As suggested earlier, Levinas acknowledges a double disposition of Dasein but finds in his analysis of nausea that Heidegger has overlooked another distinction in the relation of being and the human. Shame does not turn us toward the nothing, it turns us towards “the fact of having a body, of being there” (EV 91). The passivity of shame calls into question whether even my death is an ownmost possibility. Later, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas will challenge Heidegger’s notion of being-towards-death directly. In De l’évasion, Levinas is merely pointing to a relation to being which is not to be found in the existential analytic of Dasein.28 But does this mean that Levinas is concerned solely with the existentiell or pre-ontological ‘comprehension’ of being? There is a sense in which nausea could be understood as the existentiell expression of the pre-onto-logical understanding of being. However, this would not mean that Levinas wishes to overturn the priority of the question of being. Rather, he suggests that question of being, which governs the consequent analytic of Dasein as that being which has the understanding of being as its very mode of being, is also and always already governed by an impossibility. The passage from implicit to explicit comprehension, despite and perhaps because of its anti-intellectualism, reveals transcendence as a movement that only ever recovers itself. In other words, Dasein’s ecstatic projection, in which it is open to its ownmost possibilities for being, is not belied by Dasein’s inevitable death but by the very manner of this being’s attachment to being. At the end of his analysis of nausea Levinas asks: Is not nausea a fact of consciousness that the self recognises as one of its states? Is it existence itself or only an existant? (EV 91) In other words, is nausea merely a state of consciousness or the manner of the existent’s attachment to existence as such? Levinas will claim

22 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

that it is nausea that “reveals to us the presence of being in all its impower [impuissance]” (EV 92). Thus there is no leave-taking of being or of oneself in the passage to explicit comprehension. Rather, Levinas suggests that it is in the utter passivity of shame that there is hope for the presence of the other as an exteriority that is not reducible to the exstasis of ontological transcendence. This is Levinas’ first mention of the other person [autrui]: The presence of the other person is even hoped for to a certain extent, because it permits the reduction [ravaler] of the scandal of nausea to the rank of an illness [maladie]; to a normal social fact that one can treat; and consequently, with regard to which one can take an objective attitude. (EV 91) According to Levinas, this hope is not in itself enough to accomplish the escape nor is it another way of thinking the relation to being that he has been pursuing throughout the essay. De l’évasion announces that a new way of leaving being must be pursued but it must be pursued beginning with the affirmation of the impossibility inherent in the relation to being. It is on the basis of recognising that in our attachment to being we find something more distressing than the finitude of our existence that this new way of thinking transcendence is to be approached. Thus nausea and the impossibility of evasion can be read as Levinas’ first attempt to awaken the sense of a passivity and a suffering in the midst of the relation to being which cannot be assumed by a being and which refuses to leave Dasein to itself. The only way that is open consequently…is to measure without fear, all the weight of being and its universality, to recognise the inanity of the act and the thought that cannot hold a place for the event that, in the very accomplishment of existence, shatters that existence, act and thought, that should not consequently mask the originality of evasion. (EV 99) Impossibility is not conceived of as a negation of being as such rather it introduces a conception of being as insufficient and only in this sense as always already in question in the experience of nausea. But what is the basis of Levinas’ assertion that it is being itself that is “experienced” in nausea and not just some subjective event of consciousness? De l’évasion does not yet provide an answer or a reason for this

SUBJECTS OF BEING 23

reconfiguration of being and Dasein, however, it does suggest that the way out of being concerns the meaning and value of humanity itself. And, in such conditions is excendence possible and how is it accomplished? What is the ideal of happiness and human dignity that it promises? (EV 74)29 In concluding this chapter, let me recall the discussion in Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism where Levinas finds National Socialism to be a response to the new philosophy of embodied existence to which liberal idealism is incapable of replying. In this essay Levinas claims that blood and race have become the new bases of “freedom” and the “rights of man” and that these ideas have been perverted by the new ideal of “the expansion of force” (RPH 70). Perhaps we can discern an attempt at a critique of this notion of force in Levinas’ account of impossibility and impower. We would then have to read the utter failure of the need of evasion as opening the impossible to something other than impotence, apathy or silence. Commenting on De l’évasion years later, Levinas implicitly recognises the problem that this association of being and impower raised: In the original text, written in 1935 one is able to distinguish the anxiety of war that was approaching and all of the “fatigue/ tiredness of being” the state of the soul of that period. A mistrust with regard to being, which under another form continued in what…in its entirety was the foreboding of the imminent Hitlerism everywhere. (QEV 82–83) In the experience of nausea, ontological impossibility does not bow to absolute power. It begins to look for another way of thinking the meaning of the human out of, but beyond, its relation to being.

CHAPTER 2 Hypostasis: Il y a/Existent

To simply say that the ego leaves itself is a contradiction since in quitting itself the ego carries itself away [s’emporte], unless it sinks in to the impersonal. (DE 164–165 translation modified) Levinas extends his rethinking of the relation of being and the human in his post-war essays, Existence and Existents and Time and the Other. In these works, he undertakes a critical rearticulation of the relation between subject and being. In the former, as the French title, De l’existence à l’existant suggests, Levinas moves from the unavoidable fact that “there is” [il y a] being, to the finite being or existent. Viewed in terms of Heideggerian ontology, he takes up an impossible starting point. On closer reading, it is precisely the impossibility inherent in any origin which is in question. In fact, the work describes a movement, or moment, of attachment and detachment of existent and il y a. With the alternative logic of hypostasis he explores the nature of the interval produced prior to the reification of the terms of the apparent relation. This idea of hypostasis as an alternative logic—as a non-reductive logic of meaning production—introduces us to Levinas’ early attempt to approach a dimension of signification which necessarily arises out of the relation to being but is not reducible to this relation. The relation of an existent to existence describes a duality of singularity and anonymity which is not equivalent to the distinction between authentic and inauthentic Dasein. Exploring the instant of the existent’s attachment to existence, Levinas introduces a notion of subjectivity which, by definition, postpones the anonymity of il y a. In this sense, the subject is always a unique identity. It is out of this relation of the existent and existence that Levinas re-locates the origins of signification in the postponement of anonymity. These works thereby introduce the

HYPOSTASIS 25

question of the foundations of intentional consciousness and the meaning-giving act of representation by elaborating on the manner of the subjective attachment to existence. In Existence and Existents, Levinas is still concerned with the question of a departure from being. In his preface, he calls this an “excendence” toward the Good, thereby introducing an ethical dimension, beyond being (EE 15/DE 9). Nevertheless, he insists that while excendence is “a departure from being and from the categories which describe it,” the movement and the Good “necessarily have a foothold in being, and that is why being is better than non-being” (EE 15/DE 9). The apparent reversal of the ontological distinction involved in establishing unique identities in hypostasis has this ethical dimension added to it. This does not subordinate being to the ethical, but rather, suggests that the answer to the ontological question: Why being rather than nothing? must be supplemented. Levinas’ description of his approach in the preface to Existence and Existents suggests that being, in contrast to non-being, is justified only on the basis of a necessity or need that itself points to an impossibility inherent in being. We are not, thereby, led to a dead end but must consider the signification of this impossibility otherwise. The thought of a beyond to this relation of existence and the existent is approached as a relation to another who interrupts this ontological attachment and introduces a notion of “world” distinctly different from the Heideggerian notion. Thus behind the discussion and development of the notion of il y a lies a concern to rethink of the existent’s relation to the social totality. 1. ONTOLOGICAL SEPARATION VERSUS ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE The most profound thing about Being and Time for me is this Heideggerian distinction [of existence and the existent]. But in Heidegger there is a distinction, not a separation. Existing is always grasped in the existent…(TO 44–45/TA 133) What is the difference between distinction and separation? What is the difference between Levinas’ claim that the existent is irremissibly attached to being and the apparently Heideggerian notion that Levinas introduces here which claims that existing is always grasped in the

26 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

existent? The question concerns the interpretation of ontological difference. For Levinas, Heidegger distinguishes the beings that are from the work of being (EE 17/DE 15–16). The distinction does not suggest that being is a different kind of being but that being is not a being at all. The distinction is not conceivable as a difference between entities or even as a difference of kind, in so far as “kind” suggests a class of objects, which being is not. In this sense, the distinction is indeterminate, or fundamentally indeterminable. Despite this distinction, there is no “separation,” according to Levinas, because “existing [l’exister] is always possessed by someone” (TO 45/TA 133). That someone is Dasein who “always understands itself in terms of its existence—in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself” (BT 33). The problem with Heidegger’s analysis, as Levinas explains in the paper Is Ontology Fundamental?, is that “[o]ur concrete existence is interpreted in terms of its entry into the ‘openness’ of being in general” (BPW 5). Dasein is precisely that being which has the understanding of being as its mode of being and in this sense rests on the openness of being. Any understanding of a being thus entails going beyond that being “into the openness and in perceiving it upon the horizon of being” (BPW 5). For Levinas, Heidegger thereby offers yet another account of the universal which is presupposed in all knowledge. Dasein has the status of a particular that has access to the universal and can thereby comprehend things on this basis. Thus for Levinas, there has to be a fundamental separation of the particular and being. From the start Dasein must be already torn out of being in some sense. He attempts to describe an interruption at the core of Dasein’s being. Levinas’ preoccupation with the question of the relation between subjectivity and existence in Existence and Existents should be read in this light. His ultimate concern is to reveal the possibility of an interruption of being and to locate the signification of the human at this disjunction of the particular and being. Furthermore, Levinas argues that it is not a matter of merely asserting the idea that there is being without a subject or without Dasein—that being which has the understanding of being as its very mode of being. Nor is it a matter of claiming the priority of a relation of the existent to someone or something other than being. As Levinas writes in Is Ontology Fundamental?:

HYPOSTASIS 27

One cannot prefer as the condition of ontology a relation with beings over the fundamental thesis that every relation with a being presupposes the intimacy of the forgetfulness of being. (BW 5) Levinas intends to demonstrate that another person makes a claim upon me that necessarily interrupts the relation to being, so as to give the indeterminacy and anonymity of the subjective relation to being a positive signification. This remains to be demonstrated. Existence and Existents begins this task with a critique of the relation of subject and existence. Levinas elaborates on the specificity of his approach with regard to the question of being and the ontological difference. He indicates his intention to start with being and move toward the existent, thereby apparently reversing the manner in which Heidegger approached the question of being. This reversal of the Heideggerian method has been the topic of much debate in secondary literature, prompted in part by Derrida’s s questions to Levinas on this point in his essay Violence and Metaphysics. As Derrida writes: Being, since it is nothing outside the existent, a theme which Levinas had commented upon so well previously, could in no way precede the existent, whether in time, or in dignity, etc. (Derrida 1978:136) While Derrida finds that Levinas recognises the difficulty of his attempt to begin with being rather than Dasein, he maintains that any attempt by Levinas to do so must have made a fundamental error in its interpretation of Heidegger. Derrida continues, reiterating that being is only the being-of the existent and consequently “does not exist outside it as a foreign power, or as a hostile or neutral impersonal element” (Derrida 1978:136). He asserts that neutrality can only be the “characteristic of an undetermined existent, of an anonymous ontic power” (Derrida 1978:136). As another commentator adds: The interpretation of Heideggerian ontological difference as ontological separation stands in danger of fundamentally mistaking a central intention of Heidegger. The thought of a general, neutral being is not Heideggerian. (Huizing 1988:25)1 For Levinas, the problem is precisely that anonymity, or neutrality, for Heidegger, can only be conceived of as an undetermined ontic power which, furthermore, has a derivative, if not derogatory, status. The

28 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

question of impersonality, or neutrality, is a fundamental concern that Levinas has at the very start of Existence and Existents. The attempt to begin his analysis by asking the question of being, separated from any being, is concerned to reveal assumptions underlying Heidegger’s question. For Levinas, the problem is not so much the priority of being [l’être] but the reduction of the existent—of effective existence—to a being that has the understanding of being as its mode of being. It is not a question of whether being comes before or after the existent but as Levinas suggests, a matter of how we think the meaning of the distinction. The relation, Levinas argues, “occurs” in the instant of the “polarisation” of being in general (which is neither a ‘something’ in general, nor a concept or a principle) (EE 18/DE 16–17). To start with this instant is not merely to reverse the relation of being and beings, starting with an assumption about the meaning of being, but to ask the question of the meaning of this difference: This reversal will have been only the first step of a movement that, opening onto an ethics much older than ontology, will allow the signifying of signification beyond the ontological difference, what, without doubt is, in the end, the very signification of Infinity. (DE 12)2 Levinas begins his analyses in Existence and Existents by recognising the difficulty, even impossibility, of “philosophical reflection” on the difference between being and beings: The distinction between that which exists and its existence itself… beings designated by substantives, and the event or act of their existence, imposes itself on philosophical reflection—and with equal facility disappears from view. (EE 17/DE 15) The danger in asking the question of being, Levinas explains, is that being is interpreted as a cause, or a “‘being’ [l’être] in general [that will] be ‘a being’ [étant] and not the deed, activity, pure event or work, of being [de l’être]” (EE 17/DE 15–16).3 The impossibility of separation is not an accident. Being and beings are not independent, for, “a being has always made a contract with being [l’être]” and exercises in an instant “the domination a subject exercises over its attributes” (EE 17/DE 16). The issue is that being [l’être] is not an attribute and that this domination exercised by a subject is not equivalent to a subjectpredicate relation but in a certain sense is prior to any such relation:

HYPOSTASIS 29

Being [L’être] cannot be specified, and does not specify anything. It is not a quality which an object supports, nor what supports qualities. Nor is it the act of a subject, even though in the expression “this is” being [l’être] becomes an attribute—for we are immediately obliged to state that this attribute adds nothing to the subject. (EE 18/DE 17) In other words, Levinas’ problem is not that the priority of this peculiar relation to being is a transcendental condition of thinking. Rather, the problem is that phenomenological analysis works back to this instant in which the contract with being is discerned and sees it “as something that cannot be decomposed” (EE 17/DE 16). The exact relation of Levinas’ thought to that of Heidegger appears ambiguous at this point. For, it could be argued that is it precisely the decomposition of this contract with being, understood in Heideggerian terms as a pre-ontological understanding of being, that is the ultimate aim of Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein which itself remains a preliminary step. Furthermore, it could be suggested that the unfolding of the ontological character of Dasein is the precondition of Levinas’ own “decomposition” of the “instant.” That is, Levinas’ analysis must itself begin with the assumption that there is a specific mode of being which has the understanding of being as its mode of being. In other words, Levinas’ own question must presuppose that mode of being open to the question of the meaning of being. As suggested above, for Levinas, the problem is that in so far as Heidegger approaches the question of being with an analysis of Dasein, subjectivity is interpreted solely in terms of its existence. Ontology becomes “the essence of every relation with beings and of every relation in being” (BW 4). This “fundamental ontology” reconstructs the constituents of the instant as an immanent circle of origin.4 A distinction between Levinas and Heidegger, at this point, hinges on whether it can be argued that Levinas is aware of the impossibility of escaping this immanent circle even as he attempts to go beyond it. As the analysis of the impossibility of evasion in Chapter One would suggest, this is precisely the problem that preoccupies Levinas. The impossibility of approaching being—the idea that nothing is prior to this relation to being—is interpreted by Heidegger as a case of a subject not being able to go beyond a certain limit; as the possibility of impossibility in authentic being-toward-death. For Levinas, this rejection of a beyond and of an “impossible approach” is a fundamental assumption of the Heideggerian perspective. In making this assumption, it is suggested

30 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

that Heidegger falls prey to the logic of non-contradiction at the very moment he recognises its limit. For Levinas, however, the impossibility of decomposing the instant is a logical rather than a concrete fact. The concrete signification of this impossibility involves the recognition of “separation.” Its first expression is in terms of il y a and “hypostasis,” which will be discussed below. For the moment, it must be emphasised that Levinas’ reversal has nothing to do with a conception of the relation of being and being as a relation of two existents but with the fact, uncovered by Heidegger himself, of the primacy of the Same—expressed here as the impossibility of decomposing the instant. As Bouckaert suggests, for Levinas: Even the ontological difference is no longer able to verbalise the break with the Self, because the distinction between being and beings continues to be situated in the domain of light. (Bouckaert 1970:407) This “domain of light” defines the boundaries of the phenomenological horizon—the instant beyond which nothing exists. Levinas’ “inversion” consists in approaching Dasein, or what Levinas will call “the existent,” starting from the irremissible fact that “being [l’être] cannot be specified” (EE 18/DE 17 my italics), rather than on the basis of this ‘fact’ turning to an analysis of the subject: Are we not, then, obliged to see in the very difficulty we have of understanding the category according to which being [l’être] belongs to a being the mark of the impersonal character of being [l’être] in general? Does not being [l’être] in general become the being of “a being” by an inversion, by that event which is the present…? (EE 18/DE 17–18) Levinas considers that Heidegger has taken this inversion for granted. The impossibility of approaching being, as a being, immediately points to being. Being is that which is “alien and strikes against us” (EE 23/DE 28). Such being is not the most universal or general concept but the impersonal, unnamable and ungraspable realm of what Levinas calls il y a. Having introduced this impossibility, Levinas suggests that it is “attested to by certain moments in human existence where the adherence of existence to an existent appears like a cleaving” (EE 22/ DE 27). The duality of existence and the existent is not assumed but is

HYPOSTASIS 31

shown to reveal itself in an analysis of the existent itself. In other words, despite the apparent reversal of being and existent, Levinas insists that the analysis requires that we begin with the existent. 2. THE IMPERSONAL AND ITS OTHER What is the distinction here between being in general and the impersonal, unnameable realm of il y a? In Violence and Metaphysics, Derrida claims that it is “paradoxical to see the Heideggerian city governed by a neutral power, by an anonymous discourse, that is, by the one whose inauthenticity Heidegger was first to describe” (Derrida 1978:137). It is indeed paradoxical but is anonymity always inauthentic [uneigentlich], considered in the sense of a loss of one’s own being-in-the-world? There are two kinds of anonymity discernible in Heidegger. There is the anonymity of the “they” [das Man], the mode of inauthenticity—of the dispersion of Dasein into an everyday immersion in the world and one’s relation to entitles. As well, it could be argued, there is a certain anonymity of the authentic mode of Dasein in anxiety. Derrida seems to recognise the latter notion when he adds that there is an form of anonymity in Heidegger’s account of Logos as the Logos of no-one. However, Derrida claims that this anonymity is not oppression, it is only “the possibility of the name and of responsibility” (Derrida 1978:137). In relation to the question concerning the conception of anonymity as condition of possibility, Derrida quotes Heidegger: But if man must one day arrive in the neighbourhood of Being, he must first learn to exist in the nameless. (Derrida 1978:137)5 To exist in the nameless, according to Heidegger in the Letter on Humanism, is to think language as the “house of Being” and to think thought as the engagement by and for being (Heidegger 1947/77:5/ 194).6 The nameless is not the realm of the irrational but the bringing of thought back to its element, which Heidegger claims had already been forgotten by Plato and Aristotle in their notion of thought as techne and theoria (Heidegger 1947/77:6/194). To learn to exist in the nameless is thus to learn to hear the “es,” the “it,” of “es gibt” (literally “it gives” but translated as “there is”)- In the Letter on Humanism, in discussing the distinction between the French il y a and the German es gibt, Heidegger claims that while the French suggests “there is” being, the

32 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

German already states the fact that “the ‘it’ which here ‘gives’, is being itself’ (Heidegger 1947/77:22/214). For Heidegger, “giving” names the essence or essencing of being but also avoids the expression “being is.” He finds that the French il y a not only overlooks this essence but is in danger of suggesting that “being is” (Heidegger 1947/77:22/214). Heidegger suggests that “[b]efore he speaks man must first allow himself to be spoken to/approached [ansprechen]” (Heidegger 1947/77: 10/199). For Heidegger, to hear this call is to avoid the seductions of the public realm and the impotence of the private and to allow oneself to be claimed by being (Heidegger 1947/77:8/197). Thus to hear the appeal [Anspruch] of being is to think the essence [Wesen] of “the human” [der Mensch] and thought more originally, beyond these engagements in a socio-political dimension in which the human forgets the question of being.7 Although Levinas did not have these analyses of Heidegger available to him at the time of Existence and Existents, there is no doubt that he recognises two forms of anonymity in Heidegger. In terms of the distinction between Dasein’s inauthenticity and authenticity, he recognises the anonymity of everyday existence in the “they” (which includes the public and the private opposition mentioned above) and the anonymity or neutrality of Dasein’s relation to being. The latter is covered over in Being and Time by the claim that Dasein is it ownmost possibility in its being-toward-death, to which one is awakened by the indeterminacy of being or the no-thingness of being. It is not the possibility of the creation of a moral hierarchy which is at issue for Levinas, instead, he is concerned with Heidegger’s insistence that the indeterminacy of being becomes a moment of Dasein’s ownmost possibility. Despite Heidegger’s insistence that this is a possibility of impossibility, for Levinas, it nevertheless limits the shock of the relation to indeterminate being through reducing this relation to a projection of Dasein’s future. Heidegger’s error is to locate Dasein in its authentic mode at this juncture. Alternatively, Levinas finds that this is precisely the juncture which renders every assumption of “authentic” Dasein impossible (TO 71/TA 166). It is a moment of the impossibility of nothingness, where this is an impossibility insinuated at the heart of the attachment to being and not in a future (TO 69/TA 163). In Time and the Other, Levinas conceives of the relation of inauthenticity and authenticity in Heidegger’s early work as an expression of an old antinomy of the social and the singular. In this antinomy, one side is always constructed as the degraded form of the other (TO 58/TA 149). At a more general level, Levinas argues in

HYPOSTASIS 33

Existence and Existents that the configuration of authenticity and inauthenticity points to the fact that the “dialectic of being [l’être] and nothingness continues to dominate ontology” (EE 20/DE 20). According to Levinas, the consequences for Heidegger are that “being [l’être] contains no other vice than its limitation and nothingness” (EE 20/DE 20). There is nothing to fear in being except its end. For Levinas, this means that this end is merely a limit imposed by the approach to being of the already existing existent—the already existing existent approaching its own end or discovering its own limits. What Heidegger must leave out of this dialectic is the hold that being itself has on us: It is because the there is has such a complete hold on us that we cannot take nothingness and death lightly, and we tremble before them. The fear of nothingness is but the measure of our involvement in being [l’étre]. Existence of itself harbours something tragic which is not only there because of its finitude. (EE 20/DE 21) For Levinas, the horror of nothingness is only a phase of a more general state of existence. He argues that the fear of being is just as originary as the fear for being expressed in anxiety over death. This more general state is the anonymous realm of il y a which is irreducible to either side of the Heideggerian dichotomy. 3. IL Y A AND THE IMPOSSIBLE INSTANCE While the notion of il y a becomes crucial to Levinas’ critique of the priority of the es gibt, he does not assert that “being is.” With the notion of il y a, Levinas attempts to think an original duality of existence and the existent which does not begin with the assumption that the existent discovers its authentic being in the process of a withdrawal from the world in which it is originally immersed. As we will see in the following chapter, Levinas will also attempt to redefine the nature of the existent’s immersion in a world, based on this original duality. In other words, the notion of il y a has repercussions for Levinas’ rethinking of the socio-political and the relation of the subject to the social totality and is not merely an excursion into the metaphysical without consequence.8 For the moment, it is suggested that in Existence and Existents Levinas’ account of il y a and the notion of hypostasis, which will be discussed below, attempts to demonstrate that

34 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

there is a fundamental ambiguity or duality of effectivity which reveals an insufficiency in the relation to being that the existent cannot ignore nor overcome.9 Levinas begins with a reduction through which we find that il y a imposes itself when there is no longer anything—“when the world disappears” (EE 21/DE 26). However, this is as far as Levinas goes in his reduction. Recognising that he has already risked positing an indeterminate ground which would already be some thing, another approach must be taken. The importance of this first move is to separate the relation to being from the relation to the world, in so far as this world is a world of things ready and present to hand in which Dasein is always already immersed. This first move does not delineate, in its own fashion, the realm of authentic and inauthentic Dasein but on the contrary, cancels the borders between the authentic and the inauthentic which are delineated by Heidegger and attempts to describe an alternative duality. Levinas describes a relation to being beyond Heidegger’s opposition of authentic and inauthentic existence and one which is prior to being-in-the-world. Only after suspending this relation to world can the “primary relationship which binds us to being [l’être] become[s] palpable” (EE 21/DE 26 my italics). For where the continual play of our relations with the world is interrupted we find neither death nor the “pure ego,” but the anonymous state of being. (EE 21/DE 26) The notion of a relationship is misleading, says Levinas, since it implies terms or substantives. The relation to being, alternatively, is to be considered prior to any assumptions about either existence or existents. Levinas expresses this difficulty in De l’évasion as the impossibility of distinguishing that which accepts the weight of being from the weight itself. As we have seen, this problem arises because that which accepts the weight does not exist prior to the accepting. In Existence and Existents, Levinas claims that that which accepts the weight first comes to be in this “incomparable event” (EE 22/DE 26). As Levinas suggests, he is not merely trying to imagine an act by which an existent takes over its existence—where something comes to be out of nothing—as this would already presuppose the duality of existence and existents as two “independent” terms. The meaning of this paradoxical duality is not to be sought in terms of a speculative reconstruction of its ground but, as suggested above, is “attested to by certain moments in human existence” (EE 21/DE 27). Thus Levinas turns to a phenomeno-

HYPOSTASIS 35

ontological analytic of the existent. While, in De l’évasion, Levinas arrives at the brutal fact that there is being [il y a de l’être] and describes this encounter in terms of shame and nausea, in Existence and Existents, he announces the horror of il y a and introduces the notions of fatigue and indolence as the effective accomplishment of this encounter.10 Fatigue, or weariness, is described as the impossible refusal of an obligation to exist. Like a reminder of a commitment, one has to aspire and undertake to do something. But, within this obligation there is a longing for evasion. Thus in weariness we see a movement in which the “existent takes up its existence in the hesitation of a refusal” (EE 25/DE 32). This is not a conscious no, as a decision taken by an already existing being, rather, weariness effects a refusal: “[t]he refusal is in weariness” (EE 25/DE 32). The difference between weariness and indolence is the essential inhibition that the latter effects. Indolence, Levinas claims, is the impossibility of beginning or of the effecting of the beginning (EE 26/DE 33). Indolence is a recoil before action and before the inscription in being. It is an impotent, joyless aversion in which a fear for the unknown “is a repugnance [nausée] devolving from the aversion for the enterprise of existence” (EE 26/DE 33). Levinas emphasises that what is essential to indolence “is its place prior to a beginning of an action” which is a specific “way of being turned to a future” (EE 26/DE 33). It introduces a certain impossibility inherent in the beginning of every action. Indolence is turned to the future as a holding back from it. Beginning does not solicit the future but “has already brought it about beforehand as a weary present” (EE 29/DE 40). Thus at the end of his discussion of indolence, Levinas returns again to fatigue. Fatigue is now conceived of as a lagging behind the present. In effort and labour, in which fatigue is essential, a being is “created” which is out of joint with itself. This lag in the present “opens a distance in which a relationship takes form” (EE 34/DE 49). The present is found to be constituted as a lag and introduces a distance in existence. However, this does not introduce a notion of lack or fear of loss. Levinas points to a concern that “is imposed by the solidity of a being that begins and is already encumbered with the excess of itself’ (EE 27/ DE 36). What does this amount to? It is a description of a certain duality of existence, bent and caught up in itself. It is not simply that one is, rather, that one is oneself (EE 28/DE 38). How is this notion different to the Heideggerian notion of the tragic finitude of Dasein? Nausea and indolence are not Levinasian interpretations of anxiety, which is, instead, described as the “comprehension of nothingness” (EE

36 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

19/DE 20). As already suggested in the analyses of nausea above, Levinas introduces a notion of finitude that is defined in terms of an encumbrance with oneself that takes place before Dasein’s encounter with death as the possibility of one’s impossibility. In other words, the tragic finitude of an ecstasis toward the end masks the tragic necessity of being oneself—of being inescapably attached to one’s singular and finite being. Thus Heideggerian ecstasis is transgressed by an impossibility which is not imposed as death but as a burden which marks the limits of myself within the instant. This existent will have a relation to the world as hunger and thirst and will not only be in the world alongside others and things. The burden of being oneself is the formal meaning of “materiality” or “sub-stance.” 4. IL Y A AND THE DUALITY OF HYPOSTASIS The notion of the existent as interval, or as a duality which can be conceived of as the institution of distance in existence, is an important element of Levinas’ re-thinking of subjectivity, substantiality and materiality. Materiality, for Levinas, is not to be conceived of mechanistically, biologically, or physically as opposed to mind or thought. At this stage in his work, Levinas considers the meaning of materiality in terms of the relationship to existence as the anonymous realm of il y a. Il y a is materiality in its elemental form: the “happening” of pure density or mass (EE 57/DE 91–92). The materiality of the subject is to be understood in terms of its relation to this anonymous realm. Levinas considers this relationship in terms of “hypostasis.” He claims that in the history of philosophy the term describes the event “by which the act expressed by a verb became a being designated by a substantive” (EE 82/DE 140–141). For Levinas, hypostasis describes the specific manner of an existent’s relation to il y a, where il y a is posited neither as the essence of the existent, nor as the condition of possibility of the existent (EE 83/DE 141). Hypostasis describes a unique manner of the ‘derivation’ of identity. For Levinas, hypostasis refers both to the moment in which an instant occurs but also points to a certain manner in which this instant occurs. The meaning of hypostasis is neither that which is the end product of a process of coming to be, nor that process itself, but incorporates the two from the point of view of the instant. The meaning of hypostasis is not simply the coming to be, reification, or creation of a thing but is essentially a doubling or folding back in

HYPOSTASIS 37

oneself—a “repli en soi” (EE 81/DE 138). Levinas’ hypostasis is the event of the instant which corresponds to the advent of the existent. Such an existent has, however, none of the characteristics of an entity. “Consciousness, position, the present, the ‘I’ [je]” are described by Levinas as “events by which the unnameable verb to be turns into substantives” (EE 83/DE 142). This is not only the apparition of a new grammatical category but signifies the suspension of anonymity in the unique materiality of this instant. Levinas uses the opposition of consciousness and unconsciousness as a way into the strange logic of hypostasis, suggesting that this opposition is itself constituted by another relationship (EE 67ff./DE 111–115ff.). He describes consciousness as a mode of being which becomes fatigued and interrupts itself, tending towards the underlying depth of unconsciousness. However, Levinas suggests that this tendency toward unconsciousness also points to the possibility of consciousness itself as an emergence out of unconsciousness. The relation of consciousness and unconsciousness effects an emergence in retreat: “a fainting away at the very focal point of its luminousness” (EE 68/DE 117). This fainting away is the production of position as a “scintillation” (EE 68/DE 117). Scintillation produces the body as matter, in terms of hypostasis. That is, the body is produced here as an instance of a folding back or doubling. The body is not a body object, nor a consciousness of localisation but “the localisation of consciousness” (EE 69/DE 118). This localisation does not presuppose a space or a thought behind it which grasps it as a “here.” The moment of localisation is the “subjectivisation of the subject” as a “scintillation of consciousness” (EE 69/DE 118). Levinas explains that localisation is a recess in the “plenum” of the il y a. This is not a happening in the light but is the manner of the production of light (EE 69/DE 118). In this way, Levinas uses the metaphor of scintillation in an attempt to describe a noncontinuous event as well as to challenge the presupposed horizon of light in Heideggerian ontology. Levinas attempts to describe the instant without relying on any preconceived notions of temporality or spatiality. With this notion of the scintillation of light, Levinas describes the manner of the “stance” in the instant. Light, as scintillation, is the non-continuous event which at its greatest intensity disappears. Levinas also calls it “evanescence,” a fading away (EE 72/DE 124). The notion of evanescence conceives of the moment of the positioning of subjectivity as an effectuation of an instance. This is a posi tioning which does not become position, place or

38 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

body but is the description of position, place or body, as a dynamic moment of beginning.11 The body and consciousness, conceived of in terms of evanescence and scintillation, are the primordial manner of contact with the earth and stand opposed to the Heideggerian analytic of being-in-the-world. The event of hypostasis is the effectuation of a subject who is “present” and “masters existence.” However, the evanescence of the present means that this “mastery” is not one of domination. According to Levinas, evanescence is “the ransom paid for its [the present] subjectivity” (EE 73/DE 125). In other words, in becoming “I”—in the mastery of the existent— the present has an absolute character but this is not absolute freedom. Mastery is absolute because it is engagement without reserve—an impossible evasion of the instant. However, this instant does not endure, it is a scintillation or evanescence in which nothing is kept for later. Mastery is an interval, terminus or stance which harbours another event and does not describe the advent of a free being. The subject of hypostasis discovers it is not free but alone responsible for the consummation of infinity in each instant. This is a Promethean fatality—it cannot be evaded despite a certain power being invested in the subject of hypostasis. In the hypostasis of an instant in which mastery is manifested the il y a returns, the “I” is bound to existence. What Levinas has attempted to show is that the present or instant is not “an expanse of immobilised time” (EE 73/DE 127). The present is an interruption, always breaking with the time of duration in which we grasp it (EE 73/DE 126). The hypostasis signifies the suspension of the anonymity of il y a (EE 83/DE 141). However, the particularity of the singular remains an “amphibological mutation from an event into an entity” (EE 79–80/DE 136). The identity of the “I” falls neither under the category of a thing, nor an event but is a relation between the two. This notion of the “I,” as a relation or interval, stands in contrast to the notion of Dasein as that which transcends itself. Rather than taking this ecstatic form, Levinas opposes a being “whose very advent is a folding back upon itself” and in this particular sense is substance (EE 81/DE 138). Substantiality is conceived as a “singular reflexivity”—one is oneself, that is, enchained to the itself of this oneself. As Levinas suggests: “I am forever stuck with myself” (EE 84/DE 144). This is a solitude out of which I cannot simply be shaken. The need of evasion and the impossibility of escape in De l’évasion is now translated into:

HYPOSTASIS 39

…the impossible exigency for salvation which must concern the very instant of pain, and not only compensate for it. (EE 91/DE 157) 5. BEYOND HOPE: DEATH, TIME AND AUTRUI The hope for an order where the enchainment to oneself involved in the present would be broken still does not of itself have the force to effect what it hopes for. (EE 89/DE 153) As suggested above, a notion of freedom accompanies hypostasis. The way this freedom is interpreted is crucial to an understanding of subjectivity and is tied up with hope and a new conception of time. However, to introduce a notion of freedom in the midst of enchainment will sound paradoxical unless we recognise from the start that this freedom is not a power of the subject to leave, negate or overcome being but merely to bear it. This leads Levinas to suggest that the “freedom” accompanying hypostasis is merely a conception or hope of freedom, not freedom itself. Nevertheless, as a thought it: …knocks on the closed doors of another dimension; it has a presentiment of a mode of existence where nothing is definitive [définitif], the contrary of the definitive [définitive] subjectivity of the “I.” And this is the order of time. (EE 89/DE 152 translation modified) As we have seen, with the notion of hypostasis Levinas attempts to think the instant without presupposing time as a linear progression, or as duration. In addition to this, the instant or hypostasis now describes the manner of the relation of being, conceived as il y a and subjectivity. This relation takes place before time. Levinas claims that it comes to the time of duration “out of itself” (EE 73/DE 126). The introduction of time as neither the structure of subjectivity, nor the exterior world, but as the “unravelling of the knot [le denouement du nœud] which is tied in it [the present]—the definitive which its evanescence does not undo”— signifies that we cannot find in the subject the means for its salvation (EE 93/DE 159). The exigency does not find itself negated but introduces a notion of desire which Levinas will attempt to show

40 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

accompanies every metaphysics. The introduction of temporality introduces a hitherto hidden exigency—a desire to recommence as other —occurring as an impossibility that comes face to face with the other. Thus Levinas links the need of evasion, conceived of as an exigency to leave being, with a notion of a desire for a beyond which is already a desire for an other and not just an escape from one’s attachment to being. Levinas introduces this desire as linked to a specific notion of temporality: We think…that time does not convey the insufficiency of the relationship with Being [l’être] which is effected in the present, but that it is called for to provide a remedy for the excess of the definitive contact which the instant effects. (EE 85–6/DE 147) The realm in which nothing is definitive differs fundamentally from Heideggerian nothingness. In Time and the Other, Levinas directly contrasts his analysis of solitude in pain, need and work with Heideggerian anxiety before the nothingness of being. Suffering is described here, as in De l’évasion, as the “impossibility of fleeing or retreating” (TO 69/TA 163). For Levinas, as suggested earlier, this is tantamount to “the impossibility of nothingness” (TO 69/TA 164). Suffering as enchainment is a call to the impossibility of nothingness, that is, a call to an impossibility in the existent’s relation to its own death: …as if we were on the verge of an event beyond what is revealed to the end in suffering. (TO 69/TA 163) Death is not given as nothingness but as the impossibility of nothingness. It announces itself as an “experience of passivity,” acknowledging that “experience” is “only a way of speaking” (TO 69/ TA 164). For Levinas, in being-toward-death, there is an assumption of uttermost possibility, occurring as an event of freedom and authenticity. However, Levinas is attempting to describe a situation in which we are seized, “rendering every assumption of possibility impossible” (TO 71/ TA 166). For Levinas, solitude is not affirmed by death but broken by it. We are in relation with something that is absolutely other. An event happens that we no longer assume; in which we are no longer able to be able (TO 74/TA 170). It is only for the subject that has reached suffering and through it, death, that a relationship with transcendence can be conceived.

HYPOSTASIS 41

Death is not my death, instead it introduces an abyss between the event and the subject. This does not destroy the subjectivity of the subject but introduces a relation of a “facing up to” an event that is otherwise than the welcoming of a thing or object. In Existence and Existents, Levinas explains that death, conceived of in this way, is the condition for a new birth. What he discovers in the relation to death is that the “I,” as an instant, does not return identical to itself, or circulate identically in time, but is a “ferment of time” (EE 92/DE 158). There is a “miraculous fecundity in the instant” by which it recommences as other (EE 93/DE 159). But, it cannot endow itself with this “alterity” (EE 93/DE 159). It is the relation to autrui—the other person—which constitutes time as both exterior to the definitive instant of hypostasis and something other than an object of contemplation. The relation of death, fecundity and alterity changes throughout Levinas’ work and the signification of each alters as a consequence. In other words, it is important, at this point, to recognise that death, fecundity and, as shall be seen, eros and the face, are not synonyms for the relation to the other person but reflect Levinas’ developing and changing approach to the question of how to think alterity. In Existence and Existents, Levinas introduces the other person, not merely as someone hoped for in the height of despair and nausea, but as restoring hope in the midst of despair. However, the precise causes and consequences of this miraculous fecundity remain unclear. The encounter with the other person appears to release the subject from the “responsibility” and freedom to bear the full weight of existence. Thus it might seem that Levinas has focused too much on the salvation of subjectivity and, in the process, has given it back a power over its being, making the other person merely the condition of the possibility of self-transcendence. There is a sense in which the relation to the other person, described in Time and the Other and Existence and Existents in terms of eros, could be interpreted as describing the conditions of possibility for “power” and “violence.” The question of how to think subjectivity in relation to the other, without reducing the other to a functionary of an otherwise powerless subject, underlies Levinas’ later thought.12 The issue for Levinas in Existence and Existents, is how to introduce an event in which the definitive solitude of the subject is transcended without negating the “freedom” of the “I” (EE 88–89/DE 151–152). If his ultimate concern is the possibility of transcendence, we might wonder why Levinas insists on the necessity of maintaining a place for the “I.” However, as already suggested, the necessity of this place is to

42 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

assure freedom for responsibility, rather than freedom for the individual subject (EE 87/DE 150). In Time and the Other and Existence and Existents, the search for a new way of leaving being becomes a concern to describe a mode of transcendence that does not negate the necessity of responsibility but rather locates its originary signification in the relation to the other person. Hypostasis delivers the “I” from anonymity and introduces it to a world of its own. In this world, the subject is master and remains at a distance with regard to itself. However, mastery is merely the fact of its being a base, that is, not a place of security, but one of suffering. Levinas’ ultimate concern is to describe this moment as a freedom for responsibility rather than domination. He does not want to give up either the absolute subjectivity of the subject, nor the possibility of objectivity or universality. Ontological though it may be, Levinas’ account of this “species of duality” is not a mere repetition of what he sees as Heidegger’s mistaken conception of transcendence as “only possible as an ecstasy toward the end” in which Dasein recovers its ownmost being (EE 19/DE 20). For Levinas, subjective transcendence remains essentially impossible. As we have seen, the analyses of De l’évasion introduced the notion of impossibility as well as situating this impossibility in the midst of the relation of being and Dasein. The idea that the relation of being and Dasein is governed by a fundamental impossibility is taken up by Levinas in Existence and Existents and Time and the Other. In Existence and Existents, there is a suggestion that ontological difference, as Heidegger conceives of it, is an effect of another preceding event. This event is the “instant” as a “relationship” with existence which precedes any relationship with the world: The event which we have been inquiring after is antecedent to that placing [in the world]. It concerns the meaning of the very fact that in being [l’être] there are beings. (EE 101/DE 174) An interpretation of the meaning of the antecedence cannot overlook Levinas’ claims concerning the paradox of being and the problem of origins both in De l’évasion and Existence and Existents. For Levinas, the significance of the ontological difference must itself be rescued from meaninglessness through the irruption of the other person—autrui. The meaning of ontological difference itself has its “origin” outside that difference in the realm of ontological impossibility which Levinas will call the “ethical.”

CHAPTER 3 Enjoyment: Subject and World

1. BEING HUNGRY: THE SALVATION AND SINCERITY OF LIFE In both Time and the Other and Existence and Existents Levinas makes the claim that Heideggerian Dasein is never hungry. In this way he reintroduces the question of the relation between the existent and world. In the last chapter, we saw that he reconfigures the relation of the existent and being by putting the question of the relation of the existent and world to one side. The decision to suspend the existent’s relation to world in the account of il y a is, from a Heideggerian point of view, just as impossible as the account of ontological separation that Levinas offers in these early works. However, for Levinas, just as the existent has a relation to being across a separation, its relation to world also involves an originary movement of separation. For Levinas, this neither moves the question of world to a more theoretical plane, nor reduces it to a physical substratum, but introduces us to the subject of enjoyment who produces an “interval of separation.” In Totality and Infinity, Levinas begins his description of the subject of enjoyment with a critical account of Husserlian intentionality, which he considers to maintain an implicit dualism of the body and consciousness. He attempts to describe the subject of enjoyment in relation to intentional consciousness, though independent from and outside the structures of Husserlian intentionality. At the same time, he remains critical of the Heideggerian account of Dasein’s being-in-theworld which is always a fleeing from authentic being. Levinas insists that the relation to world is not a negative flight from being but a positive affirmation of identity in the world. Nevertheless, the question of the nature of the relation between the subject of hypostasis and the

44 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

subject of enjoyment is controversial and approached somewhat differently in Totality and Infinity to the earlier works. Let us briefly trace the development of the notion of enjoyment and its relation to hypostasis in the early works, before returning to Totality and Infinity. In Time and the Other, the notion of enjoyment is introduced as a salvation from the weight or materiality of hypostasis—the enchainment of self to itself. Enjoyment is linked to a notion of a separation of the subject from itself which occurs in “everyday existence, in the world” (TO 62/TA 154). In Existence and Existents, Levinas explains the significance of the introduction of enjoyment with regard to the Heideggerian notion of being-in-the-world. What seems to have escaped Heidegger—if it is true that in these matters something might have escaped Heidegger—is that prior to being a system of tools, the world is an ensemble of nourishments. (TO 63/TA 154–155) In Existence and Existents, Levinas explains that, far from being a fall, the world “has Its own equilibrium, harmony and positive ontological function: the possibility of extracting oneself from anonymous being” and that to “call it everyday and condemn it as inauthentic is to fail to recognise the sincerity of hunger and thirst” (EE 45/DE 69). For Levinas, hunger, thirst and the essential possibility of their satisfaction interrupt anonymous existence. In hypostasis, the subject is irremissibly tied to itself. However, in the world, “instead of a return to itself, there is a relationship with everything that is necessary for being” (TO 63/TA 155–156). This manner of relation to the world entails a separation of subjectivity from its irremissible attachment to the anonymity of il y a and as such also contains an implicit critique of the Heideggerian account of being-in-the-world. For Levinas, the practical immersion of Dasein in the world overlooks the fundamental value of world as nourishment. The absorption of the object in the sincerity of hunger and thirst is not a consequence of a concern for existence but makes up the content of our “whole being in the world” (EE 44/DE 67). In other words, Levinas claims that the primary mode of being in the world has this structure in which “an object concords fully with a desire” (EE 44/DE 67). At the same time, enjoyment is not unattached to the intentionality of the contemplative ego. In Time and the Other, Levinas links enjoyment not only to being but also to light and knowledge. The significance of light is that it is the medium in which something is encountered across a

ENJOYMENT 45

distance. For Levinas, enjoyment, conceived of in terms of hunger and thirst, describes the “sincerity” of intentionality itself (EE 45/DE 69). The movement of appropriation and possession describes an intention which is belied by the sincerity of an enjoyment of the world, such that intentionality is not grounded in a needy subject but in a subject which finds everything necessary for its existence in the world. However, the relation to the object across the distance opened in light—the knowledge of the object—does not overcome the solitude of existing. The luminosity of enjoyment does not break the subjective attachment to being. Rather, enjoyment describes the plenitude of subjective life. Accompanying this notion is the idea that a postponement has been effected which is not a possibility arising in the subjective attachment to being, that is, it is not equated with the duality of reflexive hypostasis. The introduction of enjoyment must be understood as an attempt to rethink the nature of the relation between the originary attachment to being in hypostasis and the primary relation to world. In Existence and Existents and Time and the Other, Levinas uses a notion of being in the world which entails a distance with regard to il y a but is not conceived of as a negation of this primary contracting of existence. Levinas conceives of separation as an “abnegation” which, rather than a negation, is a first salvation (TO 64/TA 156). In other words, salvation from the initial materiality of hypostasis does not involve its formal negation by an ego but the concrete affirmation of identity in the world. Levinas insists this is not a separation of body and soul, nor is it a moment in which the irremissible attachment to being is broken (TO 64/ TA 156). In enjoyment, although “emancipated from the anonymity of existing,” the subject remains “riveted to itself through its identity as an existent (that is materialised)” (TO 65/TA 157). The apparent duality of the “biological life and metaphysical life” indicates an “original structure” of subjectivity. This is explored more thoroughly in Totality and Infinity. 2. ENJOYMENT AND INTENTIONALITY IN TOTALITY AND INFINITY In a similar manner to the subject of evasion, the subject of enjoyment is not lacking but is nevertheless “insufficient” (EV 70). However, in Totality and Infinity, insufficiency is discussed in terms of the need and dependence of the subject of enjoyment on the world from which it lives (TaI 110–111/TeI 82–83). Unlike the early works, Levinas does

46 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

not conceive of this subjectivity in terms of a withdrawal from the anonymity of il y a but as a withdrawal and reversal of intentional consciousness which constitutes the world as other on the basis of the “I” as a formal identity. The otherness or transcendence of the intentional world is found to be part of the immanent world of subjectivity in so far as it reverts incessantly to the subject of enjoyment. Levinas suggests that “the transcendental pretension” of the representational act of intentional consciousness is “constantly belied by the life that is already implanted in the being representation claims to constitute” (TaI 169/TeI 143). The discussion of enjoyment in Totality and Infinity starts with an examination of the relation of Husserlian intentional consciousness and lived embodiment. Behind Levinas’ analysis is the belief that, despite the Husserlian notion of “hyletic data,” the structure of affective relations in Husserlian philosophy is always described as a pretheoretical form of intentional consciousness. This is what Levinas means when he claims that the “lived body” is subordinated to the logical structures of intentionality. As suggested in a later paper, “Husserl maintained to the very end that there was a logical stratum in all intentionality, even the non-theoretical sort” (BI 105). According to Levinas, this subordination of the signification of lived embodiment to the structures of the intentional relation meant Husserl overlooked the possibility that subjectivity is produced prior to its being known (from the position of the intentional consciousness) and that the body of affects and sensibility could be anything more than the physical substratum of intentionality. At the same time, Levinas is well aware that, for Husserl, transcendence is a mode of immanence.1 As Levinas explains, the intentional relation is a relation to an outside which, however, is posited by thought and in this sense is interior to thought: …in representation the I precisely loses its opposition to its object; the opposition fades, bringing out the identity of the I despite the multiplicity of its objects. (TaI 126/TeI 99) Levinas’ use of “representation” in this context is not merely to be understood in terms of a predicative act but includes the pre-predicative act of meaning-bestowing that describes intentionality as “consciousness of.” In this analysis of representation, exteriority or objectivity is understood as a product of the meaning-bestowing act and the distinction between interior and exterior is effaced (TaI 124/TeI 96).

