Meaning and Melancholy in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas 9783666604522, 9783525604526, 9783647604527

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© 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525604526 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647604527

Research in Contemporary Religion

Edited by Hans-Günter Heimbrock, Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, Heinz Streib, Trygve Wyller In co-operation with Hanan Alexander (Haifa), Carla Danani (Macerata), Wanda Deifelt (Decorah), Siebren Miedema (Amsterdam), Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Nashville), Garbi Schmidt (Roskilde), Claire Wolfteich (Boston) Volume 18

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525604526 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647604527

Stine Holte

Meaning and Melancholy in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

© 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525604526 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647604527

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.dnb.de. ISBN 978-3-647-60452-7 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in Germany. Typesetting by Konrad Triltsch, Ochsenfurt Printed and bound by Hubert & Co, Göttingen Printed on non-aging paper.

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Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part 1: The Light And Darkness Of Phenomenological Meaning 1.1. The meaning of the ethical . . . . . . . . . . Beyond phenomenological meaning . . . . . Ethical meaning as an epiphany of the face . Ethical meaning as a questioning of the self .

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21 21 24 29

1.2. Ontology and the meaninglessness of being; darkness . . . . . . . Il y a and the enchainment to being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shame and subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33 33 38

1.3. Intentional meaning; light . . . . . . . . . Intentionality as sincerity . . . . . . . . . . The violence of light: Derrida’s reading . . Intentional meaning and temporality . . . Husserl and the problem of representation Heidegger and the problem of imagination

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1.4. Esthetics between darkness and light . . . . . . . . . Esthetics and ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The exoticism of art as the involvement with darkness The problematic consolation of beauty . . . . . . . . The value of art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1.5. Transcendence and the question of language . . . The differences between Levinas’ two main works Ontology as the amphibology of being and beings Transcendence as reduction to pure Saying . . . .

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Part 2: Transcendence And Sensibility 2.1. Sensibility and the anarchy of the self Sensibility as enjoyment . . . . . . . Ethicized sensibility . . . . . . . . . . The anarchy of the singular self . . .

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2.2. Responsibility and the traumatized self . . . . Substitution and the excess of responsibility . The critique of pathology . . . . . . . . . . . . Traumatism and psychoanalysis . . . . . . . . Traumatism between transcendence and il y a The problem of melancholy . . . . . . . . . .

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111 111 117 120 127 133

2.3. The religious dimension of sensible transcendence . . . . . . Religion and phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holiness and separation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judaism as a religion for adults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religious freedom and melancholy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The intrigue of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The transcendence of subjectivity – and the return to society Sincerity and ethical questioning of meaning . . . . . . . . .

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140 140 144 149 155 161 166 172

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

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Acknowledgements This book is an elaborated version of my doctoral dissertation, and I first want to express my deep gratitude to my advisor Trygve E. Wyller for his continuous support and constructive supervision over several years. He has always been very generous, and his sensitivity to what really matters as well as his encouragement to go my own way has been very valuable. I am further thankful to several other scholars who were willing to read and discuss some of my sketches along the way. First of all Jean Greisch and Catherine Chalier in Paris, but also Rudolf Bernet, Roger Burggraeve and Rudi Visker in Leuven. I have also received valuable help from Henning Peucker and Nicolas de Warren in the initial phase of the project. My thanks also go to colleagues and former colleagues at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, for valuable discussions and feedback: Øystein Brekke, Svein Aage Christoffersen, Espen Dahl, Sissel M. Finholt-Pedersen, Martin R. Hauge, Dagny K. Johnson Hov, Roger Jensen, Marius T. Mjaaland, dne Nj , Leonora Onarheim, Margunn Sandal and Terje Stordalen, among others. I have also received constructive suggestions from Jayne Svenungsson along the way, but also discussions with Arne Johan Vetlesen, Claudia Welz, Jan-Olav Henriksen, Carl Cederberg and Paul Karlsson have been important to my work. I am also thankful to John Ries and Joseph Smith for their efforts to improve my language. I wish to thank the Research Council of Norway, who not only supported the publication of this book, but also granted me the scholarship that made this project possible in the first place. I further thank The Fulbright Foundation for the grant that was important for the preparation of this project. Finally I wish to thank my loved ones – particularly Steingrim and the boys, but also my other family and friends – for continuous support and care, for patience and impatience, for teaching me the most important lessons. Oslo, July 2014

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List of abbreviations Levinas: AE DDVI DL EDEHH EE EI OE OBBE PN RO SS TI TA QRPH

Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence De Dieu qui vient l’id e Difficile Libert En d couvrant l’existence avec Husserl and Heidegger De l’existence l’existant Ethique et infini On Escape [orig. De l’ vasion] Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (translation of AE) Proper names [orig. Noms propres] La r alit et son ombre La signification et le sens Totalit et infini Le temps et l’autre Quelques r flexions sur la philosophie de l’hitl risme

Heidegger : Hei: SZ Hei: GdP Hei: Kant

Sein und Zeit Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik

Husserl: Hu: CM Cartesianische Meditationen Hu: Ideen II Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie Derrida: Der : VM

Violence et m taphysique

Kant: Kant: KrV

Kritik der reinen Vernunft

Freud: Freud: MM

Mourning and Melancholy [orig. Trauer und Melancholie]

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Introduction In one of Isaiah Berlin’s famous essays, he divides thinkers into “foxes” and “hedgehogs”, according to an old Greek myth: Foxes know many small things, whereas hedgehogs know one big thing. In his introductory essay on Emmanuel Levinas, Hilary Putnam refers to this dichotomy and characterizes Levinas as “one of the hedgehogs we need to listen to” (Putnam 2002, 58). In a similar manner, Jacques Derrida compared Levinas’ thinking “with the crashing of a wave on a beach, always the same wave returning and repeating its movement with deeper insistence” (Der : VM 124). Although these references to hedgehogs and repeating waves suggest a somehow problematic one-sidedness, it is at the same time clear that both Putnam and Derrida believe Levinas’ concern to be an important one. What, then, is the “insistent wave” that recurs in the thinking of this “hedgehog”? The recurring theme will be known to anyone who has involved him- or herself with Levinas’ work: ethics – in the sense of otherness – as a first philosophy. However, Levinas’ concern is not primarily the construction of an ethics, but – as he puts it in Ethics and Infinity – to seek “the meaning of the ethical” (“Ma t che ne consiste pas construire l’ thique; j’essaie seulement d’en chercher le sens”) (EI 85). This little “manifesto” of Levinas shall serve as the point of departure for this investigation and is interesting for several reasons. First of all, one may discuss what ethics means to Levinas: what is its signification or content? This has been the focus of several studies and will also play a certain role here. A keyword would here be radical responsibility for the Other, often exemplified by Levinas in the simple phrase “Apr s Vous, monsieur,” but also involving an immediacy of the relationship that makes me responsible before I am able to judge and reflect upon it. One may also, however, put the emphasis on a more existential level, on the word meaning (sens), asking how ethics can be meaningful at all in Levinas’ thought. This question is relevant not only in light of his way of reversing the phenomenological notion of meaning as intentionality, but also in light of his later description of the ethical encounter with the Other in rather pathological terms, as “traumatism,” and also very close to the meaninglessness of melancholy. This tension between the meaning and melancholy of ethics is one of the main interests of this study. In order to investigate this properly, however, one has to discuss yet a third aspect of the “manifesto”: What does it mean that Levinas so clearly points out that he is not interested in constructing an ethics? Does it mean, for example, that his thinking is not really directly applicable on what one might call the “ethical

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situation,” so that it would be mistaken to read his descriptions of traumatism as ethical imperatives? Whatever focus one chooses to approach the question of the meaning of the ethical, it is crucial to keep in mind the importance of otherness in Levinas’ work. Simon Critchley summarizes Levinas’ main concern as “the putting in question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other” (Critchley 1999, 1, 5). In Levinas’ thinking, otherness is the source of ethical subjectivity and responsibility, and thereby different from, say, philosophies that take autonomy or the ideal of a good life as the foundational principles of ethics. This does not mean that otherness becomes a new foundational principle from which a new ethics can be deduced; rather, Levinas rejects the notion of foundation when he speaks of the ethical and claims that the source of ethics is an-archic (which is not meant in a political sense). His thinking is not founded in a beginning, a principle or an arch , which also implies a refusal of the foundation of most of the Western philosophical tradition – and ontology in particular. Ethics signifies, as Levinas says in the title of one of his main works, otherwise than being or beyond essence. This radical questioning of ontology is particularly directed against Martin Heidegger, Levinas’ former teacher, whom he once admired and whose philosophical framework he remained strongly dependent upon, even after Heidegger’s deeply disappointing affiliation with Nazism. Simply put, for Levinas the fundamental problem with Nazism is the same as it is for thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno or Zygmunt Bauman: its unwillingness to see human beings as individuals and not merely as exemplars. Levinas sees this tendency reflected in Heidegger’s ontology, which for him is incapable of reaching the ethical Other – as radical transcendence. The question of what or who the notion of ethical otherness refers to in Levinas is not straightforward. On the one hand, it is clear that Levinas refuses to acknowledge the radical transcendence of an otherness that is independent from the interpersonal relationship. At the same time, the emphasis on anarchy is but one of many allusions to an aspect of invisibility or distance of the Other in his work, which implies that otherness is neither reducible to the relationship with the other human being. But what is this “more” of otherness? The rejection of ontology as well as the rejection of any foundational principle indeed says something about what ethics is not. But is it possible to say something at all about the meaning of the ethical except through via negativa, except that it is otherwise? And how is this question of a “more” of otherness connected with the second question above? Whether ethics may be seen as meaningful at all or whether it is rather a melancholic affair? As we shall see, it is perhaps the interpretations of otherness – both among Levinas’ adherents and his critics – that causes the most persistent and interesting discussions about the meaning of the ethical in Levinas’ philosophy. Although most readers agree that the Other in question is somehow ungraspable (beyond both the interpersonal Other and the onto-

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theological Other of classical metaphysics), there is nevertheless no agreement on how this ungraspable Other should be approached. Some readers read Levinas’ work primarily according to a religious or metaphysical tradition that sees the Other as a (Platonic or Neoplatonic) good beyond being, an expression Levinas also refers to. Other readers refuse such a notion of religious goodness to the benefit of a more neutral alterity, closer to Blanchot, Beckett or Adorno, though still for the sake of ethics.1 The crucial question is perhaps whether the relationship to the Other may be said to secure meaning not only for the Other for whom the subject is responsible, but also for the responsible self. Whether the first approach is eager to defend the meaningfulness or even redemptiveness of Levinas’ ethics, the second tends to emphasize the more melancholic tone in his work, excluding at least any easy kind of redemption. And indeed, both approaches seem to rely on main tendencies in Levinas’ work itself, which is marked by both redemption and the nonredemptive, both meaning and melancholy. So let us start by getting an overview of the ambiguity in Levinas’ work before we suggest what is at stake for different readers and how this should lead our investigation further. To a certain degree, an ambiguity of the notion of otherness may be seen between Levinas first main work, Totalit et Infini, and his second, Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence. The first work carries the subtitle “An essay of exteriority,” and it is indeed the notion of an otherness which is radically exterior to the subject that dominates the analyses of ethical signification. This radical exteriority does not exclude its influence on the subject, which happens through the ability of exteriority to express itself as face, thereby bringing about goodness in terms of responsibility (TI 219). At the same time, Levinas will strongly emphasize the radical separation between the Other and the self, a separation that implies that the relationship with the Other is a relationship in which there is no mediation or image (TI 218). Totalit et Infini, in other words, is marked by a strong ethical iconoclasm, where not only exterior, but also interior images are forbidden because they necessarily do violence to what they seek to capture. The phenomenological direction is thus turned around, so that meaning in its deepest sense is not constituted by the subject itself, but radically given or revealed by the Other. This does not mean that phenomenality is rejected as meaningless; rather, Levinas will here indeed give profound analyses of conditions like enjoyment, fecundity and love, mostly considered as having a pre-ethical significance. Both these analyses and his more ethical ones are marked by a strong sense of hope, and this is connected to the role that futurity plays for Levinas, particularly here and in his earlier work Time and the Other. The hope for radical futurity or renewal of time is contrasted with a strong melancholy of presence, in which everything remains in sameness. 1 Among the works I refer to in this study, those of Catherine Chalier and Richard Cohen are representative for the first approach, whereas Simon Critichley represents the second.

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In his second main work, Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence, temporality continues to play an important role in Levinas’ analyses, but now not so much in terms of futurity and hope. Instead, the notion of an unreachable past comes to influence the notion of the Other in a way that more strongly leaves the subject in the melancholy of its absence. Nor does the transcendence of the Other exclude its influence here on the subject in terms of responsibility, but this influence is described in much more somber terms compared with the atmosphere of optimism in his former work. The encounter with the Other is here characterized as obsession, persecution and as a “madness of the soul,” leaving the subject traumatized and thereby without the ability to object to the responsibility imposed upon it. The idea of immediacy is, in other words, radicalized, as is seemingly also the extent of responsibility. This becomes visible through the core motif of substitution, in which the Other is so deeply interwoven in the structure of the self that the subject not only takes on responsibility for the misery of the Other, but also for his or her very responsibility. Another important aspect of the ethical relationship is its radical passivity, which is exemplified in the biblical reference to the “turning of the other cheek.” We will have to go thoroughly into the ethical significance of such passages, but let it suffice here to note how radical descriptions of ethical responsibility correspond to what Levinas expresses in his – for our purposes – important essay “Notes sur le sens” from the same period. There Levinas determines the ultimate question not as a question of why there is being and not nothing, but as the self-scrutinizing question: “Do I have the right to be?” Now, many people – Levinas included – would claim that his project nevertheless remains the same throughout the various phases – that he remains a “hedgehog” despite the displacements in language and method. But there is undeniably a certain change of mood in Levinas’ texts, from optimism to pessimism, from a more hopeful to a more melancholic approach (although the early period is not without the latter and vice versa). It was this change that led Paul Ricoeur to accuse the Levinas of Autrement qu’Þtre of having left his early language of the Other as a master of justice, to the benefit of an “excessive” language, where the Other rather becomes a persecutor by whom the self is so crushed that it is no longer able to respond. The obvious danger with such pathological descriptions of the ethical is that they may appear to eclipse the limits between ethics and insanity, leaving the self unprotected from possible abuse. Other readers, however, have attempted to defend Levinas’ project, by pointing out the misunderstanding in the direct application of such quotes, supported by the claim that he is not really interested in constructing an ethical system. I agree that it is too simple to disclaim Levinas’ ethics as an ethics of selfsacrifice, both because many of Levinas’ pathological descriptions should be read at a more fundamental level concerning the constitution of the self, and because there are also modifications and “repairing” elements to his thought

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(as we shall see is implied in the notion of the third). At the same time, this is not to say that Levinas does not challenge the limit between ethics and insanity. The attentive reader would perhaps ask whether not such a concern with the past, the lack of hope and the excess of guilt visible in his texts are not really expressions of goodness in the relationship to the Other, but rather symptoms of a real melancholy or depression, either on a personal level or linked to a cultural breakdown of meaning. The question becomes pressing when we consider the contextuality of Levinas’ work. Being a Jew, Levinas himself was imprisoned in France during the Second World War, whereas most of his relatives and those of his wife died in the concentration camps. The explanations of personal traumatization or even survivor guilt are tempting in light of the way Levinas describes the guilt or even shame connected with ethical responsibility. Although we should be careful not to explain away Levinas’ concerns based on simplified psychological analyses, I believe it is important to understand this situation of crisis in which his thinking evolves, in order to understand why things matter to him the way they do. Levinas himself did not deny that this situation influenced his work: The epigram in Hebrew to his second main work is dedicated to those among the nearest who died in the Holocaust. But as we will see, the situation of crisis was a theme in Levinas’ work long before the consciousness of the Holocaust and horrifying experience of personal loss. And although one may certainly link the crisis of meaning visible in his work to such personal experiences, I believe it is more fruitful to connect it to a general post-war crisis of modernity and rationality – in response to which Levinas provides his own answers with his emphasis on the concrete encounter with the Other. Zygmunt Bauman understood Levinas in light of this situation, where the Otherness of the Other – which Levinas famously determines with the word face – would be seen as an answer to this crisis, as something that restores meaning as the concrete and particular as opposed to the violence of theory and the universal. In Modernity and the Holocaust, Bauman attempts to apply Levinas’ notion of the face to the visibility of the marginalized. I believe that this reading is not directly misleading, although Bauman could be criticized for not attending enough to the important aspect of invisibility in Levinas’ thought.2 What is more interesting for our investigation, however, is whether the crisis of meaning – in terms of melancholy on a personal or cultural level – can really be overcome through ethics – or whether the crisis is drawn into the ethical itself. This brings us back to the different readings of Levinas mentioned above and the question of the “more” of otherness. On the one hand, this “more” may be understood in light of the collective melancholic loss 2 Josh Cohen is an example of this when he claims that “where Levinas’s ethics reads as an explicit challenge to the thinking of the Other as a mere datum of phenomenological experience, Bauman’s post-Auschwitz ethics rests on just this phenomenalization of alterity” (J. Cohen 2003, 3).

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Introduction

created by the absence of metaphysical guarantors of meaning. Simon Critchley has done this with, and partly beyond, Levinas, questioning the whole idea that ethics is able to restore meaning in terms of an overcoming. Inspired by thinkers like Beckett and Blanchot, Critchley explores the neutral alterity or what he also calls atheist transcendence implied in the notion of dying, and finds the parallels to psychoanalysis more relevant to understanding Levinas’ concern than metaphysical implications. Critchley thus reads Levinas in part contrary to his own intentions, as both the relevance of a certain metaphysics and skepticism toward the psychoanalytical paradigm are clearly stated in Levinas’ work. The importance of the religious dimension of Levinas work is underlined by the statement recounted in Derrida’s book Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, where Levinas claims that what really occupied him in his work was neither ethics nor ethics alone, but rather the holy. Other readers have advocated reading Levinas in this vein, that the ethical Other is not at all a neutral alterity, but a goodness that may not be seen apart from a religious notion of God. Catherine Chalier is among the readers who have most clearly emphasized the relevance of Levinas’ Jewish background for understanding his thought, and she has also been concerned with defending Levinas’ thought against those who argue that his ethics is pathological. As will become clear throughout this study, I also believe that the religious dimension of otherness is crucial for grasping the meaning of the ethical for Levinas. But this does not mean that Critchley’s analyses are completely without value. On the contrary, I believe that analyses of the melancholic dimension and the difficulties of overcoming are central elements in Levinas’ religious approach. We shall thus see that Levinas’ ethical religion is not at all a na ve religion of revelation, nor is it metaphysics in its classical or ontotheological form. Rather, it is a thinking that is at pains to bring the religious ideas into the context of phenomenology : Levinas wants to take phenomenology beyond phenomenology. The question, however, is how this is possible without undermining its philosophical credibility. Famously, Dominique Janicaud believed it was not possible, neither in Levinas nor in his followers, starting a whole debate around the so-called “theological turn” of French phenomenology. There are certainly aspects in Levinas’ thinking which are difficult to infer from a simple analysis of phenomena. But if we analyze how transcendence is conceived, particularly in his later work, it is clear that Levinas is very much concerned with the question of how transcendence is expressed in phenomenological concreteness: It is there through the sensible exposure of the self that transcendence is testified. This again shows the relevance of the pathological motives the more psychoanalytically oriented readers have paid attention to. But what kind of pathos or pathology is in question here? One of the most interesting aspects of Levinas’ work is indeed the ethicoreligious meaning he gives the pathology in question. His thinking may indeed

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seem pathological (also in a medical sense) if we consider the pathological language of trauma and madness of the soul as openness to suffering. But instead of reducing the pathology to the margins of society as madness, it is elevated to its religious meaning: The madness of the soul is not the madness of the outcast, but the madness of the Messiah. This messianism is for Levinas not about some historical or future redeemer, but about the responsible self as “supporting the universe.” If not straightforwardly rejected as a product of a schizophrenic illusion, many people would nevertheless find such a notion of the messianic subject problematic, for various reasons. Whereas some religiously oriented readers would have trouble with the notion of a redemption involving the subject itself having a redeeming function, others would rather question the philosophical validity of the whole notion of redemption and messianism. What is interesting for Levinas and for us, however, is not to argue for the existence of a religious or metaphysical redemptive moment, but to develop how it may brings essential new insight in the question of the meaning of the ethical. I hope this study may say something about a) what ethics means for Levinas, b) how ethics struggle between meaningful and melancholic tendencies, and c) why Levinas does not want to construct an ethics, but rather find its meaning in an ethical-religious passivity. To this end, the study relies mainly on close readings of important passages in Levinas’ main works, though it also discusses his work in relation to other relevant approaches both within and outside of phenomenology. Since much of the discussion concentrates on the tension between the meaning and melancholy (or pathology) of ethics, I especially attend to the later works in which these topics are more explicit. But I also go into relevant passages from some of his earliest works, which are particularly interesting for my questioning. Levinas’ most famous work, Totalit et Infini, will also be introduced in some of the chapters, but it does not play any major role. The study is divided into two parts. In the first part, the main focus lies on Levinas’ early and middle work, the aim being to relate the question of the meaning of the ethical to the phenomenological tradition. In this part I use the broad categories of light and darkness, which Levinas also refers to on several occasions, in order to describe the moments of meaning and meaninglessness in a phenomenological or ontological approach to reality. This includes not only references to the analyses of Husserl and Heidegger as the two main representatives of this direction, but also to Levinas’ own analyses of such an approach. The analyses of esthetics are here particularly important, as they display a tension between meaning and the meaningless (or light and darkness) within ontological reality itself. The same may be said of the socalled amphibology of being and beings from Levinas’ later period, which I also discuss in this chapter as it is relevant for understanding the changes that take place between Levinas’ two main works. In the second part, I focus mainly on a dimension of these changes that

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Introduction

concerns the more important role that Levinas in his later work assigns to the responsible subject as a sensible trace of transcendence. Here it is necessary to go thoroughly into the question of selfhood, which serves as a condition for the wider discussion of trauma and melancholy, and into the question of how Levinas is to be read as an ethical thinker. The analysis of the religious dimension of ethical transcendence shall further be of crucial importance for the discussion of the meaning and meaninglessness of the ethical, which is particularly interesting in light of Levinas’ later work and the notion of sensible transcendence.

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Part 1: The Light And Darkness Of Phenomenological Meaning

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© 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525604526 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647604527

1.1. The meaning of the ethical Beyond phenomenological meaning Despite the religious and metaphysical notions that pervades his thinking, in the interview with Philippe Nemo called Ethique et Infini Levinas maintains that he both remains faithful to the essential truth of Husserlian thought (EI 20 – 21), and that it is impossible to go back to pre-Heideggerian thought (EI 28). This faithfulness does not necessarily concern all the results of their phenomenological research, but rather the framework and methods, whose potential he uses to develop his own thinking. Moreover, Levinas shares with both Husserl and Heidegger the strong emphasis on the question of meaning, although Levinas’ answer to the question of the meaning of the ethical indeed reveals important differences from Husserl’s and Heidegger’s notions thereof. Their notion of meaning as intentionality may be said to belong to the very essence of phenomenological method, but it is necessary to distinguish between different implications that this notion has in phenomenology. With his notion of intentionality in terms of Sinngebung Husserl had meant to transform the way of thinking the world and the relationship between the exterior and interior. As John Drabinski puts it, “reflection and world are traditionally conceived (e. g., in British empiricism) in terms of the opposition of the inner and outer. In Husserl’s hands, however, idealism transforms the very notions of interior and exterior – reflective consciousness and world – through the reducing of the ‘what’ of that which appears to the ‘how’ of its appearing” (Drabinski 2001, 49). This relationship or directedness in the conception of things and the world is crucial to intentionality. The phenomenological attention to the relationship between the intending and the intended is thereby opposed to what in phenomenology is seen as a na ve representational approach, which in Levinas’ formulation “aborde les Þtres comme s’ils taient des substances,” without interest. As Levinas observes, phenomenology instead learns that such an immediate presence of things “ne comprend pas encore le sens des choses, et, par cons quent, ne remplace pas la v rit ” (EDEHH 176). In other words, as conceived in phenomenology truth is not separable from the question of meaning – and meaning is implied in any relationship with the world, as expressed in the following quote from Husserl: “Ich kann in keine andere Welt hineinleben, hineinerfahren, hineinwerten und – handeln, als die in mir und aus mir selbst Sinn und Geltung hat” (Hu: CM §8, 22). Although Heidegger shares most of Husserl’s concerns, he is eager to emphasize the differences in their conceptions of intentional meaning. The

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crucial question for grasping the differences is who or what constitutes this meaning. For Husserl, the question of constitution is a complicated one, especially in light of later works in which sensibility and passivity play a more important role. In his earlier and more idealist works, however, this sense-giving is performed by the transcendental subject. Heidegger is more skeptical toward transcendental subjectivity because it does not account for the subject’s finitude and seeks to understand intentionality differently. For Heidegger intentional meaning is found in the ontological structures as such; he believes there to be too much left of the representational approach in Husserl and wants to conceive of meaning or intentionality as something more independent from the constitutive subject. The question of meaning is nevertheless of crucial importance for Heidegger, too; he insists on the necessity of re-posing the old question of the meaning of Being – Sinn des Seins, as he puts it in the first pages of Sein und Zeit. The question of the meaning of Being is for Heidegger the fundamental question for all ontology (SZ 231), but it is a well-known fact that Heidegger never really came to answer the question of the meaning of Being in itself in the analyses of Sein und Zeit, and later gave up the whole ambition completely. In Sein und Zeit, which is most important for Levinas’ reading, Heidegger spent his energy on explicating what could be approached with less difficulty, namely, the meaning of Dasein. Dasein is for Heidegger a being that relates to its own Being or existence in its temporal, finite conditions (Hei: SZ §1 – 5). The meaning of Being becomes for him inseparable from the comprehension of Being, but this comprehension can only be achieved by confronting one’s own finitude, which ultimately means one’s own death and the structure of concern. We here see that the phenomenological questions of Sinngebung and Sinn des Seins rely on what we here may distinguish as a transcendental and an ontological phenomenology, respectively. When Levinas poses the question of the meaning of the ethical, he seeks to go beyond both Husserl’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of meaning. Let us therefore first see why Levinas believes these notions to be incapable or insufficient for grasping the meaning of the ethical. As Derrida demonstrated in his famous essay “Violence et m taphysique,” Levinas’ critique of phenomenology in Totalit et Infini targets what he sees as transcendental violence in Husserl on the one hand, and ontological violence in Heidegger on the other. For Levinas neither of the accounts capture the meaning of the Other as Other, but rather reduce the Other to what he calls the same, either through the transcendental violence of a strong sense-giving subject or through the ontological violence of an impersonal Being (Derrida 1967). As we shall see later, Derrida objects to what he sees as Levinas’ futile attempt to avoid violence, claiming that such avoidance necessarily creates even greater violence. This critique will lead Levinas deeper into methodological reflections in Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Nevertheless, Levinas there continues to seek an alternative

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approach to ethical meaning beyond both Husserl’s Sinngebung and Heidegger’s Sinn des Seins. At the same time, the ethical meaning that Levinas proposes is difficult to grasp if we do not relate it to the phenomenological frameworks of Husserl and Heidegger. When Levinas claims that the meaning of the ethical does not come from the self but from the Other, this could be contrasted to Husserl’s notion of Sinngebung. The ethical Other is for Levinas rather an instance that puts these sense-giving powers in question – and hence questions intentionality. John Drabinski claimed that the structure of sense-giving remains for Levinas in a so-called “ethical Sinngebung,” but that the intentional move is inversed so that it is something exterior that bestows meaning and not something interior (Drabinski 2001, 85). Levinas himself refers to a meaning prior to my “Sinngebung” (TI 44), but also develops the notion of an Other-centered meaning-bestowal as a “reversal of intentionality” (AE 80). Heidegger’s question of the meaning of Being is also important as a reference point for Levinas’ alternative notion of meaning. Levinas early on recognized Heidegger’s urge to pose the question of being as being anew (OE 56), but he ends up questioning the whole idea of ontology as fundamental. In Totalit et Infini, Levinas’ main problem with Heidegger’s claim that this question of the meaning of Being is fundamental, is that Being – as opposed to beings – is impersonal, thereby allegedly hindering the responsibility involved in the more fundamental relationship to the Other (TI 36). While such an opposition between the impersonal being and the personal Other is not always strictly maintained by Levinas, it nevertheless points to the fundamental critique that Levinas raised against Heidegger, namely, that his thinking remains in a realm of irresponsibility. The meaning of the ethical can for Levinas not be found through an analysis of the meaning of Being, but precisely in departing from it, thereby still depending on Heidegger’s framework. This is particularly visible in an article from 1964, in which Levinas specifically discusses the notion(s) of meaning: “La signification et le sens.”1

1 When discussing the phenomenological notion of meaning, one is immediately confronted with a translation problem, since the German texts uses different words “Sinn,” “Bedeutung” and “Meinung.” As Drabinski showed in his discussion of the different modalities of meaningfulness, the word “Sinn” (which Levinas translates as sens) has the broadest and most generative meaning, whereas “Bedeutung” (which he translates as signification) has a more restricted meaning, belonging to the economy of manifestation and derivative of “Sinn.” When Levinas talks of sens de l’ thique, the word sens thus takes on a broader meaning than signification (Drabinski 2001, 25 – 28). It would perhaps be natural to render sens de l’ thique as “sense of the ethical,” but as we shall see, e. g., in “Notes sur le sens” the question of meaning of the ethical also implies an existential dimension. I have mostly chosen to leave the technical question of translation aside and translate sens as “meaning,” albeit acknowledging that the word has many dimensions.