ENJOYMENT 47

For Husserl, phenomenology: …explores the universal Apriori…the all embracing laws that prescribe for every factual statement…the possible sense of that statement. (Husserl 1977:72) Levinas argues that this notion of intentionality describes the instantiation of thought—the positing of a formal identity. He writes that to “be intelligible is to be represented and hence to be a priori” (TaI 127/TeI 99). In this instantiation, there is a total correspondence or adequation of the thinker with what is thought.2 Following from this, the representational act is considered to be an act of identification, where the identification of objects in an external world is also a moment in the production of the identity of the “I” itself (TaI 126/TeI 99). To represent is to reduce to a presence—to the pure presence of the “I” (TaI 125/TeI 98). Thus according to Levinas, the intentional relation might appear to be a relation to the outside but it is in fact the reduction of exteriority to the instant of thought: “[t]o represent is…to reduce to the instantaneousness of thought everything that seems independent of it” (TaI 127/TeI 100). This reduction means that Husserl’s intentional consciousness constitutes the very identity of the subject. In other words, the intentional relation claims to be an account of concrete conscious life. The apriority of intentionality lies in the fact that “representation discovers, properly speaking, nothing before [devant] itself” (TaI 125/ TeI 97).3 To “speak properly” is to understand representation as the very positing of identity in which “exterior being vanishes” (TaI 124/TeI 96). While Levinas thereby acknowledges that representational intentionality is an a priori relation to the world, he does not understand this in the sense that the representational act is the necessary precondition, or origin of all experience and knowledge of the ‘external world’. While representation produces identity, the identity of the “I” of representation is not to be understood as the non-conditioned condition of truth. He suggests that: …we are far from thinking that one starts with representation as a non-conditioned condition! Representation is bound to a very different intentionality, which we are endeavouring to approach throughout this analysis. (TaI 126/TeI 98)

48 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

The identity of the “I” of representation is an idealist creation which remains “detached from the conditions of its latent birth” (TaI 126/TeI 99). It conceals another order of events. The first step towards uncovering this order is the analysis of enjoyment through which the latent birth or posteriority of intentional consciousness is first made manifest. In contrasting enjoyment with representation, Levinas suggests that the concrete conditions of identity are not reducible to the structures of intentional consciousness. While the subject of representation is identical to itself, for Levinas, this is an abstract concept based on a negative relation. Enjoyment, on the other hand, posits this identity as a “life.” This notion of enjoyment refers a formal subjective identity back to an elemental basis of subjectivity in the notion of “living from…” [vivre de…] (TaI 1 10ff./TeI 82ff). This notion of enjoyment, as I shall argue, is not reducible to a preHusserlian or pre-Heideggerian notion of materiality and should not be considered in terms of a thing or substance. Enjoyment characterises the “ipseity” of the formal identity of the “I” (TaI 115/TeI 88). The relation of ipseity and formal identity—of enjoyment and intentionality—is not an oppositional or dialectical relation. Levinas aligns enjoyment with affectivity and sentiment (TaI 115/TeI 87). However, he insists that it does not fit into categories of activity and passivity. Enjoyment does not refer to the passivity of lived consciousness. At the same time, it cannot be conceived of as the ontological interpretation of an ontic affectivity. Levinas refers to enjoyment as the accomplishment of ipseity and the concrete locus of identity and thus aligns enjoyment with a notion of effectivity or facticity. 3. ENJOYMENT, WORLD, EXTERIORITY The body indigent and naked is the very reverting, irreducible to a thought, of representation into life, of the subjectivity that represents, into a life which is sustained by these representations and lives of them …(TaI 127/TeI 100 translation modified) The main contrast between intentional representation and enjoyment is the distinction between a constitutive relation to the world and a nonconstitutive relation: one is a “thinking about…” or “consciousness

ENJOYMENT 49

of…,” while the other is a “living from…” (TaI 128/TeI 101). Levinas’ use of the metaphor of nakedness is interesting here in relation to the earlier works which describe the susceptibility of the subject with regard to il y a. Linking the two through this metaphor, it can be suggested that, in this passage, Levinas expresses the idea that in the midst of, or despite, an unavoidable attachment to being the subject finds everything necessary for existence. In the language of the early works, the subject of enjoyment exhibits a sufficiency with regard to existence. Yet, this independence is a consequence of the pure movement of the uncovering of that which discovers itself—“nakedness.” Sufficiency seems to have more to do with the pure possibility of maintaining a life—a unique place in the midst of the elemental. While the contrast with intentional consciousness suggests an abstraction from origins, Levinas’ conception of the nakedness of the subject of enjoyment indicates his maintenance of an attachment to being and, thereby, is concerned precisely with the question of origins. Before turning to a discussion of the relation between enjoyment and the il y a let us look more closely at the structure of enjoyment in Totality and Infinity. Levinas claims that enjoyment “holds on” [tenir à] to the exteriority that intentional representation suspends (TaI 127/TeI 100). Holding on is not equivalent to a grasping, which would be more characteristic of representation. Nor is it “simply equivalent to affirming the world but [i] t is to posit oneself in it corporeally” (TaI 127/TeI 100 my italics). This positing is the advent of embodiment; it is the moment of incarnation. For Levinas, embodiment is not an attribute of a pre-existing thing but is the event in which there is an inversion of the constitutive moment of representation into a unique position of a singular life. Exteriority is thus not reducible to the exteriority of the object given. This is not a mere reversal of interiority and exteriority where the subject is found to have taken up a position outside itself and can now see itself as an object out there, or ‘alongside’ the objects of an external world. Instead, the exteriority of enjoyment is opposed to the exteriority of “formal identity” which reveals itself as an object, or a being, amongst others. Furthermore, with the notion of the exteriority of enjoyment, Levinas refuses to define subjective life as a special class of object or being. In this notion of enjoyment there is thus also an implicit critique of Heidegger’s conception of being-in-the-world as always already alongside things, ready and present to hand. For Levinas, to live from something is neither to act on it in an everyday immersion in the world, nor to act by means of it, utilising the world as tool or implement (TaI 111/TeI 83). Rather “living from…” describes a relation to the world as

50 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

that which nourishes. The sense, or signification, of “nourishment” must be distinguished from any meaning it might acquire after the fact.4 Nourishment takes place prior to conceiving of the world as consisting of objects which may satisfy my hunger. It takes place as an act of selfpositing. All action, including thinking, is nourished by the world. Levinas makes a distinction here between being, or what he calls “bare existence” and “life.”5 Life as “living from …“is not equivalent to the will to be which reduces subjective existence to a being able to grasp its own being and the world. The reality of life as “living from… “is beyond such a closed system (TaI 112/TeI 84). “Living from…” does not constitute an objective world, nor a “subject” as a singular entity in this world. This “ipseity,” or the exteriority of enjoyment, conceives of subjectivity as an event of withdrawal from a world in which identity is determined as a “meaning ascribed” in a system of finality. Outside, or other than an entity participating in a system of ends and means, the “I” of enjoyment “remains outside the distinction of the individual and the general” in which the subject is made meaningful in so far as it is bounded by generality (TaI 118/TeI 90). The world I enjoy is not the represented flux of materiality, it is the “contents” of life. These contents are not things or actions but are expressed with the infinitive verb: “to think, to eat, to sleep, to read, to work, to warm oneself in the sun” (TaI 112/TeI 84) .6 Levinas has a very specific notion of activity in mind when he claims that enjoyment is not an activity. He suggests that: If “living from…” is not simply a representation of something, “living from…” also does not fit into the categories of activity and potency determinative of Aristotelian ontology. The Aristotelian act was equiv alent to being. Placed within a system of ends and means, man actualised himself in exceeding his apparent limits by action. Like every other nature, human nature accomplished itself, that is, became entirely itself, by functioning, by entering into relations. (TaI 112/TeI 84) In enjoyment, one is not merely thinking, that is, thinking is not merely a mode of being. In other words, in enjoyment, “to eat” marks a separation from the anonymity of the “to be.” Furthermore, this manner of separation need not be read as negating the primary verbality which resounds in being.

ENJOYMENT 51

The event of embodiment, accomplished in enjoyment, conditions representation in the sense that it accompanies each moment in which the world is thought as an object, or represented, by ‘contenting’ itself with this thought. Levinas writes: “[t]he aliment conditions the very thought that would think it as a condition” (TaI 128/TeI 101). He attempts to describe the conditions by which representation relies on the priority of enjoyment when he suggests that the “represented, the present, is a fact [est fait], already belonging to the past” (TaI 130/TeI 103). Beyond our attempts to recall and re-present, this past nevertheless accompanies each and every representation as its unique ‘origin’. This is a notion that the language of intentional consciousness, in its universality, will always obscure. As Levinas writes: The world I live from is not simply constituted at a second level after representation would have spread before us a backdrop of a reality simply given. (TaI 130/TeI 103) The mistake is to reduce the body to that which is given to intentional consciousness. For, while this confers a pre-theoretical status on the body, it reduces it to the sphere of objects presentable to theoretical consciousness. In this sense the body is constituted after the fact by consciousness as a non-thinking being or entity which precedes thought. The exteriority of enjoyment is not a sphere of “physical nature” that has meaning or value conferred on it after the fact. In this sense, enjoyment is the positive origin of value as a locus of power, rather than as a physical body or thinking mind. Furthermore, this does not reduce it to the pre-condition of the predicative act. The power inherent in the subject of enjoyment is the capacity of the separated life to satisfy its needs. For Levinas, this does not mean the subject of enjoyment is a pure dominating force, since need, or indigence, remains the state of this body. There is certain mastery in the instant but this is in the midst of a dependence which is affirmed rather than overcome or negated in enjoyment. In enjoyment there is an incessant reversion of the world into the singular life (TaI 127/TeI 100). However, the ego does not thereby come any closer to dominating this world although it does begin to create its own position in it. The body is motivated by incessant need because it demands acquisition at the level of enjoyment, not because it is lacking meaning or requires power for its own sake. Thus Levinas understands the “indigent body” as the place/space of satisfaction and a movement or event of positioning, rather than a thing

52 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

or entity—the “I” of enjoyment is described as pure positivity rather than as a substance or entity (TaI 113/TeI 85). Positivity, in this sense, is outside the opposition of affirmation/negation and refers to the event of positing. The affirmation, or power, lies in a positing of oneself in the world prior to all systematic attempts to make it meaningful, rather than in an ability to grasp the world suspended in representation. Thereby, the world is “affirmed as non-constituted prior to all affirmation” and the subject affirms its existence in this world prior to its own selfconceptualisation (TaI 127/TeI 100). This paradoxical structure of indigence and satisfaction points to the fact that enjoyment is a separation from, but not a negation of, the materiality of hypostasis. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas discusses this relation of indigence and satisfaction in terms of the dependence and independence of the subject of enjoyment in relation to the “elemental.” In enjoyment, one posits oneself and is therefore independent of the world. However, the world “I live from” is the elemental world which is essentially nonpossessable—“the earth, the sea, the sun, the city” (TaI 131/TeI 104).7 Even in making a place for myself here—in becoming independent—I remain dependent on the elemental. Levinas tells us much earlier: …“living from…,” understood as the event of positing, is a consummation of the world. Consummation affirms the elemental, not by making it its own but by positing itself in it, thereby producing a life distinct from it. While it lives from the world, it is completely self-sufficient. As such, the consummation of the world exhibits an “extraterritoriality.” (TaI 131/TeI 104) Enjoyment does not describe a “cleavage [une coupure] in the abstract but the existence at home with itself of an autochthonous I” (TaI 115/ TeI 88). Thus Levinas writes, exteriority is affirmed through consummation, not effaced through a negation: “Living from…is the dependency that turns into sovereignty, into happiness—essentially egoist” (TaI 114/TeI 87). The notion of enjoyment has been distinguished from the Heideggerian concept of being in the world but must also be distinguished from the pre-Heideggerian conceptions of the selfpositing of identity in idealist conceptions of ‘particular subjectivity’ or individuality. The distinction between enjoyment and representation cannot be reduced to a polarity of subject and object, nor can it be thought in terms of an act coupled with a consciousness of this act, which more accurately describes the idealist opposition.8 If we read the

ENJOYMENT 53

notion of enjoyment in the light of Levinas’ earlier works, it is quite clear that he is concerned with a critique of notions of subjectivity which posit finite subjectivity on the basis of a negation and where this finitude is subsequently overcome with the advent of reason. The notion of enjoyment rejects the possibility of an originary negation. This is because the need of enjoyment, like the need of evasion, is not based on lack but on the surplus of satisfaction. Insufficiency or indigence is ‘experienced’ only in the midst of this excess. The development of the notion of enjoyment can thus also be considered as a more general critique of the subject of the idealist tradition which maintains the priority of the freedom of the cogito despite its attempt to think the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness, or between individuality and subjectivity.9 For Levinas, the conception of a spontaneous and pre-reflective positing of consciousness as the unconditioned condition of the “I think,” while introducing a dynamic concept of identity (the identity of identity and non-identity), only serves to re-establish the priority of the cogito (HAH 8). The pre-reflective event might be an act preceding a reflective consciousness of the act but it merely describes the place where the multiplicity of the given can be brought into the present of “being-inact” (HAH 8). This leads ultimately to a subject-object polarity of selfconsciousness which, although dynamic, is caught in a circularity of identity where I=I.10 Levinas claims that Kant’s notion of the “original unity of apperception” is the superlative expression of “being-in-act” and that it is admired by Hegel as one the deepest insights of the critique of reason (HAH 8).11 As Levinas continues, this is not to suggest that the soul, or the unknown and singular essence of the subject, is to be henceforth understood as the original unity of apperception but rather that it is this original unity itself which first lets the soul appear. The transcendental unity of apperception is not merely spontaneous psychological activity, rather, it is the “actuality” of the present. Spontaneous imagination derives from this atemporal actuality and comes to have a grasp of the given in its temporal form. The atemporal exercise of this actuality is the originary positing of the “I.” According to Levinas, this describes precisely the a priori “I” of classical humanism, which Fichte, as heir to the transcendental tradition, maintains in the notion of the sovereign activity of the self-positing “I” (HAH 8–9). Everything posited in consciousness is posited by consciousness understood as this originary positing. The “non-I” will also be posited here as the objective pole of being-in-act (HAH 8–9).

54 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

For Levinas, thought not only knows things through the power of logical or theoretical reduction and deduction but in this very process produces a subjectivity distant from itself, as though its origin were still to come—the autochthonous origin in the world. This does not lead to a notion of subjectivity which is open to its own end in death, or is uprooted from the conditions of existence in its self-representation. It leads to the notion of a subjectivity that contents itself to “live from…,” and does not cease to live from thought itself, but through thought, reproduces its origin incessantly. For Levinas, this is the tragedy of existence: not the possibility of notbeing—of death—but that we cannot escape our own being. 4. THE SUBJECT OF ENJOYMENT AND IL Y A While enjoyment can be conceived of as a moment of consummation, this consummation remains a polarity of satisfaction and need, rather than being situated on one side or the other of this opposition. But how does this possibility of satisfaction stand in relation to the impossible attachment to being? Levinas’ notion of the elemental as the plenitude of being in which the “I” bathes is no doubt tied up with his concern to begin his meditation with a being that lacks nothing but again, what is the relation of the elemental and the il y a? Unlike the need of evasion, the need of enjoyment does not lead to the experience of nausea. Rather, the need of enjoyment is more akin to the pleasure-seeking subject of evasion in so far as Levinas claims to describe the pure plenitude of the autochthonous “I” in enjoyment. Nevertheless, the subject of enjoyment is troubled by the return of the il y a. Furthermore, this plenitude, as we have seen, is also pure indigence. In his discussion of the possibility and impossibility of evasion, Rolland claims that in providing for the possibility of the satisfaction of needs, Levinas’ account of the subject of enjoyment describes the “I” as evasion initself (Rolland 1982:48). In his discussion, Rolland quotes the following: …one becomes a subject of being, not by assuming being but in enjoying happiness, by the interiorisation of enjoyment which is also an exaltation, an “above being.” (TaI 119/TeI 92)

ENJOYMENT 55

Rolland suggests that by conceiving of enjoyment in this manner—as a “beyond being”—the “I” is assured of its escape from the horror of il y a. There is a moment of mastery of its own existence which is somehow a withdrawal from the anonymity of being itself. According to Rolland, the limit of Totality and Infinity lies in this account of the existent as the possibility of mastery in enjoyment (Rolland 1982:49). As a consequence, Rolland argues that Levinas fails in his ambition to provide an alternative account of subjective life to that of Heidegger. Furthermore, he claims that, as a consequence, Levinas does not go beyond the ontological difference, but only effects an inversion of the terms: being [l’être] and beings [l’étant], privileging beings over being. Is this the case? We have now returned to the question posed in the first section of this chapter concerning the relation of the moment of hypostasis and the subjectivity of enjoyment. Is enjoyment to be understood as evasion? Rolland makes two claims which must be distinguished. On one hand there is the claim that, with the notion of enjoyment, Levinas describes the possibility of evasion which he had earlier tried to show was impossible. On the other hand is the claim that with the notion of enjoyment, Levinas merely effects a reversal of the ontological difference. Putting the two claims together, Rolland argues, quoting Levinas’ later work, that in Totality and Infinity Levinas does not yet see that in subjectivity there is “an exception putting out of order the conjunction of essence, entities and the “difference” (Rolland 1982: 48).12 As we shall see in the following chapters, while in Totality and Infinity it might be argued that Levinas does not yet see subjectivity as putting the conjunction of essence (being), entities (beings) and the ontological difference out of order, the subject’s relation to the alterity of the face certainly calls it into question. I suggest that a final decision on the question of whether enjoyment effects an impossible evasion should be made after investigating the relation of the exteriority of enjoyment to the exteriority of the face.13 This will be addressed through a reading of dwelling, which will be the topic of the next chapter. For the moment, I suggest that enjoyment does not effect the evasion but corresponds more accurately to Levinas’ discussion of pleasure in De l’évasion. As suggested earlier, for Levinas in Existence and Existents, enjoyment is that way of being in the world which does not negate the singular moment in which the “I” contracts existence and finds itself bearing the weight of being. It does, however, effect a distancing and thus appears beyond being understood as il y a. However, as Levinas

56 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

argues in Totality and Infinity, this “distancing from” is not a transcendence of being. In the opening paragraphs of section II, he states it is his aim to distinguish the “relations analogous to transcendence from those of transcendence itself” (TaI 109/TeI 81). The analysis reveals that the subject of enjoyment is the immanent locus of the intentional act. As such, the representational relation which appears to be a movement of transcendence by the subject toward the object, is shown to be an event constituting the immanent identity of the “I.” Nevertheless, we might still ask whether enjoyment has taken the place of the indolence associated with the materiality of being. However, in this regard, it could be argued that enjoyment is not opposed to nausea, indolence, or the weight of being, in Totality and Infinity, but describes what Levinas, in his earlier works, called the essential satisfaction of the “I.” In enjoyment, the “I” has identity as its content and in this sense, it lacks nothing. This autochthony, however, is nothing less than the positing of identity as a withdrawal from the world and, in a certain sense, a withdrawal from being. I would suggest it is above being in this movement of separation and withdrawal but this is not an escape from being—only a distance with regard to it. There is no event of transcendence in this distancing in enjoyment. The “I” is insufficient with regard to transcendence. The subject of enjoyment is independent in the midst of a vast dependence. However, the fact that the horror of il y a—the fact that there is being—troubles the “fundamental security” (TaI 149/TeI 123) of enjoyment but does not precede it, ensures the possibility of encountering being (conceived of as il y a) without this bringing the “sovereignty of the I to naught” (TaI 149/TeI 123). This would seem to secure the subject of enjoyment from the weight of anonymity which had previously marked its advent. The “I” is to a certain extent freed from the “fatality of anonymous existence” (EE 99/DE 171). However, the “I” discovers that this is not a freedom it secures for itself. As Levinas writes at the end of Existence and Existents: In position, in the relationship which it effects with a place, in the here, we will find the event by which existence in general, anonymous and inexorable, opens to leave room for a private domain, an inwardness, the unconscious, sleep and oblivion, which consciousness, always wakefulness, recall and reflection, is back to back with. (EE 99/DE 171)

ENJOYMENT 57

Enjoyment, back to back with intentionality, is the fact of this opening of anonymity to the inwardness of a private and singular being. Enjoyment is the turning of “bare existence” into a life. This relation neither entails a negation of il y a, nor the subject of enjoyment. Thus Levinas argues that, if enjoyment is an evasion, then it is a fleeing into life and not the possibility of transcending being (TaI 149/TeI 123). That the subject maintains a relation to this realm of anonymous existence— of il y a across a separation and a distance—points to a new event. Thus we can argue that enjoyment does not effect an evasion or escape. Does this have consequences for Rolland’s second claim that Levinas merely undertakes a reversal of being and beings and does not yet see in subjectivity an exception putting out of order the conjunction of essence, entities and the difference (Rolland 1982:49)? We would be pushing our reading too far to suggest that we can see this exception in the subjectivity of enjoyment. There is no doubt that, with the notion of enjoyment, Levinas is attempting to describe a subjectivity in relation to a world that does not fit into the ontological categories of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. The subject of enjoyment is beyond being, in this sense, and it could be argued that a reversal of being and beings has been effected. However, is the inversion of being and beings the last moment of the description of subjectivity in Totality and Infinity? In Totality and Infinity, Levinas develops his own notion of being in the world based on his rethinking of the primary relation to being as il y a in his early works. As we saw in the previous chapter, Levinas begins an analysis of the subjectivity of enjoyment by contrasting it with intentionality. However, this is only the first step in his rethinking of the identity of the intentional subject. As the analyses of the next chapter suggest, Levinas, with the introduction of “the dwelling” as an alternative account of being in the world, opposes the idea that the subjectivity of enjoyment is the forgotten origin of intentional consciousness which effects a spontaneous self-positing that overcomes the horror of il y a. To conclude this chapter we will look more closely at the separation and distance effected in enjoyment. 5. ENJOYMENT: LIGHT AND DISTANCE In Existence and Existents, Levinas suggests that the distance across which the subject approaches an object is due to a withdrawal of the subject at the moment of its tending toward the object. For Levinas, this possibility of a relation and a withdrawal is discussed in terms of the

58 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

“miracle of light” (EE 48/DE 76). In Existence and Existents and Time and the Other, he does not link this ‘miracle’ to a new event in subjective life but suggests that it is effected in the sincerity of enjoyment itself. All enjoyment is a way of being but also sensation—that is light and knowledge. It is absorption of the object but also distance with regard to it. (TO 63/TA 155) In Totality and Infinity, there has been a transformation of the notion of enjoyment as it was understood in Existence and Existents and Time and the Other. This distinction can be seen most clearly in terms of Levinas’ association of enjoyment and light in the earlier works and the transformations of this medium in Totality and Infinity. The transition is emphasised by Cathryn Vasseleu who discusses the manner in which Levinas, in his early works, starts to rethink “light” in terms of the sensuousness of enjoyment (Vasseleu 1998:78–79). This linking of the metaphorics of light to the sensuous medium of the subject’s immediate relation to the world is crucial to Levinas’ critique of knowledge. Vasseleu suggests that, in Existence and Existents, light is to be understood as the medium of our substantial immersion in life. The ego of intentionality is to be rethought in terms of its relation to this world of sensuous light which is associated with a postponement of the night of il y a. Levinas’ analyses in Existence and Existents and Time and the Other do suggest such an interpretation. As such, these works cannot avoid the question of a re-establishing of a subject of mastery in an oppositional relation between the night of il y a and the light of sensuous enjoyment. However, the relations between the ego of enjoyment, intentional consciousness and il y a in Totality and Infinity do not correspond to the relations established in the early works. In Totality and Infinity, the light of enjoyment is a medium of warmth in which the ego bathes and not something emanating from it. This warmth is contrasted to the light which provides the illumination which permits an object, coming from without, to appear. It is no longer possible to suggest that the warmth of enjoyment is equivalent to the light which Levinas had earlier described as the miracle which is the essence of thought. Furthermore, in Totality and Infinity, light is not contrasted to il y a but is the “indeterminate density” of this void itself (TaI 190/TaI 165). Thus Levinas says that light does not arrest the incessant play of the il y a (TaI 190/TaI 165). Vision in the light, however, is the possibility of forgetting the inevitable return of this apeiron. This vision is a possibility of the subject of enjoyment, who, as we have already

ENJOYMENT 59

discussed, is not the origin of this void of light, nor a visible object situated in it but a moment of postponement. It is as though the instant of evanescence does not occur in the moment of a blink of the eye but in the moment of the eyes first opening. As Levinas suggests, one only has to open one’s eyes to see the world (TaI 130/TaI 103). Up until this point in Levinas’ argument he claims to have been guided by the notion that representation is not the work of “the look” itself (TaI 189/TaI 163). The look, or intentionality of consciousness, is essentially related to a sensible subjectivity. However, the relation of the subject of enjoyment and intentional consciousness is not understandable as a relation of a sensuous foundation and a thinking subject. The light associated with the ego of intentionality is not the light in which the ego of enjoyment bathes. Levinas does not confound the realm of warmth and the realm of light in Totality and Infinity. The light which illuminates and is ‘naturally’ understood does not emanate from the self, nor is it the medium which the ego inhabits. The contrast between the night of il y a and the light of the ego of enjoyment no longer holds. It is not il y a which reveals the limits of subjective identity in incarnation but the advent of a new “light.” Levinas describes this as the face of the other, who awakens the phenomenal subject to a sensibility that can only be defined through a radically different “optics” which Levinas calls “ethics” (TaI 23/TaI xii). The analyses in Existence and Existents hint at this notion. Time is required to undo the knot that evanescence cannot undo. The existent, who is described as a scintillation, does not break with the anonymous night but instead postpones it. This, Levinas claims, is not a possibility of the subject itself. Although it finds itself already in itself, it is not aware of the production of distance effectuated in its labour. Il y a threatens the subject of hypostasis but it is precisely because this subject finds that it can postpone this moment that light turns into certainty and il y a is reified into an anonymous night. The subject, in other words, does not call the clarity of light into question. Nor is light questioned by the continual murmuring of il y a, which threatens the subject with non-sense but does not awaken it to the penury of its phenomenality. With the notion of the alterity of the face, Levinas presents an optics which rethinks the meaning of vision, breaking down the opposition between the sensuous light and the realm of knowledge without conceiving the latter as a mere emanation of the former (TaI 188–189/TaI 162–163). The danger in not making a clear distinction between sensuous light and the realm of knowledge in the early work leads to accusations that

60 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

corporeality is, for Levinas, ultimately to be blamed for the fall into phenomenality and the inability to recover one’s true self. Levinas attempts to explain that the inadequacy of the subject to its own phenomenality lies in the existence of others who continually call me into question and reveal to me a life beyond my world of possessions. Accordingly, I do not discover a lack but instead I am shown the arbitrary nature of my usurpation of the world. Rather than looking to being to re-establish the necessity of my place and the truth of my products, I am asked to speak for the first time.

CHAPTER 4 The Ambiguous Economy of Dwelling

1. DWELLING: THE GIFT OF TlME This insecurity, which thus delineates a margin of nothingness about the interior life, confirming its insularity, is lived in the instant of enjoyment as the concern for the morrow. (TaI 150/TeI 123) Having worked back from intentional consciousness to the moment of living from the elements in enjoyment, Levinas argues that the autochthonous subject has a distance with regard to bare existence, yet remains tied to being. In the instant of enjoyment, il y a haunts the subject. In enjoyment, one lives the unbreakable attachment to being. In the very instant of separation there is a holding at a distance which remains an entanglement in being. The attachment is effected in this holding back. Levinas describes this entanglement as lived in enjoyment as a concern for the future. There is, in other words, a separation with regard to being but still no departure. If this is the case, Levinas asks, how then is it possible that this concern does not overwhelm the subject of enjoyment? How is intentional consciousness possible? Already in Existence and Existents, Levinas suggests that the difference between intentionality and enjoyment lies in the fact that intentional subjectivity always maintains a distance with regard to the object (EE 46/DE 72). He claims that an event of postponement must have taken place—an event that cannot be effected by the subject of enjoyment alone. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas investigates this event of temporal postponement in distinction from, yet presupposing, the

62 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

subject of enjoyment. This postponement is effected through “recollection” and “dwelling.” In the section entitled “The Dwelling,” the subject is described as a “being at home with oneself” [chez soi], or as “dwelling” [la demeure] (TaI 150/TeI 124). This autochthony is shown to be dependant on the welcome by/of another being. The subjectivity of dwelling is not, in other words, the independent cogito. The thinking being is already engaged by another being unrecognised by the subject of enjoyment. According to Levinas, in dwelling there is an event of recollection— the deferral of the immediacy of enjoyment through work—in which the subject is described as an economy of needs and means without ends. Unlike the account of economic time in Existence and Existents, which is to say, of postponement in which the subject is distracted from being but does not escape it, dwelling is essentially ambiguous, being both a movement of evasion—understood as a return to the extraterritoriality of the self—and the first encounter with alterity. Levinas claims that the notion of subjective identity associated with dwelling is both open and closed. It is closed in the sense that dwelling remains a movement of contraction of identity. However, it is open in so far as it maintains a relation to an exterior world and discovers that recollection/postponement already refers to a welcome (TaI 155/TeI 128). The economy of dwelling is very different to the notion of a subjective totality which flees its irremissible attachment to the present. In the previous chapter, it was suggested that enjoyment is an attempt to think the primary relation to the “world” independently of the question of the relation of subjectivity to being as il y a. However, it was also suggested that the notions of “world” and “subjectivity,” in enjoyment, remain attached to being. The notion of dwelling and the postponement it effects returns to the question of the relation of subjectivity and being in an attempt to rethink this relation without negating the subjectivity of enjoyment. In other words, dwelling and enjoyment cannot be read as Levinas’ two alternatives to Heideggerian inauthentic and authentic being, respectively. Rather, dwelling continues the reconfiguration of subjectivity, world and being, introducing an new dimension of ‘intimacy’. The primordial function of the home does not consist in orienting being by the architecture of the building and in discovering a site, but in breaking the plenum of the element, in opening in it the utopia in which the “I” recollects itself in dwelling at home with itself. (TaI 156/TeI 130)

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 63

As Alison Ainley points out, we cannot overlook the reference to Heidegger in the thought of dwelling (Ainley 1996:7–20). Levinas, she reminds us, sees Heideggerian dwelling as a will to peasant rootedness where it is a matter of “building locations in language, in the material world and in philosophical ontology” (Ainley 1996:9). In Totality and Infinity, Levinas is critical of Heidegger’s edification of the world, suggesting that “things” are made the “foundation of a site, the quintessence of all the relations that constitute our presence on the earth” (TaI 77/TeI 49). Clearly this is another reference to Heidegger’s account of the practical immersion of Dasein in the world. As we have already seen, Levinas considers that, in conceiving of the fundamental relation to the world in terms of this practical engagement with tools, albeit a pre-theoretical engagement, Heidegger nevertheless fails to see the positive event of enjoyment of this world. With the notion of dwelling Levinas introduces another aspect. For Levinas, in dwelling, the world is encountered not only in the consummation of enjoyment or as what one edifies, but as what one gives (TaI 77/TeI 49). This giving presupposes the gathering of possessions and an intimacy which is not an illusory production of subjectivity. Levinas’ analysis suggests that dwelling or habitation is to be understood otherwise than being-in-the-world and is not just a reinterpretation of it (TaI 152–153/TeI 125–126). While Heidegger considers being-in as always a being-alongside and a being-with, this shared world is inauthentic. In Being and Time, Heidegger claims that being-in is always accompanied by a feeling of “not-being-at-home,” or an “uncanniness” [Unheimlichkeit] (BT 233). For Heidegger, this feeling of uncanniness is associated with anxiety. Being-in, which is a falling into everydayness, is shown to have a dual directionality, that is, it is always accompanied by anxiety or uncanniness which “brings it back from its absorption in the world” (BT 233). For Heidegger, the secret and clandestine [heimlich] world of Dasein’s everydayness is opened to its authentic being (becomes unheimlich) (BT 233). The Levinasian analysis of dwelling, based in the notion of enjoyment, suggests that the duality of being-in and not-being-at-home in Heidegger’s work does not question the fundamental being-in-the-world of Dasein but ultimately relies on a notion of an illusory intimacy that is only interrupted by being. For Levinas, the dwelling is not an account of being-in, at least not in the sense of an intimate attachment to being. Enjoyment is already the production of an interval of separation. The intimacy produced in/by dwelling also involves a distancing with regard to the world. Dwelling

64 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

is already an exile, that is, an extraterritoriality with regard to being-in. Intimacy is not opposed to exile.1 Paradoxically, the movement of withdrawal in dwelling describes the interiority of subjective identity. Yet this interiority remains a non-site, an intimacy and a “quintessential” openness. Dwelling is essentially ambiguous—it is an interiority and extraterritoriality with regard to the world but essentially open to another dimension of exteriority. Levinas claims that dwelling is the condition of “possession” but is not itself a possession. In other words, the dwelling is not a fixed locus or location that will be inhabited by a being after the fact. Rather, it is the actual event of interiorisation. This movement of interiorisation is one of the possession of possessions. Recalling the discussion of hypostasis, it could be suggested that this is the event in which “a verb becomes a substantive.” In other words, dwelling is the concrete accomplishment of the event of hypostasis. As Llewelyn suggests, habitation is the primary mode of having, after the suspension of the anonymity of “to have” [avoir] implicit in il y a (Llewelyn 1995a).2 Enjoyment is the suspension of the anonymity of being but does not issue in a “being.” It is the transformation of the verb into a substantive which in turn is to be understood in terms of habitation. Habitation is not just a mode of being and a deficient one at that but a moment of hypostasis which remains ambiguous. It is an “amphibological mutation from an event into an entity” in which the subject is neither entity nor event (EE 79–80/DE 136).3 Thus before we start thinking of this mutation as an originary ground or slip back into conceiving of the dwelling as a ‘place where to stand’, which is to say, as the ground of all possibilities including that possibility of giving, we must recall that this notion of habitation and dwelling as the non-site describes the ego in its extraterritoriality. As the following discussion suggests, dwelling does not fit into the dialectic of being-in and not-being-at-home in so far as it does not confront the anxiety of being for death but is an opening to the Other. The horror before the il y a is not overcome but undergoes a continual postponement in dwelling. For Levinas, the “utopia” of dwelling is a “non-place” and a “non-possession” in the sense that it is a commencement or space of a primary relation which has the double structure of “intimacy.” The critical significance of dwelling is this idea that the postponement of il y a requires an ‘intimacy’ which cannot be found in the relation of subject and being nor be presupposed as a primary everydayness.

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 65

Levinas writes that this intimacy or gentleness is a welcome that precedes the re-collection or postponement of il y a: Recollection refers to a welcome. (TaI 155/TeI 128)4 Dwelling is not a site or closed space of a relation of self to world but “recollection” [recueillement] (TaI 155/TeI 128). This re-collection does not refer to a primary collection or ‘gathering’ but to an openness or acollection [accueillement]—to a welcome [un accueil] (TaI 155/TeI 128). The referential, rather than oppositional or conditional, relation is made more apparent in the French, where welcome and recollection clearly have the same core infinitive. While the precedence of welcome [accueil] over recollection [recueillement] is not understandable purely in terms of this etymological link, it provides a useful starting point. “Welcome,” it can be argued, refers to a necessary excess of recollection. An excess which is not graspable in terms of an overflowing of self. The excess, this movement of recollection, “proceeds from the other” (TaI 196/TeI 170). This would explain the openness of recollection which can no longer be equated with a closed economy of the “I” reflecting on itself. Welcome would be the acollection of recollection, or the fact that recollection is not just a gathering of things in a site but a relation to an exteriority which does not return to the immanency of oneself. In other words, in the movement of recollection or gathering there is an undoing—a referring to the welcome by/of the other. These two aspects—recollection and welcome—point to the essential ambiguity of dwelling. This duality is not an opposition but a doubling of space into an interval of postponement and separation. The feat of having limited a part of this world and having closed it off, having access to the elements I enjoy by way of the door and the window, realises extraterritoriality and the sovereignty of thought, anterior to the world to which it is posterior. Anterior posteriorly: separation is not “known” in this manner; it is produced in this manner. (TaI 169–170/TeI 144 translation modified) Levinas calls this postponement of recollection a “spasm of time” and a “transcendental energy” which is time itself (TaI 170/TeI 144–145). The question remains: Where does it come from? In an explicit reference to Heidegger, Levinas insists that this moment of separation

66 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

describes an identity that is disengaged from the situation of an immersion in the world (TaI 170/TeI 144). As we have seen, in Existence and Existents, the autochthonous “I” in the in-stance of “mastery” discovers that it is not free, being alone responsible for the consummation of the infinite (EE 78–9/DE 134–5). This responsibility is a fate that it can neither evade, nor choose. Time is required to untie “the knot” that evanescence cannot undo (EE 78/DE 134 and EE 86/DE 147). We think…that time does not convey the insufficiency of the relationship with being which is effected in the present, but that it is called for to provide a remedy for the excess of the definitive contact which the instant effects. (EE 85–86/DE 147) Evanescence already introduces a notion of discontinuous time and challenges the mastery of the ego in hypostasis in so far as il y a continues to haunt the “I.” But, it cannot give itself this time, precisely because of the enchainment to being. It can hope for a future but this hope does not have the force to effect what it hopes for (EE 89/DE 152). This hope opens the dimension of economic time or the “time of economy” which compensates for the definitive contact with the present but it does not overcome this present (EE 90/DE 154). Rather, it is the possibility of the forgetting of the instant, in which “the engagement in existence, which is effort, is repressed, compensated for and put to an end, instead of being repaired in its very present” (EE 90/DE 154). This time, which is exterior to the subject and in which the subject has time to work, is contrasted with a notion of time as the dynamic recommencement of the subject as another. It is with the latter notion of time that Levinas introduces alterity. Dwelling is a separation which would condition the possibility of “the in view of oneself” that Levinas claims characterises Dasein’s care for its own being. Levinas questions Heidegger’s notion of reflection as a “radiating back from there “in which the original structure of understanding is conceived of as the reflection of the world to which Dasein is first completely given.5 In this instance temporality is sought in Dasein’s authentic being-toward-death which will explain the “spasm of time” in which Dasein is more than its everyday being-in-the-world. As such, subjectivity is guaranteed by itself—it owes itself to itself— despite the apparent passivity of thrownness. For Levinas, on the contrary, the subject of enjoyment cannot produce this distance out of itself. The separation “implies a new event” (TaI 170/TeI 145).

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 67

This event is the relation with the Other [Autrui] who welcomes me in the Home [la Maison], the discrete presence of the Feminine [Feminin] (TaI 170/TeI 145) 2. RECOLLECTION AND WELCOME: SEXUAL DIFFERENCE For Levinas, the intimacy of welcome describes the home as the nonsite of sexual difference, where masculinity and femininity are the “cardinal points of the horizon where interior life takes place” (TaI 158/ TeI 131). The feminine is found at precisely that point in which the boundaries of being, subject and world are shown to be in flux. That is, fundamental ontology does not simply give way to regional ontology but discovers another dimension. The introduction of the feminine and sexual difference in this account of dwelling is a much debated issue in feminist readings of Levinas. While in the following I focus on the positive attempt to provide a critique of subjectivity, it must be said that Levinas’ association of the feminine with a silent otherness that in some sense constitutes rather than questions subjective being is highly problematic. As Tina Chanter suggests, the question of priority which is raised in relation to the feminine and the Other in Levinas’ work is complex (Chanter 1991:117– 129 and 1995:190–224). The complexity lies in the fact that it is integrally tied to the question of the relation of ethics and ontology in Levinas’ work. As such, I suggest that the question of priority can only be decided through a more detailed examination of the role of the feminine in the reconfiguration of subjectivity and being. Levinas introduces the feminine as a “delightful lapse of the ontological order,” which makes recollection possible (TaI 150/TeI 124). This lapse is a defaillance—a fainting, a “blackout” (TaI 155/TeI 129). In relation to the language of Existence and Existents, this event can be understood as the interruption of the incessant insomnia of being which, on re-awakening, could not recall this lapse. An event happens which, in a sense, never happens to the ego because it is precisely the moment of its suspension. We might name this event the unconscious but this would be a mistake, for in doing so we would give it back to the self as merely the negative moment of consciousness. Defaillance is a suspension of the incessant play of conscious-unconscious. The subject of hypostasis is interrupted, despite itself. Even in the absolute passivity of its attachment to being the ego is active as this spontaneous living

68 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

from the world in enjoyment. Even in sleep there is no disruption of being. This interruption, which the ego cannot produce, must occur as another kind of event. Seen from this perspective, Levinas’ notion of “the feminine” would seem to be the “power” or possibility of the interruption of the irremissible attachment to being that haunts the subject of enjoyment, where “power,” for the first time, is revealed as gentleness. In Existence and Existents “the feminine” would appear as the principle of passivity that interrupts both the “virility of being” and a subjectivity which is identified with the masculine subject even in its proclaimed neutrality.6 Is this also the case in Totality and Infinity? There are some subtle changes in the account of enjoyment, being and world in this work. There is no doubt that “the feminine” is introduced to undo the immediacy of the subject’s attachment to being. According to Levinas, “recollection” is the “suspension of the immediate reactions the world solicits” (TaI 154/TeI 127). At the same time enjoyment is an immediate relation to the world “that never becomes the bare fact of existing” (TaI 154/TeI 127). The postponement of the ontological order questions the virility of being, revealing the impossibility in being itself. Femininity signifies a suspension of the immediacy of enjoyment which is not a virile force but the passivity of a body enjoying the elements. Enjoyment in its attachment to being is not virile, at least not in the sense of being a principle of generation or potency. That is, as we saw above, the enjoyment of the world is beyond the Aristotelian notion of activity that is a realisation of potency. It is only through the postponement of the world of nourishment that a generative, virile ego arises. In other words, only through dwelling—only after the recollection effected in dwelling—can we begin to speak of a being who can act, which is to say, who can hold the world at a distance by turning the world into a possession. In dwelling, the signification of virility itself undergoes a transformation into the possibility of generation and production. However, as will be discussed below, the first production is not a representation but the pure energy of labour. Labour is the energy—the first being-in-act—which is only possible for a being who dwells. Dwelling is “a node where a movement of interiorisation meets a movement of labour and acquisition” (TaI 163/TeI 137). The virility of being is called into question through a genealogy of virility itself. In other words, the primary being-in-act of subjectivity is not a power attributable to a subject. The so-called virile ego, usually identified with masculine being in the history of Western thinking, is found to be based

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 69

on the denial of the arbitrariness of a primary being-in-act. This arbitrariness is not equivalent to spontaneous self-positing but challenges the idea that a ‘spontaneous’ being-in-act can constitute a solid grounding of thought. This is not merely a reversal of masculine and feminine principles such that masculine being is secondary to the feminine. It means that activity should be considered starting from this alternative notion of being-in-act. The labourer or the primary producer is not the first cause of things. This energy, which Levinas calls “will” [une volonté], attests to an event that cannot come from the “will” but which the will presupposes (TaI 166/TeI 140). A will is defined by a movement in which a distance is traversed. Neither imbibing nor grasping and holding before oneself, will is primarily a “groping” [tâtonnement] (TaI 167/TeI 141). This movement, although directed outwards, is primarily a concern for oneself. Groping is a creating of distance in a space where “I” am not yet situated with regard to the outside world. I do not see the distance between myself and the objects in the world. I must feel my way so that I do not come up against these objects as obstacles I meet head on. Nevertheless, I am already at a distance with regard to them. The banality of the image of the hand that saves you hitting your head describes the ambiguity of the body itself. It is neither a purely lived body, nor a purely physical body, both of which can only see the hand or the head as an extension of the unified body; both of which can only describe the interaction after the fact, losing sight of the essential delay effected. To conceive of the will—of labour—as this movement of distanciation, is not to posit the will as the first cause, either as a biological event or a consciousness of ‘this as that’. Rather, it is to insinuate a distance between will and world, a distance which does not disappear as a result of the fact that the self goes out into the world. Levinas claims that this is to conceive of a separated being, a being who “in-habits” the world; one who comes to the world from a dimension of “in-teriority” (TaI 154/TeI 127). The egoism of the dwelling is the fact that this separated being maintains a distance by itself. This distance is with regard to the world it approaches but not over and against the world as an obstacle encountered. By itself [chez soi] but not alone— this is the significance of the fact that recollection refers to welcome. The dwelling plays a crucial role in Levinas’ rethinking of the meaning of subjectivity as an “original structure” situated between the ontological and the physical. The importance of the dwelling lies not only in a rethinking of the Heideggerian notion of being-in-the-world,

70 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

which can itself be conceived of as an attempt to define human being beyond the opposition of the biological and the intellectual. Rather, its importance lies in its attempt to describe a form of sociality inherent in this ontology conceived of in terms of the welcome. This sociality relies on the location of feminine alterity in the dwelling. As such it is always in danger of reducing the feminine to the realm of the home, especially if the dwelling is reduced once again to the private and natural sphere of human inhabitation, over and against the public and social realm. However, this locating of the feminine alterity can also be read as a challenge to the limits of Heideggerian ontology which, for Levinas, will by definition reduce the subject to the neutrality of its relation to being. Indeed this earth-maternity determines the whole Western civilisation of property, exploitation, political tyranny, and war. Heidegger does not discuss the pretechnological power of possession effected in the enrootedness of perception. (CP 53) Levinas argues here against a presupposed attachment to the earth in Heideggerian ontology. This is an enrootedness that somehow provides the secure locus of finite being. Dwelling cannot be reduced to this “pretechnological power” invested in a maternal earth, on the basis of which being builds and cultivates. Levinas claims that Heidegger refuses to discuss and fails to understand the pretechnological power of possession (CP 53). It is with the notion of the dwelling that Levinas argues that the attachment to the earth in Heideggerian ontology is a movement of domination after the fact. As such it could be suggested that he challenges the subordination of the feminine as the material basis of technological production and reveals the fiction of the virility of being. In Levinas’ alternative, the feminine is a power essential for the possibility of a subject who is capable of possessing the world and ultimately can represent the world ethically.7 The dwelling describes an ego who is not “invaded by nature” (TaI 170/TeI 144). However, for Levinas, this separation is not a consequence of the subject having become a thinking being—a subject who has chosen the freedom of reason and thereby represents the world to itself through the power of the intellect. Rather, the extraterritoriality of dwelling is a primary “pre-theoretical” relation which cannot be reduced to any theoretical reflection on the separation of mind and body. The notion of the will, thus described, is very different from the notion of an active free will asserting itself in the world. However, at the same

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 71

time, it cannot be conceived of merely as passive receptivity.8 This will embarks on its work. 3. POSSESSION AND/OR REPRESENTATION The notion of dwelling describes an economy of needs without ends. As suggested above, this economy gives rise to possessions. Possession is to be understood as a relation with the world before representation but beyond nature. The gathering of possessions in the home is a consequence of and secondary to the recollection of dwelling itself. The world becomes a possession only by the fact that the groping hand grasps— goes towards the world only to bring it back to itself, no longer as nourishment but as possession. Dwelling is already an economy of exchange, based on the ‘naming’ of the world in possession. In this economy, the world is gathered and shared and everything has value in relation and only in relation to everything else. One possession can be exchanged for another. However, this naming is not a theoretical identification of something as this or that, The anonymity of the elemental has been suspended in bringing the world into my home. However, this suspension of anonymity is not a recognition of the thing as this or that. As my possession, its identity is constituted in reference to me and not in itself. In possession, the world is “rendered interior” (TaI 157/TeI 131). The value of possessions can be fixed in a common currency but this is itself posterior to the initial negotiation. Thus for Levinas, the bartering of possessions takes place on the basis of a need anterior to the system where the value of things has been fixed in a common currency. In other words, prior to representation. As such, in dwelling I relate to an outside but this is an outside from which I continually withdraw; from which I absent myself. An unbridgeable separation remains. The possession has two irreconcilable meanings. It is my product and an exchangeable good, the value of which is determined according to the need of the other. These two perspectives are reduced to a common currency through a representation in which the unicity of each perspective is elided. For Levinas, however, this need not be understood as a negation or dialectical synthesis of two irreducible opposites. The two withdraw into themselves, remaining absent from this event. The significance of separation lies in the possibility of the continued existence of the singular ego, already beyond nature but never wholly in the world.