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Ethical meaning as an epiphany of the face In the article “La signification et le sens,” Levinas understands the unique ethical meaning in contrast to significations in general. He starts by analyzing the fundamental contextuality of significations in general, and seems to rely on Heidegger’s account when he describes experience as hermeneutical and not intuitive: “L’exp rience est une lecture, la compr hension du sens, une ex g se, une herm neutique et non pas une intuition.” Furthermore, what is comprehended or given meaning cannot be given outside of language and the world: “Ceci en tant que cela, – la signification n’est pas une modification apport e un contenu existant en dehors de tout langage. Tout demeure dans un langage ou dans un monde […]” (SS 128 – 129). In determining this as that, the meaning of words is dependent on other words, and the meaning of language is dependent on the position of who is speaking (SS 127). In short; significations are interconnected and arise in reference to each other (SS 128). What Levinas here does is to outline (and recognize) that things signify against the background of a horizon. In Sein und Zeit, too, the meaning of Being is inseparable from the comprehension of Being, and the notion of horizon is essential to this comprehension. The problem with this conception, as Levinas expresses it in this article, is that it lacks an orientation of meaning.2 For Levinas, this deficit may be seen as a modern expression of atheism; “cette multivocit du sens de l’Þtre – cette essentielle d sorientation – est peut-Þtre, l’expression moderne de l’ath isme” (SS 135). This does not, however, mean that he calls for a fundamental theology to structure all other experience, but rather he still aims at a unique meaning (sens) capable of orientation that is distinguished from culturally conditioned meaning (significations): “Ne faut-il pas, d s lors, distinguer, d’une part, les significations, dans leur pluralisme culturel et, d’autre part, le sens, orientation et unit de l’Þtre, v nement primordial o viennent se placer toutes les autres d marches de la pens e et toute la vie historique de l’Þtre?” (SS 138). For Levinas this unique and primordial meaning capable of orientation may be found in the Other, in Autrui, that affects me from the outside: “Autrui qui me fait face n’est pas inclus dans la totalit de l’Þtre exprim .” The Other is thus seen to orient and unite being, while itself escaping its totality. This Other is thus neither a cultural signification nor a simple given, “Il est sens 2 The concept of orientation is crucial to Levinas’ important source of inspiration, Franz Rosenzweig. Yet, whereas many have remarked how Rosenzweig’s revelation is anchored in the particularity of the Jewish, we shall see that Levinas’ religious considerations do not admit any privileged place to Judaism as a manifest religion for this orientation. The determination of meaning for Levinas cannot be found in “cette religion que la personne demanderait pour soi.” The relationship between God and meaning must rather be thought of the other way around: “c’est l’analyse du sens qui doit livrer la notion de Dieu que le sens rec le” (SS 139).

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primordialement” (SS 144). This way of understanding the ethical meaning as orienting other significations reflects Levinas’ view that ethics, and not ontology, is “first philosophy.” The ethical meaning reverses what he sees as an imperialistic tendency inherent to ontology to include everything foreign or Other into the same. Although the meaning that emerges from the Other for Levinas is primordial, it is not transcendental; rather, it signifies in unicity. But is it really possible for the Other to signify if not as something? Levinas approaches this question by claiming that the Other signifies in two ways: as the manifestation of a phenomenon on the one hand and as the epiphany of the face on the other. The manifestation of the Other relies on a (Heideggerian) hermeneutical approach, where the Other signifies in reference to its context; “La manifestation d’Autrui se produit, certes, de prime abord, conform ment la faÅon dont toute signification se produit. Autrui est pr sent dans un ensemble culturel et s’ claire par cet ensemble, comme un texte par son contexte […] La compr hension d’Autrui est, ainsi, une herm neutique, une ex g se” (SS 144). This manifestation of the Other, in other words, does require a hermeneutics of the Other. But then the Other also signifies in another way : unmediated, by itself, as epiphany ; “Mais l’ piphanie d’Autrui comporte une signifiance propre, ind pendante de cette signification reÅue du monde. Autrui ne nous vient pas seulement partir du contexte, mais, sans cette m diation, signifie par lui-mÞme” (SS 144). This lack of context and mediation of the Other is crucial to how Levinas here and elsewhere describes the face. The face signifies, beyond world, beyond horizon and beyond context, as an arrival “qui derange l’immanence sans se fixer dans les horizons du Monde” (SS 151). The primordial ethical meaning is thereby found in the Other as face – signifying in itself, but in a way that disturbs immanence without depending on it. Also in the analysis of Totalit et Infini, written a few years earlier, the face is seen as the place for the epiphany of transcendence, breaking with our common world (TI 211). Although Levinas sometimes (as below) uses the word manifestation when he talks about how the face signifies, he refuses to approach the face hermeneutically : “Se manifester comme visage, c’est s’imposer par-del la forme […] sans interm diaire d’aucune image dans sa nudit , c’est- -dire dans sa mis re et dans sa faim” (TI 218). What is interesting about this and other similar passages for our question about ethical meaning, however, is that Levinas claims the face signifies in nudity, beyond form and image. But does not this emphasis on the nudity of the face as poverty and hunger reveal another, ethical context – despite the rejection of contextuality and horizon? To answer this question, it is useful to go back to an early analysis of face vs. form that Levinas presented already in the work De l’existence l’existant in 1947. The difference between face and form reflects the distinction between epiphany and manifestation, though the analysis of form is interesting because

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it not only points to the negative aspects included in the manifestation or comprehension of the Other, but also clarifies its seemingly positive significance. What does this consist in? On the one hand, the comprehension or manifestation of the Other is indeed marked by what Levinas in TI calls the violence of the same; the tendency to include everything foreign into one’s own world. The Other in the world is thus not treated exactly like a thing, but it is never separated from things either ; the Other in the world indeed has form. Levinas exemplifies what this means by the situation where the Other is addressed and given according to his or her social situation, where the respect for a person is manifested as a respect for that person’s rights and privileges, where “autrui dans le monde est l’objet de par son vÞtement mÞme” (EE 60). The positive effect of clothing and form is that they represent a harmonizing gesture, they “prÞtent un vÞtement de sinc rit toutes les equivoques et les rendent mondaines” (EE 60), thereby representing an overcoming of what Levinas terms the “formless swarming of the il y a,” which, as we shall see, represents the meaninglessness of being. However, to conceive of the Other solely on the basis of his or her clothing or form is for Levinas violent, because it misses what goes beyond their worldliness as what is “refractory to forms” (EE 60). The exteriority of the Other thus cannot be comprehended as this or that or as given in a world; it precisely signifies beyond worldliness, which for Levinas implies that it comes as a revelation. The Other as other is precisely what escapes this harmonizing gesture of form, what disturbs through its nudity and its resistance to the form and the world: “[L]a relation avec la nudit est la v ritable exp rience – si ce terme n’ tait pas impossible dans la relation qui va au del du monde – de l’alt rit d’autrui” (EE 61). This alterity of the Other – beyond the form – is the face. As Wyschogrod puts it: “That which gives itself in its entirety must renounce the form as the term through which it reveals itself. It must provide an opening into being. The only ‘given’ that fulfills this requirement is the face” (Wyschogrod 2000, 93). Having established how the face does not appear, we can now move on to the question of whether it is possible to maintain such a strict opposition between form and face, as Levinas does. Is it really possible for the face to appear without form, without the mediation of a context or horizon? The question of mediation occupied Levinas greatly, especially in his later works, which are marked by the influence of Derrida. But even early on we may ask whether Levinas manages (or wants) to maintain the noncontextuality of the face, or whether he does not rather presuppose a concrete context of some kind of ethical goodness. It is true that negative explanations dominate in analyses of the face; as Bernhard Waldenfels expresses it, “we are able only to say what it is not, or more precisely : we can only show that it is not something at all” (Waldenfels 2002, 67). But even though the face is not a (some)thing, nor it is not nothing. In Totalit et Infini and elsewhere, Levinas refers to images of the Other as vulnerable, such as “the stranger, the widow and the

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orphan” (TI 237), and as Robyn Horner writes with reference to Derrida’s critical reading, it seems as if a certain kind of context is nevertheless involved in the ethical relationship: That he [Levinas] tries to exclude reference to a horizon, nevertheless, does not mean that Levinas himself does not employ one. For Levinas asks that we encounter the Other according to responsibility, and this condition effectively becomes the horizon in which relationship is made possible. Yet at the same time, Levinas consistently refuses to specify that horizon (Horner 2001, 76).

In this reading responsibility would be the (indeterminate or quasi-) context in which ethical signification is located, so that the hermeneutical approach cannot be entirely absent from our ethical relationship to the Other. However, as Horner adds, one never knows what responsibility means, “for that would be to put in place a meta-ethics” (ibid.). The image of the stranger, the widow and the orphan is precisely an image, belonging thereby to the comprehension of the Other and not to the nonhermeneutical moment of the Other as face. In order to approach this nonhermeneutical moment that Levinas attempts to grasp, it is crucial to focus on the practical meaning of the face beyond its theoretical dimension: Not what it is, but how it affects me. This attempt to reach a practical dimension is, of course, difficult for a philosophical analysis without betraying the meaning of its own words, but nevertheless remains important in Levinas’ analyses. So what may be said about the practical meaning of the Other? As Colin Davis formulates the nonhermeneutical moment, it concerns an Otherness that disturbs immanence, and hence is the question of how this ungraspable Otherness makes demands upon me, how this vulnerability evokes a resistance of my attempts at appropriation and domination of the Other, and how it puts my freedom in question (Davis 1996, 49 – 50). In “La trace de l’autre,” we may see this exemplified when Levinas describes the deprivation of form in the face as a nudity that aims at me: “D pouill de sa forme mÞme, le visage est transi dans sa nudit . Il est une mis re. La nudit du visage est d n ment et d j supplication dans la droiture qui me vise” (EDEHH 272). This nudity or vulnerability of the face on the one hand lays bare the possibility of killing the Other, while at the same time it forbids me to do so: “Le visage est expos , menac , comme nous invitant un acte de violence. En mÞme temps, le visage est ce qui nous interdit de tuer” (EI 80). The meaning of nudity or vulnerability in the Other is thus not independent from my relationship to it, which is a relationship of responsibility (TI 222). But if responsibility is an indeterminate context of ethical meaning, how may we still call it “good”? If goodness belongs to our established value system, does not the determination of responsibility as goodness precisely bring it back to ontology? Or does the indeterminacy rather exclude this system, thereby signaling a certain neutrality beyond manifestations of good and evil? In his middle and late period Levinas rejected both alternatives; he maintained

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a notion of a good that is beyond being, but without lapsing into mere neutrality, although the analysis of responsibility reveals that the question of its goodness is certainly somehow ambiguous. The difficulties connected to the notion of responsibility lead to quite different ways of dealing with the “problem” of goodness, which results in a tension between the meaning and a certain meaninglessness of the ethical. As we shall see, we can also pose the question of whether ethical goodness allows for a sort of redemption or hope, a question that seems to have provoked important disagreements in the reception of Levinas’ work. Before we approach the question of the difficulty of meaning and redemption in Levinas’ later work, however, let us look at some of Levinas’ characterizations of ethical goodness in Totalit et Infini. In the section called “Phenomenology of Eros,” Levinas states that being-for-the-other means being good, but that this cannot be stated in a preexisting value system (TI 292), Nevertheless, the whole book is permeated with positive descriptions of the ethical, from notions of peace, desire and generosity in the early pages, to the analyses of love in the last section called “Au-del du visage.” The analyses here presuppose the notion of an ethical time as radical renewal or futurity. This notion is particularly important in the notion of fecundity and its “triomphe du temps […] sur le devenir de l’Þtre mortel et vieillissant” (TI 315). Instead of aging and dead time, fecundity renews time and brings about youth (TI 317). Also in “La signification et le sens,” Levinas uses the notion of youth to determine the renewal that breaks with the immanence of sameness: “L’œuvre en tant qu’orientation absolue du MÞme vers l’Autre, est donc comme une jeunesse radicale de l’ lan g n reux” (SS 141). He also characterizes ethical signification as a surplus (SS 144 – 145) and describes the relationship to the Other in terms of desire, which here implies goodness and meaning (SS 143). The notion of ethical desire is elsewhere also seen to involve an infinity that excludes satisfaction: “Le D sir est comme une pens e qui pense plus qu’elle pense, ou plus que ce qu’elle pense” (EI 85 – 86). This infinity of desire means that it excludes any correspondence between the intention and the intended, or exceeds the capacities of thought: “L’id e de l’Infini, le d bordement de la pens e, avec ce qui pass sa capacit , avec ce qu’ tout moment elle apprend sans Þtre heurt e. Voil la situation que nous appelons accueil du visage” (TI 215). The Other is face precisely by exceeding the idea of the Other in me (TI 43), and the meaning or givenness Levinas talks about in TI would thereby be thought as fullness in terms of abundance and not fulfillment. In other words – both in Totalit et Infini and in “La signification et le sens” – the ethical situation is described in overwhelmingly positive terms. At the same time, “La signification et le sens” emphasizes a religious dimension to this generosity which is visible when radical gratuitousness is described as liturgy (SS 141) or the ethical meaning as work (œuvre) in the sense of an “orientation qui va librement du MÞme l’Autre,” never returning

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to the same. This implies both radical generosity as well as the Other’s ingratitude: L’Œuvre pens e jusqu’au bout exige une g n rosit radicale du mouvement qui dans le MÞme va vers l’Autre. Elle exige, par cons quent, une ingratitude de l’Autre. La gratitude serait pr cis ment le retour du mouvement son origine (SS 140).

This dimension of work or liturgy as well as the Other’s ingratitude reappear in Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence, albeit in a more melancholic and sombre description of the relationship to the Other than one finds in Totalit et Infini. We thus observe a shift in the way the goodness of ethical meaning is conceived. In order to clarify the less optimistic or less redemptive aspects of the meaning of the ethical, we should now turn to this work, as well as to the article “Notes sur le sens.”

Ethical meaning as a questioning of the self In Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence, more emphasis is put on the more negative or pathological descriptions of what happens when the subject is affected by the ethical Other. Levinas describes the ethical relationship as involving a persecution or traumatization by the Other, and this relationship is conceived of in terms of a “desire of the undesirable” (AE 140). Furthermore, instead of emphasizing futurity and youth, Levinas now connects the ethical more to the past and to aging, as we shall analyze in detail later. The question I would like to draw attention to here is what happens with the notion of meaning. In one of the book’s last sections – “Sens et il y a,” to which we will return at the end of this investigation – Levinas no longer presents ethical meaning in strict opposition to ontological meaning, as he tends to do in the more dualistic account of Totalit et Infini. The ethical is still thought to break with ontology, but as we shall see, this happens more from within ontology and not as an alternative to it. This is shown when Levinas talks about the necessity for ethical signification to appear in a theme, which means participating in phenomenality. This participation happens for the sake of justice, but also implies that an aspect of “non-sense” is mixed into the ethical signification. The non-sense, in terms of the so-called il y a, is even seen as a “modality” of ethical meaning. As we shall soon see, the impersonal and meaningless being of the il y a also plays a crucial role in Levinas’ early analyses of ontology, but then as something ethics is seen to break with. What is interesting here, however, is that the meaninglessness of the il y a is seen as the very place from which ethics signify. There is here what Levinas calls a “surplus of non-sense over meaning” (surplus de non-sens sur le sens), which makes the “expiation” of the ethical self possible (AE 253 – 255). In an earlier passage of the book,

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Levinas similarly talks about a “d bordement du sens par le non-sens, pour que le sens passe le non-sens; le sens c’est- -dire le mÞme-pour-l’autre” (AE 105). As the latter quote suggests, the meaning of the ethical – understood as the generosity of the being for the Other – must imply for Levinas a questioning of meaning itself – an “overflowing of meaning by non-sense.” Such an overflowing of meaning may certainly be seen as the ethical questioning of intentional meaning; but instead of merely describing this ethical questioning in terms of the goodness of the face, Levinas points out the necessity of nonsense to enable responsibility. The meaning of the ethical, in other words, is ambiguous for Levinas. But is this ambiguity, this excessive language, more than the frustration of a thought inadequate to its object? Or does the nonsense that is necessary for ethics have some kind of basis in phenomenological experience? In order to explore what Levinas really means with this non-sense or questioning of meaning, we should move on to the article “Notes sur le sens” (published in De Dieu qui vient l’idee). Levinas opens “Notes sur le sens” by asking whether not thought may have another meaning beyond the world and its horizon (DDVI 231). He goes on to explicate the ethical meaning of the face, implying “pas une pens e de… mais d’embl e une pens e pour…” (DDVI 243). The meaning of the face in other words implies the aspect of practical responsibility above theoretical understanding in the approach to the Other. In accordance with the analyses of earlier works, the vulnerability of the face is further underlined when it is described as nudity and exposition without defense (DDVI 245). What is striking here is how radically Levinas explicates the responsibility or even guilt that this evokes – in a way that more explicitly implies my compliance in the death of the Other as well as the questioning of the very right to exist. Confronted with the death of the Other, Levinas claims, the innocence of our being is lost, and one questions whether our being is justified (DDVI 248). There is certainly a duplicity to this questioning: On the one hand, it is seen as guilt (though without culpability), and since it concerns the whole existence of the self and not only its actions, it may also be conceived of as shame. On the other hand, the very questioning of the self is for Levinas what awakens to what he calls “psychism”: “Eveil un psychisme vraiment humain, une interrogation qui, derri re la responsabilit et comme son ultime motivation, est une question sur le droit d’Þtre” (DDVI 254). The questioning of one’s right to exist, in other words, is seen as the motivation of responsibility. But if the questioning is characterized by guilt or shame, how is it capable of such motivation? What kind of guilt or shame is in question here? Levinas talks about a bad conscience, which does not refer to a law, but to the face of the Other, which “dans sa mortalit , m’arrache au sol solide o , simple individu, je me pose et pers v re na vement – naturellement – dans ma position” (DDVI 248 – 249). In other words, I am guilty, not for some violation of a law or a rule, but simply for being there; my self-

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preservation evokes a bad consciousness confronted with the Other “in his or her mortality,” and this makes me question my very right to be and as such awakens to humanity. The kind of guilt or shame that is evoked here indeed brings associations to various descriptions of survivor guilt, where a common characteristic is a feeling of guilt that is not connected to any particular harmful deed, but simply to having survived while others did not. In his book Remnants of Auschwitz Giorgio Agamben sought to demonstrate how what e. g. the survivors Primo Levi and Antelme describe as guilt in reality has more to do with shame (since it concerns the subject in its innermost identity) and not only its actions (Agamben 1999, 88)3. Similarly, the guilt or bad conscience that Levinas describes is evoked when the mortality of the Other questions my very existence, something that makes it more reasonable to talk of shame rather than guilt (which normally applies to agency). The question is how such shame may be seen to motivate to responsibility, and whether it is possible to distinguish an “ethical shame” from a more pathological or destructive one? As we shall see in Part 2 of this investigation, such a deep questioning of the self has indeed strong similarities to pathological conditions of shame and melancholy, and this has led some critics to ask whether not this aspect of his thought makes it susceptible to being a kind of victim ethics. We will return to this discussion later, but what we should try to capture here is how Levinas believes this questioning of the self to be crucial to ethical meaning? In the article, Levinas recognizes how such a meaning in terms of questioning departs from a common understanding of meaningfulness and therefore makes a point out of the difference from ontological meaning through the characterization of ethical meaning as an “intrigue”: “Il faut rester attentif une intrigue de sens autre qu’ontologique et o se met en question le droit mÞme d’Þtre” (DDVI 254). The word “intrigue” signals the impossibility of truly capturing this meaning, although the feelings of guilt and shame show that the questioning is not only intellectual but indeed existential or affective. Levinas further applies the Augustinian notion of veritas redarguens – the truth that accuses or puts in question – as opposed to the notion of veritas lucens (DDVI 255). Finally, at the end of the article, Levinas also recognizes how close to madness and absurdity this ethical meaning is: “Question de sens […] qui remonte la pointe extrÞme de ce qu’on appelle parfois, la l g re, maladie” (DDVI 257). To this he adds an interesting footnote, in which he draws parallels to the situation described by Kafka: “le probl me de l’identit humaine elle-mÞme mise en question sous l’accusation sans culpabilit , de son 3 In his book, Agamben also refers to Levinas’ early analysis of shame in De l’evasion, where the feeling is seen to appear “because the unrestrainable impulse to flee from oneself is confronted by an equally certain impossibility of evasion” (Agamben 105). We further analyze the feeling of shame later on, but for both Agamben and Levinas, shame is not primarily a psychological state, but something that belongs to our ontological condition.

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dro t l’Þtre et de l’innocence de l’advenir mÞme de l’aventure de l’Þtre” (DDVI 257). We get a feeling of how the question of the meaning of the ethical now appears in an altered mood, where a certain madness and shame of even being there seems to be at the beginning of ethical thought, as that which awakens to humanity. Or perhaps – to connect to the passages from Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence – as the non-sense that overflows meaning in order for the meaning of the ethical to be possible. This introductory chapter on the meaning of the ethical should suffice to get a grasp of the problem whose various aspects we shall discuss in the following. Among the most important is the question we come back to in Part 2: If the meaning of the ethical so clearly verges on madness, how may we still claim that ethical meaning is good? Are not the pathological terms through which Levinas describes the ethical relationship in his later work rather a sign that such an intriguing meaning is vulnerable to blaming the victim? And is the moment of non-sense or shame really crucial to ethical meaning in a way that also makes it able to motivate to responsibility? The last question is particularly important in light of how Levinas actually describes non-sense or shame in his early (pre-ethical) analyses of ontology. Let us therefore start by going into these analyses.

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1.2. Ontology and the meaninglessness of being; darkness Il y a and the enchainment to being As already mentioned, Levinas’ analyses of ontology are strongly influenced by Heidegger’s thought. In order to illustrate the problems Levinas had with Heidegger’s ontological phenomenology, I would like to start by going into his little book On Escape from 1935. Although Heidegger’s name is not mentioned here, it is nevertheless clear that Levinas both depends on and finally departs from his thought. At the beginning of the book, Levinas points to a need for escape that “leads us into the heart of philosophy. It allows us to renew the ancient question of being qua being” (OE 56). This question is close to Heidegger’s renewal of the question of Being in Sein und Zeit some years earlier, which deeply influenced Levinas.4 With his renewal of the question of being Heidegger wanted to break up a certain somnolence, to search for the meaning of being in what conceals itself (Llewelyn 1986, 32 – 33). Similarly, Levinas describes the need for escape as a world-weariness or a mal du si cle, beyond the self-sufficiency of being: “The impossibility of getting out of the game and of giving back to things their toy-like uselessness heralds the precise instance at which infancy comes to an end, and defines the very notion of seriousness” (OE 52). Both Heidegger and Levinas are thereby concerned with breaking with a certain na vet ; but whereas Heidegger wants to leave the na ve approach by going deeper into the question of being, in On Escape Levinas questions the very possibility of approaching being as meaningful. Instead he analyzes being in more negative terms than Heidegger, as exemplified in the analyses of nausea and shame. We thus find an anticipation of the melancholic mood that characterizes some of Levinas’ subsequent writings, especially the book De l’existance l’existant, written while Levinas was a prisoner of war, where both the world and the act of self-positing are seen to be threatened by the pure nonsense of the il y a – the impersonal “there is.” In both works Levinas expressed a crisis of meaning inherent to ontology. In On Escape, Levinas describes a situation in which one has a need to 4 Jacques Rolland asks; “in reading these lines, can we fail to hear those that began a book published barely ten years before, and which found its justification precisely in the necessity, or the urgency, of posing anew the question of the meaning of being: Being and Time, a work that Levinas understood from the first in its essential and properly revolutionary dimension, the same Levinas who would, from 1932, devote the first substantial study in French to it?” (OE 7).

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escape, but where any (game-like and pleasant) escapism is impossible. What he describes is, as Jacques Rolland has noticed, a situation of deep facticity (Rolland / OE 13), although the implications of this facticity are not exactly the same as for Heidegger. In their own way, however, both are critical toward the escapism of bourgeois liberalism, whose attitude Levinas describes in the first pages of the essay : This conception of the “I” [moi] as self-sufficient is one of the essential marks of the bourgeois spirit and its philosophy […] The bourgeois is concerned with business matters and science as a defense against things and all that is unforeseeable in them. His instinct for possession is an instinct for integration, and his imperialism is a search for security. […] His lack of scruples is the shameful form of his tranquil conscience. (OE 50)

These characteristics of the petit bourgeois may be recognized in Levinas’ later and more general critique of the philosophy of the “same,” but could here be seen in light of the failures of much of bourgeois liberalism to confront Nazism, which would clear the space for what Josh Cohen has described as Nazism’s biological conception of man (J. Cohen 2003, 6). This may explain some of the atmosphere of deep crisis in the work, which points to a need for escape beyond the pleasant escapism that the petit bourgeois is seen to admit. For Levinas the need to escape is connected to “the quest for the marvelous, which is liable to break up the somnolence of our bourgeois existence” (OE 53). Escape is not, however, about going somewhere – as in romanticism – but only an aspiration to “get out [sortir],” or what he with a neologism calls the need for excendence5 (OE 54). In this way Levinas describes a situation in which hope and future are excluded, where what remains is the experience of pure being: We are there, and there is nothing more to be done, or anything to add to this fact that we have been entirely delivered up, that everything is consumed: this is the very experience of pure being, which we have promised from the beginning of this work (OE 66 – 67).

This deep facticity is experienced as an enchainment to being, and escape hence as “the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break with that most radical and unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I [moi] is oneself [soimÞme]” (OE 55). For Levinas, the facticity is thereby localized in the very structure of being – here understood as existence (Rolland / OE 97 n 5). It is experienced as a pressing feeling of being held fast [riv ], to the “poignant consciousness of a final reality for which a sacrifice is asked of him,” and where “the pleasant game of life ceases to be just a game” (OE 54). This 5 As Jacques Rolland notes, “the word is modeled upon ‘trans-scendence,’ adjoining ‘ex-’ or ‘out’ to the Latin scandere, ‘to climb’” (Rolland / OE 115 n 4). Ex-cendence, in other words, signifies a certain need to get out, albeit without the vertical aspect involved in trans-cendence.

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seriousness implies a break with infancy, so that things lose their “toy-like uselessness” (OE 52). Now, despite the similarities to Heidegger’s notion of facticity, the notion seems to be radicalized into a more hopeless condition by Levinas, in a way that rules out even Heidegger’s structure of the self as concern. According to Rolland, Levinas seeks to “describe a situation in which existence no longer finds itself a propensity to go forth beyond the situation imposed, a situation in which being-thrown paralyzes, in some way, every possibility of projecting oneself” (Rolland, OE 14). As we will see, the possibility for the subject of projecting oneself is basically how Heidegger understands transcendence. But in Levinas’ view, this does not lead Heidegger beyond the infancy of an irresponsible leap toward meaning. Also, Heidegger’s emphasis on “Jemeinigkeit” as well as his notion of “being-toward-death” represents for Levinas a return to sameness and destiny. One of the reasons for this, according to Levinas, is that Heidegger’s renewal of the question of Being and the ontological difference is not thought radically enough, something Levinas attempts to do with the notion of pure being or “il y a,” which is introduced in On Escape and more thoroughly examined in the book De l’existance l’existent. The expression il y a brings associations to the Heideggerian “es gibt”; but whereas Heidegger emphasizes the gift-character of the expression “es gibt” (which in German can be read literally as “it gives” in addition to the normal meaning “there is”), for Levinas il y a has a rather negative significance. Il y a refers to the anonymous fact of being or being in general that refuses to take a personal form (EE 94). The impersonal form of the il y a – as in “il pleut” or “il fait chaud” – signifies for Levinas a horrifying anonymity where “il n’y a personne ni rien qui prenne cette existence sur lui” (EE 26). This experience of a threatening neutrality or meaninglessness occurs when our game-like relationships to the world are interrupted: “l o le jeu perp tuel de nos relations avec le monde est interrompu, on ne trouve pas, comme on aurait tort de le penser, la mort, ni le ‘moi pur,’ mais le fait anonyme de l’Þtre” (EE 26). For Levinas, the interruption of the everyday relationship to the world does not result in a Husserlian pure self or in a Heideggerian being toward death, but rather in the anonymity of pure being. This anonymous existence seeks to express what Levinas calls being as work (œuvre), which is interestingly the same word as he later applies to the radical generosity of ethical meaning. This work is here also explained as being in its verbality : “L’exister que nous essayons d’approcher – c’est l’œuvre mÞme d’Þtre qui ne peut s’exprimer par un substantif, qui est verbe” (TA 26). Levinas here relates to the Heideggerian distinction between Being and beings, or as he prefers to translate them, exister and existants. The beings – translatable into nouns – are distinguished from the very work of Being – the verbality. As Levinas points out, however, the substantivity and verbality of being are for Heidegger never separated; “le terme Heideggerien de ‘Jemeinigkeit’ exprime

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pr cis ment le fait que l’exister est toujours poss d par quelqu’un. Je ne crois pas que Heidegger puisse admettre un exister sans existant qui lui semblerait absurde” (TA 24). This Heideggerian insight is similar to what Levinas later outlines in Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence, when he talks about an “amphibology of being and beings.” He claim there that there is an ambiguity in ontology which can be understood in terms of language as a tension between substantivity and verbality, where the one is always prone to turn into the other. For the early Levinas, however, such a separation of pure being from beings is, as Stephan Strasser has pointed out, not only thinkable, but corresponds to an experience, namely of “die Namenlosigkeit, Unpersönlichkeit, Beziehungslosigkeit selbst […] das von sich aus Sinnlose” (Strasser 1978, 226 – 227). In Le temps et l’autre from 1947, Levinas certainly admits that this absence of beings in pure being can never be asserted, “parce qu’on affirme toujours un tant” (TA 26). At the same time, Levinas does talk about an assertion of the experience of pure being, not as a thing, but corresponding to an experience of absence or destruction. This is illustrated with the notion of vigilance or sleeplesseness – the helpless situation of being deprived of rest: “Par une vigilance, sans recours possible au sommeil, nous allons pr cis ment caract riser l’il y a et la faÅon qu’a l’exister de s’affirmer dans son propre an antissement” (TA 27). In EE, the impersonal character of the experience of il y a is further emphasized through the notion of participation, in which consciousness is thrown into an impersonal vigilance which deprives it from its very “subjectivity” (EE 98). Levinas refers to L vy-Bruhl’s application of the term participation as a certain religious experience, though not as the feelings a subject can have toward a sacred object. The participation is rather mystical in the sense that there is no longer a distinction between subject and object; “l’identit des termes se perd.” According to Levinas, such a loss of identity is also present in what Durkheim deemed the impersonality of the sacred, a sacred which for Levinas amounts to godlessness instead of a “still” impersonal God: “[p]lut t qu’ Dieu, la notion de l’il y a nous ram ne l’absence de Dieu, l’absence de tout tant” (EE 99).This mystical, depersonalizing experience of participation is what makes Levinas characterize it in terms of the feeling of horror (EE 98 – 99). What brings about the feeling of horror is for Levinas not our finitude in the face of death, but rather the impossibility of death, the fact that there is no exit (EE 100). This claim about the impossibility of death must be taken in a moral or existential sense, reflecting Levinas’ earlier claims about being as an obligation or burden; the impossibility would then reflect the infinity of a burden that cannot be removed by death: “Horreur de l’immortalit , perp tuit du drame de l’existence, n cessit d’en assumer jamais la charge” (EE 103). It is in other words being – and not nothingness – that horrifies, and Levinas thereby sets himself apart from Heidegger : “Nous opposons donc

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l’horreur de la nuit, ‘le silence et l’horreur des t n bres’ l’angoisse heideggerienne; la peur d’Þtre la peur du n ant” (EE 102). But what is wrong with Heidegger’s way of facing anxiety through a being toward death? For Levinas, Heidegger’s attitude implies a heroism that falsely seeks to control anonymity through a relationship to oneself. Such a relationship to oneself is further what characterizes consciousness, which implies a subject relating to its own existence, thereby being “ma tresse de l’Þtre, d j nom” (EE 98). Consciousness in other words represents a detachment from the anonymity of the il y a (EE 112), though for Levinas such a detachment seeks to control something that is in fact uncontrollable. The il y a deprives consciousness of the possibility of overcoming or controlling the anonymity – and even of the possibility of escaping it through suicide. Suicide is for Levinas “la derni re ma trise qu’on puisse avoir sur l’Þtre,” and this attempt to make sense of existence through the possibility of suicide is for him typical to tragedy. This is exemplified in Juliet’s cry in the third act of Romeo and Juliet: “Je garde le pouvoir de mourir” (TA 29). But such a tragic attempt at mastering the absurd is doomed to fail, and Levinas illustrates this with Hamlet’s insight – which for him is “beyond tragedy” or represents “the tragedy of tragedy” – i. e., the impossibility of relief through death: “Il comprend que le ‘ne pas Þtre’ est peut-Þtre impossible et il ne peut plus ma triser l’absurde, mÞme par le suicide” (TA 29). This impossibility of mastering the absurd through death characterizes a horrible infinitude and boundlessness of being that for Levinas marks being as evil or intolerable (mal), contrary to Heidegger’s approach: L’Þtre est le mal, non pas parce que fini, mais parce que sans limites. L’angoisse, d’apr s Heidegger, est l’exp rience du n ant. N’est-elle pas, au contraire, – si par mort on entend n ant, – le fait qu’il est impossible de mourir? (TA 29).

The anxiety connected to the impossibility of death thereby replaces the Heideggerian anxiety in the face of one’s own death. The crisis of meaning that is experienced as il y a is in other words not due to finitude, but to a certain infinity. Through the characterization of it as “mal,” however, this infinity is different from the good infinity of ethics, which for Levinas is beyond being. Some readers would disagree about the extent to which ethics is able to overcome this bad infinity of the il y a, in such a way that ethical meaning replaces meaninglessness and creates radical renewal. While we shall return to this discussion in the next chapter, what is clear in Levinas’ later work is that the il y a is brought more strongly into the ethical discussions. Accordingly, we should discuss here what in the situation of horror may display similarities to the ethical situation. Above all, it is interesting to note that the facticity of ontology and the ethical situation are both described in strong bodily terms. Insofar as the facticity of being is connected to a feeling of aversion against being that is characterized as nausea and shame, let us first return to the analysis of these feelings in On Escape and examine what they imply.

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Shame and subjectivity In On Escape, Levinas analyzes the feelings of shame and nausea together. They are both understood on an ontological and not merely psychological level, and they are strongly connected with the need for escape and the problem of pure being. The negative feelings are interesting because they are seen as integral to the very positing of a self. Levinas first analyzes shame in its social meaning: “Shame arises each time we are unable to make others forget [faire oublier] our basic nudity. It is related to everything we would like to hide and that we cannot bury or cover up” (OE 64). The basic nudity that is shameful is in other words not only the nakedness of the body, but also other things, such as poverty. Levinas also mentions not only clothing, but also words as modes of hiding ourselves (thereby anticipating the analysis of form as opposed to face). However, Levinas adds, “shame is primarily connected to our body” (OE 64). This connection of shame to the body may be seen in the analyses of pleasure and nausea. Pleasure is for Levinas a movement that seeks liberation from being through satisfaction of need, but this attempt of liberation is doomed to disappointment, and “the meaning of its failure is underscored by shame” (OE 63). Such an impossibility of escaping being is also what provokes nausea. Levinas’ analysis of nausea begins with the physiological condition of the state that precedes vomiting, what he describes as “being revolted from the inside”: “There is in nausea a refusal to remain there, an effort to get out. Yet this effort is always already characterized as desperate: in any case, it is so for any attempt to act or to think” (OE 66). This description of nausea, however, displays it as an existential hopelessness, which for Levinas – as for Sartre some years later – is strongly connected to a feeling of shame, a deep shame that is not due to moral wrongdoings, but simply to the fact of being there: [Nausea] is not only shameful because it threatens to offend social conventions. The social aspect of shame is fainter in nausea, and all the shameful manifestations of our body, than it is in any morally wrong act. The shameful manifestations of our bodies compromise us in a manner totally different than does the lie or dishonesty. The fault consists not in the lack of propriety but in the very fact of having a body, of being there. (OE 67)

In line with common psychological insight, Levinas here distinguishes shame, as something immediate and bodily that concerns the very identity of the self, from guilt, which through its connection to action is more loosely bound to this identity. Shame is thereby experienced as inescapable, for it characterizes something that one is rather than something that one has. The connection of shame and nausea to the general fact of being there makes it clear that the crisis of meaning Levinas describes here is understood on a deep existentialontological level.

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In shame, one not only vainly seeks to hide from others, but also from oneself: “What appears in shame is precisely the fact of being riveted to oneself, the radical impossibility of fleeing oneself to hide from oneself, the unalterably binding presence of the I to itself [du moi soi-mÞme]” (OE 64). Shame is for Levinas thus more than a socially inflicted feeling that could be removed; the shame or nausea in the self- relationship is rather seen as an inevitable part of the unfolding of subjectivity, and the feeling of uselessness of any action as “the sign of the supreme instant from which we can only depart” (OE 67). The feelings of nausea and shame are in other words connected to the very act of positing oneself. Levinas sees nausea as a feeling that accompanies and constitutes this self relating to oneself, and he claims that nausea “posits itself not only as something absolute, but as the very act of self-positing: it is the affirmation itself of being” (OE 68). Nausea is as such also present in any beginning of an act, and could be regarded as a fundamental hesitation inherent to the act. This hesitation seems to be due to the hopelessness and boredom of being in which everything remains the same. But nausea is also connected to the feeling of being as an obligation or even a responsibility, and thereby to the seriousness when game-like irresponsibility comes to an end. This is not so unlike Sartre, who also connected nausea to the recognition of one’s own freedom. In De l’existence l’existant, the consideration of existence as an obligation is developed as a fear of living that brings about a feeling of indolence (paresse) and aversion: C’est l’ gard de l’existence elle-mÞme comme charge que la paresse est une aversion impuissante et sans joie. C’est une peur de vivre qui n’en est pas moins une vie o la crainte de l’inaccoutum , de l’aventure et de ses inconnues tire sa naus e de l’aversion pour l’entreprise de l’existence (EE 38 – 39).

But if nausea results from the aversion for the obligation of existence, what is it really that provokes this feeling? For Levinas, the nausea of obligation has to do with the assuming of an instant as an inevitable present (EE 49), and hence with the facticity that makes being a condemnation. In evasion and indolence there is a refusal to begin – although the bad conscience connected to this refusal signals that it is not impossible (EE 33 – 34). The refusal pertains to the fact that the beginning of an act is not free: “Dans l’instant du commencement, il y a d j quelque chose perdre, car quelque chose est d j poss d , ne f t-ce que cet instant lui-mÞme” (EE 35). This facticity and the finitude of the act are therefore accompanied by the feeling of fatigue that is essentially linked to the beginning of an act, to “se d ranger, se lever” (EE 33). Despite this fatiguing situation in which the beginning of an act is no longer free and pure, where there is something to lose and where one is “d j embarrass par le trop plein de luimÞme” (EE 36), the act is seen as the very inscription in being, whereas the

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idleness in the face of the act is described as a hesitation in the face of existence, “une paresse d’exister” (EE 37). The act as an inscription in being is here essential to the notion of subjectivity, which is understood in terms of a relationship within the self. We see that Levinas not only connects the aversion to the experience of pure being in its verbality or to the bad infinite. It is also present in the finitude of a concrete being. The act of self-positing creates a difference or distance within the self; existence does not exist purely and simply. The being of the act is doubled into the possessing and the possessed, one becomes a being, (EE 36) and the verb being becomes reflexive: “On n’est pas, on s’est” (EE 38). This distance within the self – although characterized by nausea and shame – is essential to the understanding of subjectivity as identity, as the subject relating to and being subjected to oneself. Are there different ways for the subject to deal with this shame evoked by the act of self-positing? Again, the categories of time are important, not only instantaneousness, but also what Levinas speaks of as the duration of time. The opposition of the instant to the duration of time is based on Henry Bergson’s thought, and it belongs to what Levinas calls the “inner dialectic of the moment” (EE 45). Whereas the instant characterizes effort wherein one is involved in the accomplishment of the work, duration represents a disengagement and is essential to game-like phenomena such as music: “il n’y a pas d’instants dans la m lodie” (EE 46). One could perhaps say that in duration – here shown to be essential to a certain experience of art – one is not yet a subject that assumes oneself. This also implies that one cannot assume the act and the facticity and the unfreedom that this involves. In the condemnation to the instant, however, this anonymous existence is brought to an end: “Au milieu de l’ coulement anonyme de l’existence, il y a arrÞt et position. L’effort est l’accomplissement mÞme de l’instant. […] Agir, c’est assumer un pr sent” (EE 48). This assumption of the present involves a relationship to one’s own existence that, on the one hand, involves a certain subjection; on the other hand, this distance or relationship within the self is the first manifestation of subjectivity : [L]e pr sent est, dans le bruissement anonyme de l’existence, l’apparition d’un sujet qui est aux prises avec cette existence, qui est en relation avec elle qui l’assume. L’acte est cette assomption. Par l l’acte est essentiellement assujettissement et servitude; mais d’autre part la premi re manifestation ou la constitution mÞme de l’existant, d’un quelqu’un qui est. (EE 49)

Both this analysis of fatigue in front of the act, and the analysis of shame and nausea, have in common that it concerns a self relating to oneself. It is this distance of the self-relationship that produces the lateness to oneself that is described as fatiguing (EE 51). But couldn’t the feelings of fatigue and shame be seen merely as necessary implications for overcoming anonymity? As we shall see, Levinas came closer to such a view in his later thought, but here the

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notion of subjectivity is still rather connected to the hopelessness of a situation where the subject is centered on oneself and not the Other : “Elle [la paresse] annonce peut-Þtre qu’ un sujet seul, l’avenir, un instant vierge, est impossible” (EE 40). The subjectivity in question is thus described here as shameful confrontation with a being’s obligation, but this does not yet have an ethical significance, but concerns a subject by oneself. Is there then any chance of positing oneself without shame? Of assuming oneself, but without the unfreedom connected to the beginning of an act? We saw above that the notion of duration is connected to esthetic experience, and art is indeed an area where for Levinas the notion of shame is often absent. Shamelessness is in this regard not at all a better alternative; rather, Levinas connects it to the lack of responsibility, which may be seen as an escape from subjectivity. We shall go more into this later, but it is interesting that already in On Evasion, Levinas mentions the performances of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp costume or the nakedness of the music hall dancer as situations where the body ceases to be shameful because it “loses this character of intimacy, this character of the existence of a self” (OE 65). In the same way as shame is intimately connected with having a self, the lack of shame is thereby connected to the loss of self. This loss of self is for Levinas crucial to esthetic experience as an involvement with darkness. Before we go into the analyses of esthetics, however, we must get a better grasp on intentional meaning, and see why Levinas’ characterization of it in terms of light or luminosity makes it problematic.

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1.3. Intentional meaning; light Intentionality as sincerity At the same time as the early Levinas is occupied with the problem of being as pervaded by the meaninglessness of the il y a, he also goes into the attempts to master this meaninglessness through intentionality. In De l’existence l’existant, Levinas relates his notion of intentionality to both Husserl’s reductions and Heidegger’s being in the world, while at the same time raising a fundamental critique regarding the violence in both ways of conceiving of intentional meaning. Etre dans le monde, c’est Þtre attach aux choses […] La notion de l’intention traduit de la faÅon la plus exacte cette relation. Mais il faut la prendre, non point au sens neutralis et d sincarn , dans lequel elle figure dans la philosophie m di vale et chez Husserl, mais dans son sens courant avec l’aiguillon du d sir qui l’anime. D sir et non pas souci, si ce n’est le souci de l’imm diat. (EE 55 – 56)

Intentionality is hence for Levinas first and foremost to be taken in terms of desire, which we shall see signifies in what he calls sincerity, involving a positive givenness of the everyday (and not a distrust of it). He thereby agrees with Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s “dinsincarnated subject,” not however with Heidegger’s posing of concern as intentionality’s fundamental structure. I would like to expand on Levinas’ position by first going into Heidegger’s critique of Husserl and then into both Levinas’ approval and his critique of Heidegger. In the end I shall discuss a (for Levinas) fundamental problem with all kinds of intentionality, connected to its possessive character or its luminosity. In order to get a grasp on the differences between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s accounts of intentionality, we should look at how they understand intentionality with respect to the reductions. The phenomenological reductions, where one brackets the everyday relationship to the world and calls attention to the structures of pure consciousness, are central to Husserl’s method. In his Cartesianische Meditationen, he writes: Die 1pow¶ ist, so kann auch gesagt werden, die radikale und universale Methode, wodurch ich mich als Ich rein fasse, und mit dem eigenen reinen Bewußtseinsleben, in dem und durch das die gesamte objektive Welt für mich ist, und so, wie sie eben für mich ist (Hu: CM §8, p. 22).

The centrality of such a reduction to the purity of consciousness is demonstrated in Husserl’s work Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und

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phänomenologische Philosophie (Ideen I). As Rudolf Bernet pointed out, Husserl presents here the analysis of the phenomenological reductions in the section called “Die phänomenologische Fundamentalbetrachtung,” before the analysis of the intentional structures (in which he explains how intentionality implies the relationship of a noema to a noesis, etc.). The critique that Heidegger then raises against Husserl (and with which Levinas agrees) is that with this priority he gives to the reductions Husserl takes the mistaken position of an uninterested observer in order to analyze the intentional object. Instead of contending that being “can be unveiled only by turning away from the facticity of human existence,” as Bernet expresses Heidegger’s critical interpretation of Husserl, “a phenomenological approach to the being of the intentional must start with the concrete and everyday way that man behaves vis- -vis things in the world” (Bernet 1994, 56, my translation). Heidegger would therefore let intentionality play a more fundamental role than the reductions. But how is this intentionality approached? Put simply, for Heidegger intentionality is not primarily about the transcendental constitution of objects, but about ontology. The being of intentionality cannot be found through what he, with allusions to Husserl, calls a “worldless I”: Nicht zu viel, sondern zu wenig wird für die Ontologie des Daseins “vorausgesetzt,” wenn man von einem weltlosen Ich ‘ausgeht,‘ um ihm dann ein Objekt und eine ontologisch grundlose Beziehung zu diesem zu verschaffen (Hei: SZ §63, 316).

For Heidegger, the priority Husserl gives to the phenomenological reductions implies separation on different levels, whereas the relational aspect of the being of intentionality is lost (Bernet 1994, 57). This is evident in their different ways of conceiving of transcendence: Whereas the world is transcendent to the subject for Husserl, Heidegger rejects any such separation of the subject from the world. In return, however, Heidegger understands the relationship of being-in-the-world itself as transcendent. In Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Heidegger elaborates on this In-der-Welt-sein as transcendence and writes that “das Dasein, seinem eigenen Sein nach (der Transzendenz nach) schon draußen ist, d. h. bEI anderem Seienden, und das heißt immer bEI ihm selbst” (Hei: GdP 427). Such transcendence is found in Dasein’s openness toward the world and not in an object transcendent to mind. As Bernet has noted, for Heidegger such intentionality is no longer understood within the framework of transcendental idealism and its constitution of reality by the transcendental subject. For this would reduce it to a mental activity in the immanent sphere of the subject. Instead, Heidegger wants to consider intentionality as being rooted in ontology, as opening or transcendence (Bernet 1994, 55 – 56). Whereas Husserl thinks of transcendence primarily in terms of the separation between the subject and the world, Heidegger thinks of transcendence in a more dynamic

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manner, as the very relationship between the terms. In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger outlines this relationship as concern (Sorge). We shall return to this notion of transcendence, as well as to Levinas’ critique of it, but having outlined some of the main differences between Husserl and Heidegger (especially from the latter’s point of view), the question is: How does Levinas relate to them in his notion of intentionality? First of all, concerning Husserl’s influence, Levinas recognizes the importance of the phenomenological reduction as a separation between being in the world and philosophical reflection – in order to rediscover the meaning of this being in the world (EE 64). Levinas further emphasizes the importance of a distance in intentionality that separates the intending subject from the intended object: Il importe de souligner que par l’intention notre pr sence dans le monde est travers une distance, que nous sommes s par s de l’objet de l’intention par une distance, franchissable certes, mais par une distance (EE 72).

This notion of separation or distance between the interior and exterior is important for the notion of the world as given. What is achieved through such phenomenological givenness is a certain exteriority of things, which “tient au fait que nous acc dons elles, que nous devons venir elles – que l’objet se donne, mais, nous attend. C’est l la notion compl te de la forme” (EE 73). In other words, the givenness understood as form creates a distance (as opposed to the so-called “formless swarming of the il y a”) and makes way for exteriority. Levinas also emphasizes the importance of interiority, or the fact that the subject in the world not only has an outside but also an inside: “le moi dans le monde en mÞme temps qu’il tend vers les choses se retire-t-il d’elles, il est int riorit . Le moi dans le monde a un dedans et un dehors” (EE 73). For Levinas, the shortcoming of this model is that the distinction between exteriority and interiority is not thought radically enough, as we shall see in the next section on luminosity. However, the distance of givenness is important for the distinction between interiority and exteriority that we saw was wiped out in the experience of the il y a. And although we shall see that the givenness involved in phenomenological meaning is not yet as radical as Levinas will come to understand ethical givenness, it is nevertheless important for Levinas’ notion of intentionality as sincerity, which gives it a certain positive undertone. The positive undertone of intentionality as sincerity is underlined when Levinas describes the relationship to the world in terms of desire and not concern. Although this clearly sets him apart from Heidegger, the relational aspect of intentionality – where the world is always something we are already involved in – is nevertheless seen to be among Heidegger’s deepest insights: “Dans la tentative de s parer la notion du monde de la notion d’une somme d’objets, nous voyons volontiers l’une des plus profondes d couvertes de la philosophie heideggerienne” (EE 64). The reason why Levinas holds that desire is more fundamental than concern is that, whereas desire is

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characterized by sincerity and immediacy, (EE 56) concern determines intentionality too instrumentally and does not capture all dimensions of it: “Tout ce qui est donn dans le monde n’est pas outil” (EE 65). Desire is expressed in feelings of loving and pleasure, but when Levinas characterizes desire in its strongest sincerity, he uses the example of nourishment. In nourishment, Levinas claims, there is a complete correspondence between desire and its satisfaction: The food allows for the total realization of its intention (EE 65). In contrast to loving, which is characterized “par une faim essentielle et inextinguible,” or pleasure as “la poursuite d’une promesse toujours plus riche,” (EE 66) eating displays a simplicity that makes it fully realize “la sinc rit de son intention; “l’homme qui mange est le plus juste des hommes”” (EE 67). Insofar as it implies promise and joy, this understanding of intentionality as desire differs from one that stems from an anxious need or lack. Levinas wants to restore a positive significance to the everyday, against attempts of devaluing it in terms of fallenness or inauthenticity : “L’appeler quotidien et le condamner comme non-authentique, c’est m conna tre la sinc rit de la faim et de la soif” (EE 69). Although this notion of desire is yet to be interpreted at a pre-ethical level, we shall see that Levinas also applies the notion of sincerity – involving a certain immediacy – in his later ethical analyses. In his early works, however, the intentional desire is seen to be conditioned by luminosity, in which sincerity marks a correspondence between the intending and the intended; in other words, where radical exteriority is not yet at work.

The violence of light: Derrida’s reading For Levinas luminosity is what conditions all intentional meaning. It appears to be a positive thing, inasmuch as it is “set out in contrast to the darkness of the il y a, which is described as a situation with no world, no discourse and no correlation between an interior and an exterior” (EE 95, my translation). This darkness of the il y a, which we saw excludes intentionality and evokes the feeling of horror, is thereby in some sense overcome in the intentional attachment to the world and to objects (EE 79). Luminosity is seen as that through which the world is given to us and apprehended. As such it is a condition for meaning – and through its overcoming of anonymity also a condition for subjectivity. However, for Levinas there is also a moment of possession in luminosity, because of the way in which the given ultimately has its source in ourselves: Ce qui vient du dehors – illumin – est compris, c’eat- -dire vient de nous. C’est par la lumi re que les objets sont un monde, c’est- -dire sont nous. La propri t est constitutive du monde: par la lumi re, il est donn et appr hend (EE 75).

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Although the givenness of the world thereby seems to imply a moment of passivity, it ultimately involves the subject, be it in the form of Heidegger’s horizon or Kant’s transcendental apperception (EE 76). For Levinas the basic problem with this involvement is the moment of theory – or knowledge in a wider sense (EE 77) – that all intentionality contains, even that of desire (in the pre-ethical sense described above).6 For Levinas, all phenomenological meaning is dominated by theory, where there is what he calls a “transparency already characterizing sensation” (EE 74). Above all, this criticism of theory is directed against Husserl. Already in his dissertation on Husserl, Levinas recognizes that intentionality for him need not be theoretical, but he nevertheless maintains, as Robyn Horner puts it, that “even intuitions that are primarily non-theoretical must return to a theoretical point (the doxic thesis) before it can be asserted that the object exists for consciousness” (Horner 2001, 52). The problem for Levinas with understanding this overcoming of the il y a in terms of the luminosity of theory is therefore simply that such an overcoming is interwoven with power and violence. Derrida makes this observation in his reading of Levinas in “Violence and Metaphysics,” where he names one of his sections “The Violence of Light.” There he writes: “L’imp rialisme de la heyq_a inqui tait d j Levinas. Plus que toute autre philosophie, la ph nomenologie, dans la trace de Platon, devait Þtre frapp e de lumi re. N’ayant pas su r duire la derni re na vet , celle du regard, elle pr -d terminait l’Þtre comme objet” (Der : VM 126). For Levinas, phenomenology is thereby unable to really overcome the representationalism it sought to overcome, so that the theoretical approach to being and the world still dominates phenomenology. But is this dominance of theory – this luminosity – also a valid objection to Heidegger’s notion of intentionality? As we have seen, Heidegger raised a similar critique against Husserl’s too theoretical approach, a critique that Levinas greatly depends on. But in Levinas’ eyes, Heidegger did not manage to allow for the otherness that could prevent this violence of theory. As Levinas sees it, for Heidegger still the interior determines the exterior and not the other way around, as is implicit in Levinas’ definition of phenomenological meaning as “ce par quoi un ext rieur est d j ajust et se r f re l’int rieur” (EE 74). But even though Heidegger’s notion of intentional meaning represents violence for Levinas, this is not quite in the same manner as with Husserl. Let us therefore approach Derrida’s 6 Although Levinas understands the intentionality of desire as more sincere and immediate than what he finds in Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas here claims that even the exteriority of desire ultimately comes from ourselves and belongs to ourselves: “Le d sir en tant que relation avec le monde comporte la fois une distance entre moi et le d sirable et, par cons quent, du temps devant moi – et une possession du d sirable ant rieure au d sir. Cette position du d sirable avant et apr s le d sir, est le fait qu’il est donn . Et le fait qu’il est donn – c’est le Monde” (EE 59). In Totality and Infinity, however, Levinas also talks about metaphysical desire as a relationship with transcendence, which indeed implies a questioning of intentionality.

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reading of Levinas in order to better understand the different aspects of this violence. We shall also see why Derrida believes we cannot simply depart from it. Following Derrida’s reading, for Levinas Husserl would represent a transcendental violence, whereas the violence in Heidegger’s account has a more ontological character. Whereas the main problem with the first may be said to be too strong a subject, the problem with the latter is rather the impersonal or mystical neutrality of being. In any case, the violence consists in the exclusion of otherness. Derrida indeed claims that these two kinds of violence are connected for Levinas: “La complicit de l’objectivit th orique et de la communion mystique, telle sera la vraie cible de Levinas. Unit pr m taphysique d’une seule et mÞme violence” (Der : VM 130). Derrida has several complaints against Levinas’ reading.7 First of all, he points out how Levinas, in his attempt to transgress the limits of the tradition (of phenomenology and ontology), still remains caught in its language. This does not necessarily mean that Derrida defends this tradition; it is rather the blindness to its own dependence on the tradition that Derrida finds dangerous. For Derrida, one of the most serious problems with Levinas’ texts is that their attempts to overcome the violence in the philosophical language of manifestation and light may entail an even greater violence – the violence of silence or absoluteness. In his essay Derrida therefore argues for the necessity of a certain Husserlian transcendental violence as well as a Heideggerian ontological violence against what he seems to regard as a too strong search for purity in what he sees as Levinas’ attempt to reach a “purely heterological thought” (Der : VM 224) and to avoid violence through an ethical, nonviolent language. Derrida questions the possibility of such a nonviolent language and asks whether Levinas doesn’t still depend on the very phenomenological presuppositions he sought to overcome. Derrida’s point, however, is not to return to phenomenology, but to emphasize the necessity of “s’installer dans la conceptualit traditionnelle pour la d truire” (Der : VM 165). Derrida thereby undertakes what Simon Critchley demonstrated to be a socalled double or “clotural” reading of Levinas’ text. According to Critchley, the deconstructive problematic or the problem of closure is inherited from Heidegger, and closure may be defined as “the double refusal both of remaining within the limits of the tradition and the possibility of transgressing that limit” (Critchley 1999, 1, 20). In this reading, Derrida is, on the one hand, concerned with the futility of trying to escape philosophical language in general, and transcendental phenomenology and ontology in particular. On the other hand, he is sympathetic to the element of Levinas’ thinking that 7 Colin Davis has shown that “Derrida draws attention to two kinds of problems in Levinas’s work: apparent inconsistencies in his thinking, and blind spots in his reading of other philosophers” (Davis 1996, 64). See Davis 64 – 66 for a brief account on the most important of the blind spots.

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involves a departure from the “Greek” or Western philosophy – in the experience of Judaism, in which “the thought of Emmanuel Levinas can make us tremble” (Der : VM 122). Such a double reading is typical to Derrida’s deconstructive method, and as we will see, it can also be traced in Levinas’ later writings. It is widely agreed upon that Derrida’s critique played an important role for some of the changes that took place between Levinas’ two main works.8 In addition to this fundamental critique, Derrida is also critical to specific elements of Levinas’ reading of Husserl and Heidegger. In the section called “Transcendental Violence,” Derrida first points out several moments where he finds Levinas to misread Husserl. One of these regards the question of how the Other is conceived. As we have seen, Levinas objects to an account whereby the Other is seen as something, and Derrida takes up the passages where Levinas criticizes Husserl for regarding the Other as an alter ego and not as Other. The notion of an alter ego is taken from the fifth of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, where Husserl approaches the Other in the form of an “analogical appresentation” (Der : VM 182). This means that the ego of the Other cannot be grasped directly, but rather only in and through analogy with my own ego, as another constitutive origin. For Levinas, this would be to allow for a certain symmetry in the ethical relationship, where the recognition of my own ego is a presupposition for respect for the Other. Instead, we have seen that, for Levinas, the Other comes to us from a source that is not transcendental, but radically transcendent – i. e., as an epiphany. Derrida’s question, however, is whether such an idea of radical otherness does not end up considering the Other as an object after all, when he refuses to recognize the Other’s ego as origin. Husserl’s way of comprehending otherness, Derrida claims, would better protect the alterity of the other by considering him an ego as myself. Derrida claims: “Si l’autre n’ tait pas reconnu comme alter ego transcendantal, il serait tout entier dans le monde et non, comme moi, origine du monde. Refuser de voir en lui un ego en ce sens, c’est, dans l’ordre thique, le geste mÞme de toute violence. Si l’autre n’ tait pas reconnu comme ego, toute son alt rit s’effondrerait” (Der : VM 182). When Derrida emphasizes the recognition of the Other’s constitutive function as an ego, he is pointing out that a phenomenological grasping of the Other, which he admits necessarily entails violence, prevents a greater violence (in the lack of such a recognition). In other words, for Derrida a transcendental violence is inherent to all 8 This is demonstrated, for example, by Simon Critchley, who, although he sees it to be an “intriguing, although ultimately indeterminable, question as to what extent one might read Levinas’s work after Totality and Infinity, particularly Otherwise than Being, as a response to the questions raised by Derrida in ‘Violence and Metaphysics,’” nevertheless claims that an influence is visible in the increased attention to “the linguistic and logocentric recoils that arise when the ethical Saying is thematized within the ontological Said” (Critchley 1999, 1, 12). For others who have commented on this influence, see Davis 1996, 149, note 2. It should also be mentioned that the influence between Levinas and Derrida is largely two-sided.

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discourse – without which the ethical is not possible (Der : VM 188): “Le discours se choisit donc violemment contre le rien ou le non-sens purs, et, dans la philosophie, contre le nihilisme” (Der : VM 191). The violence of light is thus for Derrida necessary in order to protect from pure non-sense – or what we in light of the last section may characterize as the violence of darkness. Derrida also questions certain aspects of Levinas’ reading of Heidegger, particularly the latter’s notion of Being. Derrida finds this notion to be too narrow in Levinas’ reading, who states that “Ontology, as first philosophy, is a philosophy of power” (Der : VM 201), and when he sees this relationship to Being to hinder the personal and ethical relationship to the Other. Whereas for Levinas the priority of Being represents a violence of the impersonal, Derrida states that the thought of Being not only is without ethical violence, but that “aucune thique – au sens de Levinas – ne semble pouvoir s’ouvrir sans elle” (Der : VM 202). The reason for this is that respect for the Oher presupposes the “as-structure” that Levinas had questioned. Derrida further claims that Levinas unjustly interprets Being as a concept, and that this is what makes it violent for Levinas.9 But for Heidegger, Derrida points out, Being is not a concept to which the existent is to be submitted: “[l]’Þtre est donc transcat gorial et Heidegger dirait de lui ce que Levinas dit de l’autre: ‘il est r fractaire la cat gorie’” (Der : VM 205 – 206). Being is not something one can “relate to” like a concept or a category. Moreover, only the thought of Being – and not traditional philosophy or metaphysics – is for Derrida able to liberate from violence through a certain putting into question, “sollicitant la recherche de l’!qw^” (Der : VM 208). This is because an understanding of Being is necessary in order to let the other be: Si comprendre l’Þtre, c’est pouvoir laisser Þtre (respecter l’Þtre dans l’essence et l’existence, et Þtre responsable de son respect), la compr hension de l’Þtre concerne toujours l’alt rit et par excellence l’alt rit d’autrui avec toute son originalit : on ne peut avoir laisser Þtre que ce qu’on n’est pas (Der : VM 207).