72 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Thus Levinas insists that identity is determined in representation but this representation will always betray the value as possession and product. In other words, there remains an excess to any meaning-giving determination. The apparent neutrality of the representational subject and the moment of identification is belied by a difference that is not reducible to a biologically or physically determined fact.9 However, this is not to suggest that the representational act is reducible to a type of possession. For Levinas, there is no doubt that representations, conceived phenomenologically, are considered precisely as a type of possession. The subject who represents the world to itself can share this knowledge with another through the common medium of language. Thus representation, conceived of as the possibility of sharing, is considered to be a special kind of possession. It appears to be independent of the immediacy of the need governing the labour and exchange value of material possessions but, nevertheless, it presupposes the postponement effected in labour. This notion of representation as a possession—as an expression of a subject in relation to another subject—issues in a certain model of sociality that appears to introduce another dimension to the realm of economic exchange. The sociality governed by the process of exchange is enhanced by a process of negotiation—a dialogue—on the basis of which an agreed value or meaning will be determined. Thus individuals—subjects who up until now have been reduced to the phenomenality of their works—make an appearance in the economic field. They argue over value; take part in the determination of meaning; interpret the claims of the other. Representation is, thus conceived of as the possibility of peaceable sociality. However, Levinas asks how the materiality of possession turns into expression? Where, in other words, does the peaceable language come from? Dwelling is the possibility of a subject existing independently of the world it does not cease to enjoy. However, Levinas insists that representational consciousness can in no way be derived from this ego. That is, language is not just another possession and thought the utilisation of it. The thinking “I“is not a possibility of this being, either as something it gives itself, or finds within itself thanks to the postponement of the elemental. One could take up such a position but only by negating the particularity of the body— or subjectivity—which Levinas has been at such pains to affirm. However, the alternative—that in holding to the particularity of subjectivity all representation is conceived of as an arbitrary expression of a subject that finds its objectivity in a continual and endless process of negotiation which

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 73

relies on the good will of the other—is equally unsatisfactory (TaI 168– 69/TeI 143). Levinas’ notion of representation relies on a notion of universality which requires neither the negation of a unique subjective identity, nor relies on a morality of good intention. For a representation to be more than just another kind of possession— an arbitrary expression of a subject that has its value determined in a system from which the subject withdraws—another event must take place. For Levinas, to represent is to refuse enjoyment and possession. To represent, “I must know how to give what I possess” (TaI 171/Tel 145). Levinas claims that to understand representation as a gift is to recognise the “moral” conditions necessary for thought and to realise that the temporality given in dwelling does not fulfil these conditions. The gift of time is not the gift of language.10 This means that we can no longer conceive of representation as a primary valuation; it is no longer the sole and primary function or meaning of representation to assign a value in an economy of exchange. If it is not possible to draw from an impassive contemplation of an object the finality necessary for action, is it any easier to derive from commitment, from action, from care, the freedom of contemplation representation evinces? (TaI 169/TeI 143) Levinas realises he is treading a fine line between a radical subjectivism and a radical objectivism. To say that re presentation is in no way derived from the economy of exchange is to argue that representation is not necessary in order to act, will, feel or desire. This, Levinas claims, is to challenge the intellectualist thesis which subordinates life to thought, even when recognising the lived body. However, the alternative to the intellectualist thesis is equally unsatisfactory in so far as it conceives of representation as the “residue of an act suspended and hesitant, representation as the misfire of action” (TaI 168–169/TeI 143). This is to suggest that the alternative to intellectualism is relativism—the idea that all thought is the outcome of a random engagement of the lived body and the world. If we accept that representation is conditioned, as Levinas has been arguing, then we must confront the problem of relativism. For Levinas, an alternative solution begins in the recognition that, despite the life of enjoyment and possession being considered in retrospect as the condition of representation, representation is in no way a possibility of the subject of dwelling (TaI 169/TeI 144). Representation “evinces a new energy,” which comes from elsewhere (TaI 169/TeI 144). But what is this new energy?

74 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

4. REALMS OF LIGHT: NEW VISIONS The final part of Section Two of Totality and Infinity, entitled “The World of Phenomena and Expression,” offers some clue to the understanding of this subject. Here Levinas establishes that if dwelling is beyond being, considered in terms of il y a, the subject of dwelling is not, consequently, reducible to a phenomenal event. The postponement of the il y a does not mean that the subject of enjoyment and dwelling is to be understood solely in terms of its phenomenality. Levinas considers that there is a dissimulation of the subject of dwelling in its work (TaI 176–178/TeI 150–152). The subject produces a work and thereby makes an appearance—becomes a phenomenal event. However, the subject always maintains a distance from the phenomenal. It is not so much unable to bridge that gap as unaware of the gap at all. Postponing the elemental, unbeknownst to itself, it produces a distance with regard to the world. As Levinas explains: “[a] nterior posteriorly: separation is not “known” in this manner, it is produced in this manner” (TaI 170/TeI 144 translation modified). It is a perspective involving a reflection back on oneself, which Levinas famously refers to as the Odyssean journey: “where the adventure pursued in the world is but the accident of a return” (TaI 176–177/TeI 151). This notion of reflection has a lot in common with Heidegger’s notion of self-consciousness in which it is the world that reflects myself to myself. For Heidegger, Dasein does not stand outside itself, although it is already a folding in on itself and a projection and in this way testifies to a postponement and the advent of a certain temporality. However, while Heidegger recognises the non-intentionality of Dasein’s relation to the world, he considers the impossibility of the encompassing gaze to be the consequence of the temporality effected by the relation to being. For Levinas, it is not being which makes all encompassing intentions impossible. It is only with the arrival of the Other [Autrui] that I become aware of the distance between myself and my expressions in the world. The Other questions even the nonintended consequences of the will’s labour, awakening it to its arbitrariness and to its phenomenality (TaI 180/TeI 155). The phenomenal world is understood as that world in which things are manifest in absence (TaI 178/TeI 153). In so far as the subject of dwelling absents itself from its works, it participates in the creation of meaning, but in the process it is dissimulated. In this there is a division of the subject of dwelling and phenomenal expression which seems to

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 75

reinstate an old opposition of the real and apparent worlds. However, this must be investigated in the light of the account of subjectivity that Levinas offers at this stage. First, we must ask what kind of being is now associated with the subject of dwelling. Second, the use of this apparent opposition, soon reveals itself as a critique which divests the opposition of its foundational status. The totality of contentment betrays [accuse] its own phenomenality when an exteriority that does not slip into the void of needs gratified or frustrated supervenes. The totality of contentment reveals [révèle] its phenomenality when this exteriority, incommensurable with needs, breaks interiority with this very exteriority. (TaI 179/TeI 154) The suspension of the anonymity of il y a, which locates the subject of dwelling beyond being, is not an entering into the clarity of a relation in which the “I” becomes the origin of the light which is necessary for the representation of the world. Levinas insists that “representation is not a work of the look itself” (TaI 189/TeI 163). The subject of dwelling displays its phenomenality to another but is not thereby phenomenal, as it awakens to the arbitrary and centripetal nature of its postponement of the elemental. In other words, the subject of dwelling has a phenomenality only after the arrival of the Other. To discover one’s phenomenality as a consequence of the relation to the Other is to recognise an essential element of non-intentionality and nonparticipation of subjectivity in its own products. The subject only engages or participates in an economy deriving from the products of its labour, across a separation which the it catches sight of so to speak, in the light of the Other. In other words, the light of the phenomenal world is not independent of the arrival of the Other. The light necessary for knowledge and representation is not given by the subject of dwelling but already presupposes the Other, who is not therefore the source of light but calls into question the nature of the panoramic gaze which characterises the subject who possesses the world. Thereby, Levinas attempts to locate the ‘origin’ of representation in the relation to the Other. This attempt, as already suggested above, does not mean that the act of representation cannot itself appear as a type of possession, that is, as a mode of possessing the world. Levinas’ intention is only to suggest that the truth— the originary light of this meaning giving act—does not lie in a subject who masters and conquers the objects of its perception

76 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

but is in a certain sense produced in the relation to the Other, who first calls me to answer to the unintended consequences of my labour. The problem with the notion of intentional consciousness, in other words, is that it models representation on possession and does not consider the possibility that representation is not a possibility of this subject alone. Levinas attempts to explain that the desire for presence, which is expressed in the production of works, is unachievable. This discovery does not lead to despair nor to the decision to abandon the notion of existence altogether as a fiction. Rather, the fiction is itself interpreted in terms of an underlying desire which ultimately points to the Other as the face and an idea of infinity which exceeds the power of the finite subject. This does not render the subject of dwelling powerless but permits this subject to “recognise his phenomenality, the penury of his plenitude, a penury inconvertible into needs which, being beyond plenitude and void, cannot be gratified” (TaI 180/TeI 155). Thus we come back to the possibility of a relation to the world in which subjectivity is capable of possession and a certain mastery but which does not mean therefore, or necessarily, that the subject is the sufficient origin of meaning, nor alternatively, is to be thought as founded on an irrecuperable loss. This distinction between the subject of possession and the subject of intentionality is fundamental to Levinas’ rethinking of the relation of phenomenality and materiality. To accept the validity of Levinas’ account of the subject of dwelling —to accept that it is not reducible to the phenomenal—is to accept the possibility that there is a subject whose meaning is not exhausted by its description as a meaning-giving being. The essence of this being does not lie in its relation to the world in which it qualifies the visible object. To exceed the phenomenal is not to exist in the dark. The notion of excess suggests an implicit critique of the metaphorics of light and the opposition of light and darkness on which phenomenology is based. Appearance is always and already a dissimulation. It is not that I am shut out, or am inadequate, or that there is a realm in which I always withdraw—a world behind the scenes—but simply that the “unicity” of subjectivity is an excess. Even my own summation will have been conditioned by this excess which will not take part in the play of darkness and light which is essential to the phenomenal world. The phenomenal intention, it might be argued, is constantly belied by non-intentional effects. It is precisely where the subject by itself [chez soi] does not present itself. As discussed toward the end of the last chapter and reintroduced at the start of this one, Levinas insists that another notion of time is required to undo the knot that evanescence

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 77

cannot undo. The existent, described as a scintillation, does not break with the anonymous night but does postpone it. This postponement, as Levinas makes clear, is not a possibility of the subject itself. Although it finds itself already in itself, it is not aware of the production of distance effectuated in its labour. Il y a threatens the subject of hypostasis but it is precisely because this subject finds that it can postpone this moment that light turns into certainty, and, as we have seen, il y a is reified into an anonymous night. It is not the subject who calls into question the clarity of light, nor questions the continual murmuring of il y a which threatens the subject with non-sense but does not awaken it to the penury of its phenomenality. Levinas attempts to explain that the inadequacy of the subject to its own phenomenality is not a constitutive lack at the heart of subjective identity but is experienced in an encounter with the Other who calls me to answer for these products. In this encounter, I do not discover a lack but the arbitrary nature of my usurpation of the world. Rather than look to being to re-establish the necessity of my place and the truth of my products, I am asked to answer to the Other. 5. REPRESENTATION, SENSIBILITY AND THE FACE For Levinas, the subjectivity of dwelling—the ego [moi]—is an economy without ends; an interiority separated from the history in which its works take on a meaning according to a finality alien to it. Alienation from history is understood, by Levinas, to be a positive event of separation which permits the possibility of a singular subjectivity which is always more than the sum of its appearances in history. The postponement effected in dwelling is not merely the postponement of a world that stands over and against the subject of enjoyment but is also a withdrawal or postponement of that subjectivity which masters the world through representation and work but is indistinguishable from these works. In dwelling, the word is inscribed within an economy of self-identity. Retrospectively understood as such, it undoes the primacy of the intentional relation to the object, revealing its inherent intellectualism which we can now understand as any approach that thinks sensibility only in terms of its value for our understanding, rather than as a reliance on a presupposed universal, whether we conceive of this understanding epistemologically or ontologically. In so doing, Levinas suggests that

78 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

we reduce even the content of lived experience, convincing ourselves thereby of the power inherent in our own being. With the notion of dwelling, Levinas reveals the one-sidedness of the intellectualist position and the refusal of the essentially ambiguous moment of lived identity on which the notion of intentional consciousness is based. While the notion of dwelling brings us to the threshold of a notion of the sensible, beyond any value it might have for the intellect or the ego as a locus of power, it might be suggested that, in-itself, dwelling is Levinas’ own attempt to rethink “theoretical consciousness” in light of such a moment of subjective identity. In other words, dwelling could be considered as the final moment of a revaluation of the epistemicaesthetic quality of our relation to world. But it harbours within itself a new moment in so far as, in bringing us to the limits of identity, dwelling reveals the essentially ambiguous borders which do not necessarily shore themselves up against an outside—do not even perform a negation of the world it inhabits—but reveal the world as the production of separation and distance in the instant of self location. It might be tempting to conceive of the dwelling as the last moment in the transformation of sensibility in which Levinas considers the consequences of this essential ambiguity for our notion of meaning. However, in undertaking such a rethinking, we must be aware of the dangers inherent in this move, which faces a fine risk of reducing the sensible to the theoretical once again. I hope that it is already apparent that this would contradict the direction of Levinas’ analyses, for, if Levinas does consider certain consequences for how we think the representational relation to the world, it is not in terms of how sensibility is translated into theory but by the realisation of a certain impossibility in this relation. This is the impossibility of thinking the sensible as a condition of the theoretical without reducing it once again to an a posteriori moment of the ego’s identity. It can now be suggested that the subjectivity of dwelling maintains a sense of apriority. The fact that despite the a posteriori apprehension of one’s own being by the thinking subject it exceeds this moment points to a radical interruption of subjectivity. Subjectivity thus has a sense distinct from any relation to the object. In other words, a pre-given relation to the Object— a presupposed universal—is not in itself the condition of possibility for the thinking subject. Apriority begins to take on a signification beyond any chronological notion of priority or being first. If the sensibility of enjoyment is not to be reduced to the prior material conditions of the thinking being, in which the incessant production of distance would have undergone a spontaneous negation,

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 79

then another sense of apriority might be awakened. It is precisely the Other who will not accede to this moment of negation and in this way introduces the ethical dimension at the level of material subjectivity. The subject of enjoyment, in other words, will continue to live from its representations but only because this sensibility refuses the negation. It refuses the moment in which it is taken up in thinking, whether as that thinking’s subject or its object. The a priori sense of subjective sensibility is awakened to its ethos. Having started with representational consciousness and worked back to the subject of enjoyment, Levinas confronts a new question concerning the very possibility of representational consciousness. The possibility of postponement is in no way a possibility of the subject of enjoyment and thus introduces another dimension. It is the moment in which its ontological status—its relation to being—lapses. In this moment, the other does not appear as a salvation from the meaninglessness of solitude but as a desire that rejects any self-satisfied security. In the passage through the home, the subject of enjoyment is neither entity nor essence. Thus dwelling is a description of subjectivity beyond being—extraterritorial. This subjectivity is not merely a physical entity with the intellectual powers to postpone the world from which it lives, for it already implies a relation to an exteriority that is not constituted nor consumed by the subject of enjoyment. The subject of enjoyment and dwelling is required for the relation to the Other but is not the necessary, nor sufficient, condition. How are we to understand this contradiction? Levinas’ insistence that the subject is not reducible to its phenomenality—that in its appearing it also withdraws— leaves open a realm which remains distinct from the totality of the phenomenal world. While Levinas began, in Totality and Infinity, by contrasting this subjectivity with intentional consciousness, he warned us at this time that the outcome of this analysis will remain abstracted from its origins. This material subject will always be interpreted as the ground of the thinking subject and thus be reduced to matter which must be overcome in the quest for mastery of the world. For Levinas, the question becomes how to think the relation of this material subjectivity and the subject of representation differently, such that the one does not suppose a negation of the other? For Levinas, the subject of dwelling in the relation to the face of another is awakened to its materiality as a realm which is refractory to its own encompassing gaze. It discovers in the process that its substantiality is itself a product of its own gaze and therefore radically contingent. However, it is the Other who introduces an alternative signification to material being.

80 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

For Levinas, representation is the possibility of a language which is not merely the unintended excessive expression of a subject, nor the moment in which a subject chooses to limit its instinctual will for the sake of the Other. To represent, the ego of enjoyment and possession must have been called into question by the indiscrete presence of the Other (TaI 171/TeI 145). In other words, representation refers not to a primary possibility of the sharing of my world through the expression of representations pre-existing in me but to a “putting in common” of a world that even in sharing remains mine (TaI 174/TeI 149). The “face” of the Other makes possible the notion of representation as a moment of generalisation, for which I am responsible beyond my self-centred concerns for the Other. It is the moment in which these concerns are called into question by the one who is injured in any attempt at selfjustification. Representation is language but this is not because it relies on words designating entities, which would be another form of possession. Representation is language because the Other “breaks the ceiling of the totality” and opens possession to a universe beyond the self, to a commerce with the alterity of the Other who does not want to share (TaI 171/TeI 146). The face of the Other makes such a universalisation or generalisation possible. In other words, the face is the possibility of language which is not just the production of a subject and thus essentially the expression of a subjective world, nor the universal realm of reason which would have to be presupposed for such singular and unique beings to be able to speak to one another. Furthermore, the face is not enacted outside the world, now conceived in terms of the economy of dwelling. For Levinas, the dwelling is the possibility of a world which is not merely my world but one which I must learn to share with others, tolerating their needs as they tolerate mine. However, society is not founded on the creation of a common or public space, negotiated by individuals who maintain a sense of freedom through the demarcation of a private sphere in which the ego remains master. The face puts this world of possessions radically into question. In calling me into question, it questions the “complaisance”—the shared pleasure—of the home which would close its doors to the outside. Nevertheless, the face does not destroy the home, instead it is a possibility “as essential to the essence of the home as closed doors and windows” (TaI 173/TeI 148). This is not to say that privacy is no longer possible. As Levinas says, “Gyges is the very condition of man” (TaI 173/TeI 148). Gyges, who sees without being seen, disappears into the extraterritoriality of the home. However, the

THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING 81

idea that the face can show itself at the window and can come in through the closed door without violence, means that even Gyges becomes aware of “the possibility of injustice and radical egoism” (TaI 173/TeI 148) that this withdrawal from the world of the other entails. Thus the face introduces me to the question of justice and injustice and is not merely the demand to love the neighbour as myself. In other words, Levinas’ notion of the alterity of the face incorporates a critique of both “love” and “justice.” This critique will be the topic of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5 Eros, Ethics and the Social Totality

In the preceding chapter, I argued that dwelling describes a primary sociality of subjective identity. We saw that in his account of the dwelling, Levinas relies on the difference between the sexes, where the feminine is considered as a dimension of subjective being. He argues that the feminine has a “categorial signification” and is not to be thought in terms of biological or sociologically determined categories (DF 22–23).1 Yet, for Levinas, the feminine other encountered in dwelling is not Autrui—the Other who questions my right to be and in doing so introduces the ethical dimension into being. What leads him to make such a distinction between the feminine other and Autrui? As is now well documented, Levinas describes “alterity” in the works preceding Totality and Infinity primarily in terms of a difference between the sexes.2 In Time and the Other, a phenomenology of eros suggests that the difference between the sexes is not reducible to a logical opposition. In this phenomenology, feminine alterity is considered the other par excellence. This chapter considers that the major concern governing this account of feminine alterity is a rethinking of the nature and structure of the social totality. Furthermore, it is this concern which also lies behind the move from feminine alterity and eros, to the face to face relation in Totality and Infinity. As we will see in the first section of this chapter, Levinas’ account of eros in Time and the Other stands as a critique of the Platonic conception of love which provides a unifying ground and principle of the social totality. Levinas attempts to describe an alternative form of ‘society’ which neither provides the principle of unity nor relies on a unifying principle. In the early fifties he continued to explore the nature of the relation of the individual and the social whole, discovering that it was governed by the question of justice which only arises in the presence of a third party. The relation to alterity would also have to take account of the third and the question of justice if it was to be an alternative account of society.

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 83

The critique of love in The Ego and the Totality addresses this issue explicitly, introducing the face in the midst of the relation to a third party. In Section Two I examine this critique of love and the introduction of the question of justice. I consider that the move from feminine alterity to the face to face relation is the result of this concern for the question of the third party. As the phenomenology of eros in Totality and Infinity suggests, even as a non-numerical duality, the erotic encounter remains a duo-solitude. On the one hand, this could be read positively as a refusal to consider the relation in terms of the production of a third. On the other hand, it reduces feminine alterity to the other of an erotic relation or to the intimacy of the dwelling, both of which, by definition withdraw from the plurality of the social whole. I will return to this issue in the final section of the chapter. A brief analysis of the role of eros in Totality and Infinity reveals that it is also has a significant position in the rethinking of the relation of ethics and justice. 1. EROS AND PLATO’S SOCIAL TOTALITY The linking of alterity, the feminine and eros first occurs in Existence and Existents and is followed by a more detailed discussion in Time and the Other. The “plane of eros” Levinas writes in Existence and Existents “allows us to see that the other par excellence is the feminine” (EE 85/DE 145). In Existence and Existents, Levinas suggests that this pairing of eros and the feminine entails a critique of the Platonic notion of eros. In Time and the Other he undertakes a more detailed critique of Platonic love. He argues that it is based negatively in need or lack, presupposes the restorative power of a ‘father’ and founds a nonpluralistic social totality (EE 85/DE 145; TO 93/TA 195). Levinas will argue that the plane of eros is associated with a relation of two which is not a numerical or quantitative duality. Each partner in the relation remains a unique subject (TO 89/TA 188). The alterity of the feminine encountered in the erotic relation challenges the Platonic conception of a social whole by undermining the assumption of the unity of being on which it is founded. The Eleatic notion of being dominates Plato’s philosophy, where multiplicity was subordinated to the one, and where the role of the feminine was thought within the categories of passivity and activity, and was reduced to matter. Plato did not grasp the

84 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

feminine in its specifically erotic notion. In his philosophy of love he left to the feminine no other role than that of furnishing an example of the Idea, which alone can be the object of love. (TO 92–93/TA 194) Here, Levinas contrasts an “erotic notion” of the feminine with the Platonic notion of the feminine as an example of the object of love—an example of “the beloved.” Let us look at the Platonic texts to understand this argument. First, the signification of love or eros in the Symposium is associated with the movement of the soul from the physical to the spiritual realms, that is, a movement of self-knowledge as a recollection of the Good in which the beloved plays the role of an inferior copy of the true object of love (Plato 1951:209e–21 la). As such, and as is suggested in the Phaedrus, the meaning of eros is already subordinated to the Socratic interpretation of the Delphic injunction to know oneself, which is to say, to know oneself in one’s transcendent relation to the Good. I’ve not yet succeeded in obeying the Delphic injunction to ‘know myself’, and it seems to me absurd to consider problems about other beings while I am still in ignorance about my own nature. (Plato 1973:229) Socrates makes it clear that the injunction relegates the question of other beings and one’s relations with them to a secondary status. One must first establish the ground of individual subjectivity in relation to the pregiven universal, before one can begin to ask the question of the other. He thereby fails to consider the possibility that the other is, in this very refusal, inscribed and fixed with regard to a certain economy—the economy of self-knowledge. The moment of dismissal is also a first attempt at self-definition over and against this other: “I try to discover whether I am a more complicated and puffed-up sort of animal than Typho” (Plato 1973:230). In this act of exclusion, the signification of the other is grasped in terms of the philosopher’s quest for knowledge and the certainty of the self.3 The treatment of eros in the Symposium can be read in terms of this subordination of the other to the philosophical economy. Eros may still be the name of a god but this god now figures in the relation to the idea of the Good in a purposeful universe. Irigaray suggests that Eros is the very model of the “philosopher”: the seeker of wisdom who recognises his impoverished state (Irigaray 1981:36). In this philosophical account,

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 85

the signification of eros is thought in terms of a relation to transcendence. Eros provides the dynamic element for the production of the Idea in Plato’s philosophy and as such its possible signification is subordinated to both the social and philosophical economy. In the Symposium, Eros is said to have been born from the union of poverty and plenty (Plato 1951:d203b–204d). Eros is not to be found to be significant in the moment of the encounter but subsequently as the means to the production of a heightened relationship with the Good. His parents are not lovers, rather his mother, Poverty, wants a child to supplement the neediness with which Plato characterises the feminine. Eros is conceived on the basis of want and is the son who will compensate for the lack, however, this must occur through an association with transcendence. Fathered by Plenty, the compensation for the lack in the relation to truth or the Good is guaranteed by the power of the father—the masculine principle in eros that ensures that the union will not be without resources. Eros, then, is the product of a relation that is driven by need but can take comfort in the gift of the father (Plato 1951:203). In Levinas’ discussion of the Platonic notion of eros, it is quite clear that he has this parentage of Eros by poverty and plenty in mind when he writes: In Plato, Love, a child of need, retains the features of destitution. Its negativity is the simple “less” of need, and not the very movement unto alterity. (EE 85/DE 145) Levinas finds something pathetic in this notion of love. For rather than being considered important as an event of transcendence—of alterity— the transcendence of love is conceived of in terms of the value of the product that the relation engenders within the context of the Ideas. The masculine and the feminine play their respective roles in the production of the child— eros as the affective moment of partaking in the Good. The feminine is reduced to the bearer of the child and could be seen to regard the child as a necessary supplement to an insufficiency in relation to the Ideas which requires her subordination to the masculine. In Time and the Other, Levinas seeks to overcome this notion of the feminine and suggests that the erotic relation is neither a subordination of eros to a social teleology or philosophical quest, nor of the feminine to the conditions of the production of a social or philosophical totality in which the difference between lovers is excluded. For Levinas, the erotic relation is “swallowed up in a collective representation” when Plato

86 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

constructs his Republic (TO 93/TA 195). The specificity of the relation between two has its signification reduced to the common ideal (TO 93/ TA 195). Levinas looks for the signification of this relation outside this collectivity and conceives of it as a relation to a future in which the subject, in relation with alterity, is not absorbed or lost in that other. Love is not to be conceived after the event in terms of the child, Eros. Rather, love remains a play with the future and a kind of pure intentionality, according to Levinas, which opens a future in which the particularity of subjectivity is not lost but is somehow brought to its true presence in the relation with alterity (TO 89–90/TA 189–190). This becoming present in an encounter with alterity remains ambiguous— perhaps by definition. Levinas calls this moment a “victory over death” (TO 90/TA 191); a victory which refers to “another mastery in the human other than the virility of grasping the possible” (TO 81–82/TA 180). Clearly this is a critical reference to Heidegger’s notion of being-toward-death in which Dasein grasps the impossible as one’s ownmost possibility. For Levinas, at this stage, the erotic relation entails the interruption or suspension of this virility. Yet he suggests there is another mastery in this moment. This is not a new kind of power but the situation in which the subject is both engaged with the other yet remains itself (TO 89/TA 188): Love is not a possibility, is not due to our initiative, is without reason; it invades and wounds us, and nevertheless the I survives. (TO 89/TA 188) There is not a fusion but a non-solitary “intentionality of the voluptuous,” where the subject of enjoyment encounters the other, as a “pure future” (TO 89/TA 189). With this terminology Levinas not only argues against the Platonic notion of eros but also against what he considers to be a more general philosophical misunderstanding. Plato’s subordination of eros to the product of a union is mirrored in the philosophical subordination of the pure intentionality of voluptuosity, which is an “intentionality of the future itself” to the “expectation of some future fact” (TO 89/TA 189). For Levinas, on the other hand, the intentionality of voluptuousness is the “very event of the future” (TO 90/TA 190). For Levinas then, the construction of eros in Plato entails the subordination of voluptuosity to the expectation of the product. As Irigaray has suggested, Eros is precisely the child who conceives of himself as the product of a union based on need, which furthermore,

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 87

subordinates the feminine to the production of this first philosopher. But how does Levinas characterise his alternative—this intentionality of a “pure future” arising from “the caress” (TO 89/TA 189)? There is a kind of productivity in the erotic relation. It appears to be the pure nonteleological production of the infinite as expressed in this encounter with a pure future. Levinas seems to be suggesting that the infinite is produced in the relation between two lovers. This infinite is indefinite and not the compensatory child. Beyond and greater than the two but neither prior to or engulfing them. The infinite is produced here, not expected. There is, however, another important element in this account of eros as an intentionality of the “pure future.” Levinas introduces the problematic of the third in this first account of the relation to alterity. What concerns him most is to think a relationship of two which does not entail “a participation in a third term” (TO 947 TA 196). The problematic of the third appears here in two moments: firstly, as the question of the signification of the child and the social totality, and secondly as opening a dimension of the infinite. The erotic encounter does not figure as the site of the production of a social totality, yet with the notion of fecundity and paternity, Levinas reveals that it is nevertheless engaged in the production of the future and the social, in some other sense. At this point Levinas is concerned to think this event in its “correct ontological value” (TO 92/TA 193) as a moment of generation which produces a “collectivity which is not a communion” (TO 94/TA 196). In his attempt to explain this notion, Levinas introduces this notion of fecundity and likens it to Bergson’s élan vital as a creative and generative event. However, he challenges the impersonal nature of the élan vital.4 “Fecundity” is thought in terms of the relation of father and son—of paternity (TO 91/TA 191). Against Plato, he argues that this fecundity is not a form of power inherent in the father which is spontaneously given to the son. If anything the relation is reversed. Levinas writes that I do not have my child, I am my child. The father-child relation—fecundity or paternity— describes the manner of being other while remaining in oneself. Subjectivity is maintained, rather than negated in the event of transcendence. Nevertheless, while the child might now be thought in terms of a pure futurity, rather than the future being thought in terms of the child as mere product, the feminine and eros are subordinated once again to this relation of father and son. Irigaray suggests in her reading of Levinas’ later phenomenology of eros, that Levinas’ coupling of enjoyment and voluptuosity is close to

88 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

conceiving of eros as a dynamic relation between two—an encounter driven by the infinite desire of each which would liberate or separate the beloved from any movement of subordination to the subject’s projects. Yet Levinas’ account of fecundity appears to reduce the encounter to the problematic of the relation between subjectivity and the infinite once again. Thus while Levinas gestures towards the vulnerability of desire that was written out of the union of poverty and plenty when the first philosopher—Eros—referred to them as his parents, his account of eros remains problematic. I will return to this issue of the relation of eros and the production of the infinite in the final section of the chapter. 2. FROM EROS TO THE FACE Thirty years ago I wrote Time and the Other—where I thought that the feminine was alterity itself; I do not renounce this, but I have never been a Freudian. In Time and the Other there is a chapter on Eros that describes it as love that becomes enjoyment, while of Agape I have a grave vision beginning with responsibility for the Other. (EN 123–124) In his book The Wisdom of Love, Finkielkraut introduces the question of the way we should read the relation of eros and ethics in Levinas’ work by recalling that eros marks the situation in which the Other’s alterity appears for the first time in its pure form. But the erotic, he claims, is “already an ethics” (Finkielkraut 1997:47). The contradiction expressed by Finkielkraut, the situation of eros before and after the ethical is true of Levinas’ work, at least up to and including Totality and Infinity. Finkielkraut continues, suggesting that what Levinas undertakes in these works is a searching of “our commerce in the flesh for a higher communication, a way of being in society that could not be reduced to survival of the fittest or to erotic union” (Finkielkraut 1997:47). This leads Finkielkraut to suggest that Levinas undertakes a reversal of eros and agape. Levinas is not looking for eros in agape but the shape of agape in eros (Finkielkraut 1997:47). Levinas’ critique of Platonic eros in Time and the Other certainly moves in this direction. As he claims in the final paragraphs of the work, in eros one discovers the “face-to-face without intermediary” (TO 94/196). Yet, it is not so clear that this remains the case in the later works. As Levinas suggests above, eros

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 89

moves toward enjoyment, an encounter of pleasures shared, rather than the “grave vision” of agape arising in responsibility for the Other. The introduction of an opposition between eros and agape and the suggestion that Levinas undertakes a reversal is clearly in need of further exploration, for it is not certain that we can so easily fit the distinction and relation of eros and ethics in Levinas into the structure suggested in Time and the Other. If eros is apparently replaced by the face to face relation in Totality and Infinity, this is not due to a mere reversal but due to an increasingly complicated question concerning the social totality and the place of the ethical relation in regard to this totality. Love is not written out of this question but continues to play an ambiguous and controversial role in Levinas’ account of the relation of the ethical and the political realms. Levinas himself suggests that the alterity of eros expresses a concern for ethics and might explain our preference for charity over justice, “even when, from the point of view of justice, no preference is any longer possible” (TO 84/TA 182). Inadvertently, Levinas here expresses a paradox that will haunt his attempts to give value to the ethical relation over the coming decades. Justice is the moment in which the non-reciprocity of the relation to alterity is subordinated to a principle of equality. While Levinas has discovered a relation in which the unique singularity of subjectivity is in a relation to a transcendence which does not entail the loss of subjectivity, he now confronts the problem of how it is possible that this subject can show itself in a society of equals. Levinas’ refusal of the productive teleology of Plato’s philosophy in Time and the Other, attempted to demonstrate that eros remains blind to the third, both as the expectation of the child and the arrival of another other. This refusal of the totality becomes a serious problem for Levinas in his later work. The ethical event must address the question of justice and the third if it is to challenge not only the Platonic notion of eros but the Judeo-Christian notion of agape in the form of love of the neighbour. This is the task of his paper The Ego and the Totality. Earthly morality invites one into the difficult detour that leads to third parties that have remained outside of love. Justice alone satisfies its need for purity. In a sense this amounts to saying that dialogue is called upon to play a privileged role in the work of social justice. But it cannot resemble the intimate society, and it is not the emotion of love that constitutes it. The law has priority over charity. Man is also in this sense a political animal. (CP 33/ EN 33)

90 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

The Ego and the Totality, discusses the issue of the relation between the singular and unique subject and the social totality or economy in which everything has its value determined in terms of its relation to everything else (CP 28/EN 26). This economy is not the economy of dwelling but the realm of social justice and equality. The problem for the ego in relation to this economy, according to Levinas, is how it is possible that the ego is “simultaneously a position in the totality, and a reserve with respect to it or a separation” (CP 27/EN 25). Thus instead of attempting to rethink the notion of a social collectivity in terms of the plurality of the relation to alterity, Levinas begins with this social collectivity and asks how it is that a unique subject can make an appearance within this totality without being reduced to it. In other words, he asks if it is possible for the subject to remain distinct from this totality, in the sense of it having a value that is not derived solely from its relation to the totality. These issues are also the subject of the more comprehensive analyses of enjoyment and dwelling in Totality and Infinity. However, in The Ego and the Totality, the direction of Levinas’ thinking is sketched out and can be used as a rough framework for an understanding of the move from dwelling and eros, to the face in Totality and Infinity. In the earlier work, Levinas describes the thinking ego as a part of a totality, distinguishing and defining itself with respect to other parts. He contrasts this to the I, who finds its identity outside this totality (CP 28/ EN 26). This possibility of participa tion and non-participation—of a being that identifies itself in relation to others but does not exhaust its singularity in this identity—does not depend on the division of the social world into the public and the private. For Levinas, it presupposes a society of those who speak and face one another and remain separate in this relation (CP 28/EN 26). This society, Levinas claims, provides the “moral conditions” of thought itself (CP 29/EN 27). But what kind of “morality?” According to Levinas, the morality which arises from this society does not take place behind closed doors, or outside history. The moral conditions for thought, he claims, are realised in “the work of economic justice” (CP 29/EN 27). The question of the relation between the encounter with the face and the wider realm of social justice is uppermost in Levinas’ approach to the face in The Ego and the Totality. He is especially concerned with the relation of “morality” and economic justice and the meaning of the “realisation” of the moral conditions for thought (CP 29/EN 27). Levinas begins his discussion of this issue by introducing the notion of

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 91

the third person and undertaking a critique of love and moralism (CP 29/ EN 27). In a section entitled “The Third Man,” Levinas discusses “friendship,” “love of the neighbour” and “love of God” (CP 29–35/EN 27–35). The critique of love in the Ego and the Totality is not an explicit critique of eros, which one might expect in an essay that lies chronologically between the analyses of alterity as eros and alterity as the face.5 Nevertheless, it could be suggested that there is an implicit critique of eros in so far as it would also fall under a species of love, which Levinas calls here the “love of the couple” (CP 32/EN 31). At this stage, the problem with eros lies in the fact that: “All love—unless it becomes judgement and justice—is the love of the couple. The couple is a closed society” (CP 32/EN 31). Peperzak suggests in a footnote that Levinas is arguing against Bergson, who opposes “open” and “closed” society and sees “love” as the deepest elan of creative evolution. As we saw above, in Time and the Other, Levinas links his idea of fecundity to this elan vital, yet argues that the erotic relation is not a closed society but is rather the production of another kind of society altogether. Perhaps this is why Levinas does not engage in an explicit critique of eros in The Ego and the Totality but rather focuses on a critique of the love of the neighbour.6 Nevertheless, in so far as the erotic relation cannot answer the call for justice it will also fall under this species of love. Here love, whether eros or agape, is associated with “emotion,” which is not aware of the necessity of social justice. Thus it can be suggested that Levinas rejects both eros and love of the neighbour, at this stage, as inadequate accounts of the ethical, associating both with moralism. In his 1965 essay, Phenomenon and Enigma, Levinas notes his own reluctance to use the term “neighbour,” in so far as it suggests a “community by neighbouring,” which he conceives at this stage as “being alongside” (CP 65, note 7/DEHH 207, note 1). In such a community, the neighbour is merely welcomed into my economy in which I might share my possessions but without having to give them up to the world. For Levinas, the love of the neighbour, as it is conceived by traditional religion, is modelled on a private relation to God, which is blind to the existence of third parties—is blind to “earthly morality” (CP 30/EN 29). This “earthly morality’ must recognise that my actions with regard to another, exceed the realm of my intentions such that, even in recognising a wrong in relation to one other—“even by my act of repentance”—I can “injure a third person” (CP 30/EN 29). Levinas describes this relation as a dialogue between “I”and “you” [toi], in

92 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

which the other liberates the “I” from the only remaining hindrance to its freedom, which is the existence of the other themselves: “Love is the ego [moi] satisfied by you [toi] apprehending in the other [autrui] the justification of its being” (CP 31/EN 30). In this intimate society, the other can absolve the “I" from the violence it has inflicted on it. This would be the meaning of “love” (CP 31/EN 29–30). Thus love appears as the possibility of peace and freedom and a necessary condition of society. Charity, love of the neighbour or philanthropy assuage a guilty conscience but only in a society closed to the third. Thus while it makes a society of two possible, “love is not the beginning but the negation of society” in so far as it cannot recognise the third (CP 31/EN 30). Levinas argues against the tradition of Judeo-Christian morality and a specific interpretation of “love of the neighbour” (CP 32/EN 31). As he writes elsewhere, the dangers inherent in the Christian exaltation of the transcendent God lie in the very ambiguity of exaltation—abnegation and cruelty (DF 49). Salvation by faith cannot, in the words of another philosopher, “avoid gazing on the suffering violently imposed by everything in the way of bloody fury and so-called charitable crimes that is conversely entailed in that same exaltation” (DF 48).7 In other words, we are drawn to the awareness that faith in an ideal of humanity is no guarantee against violence and, in fact, might ultimately demand acts of inhuman cruelty for the sake of the ideal, which in turn justifies its own ends. But, without being carried away by the rhetoric, the significance of this critique lies in its concern for the social totality. The danger inherent in faith in a God inhabiting a world behind the scenes is the ultimate denigration of the social world. It is for this reason that Levinas later rejects Buber’s I-Thou relation. According to Levinas, Buber’s notion of friendship in terms of the “I and Thou” relationship continues to conceive of the “public” world as a fall and a threat to the purity of the relation between self and thou (TaI 68–69/TeI 40). Friendship is constructed in an opposition to the public realm. As Levinas writes in Totality and Infinity. The I-Thou is an event (Geschehen), a shock, a comprehension, but does not enable us to account for (except as an aberration, a fall, or a sickness) a life other than friendship: economy, the search for happiness, the representational relation with things. They remain in a sort of disdainful spiritualism, unexplored and unexplained. (TaI 69/TeI 40)

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 93

Levinas suggests, furthermore, that the relation of the couple withdraws from the world and attempts to sustain itself over and against it. The problem, he seems to be suggesting here, is that the closed society does not recognise the “economy of justice” (CP 29/EN 27). The first step to overcoming the notion of economy as a disdainful spiritualism is to recognise that even friendship, understood in terms of the I-thou, is governed by an economy of the ego. For Levinas, one economy has pretensions to a certain purity and nonviolence, while the other—the economy of justice—seems to be driven by inhuman forces. Overcoming this oppositional construction of the difference underlies Levinas’ discussion of the inevitable violence of the relation that he refers to as the “love of the couple” (CP 32/EN 31). This violence occurs because of the egoist concerns which energise this relation to the other such as the desire for pardon, freedom and a release from the dependence on the other. Love is directed towards the beloved and requires the maintenance of an ignorance of the third. The analysis of dwelling in Totality and Infinity demonstrated the ambiguity of the autochthonous ego which is at “the same time an attribute of sovereignty and submission” (TaI 164/TeI 138). Nevertheless, the negotiations of ego and other in dwelling remain by definition, selfcentred. The welcome of the other is the model of I-Thou relations, in which the “I” responds to the presence of the other by sharing the world it brings through the door as possessions. However, the ego would be deceiving itself if it considered that it was thereby solely for the other. The “I” is not called into question by the peaceable welcome offered by the friend but given the space to participate in a dialogue which is blind to the damage done to a third. Love makes blind the respect which is impossible without blindness toward the third person and is only a pious intention oblivious of the real evil. (CP 31/EN 31) Thus friendship understood in terms of the I-Thou relation—the relation to the other as the welcome presupposed in dwelling—offers an account of a peaceable relation and ushers in a certain morality. However, this morality is not yet one that can found a society in which not only the neighbour but also the stranger, participates. As Levinas insists, this is not to say that “love of the couple” does not include all the possibilities of the transcendent relationship with the Other (TaI 155/TeI 129), but only that it is, in-itself, not the condition of society, as it does not yet “put into question the world possessed” (TaI 173/TeI 148).