Both in Derrida’s critique of Levinas’ reading of Husserl and in the critique of his reading of Heidegger, explicit attention is paid to the problem of purity in Levinas’ attempt to describe alterity as such. For Derrida, pure nonviolence is impossible to reach: Un Þtre sans violence serait un Þtre qui se produirait hors de l’ tant: rien; nonhistoire; non-production; non-ph nom nalit . Une parole qui se produirait sans la moindre violence ne d -terminerait rien, ne dirait rien, n’offrirait rien l’autre (Der : VM 218). 9 Derrida here quotes the passage in TI, which says the following: “Affirmer la priorit de l’Þtre par rapport l’ tant, c’est d j se prononcer sur l’essence de la philosophie, subordonner la relation avec quelqu’un qui est un tant (la relation thique), une relation avec l’Þtre de l’ tant qui, impersonnel, permet la saisie, la domination de l’ tant ( une relation de savoir), subordonne la justice la libert ” [TI 36] (Der : VM 198).

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The attempt to evade philosophical discourse in a metaphysics of infinity is for Derrida ultimately doomed to fail. The “dream of a purely heterological thought” instead ends up as empiricism: Mais le vrai nom de cette inclination de la pens e devant l’Autre, de cette acceptation r solue de l’incoh rence incoh rente inspir e par une v rit plus profonde que la “logique” du discours philosophique, le vrai nom de cette r signation du concept, c’est l’empirism (Der : VM 224).

Davis sums up the critique with the words of Etienne Feron: “The essential point of Derrida’s argument consists in recognizing that philosophical discourse can only say the Other in the language of the Same,” and this can be taken to summarize Derrida’s dilemma as much of that of Levinas (Davis 1996, 66).

In his later works, we shall see that Levinas is forced to rethink the relationship to phenomenology in light of such concrete objections as mentioned above. Despite the influence that Derrida’s reading had on his later works, Levinas does not give up on the thought of approaching what cannot be reduced to ontology or logo-centric thought. This is above all visible in the title of his second main work Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence. The way Levinas develops transcendence after Derrida’s critique, however, presupposes a radical re-thinking not only of language, but also of being. We shall return to this, but in order to understand how the ethical meaning thus developed still breaks with the conceptions of meaning in Husserl and Heidegger, we shall take a look at how the latter thinkers understand intentional meaning as something deeply connected with the problem of temporality and the constitution of time. It will be especially important to discuss the passivity involved in their accounts. For indeed a certain passivity is involved in this constitution both for Husserl and Heidegger, which at first may seem to bring them closer to Levinas’ concern and not a “logic of power.” At the same time, for them temporality will involve representation or imagination as meaning-giving capacities of mind, which for Levinas are obstacles to ethical transcendence. Instead, Levinas will develop a more radical passivity, involving a rejection of the intentional light or of the “doxic thesis.” This brings us closer to the Other, but also to the darkness of the il y a. In order to prepare for the understanding of this break, however, we should first go into Levinas’ reasons for distrusting Husserl’s and Heidegger’s notions of time, before we ask how the constitution of time for Husserl and Heidegger is tied to representation and imagination (respectively).

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Intentional meaning and temporality One of the most important contributions not only of Heidegger’s philosophy, but also of Husserl’s concerns the problem of time. However, this thematic also reveals major difficulties that, in many people’s eyes, remain unresolved.10 I shall not give an extensive analysis of temporality in these thinkers, but mention some aspects that are important for understanding Levinas’ critique thereof (as well as his dependence on them): the notion of time as inner time consciousness and the question of constitution of time.11 What is characteristic of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of temporality is, first of all, that they are not concerned with objective clocktime, but rather with time as something immanent and experienced. We experience time when we determine intentional objects in time. For Husserl, the intentional acts of perception, recollection and expectation each have their own temporal determination (in the present, past and future); a present object is an object of perception, a past object is given in an act of recollection, whereas a future object is anticipated in an act of expectation. Heidegger also operates with a similar notion of immanent temporality connected to acts of perception, recollection, etc. (Bernet 1994, 194 – 197); what is important is that temporal categories for Heidegger are closely tied to the structure of concern (Sorge). As we shall see, both Husserl and Heidegger have their own ways of uniting the three dimensions of time in a way that involves representation and imagination as meaning-giving capacities of mind, as such seemingly presupposing subjectivity as a condition for temporality. At the same time, they both attempt to regard temporality as, in a certain sense, prior to or above subjectivity, revealing thereby a certain ambiguity concerning the role of the subject in temporality (Dostal 2006, 149). This ambiguity is particularly visible in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s concern with the question of the constitution of time – the question of the origin of the temporal determination of the intentional acts. Rudolf Bernet has shown that there are strong similarities in their accounts of constitution,12 but at the same time he pointed out important differences: Whereas Husserl is concerned with absolute consciousness, Heidegger understands the original constitutive moment of time as connected to the transcendence of Dasein. As we will see, both accounts seem to imply a combination of passivity and activity which (at least for Heidegger) implies a certain transcendence of the subject (and thus 10 See, e. g., Robert J. Dostal 2006, 141 11 I limit the analyses primarily to the concepts of time that Levinas relates himself to, avoiding the complex discussion that a narrow reading of Heidegger’s and Husserl’s later thought would have required. 12 Bernet claims that the parallels between the two are striking – despite Heidegger’s comment on Husserl’s treatment of the problem of time with the words “alles bleibt beim alten,” and his outright silence about Husserl’s analyses of absolute time consciousness (Bernet 1994, 201).

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involves the thought of an otherness). However, the passivity implied in their accounts is not passive enough for Levinas, and the transcendence in question is problematic because of what one might call its esthetic character. This implies that the passivity in question is limited by a certain meaning-structure that presupposes some activity of the subject after all. In the next subsection we analyze this aspect of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s accounts of time in more detail, but before we do that we identify the most important moments of Levinas’ critique of their notions of temporality. In an analysis called “Le temps d’une existence interrompue,” Rudolf Bernet sums up the Levinasian critique against the conceptions of temporality in Husserl and Heidegger in three points, the last of which primarily applies to Husserl. The first concerns the theoretical character of their analyses of temporality. As we have seen, this theoretical character belongs to intentionality understood as luminosity. In luminosity one relates to the world as knowledge, which for Levinas is “essentiellement une mani re d’Þtre en deÅ de l’Þtre,” or an ability to relate to events without being involved (EE 77). This implies a certain withdrawal in contemplation, where the involvement with objects or history is suspended. This ability to withdraw makes knowledge a condition for freedom (EE 79). Such a freedom will be important in Levinas’ notion of separation, which implies a constitution of a personal time contrary to universal time. Wyschogrod claims that “[t]his personal dimension of time, our time, is a postponement of the violence of death. All life is a ’not yet’ balanced against death” (Wyschogrod 2000, 115). At the same time, however, we have seen that the accusation of theory concerns its power as violence. Such accusations of a too theoretical approach to time would initially seem to apply to Husserl much more than to Heidegger. But Levinas claims that luminosity for Heidegger likewise connects exteriority to interiority again – through comprehension. Levinas’ reproach against theory is based on its nature as grasping, as an imperialism of the same, and, as Bernet points out, “the transcendence of concern is for Levinas no less egocentric than the intentionality of representational consciousness” (Bernet 2004, 253, my translation). As such, both Husserl’s representation and Heidegger’s Sorge are for Levinas part of the same logic of power, assimilation and enjoyment that ends up depriving things of their autonomy and thereby of their reality The second point of Levinas’ criticism that Bernet mentions concerns a temporality in Husserl and Heidegger which, according to him, does not sufficiently take into account the aspect of novelty, the unexpected and the impossible – which for Levinas is crucial to ethical otherness. Phenomenological anticipation – as shown in Husserl’s process of fulfillment of an intention – does not manage to seize the unexpected event of alterity. To be sure, anticipation in Heidegger is understood in connection with death as the order of the impossible, thereby seemingly implying a certain novelty. In Levinas’ eyes, however, “pour Heidegger la mort est encore et toujours la possibilit d’une impossibilit et non l’impossibilit de toute possibilit

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propre” (Bernet 2004, 253 – 254). Levinas thus opposes Heidegger’s heroic relationship to death by connecting otherness to the impossibility of an own possibility. Interestingly, this seems to bring Levinas’ own otherness closer to the horror of the il y a described in the last chapter, which likewise was connected to the impossibility of death, to the fact that there is no exit (EE 100). The ethical novelty Levinas aims at should thereby be understood as both beyond the fulfilment of intentionality and beyond death understood in terms of possibility. Bernet’s third point of criticism concerns the reasons why his notion of temporality does not manage to allow for ethical otherness. It implies that past is made present. For Levinas, making the present of the past – in representation – is incapable of doing justice to the alterity of the past, an alterity that involves distance, rupture and loss. What presumably happens in Husserl is that past is recovered, whereas Levinas himself holds to the notion of an irrecoverable past as necessary for securing the otherness of the Other. Implied in this idea is the thought that the past in its most original sense is not my past but the past of the Other (Bernet 2004, 254 – 255). Whereas the two first points of criticism – regarding theory and the lack of novelty – are directed against both Husserl and Heidegger, this third point mainly concerns Husserl and what for Levinas appears to be a necessary link between temporality and representation. This point is particularly noteworthy, for it regards representation as a meaning-giving capacity of mind, which requires a more thorough discussion. What I would like to show next, however, is that, despite his critique of representation, Heidegger likewise defends a connection between temporality and the meaning-giving capacities of mind by emphasizing the importance of imagination. In phenomenology, both representation and imagination are closely linked to temporality, and an analysis of these notions will therefore bring into relief Levinas’ own nonrepresentative and nonimaginative conception of temporality and meaning.

Husserl and the problem of representation If we first consider the role Levinas considers representation to play in the phenomenology of Husserl, we see that this is ambiguous. On the one hand, Levinas accuses Husserl of being “obsessed with” representation in a way that binds every intentionality to representation: “La th se selon laquelle toute intentionnalit est soit une repr sentation, soit fond e sur une repr sentation – domine les Logische Untersuchungen et revient comme une obsession dans toute l’œuvre ult rieure de Husserl” (TI 127). In Totalit et Infini, Levinas develops the notion of a representative intentionality within the logic of the Same and the Other. There he claims that, in representation, the Same is in a relationship with the Other, but in a way in which the Other is always

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determined by the Same; “l’Autre n’y d termine pas le MÞme, que c’est toujours le MÞme qui d termine l’Autre” (TI 130). Representation is thereby essential in a logic of power where, as we have seen, the Other is taken as form and not as face. But for Levinas representation also has a temporal significance through its connection to the act of making present, to re-present. When Levinas develops his alternative notion of temporality, he emphasizes that both radical futurity and radical past become lost in this act of making present. Levinas explains in TI how representation implies a suppression of the past: “Au moment mÞme de la repr sentation, le moi n’est pas marqu par le pass , mais l’utilise comme un l ment repr sent et objectif […] Le repr sentation est pur pr sent” (TI 131). In addition to these accusations, John Drabinski has shown that Levinas also recognizes a moment in phenomenology that implies a destruction of representation. He finds it “quite peculiar, on the one hand, to discover the claim by Levinas in his essay ‘R flexions sur la ‘technique’ ph nom nologique’ that ‘[p]henomenology is a destruction of representation and of the theoretical object” [EDEHH 160] and then, on the other hand and in direct opposition to this characterization of phenomenology, to consider Levinas’s comments regarding Husserl’s ‘obsession’ with representation. [TI 127] Phenomenology, then, is at once the destructor of representation and its most profound guarantor” (Drabinski 2001, 69). Levinas view on the dominance of representation is also moderated in his analyses of Husserl’s notion of sensation, where Levinas indeed recognizes a nonrepresentational account of intentionality. In AE, Levinas shows that Husserl’s inner time-consciousness is rooted in the temporality of sensation and not of representation: “Chez Husserl, la conscience interne du temps, et la conscience tout court, se d crivent dans la temporalit de la sensation” (AE 56). This implies that Husserl too is concerned with a passive moment of temporality ; but in order to understand how this passivity for Levinas is ultimately insufficient for ethical otherness, we should take a brief look at some aspects of Husserl’s account of time as absolute consciousness, which is where the moment of passivity comes to expression. According to Bernet’s reading of Husserl’s work on inner time consciousness, the temporality of absolute consciousness is distinguished from intentional consciousness or perception; it is not an active or spontaneous relationship to an object but rather the result of an affection. In addition, absolute consciousness is for Husserl no longer in time, but in a certain sense nontemporal or other-temporal, since it is beyond intentional experience and its corresponding temporal determination. Although absolute consciousness is thus not thought of as dependent on intentional temporality, it nevertheless contains moments that seem to express a certain temporal relationship, such as “original impression,” “retention” and “protention” (Bernet 1994, 196 – 198). The retention and protention in question are distinguished from the

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intentional acts of memory and expectation; they are regarded as moments of presence – of what presence retains of the past (retention) and of what it anticipates of the future (protention) (Dostal 2006, 146). When Bernet analyzes the moment of retention in absolute consciousness, he finds in it a doubleness – expressed in what Husserl determines as Querintentionalität and Längsintentionalität. Put simply, the former regards the retention of “protoobjects,” which seems to be kinds of empty intentions, whereas the latter retains the flux of absolute consciousness itself. It is the latter – longitudinal intentionality – that introduces in Husserl a prereflexive and nonobjectifying moment of self-consciousness. However, one of the consequences that Bernet draws from Husserl’s analysis is that there is reversibility between the two kinds of intentionality, namely, between absolute consciousness and the temporality of the intratemporal objects. This means that absolute consciousness is not really absolute in the sense of nondependent.13 If we recall Levinas’ objections to phenomenological temporality, we may get a sense of why Husserl’s passivity remains for him unable to take into account the unexpected. Although Levinas in AE recognizes a certain difference of alterity to Husserl’s notion of inner time-consciousness, he sees the temporal difference of retention and protention as implying a “modification without change”: Diff rer dans l’identit , se modifier sans changer – la conscience luit dans l’impression pour autant que l’impression s’ carte d’elle-mÞme: pour s’attendre encore ou pour d j se r cup rer. Encore, d j – temps; et temps ou rien n’est perdu (AE 57).

The source of change that Levinas calls for cannot be found in absolute consciousness but in the concreteness of the other person. According to Bernet, in AE Levinas has stronger reservations against Husserl’s analyses than found in the article “Intentinnalit et sensation” written some years earlier. There Levinas tries to show how one “not only finds the original moment of temporalization, but also the root of every alterity and every difference” (Bernet 2004, 259, my translation) in the lateness of consciousness to itself. In other words, Levinas seems to think ethical transcendence from within the temporal difference itself. According to Bernet 13 “Il faudrait dire au contraire que le rapport constitutive entre le flux de la conscience dite “ absolue ” et la temporalit des objets intra-temporels est, pour utiliser un terme de MerleauPonty, fait de r versibilit […] Une origine ne peut d pendre de ce quoi elle donne naissance, elle doit Þtre autonome, absolue” (Bernet 1994, 199 – 200). This ambivalence between the absolute consciousness and temporality seems to be the same as Robert J. Dostal has pointed to with reference to Husserl’s different accounts on time: Are subjectivity and temporality identical or is temporality prior to subjectivity and its objective correlate? In some of his later manuscripts, Husserl seems to suggest the latter, thereby leaving his egological project and coming closer to what Heidegger comes to mean with his expression “Temporality temporalizes” (Dostal 149 – 150).

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this analysis is similar to the one Derrida developed further in La voix et le ph nom ne (ibid.). The reason why Levinas becomes more critical of Husserl’s solution in AE, however, seems to be that the otherness rooted in timely difference risks leaving the concreteness (and singularity) of the other person. This is why Levinas will come be very concerned with transcendence as sensible affection, as we shall see in the chapter on traumatism. What is new in Levinas’ later work, however, is also that it is increasingly difficult to maintain a clear division between the meaning coming from the same (including representation) and the meaning coming from the other (excluding it). This does not mean that Levinas wants to confuse them; but we shall see that he recognizes that also the phenomenology of representation is necessary for the articulation of the ethical. Representation is simply difficult to do without, although Levinas indeed maintains the importance of a nonrepresentative moment, as shown with the notion of the trauma. In AE the process of representation or presencing is described as necessarily involved in the phenomenological notion of truth: Il faut le temps […] pour que s’ tablisse la tension nouvelle […] par laquelle, dans l’Þtre, se r veille l’intentionnalit ou la pens e. La v rit est retrouvailles, rappel, reminiscence […] re-pr sentation […] (AE 51).

Phenomenological truth, in other words, depends on the overcoming of a temporal tension or difference – where something absent is made present in representation. Levinas defines such a truth as “l’exposition de l’Þtre luimÞme, dans la conscience de soi” (AE 50 – 51). Representation is thus important for self-consciousness. We have seen that in his early work Levinas also connected subjectivity or self-consciousness to the presence of the instant, but also that it was accompanied by a feeling of fatigue or shame. This signalled the impossibility of subjectivity as presence to erase the crisis of meaning that was expressed with the depersonalizing experience of the il y a, whereas futurity received an ethical significance as an alternative to the fatiguing presence. Renewal of meaning could happen through what Levinas called a relationship with the future – through the presence of the future in the situation of being face to face with the Other (TA 68 – 69). What we see in AE, however, is that the possibility of such overcoming is problematized, signalled by the return of the il y a in the ethical analyses. Does this mean that ethical meaning is no longer seen as overcoming representation, following Derrida’s suggestion that a certain transcendental violence would prevent an even greater violence of silence? As we shall see, the problem of presenting ethical meaning as an alternative to representational meaning does not mean that representation cannot be challenged, though this will increasingly happen from within phenomenology itself (which shows how Levinas at least partially is influenced by Derrida). Now, if Husserl’s account in Levinas’ eyes is bound to representation (or the presence or immanence of sensation), how does he relate to Heidegger, who

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understood the privileged level of temporality to be what he called the “ecstatic-horizonal temporality of Dasein”? Does Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is transcendent (as transcending) make it more open to ethical otherness? Let us approach this question by examining Heidegger’s notion of transcendence in the ecstatic-horizonal temporality and particularly its relationship to imagination.

Heidegger and the problem of imagination In Sein und Zeit, which is the work of Heidegger to which Levinas relates, the privileged level of temporalization is not seen as belonging to an absolute consciousness, but rather to what Heidegger calls the original ecstatichorizonal temporality of Dasein (Bernet 1994, 202). The reference to Dasein means that the constitution of time is seen as dependent on the finite condition of man, which for Heidegger is characterized by concern (Sorge). The expression “ecstatic-horizonal” is complex and means that the temporality of Dasein is at the same time transcending (in ecstasies of the future, past and present) and limited (in horizonal schemata). What is particularly interesting for understanding Levinas’ critique is to see how this transcendence of Dasein for Heidegger is necessarily linked to imagination and thereby to the subject’s bestowal of meaning.14 But let us first look at the notion of the ecstatichorizonal constitution of time more in detail, especially as he presents it in Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, in which the relationship between temporality and transcendence is lucidly presented. The ecstatic character of time is for Heidegger what “ermöglicht den spezifischen Überschrittscharakter des Daseins, die Transzendenz und damit auch die Welt” (Hei: GdP 428). Bernet claims that temporality is called ecstatic because of its character as “ lan vital” – as vital force – which tears everything that is out of itself and “le fait Þtre comme mouvement sans rel che ni repos” (Bernet 1994, 203). This means that the ecstatic character of Dasein involves a centrifugal move, a moving outwards. According to John Sallis this move is limited by the corresponding horizon. He writes that the concept of horizonal schemata is first developed in section 69c of Being and Time. At that point the ecstatic character of primordial temporality has already been established, and it is then a matter of limiting the centrifugal movement (Sallis 1990, 109).

The ecstases have to move somewhere, and Heidegger names “dieses Wohin der Ekstase als den Horizont oder genauer das horizontale Schema der 14 Although Heidegger later tends to understand temporality as independent from subjectivity, such independence is in the period of Sein und Zeit less developed.

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Ekstase” (Hei: GdP 428 – 429). The horizonal schemata in other words limit the ecstatic moves by giving them a direction. For Heidegger there are three ecstases of time – in the future, past and present – and to each ecstasis there corresponds a schema. He writes, for example, that the schema in which Dasein “zukunftig, ob eigentlich oder uneigentlich, auf sich zukommt, ist das Umwillen seiner” (Hei: SZ 365). Bernet pointed to the fact that there is a doubling of this tripartite structure of original ecstatic temporalization, resulting from the possibility of both authentic existence (primarily concerned with oneself) and inauthentic existence (primarily concerned with things) (Bernet 1994, 204 – 205). What unites all of them, however, is the form of existence that Heidegger calls concern (Sorge), which as Bernet puts it, “n’est pas seulement le d nominateur commun de tous les modes d’existence, mais aussi la structure qui d voile l’existence du Dasein dans sa totalit ” (Bernet 1994, 205). This structure of concern is interesting to us, not only because it unites Dasein’s different modes of existence in its totality, but also because it is fundamental to Heidegger’s notion of transcendence. As we will see below, such transcendence implies a certain openness or receptivity of the subject, in the same way as we saw was the case with the affection involved in Husserl’s notion of absolute consciousness. But in both cases, the passivity in question would for Levinas not be passive enough, but limited by a certain (esthetic) meaning structure. Let us see how this comes to expression with Heidegger’s notion of transcendence. In Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Heidegger disregards the traditional philosophical usage of the word transcendence, which he sees as ambiguous and vague. Instead he understands transcendence as “was Kant im Grunde suchte, wenn für ihn die Transzendenz ins Zentrum der philosophischen Problematik rückte, so sehr, daß er seine Philosophie als Transzendental-Philosophie bezeichnete” (Hei: GdP 423). Heidegger reads Kant in a rather free way, but by likening the transcendent to the transcendental he draws it into the realm of the graspable. As such, transcendence is not considered outside of us, but is found in the very movement of transgression. Das Transzendente ist das Überschreitende als solches und nicht das, wohin ich überschreite. Die Welt ist das Transzendente, weil sie zur Struktur des In-der-Weltseins gehörig das Hinüberschreiten zu… als solches ausmacht (Hei: GdP 425).

The way this transgression takes place is shown in the transcendence of Dasein: “Weil durch das In-der-Welt-sein konstituiert, ist das Dasein ein Seiendes, das in seinem Sein über sich selbst hinaus ist” (Hei: GdP 425). Transcendence is thereby rooted in Dasein’s openness to the world as a relationship to oneself, to others and to things – which are different modes of concern (Hei: GdP 427 – 428).15 15 This transcendence of Dasein shows itself both as “Zu-sich-sein, Mitsein mit Anderen und Sein bEI Zuhandenem und Vorhandenem,” and these ways of relatedness are for Heidegger united

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What then is Levinas’ problem with this way of conceiving transcendence in terms of a concerned openness to the world? It is important to bear in mind that for Heidegger the world is not a sum of objects, but is what qualifies the being of Dasein and exists only insofar as Dasein is (Hei: GdP 420). The world has more to do with the wholeness and meaning necessary for the grasping of Dasein (Hei: GdP 416 – 417, 419). When Heidegger conceives of temporal transcendence in terms of concern, this certainly pertains to (ecstatic) openness, but also to (horizonal) limits – and thereby to a wholeness of beingin-the-world that for Levinas signifies as totality. Levinas himself understands transcendence as involving a more radical separation or difference and seeks a temporality behind or beyond the original ecstatic-horizonal unity of temporality that for Heidegger is a condition for the wholeness of the being-in-the-world (Hei: GdP 414, 429). To better understand why such a wholeness of temporality is problematic, however, we must examine how temporality seems to be necessarily linked with meaning through its connection with imagination as a meaning-giving capacity. Let us then first look at the notion of imagination in phenomenology. Imagination may at first sight be seen as opposed to phenomenology’s “return to the things themselves,” which, as John Sallis has pointed out, “appear[s] to require just the opposite direction from that which imagination is believed typically to take” (Sallis 1990, 97). But Sallis notes that this is neither the case for Husserl, where “imagination proves essential to the very opening up of the field of the things themselves,” nor for Heidegger, where “imagination is the medium in which the understanding of Being is maintained” (Sallis 1990, 98 – 99). In phenomenology, imagination is not primarily a move toward the unreal, but essential to the structure of consciousness itself.16 As Richard Kearney has shown, phenomenology – following Kant’s admittance of a productive role to imagination – sees in the image an intentional structure, so that the image is no more construed as a thing, but as a relationship: “images do not determine consciousness; they are determining acts of consciousness” (Kearney 1991, 14 – 16). For Heidegger this implies that imagination must be seen as crucial to providing the horizon in which comprehension of being can take place under the expression “In-sein des Daseins” as “Vertrautheit in einer Welt” (Hei: GdP 427 – 428). Or in Sein und Zeit: “Das Dasein ist seine Erschlossenheit” (Hei: SZ 133). 16 According to John Murray, such a relationship to the unreal is, on the other hand, typical to the notion of imagination in the early Sartre: “For Sartre, the imagination is a mode of consciousness that enables one to relate to the world of unreality. In the imagination one can hold something as unreal, non-real, nonexistent, and by so doing can gain distance, as it were, from the real world, at least for a while, and establish some basis for one’s freedom. Hence, Sartre would see imagination as identified with the world of consciousness in the process of realizing its own freedom” (Murray 1986, 61). He has also shown, however, that “[w]hile the earlier Sartre may have seen the imagination as a focus on the unreal, the Sartre of the post-resistance period saw it as intently engaged in the real world of activity” (Murray 1986, 21).

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(Murray 1986, 62 – 63). In John Sallis’ reading, imagination is thereby crucial to the essential question about the meaning of Being: Is it not imagination that in its hovering spans the gigantic space of sense, thus gathering now what would previously have been called the horizon, the meaning, for Being? Is imagination not precisely this gathering? Is imagination not the meaning of Being? (Sallis 1990, 97).

In order to understand what is implied in the imagination being the meaning of Being, and why this is problematic for Levinas, let us briefly consider how Heidegger – based on a reading of Kant – understands imagination as unifying the active and passive capacities of mind. Schematism belongs for both Kant and Heidegger to imagination. We have already seen how Heidegger understands horizonal schemata as corresponding to the temporal ecstases. To better understand the function of the schemata, it might be useful to look at where Heidegger deals extensively with schematism, namely, in his book Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Here Heidegger claims that the schematism chapter of Kant’s first Critique – though only eleven pages long – is the most central to the book.17 It is in these pages that Kant develops the application of categories on intuition in time, i. e., he deals with how judgments are possible in the concrete (and not only as synthetic a priori). What Heidegger does, however, is to develop this connection between schematism and time and place it at the origin of transcendence (which we have seen signified as transcendental). In other words he places the ecstatic-horizonal unity of time at the origin of both intuition and concept, attempting to overcome the Kantian dualism. What Heidegger thereby does is to see imagination – in its essential connection to time – as a constitutive middle concept between the passive and active capacities of mind. This interpretation is based on a rather free use of Kant, where Heidegger sees imagination as the “common, but to us unknown root of sensibility and understanding” that Kant alludes to in the introduction of the first version of Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (Kant: KrV, A 15)18. With the support of certain 17 “Schon allein dieser Hinweis auf die systematische Stellung des Schematismuskapitels innerhalb der Ordnung der Grundlegungsstadien verrät, daß diese elf Seiten der Kritik der reinen Vernunft das Kernstück des ganzen umfangreichen Werkes ausmachen müssen” (Hei: Kant 89). 18 Here Kant writes: “Nur so viel scheint zur Einleitung oder Vorerinnerung nötig, daß es zwEI Stämme der menschlichen Erkenntnis gebe, die vielleicht aus einer gemeinschaftlichen, aber uns unbekannten Wurzel entspringen, nämlich, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand, durch deren ersteren uns Gegenstände gegeben, durch den zweiten aber gedacht werden” (Kant: KrV, A15). Unlike most Kant scholars, Heidegger favors this first so-called A-version of Kant’s first Critique, especially when it comes to the transcendental deduction, because there he sees Kant giving the transcendental imagination a more important and more independent role than in the Bversion. Although Heidegger sees both versions as transcendental (Hei: Kant §31, 164), he nevertheless thinks that in the second version Kant recoils from his former insight into the independent role of imagination and subjects it to understanding. In common opinion, the

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passages of this version, Heidegger understands imagination as an independent faculty of the mind that builds the unity of the two other faculties, sensibility and understanding; “die transzendentale Einbildungskraft ist nicht nur ein äußeres Band, das zwEI Enden zusammenknüpft. Sie ist ursprünglich einigend, d. h. sie als eigenes Vermögen bildet die Einheit der beiden anderen, die selbst zu ihr einen wesenhaften strukturalen Bezug haben” (Hei: Kant 137). In other words, imagination makes the original unity of spontaneity and receptivity possible – and thereby also “der Wesenseinheit der Transzendenz im ganzen” (Hei: Kant 134). Although this is a reading of Kant and not an explanation of Heidegger’s own thinking, it nevertheless strengthens the connection between imagination and transcendence in a way that fits well into Heidegger’s own emphasis of transcendence as bound to the finitude of Dasein and as connected to the wholeness and meaning implied in being-in-the-world. In his book on Kant, transcendence is described as deeply finite, as keeping oneself in the event of dwelling in nothingness: Die Angst ist diejenige Grundbefindlichkeit, die vor das Nichts stellt. Das Sein des Seienden ist aber überhaupt nur verstehbar – und darin liegt die tiefste Endlichkeit der Transzendenz – wenn das Dasein im Grunde seines Wesens sich in das Nichts hineinhält. Dieses Sicheinhalten in das Nichts ist kein beliebiges und zuweilen versuchtes “Denken” des Nichts, sondern ein Geschehen (: das Nichtende Verhalten; dieses aber gründet in der Gelassenheit19), das allem Sichbefinden inmitten des schon Seienden zugrundeliegt. (Hei: Kant 238)

Heidegger’s emphasis on Dasein’s transcendence, Gelassenheit, and the ontological foundation of intentionality here seems to downplay the active and independent subject’s role in a way that at first sight would appear close to Levinas’ own intention to replace the notion of an imperialistic, possessive subject with a more passive one. The problem for Levinas with the passivity of imagination, however, is that it is not passive enough – it remains enclosed in the interiority and wholeness, and it excludes the deeper difference that Levinas will present with his notion of a temporal diachrony. Before we begin to analyze Levinas’ own notion of transcendence, however, we should look at Levinas’ discussions of esthetics, in order to better see how his critical relationship with phenomenological meaning has an esthetic undertone. At development from Kant’s first to the second edition is marked by a slight transition from a psychological to a more logical tendency. This brought the neo-Kantian philosophers, who according to Heidegger “reduce[d] the Critique of Pure Reason to an epistemology of the natural sciences” (Longuenesse 1998, 4), favor the B-version. 19 This notion of Gelassenheit will play a more important role in Heidegger’s later thinking, where the emphasis on Being rather than Dasein downplays the role of individuality even more. John Caputo describes Heidegger’s understanding of this phenomenon as “not merely a matter of overcoming ’self-will,’ but ’willing’ in the broadest sense, where willing includes ’representational’ thinking” (Caputo 1978; 175).

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the same time, the tensions within esthetics will be important, as we shall see, in that they can also be seen to be reflected within ethics.

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1.4. Esthetics between darkness and light Esthetics and ethics In order to discuss the role of esthetics in Levinas’ thought and its relationship to ethics, it is important to relate the question to the foregoing chapters and the question of meaning. As we have seen, the notions of light and darkness may be seen to structure those elements of phenomenological and ontological analysis which have to do with meaning and the meaningless. Whereas darkness symbolized the nausea, shame and meaninglessness of the impersonal being in terms of il y a, light was seen to characterize the intentional covering over this darkness, as form or clothing. However, we also saw that according to Levinas the light of intentionality could not eradicate the darkness; the meaning of phenomenology was always threatened by the meaningless swarming of the il y a. It was therefore only as radical exteriority that true, ethical meaning could be saved. At the same time, we have already become aware that such a notion of pure exteriority – or meaning kath’ auto – becomes increasingly problematic in Levinas’ thought, especially after Derrida’s critique, something we shall develop in the next chapter. This implies that the ethical in Levinas’ later thought comes to signify from within phenomenology or ontology itself, as the next chapter shows. It is here that esthetics may become interesting to us. This is because for Levinas esthetics and artistic creation should be taken as deeply rooted in the structures of ontology or, as he puts it elsewhere, as “ontologiques par excellence: elles rendent la compr hension de l’Þtre possible” (SS 132). This not only means that an analysis of esthetics can contribute to a better understanding of Levinas’ relationship to ontology. When we learn that ethical transcendence in Levinas’ later work must be understood from within the ontological structures themselves and not in another ethical realm, we may also see how the esthetical analyses – as ontological par excellence – may contribute to the way in which ethics signify. At the same time, art will never be the paradigmatic expression of transcendence (in the way it is, say, for Adorno, with whom Levinas shares important concerns), and is sometimes even pictured as inhuman and monstrous. Esthetical analysis nevertheless clarifies the ambiguity of being that we have hitherto treated separately – between darkness and light, meaning and the meaningless – in a way that will be important for understanding how ethics signify in Levinas’ later work. Esthetics should thus not be taken as a peripheral question outside of Levinas’ “real” interest in ethics.

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It may seem futile to deem Levinas’ esthetics as relevant to his ethical analyses, since his most systematic treatment of esthetics is a relatively short article from 1948, “La realit et son ombre,” in which he presents us with some rather hostile comments on art and artists.20 We shall analyze this article in some detail below and show that, although Levinas’ critique is quite fundamental, his relationship to art is also ambiguous. The picture further needs to be moderated in light of all the other allusions to art in Levinas’ work, which show that his relationship to art is not at all primarily characterized by hostility or ignorance, but differs both according to types of art and the attitude one has toward it. First of all, through his references Levinas seems to display a particular preference for literature and music over visual art, and of modernist art over classical art. He wrote articles on Proust, Blanchot, Celan, etc., but references to classical literature (like Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare) are also numerous in his work, as are references to musical expressions. Levinas’ own philosophical language can likewise be seen as rather poetical in form. At the same time, there are statements in his texts about art and artistic practice especially concerning beauty and plastic art which are indeed highly negative and seem to reflect and be motivated by a kind of ethical iconoclasm. This is not unlike Adorno’s seeming preference for music over visual art, or what Lessing (in Laocoon) would call “time-art” over “space-art.” We may thereby say that it is the representative and the spatial elements of art that are especially problematic for Levinas. But the ambiguity goes deeper than to the preference of one art form over another. The analysis below will show that Levinas’ esthetical analysis is not only relevant for understanding art as a particular phenomenon of life, but also – and perhaps primarily – for how we understand reality as such. “Reality and its shadow” is the expressive title of the article Levinas uses to describe not only what happens in the work of art but in the very fundamental event of “reality’s turning into image,” which Levinas describes as the event of an eclipse of being, or the non-truth of being (RO 773). The doubling of reality that he refers to is not an act one performs when immersed in esthetic experience, but an essential trait of ontological reality. As Hent de Vries puts it, the splitting of reality “has always already happened, just as it is, happily, always already overcome, reversed, inverted and forgotten” (De Vries 2005,

20 Hent De Vries regrets the lack of attention to this aspect of Levinas, writing that “‘Reality and Its Shadow,’ in which the critique of existential phenomenology remains as implicit as in Existence and Existents, has never had the direct philosophical impact of Levinas’s writings on ethics and infinity. This has resulted in a lacuna in the reception of his thought and, coupled with the continuing neglect of On Escape, has facilitated a na ve and moralistic view of the relation to the Other, in whom God, far from merely being a grand Autrui, has left his trace. We have hardly begun to correct this moralistic view in light of the more complex experiences to which the aesthetic – art in relation to truth – forms a major point of access […]” (De Vries 2005, 411).

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423)21. At the same time, the work of art is interesting because it displays the ambiguity or doubling of reality in a way that clarifies what it is that really happens and what may be problematic about it. The connection of art to an eclipse or non-truth of being does not mean that art per se is rejected, though Levinas is highly critical of the elevated position of art in contemporary culture. In “La realit et son ombre,” Levinas claims that art in our time is almost equated with spiritual life, and we shall see that the religious aspects of esthetic experience are indeed what make it highly problematic. This is not the kind of religion that for Levinas is crucial to ethical transcendence, but rather the magical, seductive and depersonalizing religion of participation. However, art and esthetic enjoyment are not forbidden in themselves. Art has its place for Levinas, and this is connected to human happiness. But this is only a place; art “is not the supreme value of our civilization” (RO 788). What Levinas criticizes is therefore that art receives an absolute value and is worshipped with an almost religious awe. Also in “La signification et le sens,” Levinas criticizes the approach to art where it functions as a replacement for religion. He there claims that the exaltation of the artistic aspect of culture guides contemporary spiritual life, so that “les mus es et les th tres, comme autrefois les temples, rendent possible la communion avec l’Þtre et que la po sie passe pour pri re” (SS 132). When Levinas claims that “poetry is taken for prayer,” it is not poetry as such that is rejected, but the elevation of it to an absolute value. This is an important aspect when we analyze how poetry – taken in a wide sense – plays a major role in Levinas’ analysis of esthetic experience as involvement with darkness. As we shall see, the basic problem with such an involvement with darkness is that it escapes subjectivity and responsibility. In Nietzsche’s terms, to whom Levinas also refers, we may identify the problem as the anonymity of Dionysian intoxication, which is also close to the meaninglessness of the il y a. We shall see that philosophy and critique for Levinas are important in order to break the spell of this intoxication and thereby question the elevated position of art. Is his solution then to go in the opposite direction of Nietzsche and acclaim an Apollonian form or beauty? Levinas believes that art indeed has a tendency to reintegrate the aspect of darkness – its meaninglessness and exoticism – into a meaningful whole, which is what happens in beauty. But such a move is also problematic for Levinas, who sees it as too close to the light of intentional meaning and unable to grasp the unicity of the Other as ethical transcendence. Exoticism and beauty seem to represent two opposite moves of art – of the Dionysian darkness and the Apollonian light – that are both problematized by Levinas. What is interesting in Levinas’ analysis, however, is that these two moves are thought to belong together – and it is precisely this 21 He here quotes Thomas Wiemer: “Not as a process that would add something to existing reality after the fact, but as the movement in being that is co-originary with that of reality and accompanies reality from the very beginnings: as its shadow, its other possibility, as it were.”

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tendency to capture and find meaning in the exotic and meaningless through beauty that makes it so problematic. Why? Because it involves a moment of destiny or tragedy that makes it remain in an immanence where art has an absolute value, instead of being open to the radical futurity of ethical transcendence. The critique of destiny or tragedy is crucial, because it concerns precisely the premature capturing of an unordered reality into a meaningful whole. In tragedy, freedom is turned into necessity, the person regards him- or herself from the outside as an object. Nietzsche’s idea of amor faTI or eternal recurrence would represent a version of such a problematic esthetization of reality ; but I believe Heidegger’s tendency to pose the relationship to death as a sort of tragic heroism is the most relevant backdrop for Levinas’ critique. As we have seen, Levinas thinks that tragedy fails in its attempt to overcome the meaningless, and he instead presents an alternative relationship to death where death figures as an impossibility of possibility and not one’s innermost possibility as it is for Heidegger. We have likewise seen that Heidegger’s understanding of transcendence as something bound to the imaginative structure of concern for Levinas would represent an immanent meaning that is not capable of ethical transcendence. More than this: Remaining in immanence represents an immoral blindness toward the Other. Levinas’ critique of Heidegger’s notions of destiny and tragedy is particularly strong in light of Heidegger’s affiliation with Nazism during the war. Levinas’ critique of the irresponsibility of art can be understood in the same context. Levinas indeed points to a shame of esthetic enjoyment that seems to be particularly problematic in certain historical epochs compared with others: “Il y a quelque chose de m chant de d’ go ste et de l che dans la jouissance artistique. Il y a des poques o l’on peut avoir honte, comme de festoyer en pleine peste” (RO 787). Given the fact that Levinas published this article shortly after the Second World War, it is reasonable to assume that Levinas here has the same epoch in mind as the one that motivated Theodor W. Adorno to question the possibility of art after Auschwitz.22 Much as Levinas here compares the shameful esthetic enjoyment with a celebration in the middle of a plague, Adorno is even more explicit in claims that “Alle Kultur nach Auschwitz, samt der dringenden Kritik daran, ist Müll” (Adorno 2003, 359). Although Adorno will nevertheless go on to develop a systematic esthetics, he is still deeply aware of the difficulties concerning the consoling function of art. According to Danielle Cohen-Levinas, one of the main ideas in Adorno’s 22 Jean Hand has also suggested that Levinas had concrete situations and persons in mind. Levinas uses Girandoux’s work as example in RO, and as Hand writes, “Girandoux’s work, well-known for its fascination with German culture, had been positively received by the fascist journal Je Suis Partout and praised by the fascist writer Brasillach,” who according to Hand had also sought a position in the Vichy r gime (Hand 1996, 69).

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Ästhetische Theorie is that the happiness of reconciliation is forbidden by art because this would appear as an apology for the world as it is, namely, a world in which Auschwitz could happen (Cohen-Levinas 2002, 366). This skepticism toward reconciliation in art resembles an ethical refusal of theodicy. Josh Cohen showed that this problem underlies both thinkers, although Adorno is more skeptical toward religion than esthetics, whereas for Levinas it is the other way around (J. Cohen 2003, xvii). However, both ways of making sense of the world – through esthetics and religion – would risk mocking the victims and refusing to recognize the otherness of evil that escapes the subject’s meaning-giving capacities. In light of this, Levinas’ reservations against artistic enjoyment would be linked to the difficulties of meaning we discussed in the preceding section. It is instead the facticity of being that reveals the game-like irresponsibility of esthetic enjoyment as shameful. Let us regard the question of the presumed shamelessness of art in relation to the foregoing analyses of shame. There we saw that Levinas was concerned with the relationship between shame and subjectivity, and that shame necessarily accompanied the subject in its self-positing. This self-positing was analyzed in temporal categories, as the break of the instant with duration or as a moment that created distance within the self – something that evoked fatigue. We also saw that music was mentioned as an example of duration without the instant, in other words, as containing a de-subjectifying element, which we shall see is crucial to Levinas’ analysis of what happens in art. But the artistic subject would neither be totally de-subjectified. As was shown in the example of the (performative) nakedness of the music hall dancer, art could also be seen as a way of self-positing without shame or without the fatigue that accompanied the beginning of an act. In transforming the nudity into a role, the subject rather re-enters the form that covers over its shame. The subject is thus seized (also by itself) as an object, a persona. As such, art is a happening in which in a certain sense one is seen to escape the seriousness of being and instead enjoy the playfulness of imaginative freedom. For Levinas, such a way of positing the self would precisely miss the very element of facticity and shame that is so important for the notion of subjectivity – which again is necessary for responsibility. The question is now whether we may say that all art contains such an attempt of transforming the shameful self-positing subject into an esthetic persona, thereby excluding responsibility. To this end, we must delve more into Levinas’ more concrete analyses of what happens in art. We should here look separately at the two processes mentioned above, although they ultimately belong together : exoticism of art and its reintegration in the world through beauty.

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The exoticism of art as the involvement with darkness In De l’existance l’existant, Levinas seeks to describe what happens in art by discussing the exoticism at work there, or what it means that “art makes things leave the world” (EE 83). The indirect relationship to reality, the modification that happens through a painting or a story would, for Levinas, determine their exoticism, and this alterity within the represented objects is present for him even in the most realistic of art (EE 84). The exoticism thereby makes things appear in their nudity, understood as the absence of forms in the phenomenological sense (as what makes exteriority correspond to interiority). Instead, the forms and colors of a painting “ne recouvrent pas, mais d couvrent les choses en soi; pr cis ment parce qu’elles leur conservent leur ext riorit . La r alit reste trang re au monde en tant que donn ” (EE 85). The exoticism of art, in other words, is opposed to the intentional meaning in which things are signified as something in the world. What Levinas means by this exoticism can be better understood by looking at his distinction between sensation and perception. In perception, he writes, “un monde nous est donn . Les sons, les couleurs, les mots se r f rent aux objets qu’ils recouvrent en quelque mani re” (EE 85). In sensation, in contrast, this direct link to the object is broken when the intention “gets lost” in the sensation itself: “l’intention s’ gare dans la sensation elle-mÞme, et c’est cet garement dans la sensation, dans l’aisthesis, qui produit l’effet esth tique” (EE 85). Esthetic sensation in this way signals a break with the intentional relationship to the world; the sensible qualities are detached from their objects and signify in themselves. Levinas gives to sensation an independence that distinguishes it from its role as mere material for perception. This notion of esthetic sensation may resemble Husserl’s notion of sensing (Empfindnis) as a touching touch – where likewise the relationship to the world (and to form) is excluded. But whereas Husserl seems to connect sensation to a sensing self (Hu: Ideen II §36), Levinas more strongly emphasizes the depersonalizing anonymity of esthetic sensation. The consequence of this break with intentionality and the emphasis on the independence of sensation is that art is seemingly left to a realm outside of light and meaning, close to the anonymity and darkness of what in the previous sections we have seen as characterizing the experience of the il y a. In “La r alit et son ombre,” Levinas also speaks of art in terms of an involvement with darkness, as containing an event distinct from comprehension and knowledge: La function de l’art non consiste-t-elle pas ne pas comprendre? […] Le commerce avec l’obscur, comme v nement ontologique totalement ind pendant, ne d crit-il pas des cat gories irr ductibles celles de la connaissance? Nous voudrions montrer dans l’art cet v nement (RO 773).

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The characterization of the esthetic sensation as noncomprehension displays an exoticism that resembles the signification of the face, which likewise signifies as nonworldly, as something quite other than the form that conceives of everything as something. Esthetics, like ethics, involves a situation in which something cannot be categorized, and where a strangeness thereby appears. Such esthetic exoticism, however, is not human and cannot address us in the way the exteriority of the face can; its otherness rather resembles the impersonal meaninglessness of the il y a. But whereas il y a was described in terms of a horrifying absence of meaning, the esthetical otherness apparently provokes a more positive sensation in the subject. This can be illustrated with the notions of musicality and poetry. For Levinas, neither musicality nor poetry are limited to music and poetry as artistic genres, but describe the processes involved in our relationship to art in general. In EE, Levinas describes the esthetic event in which sensible qualities signify in themselves – and not as signs – as the musicality of sensation. Such musicality is present in music as well as in other genres such as painting and literature. What happens is that there is a dispossession of both objectivity and subjectivity in the detachment from worldly objects. The musicality of painting might be visible when, say, colors are put together without regard to the syntheses of objects in the world (EE 86). In literature, one finds musicality when the word, initially not separable from meaning, is affected by the materiality of the sound, and as such becomes susceptible to be detached from its objective meaning and return to sensation. This may be in the form of rhythm, rhyme, etc., or it may be signalled in the multiplicity or ambiguity of meaning (EE 86 – 87)23. The musicality of sensation, in other words, concerns its materiality and its detachment from the sign systems of the world. In “Reality and its shadow” Levinas speaks of musicality not only as the materiality of the art work, but as a way of relating to reality. More precisely, musicality is implied in the “deconceptualization of reality” that happens in the image (RO 776). For Levinas, the image differs from the concept and from truth in that, whereas conceptuality implies a seizing of reality or a power over it, with the image it is the other way around: “L’image marque une emprise sur nous, plut t que notre initiative: une passivit fonci re. Poss d , inspir , l’artiste, dit-on, coute une muse. L’image est musicale” (RO 774). The musicality of the image then expresses the reversal of the activity of the subject and the reversal of the intentional move. In contrast to the symbol or sign or word, for Levinas the image relates to the object through resemblance (RO 777). This implies that the relationship of the image to reality is weaker than the one of the sign; there is “un arrÞt de la pens e sur l’image elle-mÞme et, par cons quent, une certaine opacit de l’image. Le signe, lui, est transparence 23 This latter statement shows that for Levinas musicality is no less present in modern poetry than it is in classical poetry : “La po sie moderne, en rompant avec la prosodie classique, n’a donc nullement renonc la musicalit du vers, mais l’a cherch e plus profond ment” (EE 87).

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pure, ne comptant en aucune faÅon par lui-mÞme” (RO 777 – 778). This claim that the sign is transparent and the image opaque implies that, whereas the sign points away from itself toward the signified, the opacity of the image in some sense draws us into itself. It is this latter aspect of the image – its “emprise sur nous” – that poses the problem for Levinas, because it closes the subject off from reality and effaces the radical distance that is so essential to ethical subjectivity and freeedom. This lack of distance is also important to the characterization of mystical participation, whose horror is due to the fact that both God and every being are seen as absent (EE 99). The detachment from the world in musicality is thereby not problematic because it places art beyond the world, but because it makes the subject evade the world and its responsibility. This is evident in the notion of rhythm, which is not seen as inherent to the poetic order, but rather concerns the way it affects us, as the rejection of freedom and selfhood in a “turn to anonymity”: Le rythme repr sente la situation unique o l’on ne puisse parler de consentement, d’assomption, d’initiative, de libert – parce que le sujet en est saisi et emport . Il fait partie de sa propre repr sentation. Pas mÞme malgr lui, car dans le rythme il n’y a plus de soi, mais comme un passage de soi l’anonymat (RO 775).

This surrendering of freedom, initiative, etc. in rhythm is similar to the description of horror in the face of the il y a, which was seen as “un movement qui va d pouiller la conscience de sa ‘subjectivit ’ mÞme,” in an impersonal vigilance or participation (EE 98). But the way in which the subject is absent is interesting: The subject is carried away and becomes “part of its own representation”; it is looked upon as a thing – the intimate is made exterior : “il est parmi les choses, comme chose, comme faisant parTI du spectacle, ext rieur lui-mÞme […] Ext riorit de l’intime, en v rit ” (RO 775). The problem with this idea of a subject regarding oneself from the outside, like an actor in a play, is not only connected to a passive irresponsibility of the play, but could also take a more active and dangerous form if the subject thereby sees itself in a subject-transcending game of destiny. What happens in such an abandonment of responsibility in rhythm is seen as a “renversement du pouvoir en participation” (RO 776). In addition to musicality and rhythm, Levinas also uses the notion of poetry to describe the detachment that happens in the event of art. Poetry is also taken as an attitude beyond the question of genre, as it was in other French intellectual debates at the time, during which it was set opposite to prose. The systematic distinction between poetry and prose is not so elaborated in “Reality and its shadow,” but Levinas returns to it in Totalit et Infini, where he contrasts the (Dionysian) rhythm of poetry to the (ethical) transparency of prose. The straightforwardness and sincerity of prose is seen as characterizing ethical discourse, which secures subjectivity from the depersonalizing ravishment of the poetic “rhythm”: “Le discours est rupture et commencement, rupture du rythme qui ravit et enl ve les interlocuteurs – prose”

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(TI 222). This ethical prose contrasts with a poetic activity in which artists in a Dionysian manner become a work of art and loses their independence by entering into a role: A l’activit po tique […] o d’une faÅon dionysiaque l’artiste devient, selon l’expression de Nietzsche, œuvre d’art, – s’oppose le langage, qui rompt tout instant le charme du rythme et empÞche que l’initiative devienne un r le (TI 222).

The charm of rhythm in the poetic activity is thereby broken with the ethical language that Levinas characterizes as prose. Does this mean that Levinas is defending a distinction between ethical prose and unethical poetry? We shall see that it is not that simple, but in order to clarify the distinction between poetry and prose let us compare Levinas’ account with that of Sartre. Jill Robbins has noted the similarities of Levinas’ analysis of poetry and prose to Sartre’s view, as expressed in Sartre’s essay “What is literature?” Here, Robbins explains: Sartre had opposed the poetic attitude to prose in terms of their relations to language and the world: “Poets are men who refuse to utilize language.” While the prose writer conceives of language as a tool and discloses the world with the intention of changing it (thus exemplifying what Sartre termed litt rature engag e), ‘the poet considers words as things not as signs’ and withdraws language from its instrumentality. (Robbins 1999, 80)

According to Robbins, this distinction between poetry and prose goes beyond the question of genre for Sartre as well; the withdrawal of poetry is caught up in an irresponsibility typical of writers like Marcel Proust. Also for Levinas, such poetic activity involves an irresponsible passivity ; to consider words as things and not as signs would for him be characteristic of the turn toward materiality in the musicality or poetry of art. It would imply that words lose their ability to create meaningful wholes and signify something in the world, as implied in the notion of exoticism. But Levinas’ solution is not to reestablish this relationship to the world through an engaged, committed art. Rather, he would maintain art’s essential character as work, which implies a completion or saturation that places it beyond the world: “L’artiste s’arrÞte, parce que l’œuvre se refuse recevoir quelque chose de plus, para t satur e” (RO 772). Levinas neither wants to establish Apollonian ethics in its rejection of the Dionysian depersonalization (to continue to speak in Nietzschean terms). We have already seen how Levinas is critical of the (Apollonian) aspects of form and beauty. In addition – and this is interesting for us – it is questionable whether Levinas’ attitude toward poetry remains exclusively negative, especially in light of Levinas’ later works like Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence, where he writes in one of the first pages: “Il faut aller jusqu’au nihilisme de l’ criture po tique de Nietzsche, renversant le temps irr versible, en tourbillon – jusqu’au rire qui refuse le langage” (AE 22). When Levinas claims that one has to go all the way back to

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Nietzsche’s poetic writing, which refuses language, this is seemingly completely opposed to what he claimed when he opposed Dionysian poetry to ethical prose in TI. Such passages show that a certain involvement with poetry – or the il y a – will come to play a central role for Levinas’ later ethics. We will return to how this happens, but here I would like to suggest that what makes the esthetic enjoyment problematic – and indeed shameful – is not alone its exoticism, but above all the tendency to reintegrate the exoticism of art into a meaningful whole, although some kinds of art seek to preserve its exoticism more than others. As Rudi Visker formulates it: “Such is aesthetics: It plays with the il y a, – it approaches it, but stops in time. Horror is sublimated into beauty which consoles. Art is never collective; its aim is to make the secret of interiority bearable. But it knows no shame – which is why Levinas distrusts it” (Visker 1999, 263). Let us now go into how Levinas understands this consoling reintegration – and also ask in what way certain forms of art are more able to avoid it than others.

The problematic consolation of beauty According to Levinas, the exoticism of art has the tendency to be reintegrated in our world through sympathy with what he calls the “soul of things” or the “soul of the artist.” This happens in the same manner in which Levinas had earlier described the alterity of the Other as accessible as an alter ego through sympathy (EE 89). The otherness of the Other is lost when the Other becomes an alter ego, and a similar loss of the exoticism of art happens when the meaning as worldliness is regained. Art thereby shows its essential plasticity or idol-character (RO 781 – 782). Levinas includes all art in his analysis of this plasticity, although it is not equally characteristic of all kinds of art. This has to do which both art form and with the difference between the classical pursuit of beauty and modern art’s struggle with representation. The way Levinas describes the differences between classical and modern art thus reflects the tension inherent in the ontology between light and darkness we have already worked out above. Whereas the tendency to reintegrate the exoticism in the world is particularly strong for classical art, according to Levinas modern painting and poetry attempts to escape this tendency. Modern art wrestles with vision and representation and by doing so tries to conserve the exoticism of reality : “Nous comprenons ainsi la recherche de la peinture et de la po sie moderne, qui essaient de conserver la r alit artistique son exotisme, d’en bannir cet me […]” (EE 89). This skepticism toward representation in much of the post-war modernist art seems to be due to the already mentioned shame or embarrassment of the enjoyment in making the world meaningful when the world is in fact not. Such a false meaning or hypocritical happiness would be forbidden through the break-

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down of worldliness, which in Levinas’ case is already visible in the premonitory sentiment of a “fin du monde” in “On escape” from 1935. In contemporary painting, Levinas contends, things are no longer important as elements of a universal order, in the perspective of a glance; instead, “la peinture est une lutte avec la vision” (EE 90). Things are disconnected from each other, in a space without horizon, and this exoticism is sought through an examination of materiality, which is not the material opposed to thought and spirit, but rather a “pure” materiality understood as the “formless swarming” of being or the il y a: Celle-ci c’est de l’ pais, le grossier, le massif, le mis rable. Ce qui a de consistance, du poids, de l’absurde, brutale, mais impassible pr sence; mais aussi de l’humilit , de la nudit , de la laideur […] La d couverte de la mat rialit de l’Þtre n’est pas la d couverte d’une nouvelle qualit , mais de son grouillement informe. Derri re la luminosit des formes par lesquelles les Þtres se r f rent d j notre “dedans” – la mati re est le fait mÞme de l’il y a (EE 91 – 92).

When Levinas describes the search for a materiality in modern art as the disclosure of the formless swarming of the il y a – opposed to the luminosity of forms – he sees the difference between classical and modern art in some sense reflected in the tension between meaning (as light) and the meaningless (as darkness). This does not mean, however, that classical art is dominated only by this light, or that modern art manages to escape it completely. Whereas much modern art thematizes the absence of meaning through by emphasizing materiality, deformation, decay, etc., Levinas accuses the so-called classical art of ideal forms of seeking to correct what he calls the “caricature of being” through the pursuit of beauty : “La beaut – c’est l’Þtre dissimulant sa caricature, recouvrant ou absorbant son ombre” (RO 781). This pursuit is futile, however, since the caricature of being is not possible to remove, and therefore it returns in the stupidity of the idol: “La caricature insurmontable de l’image la plus parfaite se manifeste dans sa stupidit d’idole. L’image comme idole nous am ne la signification ontologique de son irr alit ” (RO 781). The idol-character of the beautiful image implies the intentional light, or the form that seeks to cover over the formless swarming of the il y a as the darkness or nontruth of being. Levinas exemplifies the futility of this approach through the image of the person: There is always something that escapes it, something that its substance is incapable of containing. And this is how, Levinas contends, “que la personne porte sur sa face, c t de son Þtre avec lequel elle co ncide, sa propre caricature, son pittoresque” (RO 778). As we have seen, the entrance in the world makes the person appear as form. As Levinas puts it here, and also repeats in similar ways in TI, the person thereby appears as his or her own caricature. There is in other words a doubling between being and its caricature. The mentioning of caricature, however, suggests that the resemblance does not really double being, but rather alters it

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in the process of delay, so that, when being withdraws, it leaves the “garnish”: “une alt ration telle que ces formes essentielles apparaissent comme un accoutrement qu’il abandonne en se retirant” (RO 779). This doubling or alteration is not only valid for the being of the person, but is essential to reality as such: “La r alit tout enti re porte sur sa face sa propre all gorie en dehors de sa r v lation et de sa v rit ” (RO 780). The problem for Levinas is not the doubling in itself, but rather – and this is what happens with the image – the accomplishment of the allegory in making it part of the world: “L’art, en utilisant l’image, ne refl te pas seulement, mais accomplit cette all gorie. En lui l’all gorie s’introduit dans le monde comme par la connaissance s’accomplit la v rit ” (RO 780). It is thus the attempt to obliterate the difference implied in all reality – especially that of the other person – that makes the search for beauty in art so questionable for Levinas. Although the search for beauty is typical for classical art, this idol-character of the image is not limited to classical art. For Levinas, every work of art is ultimately statue: “Dire que l’image est idole – c’est affirmer que toute image est, en fin de compte, plastique et que toute œuvre d’art est, en fin de compte, statue – un arrÞt de temps ou plut t son retard sur lui-mÞme” (RO 781 – 782). This latter claim about the temporality of the artwork – that cessation of time (or lateness to oneself) is characteristic of the statue and ultimately of every work of art – is crucial in order to understanding the limitations that Levinas her sees in esthetical transcendence. What are the implications of this kind of temporality that is at work in the statue? If we recall Levinas’ analyses of fatigue, where he referred to Bergson’s distinction between duration and the instant, we saw that Levinas spoke about an instantaneousness that belonged to the beginning of an act. This was important for the emergence of subjectivity, but the facticity connected therewith also implied fatigue or idleness. For such a (self-contained) subjectivity, a future was still impossible: “Elle [la paresse] annonce peut-Þtre qu’ un sujet seul, l’avenir, un instant vierge, est impossible” (EE 40). In a similar way, this cessation of time in the statue characterizes what Levinas calls the paradox of an instant that continues without future (“qui dure sans avenir”) (RO 782). This duration of the instant signals a presence without a future and without the possibility of assuming responsibility, thereby impersonality and anonymity (RO 782). Levinas exemplifies this lack of futurity with works of art that are described as life without life: A l’int rieur de la vie ou plut t de la mort de la statue, l’instant dure infiniment: ternellement Laocoon sera pris dans l’ treinte des serpents, ternellement la Joconde sourira […] L’artiste a donn la statue une vie sans vie. Une vie d risoire qui n’est pas ma tresse d’elle-mÞme, une caricature de vie (RO 782).