94 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Nevertheless, while not the founding condition there a sense in which both the dwelling and eros function as a the pre-ethical condition of ethics. However, as Levinas will discuss at great length in Totality and Infinity, eros will open another dimension of temporality, which not only places it before the relation to the face, but also beyond the face. This ambiguous role brings eros into play with the ethical event and the question of justice. 3. EROS AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE INFINITE The move from eros to the face in Totality and Infinity is a consequence of Levinas’ questioning of the sociality of two as a suitable model for ethics and a recognition that the presence of a plurality of others complicates the question of responsibility to the singular other from the start. The linking of the question of justice to the ethical is fundamental to this move. As Tina Chanter points out, the critique of eros is already motivated by Levinas’ concern for the ethical (Chanter 1995:201). Furthermore, this concern for the ethical is tied around the question of the third party and justice (Chanter 1995:206). In Totality and Infinity, eros still plays a significant role. While the alterity encountered in the erotic relation does contain the demand expressed by the face, eros is nevertheless essential to the possibility of ethics and justice. Unlike the love of the neighbour which remains a duo-solitude, eros is both before and beyond the face. It is this essential ambiguity which allows Levinas to explain the paradoxical possibility of a subjectivity who is not annihilated in the relation with transcendence but affirms itself there as an Other while remaining in itself. In Section IV of Totality and Infinity, Levinas describes the ambiguity of eros. Eros is both before and beyond the face. It is beyond the face in so far as it becomes enjoyment. Beyond the face it is voluptuosity. Distinguishing the erotic relation in voluptuosity from the I-Thou relation, Levinas claims that it “is bent in another direction” (TaI 264/TeI 242). As such, the relationship is a dual solitude and refractory to a social relation, even conceived in the formal sense of the I-Thou. Voluptuosity excludes the third party, remaining “supremely non-public” (TaI 265/TeI 242) and thus appears to have the structure of the I-Thou relation. However, the I-Thou does not so much fail to recognise the third as refuse the third. The relation to the other in voluptuosity positively withdraws from this dialectical structure of the

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 95

social whole. However, in doing so the relation takes on the unique structure of a relation to another in which there is no unity. The relation to the other in voluptuosity is a participation in which the subject neither loses itself in the other nor is the other encompassed by the subject. Voluptuosity “aims not at the Other but at his voluptuosity” (TaI 266/TeI 244). In voluptuosity there is a pure withdrawal from the social whole and thus a positive impossibility of recognising the third party in the social realm. There is nevertheless a relationship to something beyond the other encountered in voluptuosity. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas does not identify this as a form of relation to a third, but discusses it in terms of the production of infinity and the engendering of the child. However, the role of eros as fecundity has many similar features and functions to the notion of the illeity of the third which Levinas discusses in the works after Totality and Infinity. I will outline Levinas’ account of fecundity and paternity here and discuss the notion of illeity in detail in the final chapter. Eros, then is beyond the face. However, it is also before the face. It is before the face in fecundity and paternity. These modes of engagement with otherness describe the manner in which subjectivity can be in relation to the other without being annihilated or without it losing the singular locus of its identity in this encounter. Furthermore, fecundity conditions the face to face relation in the sense that it guarantees the possibility of a justice which recognises the offence to the face (TaI 247/ TeI 225). For Levinas, as we saw above, in engendering the child, or producing the infinite, eros is able to overcome death. In Totality and Infinity, he argues that the ontological possibility of death would render the ethical event meaningless unless paradoxically subjectivity somehow constantly withdraws from its own attempts to respond to the other. In going toward the other it must also remain in itself and in doing so withdraw from the history and social whole in which its response will inevitably be judged. How is this possible, Levinas asks? There is a production of the infinite in eros which bears the “I” beyond this ontological possibility of death, and opens the dimension of transcendence in being. The discussion of eros in Totality and Infinity thus concerns itself with the “victory over death” and a futurity without which the ethical relation would be negated by the inevitable and unavoidable confrontation with death. In other words, without the futurity of eros, Levinas cannot overcome the inevitable betrayal of the ethical in the socio-historical realm.

96 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

The role of eros in Totality and Infinity lies in its overcoming of the inevitable return of existence as a moment of the negation of the ethical. This return to being in a non-dialectical event in which the ethical is not negated, becomes a crucial preoccupation of Levinas’ later works (and will figure as a fundamental theme in the remaining chapters of this book). In other words, the relation of voluptuosity and fecundity introduces a model of “reproduction,” which for the first time does not negate the ethical moment on the one hand, nor reduce the erotic to the production of the child on the other. The manner of production, of reproduction, is to be sought beginning with the ethical. There is a suspension of my projection of the future; a relation with a future that is “irreducible to the power over possibles” (TaI 267/TeI 245). Love [Eros] is not reducible to knowledge mixed with affective elements which would open to it an unforeseen plane of being… Eros is not accomplished as a subject fixes an object, nor as a projection toward a possible. (TaI 261/TeI 238) The child, Levinas claims, will “come to pass from beyond the possible, beyond projects” (TaI 267/TeI 245). This relation to a future is beyond the projection of my own possibility in the sense that it is an engendering in voluptuosity which entails the unique presence of another. Thus voluptuosity is essential to the production of the future as an infinite. The child is engendered in the relation to the beloved. But what is engendered there is also thought in terms of the relation of the subject to a future in which it both goes beyond its own death yet remains itself.8 The subject-child relation— discussed in terms of paternity, or the relation of the father and son—describes a mode of being other that does not entail the negation of identity. This is essential so as to secure a place for subjectivity simultaneously outside history and being, while remaining within it: In fecundity the I transcends the world of light—not to dissolve into the anonymity of the there is, but in order to go further than the light, to go elsewhere. (TaI 268/TeI 246) For Levinas, rather than a relation to a neutral impersonal infinite, this engendering of the child in the relation to the beloved produces being as a multiplicity—“split into same and other,” “it is society, and hence time” (TaI 269/TeI 247). In the withdrawal from the social totality in its inhuman form, the erotic relation introduces another dimension of

EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY 97

sociality. We might thus provisionally say that the erotic dimension in its very multiplicity, intro duces the ‘human’ into being. In so doing, we are brought to the possibility of another kind of justice. A justice that is instituted in the unique relation to the face yet is able to affirm the whole of humanity. I will discuss this further in the following chapter. Thus the ambiguity of eros is essential to Levinas work and offers us elements of a critique of Platonic eros and Christian agape. Erotic response will always slip into the intimacy of voluptuosity (TaI 265/TeI 242–243). It is not therefore, evil. But neither is it the ground of the ethical (which furthermore, can never be simply equated with the Good). For Levinas, voluptuosity is not derivative but beyond the face (TaI 262/ TeI 240). Yet, what are the consequences for the feminine and eros with regard to the social totality and the question of ethics? Levinas claims elsewhere that the crucial element of eros is its refusal to be subordinated to a means of procreation, or as prefiguring its fulfilments (DF 36). If the erotic encounter is no longer the origin of the totality, it nevertheless engenders another form of sociality thought in terms of paternity. While the alterity of the feminine is necessary in this engendering there nevertheless appears to be a moment of subordination to the production of the infinite. As mentioned above Levinas intends to challenge the Platonic notion of Eros and the feminine, claiming that sexuality “introduces a duality into existence, a duality that concerns the very existing of each subject” (TO 927 TA 194). However, while this duality is no longer to be subordinated to the neutrality of being and a social totality in which subjects inevitably find themselves inscribed, there is a sense in which the feminine is subordinated to the production of the human in being. Furthermore, while Levinas rejects the principle of the neutrality of ontology, in doing so he must face the question whether he does not thereby merely replace a singular essence with two essences without challenging the essentialism common to both of these positions. While Levinas attempts to describe the difference of the sexes in their exemplary philosophical value, he constantly faces the problem of the relation of these formal philosophical categories to the empirical.9 While it might be argued that the exemplary, or ethical, signification of sexual difference lies in the refusal of a reduction of the Other to an image or Idea produced by myself, for myself, the role of the feminine in Levinas’ philosophy constantly belies and betrays this sense. In Totality and Infinity, feminine alterity is precisely that which remains refractory to society. Sexual difference will provide an example of alterity but cannot be the ethical. For Levinas, sexual difference is

98 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

encountered in the erotic relation which in withdrawing from the social realm experiences the other in a unique relation but does not yet answer the exigencies of justice. In conclusion, we can see that for Levinas in Totality and Infinity, there is an essential ambiguity in the erotic relation. It is both beyond and before the ethical. As we saw above, for Levinas, eros is a relation that “becomes enjoyment”—in this sense it would be beyond the ethical (EN 124 my translation). Yet he also claims that there is an “ethical radiance” in the erotic relation, in which “humanity enters into the society of two and sustains it, authorises it” (TO 36). In so far as it becomes enjoyment, the erotic relation postpones the ethical event. I suggest that this does not necessarily reduce the erotic to the status of a productive teleology, although the use of the feminine and the localisation of sexual difference in a relation that ‘becomes enjoyment’ which no longer recognises the Other, is problematic. In Totality and Infinity, eros is not the ethical relation par excellence but comes to play an important role in the preservation of the question and possibility of social justice. Levinas considers that eros before and beyond the face (TaI 254/TeI 232). It is before the face, since it does not yet recognise the third as an end in itself but beyond in so far as it will have already done so, opening eventually to the possibility of a love that recognises the exigencies of social justice, as shall be discussed in further chapters. In his later work, Levinas will call this a love “without concupiscence.” Is this a victory of agape over eros? Levinas will return the space of love to the body of philosophy. However, this will be only after a radical rethinking of the meaning of ethics, justice and being, in which philosophy is not so much the pursuit of knowledge as the wisdom of desire for the other—the wisdom of love.

CHAPTER 6 Ethics is Justice

My task does not consist in constructing ethics; I only try to find its meaning. (EI 90) In this chapter, I return to Totality and Infinity, bringing the elements of representation, justice and alterity together in a discussion of the question of the relation of ethics and justice. I argue that the face to face relation contains the idea that the truth of representation is a product of a demand for justice, or in other words that there is an awakening to the question of justice in the face to face. I shall show that Levinas’ claim that ethics is justice is not a reduction of one to the other but introduces an irreducible twosidedness into the ethical relation as a response to the singular other and an attestation to and affirmation of the whole of humanity. 1. THE OTHER AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Between the conception in which the ego reaches the Other [autrui] in pure respect (based on sympathy and love) but is detached from the third party, and that which converts us to a singularisation of the concept man, where an individual in the extension of that concept is subject to the legislation of an impersonal reason, there is a third way to understand the totality as a totality of egos which are without conceptual unity but in relationship with each other. (CP 37/EN 37) As we saw in the previous chapter, the analysis in the two major works of the 1940’s and in The Ego and the Totality, is critical of the classical

100 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

conception of the intersubjective relationship as constitutive of a social totality which itself becomes the common ground or locus of subjective identity. The subjects in the intersubjective relation must maintain both a distance with regard to this totality and also a distance and singular locus with regard to the relation to one another. As the quote above suggests, Levinas is looking for an alternative which refuses to subordinate the intersubjective relation to a rational principle without thereby undermining or negating the possibility of a social totality. In The Ego and the Totality this becomes a question of the possibility of justice and injustice in an economy which does not rely on any predetermined universals. This introduces the problematic of the third and the face. Returning to his starting point, and refusing to give up the idea that the individual can participate or be in relation to the social totality without thereby being totally enveloped in it, Levinas asks what injustice means “when the standard of justice cannot be derived from a simple comparison of individuals?” (CP 37/EN 37). Refusing the opposition between a private ethos and a public justice, in which the former is governed by love and the latter by an objective law and impersonal reason, Levinas suggests that there is a third way to think the relation of the individual and the totality. In exploring this possibility, he discusses the manner in which the individual will appear in the totality without negation (CP 37/EN 37). According to Levinas, the individual subject cannot “hold on to the meaning of its own willing” (CP 38/EN 38). Its “works” enter into a fate over which the subject, despite remaining free in its willing, has no control. Injustice, he claims, is the moment of the limitation of this freedom and the condition in which the totality takes form. The will itself enters a world of valuation in which it is not the only participant. This is a world that Levinas calls “economic” (CP 39/EN 39). It is not governed by an absolute but instead remains a multiplicity in which individuals, unbeknownst to themselves, betray their singularity. For Levinas, the third is the manner of the presence of the will in this economy (CP 39/EN 40). The third is not simply another Other (although from within the relation to the face, this is how the third will appear) but a certain manner of appearing of another. The individual conceived of as a third is apprehended in their “work.” Work is not only to be thought of as an expression or effect of a producer but is also to be thought of as a possession, that is to say, as the presence in absence of the worker (CP 38/EN 39). In this context, work is not an object or a product but a value as producer. As producer, I have an economic

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 101

value. This economic value as a third has the ontological structure of a body—both the “I can” and a vulnerability of the physiological body (CP 39/EN 40). For Levinas, this is an economy of injustice that is not recognised (CP 39/EN 40). The institution of a universal currency within this economy betrays the unique productive moment of the singular will. Yet, at the same time, it brings the singular into the system in which it can be measured and judged, as well as measure and judge according to this universal (CP 39/EN 40). In the midst of the exploitation of the singular, the subject is relocated—re-cognised in terms of a common value. The danger here is that the universal currency established after the fact now becomes the standard against which one measures justice and injustice without acknowledging the essential injustice of the system effected in the betrayal of the singular. What is required here is not another universal value—religious or moral—to challenge the dominance of the economy. Rather, there must be a way in which the singular can come to break through the totalising movement of the economy. In Part Five of The Ego and the Totality, Levinas turns to the question of how the relation of the singular ego to the social totality can be recognised as a realm of injustice (CP 39–44/EN 40–46). To not only hear but to hearken to [entendre] a cry for justice in the “groans that cry of affliction” [la plainte qui crie misère] can only occur within an encounter with “someone,” a singular other who, in these cries, calls me to account [me demande des comptes] (CP 39–40/EN 41). This notion of singularity is the basis of the relation of subjects in the social whole. For this reason, Levinas will call the relation to the Other a reciprocal relation (CP 43/EN 45). However, reciprocity does not mean equality. While the social totality is made up of relations between third persons, understood as bodies which both appear and absent themselves, it is not with regard to their value in the system but with regard to their value as unique perspectives, that reciprocity must be thought. Thus, overcoming the injustice done to another, who, like me, is understood as a subject who appears in its work while absenting itself, is not possible through an economic transaction. Levinas considers the institution of common currency to be the possibility of true violence and the “way of peacetime violence” (CP 39/EN 40) as its attempt at recognition of the will is simultaneously a misrecognition. The notion of economic injustice is based on this impossibility of compensation which will always entail measuring the immeasurable. At this point Levinas argues that economic justice merely heightens the play of

102 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

injustice. How is justice possible? According to Levinas, there must be a principle which does not appeal to an ideal justice or an absolute law in which an ultimate justification is sought (CP 40/EN 41). One must be judged by someone and not by history or a distilled principle. One must begin with an interlocutor who arises “behind the man known in that absolutely decent bit of skin that is the face” (CP 41/EN 42). Thus Levinas introduces the face in all its ambiguity. At this stage, the face is the site of the emergence of the Other—that bit of flesh, of embodied thirdness or tertiality, from behind which the Other emerges. In other words, the relation with the Other is not independent of the conditions of economic injustice, rather it “emerges out of [dégage de] a relationship in which the other plays the role of the third party” (CP 42/EN 44). The Other is a moment of a disengagement of reciprocity which would otherwise reduce the tertiality of the other to a you [toi], a second person. In the light of the discussion of the previous chapter, this would be to return to a conception of intersubjectivity as a relation of two. The manner in which this relation is blind to the third begins to show its complexity. The Other, who appears in that “bit of skin,” breaks the form of the appearance of the other as a third, that is, as a vulnerable body like myself but does not reduce the other, in that moment, to a second person. The Other, as the face, emerges out of this vulnerable body but it is not equivalent to it. In this relation, Levinas says one listens and spies. One observes as one speaks (CP 42/EN 44). The subject both responds to the unique Other and gazes on the other as a third. The face in this sense signifies a disengagement which is not thinkable as a turning away from the other as a third party.1 However, this “release from” is not a negation of the vulnerable body but perhaps the opposite. That is, it signifies a refusal of the moment of reification of that body which would reduce the other, once again, to a producer who has no say in the value of their work. The face as the Other breaks the hold of the totality and demands justice (CP 43/EN 45). Levinas’ account of the face, in this work, introduces a crucial theme into the question of the relation to alterity. While the face is understood as a demand for justice that comes from beyond the social totality understood in its economic sense, Levinas argues that it cannot remain isolated from the community. The relation must refuse all intimacy, understood as absence from the community, to avoid instituting another social totality, this time governed by the extraordinary demand of the Other. For this reason, Levinas explains that the relation is neither friendly nor hostile. Rather, it is a relation of respect (CP 43/EN 45).

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 103

Unlike the respect he associated with love, however, this is a respect which “attaches the just man to his associates in justice before it attaches him to the man who demands justice” (CP 43/EN 45). This is to suggest that the face who breaks through the form of its own appearance as a third firstly demands justice of the “I” who awakens to the injustice of the system. However, the response to this demand is already a concern for the Other as an associate in justice and thus, as a member of a community that does not remain a relation of two but concerns itself with the “we” (CP 43/EN 45–46). Levinas explains that the face who commands cannot simply command me to bow down before it. Humiliation before the law is contrary to the command given in the face to face. To be commanded is “to be commanded to command him who commands me” (CP 43/EN 46). In light of the above, I suggest that this is a moment in which the Other, heard in the groaning of affliction, nevertheless refuses the pity with which the will, in its selfconcerned need to restore its own good conscience, attempts to ease the suffering of the Other. This is a moment in which the subject must recognise that the face does not call me to bow down before it but awakens me to the ultimate act of egoist appropriation in my very attempts to inhabit the space of good intentions. I am called to confront the question of the possibility of justice once again. Thus Levinas returns to the question of the possibility of reparation in economic justice in the final section of The Ego and the Totality. Here he revisits the question of the “peacetime violence” of economic transactions. He affirms that the institution of a common currency does issue in a new kind of justice that offers an alternative to vengeance or pardon. While it cannot put an end to violence, he asks whether justice would be possible without the possibility of the quantification of man (CP 45/EN 48). Perhaps we can read this as an attempt to affirm the necessity of measure, in the light of the relation to the Other. This need not be read as contradictory but as an implicit recognition that justice has at least two senses, the ethical and the economic and that one requires the other. Levinas began with the idea that “the standard of justice cannot be derived from a simple comparison of individuals” (CP 37/EN 37) and argues that the standard must come from another kind of event. In what sense the ethical event now becomes the standard of justice is still not clear. This question of the relation between ethics and justice—between an ethical justice and an economic justice—is still to be determined. These two senses are discernible in Totality and Infinity.

104 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

2. FREEDOM AND THE FACE The Other [Autrui]—does not limit the freedom of the same. In calling it to responsibility, it institutes [instaure] and justifies it (TaI 197/TeI 171, translation modified) As the discussion of the relation of “wills” in The Ego and the Totality suggests, Levinas refuses to sacrifice the individual to a universal for the sake of a peaceable model of the social totality. In Totality and Infinity, the discussion of the relation of the subject and the totality is inverted such that Levinas does not begin with a social totality but with a notion of subjectivity. As discussed in Chapter Four, the subject of dwelling both participates in an economy and withdraws from it. It is awakened to this separation only with the arrival of the Other [autrui]. The will discovers its thirdness or “tertiality” only after the encounter with the face. In other words, Levinas does not begin with a relation of economic subjects in which the alterity of the face breaks through the form of its appearance as a third. Instead he suggests that this thirdness and the recognition of the Other as a third is subsequent to my encounter with the face in which I awaken to the phenomenality of my own being.2 Thus tertiality, in Totality and Infinity, is approached starting with the relation to the Other as a face. The question of justice and injustice arises in the encounter with the Other as a face. The relation of subjects in the social totality is discussed in terms of this justice. As the earlier chapters have suggested, Levinas’ rethinking of the meaning of human subjectivity beyond but not before the structures of Heideggerian ontology is central to his work. In Totality and Infinity, the discussion of subjectivity in terms of the dwelling undermined the notion of the virility of being without giving up a notion of will. For Levinas, this notion of the will is a necessary condition for a relation to the Other but not the sufficient condition. The subject of dwelling is necessary for the possibility of conceiving of a relation to transcendence which is thought in terms of a negation of powers inherent in a thinking being. It is Levinas’ intention to show that these powers are already an effect of the encounter with the Other which, furthermore, does not effect a negation of subjective identity. Introducing the face, Levinas describes the manner in which the Other confronts the subject, insisting that it does not entail a negative or oppositional relation (TaI 194/TeI 168). The Other remains infinitely

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 105

distant. The face of the Other interrupts the notion of a common world and does this by putting in question the subject in relation to being and the world of possessions (TaI 194/TeI 168). It is the manner of putting in question which Levinas attempts to explain. He suggests that it is neither in terms of an opposition of free wills, nor as a confrontation of subjective limits. While the first of these counters the idealist interpretation of intersubjective relations, the latter challenges the Heideggerian notion which would see the limits of subjective identity as lying in the encounter with being. Levinas suggests that the Other calls the phenomenal subjectivity of dwelling, which is a “mode of being where nothing is ultimate,” to its final reality, engendering it for responsibility (TaI 178/TeI 153). In this discussion, he suggests that this engendering is a movement where I pass from phenomenality to being (TaI 178/TeI 153). In linking the encounter of the face with existence, Levinas seems to be suggesting, paradoxically, that the relation to being as il y a might have a signification beyond the ontological drama of enchainment and finitude. This moment in Totality and Infinity, when il y a and the Other cross paths, is highly controversial and little understood.3 Recalling the distinction between the anonymity of il y a and the neutrality of “the they” in Heidegger, as discussed in Chapter Two, it can be suggested that the notion of the Other is precisely the moment in which Levinas rejects the attempt to conceive of the social totality as being governed by the neutrality or anonymity of “the they’” or the “es gibt” of Heideggerian ontology. Why or how this does not rely on pregiven moral assumptions about human subjectivity is the issue at hand. The gravity of being that the face institutes is found to be wholly otherwise to the incessant murmuring of il y a in Totality and Infinity (TaI 183/TeI 158). I suggest that Levinas attempts to demonstrate that the effectivity of the subject’s localisation with regard to il y a presupposes this weight, without which its orientation as the centre would not be graspable. Pursuing the metaphor a little further, the gravity here is more akin to what Levinas later calls a “falling upwards” of the human (OTB 184/AE 231). In Totality and Infinity, Levinas uses such terms as the “straightforwardness” or “uprightness” [droiture] and the dimension of height in/across which the face is encountered (TaI 183/TeI 158 & TaI 215/TeI 190). If the il y a is that which awakens subjectivity to its enchainment, it is the Other who locates the gravity of this relation beyond the subject’s relation to being.4 In the language of the early works and the specific logic of hypostasis, the derivation of singularity from anonymity already

106 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

presupposes an Other as an infinite other to the infinite totality of il y a. This infinite is both a foundation and a destruction of the subject’s relation to being as ground. In other words, it is an a-ffirmation, or a foundation, which comes from elsewhere than the subject or il y a, which does not destroy either. Levinas claims that it institutes the freedom of subjectivity, calling it to justice. “Invitation,” “institution,” and “investiture” are all terms Levinas uses to describe the manner in which the subject is liberated from the arbitrary in the encounter with the Other (TaI 84–85/TeI 57). This liberation is described as a Desire which, unlike the need of enjoyment, does not return to the home but is a movement toward the Other. It cannot be seen as either the condition of the groping hand, nor the nonteleological moment of this movement. It introduces another dimension. Desire does not simply go elsewhere, it comes from elsewhere. The relation to the Other is a foundation only in the sense of institution and investiture. Levinas claims this relation presupposes the “I,” before whom the other “appears”: …it [the relation to the other] takes place, in effect, before the existent who expresses itself, that is to say rests in itself [reste en soi]. (TaI 109/TeI 81 translation modified and my emphasis) This before—this priority—is an “in front of me.”5 It is an “overflowing presence [which] is effectuated as a position in face of the same” (TaI 196/TeI 170). According to philosophical logic, this “before” is translated into an opposition of two terms. However, for Levinas this “in face of” is “opposition par excellence” (TaI 196/TeI 170). In other words, opposition is not reducible to a logical axiom but itself refers to a relation with the Other (TaI 197/TeI 171). The “in face of” as a calling into question, is an invitation to justice which opens the possibility of response; of dialogue; of “commerce,” out of which reason and knowledge are produced (TaI 197/TeI 171). The call and the response describe the double structure of the ethical space—the “in face of” as “opposition of discourse” (TaI 197/TeI 171). The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation, which no “interiority” permits avoiding. It is that discourse that obliges the entering into discourse, the commencemcnt of discourse rationalism prays for, a “force” that convinces even “the people who do not wish to listen” and thus founds the true universality of reason. (TaI 201/TeI 175)6

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 107

The notion of an ethical relation which calls the arbitrary freedom of the “I” into question by calling it to responsibility is in itself not a radical claim. As Levinas points out, for the tradition from Spinoza to Hegel this would be the advent of freedom itself, in accordance with the universal principles of reason (TaI 87/TeI 59).7 In a discussion of justice in a latter essay, Levinas argues that Kant had shown that “through justice being imposed upon the “incomparable uniqueness” of free persons, we witness the miraculous birth, a birth “out of suffering,” of the “objective spirit of truth” (OS 122). However, unlike Kant, Levinas argues that justice has a different authority than that of the harmonious relation between wills that are initially opposed (OS 122). In Totality and Infinity, Levinas insists that in cases where justice is understood as issuing out of the confrontation of opposing free subjects: Freedom is not maintained but reduced to the reflection of a universal order which supports itself and justifies itself all by itself, like the God of the ontological argument. (TaI 87/TeI 59 translation modified) Thus, according to Levinas, idealism does not call freedom as such into question but presupposes it in terms of a fundamental being-in-act. What is called into question by this tradition is a subjective spontaneity which does not act in accordance with the freedom associated with the principle of reason. Levinas calls this a “theoretical critique” of spontaneity, in which the “I” is able to reflect on its failure to overcome the limits imposed on it by others (TaI 87/TeI 59). However, this power of reflection already presupposes a universal order, justified of itself, grounding truth and knowledge. In other words, the discovery of the universal is itself not called into question but entails the “uprooting of the I” and the reconciliation of my spontaneity with the freedom of others through “living in the universal” (TaI 83/TeI 55). Levinas attempts to describe the difference between a relation to the universal as Idea and the “infinite as desire” (TaI 84/TeI 56). Infinity, or “the other as Other,” is found to not be “adequate to a theoretical idea of another myself” (TaI 84/TeI 56). Discussing Hegel’s notion of infinity, Levinas finds that the finitude to which Hegel opposes the infinite is equivalent to his own notion of the subject before the impersonal realm of il y a. In face of this realm, as we have already seen, the subject can undertake works and labour and thereby postpone the il y a and accomplish a security before this threat. However, the primary reflexivity of labour is a consequence of a relation to the infinite that is

108 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

beyond the Hegelian dialectic of finite and infinite. The finite is never subsumed into the infinite which, for Hegel, encompasses all relations. The infinite neither comes from within the finite, nor from without as a negation. Thus Levinas finds the infinite to be already present to the cogito, neither as idea nor concept, but as a desire for the infinite. While this does not presuppose reason and truth, it is equally not a purely sensuous principle which negates them, as the analyses of enjoyment has attempted to show, rather: …the presence of and the desire for the other [l’Autre] are not the negation of knowing: knowing is their very articulation. The essence of reason consists not in securing a foundation and powers for man, but in calling him into question and inviting him to justice. (TaI 88/TeI 60–61) The relation of justice and thematisation to the ethical moment cannot be seen as an afterthought but is the consequence of the ethical perspective itself. Levinas insists that the face to face relation is the ethos of reason itself. It does not found reason but opens reason to critique and renewal. It is in relation to the Other that the arbitrariness of the free subject is encountered without the annihilation of subjectivity or its reduction to a fatality that idealism would reserve for the less than human.8 This idea, that the will opens to reason only through the detour of the face of the Other, is a direct critique of the “identification of will and reason, which is the ultimate intention of idealism” (TaI 217/TeI 193). As we have seen, for Kant, the will, realising its arbitrariness, aspires to the universal— to reason. Levinas suggests that, for Hegel, that the will aspires to reason, is reason “seeking or forming itself” (TaI 217/TeI 192). He claims that such an idea “is opposed by the entire pathetic experience of humanity” (TaI 217/TeI 193). The notion of the progression of humanity through the unfolding of reason might, in other words, have presented itself as an inspirational Ideal, but as Levinas goes on to suggest, this possibility is belied, not by the refusal of one man to say yes to the system but by the Other, who “speaks to the subject and tolerates only a personal response, that is, an ethical act” (TaI 219/TeI 195). Thus the ideal of reason thinking only itself is not capable of accounting for life as becoming. For Levinas, this is a becoming which effects renewal. The infinite must be produced infinitely and is not just an eternal immutable ideal which reduces life to a

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 109

fatality that cannot be overcome, merely endured. Even Heidegger, Levinas claims, distinguishes life from “the finality of potency tending toward act” (TaI 218/TeI 193). But unlike Heidegger, for Levinas, the will is a radically arbitrary life, separate or distinct from the finality of being and separate with regard to the Other who does not merely awaken the reason lying dormant in the “I” but is the advent of rationality (TaI 219/TeI 194–195). Will is in this way distinguished from reason for the sake of the ethical. In other words, Levinas is suggesting that the aspiration of the will to reason is itself a sign of the impossibility of its refusal of responsibility to the Other. It “is not free to ignore the meaningful world into which the face of the Other has introduced it” (TaI 219/TeI 194). This is an exigency which, as already suggested above, demands all the resources of the singular subject rather than insisting on surrender. 3. THE SUBJECT OF JUSTICE AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE THIRD The introduction of the face is concerned with a critique of the grounds of reason itself. Levinas has revealed an unbridgeable gap between the “thinking subject” and that being who has a relation to the world in enjoyment and possession. This division, he insists, is not overcome by the awakening of an innate faculty of thought in a pre-linguistic, animal existence. There is no spontaneous awakening to this reason. The face awakens me not to my inherent rationality but to the arbitrary nature of my existence. This face asks for justification and calls me to give those possessions in an economy very different from my own totality. Separation is embedded in an order in which the asymmetry of the interpersonal relation is effaced, where I and the other become interchangeable in commerce… Separation is not effaced in this ambiguity. We must now show in what concrete form the freedom of separation is lost, and in what sense it is maintained even in its very loss, and can resurrect. (TaI 226/TeI 201) The Other awakens the subject to the question of justice. In the first instance we can understand this to mean the calling of the subject to justify itself before the Other. But, how is it possible for the subject to respond when it is precisely its “being able to be able” which is called into question in the relation to the Other (TaI 198/TeI 172)? In other

110 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

words, how are we to be just? It might be argued that, for Levinas, it is not a matter of ‘being’ just at all. Rather, justice is precisely a giving up of one’s own being for the sake of the other; the leaving of being for ethics. This is not an uncommon interpretation and seems to supported by many claims concerning the meaning and relation of justice and ethics in Totality and Infinity.9 However, none of these claims reduce one term to the other. An understanding of the terms which finds them to be synonymous conceives the ethical relation as a withdrawal from the world of action into a private realm in which the subject sacrifices itself to the Other. However, for Levinas, the submission and passivity of the ego does not lead to my entry into the universal order of justice. I am called to respond. Thus Levinas says that justice summons me to go beyond the straight line of justice. That is, justice, as a demand of the Other, requires a response. This response does not remain between two. It does not merely demand submission to the Other (TaI 212/TeI 187; TaI 245/ TeI 222). The Other is the possibility of renewal, not a demand for silence. I am called upon to respond and thereby engage in the production of Infinity as infinite. As Levinas explains with regard to the nature of objectivity and signification: …while the utilisation of the sign permits me to render things offerable, and this is a designation to the Other, the word or language, attests to the sharing of things between me and all others. Language is the very passage from the particular to the universal. (TaI 173–174/TeI 148–149) However, “discourse [discours] is not a pathetic confrontation of two beings absenting themselves from things and the other” (TaI 767 TeI 49 translation modified). The relation to the other passes necessarily through the mediation of things and a world in which there is more than one Other. But, this does not make things or others, considered in their totality, that is to say, the political or economic circumstances of the event, the quint-essence of all relations. The edification of things and the reduction of the plurality of Others to a social totality is undermined in giving to the Other. Levinas has already warned us that “the relation with the Other— discourse—is not only the putting in question of my freedom” (TaI 213/ TeI 188). It is not only a demand to give myself to the Other in the “complicity of a private relation and a clandestinity” (TaI 212/TeI 187). The response to the Other, Levinas recognises and insists, does not

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 111

remain “between us” but concerns everyone. Levinas’ claim that the will is absent from the judgement of history and only appears there as a third may underlie readings of the relation of the ethical and the sociohistorical in Totality and Infinity as an opposition in which the latter is conceived of as negating the claims of the ethical. However, as we saw in the discussion of The Ego and the Totality Levinas is precisely attempting to think the relationship between the ethical and the economic as a non-oppositional structure. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas also attempts to formulate a positive relation of the two without relying on a notion of reconciliation or negation. In particular he asks how the ethical demand is translated into the historical. Thus he claims: But how is that situation which we call the judgement of God, and to which the will that wills in truth and not only subjectively submits [to the universal judgement of history], concretely brought about? (TaI 244/TeI 221) This is not to introduce a traditional conception of God as the solution but to suggest that the notion of an ahistorical judgement represented in organised religion as the judgement of a God inhabiting a world behind the scenes is to be interpreted as the attestation of the will—ethical subjectivity—to the face of the Other (TaI 244/TeI 221–222). For Levinas, this means that all judgement requires the presence of the will which would reject the violence of an impersonal judgement which silences the response. Thus the judgement of history does not negate the ethical relation but demands all the powers of the singular subject. Levinas writes that: In the justice that indicts my arbitrary and partial freedom I therefore am not simply called upon to concur, to consent and assume—to seal my pure and simple entry into the universal order, my abdication and the end of the apology, whose remanence would then be interpreted as an after effect of animality. (TaI 245/TeI 222–223) The Other awakens me to the question of justice but at the same time confronts me with the question of how to respond. This apparent moment of paralysis, in which I am awakened to the non-intentional effects of my labour in an apparent moment of passivity, cannot be conceived of as the abdication of subjectivity and the subjective will. This is the moment when Levinas confronts a new question concerning

112 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

justice: the question of how the ethical event is translated into a moment of judgement without an inevitable negation of infinite responsibility. As the discussion of The Ego and the Totality suggested, the relation to the other, understood as the intimate relation of two, describes a certain moral relation but is not a satisfactory account of the moral conditions for thought as Levinas understands them. The problem, Levinas suggests, is the necessary violence to the third that this relation entails. The relation to another in the dual society is outside the distinction of justice and injustice. This is not to say that there is not violence within this relation but that precisely because a third perspective is absent, the question of justice or injustice does not arise. To be sure, within the relation, Levinas claims we are just amongst ourselves. Justice here would be a process of negotiation—of exchange and reparation. If this begins to sound like a juridical notion of justice then we must add two points. First, that it could be argued that the juridical notion always requires a third person. This third person is not equivalent to Levinas’ third. The third person of the judge, is no doubt a third, however, the judge by definition is not another other but a representative of a law to whom the two parties defer. The very meaning of impartiality requires that the person of the judge does not become a third party in Levinas’ sense. Thus we can also say that when Levinas talks of the third he is not talking about the third as an impartial judge or the objective perspective which we must somehow climb towards out of the messy subjectivism of our bi-partiality. Second, we can also suggest that in so far as the third party is not the judge, yet introduces the question of justice, we must consider that the meaning of justice in Levinas is being approached from an entirely different perspective to that of the juridical or the moral. In fact it is being approached from beyond the opposition of the juridical and the moral. Justice is not the harsh and inhuman rule of law that must be imposed upon the clandestine relation between two. The ethical relation does not sink into complacency. To say that ethics is concerned with justice is to begin to rethink both morality and justice beyond the traditional oppositions of private and public law. What we have undertaken is the first step in the break down of this opposition by suggesting that the private-public opposition actually resides on the same plane of a morality of goodwill. The significance of this rethinking of the relation of ethics and justice is fundamental to understanding why Levinas’ ethics is not a moralism. The introduction of the question of another Other, or the third party,

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 113

makes clear that Levinas is already concerned with a critique of morality in terms of justice. As Levinas says: It is important to recognise that the idea of justice always supposes that there is a third. But, initially, in principle, I am concerned about justice because the other has a face. (PM 170) In other words, ethics is concerned with justice because it is the condition of possibility and impossibility of the question of justice conceived at the political level, as a calculation, or judgement. The welcome of the face as the work of justice conditions the birth of truth (TaI 28/TeI xvi); it conditions the inevitable moment of decision. Justice supposes a third but it is in the relation to the Other that this third first becomes “visible.”10 …the word “justice” applies much more to the relation with the third than the relation with the Other. But in reality the relation with the Other is never uniquely the relation with the Other: the third is always and already represented in the Other; in the very apparition of the Other I already regard [me regard] the third. And all this renders an extremely close connection [rapport] between responsibility in regard to the Other [à l’égard d’autrui] and justice. (DVI 133 my translation) Thus justice is “knowledge,” “calculation” and “decision” which arises out of the relation to the Other. Elsewhere, Levinas discusses the ambiguity of the terminology, suggesting that, in Totality and Infinity, “just” and “ethical” are “the same word, the same question, the same language” (PM 171). In making ethics and justice the “same language,” Levinas is acknowledging the two-sided event of the face to face encounter itself, that it is a relation that confronts the unique other but also concerns itself with the whole of humanity. Thus while, for Levinas, the ethical relation is linked integrally to justice, it is of utmost importance that the one is not reduced to the other. While I am necessary for justice, “the relation with the Other, discourse, is not only the putting in question of my freedom” (TaI 212/TeI 187). It is not only a demand to give myself to the Other, for this would involve the forgetting of the universe of the many others in the “complicity of a private relation and a clandestinity” (TaI 212/TeI 187).

114 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

The response to the Other differs from the reaction of a subject to the given of the phenomenal world in so far as it does not remain “between us” but concerns everyone. The ethical relation and the “ethical question”: “What do I have to do with justice?,” accomplishes the “critical essence of knowledge” beyond the objective knowledge of the cogito (TaI 85/TeI 58). Justice, as knowledge and calculation, is “thought” conceived out of the relation to the Other. The meaning of ethics is this concern for the whole of humanity awakened by the relation to the unique Other. The meaning of justice in this moment refers to “right,” in the sense of the uprightness [droiture] of the face. Thought out of the relation to the Other, justice is not revenge, restitution or compensation but the institution, or investiture of arbitrary life through the question of right. By linking justice to the ethical encounter, neither “morality,” nor justice can be understood in terms of an appeal to universal principles. For Levinas, morality presides over freedom only in so far as “reason” does not find, or coincide with, a clear and distinct idea but comes face to face with the Other.11 The Other opens a dimension beyond the open ended economy of needs to a desire that comes from elsewhere.12 4. TWO KINDS OF JUSTICE But to speak truly, the appearance in being of these “ethical peculiarities”—the humanity of man—is a rupture of being. It is significant even if being resumes and recovers itself. (EI 87) The meaning of ethics in Totality and Infinity lies in the insinuation of a radical break with being but does not yet conceive of this relation from a position beyond being. The positive signification of this is that Levinas implicitly recognises the impossibility of leaving being even in asserting a beyond. This is often overlooked in interpretations of the ethical relation in Totality and Infinity. In a certain sense, Levinas remains concerned with the ontological signification of the ethical. In other words, he remains concerned with the question of how the ethical can show itself in being without negation. The paradoxical elements of this approach are well discussed by Derrida in Violence and Metaphysics, a paper which has as its main theme the question of ontology and ethics and suggests in certain

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 115

moments that there is an unavoidable and perhaps absolute violence instituted by the ethical relation itself (Derrida 1978:130).13 While it can be argued that it is not until the later works that Levinas discusses the complexities arising from this paradox, the discussion of justice, at the very least, does not reduce the ethical and the ontological dimensions to an oppositional relation. Totality and Infinity continues Levinas’ reconfiguration of being, subjectivity and world. Perhaps it could be argued that Levinas already offers us a glimpse of a subjectivity which he later describes as an “exception putting out of order the conjunction of essence, being and the ‘difference’” (OTB xli/AE x translation modified). Ethos, in Totality and Infinity, is not a place of inhabitation of the human but the moment of the effectuation of disorder and disjunction with regard to being and beings. The question of disorder and order; of disjunction and conjunction, is not unrelated to the question of justice and injustice (as the following chapter discusses in detail). In Totality and Infinity, it could be suggested that justice is a moment of the ordination of subjectivity by the Other for the social totality. This is a move from the anonymity of the totality, in which I am a being in light, to the moment of singular identity before the Other, who does not justify me but demands a response. In other words, the Other does not just command/order me but commands me to command, which is to locate myself there before the Other and thus introduce myself to the whole of humanity. Nothing remains between two. The ethical exigency must be translated into an ontological act of calculation and judgment. Toward the end of Section III of Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes: In reality, justice does not include me in the equilibrium of its universality—justice summons me to go beyond the straight line [ligne droit] of justice, and consequently nothing marks the limits of this march; behind the straight line [ligne droit] of the law the land of the good extends infinite and unexplored necessitating all the resources of a singular presence. (TaI 245/TeI 223) The distinction between “justice” and the “straight line of justice” marks a crucial turning point in Levinas’ analyses in Totality and Infinity. The straight line of justice is linked to the “right” [droit] attached to law, while the justice which summons me is linked to an infinite unknown realm of the relation to the Other. It is not surprising that this division and distinction has been interpreted as the reassertion of the traditional division between ethics and law—between private

116 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

morality and public duty. However, as the arguments above have suggested, Levinas is well aware of this opposition in The Ego and the Totality where he attempts to introduce the notion of a relation between two that recognises the exigencies of social justice. Rather than reasserting an age old division in Totality and Infinity, I have suggested that Levinas’ notion of the ethical relation is the necessary condition of possibility of justice within the social totality. This linking of ethics and justice is not merely a rethinking of the grounds of social justice but a questioning of the meaning of the traditional grounds or foundations of justice as a presupposed, impartial universal. Thus Levinas’ claim that he did not make a distinction between the right before the other and the right before the third does not mean that he did not recognise a difference between “ethical justice” and “justice” as a moment of calculation but rather that the call to justice by the Other is already a call to respond and make a judgement in the face of an incomparable uniqueness. The ethical event is not a refusal of the third—another Other. Rather, the third is approached out of the relation to the Other and thus takes on an ethical sense. As the discussion of the face and the third in The Ego and the Totality suggests, this approach reveals the fundamental ambiguity of signification. There remains an excess to any meaninggiving relation in being. This excess does not refer to the essential infinite possibilities of signification in the relation to il y a but suggests that even this encounter might have an ethical signification, that is, an excessive moment that does not negate it but introduces another question (which will be discussed in the following chapters). For the present, I suggest that an understanding of the relation of ethics and justice in Levinas’ work is necessary in order to grasp the configuration of ethics and ontology. It is only relatively recently that Levinas’ linking of ethics and justice in Totality and Infinity has been discussed as an important theme.14 John Llewelyn suggests that Totality and Infinity concerns itself with the “condition of the justice of the systems of justice” (Llewelyn 1991:4), thereby suggesting that Levinas’ account of the face to face relation in Totality and Infinity is a rethinking of the justice of social totalities in terms of the ethical relation. Simon Critchley also suggests that, in Totality and Infinity, “justice defines and is defined by the ethical relation to the Other” (Critchley 1994: 15). In other words, justice is conceived of as arising as a response to the suffering of the Other. Critchley and Llewelyn link Levinas’ discussion of the face to the possibility of the question of justice, leading to an interpretation of the

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 117

ethical relation as a call to justice. Both recognise that the ethical relation is approached from the position of the meaning of justice in the realm of being. The present discussion is in agreement with this interpretation— that, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas is primarily concerned with providing an account of an “ethical justice.” That is, he is concerned with insisting that justice arises out of a singular relation to another and does not presuppose a pre-existing universal. This is to suggest that the notion of the face as a call to justice cannot ignore Levinas’ concern to rethink the foundations of representational thought, which has consequences for how we think the nature of judgement and the calculations which occur in the realm of economic justice. Does this rethinking of justice nevertheless introduce a question concerning whether there might be two irreducible sides of justice? Simon Critchley writes that there are two notions of justice in Levinas’ work—an ethical and a political notion—but finds that only the former is present in Totality and Infinity. Critchley refers to the preface of the 1987 German edition of Totality and Infinity where Levinas suggests that he did not make a distinction in Totality and Infinity between mercy—the source of the right [droit] of the other before me—and justice where the right [droit] of the other imposes itself before the third.15 In other words, Levinas did not make a distinction between the relation of the subject and the Other and the relation of subject and another within a social realm in which there is more than one Other. The failure to both make such a distinction and introduce the question of how I make a decision between two Others, could be regarded as a failing of Totality and Infinity. However, in the light of the discussion above, it can be suggested that, in Totality and Infinity, both the subject and the Other are already engaged with the third party in so far as the relation to the face does not absent itself from the social totality but in a certain sense reconstitutes the social whole as a plurality by refusing the totalising forces operating in it. The problem with Totality and Infinity is not that the ethical does not recognise a third but the manner in which Levinas explains how the demand of the Other is not negated in the response, where such a negation would result in the reification of an “ethical beyond” or its refusal altogether. The problem Levinas addresses in Totality and Infinity, is not that my response negates the Other but that the infinite responsibility of the ethical relation is troubled from the start by the finitude of subjectivity itself. As the analysis of The Ego and the Totality suggests, subjectivity is already a participant in the social totality. As a will it constantly betrays itself in the totality while

118 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

remaining exterior to it. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas explains that the will is only present in the totality as a third party and thus is always judged or assigned a meaning in its absence (TaI 242/TeI 220). However, in the response to the Other it attempts to present itself as a unique subjectivity in this totality—it attempts to become visible. In doing so it becomes apology, yet cannot maintain itself in this relation without confronting the violence of death (TaI 242/TeI 220). For Levinas, to overcome death, it would have to will its own judgement, no longer as a judgement of history but as a judgement before the face of the Other. This takes place when the subject is summoned by the Other to respond. In this ethical event the subject’s fear of death turns into a fear for the death of the Other (TaI 244/TeI 222).16 As a consequence, the response to the demand of the Other turns out to be conditioned by, or condition the possibility of, a “victory over death”—a victory over finite being, which does not annihilate subjective identity but calls it to its unicity. The directionality of the relation between conditioned and conditioning remains ambiguous. Perhaps this is necessarily the case for another notion of time is required altogether to describe the event of responsibility. The victory, in Totality and Infinity, takes place as responsibility, as an existing for the Other (TaI 246/TeI 224). However, Levinas argues that this responsibility, or goodness, is not guaranteed by the relation to the face itself, which already presupposes an infinite time—a time that is not measured in or by history (TaI 247/TeI 225). As we saw in the previous chapter, Levinas attempts to resolve this dilemma by introducing the notion of fecundity and paternity as a mode of existing in which subjectivity goes beyond being and the social totality and in doing so affirms an infinite future while remaining in itself. It is this event which can thus affirm the “whole of humanity.” The phenomenology of eros and the notion of fecundity are central to the possibility of the overcoming of death and the possibility of the translation of the ethical response into a judgment which affirms a human infinite as another kind of universal. The victory over death associated with eros is understood as a relation to a future without subjective purpose.17 While it could be argued that Levinas thereby reveals the ethical signification of eros, it is undeniable that eros, both before and beyond the face, appears to function as a principle of generation which introduces a certain “potency” to the ethical subject. It can now be read as Levinas’ first attempt to introduce the notion of a human or personal infinite which is paradoxically discovered in the singular relation to the Other. This infinite will be juxtaposed to the il y a or impersonal being. The

ETHICS IS JUSTICE 119

phenomenology of eros, both before and beyond the face, is Levinas’ first rethinking of an ontological event in terms of the two-fold perspective effected by the advent of the Other. Returning to the ontological out of the inversion effected by the encounter with the Other, his task will be to rethink the phenomenological or ontological dimension starting from the ethical.18 Potency is nothing other than the possibility of response to an ethical demand, without the negation of subjective identity. In other words, the proper ontological meaning of fecundity in Totality and Infinity is the fact of its referring to an excessive moment—the production of the infinite. As we saw in the previous chapter this is an infinite engendered by a human multiplicity. In his later work, the notion of fecundity which produces the victory over death, is thought as a tertiality which Levinas names “illeity,” reducible neither to an ontic nor ontological third. For the moment, it can be said that to suggest that to be in relation to the Other is to be “in justice” is to offer a critique of justice conceived in traditional moral or juridical terms. The defence of subjectivity before the face shifts the orientation of justice, which is then shown to have its “origins” in responsibility and the apology of subjectivity before the Other. However, as Derrida, points out, surely this turns the ethical relation into the worst possible violence (Derrida 1978:143), not only with regard to my responsibility as “infinite and increasing in the measure it is assumed” (TaI 244/TeI 222 translation modified) but also in so far as it takes place in an invisible and silent world of the same and the Other. The suggestion that Levinas’ defence of subjectivity in the ethical relation is concerned with the critical essence of knowledge and truth is meant to demonstrate that ethical metaphysics, as Totality and Infinity has been characterised, is from the start concerned with the possible reification of the ethical relation. Justice is not necessary to save us from the ethical but rather to save us from turning the ethical into a form of complaisance (and I understand this word etymologically as a shared pleasure).19 Derrida’s claims about the silence of ethical speech are perhaps directed precisely at this danger in which the ethical, in the guise of the good, commits the worst violence. However, as Atterton suggests, the necessity of justice reveals there can be no simple origin; no simple first relation. It is not just a matter of avoiding a violence to a third, it is also the recognition of the double origin which is crucial (Atterton 1992:68). Thus the passivity of subjectivity discovered in Totality and Infinity must face the Other or risk becoming a moral being and introducing yet another moral economy to rival the technological economy of being.