The lack of futurity that is seen to characterize the statue is not limited to classical beautiful art; nonplastic forms of art such as literature too are for Levinas marked by the fixity of an infinite repetition (RO 784).

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What happens is that the monstrous and inhuman eternal duration is seen to turn the comedy of caricature into tragedy, in which freedom turns into necessity and powerlessness: Dans l’instant de la statue, – dans son avenir ternellement suspendu – le tragique – simultan it de la n cessit et de libert – peut s’accomplir : le pouvoir de la libert se fige en impuissance […] Dans l’ conomie g n rale de l’Þtre, l’art est le mouvement de la chute en deÅ du temps, dans le destin (RO 783).

When Levinas claims that the image has the character of an idol or a statue, he has the dangerous and irresponsible destiny in mind. Tragedy, where powerlessness turns into necessity, functions as an immoral consolation. The tragic fall into destiny is here also described as a fall “en deÅ du temps” – below or on “this side” of time. What does Levinas mean by this? I suggested above that Heidegger’s thinking was the most relevant backdrop for understanding Levinas’ critique, and I believe that also Heidegger’s temporal transcendence and its connection to imagination may be similar to what Levinas calls a fall “en deÅ du temps.” As we have seen, for Heidegger transcendence was not released from the finitude of time, but rather found in the imaginative structures of concern. In Heidegger’s analysis of art in “Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” the art work brings about another reaction than concern, but it nevertheless represents the world as a meaningful whole and even has allusions to destiny (Heidegger 1960, 45, 79). Levinas’ objection to Heidegger was that such transcendence is not able to capture the ethical transcendence that implied a certain break with the meaning-giving capacities of mind. This is ultimately also Levinas’ concern regarding art or esthetical transcendence, when he describes it as belonging on “this side of” time. For Levinas, the plasticity of art thereby represents an immanent transcendence where time freezes into destiny and irresponsibility. But why does this have to be? He is not so explicit on this, but the crucial point seems to be what happens to the subject. When it regards itself from the outside as an (esthetic) object, the subject protects itself from the constituting glances from the outside; it becomes a solipsist subject, a subject without shame. This shelter against one’s own vulnerability then becomes what hinders the subject from being touched by the Other’s vulnerability – and thereby what hinders the subject from assuming its responsibility. Given all these negative statements, it is perhaps difficult to claim that art can have a positive significance. We saw, however, that Levinas explicitly claimed that it does, and that this was connected to human happiness, on the condition that the value of art was not made absolute. The question now is whether there is something in art itself that is not only permissible, but actually has a value also for ethical transcendence in Levinas’ later work. This question of such a more implicit value is especially interesting in light of Levinas’ claim in AE that we need to go all the way to Nietzsche’s poetic

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writing, thereby seemingly displaying a much more positive attitude toward poetry than we have seen in the preceding sections.

The value of art In order to understand how art might have an implicit value for the ethical, we should return to the exoticism of art and what happens in esthetic sensation. We saw that this sensation implied a break with intentionality and worldliness, similar to what happened in the break with intentionality and worldliness in ethical meaning. The difference was that art permitted the subject to freeze this exoticism and make it meaningful, in other words to cover over the difference, wound or shame in the subject too early and thereby close the subject off from its surroundings (and ethical demands). Levinas considers the disengagement from the world that happens in art as a movement en deÅ , whereas the disengagement that happens in the ethical is seen to move au-del . The expression “en deÅ ” is often used by Levinas to describe a kind of transcendence that does not have the vertical aspect of the “au-del ” of ethical transcendence. In order to explain this difference between au-del and en deÅ , it might be useful to point to Levinas’ use of Jean Wahl’s terms “transascendence” and “transdescendence.” Transascendence implies the absolute distance or incompatibility that is at work in the metaphysical desire of ethical transcendence, as Levinas puts it in Totalit et Infini: “Le mouvement m taphysique est transcendant et la transcendance, comme d sir et inad quation, est n cessairement une transascendance” (TI 24). Rudi Visker argues with reference to this quote that transdescendence is different from transascendence by lacking the metaphysical term and the distance it implies. Transdescendence would thereby amount to the bad infinite of the il y a, which does not allow for a relationship with it (because there would be no metaphysician left), and which would collapse into immanence (Visker 1999, 237). I believe it is right to connect the movement en deÅ with the bad infinite of the il y a, but in light of Levinas’ later work I am not sure if it could easily be dismissed as an immoral collapse into immanence, although it does not suffice for ethical transcendence. The reason for this will be clear when we see how Levinas rethinks his notion of ethical transcendence in his later works, involving sensibility in a much more fundamental way. This challenges the aspects of understanding and meaning in a way that also problematizes the way transcendence au-del is thought. For as Levinas puts it in “Reality and its shadow,” the movement audel involves an element of understanding and communication with ideas that is not there in esthetical otherness: “Aller au del , c’est communiquer avec les id es, comprendre. La fonction de l’art ne consiste-t-elle pas ne pas

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comprendre?” Art is thus rather opposed to truth, understanding and even to “the order of revelation” (RO 773). The difference between the movement au-del and en deÅ can be further explicated by returning to how Levinas conceives of the work-character of art. This may also indicate how the movement en deÅ – as nontruth and as opposed to the order of revelation – can have a value beyond the tragic fall into destiny. The work-character does not imply any absolute or ethical value nor a justification of art for art’s sake. The latter is for Levinas a false prescription insofar as it situates art “au-dessus de la r alit et ne lui reconna t pas de ma tre; immorale dans la mesure o elle lib re l’artiste de ses devoirs d’homme et lui assure une pr tentieuse et facile noblesse” (RO 773). Instead, Levinas seeks to describe art in terms of a completion and a disengagement that does not place art as beyond reality – au del – toward the Platonic ideas and the eternal. Only the ethical can signify as absolute, implying the vertical aspect of the beyond being. The disengagement of art for Levinas belongs rather to what he considers as below or on “this side” – en deÅ : “Ne peut-on pas parler d’un d gagement en deÅ ? D’une interruption du temps par un mouvement allant en deÅ du temps, dans ces ‘interstices‘?” (RO 773). What does Levinas mean by determining the fall en deÅ as a fall into the “openings” or the “fissures” of time? Given the fact that Levinas sees the esthetic experience as having to do with sensation, the disengagement into the fissures of time seems to be what Levinas later describes in “Intentionalit et sensation.” As we saw in the section on Husserl and representation, Levinas recognized the difference found in the lateness of consciousness to itself as connected to the temporality of sensation as “the root of every alterity and every difference,” but later determined such difference as “modification without change.” The question is whether this difference nevertheless will be important as a moment of the ethical – as the meaninglessness that makes ethical meaning possible, as we saw in the first chapter. In this case the moment of nontruth and break with meaning that Levinas finds in art as a darkening of being would perhaps be what he aims at when he points to the necessity of Nietzsche’s poetic writing – as well as to the involvement with the il y a? If this moment of art thereby has a value for the ethical – perhaps as a certain challenge to reason – we should not forget what makes Levinas critical of the role of art in contemporary culture: its elevation to an absolute value and the tendency toward shamelessness (connected therewith). In order to prevent such elevation, Levinas wants to reinforce the role of the critic and also argue for the difference between art and criticism or interpretation. In Levinas’ exploration of the relationship between art and interpretation, e. g., in the first pages of “La r alit et son ombre,” he seeks to restore the role of criticism in confronting views that in different ways consider art to be a source of supreme insight. According to these views, through a poem or a painting the artist can say the ineffable or have knowledge of the absolute

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where common language falls short; the work of art seen as “plus r elle que la r alit , atteste la dignit de l’imagination artistique qui s’ rige en savoir de l’absolu” (RO 771). Such esthetic realism, where “surr alisme est un superlative,” would according to Levinas assign to criticism a parasitic existence (RO 771), since critique would never say or show things the way the artistic work does. For Levinas, however, this way of protecting the dignity of art by withholding it from critique may result in protecting its vanity. Only through critique can this false absolute dignity of art be revealed, as he comments about Mallarm : “Dire clairement ce qu’il dit obscur ment, c’est r v ler la vanit de son parler obscur” (RO 771). The critic is thereby justified as “l’homme qui a encore dire quelque chose quand tout a t dit; qui peut dire de l’œuvre autre chose que cette œuvre” (RO 772). In “La r alit et son ombre,” interpretation is also essential to maintain the value of the image as ambiguous: La valeur de l’image pour la philosophie r side dans sa situation entre deux temps et dans son ambigüit . Le philosophe d couvre, au-del du rocher ensorcel o elle se tient – tous ses possibles qui rampent autour. Il les saisit par l’interpr tation (RO 788).

By keeping the ambiguities and possibilities open, the interpretation of philosophy may thereby hinder the freezing of the image in the statue. For Levinas, it is therefore crucial that art and critique not be mixed together, and that art maintain an element of nontruth: On est donc en droit de se demander si v ritablement l’artiste conna t et parle […] Si l’art n’ tait originellement ni langage, ni connaissance – si, par l il se situait en dehors de l’ “Þtre au monde”, coextensif la v rit – la critique se trouverait r habilit e (RO 772).

As we will see in the next chapter, ethical critique implies more than what is presupposed here, although it is interesting that Levinas formulates ethical critique in a way that also involves ontology. The fundamental tensions of ontology and esthetics (as ontology par excellence) are therefore interesting. Although Levinas describes ethical critique in terms of a reduction to what he calls a pure Saying, we shall also see that the ethical cannot be said in another (pure) language that is independent of esthetics or ontology. Both the notions of the Saying and the Said as well as that of reduction are crucial to understanding the relationship between ethics and esthetics in Levinas’ later works. We must now turn to these ideas in the next section. We begin by pondering some of the important changes that can be traced between Levinas’ main works.

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1.5. Transcendence and the question of language The differences between Levinas’ two main works There is general agreement that, although the main concerns of Levinas remains the same over time, there are some important displacements in his thought that were at least partly influenced by Derrida’s critique already commented on. In her book Levinas between Ethics and Politics, Bettina Bergo summarized some of the most important insights that different commentators have given to the shift that takes place between his two main works, Totalit et Infini and Autrement qu’Þtre o au-del de l’essence. I refer here to some of the most important aspects of this shift, all of which have to do with how transcendence is seen in light of the problem of purity that Derrida pointed to. One of the major changes from TI to AE concerns the relationship to sensibility, which comes to play a more important role. This may be seen as an attempt on Levinas’ part to more strongly dissociate himself from the role theory and comprehension play in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s approaches to the Other ; the relationship between sensibility and ethical transcendence is explicitly emphasized in Levinas’ later works. One of the scholars who, according to Bergo, has most strongly emphasized this change is Fabio Ciaramelli, who showed that the sensible in AE is no longer primarily considered in terms of enjoyment of the separated self, but has become ethicized, “as vulnerability and exposure to the other are placed beside responsibility as virtually synonyms” (Bergo 1999, 142). We will study in detail the implications of this ethics of sensibility in the next chapter, but what this tells us above all is that Levinas will more clearly dissociate himself from an ethical escapism that understands the ethical encounter with the Other in a (traditional) metaphysical sense, liberating it from the facticity and boundaries of existence. Just as being in OE was seen as a condemnation impossible to escape, the promise of any escape – even through the ethical – now seems to be questioned. This will also bring the notion of the il y a closer to the ethical in a way that we will discuss further in the next chapter. But if such changes seem to bring Levinas closer to phenomenology, what happens with his insistence on transcendence? Levinas will certainly not give up the idea, but the way in which transcendence is conceived nevertheless changes in a way that, on the one hand, more clearly accepts the premises of phenomenology and the need for mediation through language, but on the other hand wants to maintain the notion of radical transcendence, though now as more unspeakable and absent. According to Bergo, Stephan Strasser provided an important contribution to this interpretation by demonstrating

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that transcendence is “now claimed to be unspeakable, and so not only refractory, or prior, to thematization” (Bergo 1999, 135). This affects the way the relationship with the Other is conceived; from being a relationship of dialogue and teaching, the absence of the face is more strongly emphasized in AE, with the consequence that “the ethical encounter is viewed from the side of the affected subject” (Bergo 1999, 136). Such a preference given to the analysis of the self of the ethical relationship instead of the epiphany of the face is indeed another major change of the later work. According to Bergo this is emphasized by Adriaan Peperzak, who points out that this change is necessitated “by the difficulties that beset any writing which attempts to describe what eludes representation” (Bergo 1999, 145). Therefore the wider problematic of language or mediation forces Levinas’ attention from the Other as other toward the affected subject. This change is further reflected in the increased attention given to notions such as trace and testimony. Transcendence, in other words, is sought to be preserved by insisting on its status as something unspeakable and irrepresentable, at the same time as the attention is moved from transcendence as something absolute to its impact on the affected subject. This also implies what Bergo calls a “return to the immanence and the first person voice,” refusing “to speak as if we ourselves could stand outside the encounter, describing it from a transcendent position” (Bergo 1999, 150 – 151). But in what way can the unspeakable and the irrepresentable still be conceived of in light of what here seems to be a return to immanence? As Bergo shows, Etienne Feron developed the problem of language by claiming that there is a “rapprochement between OBBE [AE] and Heidegger’s thinking of language and time” (Bergo 1999, 138), which leaves room for a richer concept of being than what one finds in Totalit et Infini. This means that, although the ethical is seen to have its source “otherwise than being or beyond essence,” it can no longer be explicated without this being or essence. Let us go more into how this change is developed in Etienne Feron’s book De l’id e de la transcendance la question du langage, where he distinguishes between two ways of thinking transcendence that, simply put, may be seen to characterize Levinas’ two main works, respectively. In the first way, transcendence is thought beyond being understood as totality, so that it is seen to exist in its own way : “il existe sa faÅon au-del de l’Þtre, ce qui reviendrait en d finitive d doubler le concept de l’Þtre et le rendre quivoque” (Feron 1992, 166). This understanding of the transcendent as another being would imply a certain doubling of being that, according to Feron, again requires a new concept serving as a common measure. The alternative to this conception of transcendence is to accept a wider notion of being, where one recognizes that the concept of being includes the signification of everything that exists, so that the beyond can only be thought in terms of an enigma or a questioning that challenges logic: “quitte ne pouvoir penser l’au-del que comme une interrogation qui d fie la logique, comme un trou e ou une fissure de l’Þtre

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signifiant de mani re seulement nigmatique” (Feron 1992, 166). According to Feron, TI is oriented toward the first solution, whereas AE rather tends to prefer the second. If Feron is right that Levinas accepts a wider notion of being, what does this mean more concretely? First of all, it means that it becomes problematic to thematize something transcendent outside of being, since being would immediately pervade this as well. But since Levinas does not want to return to immanence, how is he then to maintain the significance of transcendence? Can it be more than simply the limit of thought, and can accordingly the meaning of the ethical be more than an enigma? Levinas starts the first chapter of AE by examining the expression “otherwise than being,” and there he underlines that this otherwise neither means a being otherwise, nor a nonbeing or death (AE 13). Transcendence for Levinas rather signifies an exceeding of this difference between being and nonbeing, or as what we shall see that he refers to as an “excluded third.” Nevertheless, he continues, one asks whether not the adverb “otherwise” in the expression “otherwise than being” necessarily relates to the verb being: “[e]n sorte que le signifi du verbe Þtre serait in luctable dans tout dit, dans tout pens , dans tout senti” (AE 14). When Levinas claims that being is inevitable in everything said, thought or felt, he recognizes his dependence on the language of the philosophical tradition, which Derrida had accused him of disregarding in TI. This pervasion of the notion of being in everything thought is certainly challenging to the articulation of the meaning of transcendence. On the other hand, however, Levinas remarks that any attempt to negate being would be futile, since il y a remains: “L’il y a remplit le vide que laisse la n gation de l’Þtre” (AE 15). By claiming that, after a negation of being, there still is – il y a – Levinas seems to accept the necessity of a more impure approach to transcendence. In addition, by exploring the beyond as an adverb that necessarily relates to the verb being, Levinas not only signals the increased reflection on language in his thinking of transcendence, he also indicates a departure from the dualism that was not defended but neither entirely overcome in TI. According to Feron, this insight implies that the meaning of the beyond can no longer be described in terms of the signification “in itself” in the face of the Other – without going back to a prephenomenological metaphysics (Feron 1992, 172). As we shall see in the next two subsections, transcendence is instead imagined more profoundly from within the phenomenological framework itself, through a renewed reflection on language and temporality. As Feron showed, AE recognizes the meaning of being imposed by manifestation and truth (Feron 1992, 173), although we shall see that the meaning of the ethical can neither be reduced to the truth of manifestation. It is, however, only in being as manifestation that what Levinas calls the trace of transcendence can be found. In the next chapter we see that Levinas indeed thinks this trace to be more than an enigma challenging thought, as it is seen to

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imply responsibility in a deeply sensible manner. For the present situation, however, this analysis shows that the meaning of ethical transcendence cannot be considered in terms of a simple opposition or an alternative to the meaning of being, but rather, as Simon Critchley has put it, as a questioning from within. In order to understand how this happens, we need to explore the significance of “Saying” and “the Said”. According to Critchley, the “great innovation of Otherwise than Being […] is the model of the Saying and the Said as the way of explaining how the ethical signifies within ontological language” (Critchley 1999, 1, 7). For Levinas, the Said comprises ontological language understood as “statement, assertion, or proposition (of the form S is P), concerning which the truth or falsity can be ascertained,” whereas the Saying is “my exposure – corporeal, sensible – to the Other, my inability to refuse the Other’s approach” (Critchley 1999, 1, 7). What Critchley is pointing to is that ethical transcendence (or Saying) does not signify anything outside of ontology (the Said), but rather within. This does not, however, mean that transcendence can be reduced to ontology (or Saying reduced to the Said), but rather that ontology is being challenged from within, in terms of the transcendence of sensible exposure. Transcendence is consequently not escapism. The notion of a transcendent sensibility is thoroughly explored in the next part of the study, but in order to understand how this challenge happens, we should now first examine how Levinas understands the structure of ontology or the Said in terms of what he calls the “amphibology of being and beings” (AE 67 – 74). As we shall see, Levinas regards the tensions within ontology in a way that is very much similar to the tensions we have already described in the section on esthetics. After that it will be crucial to understand how Levinas nonetheless maintains a notion of radical transcendence, by analyzing the meaning of what Levinas calls a reduction to pure Saying. But let us first approach the notion of amphibology.

Ontology as the amphibology of being and beings In the amphibology of being and beings, Levinas develops his ideas of an ambiguity within the ontology inspired by Heidegger’s notion of ontological difference. The unusual concept of amphibology, however, is perhaps best known from a similar concept found in Kant’s first Critique, in the appendix to the transcendental analytic entitled “Von der Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe durch die Verwechselung des empirischen Verstandesgebrauch mit dem transzendentalen” (KrV A 260 – 292/B 316 – 349). Kant’s aim is to show the illusion in both the rationalist and empiricist lack of transcendental reflexion: In contrast to what these positions claim, the concepts of reflexion are

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equivocal; there is both an empirical and a transcendental use of understanding (Verstandesgebrauch). Such a fundamental ambiguity is also central to Levinas’ notion of amphibology, but in contrast to Kant he approaches the ambiguity on the level of language. This we see when the amphibology he talks about is first analyzed in a grammatical way as the relationship between the substantivity and the verbality of Being. On the one hand, Levinas analyzes language as a system of nouns, of an identification that gives something meaning as something: “la d nomination d signe ou constitue des identit s […] Identification qui est prestation de sens: ‘ceci en tant que cela.’ Dans leur sens, des tants se montrent unit s identiques …” (AE 62). There is here a doubling of being which is necessary to its identity and to language understood as designation. This identification is also necessary to provide meaning to beings. On the other hand, Levinas is concerned with the verbality of being, which is reached when the verb is not taken as a sign designing an action or an event, but in its very verbality, when the verb ceases to name. This is described as temporalisation or flow : “Le verbe Þtre dit la fluence du temps comme si le langage n’ quivalait pas sans quivoque la d nomination […] la temporalization, c’est le verbe de l’Þtre” (AE 60 – 61). Language as verbality is thereby more than a system of signs that identify entities; it also “makes the essence of being vibrate” and it is “as verb that language carries [porterait] sensible life” (AE 61). The amphibological difference is in other words a difference between the identity of substantivity (beings) on the one hand, and the temporal difference of verbality (being) on the other. This brings associations to Levinas’ earlier descriptions of being and beings from EE, as well as to his discussion of esthetical temporality. These passages involve similar notions of substantivity and verbality ; what is new in AE is not only that Levinas presents them much more systematically, but also that he ultimately relates them to ethical signification (in the discussion of the Saying and the Said). We shall return to this in the next section, but let us first look at how the earlier analyses contain preliminary analyses of the amphibology of being and beings. In EE, we saw that Levinas introduced Bergson’s analysis of time as duration and the instant in a way that resembles the grammatical analysis here. Duration was found in the disengagement of game-like phenomena such as music, whereas the instant represented a break with this through a relationship (or subjection) to one’s own existence and thereby the emergence of subjectivity. What interests us is that his instantaneousness was also characterized as a substantivity necessary to break with being in general: “dans le fait qu’il n’y a pas seulement anonymement de l’Þtre en g n ral, mais qu’il y a des Þtres susceptibles de noms. L’instant rompt l’anonymat de l’Þtre en g n ral” (EE 169). We also saw, however, that the instant’s break with the anonymity of the being did not represent the exteriority necessary for the liberation of the subject, which could happen only through the ethical relationship to the Other and its temporality : “Le temps et Autrui sont

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n cessaire sa liberation” (EE 171). In other words it would not be possible to break with anonymity through substantivity’s break with verbality – the two are inevitably connected. A similar connection of duration and instantaneousness was found in the discussion on esthetics, where the statue was seen to realize “le paradoxe d’un instant qui dure sans avenir” (RO 782). The similarities to the descriptions of amphibology are strong here too. First of all, the tendency in esthetics toward dispossession in the musicality or poetry of rhythm – also connected to the element of nontruth or the sensible character of reality – seems to come close to what Levinas describes as the verbality of being. In EE, Levinas saw esthetic sensation as emerging from an element that is refractory to the noun: “ tranger toute distinction entre un ‘dehors’ et un ‘dedans,’ se refusant mÞme la cat gorie du substantif” (EE 87). For Levinas this element was essential to poetry, which he considered something that is not a noun, that is unnamable: “qu’il y a quelque chose qui n’est pas, son tour, un objet, un nom; qui est innommable et ne peut appara tre que par la po sie” (EE 91). The esthetic sensation would thereby seem to come close to the verbality of being or its temporalization. However, as the example of the statue as a cessation of time showed (and we should recall Levinas’ claim that all art is ultimately statue), even this wildness of poetry is reintegrated into the world through the transparency or luminosity of forms and beauty. We see an interdependence of verbality and substantivity – like that between duration and the instant, or between poetry and prose – also in Levinas’ writing on esthetics. It is precisely this interdependence that Levinas takes up and develops with his notion of amphibology (and which he ultimately claims is challenged in the reduction to pure Saying). Let us therefore return to this notion in order to prepare for the exploration of how ethical signification – although transcendent as Saying – must nevertheless be said within this ontological difference of amphibology. Although the amphibology of being and beings is similar to Heidegger’s ontological difference, Levinas is less concerned with distinguishing Being from beings than with underlining their intertwinement in the sense that every identity can be transformed into a verb and vice versa. According to Levinas, however, such an intertwinement is also found in the way Heidegger speaks of the verbal Being as a being: L’ontologie fondamentale elle-mÞme, qui d nonce la confusion de l’Þtre et de l’ tant, parle de l’Þtre comme d’un tant identifi . Et la mutation est ambivalente. Toute identit nommable peut se muer en verbe (AE 74).

The mutation of identity into verbality or modality of essence is demonstrated in what Levinas refers to as “apophansis” or “predicative proposition” (AE 67). He uses the tautological proposition “le rouge rougeoie” – the red reddens – as an example in which the verb rougeoyer implies a temporalization and thereby a break with the identity of the noun (here in the form of a nominalized adjective). Such temporalization is what is meant by “resonance”

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(AE 68). It should not be taken only as something that may or may not happen to beings; for Levinas, it belongs more fundamentally to every access to essence (through its participation in Logos): “L’apophansis – le rouge rougeoie – ou A est A – ne double pas le r el. Dans la pr dication seulement peut s’entendre l’essence du rouge, ou le rougeoyer comme essence” (AE 69). The claim that reality is not doubled in the predicative preposition reflects Levinas’ analysis of resemblance in his essay on esthetics where he claimed that there is a resemblance in art that also is essential to reality as such: “La r alit tout enti re porte sur sa face sa propre all gorie en dehors de sa r v lation et de sa v rit ” (RO 780). This resemblance was not seen to double being, but rather to alter it in the process of delay, something that revealed being (whether of the person or of the work of art) as caricature (RO 778 – 779). When Levinas explains the significance of resonance here in AE, he also connects it to art and claims that this is what modern art is searching for : La recherche de l’art moderne – ou peut-Þtre plus exactement l’art au stade de la recherche – mais au stade jamais d pass – semble dans toute son esth tique, qu rir et entendre cette r sonance ou production de l’essence en guise d’œuvres d’art (AE 71).

The search for resonance in the work of art is, according to Levinas, typical in many forms of modern art, both in literature on writing and in music, as Levinas exemplifies with reference to a composition of Xenakis, in which “quiddit se faisant modalit ” (AE 71). In other words attention is moved from what the work is to the way it is. This resonance in the work of art implies an essential renewal, in which colors, forms, sounds, words, buildings – although they are about to be identified as beings – “se remettent Þtre” (AE 70). The resonance seems to represent something like a chaos force that breaks up the identity of the work and makes up its “inexhaustible diversity” (AE 70). In a similar way to his essay on esthetics, poetry is here also seen as “productrice de chant – de r sonance et de sonorit qui sont la verbalit du verbe ou l’essence” (AE 70). But as in RO’s analysis of the tragic beauty of the statue, the difference revealed in esthetics is not radical or absolute. Levinas rather seems to imply that the predicative proposition –where the identical entities resound – falls back at the absoluteness of beauty. Although in AE Levinas refers specifically to modern works of art, resonance should still be taken as something that belongs to the access of being as such. At the same time, we have seen that for Levinas esthetics is more than the analysis of works of art. Esthetics may indeed be said to be fundamental to amphibology itself, understood as ontology. This is shown in a remarkable passage in which Levinas claims that the predicative proposition does not happen as a result of psychological reflection, but

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partir de l’art, ostension par excellence – Dit, r duit au pur th me, l’exposition – absolue jusqu’ l’impudeur, capable de soutenir tous regards auxquels exclusivement elle se destine – Dit r duit au Beau, porteur de l’ontologie occidentale (AE 70).

Let us analyze this passage in some detail. First of all, it is interesting that Levinas characterizes the Said in terms of beauty as the bearer of Western ontology. This shows us that esthetics is not limited to analyses of artistic practice or to works of art, but is seen as something that pervades ontology : the predicative proposition in which identity is made into verbality is again borne by the identity of beauty. As we saw in the chapter on esthetics, some of the problem of beauty was the connection to tragedy and destiny – as a way of giving meaning to the exoticism of art at the expence of subjectivity. Whereas true subjectivity involved the notion of shame, the danger of esthetic subjectivity was its tendency to shamelessness. What we here see is that in terms of beauty the Said is likewise inclined to shamelessness, with its “ability to hold all the looks for which it is exclusively destined” (AE 70/OBBE 40). In shame, one does not control the impact of the other’s gaze, whereas this is exactly what happens in beauty, which accordingly functions as a shield against shame. The significance that art has for ontology is further expressed by the characterization of art as “ostention par excellence.” The term “ostension” refers to a certain showing that has connotations to a religious monstrance. Art as “ostension” thereby has an element of light that seems to reverse the darkening movement of art – which was seen as not belonging to the order of revelation (RO 773). This ostension or exhibition should be seen in connection with Levinas’ claim that there is a fixity of an already Said or a doxa underlying every identification or sense-giving. This doxa of the already Said implies for Levinas that there is a place that makes identification and orientation possible: “Avant toute r ceptivit , un d j dit d’avant les langues […] offrant aux langues historiques parl es par des peuples un lieu, leur permettant d’orienter et de polariser, leur guise, le divers du th matis ” (AE 62 – 63). For Levinas, such a doxa is necessary in order to reach the sensible at all, and it implies a surplus of spontaneity in thought. Levinas connects this doxa – or kerygma as he also calls it – to Kant’s transcendental spontaneity, to the synthesizing activity that is necessary to every objectivity, as Kant argued in the chapter on transcendental deduction of his first Critique (AE 62 – 63). The necessity of a doxa or a place required for orientation illustrates in an interesting way some of the changes that have taken place since Levinas’ early claim that a meaning capable of orientation must lie completely outside ontology. This is not to say that ethical meaning is reducible to such a moment of art, as the spontaneity of the doxa and the tendency to shamelessness still poses a problem. The fixity of the already Said is indeed what makes up the basic problem with art – and ontology – for Levinas; although its resonance implies that identity is broken in temporalization, this difference itself does

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not manage to put the subject radically in question and thereby risks protecting the shameless subject from ethical responsibility. This does not mean, however, that it is possible to determine the ethical independently of this amphibological tension; what does put the subject in question cannot be determined either as Being or as a being behind the amphibological Said: “L’essence ne se traduit pas seulement dans le Dit, ne s’y ‘exprime’ pas seulement, mais y r sonne originellement – mais amphibologiquement – en tant qu’essence. Il n’y a pas d’essence ni d’ tant derri re le Dit, derri re le Logos” (AE 69). This quote would illustrate Derrida’s claim that there can be no transcendent entity or essence outside of language, of Logos, or of what Levinas calls the Said. In a similar way, Levinas contends that it is only in the Said that one can talk meaningfully about truth and falsity : C’est dans l’ordre de l’Þtre seulement que rectification, v rit et erreur ont un sens et que la trahison est manquement une fid lit […] Entrer dans l’Þtre et la v rit , c’est entrer dans le Dit; l’Þtre est ins parable de son sens! Il est parl . Il est dans le logos (AE 77).

Although Levinas here claims that truth has a meaning only within the Said – to which the amphibology of being and beings belong – it is now time to explore how Levinas still believes that the ethical signifies beyond this amphibology, as “otherwise than being.” In what way is it possible to talk of such a beyond or a transcendence if ontology and esthetics are impossible to escape? As we shall see, this beyond can neither be determined as being nor as a being, but signifies through what he calls a reduction to pure Saying. Although Levinas speaks in the language of phenomenology, we shall see that this reduction also implies a certain challenge to logo-centric language. This also means, however, that any attempt at making sense of what happens in this reduction necessarily involves a certain betrayal, since it must necessarily use a language that cannot do justice to its meaning.

Transcendence as reduction to pure Saying Having seen that, with his analysis of amphibology, Levinas took seriously Derrida’s objections about the difficulty of escaping ontological language, we have to ask how Levinas nevertheless maintains the thought of a pure Saying that signifies beyond the amphibology. What kind of language is involved and what is the meaning of such Saying in light of his above-mentioned claim that truth belongs to the Said? In order to understand this, it is necessary to recall what was problematic for Levinas about the Said, something that I showed with reference to the analyses of esthetics and the tendencies to irresponsibility and shamelessness. With the notion of Saying, Levinas wants to reach the source of responsibility precisely as a reduction from the Said. Such reduction

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to Saying should be understood in terms of sensible exposure to the Other’s demand (as will be discussed in the next chapter), but we must first dwell upon the implications of such a reduction for the possibility of (logocentric) language and temporality. As we shall see, Levinas presupposes a whole new conception of temporality, in which the synchronic time that was seen to characterize the amphibology and the esthetic – where the instant/subjectivity and the duration/verbality were seen as interdependent – is broken down into what Levinas calls a “diachronic time.” The reason why Levinas introduces the notion of a diachronic time is because it allows for the radical passivity of Saying that for Levinas is necessary to responsibility. That Saying is thought of as radical passivity signals that the distinction between Saying and the Said is not the same as Saussure’s distinction between parole as the act of speaking and langue as a system of signs. Although the act of speaking may be involved in Saying, Levinas understands its significance as something more than the active aspect of language, namely as the radical passivity of a sensible exposure to the Other : “L’acte ‘de dire’ aura t , d s le d part, introduit ici comme la suprÞme passivit de l’exposition Autrui qu’est pr cis ment la responsabilit pour les libres initiatives de l’autre” (AE 81). As this quote shows, the responsibility that follows this exposure is radical in the sense that it not only means responsibility for the Other, but also for the other’s freedom. The implications of this responsibility are discussed below, but what is important here is to understand how such passivity is not based on an intentional or willful act, but implies an “inversion of intentionality” (AE 80) or an interruption of luminosity by a certain gratuity and disinterestedness (AE 75). The nonintentional darkness involved here also implies a break with the phenomenological conceptions of temporality (involving representation and imagination) that Levinas critiqued in Husserl and Heidegger. But since we saw that such conceptions were seen to be important to meaning, the question is whether the break with intentionality and luminosity also means that the ethical comes close to the nonintentional darkness of the il y a. This would again signal a closeness of Saying to what we have just described as the verbality of being. As I will attempt to show, Levinas might be seen as going in this direction with his emphasis on temporal difference, although he understands the temporal difference of Saying as more radical than the difference belonging to the verbality of amphibology. Whereas the poetic or verbal difference in ontology or esthetics was ultimately thought to return to identity and vice versa, Levinas at least attempts to keep open a more radical difference in the ethical reduction with the notion of diachronic temporality. The notion of diachrony should be understood in relation to the synchrony that Levinas finds to be present in the amphibology – and in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s conceptions of temporality. As Critchley pointed out, the etymology of synchrony suggests that it “is the bringing together, or understanding of

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phenomena within a unified temporal order,” whereas diachrony refers to “the coming apart of time, the inability to recall the succession of instants within memory or to predict the instants to come” (Critchley 1999, 1, 165). While the temporalization at play in the amphibology was always prone to fall back into identity and thereby be synchronized, Levinas talks about diachrony as a dispersion of time that cannot be reassembled in presence. Levinas thereby recurs to the notion of an immemorial time in order to maintain a difference that is more radical than the one that could be recollected in representation or imagination. As we have seen, notions such as the immemorial represents examples of how Levinas displaces the radically transcendent to the unspeakable and absent, in line with his claim that being is inevitable in everything said, thought or felt, so that what is then otherwise than being cannot really be said, though, or felt. At the same time, Levinas claims that transcendence nevertheless has an effect in the self, as a trace of something that cannot be grasped. And it is through the approach to how this trace is shown in the self that we can understand what the ethical implications of this diachrony really are for Levinas. Central to Levinas’ notion of diachrony is the idea that the identity of the self is broken so that the self is no longer “for itself”: “Cette diachronie du temps […] est disjonction de l’identit o le mÞme ne rejoint pas le mÞme: non-synth se, lassitude. Le pour soi de l’identit n’y est plus pour soi” (AE 88). What happens, in other words, is a splitting of the identity of the self in the sense that memory is no longer able to secure the unity of the self. Levinas describes this “nonsynthesis” of the self in terms of lassitude or aging: “C’est comme s nescence par-del la r cup ration de la m moire, que le temps – temps perdu sans retour – est diachronie et me concerne” (AE 88). At the same time, this self receives a new unicity from the outside, which is what allows for a change from the identity “for itself” to an identity “for the other”: “L’identit du mÞme dans le ‘je’ lui vient malgr soi du dehors, comme une lection ou comme l’inspiration, en guise de l’unicit d’assign . Le sujet est pour l’autre; son Þtre s’en va pour l’autre; son Þtre se meurt en signification” (AE 88). Levinas thereby challenges the very idea of the self as conatus or self-preservation, and replaces it with a more original notion of being for the Other. The next chapter treats in greater detail that the subject here is not only drawn out of its egoism to be for the Other ; the diachrony that challenges the very identity of the subject also involves a great deal of pain and a challenging of meaning. But what is the status of this diachrony – allowing the self to be “for the Other” – with respect to the amphibological tension between substantivity and verbality? On the one hand, when Levinas describes diachrony in terms of the passivity of aging – beyond the recollection in memory – he seems to challenge the identity of the self in the same manner as the resonance of the verbality of being. But he also brings in a certain notion of substantivity, though not one

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that is reducible to being. This is shown when Levinas says that the nominal form of the individual comes from someplace else than from the verbality of essence: “d’ailleurs que de la verbalit de l’essence” (AE 89). The subject understood as pure term or noun is inseparable from the notion of a call without possible evasion, which is also understood as its election (AE 89). But the response is produced in being as the temporality of aging: “C’est sous les esp ces de l’Þtre de cet tant en tant que temporalit dia-chronique du vieillissement, que se produit malgr moi, la r ponse un appel, direct comme un coup traumatisant” (AE 90). In other words, there is a difference between the call and the response. On the one hand, we see that the call as an election from the outside presupposes the substantivity of a metaphysical or religious dimension. On the other hand, the response must have its place in being, where it signifies as aging and traumatism. The self thus signifies in two different “orders” – being and otherwise than being – and the impossibility of uniting these two orders is the reason why the self is said to signify in diachrony : “Le sujet dit aussi proprement que possible […] n’est pas dans le temps, mais est la diachronie mÞme: dans l’identification du moi, vieillissement de celui que l’on ‘n’y reprendra’ jamais” (AE 96). What makes this diachrony differ from the amphibological difference is precisely the impossibility of being recollected or synchronized; the call is necessarily separated from the response. It is important to grasp why it is important for Levinas that the ethical self signifies in both these orders or, as Critchley puts it, as an “oscillation” of these orders (Critchley 1999, 1, 165). Why is being necessary – and why it is also crucial to carry out what Levinas calls a “reduction from being”? First of all, being is necessary in order to express the transcendent at all. We saw that already in the very first pages of AE Levinas asked whether not “le signifi du verbe Þtre serait in luctable dans tout dit, dans tout pens , dans tout senti” (AE 14). This does not mean that Levinas gives up the notion of transcendence, but that any attempt of expressing its meaning, even in thinking or feeling, implies a betrayal. The meaning of Saying cannot thus be grasped in its purity. The reduction to an otherwise than being, to a Saying beyond the Said, is nevertheless important, but it does not create another ethical realm, as it cannot be exposed otherwise than as another Said, as another on. The return to being is, however, not only a negative implication of the withdrawal of transcendence ; it is something that is required by ethics itself. This is clear when Levinas, after declaring the gratuity of Saying before all Said, nevertheless claims that ethics requires that Saying must be said : Mais la gratuit cependant exig e de la substitution – miracle de l’ thique d’avant la lumi re – il faut que ce Dire tonnant se fasse jour de par la gravit mÞme des questions qui l’assaillent. Il doit s’ taler et se rassembler en essence, se poser, s’hypostasier, se faire on dans la conscience et le savoir, se laisser voir, subir

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l’emprise de l’Þtre. Emprise que l’ thique, elle-mÞme, dans son Dire de responsabilit , exige. (AE 75)

What is interesting here is that Levinas so clearly points to the necessity for responsibility to be seen, known and exposed in being. According to Etienne Feron, the ontological status of Saying is a necessary condition for preventing transcendence from fading into “transcendental illusion” (Feron 1992, 183). The betrayal in ontology is thus necessary for the concreteness of responsibility. At the same time, the movement goes not only from the transcendent to ontology, but also back again. For although Levinas claims that Saying needs to be said in order to appear, the Said must again be reduced in order not to freeze into ideology ; philosophy is called upon to immediately reduce “l’ on qui triomphe dans le Dit” (AE 75). This is necessary in order to prevent the “hypostasis of an eon” from idolization (AE 75). Only through this reduction (in philosophy) can the diachronic difference be traced. Diachronic difference cannot be taken as an antinomy to synchrony, but rather signifies a residue or an immemorial within synchronized temporality itself. The ethical can thereby only signify within synchronized temporality – where Saying is translated or betrayed in the Said, but again requires a reduction from this order. So how does this reduction happen? As Levinas puts is, this happens as a certain unsaying of the Said: “L’autrement qu’Þtre s’ nonce dans un dire qui doit aussi se d dire pour arracher ainsi l’autrement qu’Þtre au dit o l’autrement qu’Þtre se met d j ne signifier qu’un Þtre autrement” (AE 19). Simon Critchley explained that such a reduction or unsaying is never pure, but expresses the ambiguity within the Said: The reduction uses the unavoidable language of the Said, and attempts to avoid, or unsay, that Said by finding the Saying within it. Yet – and this is crucial – this reduced Said retains a residue of the unsaid Said within the Saying. The reduction is never pure or complete. This leaves philosophy in a spiralling movement between two orders of discourse, that of the Saying and that of the Said, whereby the ethical signifies through the oscillation, or alternation, of these orders (Critchley 1999:1, 165).

According to this reading, there is a strong ambiguity connected to every ethical Saying, since it necessarily involves a certain hypocrisy or betrayal in the Said, which therefore again must be reduced. But according to Levinas this ambiguity of diachrony should not be sought in some metaphysical realm, but in recuperable temporalization itself – “sans temps perdu.” Only here is there “un laps de temps sans retour, une diachronie r fractaire toute synchronisation, une diachronie transcendante” (AE 22 – 23). To think of this diachrony as resisting synchronization does not, as Feron showed, mean posing a thesis that competes with ontology as an exposition of being in truth (Feron 1992, 125). It is rather in language as ontology that Levinas finds a trace of something more.

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This trace is described as the echo of a truth that cannot be thematized: V rit de ce qui n’entre pas dans un th me, elle se produit contre-temps ou en deux temps sans entrer en aucun, comme la critique sans fin – ou le scepticisme – qui dans un mouvement en vrille rend possible l’audace de la philosophie d truisant la conjonction o entrent sans cesse, son Dire et son Dit (AE 76).

Here Levinas demonstrates that it is the task of philosophy – in terms of critique and skepticism – to reduce the correlation between the Saying and the Said. But what does it mean that truth is produced “in two times,” “ contretemps,” as diachrony? Levinas seeks to express this ambiguous notion by developing a double reading of the notion of truth: ontological and “reductive.” On the one hand, we have seen that Levinas claims that “[c]’est dans l’ordre de l’Þtre seulement que rectification, v rit et erreur ont un sens” (AE 77). On the other hand, Levinas also speaks of a reduction from this ontological order, as a “reduction to inquietude,” so that “ la v rit sera rendu le terrain du d sint ressement qui permet de s parer v rit et id ologie” (AE 77). In other words, Levinas sees the danger of ideology in the ontological notion of truth, which therefore must be reduced. In this way we see that the reduction of the Said reflects Levinas’ critique against the tendency in esthetics to reintegrate the poetic or verbal difference into the world of identity, beauty and meaning, and the necessity of critique and philosophy to prevent the absolutization of art. But how do the reduction and the critique here exceed the critique described in the writing on esthetics? In order to fully grasp the ethical meaning thereof, it is crucial to understand critique and skepticism – through which the reduction to inquietude happens – not only in a theoretical sense; it is rather something that is turned toward the subject and concerns its very existence. It has to do with a certain shame when it is affected by the Other. In his later article “Notes sur le sens,” collected in De Dieu qui vient l’id e, Levinas similarly talks about a double aspect of truth. There he points to Augustine’s distinction between veritas lucens and veritas redarguens. The first corresponds to the ontological truth mentioned above, whereas the latter refers to a truth that accuses or puts the subject in question (DDVI 255). This accusing truth is connected to the question of “le sens de l’humain,” which for Levinas is not an ontological question, but an ethical one: “La question par excellence, ou la premi re question, n’est pas ‘pourquoi il y a de l’Þtre plut t que rien?’, mais ‘aije droit l’Þtre?’” (DDVI 257). The reduction involves the radical questioning of one’s own right to exist, which must not be regarded as a rational argument advocating suicide, but as a certain shame, it seems, of what is unjustified in the struggle for self-preservation (DDVI 254). We now start to get an idea of the reduction as something sensible, which will be an important aspect of the next chapter.

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Part 2: Transcendence And Sensibility

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2.1. Sensibility and the anarchy of the self Sensibility as enjoyment In the first part of the study we analyzed how Levinas understands the meaning of the ethical with respect to phenomenology, and we also discussed some of the changes that took place between Levinas’ two major works in this regard. It is now time to analyze one of the changes that is especially relevant for the understanding of the meaning of the ethical: the increased importance of sensibility. As we shall see, sensibility goes from playing a central role in Levinas’ pre-ethical phenomenological descriptions to becoming a crucial element of ethical transcendence. This connection of sensibility and transcendence is rather contraintuitive, and it also carries with it other problems than the ones that Levinas (according to Derrida) had with the too-purist conception of transcendence in TI. One example we discuss is the element of meaninglessness or pathology that seems to follow from the way he presents ethical sensibility. But let us first look into how Levinas understands the relationship between sensibility and ethical meaning in TI, in order to grasp why the analysis of sensibility had to undergo some important changes in Levinas’ later works. As we saw at the beginning of the first part, Levinas spoke of ethical signification as face, which implied that it signified in itself beyond any world, context and horizon. In TI, the ethical relationship to the Other was further described in terms of language, as expression, but this ethical language was not yet seen to participate in ontology or the Said. According to Etienne Feron, this attempt to preserve the purity of ethical meaning implied that sensibility could not belong to the ethical; sensibility was instead primarily conceived of in terms of enjoyment – and thereby exposed to the threat of the il y a: Totalit et Infini semblait isoler la sensibilit du langage en la rejetant dans la sph re de la jouissance, l’exposant ainsi la menace de non-sens de l’ “il y a”, pour faire valoir la puret de sens de la relation avec autrui en tant que langage, lequel pouvait du mÞme coup Þtre identifi la raison (Feron 1992, 125).

Although it may be debated to what degree the rationalistic elements of TI imply a devaluation of the sensible, it is clear that the role of sensibility in ethics is more strongly emphasized in AE. If we recall the analyses of sensibility and sensation in the analysis of ontology and esthetics in Levinas’ earlier writings (like EE and RO), we see that these were often rather somber ; whether connected to the il y a as a depersonalizing state of being without beings or to the esthetical notion of

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pure sensation in which intentionality “got lost.” We also saw, however, that Levinas attempted to describe intentionality in a more positive way than, according to him, was the case with the Heideggerian Sorge, and that this happened through sensible categories such as enjoyment, desire and nourishment. In TI the analyses of such notions are developed in greater depth and detail. Although the analysis of sensible intentionality may be said to be on a pre-ethical level, we shall see that it is not without importance for understanding the meaning of the ethical. First of all because ethical relationships cannot be thought of apart from it, although we shall see that such sensible intentionality cannot found ethical relationships. As Simon Critchley points out: “it is precisely this self of enjoyment that is capable of being claimed or called into question ethically by the other person” (Critchley 2002, 20). Second, because the way in which sensibility is conceived (which differs on some important points between TI and AE) has implications for the notion of ethical subjectivity. Let us therefore critically examine the analysis of sensibility in TI. Although some readers have argued that Levinas’ relationship to sensibility in TI is a negative one, others have emphasized that sensibility should not only be seen as contrary to ethical signification, but rather as “preparatory” for it.1 John Drabinski explored how the relationality of affective life is the clue to understanding how the subject may be situated with respect to transcendence “without the analysis falling back into the logic of positionality.” He especially emphasizes desire and enjoyment as ways of articulating this relationship to transcendence. Drabinski refers to Alphonso Lingis’ observation that “there are two sensibilities at work in Totalit et Infini: the sensibility of sensuous Enjoyment and the sensibility of the face.” While there is an important difference between these sensibilities, Drabinski nevertheless stresses the similarities in structure, or the fact that the sensibility at work in both the sensual life of the subject (Desire and Enjoyment) and in the ethical relationship (the face) occasion the same logic: the logic of sense-bestowal from the outside (Drabinski 2001, 107 – 108).

1 With reference to the reading of Ciaramelli, Bettina Bergo showed that “in the solitude of enjoyment, a sensibility unaffected by alterity might appear to be pre-ethical. However such a claim is untenable given the utter priority attributed to the face-to-face relation. On the other hand, the happiness of egoism stands as if ancillary to the ethical encounter, as its support” (Bergo 1999, 142). Similarly, Michael L. Morgan pointed to the importance of separation within enjoyment as a condition for giving: “Within enjoyment subject and object exhibit a separation, and this separation then becomes the framework in which language, discourse, description, perception, and so forth take place […] this situation makes responding to the face possible, for that response requires giving, a wholly benevolent giving, and it is only because of enjoyment, possession, labor, and habitation that I have something to give” (Morgan 2007, 107). It is unclear, however, just how explicit this is already in TI. Simon Critchley underlined how enjoyment goes from being ethically undetermined in TI to being a condition for ethics in AE (Critchley 1999, 2, 188).

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In order to understand how Levinas thinks such sense-bestowal from the outside in the sensibility of enjoyment, we need to investigate how Levinas compares enjoyment and representation in TI. To understand what the notion of sensibility as enjoyment means, we should first bring to light how enjoyment is seen as a particular form of intentionality, albeit different from the intentionality of representation. The notion of enjoyment is crucial to Levinas’ notion of life and has a sense more fundamental than suffering: “Vivre, c’est jouir de la vie. D sesp rer de la vie n’a de sens que parce que la vie est, originellement, bonheur. La souffrance est une d faillance du bonheur” (TI 118 – 119). In and through this primacy of enjoyment and happiness Levinas sets himself apart from Heidegger, for whom the Sorge structure appears more fundamental. Levinas rather emphasizes the relationship of life with its very conditions, with what nourishes it in a positive way and makes life love itself: “La vie est amour de la vie, rapport avec des contenus qui ne sont pas mon Þtre, mais plus chers que mon Þtre: penser, dormir, lire, travailler, se chauffer au soleil […]” (TI 115). This relationship of life to the content that makes life enjoyable and lovable is for Levinas taken as intentionality. Although Levinas maintains (and later moderates) that, for Husserl, every intentionality is or is founded on representation (TI 127), he still asks whether or not enjoyment is intentionality in a Husserlian sense – as the way that life relates to its contents: “La jouissance comme faÅon dont la vie se rapporte ses contenus, n’est-elle pas une forme de l’intentionnalit prise au sens husserlien de ce terme, dans une acceptation tr s large, comme fait universel de l’existence humaine?” (TI 127). However, although enjoyment is taken as intentionality, the intentionality of enjoyment is described in contrast to the intentionality of representation. Whereas the transcendental character of the latter for Levinas implies a subsumption of the exterior under the same, where the represented is reduced to its meaning, the intentionality of enjoyment implies a more open relationship to exteriority : “Elle consiste tenir l’ext riorit que suspend la m thode transcendantale incluse dans la repr sentation” (TI 133). As we shall see, this exteriority is here not yet an ethical exteriority, but as Critchley has put it, “the self-conscious subject of intentionality is reduced to a living subject that is subject to the conditions of its existence” (Critchley 2002, 30). What are the implications of these differences between enjoyment and representation for the notion of the subject? The difference between enjoyment and representation can be regarded as one between the particular and the universal, or between the life and death of the ego. Enjoyment is here seen as a condition for unicity and egoism. This unicity is not primarily understood as being some unique exemplary (like the Eiffel tower or the Mona Lisa), but as “existing without genre, without being the individuation of a concept” which is the egoism of happiness: “Cette structure, logiquement absurde, de l’unicit , cette non-participation au genre, est l’ go sme mÞme du bonheur” (TI 122). This happy egoism is also what

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makes up the unicity or personality of the person: “Et parce que la vie est bonheur, elle est personnelle. La personnalit de la personne, l’ips it du moi, plus que la particularit de l’atome et de l’individu, est la particularit du bonheur de la jouissance” (TI 119). This means that enjoyment is not seen as an attribute of the self, rather the self is seen as a “contraction of sentiment” where enjoyment is involved in a movement toward oneself (TI 123). As Drabinski puts it: “the quasi-object of affective life is that from which the subject originates. The I is supported by affectivity and thus cannot be said to contain affection” (Drabinski 2001, 113). Whereas such enjoyment is thought as a movement toward oneself and egoism, representation involves the opposite move, namely, a loss of ipseity in an emptying of one’s subjective substance: “Le moi identifi avec la raison – comme pouvoir de th matisation et d’objectivation – perd son ips it mÞme. Se repr senter, c’est se vider de sa substance subjective et insensibiliser la jouissance” (TI 124). This loss of personality in representation – as constituted by the affectivity and love of life – could thereby be seen as a movement toward death (of the subject); representation is thus a move from the particular toward the general and universal, “le passage naturel du particulier l’universel” (TI 132). The exteriority in enjoyment would on the contrary imply a bodily involvement in the world that turns representation into life and concreteness: “Tenir l’ext riorit n’ quivaut pas simplement affirmer le monde – mais s’y poser corporellement […] Le corps nu et indigent est le retournement mÞme, irr ductible une pens e, de la repr sentation en vie” (TI 133 – 134). As Drabinski has shown, the return to enjoyment “reverses the direction of sustenance, from the sustaining of the particular by the universal to the sustaining of the intention by that at which it aims” (Drabinski 2001, 114). According to him, such a reversal “leads Levinas to develop the logic of ‘living from’” (Drabinski 2001, 114). In this logic, Levinas talks about nourishment as a supporting thought and not the other way around: “L’aliment conditionne la pens e mÞme qui le penserait comme condition” (TI 135). In Levinas’ eyes, such a notion of enjoyment thereby implies a reversal of the transcendental constitution of meaning.2 What happens in representation is, according to Levinas, not only a loss of the enjoying, individual self, but a possession of the Other by the same. For him such a possession would erase the difference between the self and the object or between interiority and exteriority, because everything is determined by the same (TI 129). In the intentionality of representation, “le MÞme y est en relation avec l’Autre, mais de telle mani re, que l’Autre n’y d termine pas le MÞme, que c’est toujours le MÞme qui d termine l’Autre” (TI 130). In 2 “Si l’intentionnalit du ‘vivre de…’ qu’est proprement la jouissance, n’est pas constituante, ce n’est donc pas qu’un contenu insaisissable, inconcevable, inconvertible en sens de pens e, irr ductible au pr sent et par cons quent irrepr sentable, compromettait l’universalit de la repr sentation et de la m thode transcendantale” (TI 136).

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contrast to the egoist self of enjoyment, this notion of self as same is characterized by its unchangeability : “L’identit du MÞme inalt r et inalt rable dans ses rapports avec l’Autre, c’est bien le moi de la repr sentation” (TI 132). Still, while enjoyment is seen to break with this transcendental violence of the same, this does not yet imply an opening to ethical exteriority. As opposed to personal otherness, the intentionality of enjoyment relates to the impersonal or to what Levinas calls the “elemental,” which has the character of a faceless ambience or an ambience without borders: “A vrai dire, l’ l ment n’a pas de face du tout. On ne l’aborde pas. La relation ad quate son essence le d couvre pr cis ment comme un milieu: on y baigne. A l’ l ment, je suis toujours int rieur” (TI 138). The exteriority of enjoyment and “living from” does not thereby think the exteriority radically enough; the living in the elemental means being deaf toward the Other and outside of communication, i. e., it is a happy egoism: “Dans la jouissance, je suis absolument pour moi. Ego ste sans r f rence autrui – je suis seul sans solitude, innocemment go ste et seul. Pas contre les autres, pas ‘quant moi’ – mais enti rement sourd autrui, en dehors de toute communication et de tout refus de communiquer – sans oreilles comme ventre affam ” (TI 142). Although the exteriority of the enjoying ego is seen as different from the exteriority of ethical transcendence, Levinas nevertheless contends that such a radical separation of the enjoying ego is a necessary condition for being accused from the outside. As Drabinski pointed out, the enjoyment “model of relation to the exterior reverses the direction of sustenance, from the sustaining of the particular by the universal to the sustaining of the intention by that at which it aims” (Drabinski 2001, 114). Moreover, I hold that these pre-ethical analyses of enjoyment and representation are highly relevant to our question of meaning and the meaningless. Although enjoyment is described here as intentional and as constitutive to egoism, its connection to the elemental again brings it closer to the depersonalizing fall into destiny of the il y a and esthetic enjoyment. In light of the analyses of the first part, the distinction between enjoyment and representation may therefore be seen to correspond to that between the (Dionysian) meaninglessness of darkness and the (Apollonian) meaning of light. For Levinas then, neither enjoyment nor representation can bring about the exteriority that is necessary for an ethical self as affected by the face of the Other (as “Autrui”); the responsible self is neither founded in the being/life of enjoyment nor in the nothingness/death of representation. But, although we have seen that in AE Levinas continues to think ethical signification beyond ontology, the analysis of Saying and the Said nevertheless have shown that the ethical cannot be said without ontology. As such, we shall see in the next chapters that there is a similar tension between enjoyment and representation – one between life and death of the subject – also at play in the later discussion of ethical subjectivity. Before we do this, however, we need to analyze what

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happens in AE when Levinas explores the notion of an ethicized sensibility in the analysis of proximity. As we shall see, Levinas here attempts to think sensibility and responsibility to be connected in a more fundamental way than was the case in TI.

Ethicized sensibility Whereas the sensibility of enjoyment in TI was understood as a kind of intentionality, Levinas later speaks about ethicized sensibility as nonintentional. As we have seen, the nonintentional was also central to the notion of esthetic sensation, but in contrast to what tended to happen in art, Levinas more strongly emphasizes the resistance against any attempt of re-integrating this ethical sensibility into the world and intentionality. In the article “Langage et proximit ” from 1967, Levinas discusses ethical sensibility as proximity beyond intentionality, as the relationship to the Neighbor in the moral sense of the term (EDEHH 319). Herein sensibility is inevitably bound to the ethical relationship to the Other, as opposed to both the happy egoism of enjoyment and the depersonalizing esthetic sensation. But precisely what characterizes this sensible, ethical relationship of proximity? Levinas begins the chapter of AE entitled “Sensibilit et proximit ” by distinguishing two different ways of approaching sensibility. In the first, sensibility signifies in terms of intuition as opposed to the concept, whereas in the latter sensibility is seen as proximity prior to this distinction. Intuition, Levinas claims, “est d j la sensibilit se faisant id e” (AE 100). Sensibility is oriented toward “this as that” or toward what gives it identity, and this interconnection is essential to truth and knowledge: “Le savoir… se produit partir de l’intuition sensible qui est d j du sensible orient vers ce qui, au sein de l’image, s’annonce au-del de l’image, ceci en tant que ceci ou en tant que cela” (AE 100). Understood as intuition, sensibility thereby belongs to the order of manifestation or the Said. And as in the analysis of esthetics, sensibility is reintegrated in the world, and its non-sense made sense of. This is illustrated in the movement of knowledge, where according to Levinas “l’image est d j id e, symbole d’un autre image; la fois th me et ouverture, dessin et transparence” (AE 101). Levinas also talks of this sensibility, which is related to the intellect as belonging to gnoseology (AE 104), meaning that it cannot be seen apart from knowledge. Sensibility as intuition is in other words understood within the amphibological tension of the Said. While Levinas considers the sensibility of intuition to be reflected or mediated, he holds that ethical sensibility implies a certain immediacy, which is expressed with the notion of proximity, where sensibility is understood on a more fundamental and immediate level than in intuition, like touch prior to knowledge and experience of itself: “[A]vant de se muer en connaissance sur le dehors des choses – et pendant cette connaissance mÞme – le toucher est pure

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approche et proximit , irr ductible l’exp rience de la proximit ” (EDEHH 317). The sensibility of proximity, in other words, seems to signal a bodily relationship that involves a certain blindness of the mind. The difficult question is how such a notion of sensibility can be said to imply the radical transcendence that Levinas is aiming at. It is also unclear whether or not a similar immediate sensibility can be found in, say, some of Husserl’s analyses of sensibility. Let us therefore take a short detour through Levinas’ readings of Husserl’s notions of sensibility, in order to understand how Levinas himself regards immediate sensible transcendence as different from these conceptions. Although Levinas claimed in TI that representation remains an obsession throughout Husserl’s work (TI 127), in the article “Intentionalit et sensation” he recognizes that sensation plays an increasingly important role for Husserl: Loin de jouer dans le syst me le r le d’un r sidu dont l’ vacuation progressive devait intervenir, la sensation occupe dans la m ditation husserlienne une place de plus en plus grande (EDEHH 206).