120 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Perhaps it could also be said that Totality and Infinity redefines the ontological before the face and thereby hints at the transformations of these modes of being before the Other. However, it is not until these transformations before the Other are more thoroughly explored that the “ethical” sense of “difference” can be conceived of as the fundamental doubling of being with an ethical significance that is not reducible to its relation to being. While Totality and Infinity brings us to the limits of the phenomenological realm, the irruption in which the Other first appears will be reduced to another metaphysical foundation for thought, subjectivity and justice unless we can find a way in which to keep meaning open to the inversion—unless, as Bernard Caspar suggests, we can approach meaning and language itself out of this inversion (Caspar 1988:275). This is the work of Otherwise than Being, to be discussed in the next chapter.20

CHAPTER 7 Ethics, Ontology and Justice

This chapter addresses Levinas’ attempt to overcome the problems associated with the apparent duality of the ontological and the ethical subjectivity through a rethinking of justice as a primarily ontological moment. However, in doing so, the ultimate aim of the analysis is to demonstrate that the question of justice is not only linked to a question of being but also to an ethical event. The first half of the chapter discusses the relation between being, truth and justice, suggesting that the significance of Levinas’ reversal of truth and justice should be read in the light of Heidegger’s interpretation of these terms. I look at Heidegger’s interpretation of justice in The Anaximander Fragment and argue that Levinas’ basic objection to this notion of being’s justice is its subordination of the ethical moment to a necessity which Heidegger thinks in terms of to chreon or the dispensing of justice. In the second half of the chapter, I trace Levinas’ notion of justice in Otherwise than Being. Levinas locates justice in the ontological play of significations in “the said” and differentiates this realm from the ethical “saying.” In the said there is a continual undoing by the “unsaid” or, in Heidegger’s terms, the silent essencing of being. Levinas rethinks this unsaid as the “saying teleologically turned toward the said” and points to the necessary betrayal of the ethical saying in this movement toward being. At the same time he opens the dimension of affectivity beyond being. 1. TRUTH AND BEING’S JUSTICE In his essay, Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite, Levinas suggests that Heidegger’s concern for the question of the meaning of being affirms a tradition in which the question of freedom precedes the question of justice (CP 53/DEHH 171). Levinas’ critical engagement

122 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

with Heidegger and this tradition enacts an inversion of this relationship of freedom and justice. However, as we shall see, the inclusion of Heidegger in this tradition must at the very least take account of his rethinking of truth as unconcealment and justice as the dispensation in/of being. Levinas’ inversion does not consist in a simple reversal of priorities but a rethinking of the notion of temporal priority itself in terms of the face to face relation such that the question of justice itself institutes the same, rather than the reverse.1 For Levinas, the question of freedom is concerned solely with securing a place for the same—securing the identity of subjectivity within itself and affirming a right to be on the grounds of a certain necessity or truth. The question of justice for Levinas is not one of how to guarantee this right but a putting of it into question. The other calls the subject into question, thereby “putting the obligation with regard to the other before obligations to oneself” (CP 53/ DEHH 171). As such, the question of justice is a questioning of justice as founded on truth and freedom. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas’ discusses the meaning of truth and its relation to justice. Truth, a lesser contact than tangency, in the risk of ignorance, illusion and error, does not undo “distance,” does not result in the union of the knower and the known, does not issue in totality. (TaI 60/TeI 31–32) Truth understood as an epistemological event is always a distancing rather than a union. Heidegger and Levinas would agree on this point, in so far as, for Heidegger, what is revealed or unconcealed also slips away in its appearing. However, Levinas also challenges Heidegger. The distancing effected is not the consequence of a prior contact with being even when this being is understood as withdrawal. Despite [contrairement] the theses of the philosophy of existence, this contact is not nourished from a prior enrootedness in being. (TaI 60/TeI 32) The arguments of Chapter Four suggested that the production of representations presupposes a subject who dwells but who, nevertheless, is not a sufficient condition or ground of the production of truth. The notion of dwelling, considered as a primary mode of being of subjectivity, already undermines the notion of an enrootedness to being

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 123

in Totality and Infinity. Dwelling is an essential extraterritoriality and an event of separation. For Levinas, in the production of truth the subject remains separated or distant. The intentional relation is constantly undone by its non-intentional effects. The subject discovers this separation in the encounter with the Other. Here one discovers that the desire animating the quest for truth is a desire not lacking anything, not in need of certain facts, but an awakening to the speech of the Other. To put speech at the origin of truth is to abandon the thesis that dlsclosure, which implies the solitude of vision, is the first work of truth. (TaI 99/TeI 72) In this critical reference to Heidegger, Levinas challenges the notion of truth as unconcealment. Unconcealment or “disclosure” does not “respect” the other of discourse. He elaborates on this point, claiming that discourse is justice, and truth is thus founded on justice rather than the “solitude of vision.”2 Justice is thought here solely in its ethical sense as a question of right. Levinas does not accept the Heideggerian notion of being and considers that it ignores the “presence” of the Other as the face. The face speaks rather than designating, perhaps speaks as it designates but, nevertheless, introduces a dimension to language that the subject cannot discover alone as it is only revealed in the unique presence of the face. As the arguments of the previous chapter suggested the concept of justice is tied to the ethical relation. Yet Levinas is also aware that justice, while having an ethical signification, must also have an ontological sense. While instituted by the question of/by the Other, there is also a demand for measure and compensation. The analysis in Totality and Infinity affirms the necessity of this justice but does not explore it in great depth. It was more important there to uncover the ethical signification of justice. However, in Otherwise than Being, the question of the possibility of justice understood as measure and calculation is taken much more seriously and becomes a question of the relation between ethics and ontology itself. There Levinas affirms that everything shows itself in being for justice. In this work, Levinas comes much closer to affirming the Heideggerian analysis of being as justice while at the same time arguing that the ethical dimension must always remain outside this ontological structure. I suggest that in Otherwise than Being, Levinas relies implicitly on Heidegger’s retrieval of justice in his reinterpretation of the Anaximander fragment. I will discuss this

124 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

before turning to the rethinking of ethics and ontology in Otherwise than Being. In his discussion of the Anaximander fragment, Heidegger attempts to explore the meaning of justice and injustice and its necessity beyond any juridical or moral conceptions.3 As Robert Bernasconi explains, Heidegger thereby refutes from the outset the standard interpretation of the Anaximander fragment in which it is argued that concepts from the “human” realm are being applied to the natural realm (Bernasconi 1993a: 43). This is not to suggest that the terms are to be reversed such that the human is now to be understood in terms of the natural. These boundaries and oppositions do not apply. Rather, Heidegger will attempt to think the meaning of justice and its necessity in terms of a more original thinking (Bernasconi 1993a: 43). This original thinking is called an “originary ethics” by Heidegger in his Letter on Humanism, a paper which is contemporaneous with The Anaximander Fragment. In the former essay, Heidegger interprets ethos beginning with the Heraclitean phrase ethos anthropos daimon. He suggests that the ethos means abode or place of residence [Aufenthalt, Ort des Wohnens]—the “open region where man dwells” (UH 39/233). Daimon is interpreted as God, such that the entire phrase reads: “Man dwells, as man, in the proximity of God” (UH 39/233). For Heidegger, this opens the possibility that the meaning of “God” and “man” can be thought in terms of a more originary openness—the openness of man who dwells in the proximity of being. As such, originary ethics is the thinking of the meaning of the openness of man to being. Ontology, as the thinking of beings in their being, is secondary to this more original thinking. These distinctions are important for the following discussion in so far as Levinas will attempt to insinuate a signification for ethos, “the human” and the “proximity of God” beyond this Heideggerian conception without thereby interpreting the Heideggerian position in terms of the naive opposition of the human and the natural realms. In The Anaximander Fragment, Heidegger suggests that “injustice” runs through the totality of the “present.” Injustice is the “presence” of entities in their persistence and is to be contrasted to justice as “presencing.” Ontologically, Heidegger explains, what is present, approaches and passes away and thus is said to “linger” (AF 42). Lingering is the “jointure” or “juncture” [Fuge] of presencing which consists in a fundamental discontinuity: coming to be and passing away, “doing both at the same time” (AF 42).4 However, that which lingers can persevere, or persist aiming for subsistence and continuance. In so

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 125

doing, it abandons the jointure of the while; it is “out of joint.” This disjunction, or Unfuge: …consists in the fact that whatever lingers awhile seeks to win for itself a while based solely on the model of continuance. (AF 44) Nevertheless, this persistence does not escape the ontological fact that what lingers is in transition. There is an approach/withdrawal, which continues despite the disjunction: The enjoined continuance…does not fall into disjunction; it surmounts disorder. (AF 43) Heidegger suggests that being—understood as the presencing of what is present as lingering—is not unjust. Rather, beings are unjust in so far as they “tarry,” “delay,” or “hang on” (AF 47). This would be a momentary forgetting of being as presencing. For Heidegger, that which lingers becomes present “as it surmounts reckless disorder, which haunts lingering itself as an essential possibility” (AF 47). Furthermore, the very “presencing of what is present is such a surmounting” (AF 47). Reckless disorder is thus associated with the persistence of things in their being and not with the fact that in their coming to be they also pass away. Thus order is associated with justice/dike and that which comes to presence by way of presencing. For Heidegger, the whole manner of lingering is tied up with the jointure of presencing which in his analysis of the Anaximander fragment he associates with giving reck to the other.5 It is to allow something to be itself, which is thought to be considerate in the sense of letting the other be. This is an “indeterminate reciprocity,” or a leaving of the other to itself (AF 46). Tolerance, considered as an indeterminate reciprocity, is the essence of justice, or of justice conceived of as the silent essencing of being. In the interpretation of the Anaximander fragment, Heidegger thereby approaches justice in terms of being. However, this not to define justice or being once and for all but as Bernasconi explains “to understand dike in terms of what still remains to be thought in the assignment of the truth of Being” (Bernasconi 1993a: 45). For Heidegger, what still remains to be thought is to chreon, which is most often translated as “necessity” but which, according to Heidegger, is to be interpreted as “usage” (AF 53).6 Looking to the root meaning of the German term for

126 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

“usage” he relates it to the Latin frui which not only means “fruitful” but also, Heidegger claims, means “to enjoy” (AF 53). For Heidegger, to chreon means to enjoy in the sense of letting something come to presence ‘to enjoy the fruits of’. This does not designate anything to do with human behaviour but rather the manner in which being itself presences. As such, the word to chreon designates a relation between being and beings where being is a delivering or dispensation; a letting something belong to someone (AF 52). Heidegger describes it as a “handing over of presence which presencing delivers to what is present” (AF 52). Being is that which delivers or distributes justice and injustice. In other words, being is not that which distributes nor what is distributed but distribution.7 However, “[a]s soon as presencing is named it is represented as some present being” (AF 50). Ultimately, Heidegger says that this means the forgetting of the difference between being and beings since being is reduced to the highest being. The essence of presencing, and with it the distinction between presencing and what is present, remains forgotten. The oblivion of Being is the oblivion of the distinction between Being and beings. (AF 50) However, Heidegger adds that this oblivion is not a consequence of the forgetfulness of thinking but rather belongs to the self-veiling essence of being. In its originariness the distinction between being and beings collapses and the two parties do not reveal themselves as distinct (AF 51). The difference is determined after the fact. Thus for Heidegger, justice would be the law of being as the oblivion of the difference. This would be a “law” in which the other is “distributed” in/by being. Again, Bernasconi reminds us that this “law” must not be understood in any juridical or moral sense which would overlook its metaphysical content which he understands as originary collectedness of phusis. While this does not mean that ethics and law were not an issue for Heidegger, they would be secondary to the fundamental ontology as an original ethics that attempts to think ethos in terms of the truth of being (Bernasconi 1993a: 43). As Heidegger writes: The totality of beings is the simple object of a singular will to conquer.

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 127

The simplicity of Being is confounded in a singular oblivion. What mortal can fathom the abyss of this confusion? He may try to shut his eyes…the abyss does not vanish. …Is there any rescue? Rescue comes when and only when danger is. Danger is when Being itself advances to its farthest extreme, and when the oblivion that issues from Being itself undergoes reversal. But what if Being in its essence enjoys [braucht] the essence of man? If the essence of man consists in thinking the truth of Being? Then thinking must poetize on the riddle of Being. It brings the dawn of thought into the neighbourhood of what is for thinking. (AF 57–58) This passage, coming at the conclusion of The Anaximander Fragment, can be read as a dense summary of the outcome of his reading of the fragment and its consequences for the thinking of being and “the human.” The interminable play of justice/injustice in being, which Heidegger brings out in his discussion, reminds us that what is at stake is the forgetting of the difference between being and beings—the oblivion of the difference. The oblivion, as argued above, is not an error or lack that can be recovered but belongs to the self-veiling essence of being. Oblivion is not a consequence of the forgetfulness of thinking, rather, forgetfulness would be a consequence of the fact that presencing, as such, cannot appear; the fact that the presencing always gets interpreted as some present being and being is reduced to the highest being. Thus, for Heidegger, persistence and the violence of the present is a conse quence of the oblivion of being and the difference. However, what is the meaning of the reversal which oblivion undergoes? Dallmayr suggests the possibility of an ethical interpretation. The reversal entails letting juncture be and “to be considerate to one another as well as to nature and Being” (Dallmayr 1993:129). This is to be brought about through a “bracketing of instrumental production and the readiness to undergo a transformation [Kehre]” in which “humans turn from oblivion to the recollection of being” (Dallmayr 1993:129). But how is this possible? The reversal of oblivion would seem to consist in an impossible remembrance. Can we think of this impossibility as having a positive signification, rather than as the inevitable failure or fall into despair before the abyss which never vanishes?

128 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Heidegger writes that rescue comes only when there is danger. Does danger consist in standing on the precipice of a remembrance that forgets its own impossibility, confronting the abyss of nothingness? It can be argued that, for Heidegger, the anxiety which takes hold is now to be understood as the moment of being’s call. Heidegger suggests that this might be precisely the essence of “the human,” or perhaps more correctly, the very essencing of “the human” and furthermore that it is being that gives this “essencing,” in the sense of letting such a being come to presence in the manner of presencing. The forgetting of the impossible remembrance is reinterpreted in the light of being’s justice as a lingering which, in coming to be, passes away. Thus in essencing “the human” would be fulfilling the order of justice according to being. Can we understand justice otherwise? 2. ETHICS AND BEING’S JUSTICE In Levinas’ understanding of Heidegger, it is the interminable play of justice/injustice that calls the violence and persistence of the present into question. As early as 1951 Levinas suggests that the notion of “letting be” allows beings into a horizon in which they can be comprehended without “knowing,” “independent of the perception which discovers and grasps them” (BW 6). However, this relation subordinates the Other to the openness of being—it reduces humanity to existence and the anonymous forces of justice that operate in it. “Letting be” covers over the “cry whose echo will resound forever in the eternity of spaces”—the tragic necessity which determines each subject to which Levinas draws our attention in Existence and Existents (EE 90/153– 154). The tragic, as Heidegger conceives of it, lies in the essential forgetting of the oblivion of being by a “singular will to conquer” and not, as Levinas writes in Existence and Existents, the “forgetting of the unforgiven [impardonné] instant and the pain for which nothing can compensate [compenser]” (EE 90/154). In Otherwise than Being, Levinas claims that: “Being qua Being is a function of justice” (OTB 162/AE 207). However, this does not settle the question of ethos and the meaning of the human which he insists lies beyond this original thinking of the truth of being. It is clear in the 1951 paper Is Ontology Fundamental? that he considers Heidegger’s notion of “letting be” suitable as an account of the experience of beings in their being but that he has doubts about its suitability as a description of the relation to the Other as “human” and not just as a specific kind of being

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 129

amongst beings. Despite Heidegger’s critique of comprehension— which claims that to comprehend is no longer to “define” but to find ourselves in an affective disposition (BW 4)8—Levinas suggests that Heidegger’s alliance of the verb “to know” with the verb “to exist” effaces a difference that is beyond the difference effaced in the oblivion of being. Levinas recognises that, for Heidegger, the affective disposition of “thinking” is the ontological impossibility of overcoming forgetfulness which opens an abyss that cannot be overcome by “a singular will to conquer” (AF 57). However, for Levinas, such an ontology leads to an interpretation of concrete existence “as a function of its entry into the ‘openness’ of being in general” (BW 5). As Heidegger claims in the Letter on Humanism, we must think the essence of the human in terms of this original thinking in non-definitive terms as he who resides in the proximity of being, not as the master of being but as the host [Hirt] who is claimed by being (UH 199). Ethos—the open region where man resides—lies in the proximity of being. In proximity to being an abyss is opened. There is a fundamental disturbance that challenges the possibilities of the “will.”9 On this point, Levinas and Heidegger are in agreement. However, the disturbance, which shakes the foundations of affective being, is given two fundamentally irreconcilable interpretations by Heidegger and Levinas. Levinas does not accept the Heideggerian analysis of this moment in which “the human” is thought of in terms of being and the fundamental disturbance is conceived of as the tragic essenc-(ing) of “the human,” who must give itself to the anonymous futurity and historicity of being. Llewelyn sums up Levinas’ position with regard to the Anaximander fragment, as follows: …this resolution [of the tragedy of being] is sought in a return to human subjectivity that Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein would leave when he locates what he refers to as a resolution of the tragedy of being in the coming to presence of the present as in the overcoming of the dis- of dis-order denoted by Anaximander’s word a-dikia. (Llewelyn 1995a:25) Heidegger talks of the overcoming of disorder as a relation to danger. It is in relation to this abyss—the fundamental disturbance—that redemption might be thinkable. This relation of danger and redemption in Heidegger’s work expresses the paradox of the proximity of the infinite, the difficulty of an approach to the infinite and yet the

130 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

possibility of a projection toward or affirmation of this infinite. Heidegger suggests that in recognising the risk and the danger one has already takes a step toward redemption.10 The anxiety invoked in the recognition of the “absence of God” no doubt calls into question the pretensions of the “singular will to conquer.” The abyss itself is interpreted as a moment of an awakening to being’s call. While it might be argued that Heidegger is far from offering consolations, the question remains what is it to heed the call of being. Who is saved? Who suffers? Is there another danger in linking being’s justice to the growth of a saving power? Levinas implicitly takes up these questions in the paper Diachrony and Representation where, commenting on Heidegger’s analysis of the Anaximander fragment, he suggests that Heidegger’s putting in question of the presence of the present in its persistence and violence might be read as gesturing toward the calling into question of the ego in its perseverance in being (TO 97–120/EN 165–184). Levinas writes: It [the notion of the unjust presence of the present] puts into question the “positivity” of the esse in its presence, signifying, bluntly, encroachment and usurpation! (TO 109/EN 174) Levinas asks whether Heidegger inadvertently gestures toward the original signification of ethics at this moment and suggests that the manner of presencing discussed by Heidegger is already a sign of the offence done to the Other by the persistence of being’s good conscience (TO 109/EN 175). However, Levinas makes clear in another comment that what he sees in this account of being is an honesty with regard to its violence and not necessarily an adequate account of its overcoming. I have always admired the Heideggerian analysis of the Anaximander fragment. The present—the presence of the present —appears there, in its very persistence, as violence, postponing the past and the future, without suggesting any remorse in this exclusive “Being-there.” (Ent 13)11 On first reading, Levinas’ claim appears somewhat contentious. As we have seen, Heidegger makes a distinction between the “presence of the present” and “presencing.” The presencing of the present does not appear in his analysis as persistence and violence but as “giving reck” or the surmounting of disorder/injustice. However, we must examine

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 131

this interpretation of presencing as justice/dike more closely, before we make a decision regarding Levinas’ claim.12 This, I suggest not only entails a closer examination of “remorse” but a discussion of both remorse and giving reck, in terms of the relation between the said, the unsaid and the saying in Otherwise than Being. The relation of remorse and justice in Levinas can be traced back to one of his earliest discussions of justice. In Existence and Existents, he discusses a notion of suffering or pain which cannot be redeemed. He finds that “[t]here is no justice that could make reparations for it [suffering]” (EE 91/DE 156). In this work, the meaning of pain or suffering is doubled with an ontological signification as a moment of impossibility. Between the moment of suffering, which is itself conceived of as an enchainment to being and the moment of justice there is an unbridgeable gap; a not being able to return to the moment in which pain was inflicted so as to undo it. One cannot undo the attachment to being through acts of justice. It announces a certain impossibility of justice understood as the adequation of being. If justice is possible at all it can only take place across this interval. In the light of this early account of justice, it can be suggested that the problem with the interpretation of existence as a function of justice is the reduction of affectivity, or sensibility, to a passive exposedness to being which does not seem to recognise the violence inherent in this exposedness and the demand that the human gives itself to being, or becomes the servant of being. In Existence and Existents, passive exposedness appears as a violence with regard to the subject. In Otherwise than Being, the signification of exposure is introduced as the gnawing sensibility of remorse. Levinas describes remorse in relation to the notion of recurrence and substitution. Remorse is a “gnawing away of identity,” or the recurrence of the contracting ego, which is associated with intolerable rest and the break up of the principle of being (OTB 114/AE 145). This is not the “alienation of an identity betrayed” in coming to be, but substitution— an inequality beyond consciousness where the self is out of phase with itself—“biting in on itself”—in remorse (OTB 115/AE 147). In Otherwise than Being, remorse is a term used to describe a sensible subjectivity whose embodiment is now understood in terms of an ethical affectivity. Sensibility is no longer a mode of enjoyment, rather, the “immediacy of enjoyment and its frustration” describes the “immediacy of sensibility” (OTB 74/AE 94 my italics). This immediacy is the “for-the-other of one’s own materiality”—a proximity and vulnerability to the Other (OTB 74/AE 94). It is at the level of material

132 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

“vulnerability” that the subject, “despite itself [malgre soi]” is responsible to the point of substitution for the Other (OTB 74/AE 94). In other words, initial materiality already has an ethical signification. In the terminology of Otherwise than Being, the relation of this ethical affectivity and being is discussed in terms of the relation of “the said” and “the saying.” The said is the realm of the interminable play of justice and injustice—of the coming to be and passing away of entities in their being— and the saying is the excessive moment of ethical affectivity which is necessarily betrayed in the said but not thereby negated. Thus the question of justice is no longer a question of whether or not it can be rendered to being but a necessity that arises out of the ethical saying. What this introduces is a notion of responsibility that cannot permit the subject of justice to remain indifferent to the Other. Responsibility is not simply bad conscience nor conscience as the fact that one hears the silent call of being. Responsibility is prior to the response given to the call. There is no economy of need, even the need of being for humanity. 3. LANGUAGE AND AFFECTIVITY In his 1967 essay Language and Proximity, Levinas introduces the said in a discussion of intentionality and signification (CP 109–126/DEHH 217–236). Language, he suggests, is the manner in which the world is present to intentional consciousness. This is not to say that language is a system of signs which represents or reconstitutes, in a subjective consciousness, the objects of an external world. The phenomenological conception of language challenges, on the one hand, the naturalist or naive realist conception of the relation of subject-object in which the objective world is present to consciousness through sensible perception, and on the other hand, the idealist notion in which the manifold of intuition is presented to a synthesising consciousness which immediately identifies this or that. As Levinas writes: To be present to consciousness is not reducible to presence in a receptacle nor to the unfolding of this or that before the gaze. Presence to consciousness is the fact that this which takes form in experience is already alleged [prétendu] or understood [entendu] or identified, hence thought as this or as that and as present, that is, precisely thought. (CP 110/DEHH 218)

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 133

The notion of the identification of “this as that,” or identity as the understanding of this as that, also has something in common with Heidegger’s notion of interpretation [Auslegung] as the understanding of a “something as something,” as Levinas points out (CP 111/DEHH 219). From a phenomeno-ontological perspective, it is the signification of the “as” that is in question. According to Heidegger, to understand “something as something” is an “articulation” of this as that “before our making any thematic assertion about it” (BT 190). In Language and Proximity, Levinas attempts to explain this notion of meaning. In terms of the “as,” meaning is not something added to pre-existing unities nor is it how the unities are given, rather it is “the fact objects are meant [entendu]—‘gemeint’—as present in the original, in ‘flesh and bone’” (CP 110/DEHH 218–219). The consequences for our understanding of the relation of language and world, or perhaps we should say, for the meaning of “language” and “world,” are explained in Meaning and Sense: Experience is reading, the understanding of meaning exegesis, a hermeneutics, and not an intuition. This taken qua that—meaning is not a modification that affects a content existing outside of all language. Everything remains in a language or in a world… (CP 78–79/HAH 22) This is the importance of Heidegger’s ontology—that it overcomes the subject-object opposition that plagues “intellectualism” and brings the things in themselves back to the horizon of their appearing.13 In Language and Proximity, Levinas first distinguishes the notion of “identification” as the work of classification or subsumption of an identity under a predicate (Kantian apperception) from the properly phenomenological notion of identification as “kerygma” which conceives of the act of identification as a primary movement of meaning which is presupposed in any predicative act (to be discussed in detail below). However, the discussion in Language and Proximity does not limit itself to the delineation of this distinction but attempts to reveal an assumption common to both—that all acts of identification are grounded in a presupposed spontaneity. Levinas continues: …[a]nd the authority of intuition rests on this as, on this meaning behind which one can not reasonably seek anything further. (CP 110/DEHH 219)

134 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

In the former, the subject is identified by being subsumed under a predicate. In the latter, identification is the a priori mode of presentation of something to intentional consciousness, of being-in-tension. In his analysis of these issues in Otherwise than Being, Levinas also draws our attention to Husserl’s discussion of an “originary doxa” [Urdoxa] in Experience and Judgement (OTB 35–36 & 189/AE 45–46).14 Husserl suggests that the “merely passive pretentional [vorgebendes] consciousness” in which the entity [seiendes] is “pre-tended” as a unity of identity is also a realm in flux (EU 60). For the grasping of the unity of identity as an objective identity the pretention is always already accompanied by a “perceptive contemplation” [wahrnehmendes Betrachten] of the pre-tended sensible substrate, which Husserl claims is already an “Activity” (EU 60). In other words, the primary “tension” of “intention” is the fact that it is neither a pure passivity of sensibility, nor a pure act of reflection in which a subject is assumed under a predicate. The a priori presentation is a “primal impression” which is “not impressed without consciousness” (OTB 33/AE 41). The significance of this analysis lies in Husserl’s insistence that the relation of the pre-predicative realm and the predicative judgment is not one of passive receptivity and active contemplation but that at the prepredicative level there is already an active “I” [Ichakte].15 Thus, for Levinas, intentionality cannot be summed up by the well known phrase “consciousness is always consciousness of something” or thought as an openness upon something unless we recognise that this openness is already an “understanding” [entendement]. Understanding is an a priori “being-in-tension,” in the sense of a pre-tension [pretendu], a proclamation of something as something.16 In Otherwise than Being, Levinas writes: …[t]he said is not simply a sign or an expression of a meaning; it proclaims and establishes this as that. (OTB 35/AE 45) In other words, the said is another word for the a priori spontaneity of consciousness. However, what Levinas claims to have uncovered is not a notion limited to Husserl but a notion of the a priori common to the Western philosophical tradition.17 This notion of spontaneity is ultimately conceived of as a first enunciation,—the possibility of predication—or the spontaneous advent of the universal.18 “Primal consciousness” is a “surplus of spontaneity” prior to the reflective thought which will subsume the proclaimed/pretended identity under a predicate (OTB 35/AE 45).

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 135

For Levinas, the specificity of Husserl’s notion of spontaneity lies in the suggestion that it is situated between activity and passivity. This is to insinuate that the “sensible as lived” functions as the fundamental level of judgement and is not reducible to either side of the opposition mind/body.19 Thus Levinas claims that the pre-predicative said cannot be reduced to a spontaneous subjective expression conceived of as the spontaneous outburst of an embodied thought but is an obedience to an originary doxa [Urdoxa], a listening or “hear-say” [oui-dire], which Levinas also calls the “already said” [deja dit] or the “epos where the given is held in its theme” (OTB 36/AE 46).20 In other words, the identification of something as something does not “take place,” so to speak, in a world of pure sensations but in a world where things are already “meant.” This is not to claim that the world has already been grasped theoretically, or has been named, or represented as this or that. Rather, the already said “signifies (proposes and orders) experience” (OTB 36/AE 46). In terms of the above, the said refers to the spontaneous activity that accompanies the givenness of the object but which is prior to any predication. In distinction, the already said—which Levinas describes as “the saying teleologically turned toward the kerygma of the said” (OTB 37/AE 47)—is the fact that this spontaneous activity takes place, so to speak, at the fundamental level of the sensible lived. Together, the said and the already said, insinuated between activity and passivity, are the possibility of a naming and of an approach to, and out of, the sensible. What this means is that the said is not merely the nominalisation of an undifferentiated, or pure, flow of temporality, considered as the flux of an “objective world.” The relation between temporal flow and the said takes place across the affectivity of the “sensible as lived”: In the sensible as lived, identity shows itself, becomes a phenomenon, for in the sensible as lived is heard and “resounds” essence, the lapse of time and the memory that recuperates it, consciousness… (OTB 36/AE 46) Thus Levinas connects the “amphibology of being”—the essential hideand-seek structure of being, which is the coming to be and passing away of beings in the said—neither to a notion of a fundamental duality of matter and mind, nor to the essential oblivion of being itself but to the fact that the “sensible lived” resounds in any denomination of being. In other words, the verbality of the verb lies in lived sensibility. The

136 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

sensible is “already the ambiguity of the verb and the noun that scintillates in the said” (OTB 36/AE 46). The ambiguity lies in the fact that the sensible is always “already said.” Thus Levinas writes that the saying that bore the said “was absorbed and dies in the said, was inscribed” (OTB 36/AE 46). This account of the said and the already said contains a more complex critique of the latent intellectualism of Husserl’s position, which was touched upon in Chapter Three. As suggested in that chapter, although Husserl recognises the significance of affectivity, he subordinates it to intentional consciousness—to an act of meaning-giving—which remains a form of intellectualism even if we now understand this “meaning-giving act” as beyond theoretical naming. In Otherwise than Being, Levinas links the Heideggerian question of being, or in Levinas’ terms the “amphibology of being,” to Husserl’s notion of the “lived sensible”—in other words, to the question of the nature of sensibility. That is, he links verbality to sensitivity. Should we see this as a radical reinterpretation of the ontological difference, where the fact of the silent essencing of being, which always gets said, is tied up with a betrayal of the sensible lived? Levinas has introduced us to the saying teleologically turned toward the said, a saying or affectivity, the signification of which is always subordinated to the moment of presencing if only as the condition of the possibility of such essencing. For Levinas, however, the saying cannot be reduced to this moment in which it is fixed in terms of the teleology of the said. 4. THE SAID AND THE SAYING OF THE SAID As the discussion above suggests, the introduction of the said and the saying, after Totality and Infinity, should be read as a clarification of a difficult and debated relationship between ethics and ontology.21 In the terms of Totality and Infinity, the issue resides in the question of the relation, priority and contradictions involved in the announcement of the face/Autrui as the ethical signification of “language,” while “language” seems, nevertheless, to remain the “house of being.” In the language of Otherwise than Being, this becomes a question of the possibility of an ethical saying which not only ruptures the ontological language of the said but in this very rupture transforms the manner in which we think the relationship.22 These terms already appear at the end of the Preface to Totality and Infinity where Levinas writes that the preface is already a restatement of

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 137

the work written and is an attempt “to break through the screen stretched between author and reader by the book itself” (TaI 30/TeI xviii). As such, he suggests that the preface “belongs to the very essence of language, which consists in continually undoing its phrase by the foreword or the exegesis, in unsaying the said” (TaI 30/TeI xviii).23 Rather than suggesting that these claims in the preface introduce (albeit in condensed form) the relation of the saying and the said that is elaborated in Otherwise than Being, I suggest that the unsaying of the said to which the prefatory word would correspond, remains ambiguously situated between what Levinas calls, in Otherwise than Being, the saying teleologically turned toward the said and the “saying without the said” (OTB 45/AE 58). In other words, the unsaying of the preface is not equivalent to the ethical saying of Otherwise than Being but merely the ontological fact of the unsaid which continually undoes the said in the “hide-and-seek” game that is essential to being (OTB 23/ AE 29). In Otherwise than Being, the distinction between the saying and the said is complicated from the first by this distinction between the “saying teleologically turned toward the said”24 and the saying which cannot be conceived of as a correlate of the said. Thus the relation of the said and the saying is not one dimensional. The relation of the saying teleologically turned toward the said corresponds to the amphibology of being—to ontological difference. The saying beyond the said, alternatively, introduces the “amphibology of this amphibology” itself which Levinas insists cannot be thought on the plane of being.25 Levinas argues that ontological difference does not escape the denomination of the said.26 Levinas insists that both being and the difference belong to the plane of monstration. For Levinas, the essential hide-and-seek play at work on this plane is a “modality of signification” (OTB 23/AE 29). However, this plane cannot be considered the ultimate event of sense or meaning. Elsewhere, Levinas writes that such a conception of meaning is in keeping with the Greek tradition where language is the fundamental event of sense (DVI 137). This language is dominated by the denomination of being, where being might have existence as its essence but will be “a being” nonetheless. While Heidegger reveals the oblivion of the difference, Levinas claims we cannot stop at the said, nor the saying teleologically turned toward the said. It is necessary to consider the possibility (and impossibility) of a saying beyond the said. Thus Levinas claims that: “[t]he said and the non-said do not absorb all the saying, which remains on this side of, or goes beyond the said” (OTB

138 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

23/AE 29). However, the question is immediately raised: How are we to approach this “beyond” without again fixing it in the said? Does the mystery of being [l’être] and entities [l’étant]—their difference—disturb already? From the start, the distinction and the amphibology of being and entities will show itself to be important and being [l’être]—determinant for truth; but this distinction is also an amphibology and does not signify the ultimate. (OTB 23/AE 29)27 In what appears to be a repetition of the opening paragraphs of Existence and Existents, Levinas draws our attention to the difficulty of differentiating between being and entities in the opening paragraph of his “Exposition.”28 Just as Levinas makes a distinction between “difference” and “separation” in Time and the Other, he is now attempting to distinguish “distinction” and “amphibology.” There is a distinction and an amphibology, he claims, but the distinction is also an amphibology. What is the difference between the first and second amphibology—the first and second distinction? The first distinction or amphibology is between nominality and verbality— between an entity that is and the process of being of the entity—its essence. As Levinas reminds us: “the term essence here expresses Being different to being” (OTB xli/AE ix). Verbality, in other words, is qualitatively different to denomination. However, according to Levinas, the verb always gets understood as a species of nominality— naming an event or process as opposed to an entity— but, nevertheless, naming. Whether designating an entity that is or that entity’s process of being [le processus d’être] it cannot rid itself of the nominalisation. The process “captured by the designation, even if it is a movement, shows itself but is immobilised and fixed in the said” (OTB 23/AE 29). Nevertheless and as Llewelyn points out, “the nominalised being of beings is always exposed to the resounding, echoing essence, essance or essencing through the verb” (Llewelyn 1995a 181).29 This relationship— in which the process of being is captured in the said yet remains exposed to the essencing of the verb—describes the amphibology of being. In the French, “being” is written as l’être, a nominalised verb. Levinas opposes this to “to be” or être, which he calls the verbality of the verb. The verbality of the verb lies in this telling of the temporality that any event would already presuppose. As such, verbality expressed by to be is linked to temporalisation where time is not the essence of to

ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE 139

be but rather temporalisation is the essencing of being— occurring as a “vibration” or “resounding” rather than the naming of being in the said. The verb to be tells the flowing of time as though language were not unequivocally equivalent to denomination, as though in to be the verb first came to function as a verb, and as though this function refers to the teeming and mute itching of that modification without change that time operates. (OTB 34/AE 44) This essencing is an expression of the “saying teleologically turned to the kerygma of the said” (OTB 37/AE 47) which Levinas also calls the saying as a correlate of the said. As Llewelyn writes of the relation of the said and the saying as correlate of the said: On the one hand is the exposition of the properly propositionally said that may be written down and transferred and remembered from one generation to another…[o]n the other hand is the exposition that is the exposing in saying or to-say [Dire] of the proto-impressional temporal flow of being which is the poietic source of scientific life. (Llewelyn 1995a:181–182) The exposedness of being which is said to the silent essencing of being points to the essential hide-and-seek structure of being. Being, essentially amphibological, is a plane where entities show themselves as such; where they are re-presented or ‘said’ but in belonging to being also pass away, or are concealed and remain ‘unsaid’. Temporality “comes to be analysed as a divergency making possible the rediscoveries of an act of consciousness” (OTB 37/AE 48). Temporality exposes, in the sense of illuminating, and ontological illumination is a modality of signification in which truth is revealed. …temporality which illuminates resounds for the “listening eye” in the verb to be. And it is for that man is a being of truth, belonging to no other genus of being. But is the power to say in man—however strictly functioning as correlative of the said—in the service of being? (OTB 37/AE 48) Thus the silent essencing of being—which in the light of the discussion of the Anaximander fragment can be linked to justice understood as presencing, in which things come to be and pass away at the same time —is necessary for signification. However, Levinas questions whether

140 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

this is a sufficient condition of signification. What is left out of this amphibology is not simply the “presence of the other” but a notion of sensibility which Levinas has been pursuing throughout his work—a notion of the sensible which is not subordinated to theoretical consciousness. This notion and the nature of its relation to the realm of justice will be the topic of the final chapter. In conclusion, it can be suggested that Heidegger’s attempt to think “the human” beyond ontology and ethics in terms of what remains to be thought in terms of the truth of being is questioned by Levinas in so far as it conceives of the human not only in terms of a relation to the truth of being but also in so far as this truth is thought in terms of an essentially anonymous play of justice and injustice. Levinas analyses this realm of justice in terms of the said—the realm in which everything shows itself according to this unavoidable ontological necessity.

CHAPTER 8 Subjectivity and Tertiality: Il y a and Illeity

…the for-the-other characteristic of the subject can be interpreted neither as a guilt complex (which supposes an initial freedom), nor as a natural benevolence or divine ‘instinct’, nor as some love or some tendency to sacrifice of which I know not what. (OTB 124/AE 160 translation modified) 1. ETHICAL AMPHIBOLOGY Totality and Infinity began its approach to sensibility by contrasting enjoyment with intentionality. It then revealed how this subject comes into question in an encounter with the Other. In this encounter the subject discovers an ethical sense which contradicts the movement of affective self-positing in enjoyment. The sensibility of enjoyment and ethical signification stand in a contradictory, yet non-dialectical relation to one another. In Otherwise than Being, by contrast, subjectivity is described in terms of an ethical sensibility. The question of affectivity is introduced into Levinas’ critique of Heidegger by linking the essencing of being to an affectivity, or lived sensibility (which Husserl had explored as the fundamental, pre-predicative level of judgement). Although Levinas might have originally relied on Heidegger’s existential analysis of affective life to question the limits of the Husserlian lived body, he now questions the “formalism” of Heidegger’s conceptualisation of the human [der Mensch] in terms of an exposedness to the essencing of being. Levinas suggests that Heidegger reduces the sensible to a correlate of the said. The exposedness to being admits no sense of the material vulnerability of embodied subjectivity. For Levinas, only an ethical saying can be the source of

142 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

right, without which being’s justice reverts to a law that cannot recognise the human. The ethical saying presents the final form of Levinas’ project of the renewal of the question of the meaning of being, announced in 1935. However, while Levinas’ original concern was expressed in terms of the suffi ciency of being with regard to transcendence, the question now concerns the ethics of being’s justice. The saying, however, does not merely accompany any determination of the meaning of being as its “undoing”—it is not equivalent to the silent essencing of being. As the previous chapter has attempted to clarify, this silent essencing refers to the amphibology of being, or the coming to be and passing away of being in the said. For Levinas, however, the saying corresponds to a realm of affectivity beyond the said. The previous chapter ended with the suggestion that the saying is neither the unsaid, nor the expression of the essencing or presencing of being in beings. As Paul Davies suggests, such an account of the distinction between the saying and the said might point to a “prephilosophical” concern that governs Levinas’ work but does not suffice to explain how the prephilosophical problematises the language in which it is exposed to the reader (Davies 1995:196). Davies draws our attention to the unavoidable question of method or approach which accompanies any attempt to provide an account of the ethical saying. In other words, any approach to the meaning of ethical saying must address the “logo-centric recoils” involved in thematising that which is considered precisely beyond, or an excess to, any thematising language.1 In an interview a few years after the publication of Otherwise than Being, Levinas suggests that the ethical saying is inherently concerned with the question and limits of the reductive method itself: Ethics is like reduction in a certain language. In this it is more than adequate; but I would also say [dirai] that the To Say [Dire] must also be accompanied by a retraction/unsaid [dedit], and the unsaid [dedit] must also be unsaid [dedit] in turn and there is no stop; there is no definitive formulation, It is for this reason that I call the conclusion of my book, to which you refer, “otherwise said.” (DVI 141 my translation) To suggest that the saying must be necessarily accompanied by an unsaid is not to suggest that a saying requires immediate negation or qualification, but as the previous chapter suggested, signifies that a

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 143

saying turns into an unsaid. That is, in meaning-giving, a saying becomes “teleologically turned toward the said.” That which is always unsaid, in turn, requires a saying which is not another said but what might be called “the unsaid of the unsaid.” This introduces a reductive process that has a specific relation to the infinite which cannot be characterised as an infinite regress. While Levinas claims there is no definitive formulation, neither is he suggesting a reductio ad absurdum, for it is precisely the ethical saying which interrupts the interminable play of said and unsaid, introducing another event. The unsaid is still within the economy of being, while the ethical saying brings the human into play with what “there is.” In other words, the reductive attempt to reduce the saying to the logic of being is already compromised by the ethical saying itself. Levinas describes the interruption effected in saying as an “inquietude” that the said can neither eternalise nor internalise. As Davies points out, we cannot read this relationship of reductioninterruption as a simple step from phenomenon to face—from ontology to a prephilosophical ethical concern. Rather, the ethical, which “is not comprehensible on the basis of ethics” (OTB 120/AE 154) should be described as the step from “from…to” (Davies 1995:95–96). The question remains how to think the relation of the two without reducing the saying to a mode of being once again. Levinas emphasises the necessity of the assemblage of the saying into a said (OTB 156–157/AE 199). However, as has been argued above, he claims that this continual reduction is not achieved by the amphibology of being but requires “diachronic expression” in which the saying is both an affirmation and a retraction of the said (OTB 44/AE 56). Diachronic expression is a double movement between affirmation and retraction which Levinas links to a notion of an irrecuperable temporal lapse, or what he calls the immemorial past. Levinas begins a discussion of this temporality by contrasting it to an ontological notion in which “the divergence of the identical from itself, is essence” (OTB 30/AE 38). The ontological notion of divergence is a “getting out of phase of the instant” which, according to Levinas, allows for a recuperation in which nothing is lost. There is not a pure distancing from the present but precisely representation, that is, a distancing in which the present of truth is already or still is; for a representation is a recommencement of the present which in its “first time” is for the second time; it is a retention and a protention, between forgetting and expecting,

144 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

between memory and project. Time is reminiscence and reminiscence is time, the unity of consciousness and essence. (OTB 29/AE 36) Levinas juxtaposes the diachrony of saying with this unity of consciousness and time.2 Essence, he claims, is “more formal than the silent decay of things which betrays their becoming” (OTB 30/AE 37 translation modified).3 This can be read as a description of the becoming of things in decay. Decay is the trace/betrayal of becoming. Essence, Levinas insists, is “more formal” than this decay. In other words, in being, there is a modification without alteration; a formality independent of all qualitative determination. With this notion of betrayal, Levinas introduces the possibility of a duality, if not duplicity, of sensibility. Betrayal has a double meaning as a conveying of something precisely through misrepresentation. The notion of decay betraying becoming conveys, through misrepresentation, the decaying materiality of things, or things “already weighted down with matter” (OTB 30/AE 37). Furthermore, Levinas claims that it is “only in the order of being that rectification, truth and error have meaning, and that the betrayal is lack of fidelity” (OTB 45/AE 57 translation modified). From the perspective of the saying, betrayal is a moment in which the formality of essence is marked by a becoming in decay, which does not refer the production of meaning to a chaotic meaninglessness. As Levinas writes elsewhere, this introduces a new manner of approach to signification itself: The transcendental method consists in always looking for the foundation… Consequently an idea is justified when it finds its foundation, when one has demonstrated the conditions of its possibility.—Contrary to this, my manner of proceeding begins with the human and the approach of the human, of the human that is not simply that which inhabits the world, but also grows old in the world…there is another manner of justification of an idea by the other: to pass from an idea to its superlative, up to its emphasis. It is here that a new idea—in no way implied in the first —follows or emanates from the overstatement. (DVI 141 my translation) Reduction is not dissipation or explanation but a doubling of discourse with the weight of materiality and the introduction of the human understood in terms of this materiality (OTB 45/AE 57). The “weight”

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 145

exposes the already said, which, although already “exposed” to the silent essencing of being, is not weighted down with the material particularity of the ethical saying. Understood in this context, this exposure at a second power is the exposure of exposure, which is the “approach” or “exposition to” the other of the ethical saying—“emphasis.” Levinas writes that it is not enough to conceive of the ethical saying as an exposure, since even in the suffering of this opening to otherness, exposure inverts into position and retires in a certain complacency. This would be to revert to an asceticism—to enjoy a suffering of suffering in the so-called passivity of exposure. Just as Heidegger warns of the forgetting of being, Levinas insists on the dangers of conceiving of this moment of exposure as an act. He claims it is necessary to expose this exposure through saying, which is the “Saying saying saying itself without thematising it” (OTB 143/AE 182).4 This begins to sound like a hyperbolic play with language unless related back to the two realms of signification—that of the silent essencing of being and that of the silent decay betraying the becoming of ethical materiality. Levinas is making a distinction between, on the one hand, an understanding of the approach to the other in terms of the reflexivity of affectivity which would already undo the anarchical effect of the Other, and on the other hand, an approach to the Other which entails the incessant undoing of the reflexivity of affect, an interminable exposing of the exposure (OTB 143/AE 182). The reflexive return to self is exposed in the accusative. The very reflexivity of the self is revealed to have an ethical sense. Or perhaps its ethical sensibility exposes itself.5 This would be the sense of the hyperbolic expression or emphasis of saying above. Before discourse, I am covered in a form, I am where my being conceals me. To speak is to break this capsule of form and abandon oneself.—I treat emphasis like a process. What I have in mind here is to rediscover the via eminentiae. It is in any case the manner in which I pass from responsibility to substitution. Emphasis, this signifies at the same time; a rhetorical figure, an excess of expression, a manner of exaggeration and a manner of monstration. This is a very good word, like the word “hyperbole”: there is some hyperbole where notions are transmuted. To describe this mutation, is also to do phenomenology. Exasperation as a philosophical method! (DVI 142 (my translation)

146 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

As Llewelyn points out, emphase and phenomenology have the same Greek root—phaô—to show, bring to light. However, there is a fundamental difference between the two. The transmutation of emphasis does not lead to transparency, or an appearance—“parare”—but to exasperation or provocation, as Levinas suggests above. Rather than obtaining a clear answer to the question: what is this event?, the event is expressed in its questionableness. As Levinas cautions: This is, above all, not a situation where one poses the question; it is the question that grasps you: it is your coming into question [mise en question]. (DVI 137 my translation)6 This is not a moment of inhabiting the question, or an account of the transformations of the subject into an ethical being. Here, Levinas insists, “exposure” necessarily undergoes a reversion or recuperation and becomes activity (OTB 51/AE 66). The inevitable reversion and return of the passivity of saying to activity is not in question with regard to its possibility, which is precisely the moment of necessary betrayal of saying in the said. However, the fundamental concern for Levinas is the possibility of an excess—an inversion in this reversion—which far from paralysing all action, refuses the subjective attempt to sink into itself as the origin of the work of good will. The sense of an ethical excess of the saying lies in the “excessiveness” to this good will—the fact that the Other has already put the subject into question. Levinas claims there is an “inversion of essence, a withdrawing from the game that being plays in consciousness.” In this inversion, “[i]pseity [is] not an abstract point, the centre of a rotation” but “already identified from the outside” (OTB 107/AE 135). As a consequence, the question of the meaning or sense of the ethical saying is not to be considered in terms of how it becomes action but how it remains effective despite the inevitable reversion of passivity into action. In other words, it is a question of how this moment of reversion is not only a moment of the negation of a passive receptivity which can no longer be thought in terms of an exposure of an “I” to another but also concerns the very limits of subjectivity which thinks itself only in terms of its possibilities. The question of the betrayal of the saying in the said should be read as the question of the possibility and impossibility of significations in the said, rather than as a question of the founding conditions of thought in the said. The impossibility of the said is a consequence of the necessary betrayal of the incomparable in the said and not the consequence of the return of the abyss or

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 147

nothingness behind all presencing of beings. This is not a betrayal of the infinite understood as being, God or physis but the betrayal of the unique —of the “One” in its utter singularity; in its ethical materiality. Betrayal is not only thought as the negation of the saying, since it is already a subversion of the said in this very betrayal. Betrayal is a bringing to light, one might say, the said is both a moment of the capturing of the saying in this betrayal and at the same (but not the Same) time, an exposure to the other. But what does all this have to do with the question of justice? As we saw in Chapter Six, Levinas describes an “ethical language,” in terms of the non-signifyingness of the face; as the anarchic origin of signification or sense. This was juxtaposed with a notion of language conceived of as a system of signs referring to a signified and a signifier. In introducing an ethical dimension to language, Levinas must explain how it is possible to speak of this realm of non-theoretical significations without reducing its unique signification to another transcendental ground. The question of the relation between ethics and justice can now be thought in the terms of the duplicitous relation of the saying and the said as described above. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas described a certain duplicity of ethics and justice. The ethical is, from the first, a demand to justify oneself before the Other and a response that attests to a universality that commences out of this unique relation. It is not a moment of the ascetic subordination of the “I” to the needs and desire of another. Levinas’ claim that “language is justice,” might be reinterpreted in the terms of Otherwise than Being, as an early affirmation of the necessity of the betrayal of ethical saying in the said. In Otherwise than Being, Levinas introduces the saying beyond the said as that which can call into question being’s justice (as described in Chapter Seven), where the latter can now be conceived of as a moment in which the non-reciprocal relation to the Other is reduced to, or interpreted as, a call to tolerance and non-violence which relies on the complacency of good will (OTB 38/AE 48).7 Between, on one hand, the return of the absurd and the unintended consequences of the postulation of a god behind the scenes which allows us to go on living in the face of this absurdity, and on the other, the reification of the other which already contains a violence to a third party, Levinas seeks another way, exploring the signification of tertiality itself. The interminable play of justice and injustice (now conceived in terms of the play of incessant play of the said and the unsaid in essence), is still conceived as being’s gift, but it is in the notion of the tertiality of illeity and the ethical saying that Levinas opens the absurdity of this play to an ethical sense and

148 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

introduces a new question concerning the possibility and impossibility of justice. The introduction of the tertiality of the ethical saying in the notion of “illeity” will also allow us to approach the sense of the human beyond being. The title of the first chapter of “The Exposition,” “From Intentionality to Sense,” outlines the directionality of Levinas’ reduction, which he claims is the: …reduction of the said to the saying beyond the logos…to signification, to the one-for-the-other involved in responsibility (or more exactly in substitution), to the locus or non-lieu, locus and non-lieu, the utopia, of the human. (OTB 45/AE 58) The question of subjectivity—of the meaning of the human—is not thinkable as an entity or object, nor, Levinas will add, can it be thought ontologically. As we have seen, Levinas speaks of the inversion of intentionality in the saying to the Other—an inversion of intentionality into sensing or sensibility. While this recalls the relation of intentionality and enjoyment in Totality and Infinity, the interval of separation is no longer defined in terms of enjoyment. In the sensibility of subjectivity, the materiality is from the first an ethical signification. “Matter” is ethos. Ethos is both a non-site and a non-event of meaning opening to another sensibility. One must show in saying, qua approach, the very de-posing or desituating of the subject, which nonetheless remains an irreplaceable uniqueness, and is thus the subjectivity of the subject. (OTB 47–48/AE 61) While this correlation of matter and ethos seems to entail the redefining of matter in terms of the human body, it also entails an awakening to the understanding of matter as a history of the said of matter. This history is not only a history of matter as the anonymous forces of nature but also habitat, utensil and nourishment. For Levinas, the two moments of body and history remain governed by the dialectical negation which would describe the essencing of “man” in and by being. Nature becomes utensil, food and habitat in a process in which humanity and being become one. This anthropomorphisation of being comes at the expense of the very character (ethos) of the human who, for Levinas, always remains at a distance from being.

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 149

The notion of the human as an ethical materiality of the saying beyond being—as the excessive concept of a singular universal—is, as Rolland suggests, the ultimate metamorphoses of “evasion”—“the ethical de-neutralisation of the il y a in the intrigue of the otherwise than being” (Rolland 1982:52). As will be discussed below, ethical deneutralisation is not the fact that being is said, nor that it is possible to stand in the clearing of being. Nor is it the negation of the fact that, as a being, the subject will have always already said and unsaid being. The ethical de-neutralisation of il y a is the moment of the interruption of/the other in the saying through the suspension of my being-in-act. If being is a gift, the human is an absolute ingratitude, despite one’s intentions, with regard to that gift. One will give it to another and not return to it immediately, later, or alone. Despite oneself one is for the other and not only for being. 2. THE ETHICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF JUSTICE: ILLEITY AND THE THIRD PARTY The question of the relation between ethics and justice is governed by the question of the third. As we saw in Chapters Five and Six, the face and the third party are in a certain sense already in relation to one another in the ethical event. But, what precisely is going on here and how are we to think this relation?8 The question of the relation is complicated from the start by the fact that there is more than one notion of thirdness or tertiality operating in Levinas’ work. This is made apparent by in the following passage: It is in prophecy that the Infinite eludes the objectification of thematisation and dialogue, and signifies as illeity, as the third person [troiseme personne]; but this is according to a ‘tertiality’ which is different to that of the third man [troiseme homme], different to the third party [le tiers] who interrupts the face to face of the welcome of the other man [autre homme]—interrupts the proximity or the approach of the neighbour— in other words, different to the third man [troiseme homme] with whom justice begins. (OTB 150/AE 191)9 Levinas uses four different terms: “illeity” [illéité], the “third person” [troiseme personne], the “third man” [troiseme homme] and the third party [le tiers]. We shall say, provisionally, that illeity and the third

150 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

person refer to the grammatical third person—to a he- or it-ness. The third man and the third party appear to be synonymous, both referring to an interruptive third which functions in a similar manner to the third party of the Ego and the Totality, in so far as the interruption introduces the question of justice.10 The following discussion examines the relation and signification of the terms more closely and also considers their possible relationship to the il y a which can appear as a neutral third term, but should not be considered as such.11 It might be suggested that what we have is a list of names or nouns, each specifying, designating, localising or even deferring some hyperbolic concept of tertiality. It is possible, as we have already seen, to think of thirdness empirically. In addition, we might say that the troiseme homme or le tiers is an ontological modality, while illeity or troiseme personne is an ethical (possibly grammatical?) signification of thirdness. It is important to acknowledge these distinctions in the modes or levels of signification. However, a simple listing of them introduces the issue of the questionableness of thirdness as such. The inventory certainly specifies a number of possible meanings but does not make the meaning of tertiality any more clear. It is worth considering that there is no thirdness as such, yet there are multiple significations which push us toward the illusion of a transcendental concept. The introduction of the non-sense and the nonplace of tertiality, at the very least, cuts across the mono-logical listing of thirds which would be in danger of a hierarchisation of meanings with regard to a transcendental truth. I hope to avoid this without giving up on the possibility of multiple significations. Let us look again at Otherwise than Being. The discussion of illeity, the third party and justice takes place in Chapter Five of Otherwise than Being, entitled: Subjectivity and Infinity. The location, structure and movement of this chapter is of importance. While a great deal of attention has been given to the preceding chapter which discusses substitution as a rethinking of subjection, without the discussion of the relation of subjectivity, being and the infinite in Chapter Five, the analysis of substitution remains abstracted from its concrete conditions. Within Otherwise than Being as a whole, Levinas’ analysis runs in two directions. Beginning with the subject in its relation to being he moves toward a description of this subject in its ethical sense in the chapter on substitution. In Section One of Chapter Five he summarises this movement, discussing the various ways in which the subject finds itself in relation to being, leading to the moment of substitution—or the

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 151

“one-for-the-other.” His finishing point is the “latent” birth of the subject in the “beginninglessness of an anarchy and the endlessness of an obligation” (OTB 140/AE178). In other words, he ends the section with the latent birth of the subject in the infinite, plunging the reader into the enigma of illeity before returning to the question of being’s justice many pages later. I suggest that at the end of Section One we have been led back to Levinas’ starting point, not merely that of Otherwise than Being but his starting point more than thirty years earlier. We have been brought back to the originary non-identity of the existent as the event of hypostasis, or repli en soi—the contraction of identity that Levinas described in De l’existence a l’existant. However, the non-relation is no longer thought ontologically, as an inversion of the relation of Dasein and being, but as Levinas suggests in his preliminary note to Otherwise than Being, as an “exception putting out of order the conjunction of essence, entities and the difference” (OTB xli/AE x). Levinas is acutely aware that he has arrived at this point and also aware of a certain philosophical impossibility of having arrived beyond both being and subjective identity. The title of the chapter points to the precise issue at hand—the signification of the “relation” between “subjectivity and infinity.” As the final paragraph of section one notes, while the description of subjectivity contests the primacy of the ontological problematic it does not conjure away this essence, there is no negation of being—il y a is precisely the impossibility of negation. What is significant here, to start with, is that the discussion of illeity is framed by Levinas’ concern to expose the hither side of the ontological impossibility of a signification beyond being—“one runs the risk of, or persists in taking the signification of the one-for-the-other to be a limited or particular phenomenon, ‘the ethical aspect of being’” (OTB 140/AE 178). This problematical intertwining of the il y a and illeity— to the point of possible confusion as Levinas writes elsewhere—will be discussed below.12 I will continue here by following the trajectory of Levinas’ chapter, starting with the signification of illeity before returning to the question of being, justice and il y a. Levinas introduces the term illeity as the manner of the attachment and/or detachment of the Infinite from the thought that tries to think it. In other words, the term is introduced as a naming of a specific manner in which the subject is in relation to the Infinite. Rather than think the rela tion dialectically, Levinas considers that “[t]he ethical is the field laid out by the paradox of an Infinite in a relationship with the finite without failing in this relationship” (OTB 148/AE 189). The ethical sense

152 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

captures the positive play of the infinite in the finite. Ontologically speaking it captures the impossibility of identity leading Levinas to claim that there is an ambivalence of the relation of subjectivity (absolute finitude) and the infinite. This is expressed in the said in terms of a dilemma: does the relation to the infinite in responsibility confer upon me the identity of a unique and chosen one, or “does this election reduce me to the status of an articulation in its [infinite] divine economy?” (OTB 153/AE 195). Levinas argues that this dilemma in the said expresses the “enigma of a God speaking in man and of man not counting on any God” (OTB 154/AE 196). This remains a dilemma only if one remains in the said “where one passes, successively, without being able to stop, from the affirmation of the Infinite to its negation in me” (OTB 154/AE 196). Levinas suggests that the question mark of this dilemma points to an ambivalence in the signification of the saying, beyond the dilemma expressed in the said: The Enigma of the Infinite whose saying in me—responsibility where no one assists me—contests the Infinite. But this is a contestation in which everything is incumbent on me, and by which, consequently, my entry into the designs of the Infinite is produced—the Enigma separates the Infinite from all phenomenality, from appearing, thematisation and essence. (OTB 154/AE 196 my emphasis) In the very contestation of the Infinite it is affirmed. The question mark itself—the demand for an answer contained in it—is already the affirmation of a more than being. We might suggest that Levinas is arguing that in this manner the said itself affirms the saying. At the very least he claims that: …the ontological form of the said could not alter the signification of the beyond being which shows itself in this said and devolves from the very contestation of the signification. (OTB 156/AE 198) It must be emphasised that the affirmation does not affirm some thing, being or the highest being behind the scenes. The affirmation is in the contestation itself—a contestation, furthermore, which is not a negative proclamation about the beyond. There is no dialectic here where contestation, in its negation, affirms that Infinite. The contestation is in the question as a demand, or as a provocation. The name “God” equally

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 153

remains caught in this problematic of the saying and the said—Levinas claims that the “infinite shuts itself up in a word [God] and here becomes a being” (OTB 193/AE 151). For Levinas, the only possible alternative for the thinking of the absoluteness or transcendence of the infinite is as the interruption of its own appearing—“[t]ranscendence has a duty to interrupt its own demonstration” (OTB 194/AE 152). Illeity names this ambiguity which is not reducible to enigma—“[i] lleity overflows both cognition and the enigma through which the Infinite leaves a trace in cognition” (OTB 162/AE 206). Illeity is “diachrony,” “extraordinary,” the other side or the beyond of the enigma expressed in the dilemma (OTB 154/AE 196). Illeity would be the ethical signification of the “enigma” or the “question.” It would be the ambiguity of enigma—an exposure of the subject which dissolves the borders of individuation which paradoxically, is also a moment of an affirmation of the unique self. In Otherwise and Being, this is a moment in which “subjectivity is expelled outside of being into itself…the otherwise than being and the disinterest-edness from essence” (OTB 154/AE 196).13 For Levinas, this moment of dissolution and affirmation is an inspiration of the subject by the infinite in the modality of illeity. That is, it is not a moment of a subject transcending its own finitude, nor the infinite taking form in the finite. It is a coming [venir] that is not a recalling [souvenir] (OTB 148/AE189).14 It is the arrival of the infinite prior to welcome. Levinas suggests that one can compare the infinite to a thief who has not only slipped into the house unknown and without welcome but whose presence is discerned only in the traces left and always discovered too late (OTB 148, 150/AE 189, 190). This moment occurs as a disruption and interruption of the core of self-possession. The exposure of oneself in the ethical saying is also a moment of the production of the infinite in the finite. After outlining this interruptive relation between subjectivity and infinity Levinas returns to the question of the relation of subjectivity and being from an entirely different perspective. He asks: Why, if the interruptive imperative remains primary, is there, nevertheless, a constant movement towards identity; towards representation and demonstration of a totality; toward the ontological form of the said? For Levinas, it is necessary to show that there is the latent birth of the said in the saying itself. That the said contradicts the saying does not negate the ethical signification. Rather, it is the moment when the ethical saying —exposure, responsibility, saying—takes form as a question concerning my right to be. It is “the limit of responsibility and the birth of the

154 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

question: What do I have to do with justice?” (OTB 157/AE 200). This limit is not the end of responsibility but the positive ethical reversal of exposure into being-in-act. The subject will be in-itself yet forthe-other. How does this occur, according to Levinas? Returning to the question of the relation of the empirical and the third man, Levinas writes: It is not that the entry of the third [du tiers] would be an empirical fact, and that my responsibility for the other finds itself constrained to a calculus by the “force of things.” In the proximity of the other [l’autre], all the others than the other obsess me, and already this obsession cries out for justice, demands measure and knowing, is consciousness. (OTB 158/AE 201 translation modified) Levinas does not write tous les autre que Autrui but tous les autre que l’autre— as though we have already slipped into the ontological analysis in the said in which Autrui is already and always betrayed as the other. And this seems to be precisely the case—that the language itself is enacting the advent of the question of justice in being. The third party is neither an empirical third party, nor illeity. The third party is thought ontologically in the said; it is the thinking of tertiality in the said and is thereby distinct from the ethical ambiguity of illeity. Without resorting to naive realism, the entry of the third party signifies not one ontological event amongst others but the advent of the ontological itself as play of the said and the unsaid: The entry of a third party is the very fact of consciousness, assembling into being, and at the same time, in being [l’être], the suspension of being in possibility, the finitude of essence accessible to the abstraction of concepts, to the memory that assembles in presence, the reduction of being [l’être] to the possible and the reckoning of possibles, the comparison of the incomparable. (OTB 158/AE 201 translation modified)15 Levinas writes that the entry of the third party, another other, is an incessant correction of the asymmetry of proximity. Yet, this correction is not without ambiguity: The face [visage] obsesses and shows itself, between transcendence and visibility/invisibility. (OTB 158/AE 201)

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 155

What kind of symmetry is this? Am I and the other reduced to beings amongst other beings? The face is both the unique face of Autrui and thus transcendence, and yet, in showing itself, it enters the play of the visible and the invisible in the said. The “face defaces itself” [le visage se dé-visage] (OTB 158/AE 201). At this point, let me take a quick detour through Levinas’ earliest discussion of the face in The Ego and the Totality to clarify this issue. In this paper, as mentioned above, the face is introduced in all its ambiguity as that “bit of flesh”—the embodied tertiality from behind which Autrui emerges and on the basis of which justice first becomes a possibility. The interlocutor arises “behind the man known in that absolutely decent bit of skin that is the face” (CP41/EN 42). The relation is essentially ambiguous. One listens as one spies. One observes as one speaks (CP42/EN 44). I both respond to the interlocutor and gaze on the other as a third. Autrui or the interlocutor in this case, “emerges out of [dégage de] a relationship in which the other plays the role of the third party” (CP42/EN 44). Here, the relation to Autrui— the ethical moment—is a disengagement of reciprocity which is not only an ethical interruption but also a refusal of the reduction of the tertiality of the other to a you [toi], a second person. Autrui thus breaks the form of the appearance of the other as a third but does not reduce the other in that moment to a second person. For Levinas in Otherwise than Being, it appears that the face has entered the realm of ontological signification and, thus now takes part in the ambiguous play of the said and the unsaid—the visible and invisible —which defines the ontological structure of monstrance. However, the ethical moment is not negated. Rather we are introduced to the interruptive trace of illeity: There is betrayal of my anarchic relation with illeity, but also a new relationship with it [elle]: it is only thanks [grâce] to God that, subject incomparably to the other [à Autrui], I am approached as other like the others, that is, ‘for myself’. ‘Thanks [Grâce] to God’, I am other [Autrui] for the others. God is not involved [en cause] as an alleged interlocutor: the reciprocal correlation binds me to the other man in the trace of transcendence, in illeity. The ‘passage’ of God of which I can speak in no other way than by reference to this aid or grace, is precisely the reversion of incomparable subjectivity into a member of society. (OTB 158/AE 201–202 (translation modified)16

156 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Having suggested that the tertiality of the third party is to be understood as the advent of the ontological necessity of justice, how are we to understand the claim that it is “thanks to God” that I am another to the others? Which God are we talking about here? “God” as the name which shuts up the passing of illeity in a word? or the passing of illeity which “God” names? Grâce, translated as ‘thanks’ in the quote above, is a term Levinas discusses at length earlier with regard to the infinite. It is another term describing the interruptive relation of the infinite in the finite. The interruptive event governs all relations which “appear as a totality.” I am not I but already a relation to the infinite—and thereby not only one before the other but other to the other. Illeity is nothing more or less than the incessant refusal of totality and reciprocity and, as we shall see, precisely the impossibility of justice which otherwise fails to recognise the violence inflicted in its name. The tertiality of illeity cannot be read as the condition which leads to my entry into the universal but is in fact that which does not accede to the moment of my reduction to one amongst others in an ontological sense. If the entry of the third person corrects the asymmetry of the relation to the face and thus betrays the relation to illeity, Levinas insists that this does not involve a negation but a “new relation with it” (OTB 158/AE 201). It would not be the condition of my entry into a totality, rather, it conditions the manner of the subjective relation to the totality which is not reducible to the ontological sense of ‘being-in’. The tertiality of illeity does not turn me into an other like all others. It does not reduce me and all others to the ontological ambiguity of vulnerable bodies. Rather, this passing or grace renders the impossible: “the impossibility of slipping away, absolute susceptibility” in the midst of this totality (OTB 128/AE165). This impossibility of slipping away is the impossibility of the “I” sinking into essence, and ‘finding’ its identity in relation to being. Thus illeity is the impossibility of slipping into a relation to essence in which I am one amongst equals. While from the position of the third, I am other to the other and thus appear as another other, the unicity of subjectivity cannot be equated or reduced to this identity. “I am other”—let us recall the lines from Celan that precede the chapter on substitution—Ich bin du, wenn/ich ich bin. I am not an other like the others. As a unique one, I am for the other. I do not fall into the trace of God, of whom I become a representative amongst equals. If we can speak of commonness then it lies in the otherness or the uniqueness of each one— signifying the difference of each one to the essence which incessantly encroaches. This commonness is not thanks to an absent

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 157

‘God’. The passing of God—the infinite—does not describe some activity of an absent and essentially unseeable, unsayable being. It is not a God betraying itself in being. This passing is nothing less than the aporia or differential event which marks justice—the impossibility of justice. The unicity of subjectivity is betrayed in being but is not thereby negated. While I appear as a will like other wills in an economy of justice, the tertiality of illeity—as excess, impossibility and difference— means that I am a face like the others. I am a member of society as a face and not only as a will. The consequences of this is that my infinite responsibility is not overcome, limited or negated by becoming an other like the others, and furthermore, the face no longer belongs to one other but to all others. The face is a singular universal and in “the proximity of the other, all the others than the other obsess me” (OTB 159/AE 202). Justice is necessary, not to save me from the infinite responsibility to one other but for the sake of judging in the presence of the whole of humanity—in each face. It is crucial to acknowledge the essential ambiguity of illeity in order to avoid a reading of the infinite in which it is again reduced to a thought, a being, or the essencing of being as such, as discussed above. In relation to this issue, Simon Critchley claims that: …the passage to le tiers, to justice and humanity as a whole, is also a passage to…the commonness of the divine father in a community of brothers. (Critchley 1992:228). There is no doubt that this was the case in Totality and Infinity where the discussion of the relation of the infinite and the finite was thought in terms of paternity. The ‘He’ or ‘Il’ remains in the neologism ‘illeity’.17 However, this does not entail that the commonness or universality of illeity is a pregiven universal, of a divine “father” understood as the divine essence of each of His products, as the “father of us all.”18 This notion of illeity is not thought in terms of an end product, nor a single producer. It is a notion of tertiality which refers to an irreducible ambiguity and is itself not reducible to the product of a relation nor presupposed by it. For Levinas, then, what defines sociality is a binding separation in which I judge on the basis of the face. This is what Levinas means when he writes that: “the contemporaneous of the multiple is tied about the diachrony of two” (OTB 159/AE 203). As suggested above, the question of justice arises as a consequence of the advent of another

158 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

other, that is, of the advent of the ontological and not illeity. However, the notion of illeity means that the arrival of a third party does not negate the uniqueness of the face. Ontological tertiality does stand opposed to, or overcome by, an absolute susceptibility to the unicity of the Other—to a beyond of my being—but this means that I have to make a judgement between faces—I must compare the incomparable. It is of utmost importance to recognise that it is the relation between the ethical and the ontological which is under consideration here and that, furthermore, it is realigned according to a logic of interruption, rather than a logic of being in which my existence appears as the postponement of an infinite responsibility and an assigning of it to God/ being. Interpretations which consider the advent of the third as a relieving limit to the infinite excess of my responsibility to the Other often appear to remain caught, not only in an ontological frame, but in an empirical one. In this, I am not suggesting we should ignore the fact of a world inhabited by you, me and many others. Levinas has, if anything, consistently revealed the ontological and empirical impossibility of responsibility. He allows us to address the paradox of responsibility without merely signing it away to another or a God behind the scenes— or on the other hand giving up on the meaning of the ethical altogether. In the midst of a reciprocal relation to another, I recognise that “the equality of all is borne by my inequality” (OTB 159/AE 203). In no way is justice a degradation of obsession, a degeneration of the for-the-other, a diminution, a limitation of anarchic responsibility, a neutralisation of the glory of the Infinite, a degeneration that would be produced in the measure that for empirical reasons the initial duo would become a trio. (OTB 159/ AE 203) Thanks to illeity, the initial duo is already more than the co-presence of two subjects. Instead, it is diachronous and thus not a relation of shared complaisance. Illeity, which is another way of naming the conjunction, is the excluded middle of the relation of the same and the other, which is neither a sum nor a mirror. Illeity names a non-relation of subjectivity and the infinite which does not sustain the realm of justice but rather is that which insists that justice must always remain open to the face. Levinas claims that God is not a name of an absolute value above values but the impossibility of escaping one’s absolute susceptibility,

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 159

even when a third party leads to the birth of thought and consciousness (OTB 128/AE 165). 3. ETHICS AND IL Y A With the notion of tertiality beyond being, which cannot be thought in terms of being, Levinas introduces us to a notion of the beyond of ontological difference which cannot be thought negatively or starting from being or the difference. Tertiality is a category beyond being, thinkable neither in terms of being, the subject, nor their relation. Reduced to being, it appears as the exigency for justice between entities. We have seen that there is a complex and significant connection between ethics and justice to be found in Levinas’ work. I have insisted on the importance of this association of the face and the question of justice for a rethinking not of the ground of good behaviour but the condition of social totalities. In the said—in ontology—the existence of the third party might appear to release me from my unique susceptibility to the other. However, the inversion effected in the saying is not negated. I am now called to take on the more difficult task of judging and comparing between the plurality of unique faces which signify the whole of humanity. The ontological fact of the existence of the third demands that I make a decision—make a judgement. However, justice must be determined on the basis of the offence done to the “face” and not to an inhuman principle of justice. In a recent book, John Caputo has suggested that in this alignment of ethics and justice Levinas is more Heideggerian than he thinks. Caputo argues that while Levinas once defended the ethical against the Greek logos, he now places too much emphasis on the Greek because he accepts that everything shows itself in being for justice (Caputo 1997:25). Caputo seems to be suggesting that Levinas recognises that truth— unconcealment—is a consequence of the interminable play of justice. However, in the light of the arguments above, the question is whether Levinas’ return to logos involves anything less than a renewal of it. For, while everything shows itself in being for justice, where this is a necessity which cannot be overcome, it is no longer possible to avoid the cry that echoes beyond being’s play. Thus, while for Heidegger, the Greek logos is reduced to an aesthetic reproduction of value with no power in the world, Levinas explores the ethics of its productivity— a productivity in the service of life, understood in terms of the singular

160 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

face of the other which takes on a certain universality in the tertiality of illeity. The meaning of this tertiality and Levinas’ insistence that it points to the human and the ethical rather than to the inhuman or a neutral tertiality, or being’s justice, is a major point of discussion in Levinas scholarship. Recently, Simon Critchley has taken up this discussion in the form of a debate between Blanchot and Levinas with regard to the signification of the “il” of illeity and its relation to the “il” of il y a. Critchley suggests that, for Blanchot, God and ethics are unnecessary additions to the primacy of the other [Autrui] in Levinas’ work and end up affirming a God inhabiting a world behind the scenes (Critchley 1997:80–83). To rescue Levinas’ notion of illeity from such a possibility, Critchley suggests that we might read Levinas through Blanchot’s notion of the third genre [rapport du troiseme genre]— relation neutral [rapport neutre] (Critchley 1997:77). This is a relation with an anonymous neutrality of the “il.” In a discussion of the relation of il y a and illeity, Critchley suggests that the two terms remain ambiguous and suggests that the value of Levinas’ work lies in the affirmation of ambiguity. However, in a long note in passing, he suggests that Levinas attempts to control ambiguity by thematising it (Critchley 1997:79). While Critchley’s point is complex, his approach suggests that Levinas’ notion of illeity in its “personality,” as opposed to “neutrality,” could be read as a possible fixing of ambiguity. I understand this to mean that with the notion of illeity, Levinas fixes the essence of the human and the ethical in terms of the Good. Critchley does acknowledge that we should not read the relation of il y a and illeity in a linear fashion in which a bad experience of il y a leads to a good experience of illeity. In this he correctly claims that il y a is never surmounted by the advent of the ethical and suggests that the il y a thereby: …functions like a standing reserve of non-sense from which Levinas will repeatedly draw the possibility of ethical significance. (Critchley 1997:77). Hent de Vries makes a similar claim when he writes: “the il y a could be said to form and de-form the condition and the possibility of the trace of this illéité” (de Vries 1995:218).19 He explains that the meaning of this lies in the fact that the il y a is that which does not permit the ethical turning into the worst violence. Il y a, he seems to suggest, haunts the

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 161

ethical moment of illeity, which attempts to inhabit the place of good conscience. However, it could be suggested that il y a does not haunt illeity as evil or violence would haunt good conscience. Critchley seems to recognise this in his refusal of the notion of an opposition between good and evil in the terms illeity and il y a. He thereby, suggests that illeity is the ethical signification of the susceptibility encountered in relation to il y a, what he calls with Levinas, “a futurity without me” (Critchley 1997: 75). While I agree with Critchley’s claim that the “good” of the ethical is not pleasurable and is not to be contrasted to the horror and “badness” of the il y a, I find that his notion of “atheist transcendence,” in its affirmation of Blanchot’s neutral third, misinterprets Levinas position. While Critchley affirms the ethical dimension of the il y a, when he says “death opens a relation to a future which is ungraspable” he then reduces the signification of the ethical to the ontological moment— interpreting death in terms of the possibility of my impossibility. As a consequence, the death of the Other is thought in terms of one’s own death. But in this case the only possible human task, if there is one left at all, would be one of an aesthetic, atheist reproduction of value in which literature is conceived of as a speech to another, responsive to the alterity of il y a, that is, to the nothingness which can at least be expressed and thereby shared with the other. In the following, I suggest that il y a does not permit the subject to sink into essence and, thus signifies as a limit of subjective being. Such a subject confronts the absurdity of being and in the attempt to locate itself comes up against the incessant play of being and non-being. This confrontation with il y a will therefore be essential. However, I suggest that it is not il y a that haunts illeity (which furthermore is not synonymous with good conscience), but in fact it is the ethical moment of illeity which haunts the subjective attempt to create meaning in the face of absurdity. While it could be argued that Blanchot describes a relation to a “future without me,” this seems to be only a melancholic reflection on finitude and an affirmation of death rather than life. While this is no doubt one way to experience and comprehend the future, this is not how Levinas understands it. Levinas conceives of the moment of the confrontation with il y a as an atheism which harbours no consolation and which can (only) affirm nothing. For Levinas, affirmation is possible only as an ethical event in which the victory over death is not a victory for the subject but an awakening to the anarchic origin of the

162 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

incessant “drive to speak” of which Critchley himself writes (Critchley 1997:88). For Levinas, the necessity to speak is not a drive emanating from the neutrality of a tertiality conceived in terms of a common death. One speaks, not only because there is nothing else, or to pass time, but to the Other in a testimony that goes beyond that which is aimed at or desired in this Other. In a double movement the subject moves towards the Other who approaches, yet remains infinitely distant. A constant departure of the Other—in the trace of illeity. This is to pass into time— a diachronous present—which Levinas also calls the space of the excluded middle [tiers exclu] between the arrival of the face and the infinity of the approach. As Levinas quotes Léon Blum, who quotes Nietzsche in this regard: We are working in the present, not for the present. How many times in meetings with the people have I repeated and commented on Nietzsche’s words: That the future and the things most remote be the rule of all the present days. (CPP 93/HAH 46 translation modified) Let us look finally at Levinas’ own attempt to discuss the difference in terms of the “il” of illeity and the “il” of il y a. For Levinas, in Otherwise than Being, il y a is the “non-sense in which essence turns and in which thus turns the justice issued out of signification” (OTB 163/AE 208). Justice proceeds from signification—from the one-for-theother. As we have seen, everything shows itself for justice—the play of the said and the unsaid in being is the possibility of justice. But, this is a justice “signified in signification” (OTB 163/AE 208). In other words, justice has an ethical sense. For Levinas, this means that the essence of being and consciousness signify before and beyond the ‘being’ of consciousness which shows itself for justice. He continues, suggesting that even the one-for-the-other shows itself in the neutral and indefinite time of essence. The one-for-the-other shows itself in being as co-existence and corelation. Diachrony is encompassed in the neutrality which quickly turns into monotony and indifference; into the incessant buzzing which is il y a (OTB163/AE 208). While it is only through the simultaneity of essence that the ego is first posited as a being in-itself, the ego does not have a harmonious relation to il y a (as can been discerned from Levinas’ discussion of the hypostasis in all its forms in his work). The ego is a constant movement of withdrawal in the midst of an

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 163

unbreakable attachment. Positing itself as separate it, nevertheless, confronts the incessant return of il y a or the nonsense of being. Levinas argues consistently that the ambiguity of sense in being—that it turns into non-sense and absurdity; into il y a—cannot be taken lightly, whether this be through positive overcoming or through simple negation. The il y a constantly threatens the ego—“the active transcendental ego—beginning and present” (OTB 164/AE 208). Levinas claims that the ego is overwhelmed by the il y a, “recommencing behind every negation” (OTB 164/AE 209). Both Critchley and de Vries suggest that this atheist confrontation with absurdity functions as the condition of an awakening to a sense of an alterity beyond being, a “future without me” (Critchley 1997:77). Levinas certainly claims here that il y a signifies as a modality of the one-for-the-other and that, in the “overflowing of sense by nonsense, the sensibility, the self, is first brought out, in its bottomless passivity, as pure sensible point, a dis-interestedness, or subversion of essence” (OTB 164/AE 209). Levinas does state, in Totality and Infinity, that it is necessary to pass through atheism to grasp the sense of the infinite otherwise. It is necessary to pass through a moment of absolute nihilism for the sake of the ethical. I think it is in this sense that we can regard his affirmation of Blanchot’s notion of the neutral third: This Neutral is neither someone nor even something. It is but an excluded third term, which properly speaking, not so much as is. Yet there is in it more transcendence than that opened up by any world behind the scenes. (SB 52) Why then is this neutral third not enough? From the argument so far, I would suggest that this confrontation with the il y a can be read as a condition but only if one understands this “condition” as already a reduction to essence—to being—in fact, the very reduction to being of the signifyingness of sense. The confrontation with il y a is a condition which is not a sign referring or opening toward alterity but already a trace of a relation beyond being. We will have to explore this further. Although Levinas claims that illeity “itself refers to the indefinite time of essence,” this is not a reduction of diachrony to the said but an acknowl edgment that saying inevitably turns into a said (OTB 163/AE 208). It is from the point of view of the saying that the il y a takes on a signification of a beyond being, occurring as an alterity not reducible to an aesthetics of the absurd—although, equally, it will not negate absurdity, instead opening it to a dimension of signification beyond

164 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

being. For Levinas, il y a is not that which “remains” resistant to the system but the anonymity of the system that resists the subjective attempt to “sink into the essence it thematises” (OTB 163/AE 208). The subject, then, might find itself in essence but not as a contented freedom. For Levinas, in so far as the absurd can be approached as a modality of the one-for-the-other, it has an ethical signification. However, the surplus of non-sense over sense cannot in turn be reduced solely to a subjective impression of an ego or thinking/intentional ego, although, as Levinas argues elsewhere, it is precisely this reduction which the ego undertakes incessantly, thereby holding the absurd at a distance. This surplus of non-sense—the incessant return of non-sense despite the possibility of interminable acts of postponement—reveals another ‘order’ of surplus or excess of sense. Here, Levinas finds a sensibility which is a passivity without foundations; without recourse to activity, postponement or complaisance; a passivity which is already a subversion of essence. For Levinas, this passivity would refer to the reverse side of being itself—a beyond always already said in the history of philosophy: Descartes’ idea of the infinite (BW 135–6), Nietzsche’s “exceptional breath” (CP 132) and Sartre’s ‘other’ as “a pure hole in the world” (CP 103) to name just a few examples. Returning to the analysis in Otherwise than Being, for Levinas, there is a retraction, a withdrawal or contraction of receptivity, or the passivity of the “I”; a moment in which there is the impossibility of turning a world into a pure ego (OTB 164/AE 209). Subjectivity attains a passivity without assumption, that is, without an active taking on of this passivity. The moment in which all attempts to give meaning to what there is [il y a] are thwarted might be conceived of as the ultimate deliverance of the “I” into the openness of being, where I am “nothing at all” but in which “I am,” existing nevertheless, “in the equivalence of everything and nothing” (OTB 164/AE 209). Yet, the refusal of the ultimate synthesis in being, the retraction of subjectivity to a passivity unassumable by myself as a being, signifies otherwise, or in other words, has sense as an ethical event. If subjectivity is now posited outside or beyond being this is not a provisional transcendence awaiting a place in being but an evacuation of being for the Other. In other words, there is not a deliverance of the ego into the transcendental space of good will, reason, truth or totality. We are talking about the signification of the failure of assumption, refusing to accept the terms of “fall” or “deliver ance.” This is an impossible moment from the point of view of the ego which is ensconced in its transcendental imperialism. Yet, this impossibility itself is already a modality of the beyond being,

SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY 165

not without reference to the ego but without the ego referring to it—the one-for-the-other. For Levinas, the one-for-the-other counteracts the reductive moment in which the affective materiality of saying turns into affect in the said. That is, the “I” attempts to place itself in the position of ethical subjectivity. As a being, I recognise my meaning-giving acts are embedded in a world that infinitely exceeds my attempts to fix its meanings, reify and assemble it into a unified totality. This passing-by of infinity is a moment of passivity which necessarily exceeds the subjective being’s attempt to fix it in the said. Infinity is beyond the moment in which it is remembered and thematised. Levinas insists that this is not a moment when the subject becomes the infinite, nor does the infinite become the subject. The subject is not reduced to the mouthpiece of the infinite but is situated in the non-place of a testimony beyond the said. The subject “exposing its exposure” to the other is a testimony to an infinite across an ambiguity and a difference that cannot be reduced. For Levinas, the affective or effective relation of il y a remains an interpretive pathos which, in its anonymous neutrality, is the realm in which the relation to the other is said. In other words, it is the realm of justice, that of the coming to be and passing away of being in the interminable play of justice and injustice. However, the ethical is a moment of generation that takes place before and beyond this pathos. The distance I have with regard to the essence I thematise—the postponement already assumed in my relation to il y a—points to an excessive event. Distance comes in the form of the stranger and not Heidegger’s Heraclitean daimon.20 The negation of absurdity is not what is crucial in the relation to il y a, rather it is the possibility of judgement; of inserting the human into this inevitable neutralisation and anonymity of self, other, world and being. This possibility rescues the individual from the inevitable absorption in history, institutions and judgements which refer only to the neutral. This is the decisive ethical moment of justice. But does the subject escape the concept and essence, anxiety over death and horror of il y a, only in resignation and illusion, against which at the hour of truth or of the inevitable awakening, essence is stronger? Can one not understand the subjectivity of the subject beyond essence, as on the basis of a leaving of a concept, a forgetting of being and nonbeing? Not of an unregulated forgetting, which still lies within the bipolarity of essence, between being and nothingness. But a forgetting

166 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

that would be an ignorance in the sense that nobility ignores what is not noble. (OTB 177/AE 223 translation modified) Levinas implicitly suggests that there is another meaning to the forgetting of being and the oblivion of the difference. For Levinas, this ignorance is an ignorance with open eyes, not so that one learns to heed the call of being but in which one exhibits an indifference to essence. It is a forgetting of being and non-being which, positively expressed, is an affirmation of the future in the present as non-presence of Autrui. This indifference to essence is not reducible once more to a being-indifference, to a modality or oblivion of being. This indifference does not translate into a violence or disgust. This is not a refusal of being but signifies positively as a non-indifference to Autrui—the other than being. The human sense is brought about in the breaking up and “falling upwards” out of essence—into the human (OTB 184/AE 231). This should not be undertaken as a repugnance toward being. After the death of a certain God behind the scenes, the human is not awakened “by the mysterious housekeeping of being’s essence”—of to chreon (OTB 184/ AE 231). To recognise the human beyond being is to say “Yes” to life as something beyond being and its interminable meanings. This in turn does not entail that the creation of new values is an abhorrent waste of time, for, Levinas goes to great length to explain that the creation of values is a necessary outcome of the play of identity and essence. But, to guard against the inevitable idolatry, which would forget that in this confrontation with il y a my freedom to create meanings cannot overcome the sting of death, there will be an undoing which is not the fact of my own unsaying in the confrontation with being but my attesting to the Other, who questions my being, the value of my creations, and the violence done to the third party in the name of justice. For the little humanity that adorns the earth, a relaxation of essence to the second degree is necessary: in the just war waged against war, to tremble—even shudder—in each instant because of this justice itself. (OTB 185/AE 233 translation modified)21

Postscript

A number of years have passed since I submitted this work as my PhD dissertation. For this reason I have removed the original conclusion and replaced it with this postscript which reflects on the work from a greater distance. The nature of Levinas’ relation to Heidegger was a question that originally figured only in the background to the dissertation. However, it became increasingly relevant as the work progressed. While I avoided turning the dissertation into a comparative account of the question of the human and being in Heidegger and Levinas, a more thorough examination of the two could offer a more critical account of the human as I have described it here. A closer look at Heidegger’s critique of philosophical anthropology and the break with Cassirer over the interpretation of Kant would be an interesting starting point as Levinas often turns to Kant against Heidegger. The question remains how much this return is already mediated by Heidegger. Any future work might attempt to discern other such moments of engagement in which Levinas is always already announcing a departure. At present I consider that there remains a positive excessiveness in Levinas’ reading of Heidegger and not simply a naive, negative critique. An issue that is far from resolved in this account of the human and being is the question of the relation of illeity and the il y a—more generally the question of the relation of the neutral third and the human. At the time of writing the dissertation I thought it necessary to emphasise that it is the ethical event itself which interrupts the incessant return of the anonymity of il y a, such that the il y a cannot function as the condition of the ethical in any sense. I now consider that the relation is a little more complex than this. Nevertheless, I think that while the human will always find itself said there remains an excess and possibility of unsaying, which is the only trace of the human in being. Another important question to be addressed in this attempt to rethink the signification of the human is the question of sexual difference. Since

168 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

writing the dissertation a great deal more work has been done on Levinas and the feminine. At the time of writing I believed somewhat naively that one could separate the question of Levinas’ politics from the philosophical significations of the feminine in the work. I now think that while a distinction can be made this only deepens the question of the force of the philosophical significations in the socio-political sphere. While I have focused on the human as the interruption of being, it is still necessary to look at how this interruption functions in the political. This would require a critical examination of Levinas’ ontological construction of the political sphere. However, I do not think it is necessary to give up on the notion of the human beyond being altogether. Although we might have to acknowledge the risks involved in any attempt to think difference beyond or as an excess to socio-cultural and political realities, I think the notion could work precisely as that which incessantly interrupts these pretentions to an understanding and localisation of the other. I consider that the notion of the human beyond being might also signify that all beings maintain a singular relation to the identity assigned and constructed within a socio-political totality. If we can recognise that the difference of the other is also a difference of identity we might begin to think the totality as a plurality of difference appearing as multiplicity of identities. Justice then might be in the service of pluralism rather than uniformity. We must keep in mind that for Levinas, “what took place humanely has never been able to remain closed up in its site” (OTB 184/ AE 232). Thus Levinas would have to insist also on the necessity of a continual undoing or unsaying of the human. Humanism must be continually denounced for the sake of the Other.

Bibliography

Works by Levinas “Martin Heidegger et l’ontologie.” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger CXIII (Janvier a Juin, 1932), 395–431. De l’évasion. Fata Morgana, 1982. “Quelques reflexions sur la philosophie de l’hitlerisme,” Espirit 2/26 (November, 1934), 199–208. De l’existence à l’existant. Paris: Vrin, 1993. Le temps et l’autre. In J.Wahl, Le choix, Le monde, L’existence. Cahiers du Collège Philosophique. Grenoble-Paris: Arthaud, 1947. En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin, 1994. “Martin Heidegger et l’ontologie.” In En découvrant l’existence avec Husserl et Heidegger. Paris: Vrin, 1994. Totalité et Infini. Essai sur L’extériorité. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff. 1961. Humanisme de l’autre homme. Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972. Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. Transcendence et Intelligibilité. Genève: Labor et Fides, 1984. De dieu qui vient à l’idée. Paris: Vrin, 1992. Entre Nous: Essais sur le penser-à-l’autre. Grasset, 1991. Les imprévues de l’histoire. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1994. Altérité et transcendance. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1995.

Levinas in Translation The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology. Translated by A.Orianne. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism.” Translated by S.Hand. In Critical Inquiry, 17, (Autumn, 1990). Martin Heidegger and Ontology. Translated by Committee for Public Safety, Diacritics, 26/1 (1996),11–32. Existence and Existents. Translated by A.Lingis. Dortrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988. Time and the Other. Translated by R.A.Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987.

170 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by A.Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1990. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Translated by S.Hand. London: The Athlone Press, 1990. Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Translated by A.Lingis. Dortrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Proper Names. Translated by M.B.Smith.London: The Athlone Press, 1996. Outside the Subject. Translated by M.B.Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. In the Time of the Nations. Translated by M.B.Smith. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Beyond Intentionality. Translated by K.McLaughin. In A.Montefiore (ed.). Philosophy In France Today. Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy. Translated by E.Kameron. In H. Gorden and J.Bloch, (eds.), Martin Buber: a Centenary Volume, New York: Ktav Publishing, 1984. Collected Philosophical Papers. Translated by A.Lingis. Dortrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. The Levinas Reader. Ed. S.Hand. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1989. Emmanuel Levinas. Basic Philosophical Writings. Eds. A.T.Peperzak, S.Critchley and R.Bernasconi. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996. God, Death, and Time. Translated by Bettina Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 2000.

Interviews/Dialogues Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Translated by R.A.Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985. Intention, Ereignis und der Andere. Gespräch zwischen Levinas und Christoph von Wolzogen, 20th December, 1985, Paris. In E.Levinas, Humanismus des anderen Menschen. Translated by L. Wenzler, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1989. Emmanuel Levinas: Qui êtes-vous?, François Poirié, Lyon: La Manufacture, 1987. “The Paradox of Morality: An interview with Emmanuel Levinas.” Wright, T. and Hughes, P. and Ainley, A. Translated by A.Benjamin and T.Wright. In R. Bernasconi and D.Wood (eds.) The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. Entretien In J-C.Aeschlimann, Répondre D’Autrui. Emmanuel Levinas. Langages, A la Baconnifère-Neuchâtel, 1989.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

De l’utilité des insomnies. Entretien avec Bertrand Révillon, 1987. In E.Levinas, Les imprévues de l’histoire. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1994. Entretien avec Roger-Pol Droit, 1992. In E.Levinas, Les imprévues de l’histoire. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1994. Violence du Visage, entretien avec Angelo Bianchi. In E.Levinas, Altérité et transcendance. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1995. Deux Dialogue avec Emmanuel Lévinas. 1 .Responsabilité et Substitution. 2. Œuvre et Altérité. In Ponzio, A. Sujet et Altérité. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.

Secondary Literature Aeschlimann, J-C. Répondre D’Autrui. Emmanuel Levinas. Langages. À la Baconnière-Neuchâtel, 1989. Ainley, A. “Amorous Discourses: The Phenomenology of Eros’ and Love Stories.” In R.Bernasconi and D.Wood (eds.) The Provocation of Levinas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. ———.“The Feminine, Otherness, Dwelling: Feminist Perspectives on Levinas.” In S.Hand (ed.) Facing the Other: The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996. Atterton, P. “Levinas and the Language of Peace: A Response to Derrida.” Philosophy Today 36/1 (Spring 1992), 59–70. ———.“Levinas’s Skeptical Critique of Metaphysics and Anti-Humanism.” Philosophy Today 41/4 (Winter, 1997), 491–506. Bailhache, G. Le Sujet chez Emmanuel Levinas. Fragilité et subjetivité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994. Beauvoir, S.de The Second Sex. Translated by H.M Parshley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Becker, J. Begegnung—Gadamer und Levinas. Der Hermeneutische Zirkel und the Alteritas, ein ethisches Geschehen. Peter D. Lang: Frankfurt am Main, 1981. Behler, E. (ed.) Philosophy of German Idealism. New York: Continuum, 1987. Bergman, Shmuel Hugo. Dialogical Philosophy: From Kierkegaard to Buber. Translated by A.A.Gerstein. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Bergson, H. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by M.Andison. New York: Philosophical Library, 1961. ———. Creative Evolution. Translated by A.Mitchell. London: Macmillan and Co., 1922. ———. Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by R.Ashley Audra and C.Brereton. London: Macmillan and Co. 1935.

172 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Bernasconi, R. and Wood, D. (eds.) Derrida and Difference. University of Warwick: Parousia Press, 1985. Bernasconi, R. and Wood, D. (eds.) The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. Bernasconi, R. and Critchley, S. (eds.) Re- Reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Bernasconi, R. “The Trace of Levinas in Derrida.” In R.Bernasconi and D.Wood (eds.) Derrida and Difference. University of Warwick: Parousia Press, 1985. ———. “‘Failure of Communication’ as a Surplus: Dialogue between Buber and Levinas.” In R.Bernasconi and D.Wood (eds.) The Provocation of Levinas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. ———. “Re-Reading Totality and Infinity.” In A.B.Dallery and C.E.Scott (eds.) The Question of the Other. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. ———. “The Ethics of Suspicion.” Research in Phenomenology 20 (1990), 3–18. ———. “Levinas: Philosophy and Beyond.” In H.Silverman (ed.) Philosophy and Non-Philosophy since Merleau-Ponty. London: Routledge, 1988. ———. Heidegger in Question: The Art of Existing. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993. ———. “Politics beyond Humanism: Mandela and the Struggle against Apartheid.” In Madison, G.B. (ed.) Working Through Derrida, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993. ———. “‘Only the Persecuted…’: Language of the Oppressor, Language of the Oppressed.” In A. Peperzak, (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ———.“The violence of the face.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 23, No. 6, 1997, 81–93. ———. “Different Styles of Eschatology: Derrida’s Take on Levinas’ Political Messianism.” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. XXVIII, 1998, 3–19. ———. “The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the Ethical and the Political.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 30, No. 1, Jan., 1999, 76–87. Blanchot, M. The Infinite Conversation. Translated by S.Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. ———. Bloechl, J. (ed.) The Face of the Other and the Trace of God: Essays on the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. New York: Fordham, 2000. Blumenberg, H. “Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept Formation.” In D.M.Levin, (ed.) Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Boer, K.de Thinking in the Light of Time. Heidegger’s Encounter with Hegel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 173

Boothroyd, D. “Responding to Levinas.” In R.Bernasconi and D.Wood (eds.) The Provocation of Levinas. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. Bouckaert, L. “Ontology and ethics: Reflections on Levinas’ critique of Heidegger.” International Philosophical Quarterly 10/3 (September, 1970), 402–419. Burggraeve, R. Emmanuel Levinas. Une bibliographie primaire et secondaire (1929–1989). Leuven: Peeters, 1990. ———. The Wisdom of Love in the Service of Love: Emmanuel Levinas on Justice, Peace and Human Rights. Marquette University Press, 2003. Campbell, D. “The Deterritorialisation of Responsibility: Levinas, Derrida, and Ethics After the End of Philosophy.” Alternatives 19 (1994), 455–485. Caputo, J.D. “Disseminating Originary Ethics and the Ethics of Dissemination.” In A.B.Dallery and C.E.Scott (eds.) The Question of the Other. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. ———. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida. Religion without Religion. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997. Caspar, B. “Illéité. Zu einem Schlüssel ‘begriff’ im Werk von Emmanuel Levinas.” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 91 (1984), 273–288. ———.“Der Zugang zu Religion im Denken von Emmanuel Levinas.” Philosophisches Jahrbuch (1988), 268–277. Chalier, C. Figures du féminin: Lecture d’Emmanuel Levinas. Paris: La Nuit surveillée, 1982. ———.“Ethics and the Feminine.” In R.Bernasconi and S Critchley (eds.) ReReading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. “Emmanuel Levinas: Responsibility and Election.” In A.Phillips Griffiths (ed.) Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Chanter, T. “Antigone’s Dilemma.” In R.Bernasconi and S.Critchley (eds.) ReReading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. Ethics of Eros: Irigaray s Rewriting of the Philosophers. New York: Routledge, 1995. ———.“Levinas and Impossible Possibility: Thinking Ethics with Rosenzweig and Heidegger in the Wake of the Shoah.” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. XXVIII, 1998, 91–109. ———. Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001a. ———. (ed.) Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001b. Charry, E.T. “The View of God in ‘The Star of Redemption’.” In W.SchmiedKowarzik (Hg.) Der Philosoph Franz Rosenzweig. Band II. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1988. Ciaramelli, F. “De l’évasion a l’exode. Subjectivité et existence chez le jeune Levinas.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 80/4 (1982), 553–578.

174 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

———.“Levinas’s Ethical Discourse. Individuation and Universality.” In R. Bernasconi and S.Critchley (eds.) Re-Reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———.“L’appel infini a l’interpretation. Remarques sur Levinas et l’art.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 92/1 (1994), 32–52. ———.“The Riddle of the Pre-original.” In A.T.Peperzak (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ———. “The Circle of Origin,” in L.Langsdorf, S.H.Watson, K.A.Smith, Reinterpreting the Political. Continental Philosophy and Political Theory. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. Cohen, R.A. (ed.) Face to Face with Levinas. New York: State University of New York Press, 1986. ———. Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Cornell, D. Beyond Accommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction and the Law. New York: Routledge, 1991. ———. The Philosophy of the Limit. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Coward, H. and Foshay, T. (eds.) Derrida and Negative Theology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Critchley, S. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. ———.“Deconstruction and Pragmatism—is Derrida a Private Ironist or a Public Liberal?.” European Journal of Philospohy 2/1 (1994), 1–21. ———.“Prolegomena to Any Post-Deconstructive Subjectivity.” In S.Critchley and P.Dews (eds.) Deconstructive Subjectivities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. ———. Very Little… Almost Nothing. Death, Philosophy, Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. ———. Ethics—Politics—Subjectivity. London &New York: Verso, 1999. Critchley, S. and Dews, P. (eds.) Deconstructive Subjectivities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Critchley, S. and Bernasconi, R. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Dallery, A.B. and Scott, C.E. (eds.) The Question of the Other. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. Dallmayr, F. The Other Heidegger. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993. Davies, P. “The Face and the Caress: Levinas’s Ethical Alterations of Sensibility.” In D.M.Levin (ed.) Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ———.“On Resorting to an Ethical Language.” In A.T.Peperzak, (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1995. Davis, C. Levinas. An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 175

Delbo, C. Auschwitz and After. Translated by R.C.Lamont. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Delhez, M. and Frogneux, N. “Lorsque Levinas et Heidegger sortent du «ondit.”” In M.Dupuis (éd.) Levinas en contrastes. Bruxelles: Le Point Philosophique. De Boeck-Wesmael s.a., 1994. Derrida, J. “Violence and Metaphysics : An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas.” Translated by A Bass. In Writing and Difference. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. ———.“The Ends of Man.” In Baynes, K., Bohman, J., McCarthy, T. (eds.) After Philosophy. End or Transformation?. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1987. ———.“At this very moment in this work here I am.” Translated by R.Berezdevin. In R.Bernasconi and S.Critchley (eds.) Re-Reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———.“Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy.” In H.Coward and T.Foshay (eds.) Derrida and Negative Theology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ———.“Adieu.” Translated by P-A.Brault and M.Naas. Critical Inquiry 23 (Autumn, 1996), 1–10. ———. Adieu to Emmaneul Levinas. Translated by P.-A.Brault and M.Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Diprose, R. The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. ———. Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. New York: SUNY, 2002. Drabinski, J.E. “The Status of the Transcendental in Levinas’ Thought.” Philosophy Today 38/2 (Summer, 1994), 149–158. ———.“Sense and Icon. The Problem of Sinngebung in Levinas and Marion.” Philosophy Today, SPEP Supplement, 1998, 47–58. Dupuis M. (éd.) Levinas en contrastes. Bruxelles: Le Point Philosophique, De BoeckWesmael s.a., 1994. Dupuis, M. Pronoms et Visages: Lecture d’Emmanuel Levinas. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996. Durfee, H.A. “War, Politics, and Radical Pluralism.” Philosophy and Phenomenolog-ical Research 35 (1975), 549–558. Euripides Hippolytus. Translated by A.S.Way. London: William Heineman, 1964. Farley, W. “Ethics and Reality.” Philosophy Today 36/3 (Fall 1992), 210–220. Ferry, L. and Renault, A. Heidegger and Modernity. Translated by F.Philip, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Fichte, Fichtes Werke. (Hg.) I.H.Fichte. Berlin 1971. Finkielkraut, A. The Wisdom of Love. Translated by K.O’Neill and D.Suchoff. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

176 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

Frank, M. “Subjectivity and Individuality : Survey of a Problem.” In D.E.Klemm and G.Zöller (eds.) Figuring the Self. Subject, Absolute, and Others in Classical German Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Funk, R. Sprache und Transzendenz im Denken von Emmanuel Levinas. Freiburg: Alber, 1989. Furrow, D. Against Theory: Continental and Analytic Challenges in Moral Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, 1995. Gasché, R. Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994. Gibbs, R. Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Grosz, E. “Irigaray and the Divine.” Sydney: Local Consumption, Occasional Papers 9, (1986). ———. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989. Haar, M. Heidegger and the Essence of Man. Translated by W.McNeill. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. ———.“The Obsession of the Other. Ethics as Traumatisation.” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 23, No. 6, 1997, 95–107. Hand, S. (ed.) Facing the Other: The Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996. Handelman, S. The Slayers of Moses : The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory. New York: State University of New York Press, 1982. ———. Fragments of Redemption : Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem and Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Hayat, P. Emmanuel Levinas, éthique et société. Editions Kimé: Paris, 1995. Hegel, G.W.F. Gesammelte Werke. Hamburg: F.Meiner, 1968-. ———. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V.Miller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. ———. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1 volume. Ed. P.C.Hodgson. Translated by R.F.Brown, P.C.Hodgson, J.M.Stewart, H.S.Harris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. ———. Science of Logic. Translated by A.V.Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989. Heidegger, M. Being and Time. Trans J.Macquarie and E.Robinson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. ———.“What is Metaphysics?.” In Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings. Ed. and translated by D.Farrell Krell. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. ———.“The Anaximander Fragment” in Early Greek Thinking. Translated by D.F. Krell and F.A.Capuzzi. Harper and Row: New York, 1984.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 177

———.“Letter on Humanism.” In Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings. Ed. and translated by D.F.Krell. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. ———. Über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1947. Hölderlin, F, Selected Hymns and Fragments. Translated by M.Hamburger. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1998. Honneth, A. “The other of justice:Habermas and the ethical challenge of post modernism.” In S.K.White (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Huizing, K. Das Sein und der Andere:Lévinas Auseinandersetzung mit Heidegger. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988. Husserl, E. Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchung zur Genealogie der Logik. (Hg.) Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1972. ———. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by D.Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960. Irigaray, L. Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by G.Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985a. ———. This Sex Which is Not One. Translated by C.Porter. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985b. ———.“The Fecundity of the Caress: A reading of Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Section IV/B, ‘The Phenomenology of Eros’.” Translated by C.Burke. In R.A.Cohen, (ed.) Face to Face with Levinas. New York: State University of New York Press, 1986a. ———. Divine Women. Translated by S.Muecke. Sydney: Local Consumption, Occasional Papers 8, 1986b. ———. Sorcerer Love : A Reading of ‘Plato’s Symposium, Diotima’s Speech. Translated by E.H. Kuykendall. Hypatia 3/3 (Winter 1989), 32–44. ———. Questions to Emmanuel Levinas : On the Divinity of Love. Translated by M.Whitford. In R.Bernasconi and S.Critchley, (eds.) Re-Reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ———. je, tu, nous: Toward a Culture of Difference. Translated by A.Martin. New York: Routledge, 1993a. ———. An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Translated by C.Burke and G.C.Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993b. ———. i love to you: Sketch for a felicity within history. Translated by A.Martin. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. Jonas, H. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Translated by H.Jonas and D.Herr. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Kant, I. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Theorie-Werkausgabe Vol. VII, Suhrkamp, 1956. ———. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by N.K.Smith. London: Macmillan, 1987.

178 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

———. Critique of Judgement. Translated by W.S.Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1987. Kearney, R. “Derrida’s Ethical Re-Turn.” In Madison, G.B. (ed.) Working Through Derrida, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993. Kisiel, T. and van Buren, J. (eds.) Reading Heidegger from the Start. Essays in his Earliest Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Klemm, D.E. “Levinas s phenomenology of the Other and language as the Other of phenomenology.” Man and World 22 (1989), 403–426. Klemm, D.E. and Zöller, G. (eds.) Figuring the Self. Subject, Absolute, and Others in Classical German Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Krewani, W.N. Emmanuel Levinas: Denker des Anderen. Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1992. Lannoy, J-L. “Il y a et phénoménologie dans la pensée du jeune Lévinas.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 88 (1990), 369–394. Levin, D.M. (ed.) Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Lescourret, A-M. Emmanuel Levinas. Flammerion, 1994. Libertson, J. Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille and Communication. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982. Llewelyn, J. The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience. London: Macmillan, 1991. ———. Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ———.“Amen.” In A.T.Peperzak (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, 1995a. ———.“In the Name of Philosophy.” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. XXVIII, 1998, 37–54. ———. “Levinas’s Critical and Hypocritical Diction.” Philosophy Today, Supplement 1997, 28–40. MacDonald, M.J. “‘Jewgreek and Greekjew’. The concept of trace in Derrida and Levinas.” Philosophy Today 35/3 (Fall, 1991), 215–227. Marcel, G. “The Ontological Mystery.” In The Philosophy of Existentialism. Translated by M.Harari. New York: The Citadel Press, 1962. Marion, J-L. God Without Being. Hors-Texte. Translated by T.A.Carlson, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. ———.“Note sur l’indifférence ontologique.” In J.Rolland and J.Greisch (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: L’éthique comme philosophie première. Acts du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. La nuit surveillée. Paris:Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993. ———. “The Final Appeal of the Subject.” In S.Critchley and P.Dews (eds.) Deconstructive Subjectivities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 179

Moneta, G. and Sallis, J. and Taminiaux, J. (eds.) The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years. Dortrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988. Mongin, O. “La parenthèse politique.” In J.Rolland and J.Greisch (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: L’éthique comme philosophie première. Acts du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. La nuit surveillée. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993. Mosès, S. System und Offenbarung: Die Philosophie Franz Rosenzweigs. Translated by R.Rochlitz. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1985. Nancy, J-L. The Inoperative Community. Translated by P.Connor, L.Garbus, M. Holland, and S.Sawhney. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Neske, G. and Kettering, E. (Hgs.) Martin Heidegger im Gespräch. Pfullingen: Verlag Neske, 1988. Nietzsche, F.W. Thus Spoke Zarathustra:. Translated by W.Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1987. Paetzold, H. Ernst Cassirer—Von Marburg nach New York, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1995. Peperzak, A.T. “Phenomenology—Ontology—Metaphysics: Levinas’ Perspective on Husserl and Heidegger.” Man and World 16 (1983), 113–127. ———.“Einige Thesen zur Heidegger-Kritik von Emmanuel Levinas.” In A. Gethman-Siefert and O.Pöggeler (eds.) Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988. ———.“From Intentionality to Responsibility: On Levinas’s Philosophy of Language.” In A.B.Dallery and C.E.Scott (eds.) The Question of the Other. New York: State University of New York Press, 1989. ———.“Levinas on Technology and Nature.” Man and World 25 (1992), 469–482. ———. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993. ———. (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ———.“Illeity according to Levinas.” Philosophy Today, SPEP Supplement, 1998, 41–46. ———. “The Other, society, people of God.” Man and World 29 (1996), 109–118. Perpich, D. “A Singular Justice. Ethics and Politics between Levinas and Derrida.” Philosophy Today, SPEP Supplement 1998, 59–70. Petitdemange, G. “Emmanuel Lévinas et la politique.” In J.Rolland and J.Greisch (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: Léthique comme philosophie première. Acts du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. La nuit surveillée. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993.

180 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

———.“L’un ou l’autre. La querelle de l’ontologie: Heidegger-Lévinas.” In Les Cahiers de nuit surveillée, no. 3. Emmanuel Lévinas. Verdier, 1984. Plato The Symposium. Translated by W.Hamilton. London: Penguin Books, 1951. ———. Phaedrus. Translated by W.Hamilton. London: Penguin Books, 1973. ———. Timaeus. Translated by D.Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981. ———. Republic. Translated by D.Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979. Pöggeler, O. Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking. Translated by D.Magurshak and S. Barber, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1989. Rockmore, T. Heidegger and French Philosophy. Humanism, anti-humanism and being. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. Rolland, J. “Sortir de l'être par une nouvelle voie.” In E.Levinas, De L’évasion. Paris: Fata Morgana, 1982. ———.“Les Intrigues du Social et de la Justice.” Esprit 5 (mai, 1984), 150–161. ———. (ed.) Les Cahiers de La nuit surveillée, no. 3, Emmanuel Lévinas. Verdier, 1984. ———. “L’Ambiguïté comme façon de l’autrement.” In J.Rolland and J.Greisch (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: L’éthique comme philosophie première. Acts du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. La nuit surveillée, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993. Rolland, J. and Greisch J. (eds.) Emmanuel Levinas: L’éthique comme philosophie première. Acts du Colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle 23 août-2 septembre 1986. La nuit surveillée, Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1993. Rose, G. Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Rosenzweig, F. The Star of Redemption. Translated by W.W.Hallo. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985. ———. Franz Rosenzweig: Der Mensch und Sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften III. Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984. Sandford, S. “Writing as a man: Levinas and the phenomenology of Eros.” Radical Philosophy 87 (January/February, 1998), 6–17. ———. The Metaphysics of Love: Gender Transcendence in Levinas. London: Athlone Press, 2001. ———.“Levinas, feminism and the feminine.” In S.Critchley and R.Bernasconi (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Schneeberger, G. Nachlese zu Heidegger. Dokumente zu seinem Leben und Denken. Bern: Suhr Buchdruckeri, 1962. Schönherr-Mann, H-M. “Ein Anfang der Gerechtigkeit.” Zeitschrift Jür philosophische Forschung Band 49/1 (1995), 36–53.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 181

Schroeder, B. Altared Ground; Levinas, History, and Violence. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. Sheffler Manning, R.J. Interpreting Otherwise than Heidegger: Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethics as First Philosophy. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1993. ———. Beyond Ethics to Justice Through Levinas and Derrida: The Legacy of Levinas. Quincy: Quincy University Franciscan Press, 2002. Simmons, William Paul. An-Archy & Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’ Political Thought. Lexington Books, 2003. Simon, J. “Ende der Herrschaft? Zu Schriften von Emmanuel Levinas in deutschen Übersetzugen.” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 10 (1985), 25–48. Stambaugh, J. The Finitude of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Strasser, S. Jenseits von Sein und Zeit. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978. ———.“Le concept de ‘phénoméne’ chez Levinas et son importance pour la philosophie religieuse.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 76 (1978), 328–341. Taminiaux, J. “Immanence, Transcendence, and Being in Husserl’s Idea of Phenomenology.” In G.Moneta and J.Sallis and J.Taminiaux (eds.) The Collegium Phaenomenologicum: The First Ten Years. Dortrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988. Vasseleu, C. “The Face Before the Mirror Stage.” Hypatia 6/3 (Fall, 1991), 140–155. ———. Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and MerleauPonty. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Visker, R. “Dropping—The ‘Subject’ of Authenticity: Being and Time on Disappearing Existentials and True Friendship with Being.” In S.Critchley and P.Dews (eds.) Deconstructive Subjectivities. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. ———.“Dis-possessed: How to remain silent ‘after’ Levinas.” Man and World 29 (1996), 119–146. Vries, H.de Theologie im Pianissimo and Zwischen Rationalität und Dekonstruction. Die Aktualität der Denkfiguren Adornos und Levinas. Uitgeversmaatschapij J.H. Kok: Kampen, 1989. ———.“Adieu, à dieu, a-Dieu.” In A.Peperzak (ed.) Ethics as First Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. ———.“Violence and Testimony: On Sacrificing Sacrifice.” In de Vries, H. and Weber, S. (eds.) Violence, Identity and Self-Determination. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. ———.“Levinas.” In Critchley, S.Schroeder, W.R. (eds.) A Companion to Continental Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. ———. Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins Univerity Press, 1999.

182 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

von Wolzogen, C. “Zwischen Emphase und Verdacht: Wege und Umwege der deutschen Rezeption von Levinas.” Philosophische Rundschau 42/3 (1995), 193–224. ———.“Die eigentlich metaphysische Störung: Zu den Quellen der Ethik bei Heidegger und Levinas.” In M.Endreb (Hg.) Zur Grundlegung einer intergrativen Ethik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995. Wahl, J. Le choix, Le monde, L’existence. Paris: Cahiers du College Philosophique, 1947. ———. A Short History of Existentialism. Translated by F.Williams and S.Maron. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949. Waldenfels, B. Deutsch-Französische Gedankengänge. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. ———. Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden I. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997. Walsh, R.D. “Husserl and Levinas: Transformations of the Epoche.” A-T. Tymieniecka. (ed.) Analecta Husserliana XXXVI (1991), 283–296. Wenzler, L. “Menschen vom Anderen her.” In E.Levinas, Humanismus des anderen Menschen. Translated by L.Wenzler. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1989, viixxvii. Westphal, M. “Religious Experience as Self-Transcendence and SelfDeception.” Faith and/in Philosophy 9/2 (April, 1992), 168–192. White, S.K. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Habermas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Whitford, M. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine. London: Routledge, 1991. Windelband, W. Geschichte Der Philosophie. Freiburg i. Brei.: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung von J.C.B. Mohr, 1892. Wyschograd, E. Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. ———.“Doing before Hearing: on the primacy of touch.” In F.Laruelle (ed.) Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas. Paris: Edition Jean-Michel Place,1980. ———.“God and ‘Being’s Move’ in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.” The Journal of Religion 62/2 (1982), 145–155. ———. Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made Mass Death. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. ———.“Derrida, Levinas and Violence.” In H.J.Silverman (ed.) Derrida and Deconstruction. New York: Routledge, 1989. ———. Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Young, I.M. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990. Ziarek, K. “Semantics of Proximity: Language of the Other in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.” Research in Phenomenology 19 (1989), 213–247.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 183

———. Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutics of Nearness. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Notes Introduction 1 In the following, I do not translate Heidegger’s notion of being [Sein] with a capital except if quoting a secondary source. I have followed this usage when translating Levinas’ l’être. While Levinas does not capitalise l’étre, it is juxtaposed to an entity [l’étant]. Where the context is ambiguous I will include the French or German. 2 See also Robert Bernasconi’s discussion of Heidegger and the question of humanism, ontology and ethics, in Bernasconi 1993, especially Chapter 3, “Justice and the Twilight Zone of Morality”, pp. 40–55, and Chapter 12, “Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics: Reiterating the ‘Letter on Humanism’”, pp. 211–224. 3 In the following I will write ‘the Other’ when referring to Autrui or autrui, both of which refer to the alterity of the human. 4 Critchley is one of the first to examine the relation of ethics and justice in Levinas’ work. He considers that there is a distinction between a political and an ethical notion of justice and suggests that in Totality and Infinity Levinas is concerned with the ethical dimension of justice, only addressing the political dimension in his second major work Otherwise than Being (Critchley 1994: 13). I agree that there is a such a distinction. Furthermore, I consider that the political dimension of justice should be thought in terms of the ontology of justice and its necessary entanglement with the Other so as to avoid an oppositional formulation of the relation. 5 “Il n’y a, d’autre part, aucune difference terminologique dans Totalité et Infini entre misericorde ou charité, source d’un droit d’autrui passant avant le mien, d’une part, et la justice, d’autre part, où le droit d’autrui— mais obtenu après enquête et jugement—s’impose avant celui du tiers”. 6 Both Critichley and Llewelyn suggest that Levinas is involved in a semantic renewal which cannot be conceived as the affirmation of old values (Critchley 1996: 43 and Llewelyn 1995a:208).

Chapter 1: Subjects of Being 1 Levinas’ works up to 1940 include a long essay on Husserl published in DEHH 1940, as well as Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism

184 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

(1934), De l’évasion (1935) and two papers in Paix et Droit, the Journal of the L’Alliance Israelite Universelle. In a paper published years later, Levinas writes that “intellectualism”, “whether rationalist or empiricist, idealist or realist”, relies on a notion of meaning that is based in a fundamental intuition or perception which language will always only approximate such that “meanings conveyed by language have to be justified in a reflection on the consciousness that aims at them” (CP 76). Levinas suggests that while Husserl in a certain sense marks the end of this notion of meaning, he nevertheless continues the intellectualist tradition in so far as he “accounts for meanings by a return to the given” (CP 78). See Ent 209. For both an historical and philosophical outline of the issues that informed this debate see Paetzold 1995. Paetzold devotes a chapter to this debate: “Die Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidegger 1929” and provides a useful bibliography. See also “Davoser Disputation” in KPM; and Schneeberger 1962. In the following I have used “the human” rather than “man” or “Man” for der Mensch and l’homme in my own translations. I have left other translations as they stand. This of course leads to some inconsistency and ambiguity which I do not think is unwarranted since it is as difficult to extract the question of the human from man as it is to extract the human from being. These terms come from Derrida whose analyses of this problematic lie in the background of this discussion, Derrida 1987:139. Michel Haar suggests that a shift has already taken place between these two works. While in BT there is a “extrinsic” opposition of the traditional subject, the human, and being in the world, in KPM Dasein is the intimate essence of the human. This reformulation of the distinction furthermore, marks the beginnings of a transitional phase in which the two terms Dasein and the human are conjoined, (Haar 1993:xxxii). While he claims that the manifold knowledge of the human has never been as great, the meaning of the human has never been as uncertain; has never been so question-able. Drawing on the work of Max Scheler, Heidegger argues that while Scheler understands and even attempts to conceptualise the difficulties of an approach to this question, in his very approach, he never questions the ultimate possibility of a philosophical anthropology which can offer a systematic and essential unity of the manifold. In effect Scheler undertakes a regional ontology of the human, attempting to define humanity’s proper place in relation to all other things, rather than addressing the question of the fundamental necessity of the relation of the human and the question of metaphysics (KPM § 37). Heidegger is quoting Kant’s introduction to his lecture courses on logic. See KPM §36 214, note 3. Kant seems to go even a step further in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten where he claims it is his task to

BIBLIOGRAPHY 185

9

10 11

12 13

14

15 16 17 18

19

“work out a pure Moralphilosophie which has all empirical and anthropological elements removed from it. For it is to be based on Law which contains its own necessity according to Reason. Thus also to distinguish it from any mere human nature or circumstances in the world” (Kant 1956:13). “Effectivité” is Levinas’ preferred translation of Heidegger’s Faktizität [facticity]. See also MO 24/417. Levinas also uses such terms as “concrete existence”, and “accomplishment”, which will appear regularly throughout his later works. The Committee for Public Safety translates être ici bas as “being right there” and opposes it to l’étant ici-bas as “a be-ing right there”. Jacques Rolland draws attention to this paper written in 1935 for Paix et droit. In this paper Levinas writes: “Hitlerism is the greatest test—the incomparable test—that Judaism has had to go through…[t]he pathetic circumstance of being Jewish becomes a fatality. One can flee it no more. The Jew is ineluctably riveted to his Judaism” (IRA 4). Compare MO 6/403–404 and DEHH 57(my italics). De l’évasion is generally considered his first thematic study in a phenomenoontological manner. Levinas only agreed to publication on the basis of it being accompanied by notes and a commentary by Jacques Rolland which, given Levinas’ expression of gratitude should not be overlooked. The essay with commentary and notes has recently been published in translation by Bertina Bergo entitled “On Escape”. Being and Time was published in 1927, De l’évasion in 1935. Ciaramelli suggests that while Levinas adopts the means opened up to him by the Heideg-gerian perspective, he avoids the results and consequences by taking as his starting point the “malaise lived by the human in the face of the totality of existence” (Ciaramelli 1982: 562). For discussion of this essay see Sheffler Manning 1993; Llewelyn 1995; Rolland 1982. The following discussion also refers to Ciaramelli 1982. I agree with Rolland that this closing sentence to the paper, the phrase “sortir de l’être par une nouvelle voie” is an early expression of an exigency to think beyond the verbality of being. As Ciaramelli suggests. See Ciaramelli 1982. Ciaramelli’s argument in De l’évasion à l’exode suggests that Levinas’ use of literature was something foreign to Heidegger at this point. However, it was Hent de Vries’ insistence that this insight suggests that Levinas was doing more than merely ‘borrowing’ a term from literature that has led me to the following position. Levinas later considers that the combining of ontology and literature cannot adequately provide a basis for an account for the human, as it is precisely here that the tension and effacement of the human occurs. See “Is Ontology Fundamental?” where Levinas is critical of philosophies of existence that want to bring life, literature and human being into the

186 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

20

21 22 23

24 25

26

27 28

29

opening accomplished by the fundamental ontology, but fails to consider how life thus might “efface itself before ontology” (OF 3). Although this critical perspective does not inform the analysis of evasion, it certainly demonstrates the manner of the effacement and thus the necessity to look elsewhere than this relation of being and aesthetics for a possible approach to the human. An analysis of how Levinas interweaves the literary and the ontological in this early work and his later critique of the effacement of the human effected is perhaps an appropriate starting place for a discussion of Levinas on art and ethics. Ciaramelli also draw our attention to Duval 1975. According to Ciaramelli, Duval’s paper states that the difference between Levinas and Heidegger at this stage is that, for Levinas, being is not the question which calls, but the weight which crushes (Ciaramelli 1982:564). See Ciaramelli 1982:561. In Time and the Other, Levinas writes that the subject “seems to reach the limit of the possible in suffering”, a phrase which is eminently applicable to this earlier analyses of evasion (TO 70–71/TA 165). There is a difficulty in translating the term “soi-même” which generally would refer to oneself, but has philosophically been neutralised by the itself, although it could be argued that the “one” is equally neutral. I follow the translation of Llewelyn, Cohen and Lingis to emphasise the neutrality of being to which the ego is enchained. “Dasein is ontically ‘closest’ to itself and ontologically farthest; but preontologically it is surely not a stranger”, (BT: 16). The Committee for Public Safety translates “angoisse” as “anguish” rather than following the Macquarie and Robinson translation of Heideggerian Angst as “anxiety”. I have substituted “anxiety” for “anguish”. Levinas appears to be referring to BT 233: “Anxiety individualises Dasein and thus discloses it as a ‘solus ipse’. But this existential ‘solipsism’ is so far from the displacement of putting an isolated subjectThing into the innocuous emptiness of a worldless occurring, that in an extreme sense what it does is precisely to bring Dasein face to face with its world as world, and thus bring it face to face with itself as being-inthe-world”. This is a paraphrase of Heidegger’s claim: “that in the face of which we have anxiety is thrown being-in-the-world; that which we have anxiety about is our potentiality-for-being-in-the-world” (BT 235). In the later work, Levinas claims that being-towards-death is a “supreme lucidity and hence a supreme virility” of Dasein in its authentic existence. Death is the possibility of impossibility which “precisely makes possible all other possibilities” (T0 70/TA 165). Rolland finds that these terms, “happiness” and “dignity”, occupy marginal positions in the Levinasian lexicon. Of happiness, he suggests

BIBLIOGRAPHY 187

that it should only be thought in terms of the later ethics, that is, as a happiness of the Other for whom I am; a happiness that is demanded from me which would not require an act of virtue on my part that would itself already promise to bind me to my own happiness. Dignity would be precisely the dignity of a subject who does not harbour any hope for a happiness of its own (Rolland, note 3, EV 108).

Chapter 2. Hypostasis: Il y a/Existent 1 “Die von Heidegger aufgemachte ontologische Differenz als ontologische Trennung auszulegen, steht in der Gefahr, eine zentrale Intention Heidegger’s gründlichst zu verfehlen. Der Gedanke eines allgemeinen, neutralen Seins ist Heidegger fremd”. 2 “Ce renversement n’aura été que le premier pas d’un mouvement qui, s’ouvrant sur une ethique plus veille que l’ontologie, laissera signifier des significations d’audelà de la difference ontologique, ce que, sans doubte, est, en fin de compte, la signification même de l’Infini” At the time of writing this second preface is not available in English translation. 3 Where the English translation does not concord with my decision not to trans late Levinas’ être as Being, I have added the original in square brackets, rather than modify the translation. 4 For a more detailed account of this immanent ‘circle of origin’ and Levinas’ critique of it see Ciaramelli 1995. 5 Derrida is quoting from Heidegger 1947/77:9/199, “Soll aber der Mensche noch einmal in the Nähe des Seins finden, dann muß er zuvor lernen, im Namenlosen zu existieren”. 6 Answering his French addressee he suggests we can say these together as “de l’Etre” (Heidegger 1949/77:5/194). 7 It should be acknowledge here that Heidegger’s turn to Being is meant to be a positive refusal of the public/private opposition. However, this chapter suggests that Levinas asks whether, in this rejection, Heidegger may not have inadvertently given the socio-political realm a derivative and derogatory status and asserted the age old opposition of the social and the singular. 8 I agree with Jean-Luc Lannoy’s general assertion that Levinas’ notion of il y a has historical and political dimensions which underlie the political concerns of Levinas’ two major works, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being (Lannoy 1990: 369–394). As discussed in Chapter One, to some extent, this idea develops out of Levinas’ sense of the fatality and historical weight of being Jewish. At the same time, it could be argued that with the notion of the il y a, Levinas divests this sense of socio-political oppression of its historical specificity to uncover its

188 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

9

10

11 12

ontological signification. He reveals, thereby, that the sense of absolute passivity is to be found in the inadequacy of being itself to cope with such socio-political oppression. The urgency of finding a way out of being becomes integrally tied with the question of the possibility of responding to and denouncing the most insidious forms of political oppression—those which aim at the very core of subjective identity. To awaken to this duality is to be aware of a certain “duplicity” of subjective identity, as Levinas will attempt to demonstrate, see Peperzak 1993: 99. The relation of “duality” and “duplicity” occurs across the difference between il y a and the Other [autrui]. This relation changes through Levinas’ works and remains a controversial interpretive issue and will be a recurring theme within this book. At this stage, I suggest that duplicity is a ‘two-facedness’ which, for Levinas, does not have negative moral connotations. The French terms are fatigue and paresse. As Llewelyn points out, the translation of the latter by “indolence” expresses the more common signification of paresse as laziness. However, what the translation obscures is the aspect of its meaning which suggests a tendency “to cause delay”. Paresse, Llewelyn suggests, comes from the Latin differe, meaning “to differ” or “to defer”. Thus Llewelyn suggests paresse points to the essential delay in the “beginning of the instant” and as we shall see, the instant as that which always lags behind itself. In other words, the instant as present, never “is” as a pure presence (Llewelyn 1995:37). As Llewelyn writes, in hypostasis the stance of the existent is not ‘static’. The stance is defined as the accomplishment of a movement of commencement (Llewelyn 1995:27). The signification of eros in these early works and the move away from the erotic in the later works reflect a concern for the manner in which the relation to alterity is effected within the social totality. I will discuss this in detail in Chapter Five.

Chapter 3. Enjoyment: Subject and World 1 “Transcendency in every form is an immanent existential characteristic” (Husserl 1977:83–84). 2 Levinas appears to be referring to passages such as the following: “Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being, whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being”, (Husserl 1977:84).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 189

3 It should be noted that Levinas uses the word devant, meaning “in front of”, rather than coming before. Thus “before” should not be understood in the latter temporal sense. 4 I use “sense” here to make a connection to the French terms “un sens” which can signify both directionality and meaning. This notion, that the signifyingness of thought is also constituted by directionality, for example, “toward oneself” or “toward the other”, plays an important role in Levinas argument. As Ziarek writes: “[i]t is a direction [un sens] that ‘makes sense’ par excellence” (Ziarek l994: 79). 5 It is not clear whether “bare existence” should be conceived as a reference to anonymous being in general or the notion of being in the world, although it could be suggested that enjoyment is to be contrasted with both. 6 I have modified the translation in accordance with Levinas’ use of the infinitive verb in the original. Lingis translates these infinitives as “thinking”, “eating”, “sleeping” etc, which obscures the distinction Levinas wishes to make between activity and enjoyment and between being and enjoyment. While “thinking” can still be conceived as a way of being—“I am thinking”—the infinitive has a different relation to being. “To think” is in some sense “to be” otherwise than merely being, but as a verb does not negate the verbality which being names. 7 It is interesting to note that Levinas includes the city [la ville] which would not usually be regarded as one of the four elements of earth, sea, fire and water. This suggests that we cannot read the notion of the elemental in the traditional sense. I suggest that the placement of the city amongst the ‘elements’ acknowledges the very close connection between enjoyment and dwelling. While the present discussion focuses on enjoyment, Levinas’ analysis of dwelling and possession is the theme of the following chapter. 8 See, for example, Frank 1997:5ff. 9 See Frank 1997:5. 10 As Manfred Frank suggests with regard to Kant, the “I think” is an indissoluble doubling of “perception in general” and thinking that perceives itself, which Frank calls the “autoreflexivity of representing” (Frank 1997:11). 11 Levinas quotes Hegel in this regard: the essence of the concept is recognised in the “originary-synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of ‘I think’ or self consciousness” (HAH 8). The quote is from Hegel 1923:221. 12 Rolland uses this quotation from OTB xli/AE x. It is important to add that Levinas says this when describing the project of Otherwise than Being and does not suggest anything with regard to his earlier works. At the very least it should not be read as an explicit attempt at self-criticism.

190 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

13 shall suggest in the next chapter that this question concerns the status of the subject of dwelling and the manner in which the face appears to this subjectivity. The dwelling is both an account of the non-dialectical manner of the subject’s relation to il y a and is necessary for the encounter with the exteriority of the face.

Chapter 4. The Ambiguous Economy of Dwelling 1 Elsewhere, Levinas discusses the possibility of situating the human in view of the disappearance of causal chains and structures, in view of the “deportation” of identity, which signifies the end of a particular “human causality” (CP 145). The failure of human projects reveals the end of identity conceived as an inwardness, able to close itself up in itself. He argues that both the sciences of man and Heideggerian philosophy make the claim that the human is outside, open, either to forces which an inhuman intelligibility will triumph over, or to non-human being, of which man becomes the messenger and poet (CP 144). Levinas attempts to argue that this openness should be conceived as nothing less than the vulnerability of subjectivity which exposes “human causality”, a vulnerability which “cannot be interpreted as a simple exposedness to being affected by causes” (CP 146). The description of the dwelling might be seen as one account of the essential vulnerability of subjectivity. 2 Llewelyn discusses the link between “habit” and “habere” [to have] and the possible connection to the avoir implicit in il y a. 3 The notion of the “amphibology of being” will come to describe the realm of ‘the Said’ in Otherwise than Being. Thus I am in agreement with John Llewelyn who suggests, with regard to the dwelling that it “may be taken to correspond with the universe of discourse that Levinas will distinguish in Otherwise than Being as the system of ‘the Said’” (Llewelyn 1995a: 94). 4 “Le recueillement se réfère a un accueil”. 5 On this notion of Heideggerian reflectivity, in relation to the idealist tradition, see Frank, 1997:5. Frank finds a problem with the notion of reflectivity which he believes relies on a spontaneous self activity despite the apparent primacy of passivity in this thrownness. 6 This reading is offered by Chalier, 1991:117–129. 7 See for example, Ainley, 1996: 13. To think sexual difference and identity starting from the idea that the ego is not a virile force but is a being that arbitrarily confronts the world, suggests that difference cannot be reduced to opposing principles of activity and passivity. Rather, femininity and masculinity are to be understood as cardinal points of an

BIBLIOGRAPHY 191

embodied being who embarks on a relation to the world from a unique position as a will. The question remains whether the separation of femininity from biological determinations of a “feminine sex” nevertheless reduces femininity to the site of the transformation of ontological man into ethical man. While apparently leaving masculinity and femininity at home, it must still be asked whether the introduction of the ethical reduces humanity to a singular principle which entails the implicit subordination of the feminine to the masculine. 8 In English, we can say both, “I am will”, and “I will be”: “will” is both a noun and a verb, a manner of being present and a relation to the future— thus being present as a relation to the future. 9 Why this primary sociality is not yet the ethical relation will be discussed in the next chapter. 10 Rosenzweig calls this a gift of speech, and the “speech of love” (Rosenzweig 1985:202). However, and as will be discussed in the next chapter, this “gift” cannot yet explain the objectivity of language without reducing it to a founding principle, nor recognise the violence to a third that the morality of good will/intention inflicts.

Chapter 5: EROS, Ethics and the Social Totality 1 In Judaism and the Feminine, Levinas claims that we must seek the categorial value of the feminine and not reduce ‘woman’ to an ancillary status. In this paper Levinas seems to be suggesting that masculinity and femininity testify to two moments of the ‘human’. See Sandford 2002, for detailed discussion of the issues and problems associated with Levinas’ attempt to separate the philosophical category of the feminine from ‘woman’. Simone de Beauvoir was the first to question Levinas’ concept of the feminine as Other, considering it an example of the reduction of woman to the second sex. The concept of the feminine in Levinas’ work is also discussed by the following: Ainley 1988, 1986; Chalier 1982, 1991; Chanter 1991, 1995, 2001a, 2001b; Critchley 1992; Irigaray 1986a; Sandford 1998, 2001, 2002. 2 See discussion at TO 85/TA 183. 3 See Irigaray 1981: 36 for a reading of the Symposium. The following discussion draws on Irigaray’s reading of Diotima’s speech and implicitly suggests that Levinas’ and Irigaray’s critiques have much in common. A thorough discussion of Levinas and Irigaray on love is beyond the scope of the present work, although Irigaray s concerns and criticisms of Levinas figure in the background. See also Chanter 1997: 214ff., Grosz 1989 and Vasseleu 1997, for discussions of the relation of Irigaray and Levinas.

192 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

4 As we will see below he rejects this altogether in his account of the faceto-face in the Ego and the Totality. However, it does return again in Totality and Infinity and the later works as the possibility of overcoming death. As such I consider that fecundity, or more specifically paternity, prefigures Levinas’ notion of the tertiality of illeity, which we will discuss further in Chapter Eight. 5 The feminine does appear much later in this paper as that which “filters through in friendly faces as soon as the relationship of mutual responsibility is suspended” (CP 44/EN 46). 6 It might be added that Levinas’ notion of “duo-solitude” also reflects Rosenzweig’s analyses of the lover and the beloved in the Star of Redemption. For Rosenzweig, “love is speech” but does not hear the command necessary for a society of more than two—it is a duo-solitude (Rosenzweig 1985:203). This might explain why Levinas insists on the importance of judgement and justice. 7 Brunschvicg quoted by Levinas. 8 Irigaray’s reading of fecundity and the child, questions Levinas on this relation of voluptuosity and fecundity suggesting Levinas subordinates the former to the later. She thus asks about the status of “that ecstasy which is our child, prior to any child”, (Irigaray 1991:111). 9 Again see Sandford, 2002.

Chapter 6. Ethics is Justice 1 In Totality and Infinity, Levinas links the extraterritoriality of dwelling to this disengagement: “The chosen home is the very opposite of enrootedness. It indicates a disengagement, a wandering [errance] which has made it possible, which is not a less with respect to installation, but the surplus of the relationship with the Other or of metaphysics” (TaI 172/ TeI 147). 2 In this regard, Atterton writes that “although the ethical relation is invisible to the third party, the third party is made visible from within the ethical relation”. He quotes Levinas: “The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other — language is justice” (TaI 213/TeI 188), (Atterton 1992:66). 3 I will address this issue again in Chapter Eight, with regard to the difference between the il of il y a and the il of illeity. 4 In Levinas’ later work this idea is discussed as the impossibility of the subject sinking into the essence it thematises. I will return to this idea in the final chapter. 5 The French is devant, rather than avant or “prior to”. 6 Levinas references Plato, Rep. 327b.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 193

7 It can be assumed on the basis of his second preface to Totality and Infinity, that apart from Spinoza and Hegel, Levinas also has Kant and Fichte in mind. 8 Levinas writes elsewhere that the third Kantian antimony is founded on the priority of freedom over non-freedom, in so far as both the thesis and the antithesis must present themselves to consciousness (CP 132). Absolute nonfreedom cannot, by definition present itself to consciousness and, thus becomes, for Fichte, synonymous with something less than human. 9 See for example: TaI 63, 71, 72, 78, 89, 99/TeI 35, 43, 44, 51, 62, 72. 10 See also Atterton 1992:66. 11 As Bernasconi suggests, in a discussion of Levinas’ question to Buber and quoting Levinas in this regard, the issue is whether (or perhaps we might add more optimistically “how”), philosophy recognises in the face “a reasonable significance which Reason does not know” (Bernasconi 1988:119). The quote is from MB 320. 12 As Llewelyn suggests, for some thinkers this desire for the infinite goes by such names as “divine discontent”. But, for Levinas, Desire is protoethical, that is, as Llewelyn suggests, “that without which ethics would be violence and justice injustice” (Llewelyn 1991: 4). 13 For example, Derrida writes that “[d]iscourse, therefore, if it is originally violent, can only do itself violence, can only negate itself in order to affirm itself …discourse [the relation to the Other] chooses itself violently in opposition to nothingness or pure non-sense, and, in philosophy, against nihilism. For this not to be so, the eschatology which animates Levinas’ discourse would have had to keep its promise already, even to the extent of no longer being able to occur within discourse as eschatology, and as the idea of peace, ‘beyond history’” (Derrida 1978: 130). Atterton, in Levinas and the Language of Peace, discusses the question of the violence instituted by the relation to the Other and links it to the question of justice and the third. See especially Atterton 1992: 64ff. See also Bernasconi’s account of Derrida’s reading of Levinas in Violence and Meta-physics (Bernasconi 1993a:213–220). Bernasconi addresses the issue of the relation of the ethical moment to Being, suggesting that we should read Derrida as returning Levinas’ text to Heidegger without prioritising one or the other but according to a necessity that forbids such prioritisation, (Bernasconi 1993a: 220). In the following chapter, I will discuss the possible significations of such necessity for Levinas and Heidegger. 14 Critchley takes up this theme explicitly (Critchley 1992:219–228). Other English language commentators who acknowledge this link include: Atterton 1992; Chanter 1995: 192; Llewelyn 1991; Wyschograd 1973:94– 101.

194 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

15 2nd Preface to TeI, i-iv. This preface was written in January, 1987 on the occasion of the publication of Totalité et Infini in German (at the time of writing this preface is not obtainable in English). Simon Critchley suggests in relation to these comments that, in Totality and Infinity, “justice defines and is defined by the ethical relation to the Other” and thereby “justice arises in the particular and non-subsumptive relation to the other” (Critchley 1994:15). 16 To be more precise, the fear of death becomes a fear of committing murder (TaI 244/TeI 222). 17 “Fecundity escapes the punctual instant of death” (TaI 56/TeI 27). Levinas points to the non-teleological nature of fecundity when he says that “Paternity is not a causality” (TaI 214/TeI 189). In other words, the meaning and value of paternity does not lie in its product or as a producer. 18 This notion of inversion and an approach out of it comes from the German “Umkehr” — suggested by Caspar 1984:275. 19 See Atterton 1992:66. 20 For a summary of the different readings of the relation between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, we cannot go past (Funk 1989: 57–61). In this work Funk also questions Stephen Strasser’s notion of a “Turn”, not only because of its proximity to the Heideggerian “Kehre” but because Funk is also convinced that Levinas is already attempting to think the beyond being in Totality and Infinity, despite the restrictions of the “language” of this work. According to Funk what leads Strasser to this claim is his belief that Totality and Infinity is dominated by the opposition of metaphysics and ontology and that it is only later that the ethical concern becomes apparent. Funk suggests that in so far as “metaphysics is ethics” in Totality and Infinity, this is perhaps a forced explanation of the relation of the two texts.

Chapter 7. Ethics, Ontology and Justice 1 It is in this sense that the account of the relation to the Other in Totality and Infinity is at the same time a “defence of the subject” (TaI 26/TeI xiv). 2 In the following, I suggest that Levinas approaches justice as belonging essen tially to the disclosure of being. The question then becomes the ethics of being’s justice. 3 According to Heidegger, the Anaximander fragment is most commonly translated as: “Whence things have their origin, there they must also pass away according to necessity; for they must pay penalty and be judged for their injustice, according to the ordinance of time”, (AF 13). Heidegger

BIBLIOGRAPHY 195

4

5

6 7 8 9

separates the first half from the second arguing that the early section is already an addition to the original. However, he does offer an interpretation of the entire saying, which would read: “…coming to be is and passing away comes to be [or referring to the ancient Greek genesis: that from which things arise also gives rise to their passing away] along the lines of usage; for they let order and thereby also reck belong to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder”, (AF 30, 57). For an account of Heidegger’s argument in this paper see Bernasconi 1993a:40–55. “Juncture” or “jointure” are the terms used to translate the Greek dike, usually rendered as “justice”. The German word Heidegger uses is die Fuge meaning seam, joint, crack but also related to the musical term “fugue”. Heidegger does not draw out the musical analogy in the discussion of the Anaximander fragment, however, as Fred Dallmayr’s discussion of Heidegger on ethics and justice suggests, there is little doubt that this idea of Fuge is related and developed from the notion of Seinsfuge or “ontological juncture” which Heidegger first explores in lectures written between 1936–1938 as a process of the joining or rejoining of four interlacing parts and voices. Dallmayr writes that ontological juncture, is “a source of agon, or contest, between presence and absence” which is to be thought as the “gateway to the new beginning” beyond metaphysics, in face of the sober fact of our “abandonment of and by being” [Seinsverlassenheit], itself nurtured by the “oblivion of being” [Seinsvergessenheit]. Dallmayr goes on to suggest that Heidegger’s discussion of the Anaximander fragment involves the development of the notion of Seinsfuge with specific regard to “the issue of social (and cosmic) justice”, (Dallmayr 1993:11 10ff. and 118). As the following discussion acknowledges, the connection Dallmayr makes in so far as it considers that Heidegger’s analysis of justice is driven by the question of the oblivion of being. However, a full discussion and appraisal of Dallmayr’s analysis is not possible at this time. “Reck”, as opposed to “reckless” is interpreted in terms of “care” or “order” and can thereby be linked to the notion of Sorge. “Reck”=to allow something to be itself; to esteem (AF 46). According to Heidegger, beings which linger awhile, let order belong, and each being, thereby, lets reck belong to the other (AF 47). Heidegger suggests that what has been translated as “necessity” is the first name for the being of beings. In the following, I argue that Levinas takes issue with this association of necessity with being. See Bernasconi 1993a:43. “To think is no longer to contemplate, but to commit oneself” (BW 4). For a discussion of the relation of Heidegger and Levinas with regard to a fundamental “metaphysical disturbance”, see IEA 130–154.

196 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

10 Drawing on Hölderlin: “Nah ist,/Und schwer zu fassen der Gott./Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst/Das Rettende auch”, from Patmos, Hölderlin 1998: 230. 11 “J’ai toujours admiré l’analyse heideggerienne du “mot d’Anaximander”. Le present—la présence du présent—y apparaît comme violence dans sa persistance même, repoussant (postponing/resisting) passé et avenir, sans suggérer aucun “remords” (remorse) de cet exclusif être-là”. 12 “Remorse”, generally speaking, can be defined as a painful affect that is a remnant of a previous event. Etymologically “remorse” can be broken into “re”, and “-mordere”, where “re-” means “behind/after” and “mordere” means “biting”. 13 I do not wish to reduce Heidegger to Husserl, or Husserl to Heidegger. Levinas contrasts Husserl to Heidegger, in Meaning and Sense, suggesting that Husserl lies ambiguously positioned between intellectualism and the overcoming of it. In this paper it is quite clear that for Levinas, Heidegger’s ontology epitomises the final step out of the labyrinths of intellectualism. This ontology is nevertheless a phenomenology in the sense stated here. 14 See also OTB, footnotes 21–22 to Chapter II. 15 See especially EU 6lff. Husserl suggests that the naive consciousness cannot grasp that the givenness of the object is already an achievement [Leistung], a judgement at the most fundamental level. 16 have used “pretension” as a reminder of the etymological relation of the terms, “entendre”, and “pretendre”, which Levinas uses and which are also related etymologically to “intention”. This connection is lost in the English translation of “pretendre” as “claim” or “allege”, and “entendre” as “understanding”. 17 See Levinas’ footnote 20 to Chapter II, where Kant is quoted (OTB 188– 189/AE 45). 18 “In a cognition understood (experience and receptivity), in order for the numerical identity, the identification of this as that, to become meaningful (for identity never belongs from the first to the given profusion of the indiscernible, which is chaotic), what counts is spontaneity structured as an enunciation, a predication, language, alleging the ideal—and thus precisely communicable or universal…[t]hought can therefore reach the individual only through the detour of the universal. For philosophy as a discourse, the universal precedes the individual; it is in all senses of the term, a priori” (CP 113/DEHH 221–222). 19 We can also recall here what Levinas says with regard to the idealist tradition in his preface to Humanisme de l’Autre Homme and the essay “Humanism and Anarchy” which appears in this book. Idealism’s discovery of a dynamic identity, an essential “being-in-act” of subjectivity, is epitomised in the Kantian “unity of apperception”, in turn admired by Hegel and taking its most radical form of expression in Fichte

BIBLIOGRAPHY 197

20

21

22

23

(Wissenschaftslehre), who taught that the “reflexivity of the ego is nothing else than the fact of being the origin of the origin” (CP 131). The intelligibility of the subject itself rests on this movement of consciousness which, by definition, nothing can enter “fraudulently”, nothing can enter without becoming truth, Humanism and An-archy (CP 131). Levinas continues, seeming to suggest that this ego [moi] is involved in the postponement ad finitum of the Sollen—“devolving from the subject posited as Ego [Moi]”, which already announces the failure involved in human action. Wenzler suggests that Levinas is referring to a passage from Fichte such as: “Das Gesetz ist darum schlecthin rein, ein blofßes formales Soll, das in dieser Reinheit unverändert in alle Unendlichkeit sich wiederholt […]”, [The Law is thus pure as such, nothing more than a formal Ought, that in this purity repeats itself infinitely] (my translation) (Fichte 1971:118; Wenzler 1989). In terms of Being and Time, it could be suggested that the “already said” can be grasped as the ontological fact that all interpretation [Auslegung], the kerygmatic said, is grounded in the fore-structure of understanding as the primordial state of Dasein’s Being which is always a Being-in-theworld alongside things ready-to-hand. The importance of Levinas’ introduction of the “said” and the “saying” in Otherwise than Being is generally agreed upon in Levinas scholarship. Whether one conceives of Otherwise than Being as a radical turn from Totality and Infinity or a continuation of the project announced even as early as 1935, one cannot deny “the limitations of language” in Totality and Infinity, as is often pointed out. What exactly these limitations amount to is perhaps open to more examination and itself informs the manner in which the relationship of Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being is thought. I do not intend to discuss the degree of success or failure of Levinas’ enterprise in Totality and Infinity but to explore the issue behind the debate which is the relation of ethical and ontological language. I agree with Critchley’s and Bernasconi’s suggestion in the preface to Re-Reading Levinas that the the relation of the two texts is more complicated than any simple developmental thesis but it is nevertheless “clear that in the latter work (OTB) Levinas is more aware of the logocentric recoils that occur when ethical Saying is thematised within the ontological Said” (Bernasconi & Critchley 1991: xiii). Critchley and Bernasconi suggest that the central preoccupation of Otherwise than Being concerns the possibility of an ethical saying which ruptures the ontological language of the said (Bernasconi & Critchley 1991: xiii). I am not suggesting a dialectical transformation, since, and as I hope to show, the rupture does not involve negation of either the “ethical” nor the “ontological”. This mention of the preface and the ensuing discussion of the relation of the saying and the said is undertaken in full view of the warning given by

198 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

24 25

26

27

28

29

Paul Davies. He writes that it is not enough to make reference to what Levinas says about the prefatory word in Totality and Infinity, nor to provide an account of the distinction of the saying and the said, to decide the question of the status and possibility of the very language in which the “ethical” could be heard once and for all. In other words, the problem of the possibility of “ethical language” is not an issue that must be decided in the positive before we can take Levinas seriously but rather its undecidability is integral to Levinas’ “ethics”, which “can never have done with the issue of language”, (Davies 1995:96–97). We should keep this in mind throughout the following discussion, which does not intend to uncover the possibilities for the appearance of an originary ethical concern but leads to the necessity of betrayal and “non-sense” for the possibility of justice. Levinas also will use the terms, “epos”, “already said”, and “kerygma”. John Llewelyn also distinguishes these two amphibologies, calling them the “ontological” and the “ethical” respectively and suggesting that the ethical amphibology doubles the ontological amphibology. What this exactly amounts to, I hope will become a little clearer in the following discussion, (Llewelyn 1995a:196). As Peperzak writes: “the amphibology of being belongs to the dimension of the Said. The hesitation of language between nouns and verbs, its switching from beings to Being, and the other way round, characterises it as logos, apophansis, Said” (Peperzak l989:10). Lingis interprets: “la distinction et l’amphibologie de l’être et de l’étant se montrera importante et l’être—déterminant pour la vérité”; to read: “… the amphibology of being and entities will turn out from the start to be important and to be determinant for truth,” (my italics). Thus he translates “l’être “as “to be”rather than “being” which would be a reference to the necessity of being for truth. I refer here to Levinas’ first sentence: “The distinction between that which exists and its existence itself…imposes itself on philosophical reflection—and with equal facility disappears from its view” (EE 17/DE 15). In his preliminary note to Otherwise than Being, Levinas claims that he does not chose to write essance to distinguish his use of “essence” from the Scholastic ens meaning the essence of an entity. However, as already suggested, this does not mean that he conceives of essence in this traditional sense (OTB xli/AE).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 199

Chapter 8. Subjectivity and Tertiality: 1 See editor’s introduction in Bernasconi & Critchley 1991:xiii. With regard to this question of method, Adriaan Peperzak suggests we can only begin to approach the saying laterally by thinking back to it (Peperzak 1989:218). But, this is, at best, only a preliminary approach in so far as it would attempt to approach the saying through a reduction which can only conceive of it as a kind of “intentionality”, or in the language of Otherwise than Being, in terms of the said. 2 It could be suggested that Levinas is confounding Husserl and Heidegger on temporality and overlooking the fundamental disturbance that haunts Heideggerian recuperation such that it is not possible to attribute any simple unity of consciousness and time to Heidegger. This issue cannot be addressed in detail here. However, in the light of the arguments above and those of the previous chapter it might be suggested that, for Levinas, the fact that “man” stands in the truth of Being fulfils the sense of unity here. The rupture, as suggested above, is a mere getting out of phase with oneself and not the interruption of the human beyond being. 3 Translated by Lingis as “reveals their becoming”, from the French “la sourde usure des choses trahissant leur devenir” where usure means “wear and tear”, or “decay”, and “trahir” is translated as “betrayal” or “misrepresentation”. 4 “Dire disant le dire même, sans le thématiser…”. 5 “What verbs like ‘to deliver itself’, ‘consume itself’, ‘exile itself’ (se livrer, se consumer, s’exiler), suggest by their pronominal form is not an act of reflection on oneself, of concern for oneself; it is not an act at all, but a modality of passivity which in substitution is beyond even passivity” (OTB 138/AE 176). 6 “Ce n’est pas du tout une situation ou on pose la question; c’est la question qui vous prend: il y a votre mise en question”. 7 As Llewelyn writes of the ethical saying: “These calls are calls not of being, but away from being and its difference from beings, from logos as correlation of saying and said, to a saying that is without correlation where language as house is opened beyond monadological closure and disclosure” (Llewelyn 1995a: 162 my italics). 8 At the time of writing I had not read Derrida’s discussion of tertiality in Adieu, which prompted a renewed interest in the relation of ethics and justice in Levinas. The third is increasingly associated with the passage from the ethical to the political, a passage, however, that traverses an absolute separation. In Derrida’s terms there can be no hierarchical founding or derivative relation between the ethical and the political. Only an aporetic or interruptive event. See Derrida 1999; Bernasconi 1999; Perpich 1998.

200 EMMANUEL LEVINAS

9 I have modified the translation to make the distinction more clearly. Although illeity is distinguished from the third man, it is not dear whether the third refers back to the third man or illeity. There is a temptation to equate illeity with the interruptive third [tiers interrompant]. For this reason, I include the original in full: “C’est dans le prophétisme que l’Infini échappe à l’objectivation de la thénatisation et du dialogue et signifie comme illéité, à la troisème personne; mais selon une ‘tertialité’ différente de celle du troisème homme, du tiers interrompant le face a face de l’accueil de l’autre homme—interrompant la proximité ou l’approche du prochain—du troiséme homme par commence la justice.” 10 We could provisionally add to this list: tiers exclu, or the excluded middle, another term for illeity; and il y a, translated as ‘there is’, eliding its reference to the third person pronoun il both neuter and masculine. 11 In his paper, “The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the Ethical and the Political” Robert Bernasconi draws our attention to three notions of tertiality: i) le troiseme personne, translated as the third person, the neutral observer whose standpoint corresponds to universal reason; ii) le tiers, translated as the third party and; iii) illeity, derived from the French grammatical third person masculine/neuter pronoun ‘il. See Bernasconi, 1999. The differing significations for the troiseme personne could be put down to conceptual changes between the Ego and the Totality and Otherwise than Being. The relation between illeity and the neutral third will be discussed below. 12 See GDT 224 and BW 141. 13 have added the italics in accordance with the original. 14 In italics in the French. 15 I have added Levinas’ italics, which are not translated into the English. I have also changed, “in a being” and “of a being”, to “in being” and “of being” respectively. I understand Levinas to be referring to the amphibology of being, in this quote, where the entry into being is not just the moment of reckoning of possibility but an entry into the giving reck of being which will involve the reckoning of possibles in the coming to be and passing away of beings, according to the necessity (to chreon or dispensation) governing being’s justice. It might be suggested that the entry of the third party is the moment of subjective hypostasis, no longer thought out of the relation to il y a but out of the relation to the infinite excess of ethical materiality. 16 The French reads: “Trahison de ma relation anarchique avec illéité, mais aussi une relation nouvelle avec elle: c’est grâce à Dieu seulement que sujet incomparable à Autrui, je suis abordé en autre comme les autres. Dieu n’est pas ‘en cause’ comme un prétendu interlocuteur: la corrélation réciproque me rattache à l’autre homme dans la trace de la transcendence, dans l’illéité. Le ‘passage’ de Dieu dont je ne peux parler

BIBLIOGRAPHY 201

17

18

19

20

21

autrement que par référence à cette grâce, est précisénent le retournement du sujet incomparable en membre de société.” Just as Levinas must answer the question of the relation of the feminine as a philosophical category to woman, he must also answer the question of the relation of the He or Il of illeity as concept, to the empirical man. Again see Sandford 2002, for an outline and critical discussion of the differing responses to this issue. Critchley also finds that illeity, as the trace or excluded middle [tiers exclu], cannot be regarded as a common essence. However, he does consider that it functions as a guarantee of reciprocity—at the very least as an absent ground, (Critchley 1992:227–228). De Vries goes so far as to suggest that il y a is beyond being and the Other, that it is “the other than the other, the otherwise than other, the otherwise than otherwise than being” (De Vries 1995:218). I suggest that this is a description of the tertiality of illeity, who is never the Other but the excluded third, the other of the Other, the absolute susceptibility to the human beyond being. For an excellent discussion of the notion of the stranger, in which topography is thought beginning with a notion of strangeness, or foreignness that is not thinkable in terms of the pathos of distance, see Waldenfels 1997. Emphasis in accordance with French edition.

Index

A Affectivity, 4, 8, 22, 27, 55–56, 123, 132–133, 136–137, 141–142, 145 Affirmation, 8, 9, 22, 27, 55–56, 123, 132–133, 136–137, 141–142, 145 Agape, 92–95, 101 Ainley, Alison, 68 Alienation, 6, 82, 132 Alterity, 6–7, 26, 48–49, 62, 66, 68, 72, 75, 87–95, 98, 101, 103, 106– 107, 159, 161–162 Amphibology, 8, 136–143 Anaximander, fragment, 8, 123, 125– 128, 130–131, 140 Anonymity, 5, 9, 29, 33, 35–36, 39– 40, 45–46, 49, 52–53, 58, 61, 63, 69, 76, 80, 100, 108–109, 118, 162– 163, 165 Antihumanism, 1 Anxiety, 22, 25–26, 28–29, 31, 39, 41, 44, 48, 69–70, 129, 131, 165 Aristotle, 40 Atterton, Peter, 122 Attest, 7, 39, 43, 74, 113, 146, 164 Attestation, 103, 114 Autre, 11, 149, 153 Autrui, 2, 30, 47–48, 50, 72, 79, 87, 96, 103, 107, 116, 137, 153–154, 158, 164

and beings, 36–38, 63–64, 118, 127–128 enchainment to, 22–23, 71, 132 forgetting of, 1, 126, 144, 163–164 impersonal, 121 in-the-world, 6, 12, 16, 21–22, 25, 28–29, 39, 42, 46, 51–52, 57, 64, 69, 72 irremissible attachment to, 22, 25, 34, 53, 73 leaving, 9, 19, 27, 30, 49, 117 of beings, 2, 139 question of, 1–2, 5, 11–14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24–26, 29, 35–38, 40, 123, 136 toward-death, 5, 22, 29, 38, 40, 48, 72, 91 Bernasconi, Robert, 125, 127–128 Betrayal, 8–9, 99, 105, 123, 137, 143– 147 Blanchot, Maurice, 158–159, 160–161 Body, 16–17, 20, 27, 29, 45–46, 51, 53, 56, 58–59, 73–74, 78, 104, 106, 135, 141, 148 Bouckaert, Luc, 38 Buber, Martin, 96 C Caputo, John, 158 Caspar, Bernhard, 122 Cassirer, Ernst, 11, 165 Chanter, Tina, 72, 98

B Being, 202

INDEX 203

Command, 106, 118 Consciencc, 1, 18, 133 good, 106, 131, 133, 159–160 guilty, 96 Consciousness, 30–21, 45–46, 51, 53– 56, 58, 60, 63, 73–74, 77, 132–133, 135–136, 140, 143, 146, 153, 157, 160 intentional, 6, 33, 56, 58, 64, 67, 80, 82, 84, 133, 134 representational, 77, 83 theoretical, 58, 82, 140 Critchley, Simon, 119–120, 156, 158– 161 D Dasein, 2, 5–6, 12–23, 25–44, 46, 49– 52, 64, 68–69, 72, 79, 91, 130, 150 analytic of, 12 authentic, 12, 21–24, 29, 33, 38– 42, 48, 51, 69, 72 critique of, existential analysis of, 1, 11 fleeing of, 21–22, 51 inauthentic, 18, 23–24, 29, 33, 39– 42, 68–69 inauthenticity, 29, 39–41 radical finitude of, 2 Dallmayr, Fred, 129 Davies, Paul, 142–143 Death, 8, 22, 25, 29–30, 41–42, 44, 47–49, 61, 70, 90, 99–100, 120– 121, 159–160, 163–164 of the other, 120, 159 victory over, 8, 90, 99, 120–121, 160 Demand, 85, 98, 105, 112, 114, 116, 118, 121, 125, 132, 146, 151, 153, 158 for justice, 103, 106 of the Other, 7, 8, 106, 113, 120 Denouement, see also undoing, 27, 47 Derrida, Jacques, 35–36, 39–40, 117, 122

Descartes, René, 162 Desire, 22, 26, 47, 52, 78, 80–81, 84, 92, 97, 109, 117, 124, 147 beyond being, 9 for escape, 20–21 for the infinite, 111 for the other, 102, 111 for transcendence, 17, 20 to leave being, 21 Diachrony, 131, 143, 152, 160–161 Dialectic, 6, 41, 70, 111, 151 Dialectical, 22, 25, 55, 76, 99–100, 141, 148 Dialogue, 77, 94, 96–97, 110, 148 Difference, ontological, 34–38, 50, 62, 137– 138, 157 sexual, 6–7, 72, 101–102, 165 Duality, 22–25., 33, 39, 2–44, 49, 53, 69, 71, 88, 101, 123, 136, 143 Duplicity, 144, 146 Dwelling, 6, 64, 67, 69–70, 75, 83, 85, 87, 98, 108 E Ecstasy, 27, 49 Effort, 26, 28, 43, 71 Ego, see also moi 2, 11, 23–24, 27, 32, 52–53, 58, 64–65, 70–75, 77, 83, 84–85, 94–97, 103, 105, 113, 131– 132, 161–163 transcendental, 11, 161 Egoism, 74, 85 Embodiment, 54, 56, 58, 132 Emphasis, 144–145 Encounter, 2, 5–6, 26, 28, 43–44, 49, 52, 63, 68, 69, 75, 82, 87–89, 95, 98–99, 101, 105–124 passim, 141 Enjoyment, 5, 51–73, 78–79, 82, 84, 91–94, 98, 102, 109, 111, 132, 141 Erotic, 8, 88, 90–93, 95, 98,100–102 Escape, 20–22, 30, 46–47, 61, 63, 68, 183

204 INDEX

Es gibt, 40–41,109 Essence, 4, 13–17, 23–25, 38, 40, 44, 60, 62–63, 65, 81, 84–85, 101, 111, 118, 122, 127–129, 136–139, 143– 147 passim, 150–164 passim Ethical, 4, 34, 93, 95, 98–103, 107, 110–125 passim, 137, 152, 156– 158, 160–161, 163, 165 event, 4, 6, 7, 94, 98–99, 102, 107, 115, 119–120, 123, 148, 160, 162, 165 materiality, 5, 9, 144, 146, 148 relation, 3–4, 7, 93, 99, 102, 103, 110, 113–120, 122, 125 saying, 5, 9, 123, 133, 137, 141– 144, 146–147, 152 sense, 2, 119, 125, 141, 145, 147, 150–151, 160 sensibility, 4, 141, 145 Ethics, and justice, 3–4, 7, 88, 98, 103, 107, 116, 118–119, 146, 148, 157– 158 of being’s justice, 141 originary, 1, 126 relation with ontology, 4, 72 Ethos, 83, 104, 111, 118, 126, 128, 130, 147–148 Evasion, see also Escape, 19–28, 30–31, 38, 43, 46–47, 53, 60, 62–63, 68, 148 Evanescence, 45–47, 65–66, 71, 81 Evil, 17, 97, 101, 159 F Face, 3, 7, 49, 62, 65–66, 81–85, 92, 94–95, 98–99, 101, 104–122 passim, 125, 137, 143, 146–149, 153–160 of the other, 7, 65, 85, 108, 112, 114, 120, 158 Face to face, 7, 28, 47, 87–88, 93, 99, 103, 106, 11, 117, 124 Facticity, 15, 56

Fatigue, 31, 43 Fecundity, 8, 48–49, 92, 95, 99–100, 121 Feminine, 6, 72–75, 87–88, 90–92, 101–102, 165–166 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 60 Finitude, 1–2, 5, 8, 13, 16, 22, 29–30, 41, 60, 108, 111, 120, 151–153, 160 Finkielkraut, Alain, 93 For-the-other, 84, 93, 97, 102, 106, 111, 121, 132, 148, 153–155, 162 Freedom, 1, 4, 7, 17, 31, 46–49, 60, 63, 76, 78, 85, 96–97, 104, 107–117 passim, 123–124, 141, 162, 164 G God, 2, 9, 95–96, 110, 114, 126, 131, 146, 151–152, 154–158, 164 behind the scenes, 96, 114, 147, 151, 157–158, 164 Good, 34, 89–90, 101, 118, 122, 158– 159 H Haar, Michel, 12–13 Happiness, 31, 59, 61, 97 Hegel, Georg W.F., 60, 110–112 Heidegger, Martin, 1–2, 4–6, 8–26 pass im, 28–29, 33–52 passim, 57, 62, 68–72 passim, 75, 79, 91, 108, 112, 123–134, 138, 140–141, 144, 158, 163, 165 Height, 49, 109 Hitlerism, 17, 31 Home, see also Dwelling, 59, 67–68, 72, 75–76, 84–85, 109 Home(ness), not at, 25, 28, 69–70 Hope, 30, 47, 49, 71 Human, 1–2, 5, 8–18 passim, 21–29 passim, 31, 33, 35, 39–40, 43, 58, 75, 91, 101, 108–109, 111, 118, 121, 125–133 passim, 140–141, 143–144, 147–148, 158, 163–164

INDEX 205

beyond being, 5, 8, 9, 147, 164, 166 Humanism, 1, 16, 60 European, 5 Enlightenment, 11 Humanitas, 1 Humanity, 1–2, 7, 17–18, 31, 96, 102, 112, 116–118, 129, 148, 164–165 whole of, 103, 121, 156, 158 Husserl, Edmund, 11, 51, 53–55, 134– 137, 141 Hypostasis, 33–34, 38, 42, 44–49, 51– 53, 59, 62, 66, 69–71, 73, 81, 109, 150, 161 originary, 5–6 I I, the, see also moi, 4, 46, 49, 53–63 passim, 68, 70–71, 74, 77, 80, 96– 97, 106, 109–112, 135, 146–147, 155, 162–163 autocthonous, 59, 61, 71, 97 I-Thou, 96–99 Il y a, 5–6, 9, 20, 29, 33–34, 38–47, 51–53, 56, 61–68, 70–71, 79–82, 108–109, 111, 119, 121, 141, 148– 150, 157–165 Illeity, 5, 8–9, 99, 121, 141, 147–150, 152–160, 165 Immanence, 54 Impossibility, 3–5, 8, 19–34 passim, 37–39, 41–50 passim, 61, 73, 79, 83, 99, 105, 112 116–117, 129– 130, 132, 138, 146–148, 150–151, 155, 157, 159, 162–163 In-itself, 66, 81, 98–99, 109, 121 Indifference, 160, 164, 166 Indolence, 43–44, 62 Infinite, the, 8–9, 71, 91–92, 98–101, 109, 111–112, 120–121, 131, 142, 146, 148–151 Infinity, 5, 46, 81, 99, 111, 150, 152, 160, 163

Injustice, 5, 8–9, 85, 104–106, 108, 115, 118, 125–129, 132–133, 140, 147, 163 Insomnia, 73 Insufficiency, 4, 21, 23–24 26, 42, 47, 53, 71, 90 Intentionality, 6, 11–12, 22, 24, 51– 55, 63–64, 67, 7–81, 90–91, 133, 135, 141, 147 Interruption, 2, 5, 9, 20, 29, 35, 46, 73, 83, 91, 143, 148–149, 152, 154, 156, 166 Ipseity, 55–57 Irigaray, Luce, 89, 91–92 J Judaism, 1, 17 Justice, 1–9, 85, 88, 93–95, 99–100, 102–142, 146–150, 152–158, 160, 163–164, 166 being’s, 123, 129, 131, 141–142, 147, 150, 158 economic, 95, 105, 107, 120 economy of, 97, 155 ethical, 107, 119 ethical dimension of, 4 and injustice, play of, 5, 9, 128– 129, 133, 140, 147, 158, 163 language is, 117 ontological, 3, 8 play of, 9, 158 social, 91, 95, 102–103, 118–119 K Kant, Immanuel, 11–13, 60, 110, 112, 165 Kerygma, 134, 136, 139 L Labour, 43, 66, 74, 77, 79, 80, 111, 115 Language, 3, 8, 40, 56, 58, 68, 77–78, 84–85, 113, 116, 122, 125, 133– 134, 137–139, 142, 146–147, 153

206 INDEX

Leave-taking, 18, 21, 30 Letting be, 129–130 Lingis, Alphonso, Living from, 55–57, 59, 67, 73 Llewelyn, John, 69–70, 119, 130, 139, 145 Logic, of being, 143, 156 of hypostasis, alternative, 33, 45, 109 of interruption, 156 of non-contradiction, 38 Logos, 39, 147, 158 Love, see also agape and eros, 85, 87–88, 90–93, 95–97, 100, 102– 104, 106, 141 of God, 95 of the couple, 95, 97–98 of the neighbour, 7, 85, 94–96, 98 Platonic, 87–89 M Malaise, 26–28 Meaning, giving, 4–6, 33, 77, 118, 136, 142, 163 of being, 2, 15, 17, 24, 36, 38, 50, 123, 141 of the human, 2, 12, 17, 25, 31, 130, 147 Mercy, 3, 120 Metaphysics, 13, 15, 47, 122 Moi, 23–24, 82, 96 Morality, 78, 94–96, 98, 115–118 N National Socialism, 17, 31 Need(s), 21–27 passim, 34, 48, 53, 58–59, 61, 76–77, 80–81, 85, 88– 91, 94, 106, 117, 133, 146 of enjoyment, 60–61, 109 of evasion, 19, 21–27, 31, 46–47, 60–61

Negation, 31, 53, 59–60, 63, 76, 83, 114, 120, 148, 150, 155, 161 Neighbour, 7, 85, 94–96, 98, 149 Neutrality, 6, 36, 40, 73, 75, 77, 109, 158, 160–162 of being, 9, 101 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 160 Nihilism, 161 Non-indifference, 164 Nothing, 24–25, 28–29, 34, 36, 108, 162 Nothingness, 24, 26, 28, 41, 44, 48, 67, 129, 146, 159, 163 Nudity, 27–29 O Objectivity, 49, 54, 78, 113 Obligation, 43, 110, 124, 150 Obsession, 153, 157 One, the, 22, 39, 88 for the other, the, 147, 150, 160– 163 Ontological(ly), see also difference, 2, 4, 8–9, 12–24 passim, 27–28, 30– 31, 43, 51–52, 56, 64, 73, 75, 82, 84, 92, 99, 104, 108, 110, 117–118, 121–123, 125–126, 130, 132–133, 140, 143, 147, 149–159, 166 Ontology, 2–4, 6, 15, 33, 35, 37, 41, 45, 57, 68, 72, 75, 101, 108–109, 117, 119, 125, 130, 134, 137, 140, 143, 157 fundamental, 1, 5, 12–18, 20, 23, 28, 72, 128 Onto-theology, 9 Order, universal, 20, 47, 62, 73, 110– 111, 113–114, 118, 129, 144 Ordination, 118 Origin, 24–25, 33, 38, 50, 55, 58, 61, 64–65, 80–81, 101, 122, 125, 146, 160 Other, see also Autre, Autrui, 2–4, 6–8, 70, 72, 79–85, 87, 93, 98–99, 101–

INDEX 207

103, 105–125 passim, 129–133, 141, 145–147, 156, 159–160, 162, 164, 166 Otherness, 53, 72, 99, 144, 155 Otherwise, 109, 142, 148, 152, 161 P Passivity, 22, 29–30, 48, 56, 72–73, 88, 113, 115, 122, 135–136, 144– 146, 161–163 Past, immemorial, 5, 143 Peace, 96 Perperzak, Adriaan T., 95 Phenomenology, 6, 11, 54, 81, 87–88, 92, 121, 145 Philosophical anthropology, 12–13, 16, 165 Plato, 40, 88–93 Pleasure, 26–28, 61–62, 85, 122 Pluralism, 166 Pöggeler, Otto, 11 Politics, 165 Political, 3, 5, 75, 93–94, 114, 116, 120, 166 Positing, 12, 54–56, 59–60, 63, 161 Possibility, 8, 20, 22–25, 28–29, 35, 38–41, 44–45, 48–49, 52–54, 56, 60–66, 70–71, 73, 77, 80–85 passim, 89, 91, 94, 98–113 passim, 116, 118–121, 125–127, 129, 131, 135–136, 138, 143–147, 149, 153– 154, 158–160, 162–163, 165 Postponement, 5, 33, 53, 65, 67–68, 70–72, 73, 77, 79–83 Power, 21, 31, 36, 39, 49, 58–59, 73– 75, 81–81, 88, 90, 92, 100, 111, 131, 140, 144 Pre-ontological, 26, 29, 37 Presence, 30, 51, 68, 72, 80, 87, 90, 100, 104, 110, 114, 118, 129, 133, 153, 156 irremissible, 27, 29 of the present, 130–131

of the other, 30, 81, 92, 111, 125– 127, 140 Production, of the infinite, 8, 91–92, 98–101, 113, 121, 152 Prophecy, 148 Proximity, 8, 126, 130–132, 149, 153, 156 R Reason, 1, 13, 17, 60, 76, 85, 91, 103, 110–112, 117, 162 Reck, 127, 132 Recollection, 67–68, 70–73, 75–76, 89, 129 Recurrence, 132 Religion, 96, 114 Remorse, 131–132 Representation, 33, 53–59, 65, 74, 76– 78, 80, 82, 84–85, 90, 103, 143, 152 Responsibility, 3, 9, 49, 71, 93, 98, 107–112 passim, 116, 121–122, 133, 145, 147, 151–153, 157 infinite, 115, 120, 155–156 Rolland, Jacques, 19, 23, 61–63, 148 S Sacrifice, 1, 113, 141 Said, the, 4–5- 8–9, 123, 132–3, 135– 143, 145–148, 151–154, 157, 160– 162, 165 the already Said, 135–136, 144 Same, the, 38, 146 Saying, the, 5, 8–9, 123, 132–133, 136–139, 142 Scintillation, 45–46, 66, 81 Self, 21–22, 27, 30, 38, 65, 68, 73–74, 88–89, 132, 145, 161 Self-consciousness, 60, 79 Self-positing, 57, 59, 64, 74, 141– 144, 146–148, 151–152, 162 Sensibility, 4, 54, 66, 82, 132, 135– 137, 140–141, 144–145, 147, 161– 162

208 INDEX

ethical, 4, 141, 145 Separation, 6, 13, 34, 37–38, 51–53, 58–59, 63–64, 67, 71, 75–83 passim, 94, 107, 113, 124, 138, 156 Shame, 26–30, 43 Sign, 4, 113, 135, 161 Signification, 1–2, 5–6, 9, 11–16 passim, 19, 20, 25, 33–38 passim, 49, 54, 57, 74, 83–84, 89–92, 101, 108, 113, 117, 119, 125–140 passim, 144, 146–147, 149–150, 158, 160, 162 beyond being, 150–151, 160 ethical, 8, 119, 121, 125, 133, 137, 141, 147, 152, 159, 162 Signifying(ness), 37, 131, 146, 155, 161 Singularity, 33, 93, 95, 104–105, 109, 146 Social, 41, 75, 88, 90–91, 98–99, 105, 120 justice, 94–95, 102–103, 118–119 totality, 7, 20, 34, 42, 87–88, 90– 91, 94, 96, 108–109, 114, 118– 121, 157 whole, 4, 7, 87–88, 99, 105, 120 Sociality, 75, 77, 87, 98, 100–101, 156 Speech, 122, 124–125, 159 Spirit, 15–16, 18, 110 Spontaneity, 110–111, 134–135 Spontaneous, 5, 60, 64, 73–74, 83, 112, 135–136 Stranger, 26, 98, 163 Strangeness, 26–27 Subject, passim autonomous, 30 being of, 6 cognising, 27 death of, 2 metaphysical, 14 of dwelling, 6, 78–81, 84, 107– 108 of hypostasis, 46, 51, 66, 73, 81

of intentionality, 6, 81 of evasion, 23, 53, 61 ontic, 15 ontological, 4 uniqueness of, 3 Subjection, 149 Subjectivity, passim absolute, 49 absolute susceptibility of, 8 being of, 6, 15, 124 beyond being, 84 critique of, 1, 26, 72 embodied, 141 ethical, 114, 123, 163 finitude, 5, 8, 120 human, 5, 9, 108–109, 130 idealist conception of, 1 material, 83–84 of dwelling, 6, 67, 82–83, 108 of enjoyment, 62–63, 68 of the saying, 8 original structure of, 53, 75 passivity, 122 sensible, 65, 132 signification, 16 unicity, 155 unique, 120 Substitution, 1, 132, 145, 147, 149– 150, 155 Suffering, 20, 23–24, 26, 29–30, 48– 49, 96, 107, 110, 119, 132, 144 Susceptibility, 8–9, 56, 155–157, 159 T Teleology, 21, 90, 94, 102, 137 non-teleological, 91, 109 Temporal, 18, 60, 67, 124, 136, 139, 143 Temporality, 45, 47, 72, 78–79, 98, 136, 139–140, 143 Tertiality, see also the Third, Illeity, 5, 7–8, 105–108, 121, 141, 147– 149, 153–158, 160 Thematisation, 4, 111, 148, 151

INDEX 209

Third, the, 3–4, 7–8, 87–88, 91, 94, 96–97, 99, 104, 106, 108, 112, 114–116, 119–120, 122, 148, 153– 156, 158 excluded (tiers exclu), 160, 161 man (troiseme homme), 95, 148, 153 neutral, 159, 161, 165 ontological, 8, 121 party (le tiers), 3, 7, 87–88, 96, 98–99, 103, 106, 115, 120, 147– 149, 153–154, 156–157, 164 person (troiseme personne), 3, 7– 8, 95, 97, 105, 115, 148–149, 155 Thrownness, 16, 19, 22–23, 29, 72 Time, 2–3, 18, 46–48, 66–67, 71–72, 78, 81, 121, 136, 143, 146, 160 infinite, 121 Totality, 2, 20, 68, 80, 84–85, 103– 104, 109, 118, 152, 154–156, 162– 163, 166 social, 7, 20, 34, 42, 87–88, 90, 92–94, 96, 100, 103–108, 114, 118, 120–121, 124, 126, 128 Trace, 5, 8, 143, 152, 154–155, 159, 160–161, 165 Transcendence, 17–21, 23–24, 28–30, 48–50, 53–54, 62–63, 89–90, 92– 93, 98–99, 108, 141, 152, 154, 159, 161, 162 beyond being, 28 Transcendent, 89, 96, 98 Truth, 4, 17, 55, 66, 80, 82, 90, 103, 110–111, 114, 116, 122–125, 138, 140, 143–144, 149, 158, 163–163 of being, 1, 127–128, 130, 140 U Uncanniness, 22, 69 Unconscious, 45, 63, 73 Understanding, as pre-tension, 135 of being, 15, 25–26, 29, 35–38 ontologico-temporal, 14

Unicity, 6–7, 76, 81, 121, 155–156 Unique(ness), 7, 20, 33–34, 44–45, 56–57, 78, 85, 93, 99–106 passim, 110, 116–120 passim, 125, 146, 148, 151–158 passim affectivity, 4 demand of the other, 7 face, 153, 157 presence of the, 125 other, 106, 116–117 relation to being, 5 signification, 146 subject, 3, 78, 88, 94, 120 susceptibility, 157 Universal, 5, 7, 17, 20, 35, 54, 82–83, 89, 104, 107, 110–114, 117, 119, 121, 135, 148, 155–156 singular, 5, 9, 148, 156 Universality, 17, 30, 49, 58, 78, 110, 118, 146, 156, 158 Unsaid, 8, 123, 132, 137, 140, 142– 143, 147–148, 153–154, 160 Unsaying, 137, 164–166 V Value, 4, 19, 58, 76–78, 82, 90, 93–94, 105–106, 157–159, 164 absolute, 157 crisis of, 16 economic, 104 of humanity, 31 of possession(s), 76–77 of world, 52 ontological, 92 philosophical, 101 universal, 105 Vasseleu, Cathy, 64 Violence, 8, 49, 85, 96–97, 105, 107, 114–115, 117, 120, 122, 1128–129, 131–132, 147, 155, 159, 164 Virility, 73–5, 91, 108 Vision, 65–66, 82, 125 Vries, Hent de, 19–20, 159, 161 Vulnerability, 92, 104, 132, 141

210 INDEX

W Weariness, 20, 43 Welcome, 67–68, 70–72, 75, 97–98, 116, 149 152 Will, 1, 57, 68, 74, 84, 104–115 passim, 120, 130, 155 free, 1, 76, 78–79, 108 good, 4, 146–147, 162 to conquer, 128–131 World, 6, 22, 24, 29, 34, 42, 44, 47, 49–88 passim, 112–114, 133–134, 136, 144, 157–158, 162–163 behind the scenes, 81, 96, 114, 155, 161 of light, 100 of valuation, 104 of possessions, 66, 85, 108 phenomenal, 79–81, 84, 117 silent, 122