In Levinas’ reading, Husserl understands sensation in two ways, as Empfindnis or as kinesthesia. In what Husserl with a neologism calls Empfindnis – which has been translated with “sensing” and distinguished from sensation as Empfindung3 – there is an indetermination by which the structure between the subject and object (or sentir – senti) is effaced in the sense that the relationship with the object is incarnate: “de par la sensation, la relation avec l’objet s’incarne” (EDEHH 218). But how can this relationship be imagined? Here Levinas has the Husserlian structure of the “touching touch” in mind and mentions the examples of the hand that touches, the tongue that tastes and the eye that sees, before being witnessed by an external perception. This sensing sensation is not an interior, given that is reached by introspection, something that would have presupposed an opposition of interiority and exteriority. Instead, “l’analyse des sensations en tant qu’Empfindnisse signifie pr cis ment l’ clatement de ce sch ma et de cette opposition,” and the body instead shows itself “comme le point central, comme le point z ro de toute exp rience” (EDEHH 217 – 218). The perceptive structure between the subject and the object in other words is broken down to an immediate and incarnate sensing in a way that may be seen to resemble Levinas’ description of the nonintentional esthetic sensation. In the other kind of sensation that Levinas finds in Husserl, namely kinesthesia, the body is the organ of free movement and the sensations are “animated by intention.” The kinesthetic sensations presuppose a mobility of 3 I owe this insight to Prof. Rudolf Bernet. Levinas writes in a footnote that he does not dare to create a neologism in French, but nevertheless suggests the word “sentance” as a possibility of such a neologism (EDEHH 217).

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the subject and the subsequent relativity of the perceived (EDEHH 219). They are thereby sensations of movement,4 pointing to a dynamic aspect, a modality of sensation that the Empfindnisse do not have: “Les Empfindnisse sont constitutives des qualit s objectives; les sensations kinesth tiques, anim es d’intentions, sont ‘motivation’” (EDEHH 219). For Levinas, this modality of sensation is essential to the production of transcendence in kinesthesia: “La transcendance se produit par la kinesth se: la pens e se d passe non pas en rencontrant une r alit objective, mais en entrant dans ce monde, pr tendument lointain” (EDEHH 221). The transcendence of kinesthetic sensations is thereby essential to the constitution of the world, which is not a static entity given to experience, but “se r f re des ‘points de vue’ librement adopt par un sujet” (EDEHH 219). In this kinesthetic sense, transcendence is ‘consciousness of the possible ’” (EDEHH 222). In this way we see that Husserl’s notion of kinesthetic sensation has much in common with Heidegger’s transcendence as being-in-the-world discussed in the first part. But how does the notion of kinesthetic sensation – as well as that of sensing – relate to Levinas’ ethical sensibility? Whereas Empfindnis or sensing comes closer to the immediate by being more remote from perception and intentionality, the kinesthetic sensation produces transcendence by means of an active, creative move; both kinds of sensation would thereby have important aspects in common with Levinas’ notion of ethical sensibility, involving both transcendence and the immediacy of touch. But whereas the transcendence in question in kinesthesia is similar to the world-immanent transcendence we saw Levinas reject, sensation as a more immediate sensing would also come close to Levinas’ notion of a depersonalizing esthetic sensation. So how does Levinas’ notion of a proximity beyond intentionality differ from how he conceives of sensibility in a Husserlian sense? I will not go into a discussion of whether there is a potential for ethics or transcendence in Husserl’s notion of sensibility that Levinas overlooks. For Levinas, Husserl’s notion of sensibility cannot suffice for what he calls “the relationship to the Neighbor in the moral sense of the term” (EDEHH 319). The relationship to the otherness of the Neighbor implies a being touched from the outside in a way that is more radically passive than Husserl’s touching touch. Likewise, this relationship would seem to exclude the freedom involved in Husserl’s notion of kinesthetic sensation. Crucial to the notion of proximity is the vulnerability of an exposure to affection which is seen as immediate: “Si toute ouverture comporte entendement, l’image dans l’intuition sensible a d j perdu l’imm diatet du sensible. L’exposition l’affection – la vuln rabilit – n’a sans doute pas la signification 4 Rudolf Bernet explains that “Kinästhetische Empfindungen sind ‘Bewegungsempfindungen‘ wobEI die empfundene Bewegung sowohl diejenige des als Wahrnehmungsorgan fungierenden Leibes als auch diejenige des wahrgenommenen Dinges sein kann” (Bernet, Kern, Marbach 1989, 123 – 124).

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de refl ter l’Þtre” (AE 102). In contrast to the sensible intuition that belongs to the movement of cognition, Levinas thinks this immediate sensibility or vulnerability in terms of enjoyment and suffering: “L’imm diatet du sensible, qui ne se r duit pas au r le gnos ologique assum par la sensation, est exposition la blessure et la jouissance – exposition la blessure dans la jouissance – ce qui permet la blessure d’atteindre la subjectivit du sujet se complaisant en soi et se posant pour soi” (AE 104). This notion of sensibility as exposure to suffering and enjoyment – or suffering in enjoyment – is connected to an accusation against the subjectivity of the subject itself; in this way Levinas’ sensibility is more “destructive” than Husserlian sensing or kinesthesia. But what does this reference to vulnerability as suffering in enjoyment mean – and how is it different from Levinas’ earlier descriptions of sensibility as enjoyment? In AE, enjoyment is described in the same manner as in TI and in Levinas’ earlier writings: as the immediate and pleasurable immersion in the elemental. The pleasure is seen as “complaisance de soi de la vie aimant la vie jusque dans le suicide,” and is also considered to be the very “egoit ” or substantiality of the subject (AE 105). But where sensibility in TI was mainly described in terms of enjoyment and happy egoism, AE adds the moment of wounding or suffering to pleasure, and this moment is precisely what hurts or splits the selfcomplacent ego: “Mais aussit t la ‘d nucl ation’ du bonheur imparfait qui est le battement de la sensibilit : non-co ncidence du Moi avec lui-mÞme, inqui tude, insomnie, au-del des retrouvailles du pr sent – doleur qui d sarÅonne le moi […]” (AE 105). Here we see that Levinas presents a tension between the identity and the splitting of the self within the immediate sensibility itself, whereas in TI Levinas described a tension between the egoity and the loss of egoity in the tension between enjoyment and representation. Moreover, whereas the latter tension was understood on a pre-ethical level prior to the ethical encounter with the Other, Levinas here approaches the ethical within the affected subject itself, in the sensible exposure of proximity. But if the ethicized sensibility is understood as what Levinas determines as “suffering in enjoyment,” implying a splitting of the identity of the subject, how can we maintain the ethical as meaningful? The loss of egoity that happens in proximity does not allow for meaning-creating representation, but rather presupposes a painful challenge to meaning – rather restlessness beyond the reconciliation of presence. What happens in suffering is even what we saw Levinas described as an “overflowing of meaning by non-sense” in order to preserve the (ethical) meaning (AE 105). The meaning of the ethical in other words implies a certain suffering, but it is important to understand that the suffering at play here should not be given an ethical significance in itself, but seen only in connection with the egoism of the enjoying self. What is hurt in suffering and meaninglessness is the self-complacent ego, through the vulnerability of exposure to being wounded in enjoyment. In the next chapter, we shall see that several readers have nevertheless

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opposed the changes that took place in Levinas’ later work, especially concerning the implications of this ethicized sensibility. Descriptions of the ethical relationship as traumatism or obsession, for example, led to accusations that it amounts to an “ethics of self-sacrifice.” We shall see that the notion of sacrifice indeed plays a role in Levinas’ quite radical descriptions of the ethical; but in order to do justice to the level of discourse at which Levinas operates, we first need to explore his explanations of how this ethicized sensibility influences his notion of the self. Let us therefore look at how he understands the self as anarchical and singular, and ask why Levinas believes such a self to be necessary for responsibility.

The anarchy of the singular self In order to understand how Levinas’ notion of responsibility became as radical as it did, it is necessary to grasp how he imagines the subject as irreplaceable. This means that the responsibility belongs to the assigned subject and no one else. We therefore necessarily lose something when we conceive of it in general terms, as we do here, although such betrayal is also unavoidable in philosophical explanations. In order to underline the importance of irreplaceability, however, Levinas often uses the first person voice of personal pronouns when he speaks about this thematic. For example, we see this when Levinas describes the responsible self as being obliged by an inescapable summons: “je suis assign sans recours, sans patrie, d j renvoy moi-mÞme, mais sans pouvoir m’y tenir – astreint avant de commencer” (AE 163). What kind of self is Levinas talking about here? Let us start by looking at the position of such a self – or more precisely the lack thereof. As we saw above, Levinas talks about a self without resort and without homeland. This homelessness of the self shows the radicality of the notion of the self as being for-the-other ; the self is no longer at home in itself but is tied to the other on a very fundamental level. Levinas signals this radicality when he in the opening section of the substitution chapter in AE puts as an epigram the paradoxical quote from Paul Celan: “Ich bin du, wenn ich ich bin” (AE 156). This quote first of all signals that being for-the-other for Levinas is not just the morality of a preconstituted subject, but rather refers to the very structure of subjectivity itself. But it also suggests the paradoxality of such an other-centered structure of the self. Levinas himself speaks of this structure as anarchical. Let us start by looking at how this anarchical structure distinguishes Levinas’ notion of the self from many other notions. By claiming that the subject is anarchical, Levinas means that the subject is not founded on a principle (AE 158), but rather has an anarchical source. Anarchy should not be confused with the various politico-historical

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expressions of the notion, but is rather understood in opposition to an “archical” thinking that believes self-consciousness to be constitutive for meaning and truth. The latter involves a notion of the subject that is based on a schematism in which we identify ourselves across temporal phases: comme si la vie subjective, sous les esp ces de la conscience, consistait pour l’Þtre luimÞme se perdre et se retrouver, pour se poss der en se montrant, en se proposant comme th me, en s’exposant dans la v rit […] reposant sur une myst rieuse op ration du sch matisme dans le langage gr ce auquel une id alit peut correspondre la dispersion d’aspects et d’images. (AE 156 – 157)

When Levinas claims that the identification of self-consciousness presupposes a mysterious schematism, he refers to the same “doxa of an already Said” that belonged to the analysis of amphibology, involving a surplus of spontaneity underlying every identification or sense-giving. The schematic identification in other words involves a possession of oneself by making oneself a theme, by schematizing or representing oneself. Whereas several theories of identity – an example would be Kant – presuppose a synthesizing activity where sensual or conceptual data are collected and unified under a concept, this formal schematism is precisely what Levinas rejects. For him, such an identity implies that the identity of the Me or I is doubled in a way where the self possesses itself in a “for-itself”: “Le pour soi de la conscience est ainsi le pouvoir mÞme que l’Þtre exerce sur lui-mÞme, sa volont , sa principaut ” (AE 161). This does not mean that Levinas thinks one can do without such a schematism, which necessarily belongs to the ontological structure of the Said. He refuses, however, to give any primacy to this notion of reflective identity in ethical subjectivity. By this critique of the “archical” structure of the self we can see what the subject is not. But how radical is really Levinas’ claim that such proximity is anarchical or un-founded? Although it is not founded in the schematism of consciousness, could it not be possible that it has another “foundation,” say, in some metaphysical truth? As we saw in the analysis of the reduction to Saying, the ethical would not signify in terms of a purely ethical realm, but rather as something questioning or breaking up ontology. At the same time, we have also seen that Levinas speaks about the self as being elected, thereby seemingly presupposing a metaphysical foundation of the self. We will come back to the discussion of what this metaphysical source means, but what is important here is that, with his notion of singularity, Levinas challenges not only the self ’s possession of self that happens in the schematism of self-consciousness, but also the very notion of foundation, so that the transcendence in question cannot be derived from a speculative metaphysics, at least not according to Levinas’ intention.5 5 John Drabinski, however, noted that there is a tension in Levinas’ self-understanding regarding the foundational problematic: “On the one hand, Levinas’s work does not seek to found expe-

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The significance of this anarchical structure is instead sought in the singularity of the subject, a singularity considered in purely sensible terms as proximity. The notion of sensibility as proximity implies that subjectivity is seen as “irr ductible la conscience et la th matisation […] mettant en chec tout sch matisme” (AE 157 – 158). Levinas approaches this singular self through the notion of recurrence beyond the “game of consciousness” – in order to describe a self that is “in oneself like in exile”: “Le terme en r currence sera recherch ici par-del – ou avant – la conscience et son jeu, par-del ou en deÅ de l’Þtre qu’elle th matise, hors l’Þtre et, des lors, en soi comme en exil” (AE 163). This break with the possession of oneself – this dispossession – means that instead of carrying one’s identity like one carries beings – “identiques en tant que dits sans d dit et qui, ainsi, se th matisent et apparaissent la conscience” (AE 165) – there is a recurrence to a self prior to any synthesizing activity of identification and gathering together in memory or expectation, or retention and protention (AE 165). Levinas describes this recurrence as a “movement of the Moi into soi” – which is also seen as an anachoresis “dans sa peau” (AE 172). The term anachoresis has the connotation of a (hermit) withdrawal, and to withdraw into one’s skin underlines the bodily character of this singularity. Levinas thereby seeks to avoid escapism; the withdrawal is not into nothing, rather it is described as a retreat “qui ne va pas hors du monde pour s’installer chim riquement” (AE 172). As with the notion of excendence in the early writings – which had been characterized as “the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break with that most radical and unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I [moi] is oneself [soi-mÞme]” (OE 55) – the possibility of a romantic escape is excluded. But where facticity in the early period meant an enchainment to being, Levinas tries with his notion of recurrence to express a notion of the self that reaches beyond ontology – not into nothing, but not remaining in being either. The withdrawal into one’s skin is transcendent – “hors l’ordre” – that is, into a region where “dans l’Autre, tout le poids de l’Þtre se porte et se supporte” (AE 172). But what is this withdrawal about? And how can Levinas describe a withdrawal into one’s skin as transcendent? Is not rather the recurrence into this deeply bodily condition directly opposed to the transcending move? We have already noted how Levinas’ radical notion of transcendence implies that it no longer can be thought separately from its affection on being. But it is not yet clear how a withdrawal into one’s skin at the same time can be into the Other. For we have seen that withdrawal into oneself does not have to be ethical; esthetic sensations could be seen as a withdrawal into both irresponsibility and shamelessness, closed off from the other. What makes

rience. On the other hand, justice – which Levinas explicitly links with the diachronic structure of sensibility and proximity […] – founds consciousness” (Drabinski 2001, 210).

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this ethical sensibility open or exposed seems to be its openness to suffering, which is what clears away the last protective shields of the subject. As the previous subsection showed, ethical sensibility is for Levinas more than enjoyment – it is vulnerability, which also implies an “exposure to being wounded and insulted”: Dans l’exposition aux blessures et aux outrages, dans le sentir de la responsabilit , le soi-mÞme est provoqu comme irremplaÅable, comme vou , sans d mission possible aux autres et, ainsi, comme incarn pour le «s’offrir» – pour souffrir et pour donner – et, ainsi, un et unique (AE 167).

In other words, it is the extreme vulnerability of the subject, the sacrificing of oneself – which is not a conscious act but an exposure of the body – that constitutes the responsibility that makes the subject unique. Although the giving of the body may seem to come from the subject itself – for example, in the conscious act of resignation – Levinas maintains that the unicity of the self is understood as an inescapable election to responsibility, in which the subject is accused from the outside – “in its skin”: Dans la responsabilit en tant qu’assign ou lu – du dehors, assign comme irremplaÅable – s’accuse le sujet dans sa peau – mal dans sa peau – tranchant sur toute relation, individu l’instar d’un tant d signable comme t|de ti (AE 167).

The important thing here is that the accusation is not directed primarily against the actions of a preconstituted subject, but against the very subjectivity of the subject. This implies that, when Levinas uses rather pathological expressions such as persecution to describe the subject’s affection by the other, this affectedness should not be thought of as the content of an insane (preconstituted) consciousness; it is rather as “la forme selon laquelle le Moi s’affecte et qui est une d fection de la conscience” (AE 160). The characterization of persecution as form and not content is important, but brings us to the question of whether Levinas manages to maintain the notion of anarchy beyond the transcendental. It will become clear, however, that Levinas uses the notion of form for his particular purpose, and at the same time he intends to challenge the structure of binary concepts such as form and content, universal and particular. This is clear when Levinas talks about the nature of the singularity of the elected subject. This singularity, he explains, is not a formal collecting of sensible content; rather than form, the unity of the self is, en quelque faÅon, le contenu lui-mÞme, la r currence n’ tant qu’une “surench re” de l’unit . Unit dans sa forme et dans son contenu, le soi-mÞme est singularit , en deÅ de la distinction du particulier et d’universel (AE 170).

The unity of the self is thus understood both in terms of form and content, as a singularity beyond the distinction between the particular and the universal. We shall see that this notion of singularity is important for Levinas’ thought

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about irreplaceable responsibility. But how can such a paradoxical notion be articulated? When Levinas imagines the singularity of the subject to lie beyond the opposition of content and form, or of the particular and the universal, he does this in a similar way as Derrida later develops in On the Name. Derrida seeks a way of escaping binary language through the Greek/Platonic name of khora as defying the logic of noncontradiction. Khora is neither sensible nor intelligible, but belongs to a third genus. At the same time, neither the khora nor Levinas’ descriptions of the subject can make sense simply by means of negative or paradoxical descriptions of what it is not. The very process of sense-giving requires a betraying translation (in language understood as the Said), and both Derrida (with Plato) and Levinas recur to an esthetics of tropology – or figures – in order to describe the paradoxical nature of what defies the logic of noncontradiction. Although Derrida underlines that “the translations remain caught in networks of interpretations,” and that the khora itself can never be reached, the figures that Timaeus proposes point to something more than negations: “mother,” “nurse,” “receptacle,” “imprintbearer” (Der : ON 93). These Platonic metaphors of maternity and materiality as something containing – not as something contained – is close to how Levinas uses the metaphor of maternity or womb to describe how identity as recurrence relates to and is prior to reflective identity : “Le se du “se maintenir” ou de “se perdre” ou du “se retrouver,” n’est pas un r sultat, mais la matrice mÞme des relations ou des v nements qu’expriment ces verbes pronominaux. Et l’ vocation de la maternit dans cette m taphore nous sugg re le sens propre du soi-mÞme. Le soi-mÞme ne peut pas se faire, il est d j fait de passivit absolu” (AE 165). What does it mean that Levinas claims that the metaphor of maternity expresses the proper sense of the self ? Is this the figure of a good and stable identity? What can be said of the identity of such a self ? On the one hand, when Levinas maintains that the self has a presynthetic unity, this implies the notion of a unity that is atomic or in-dividual: “Ces qualifications n gatives de la subjectivit du soi-mÞme, ne consacrent pas un je ne sais quel myst re ineffable, mais confirment l’unit pr -synth tique, pr -logique et en un certain sens atomique – c’est- -dire in-dividuelle du soi qui l’empÞche de se scinder, de se s parer de soi pour se contempler […]” (AE 169). This unity or in-dividuality of the subject is connected to its irreplaceable responsibility, but as opposed to the division of the self in self-contemplation, this in-dividuality is no peaceful condition. The fact that it is without rest in itself rather makes it atomic only in a certain sense – the subject is described as “more and more one” “jusqu’ l’ clatement, la fission, l’ouverture” (AE 169). The unity of the self in other words also implies a paradoxical opening or fission. What kind of fission is here at stake? In the pre-ethical analysis of enjoyment and representation in TI, Levinas described the notions as implying a certain unity and fission of the self, respectively. The egoism of

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happiness was seen as ipseity insofar as it was understood as existing without genre, without being the individuation of a concept (TI 122), whereas representation was seen as a loss of ipseity and an emptying of one’s subjective substance (TI 124). But the fission of the ethical subject in AE is not that of the self relating to oneself, as in the schematism of representation. The only “modification” that happens to the sensible identity of the ethical self is that of aging, “dans la permanence d’une perte de soi” (AE 169). The characterization of aging as a permanent loss of self brings association to a kenotic selfemptying, a thought we will return to when we discuss the messianic connotations of Levinas’ descriptions of the ethical self. The difference of aging is thus not a difference of a self-enclosed self, but of a self open to the Other, a vulnerable self: “Vuln rabilit dont la maternit dans son int gral ‘pour l’autre’ est l’ultime sens et qui est la signifiance mÞme de la signification” (AE 170). By connecting the radical passivity of aging to the metaphor of maternity, by likening it to the mother who (unconsciously) sacrifices herself for the child, Levinas approaches the significance of the excessive responsibility toward the Other as a bodily openness. In addition, Levinas here comes close to answering the question of meaning (par excellence) or, as he formulates it, “the very signification of signification.” This, however, brings us closer to the crucial question of how the meaning of such ethical subjectivity can be imagined. On the one hand, Levinas talks about the singularity as a possibility for giving and responsibility and thus seemingly something good and meaningful. This positive significance is clear when, for example, the identity of the self is characterized by a “surplus of responsibility”: “L’un pour l’autre qui n’est pas un d faut d’intuition, mais le surplus de la responsabilit . C’est ma responsabilit pour l’autre qui est le pour de la relation, la signifiance mÞme de la signification laquelle signifie dans le Dire avant de se montrer dans le Dit” (AE 158). But when this giving at the same time implies the kenotic self-emptying in terms of aging and sacrifice, this would leave the subject without rest in itself and hence seem to challenge its meaningfulness. How can these seemingly different aspects of the self be brought together? Although Levinas uses metaphors such as maternity to express this notion of the self, he continues to struggle with language in order to approach what is behind the metaphor, thereby returning to paradoxical and ambiguous statements. For example, he describes the recurrence in itself in its skin as happening in an “entre-temps” that separates inspiration from expiration: L’expression «dans sa peau» n’est pas de l’en soi une m taphore: il s’agit d’une r currence dans le temps mort ou l’entre-temps qui s pare l’inspiration et l’expiration, la diastole et la systole du cœur battant sourdement contre la paroi de son peau (AE 172).

The notion of an entre-temps – which here appears to be another expression of diachrony – seems to be a way of thinking together the unity and the fission of

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the subject. The self is thought of in terms of a recurrence to a “dead time” between the breathing in of inspiration and the breathing out of expiration.6 Etienne Feron explored how this “dynamics of respiration” testifies to the noncoincidence of the subject and its interwovenness with the Other. On the one hand, he explains, the subject is structured as “the-other-in-the same” in inspiration (AE 176). This other in the same, which may easily be taken as a violent intrusion, is for Levinas not alienating: “Cette inspiration du MÞme par l’Autre n’ali ne pas le Je en le diluant dans l’ext riorit ; elle en fait au contraire un Þtre accul et assign soi” (Feron 1992, 138). On the other hand, he continues, this subject’s constant Saying or exposure to the Other is like an expiration, where the subject cannot stop emptying itself: “la subjectivit assign e soi ne trouve pas en soi le repos de l’ataraxie. Elle demeure encore et toujours Dire, exposition autrui. L’exposition est comme une expiration qui ne serait jamais assez profonde et par laquelle le sujet se viderait de soi sans pouvoir s’arrÞter de se vider” (Feron 1992, 138). According to this dynamic, the inspiration of the self by the Other secures the unity of the self as the uniqueness of its assignation, whereas the expiration as exposition to the Other involves a kenotic self-emptying that splits the subject. Although Levinas will maintain that both the unity and fission of the self presupposes a source beyond the amphibological level of the Said, the relationship between inspiration and expiration could in some sense be seen to reflect the amphibological difference between substantivity and verbality, or the relationship between meaning and the meaningless. To be sure, Levinas maintains these aspects in one (maybe paradoxical) notion – or dynamics – of the self, but we shall see that his readers often tend to emphasize one of the aspects over the other, e. g., the nonalienating aspect over the splitting – or the other way around. This is especially clear in much of the work that has been done on the notions of responsibility and the traumatized self in Levinas’ work. These readings in different directions allow us to gain a better idea of the tensions that are at play in Levinas’ work, and we should therefore turn to the analysis of responsibility.

6 “Le corps n’est pas seulement l’image ou la figure – il est l’en soi-mÞme de la contraction de l’ips it et de son clatement” (AE 172).

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2.2. Responsibility and the traumatized self Substitution and the excess of responsibility We have seen that Levinas’ concept of a singular self that is understood in sensible terms is important for his notion of responsibility. Now we have to explore what he means by this responsibility and also how it has been received by others. For it is clear that in his writings on responsibility we find some of the most radical and to some people provocative statements. There are principally two points that provoke: the extent of responsibility as infinite on the one hand, and the nature of responsibility as obsessive and prior to choice on the other. Both are seen as threatening the humanity and the dignity of the self. In this chapter I delve more into both Levinas’ own descriptions of responsibility and some of the most influential critique that has been raised against him, as well as into Levinas’ own answers to such critique. My main concern is to explore a rather difficult but central question of how Levinas is to be read as an ethical thinker. To what degree can his writings on responsibility be applied in practical life? Different answers to this question seem to underlie at least part of the disagreement about the implications of his notion of responsibility for the dignity of the self. Both the infinity of responsibility and the seemingly pathological character of the relationship to the Other is important to Levinas’ notion of substitution. This concept is among the most central in AE and describes a relationship to the Other in which I am not only responsible for the Other, but also for the very responsibility of the Other. I always have “un d gr de responsabilit de plus, la responsabilit pour la responsabilit de l’autre” (AE 186). This surplus of responsibility on my behalf implies that the Other always holds an authority over me (DDVI 230), and that I am always more responsible to the Other than the Other is to me (EI 99). Levinas famously exemplifies this with the quote from Dostoyevsky : “Nous sommes tous coupables de tout et de tous devant nous, et moi plus que les autres” (EI 95).7 The messianic connotations of these quotations are striking, and an interesting question is what kind of messianism Levinas is alluding to. The word “substitution” implies that something or someone stands for something/-one else, and in French (as in English) it is also used to describe the substitution of Christ on the cross for the sins of others. When we notice that Levinas also uses words such as “incarnation” and “expiation” to describe the 7 It is important to remember that Levinas’ first person voice is here willed, in order to underline the singularity (and nontranscendentality) of ethical subjectivity.

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ethical subject, he seems to bring Christological connotations into his notion of ethical subjectivity. The main content of Christological substitution is nevertheless questioned; Levinas would consider a notion of substitution in which a divine Savior takes on the guilt of humans to be a threat to the radicality of responsibility. But when Levinas talks about substitution as the passivity of incarnation, in which the self is exposed to suffering and to the “don qui co te,” he comes close to applying Christological notions to the ethical self, a self in which the ego is no longer constitutive of itself, but the Other is in me in a way in which I am for the Other. The messianic substitution is thus no longer seen as an event happening to a preconstituted self, but instead itself constitutive of ethical subjectivity. With this radical passivity and unconditional giving the subject is – like the Messiah – “porteur du monde”: Passivit extrÞme de l’ «incarnation» – Þtre expos la maladie, la souffrance, la mort, c’est Þtre expos la compassion et, Soi, au don qui co te. En deÅ du z ro de l’inertie et du n ant, en d ficit d’Þtre en soi et non pas dans l’Þtre, pr cis ment sans lieu o poser la tÞte, dans le non-lieu et, ainsi, sans condition, le soi-mÞme se montrera porteur du monde – le portant, le souffrant, chec du repos et de la patrie, et corr latif de la pers cution – substitution l’autre. (AE 172 – 173)

As we will see in the last chapter, Levinas himself discusses messianism explicitly in relation to Judaism. The important question here is whether “messianic subjectivity” makes the ethical subject into a kind of savior, in a way that hinders a healthy and reciprocal relationship to the Other? Indeed, how can Levinas describe ethical passivity as being exposed to sickness, to suffering and even to death without doing violence to the dignity of the self ? In his early writings, Levinas found in the notion of Being a bad infinity, an infinity that was seen as evil or as intolerable, not because of being finite but because of being without limits. What we now have to ask is what makes this ethical infinity of my responsibility into something good, when I am not only responsible for my neighbor, but indeed for the whole universe? Another controversial point is that, according to Levinas, I am not only responsible for the Other’s misery, but also for the very responsibility that the Other might have toward me, as Levinas puts it in the following quote: “Etre-soi, autrement qu’Þtre, se d s-int resser c’est porter la mis re et la faillite de l’autre et mÞme la responsabilit que l’autre peut avoir de moi” (AE 186). In these passages, however, Levinas is not so much concerned with the actual extent of responsibility as with what he with a neologism calls the incondition of the subject’s generosity. The word, which could perhaps be rendered in English as “uncondition,”points to the unconditional character of responsibility. There is in other words a moment where my considerations about the fairness of my responsibility are not allowed to interfere; the “uncondition” thus implies an independence from questions that reveal a concern for myself, such as “Pourquoi Autrui me concerne? Que m’est H cube ? Suis-je le gardien de mon fr re?” (AE 186).

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The absence of questioning in responsibility brings us to the second point of criticism toward Levinas’ notion of responsibility : its obsessive character. We saw in the last chapter that the subject had an anarchical structure that distinguished it from the reflective nature of self-consciousness. But when Levinas speaks of responsibility in similar ways as “uncondition,” he is also referring to the condition of the subject as hostage, which clarifies the anarchical and sensible self as a self that is deeply interwoven with the Other. Another way to put the claim that the subject is hostage is to say that the relationship to the Other has a traumatic structure. This structure is visible in the claim that the authority (implied in the thought of the Other as “height”) that commands me cannot be questioned or even represented: Je suis comme ordonn du dehors – traumatiquement command – sans int rioriser par la repr sentation et le concept l’autorit qui me commande. Sans me demander : Que m’est-elle donc? D’o vient son droit de commander? Qu’ai-je fait pour Þtre d’embl e d biteur? (AE 139).

This lack of questioning in light of the Other concerns what we saw in the last section: that the ethical relationship to the Other involves an immediacy more fundamental than the reflective sensibility present in, say, empathy. This immediate relationship was also called proximity, and involved a vulnerability – understood as exposure to suffering and enjoyment – that was considered to be more fundamental than the approach to the Other based on analogy or reciprocity. As such the ethical relationship to the Other is not primarily about empathizing with the Other’s vulnerability (by comparing it to one’s own); rather, it is understood as a traumatic disturbance, as a persecuting obsession that reverses my intentionality. For Levinas responsibility for the Other can therefore never mean an altruistic will, natural instinct of benevolence or love (AE 176 – 177). The traumatizing command that comes from the outside is without question, made possible by an affective attachment, a desire where the desired Other is even described as “the undesirable”: “Les obligations sont disproportionn es tout engagement pris ou prendre ou tenir dans un pr sent. Rien, en un sens, n’est plus encombrant que le prochain. Ce d sir n’est-il pas l’ind sirable mÞme?” (AE 140). This traumatic attachment to the undesirable, to what hurts me, presupposes an immediacy of the relationship where every reference is absent, so that Levinas can talk about obsession and enduring of the Other. The exposure to suffering that is necessarily involved in this obsession or traumatism is illustrated when Levinas talks about the relationship to the Other as persecution. In a passage of AE, the face of the neighbor is seen “in its persecuting hate,” and instead of urging resistance, Levinas is here occupied with what happens when the persecutor signifies as face and thereby evokes pity, which implies enduring this persecution. The condition for such enduring, Levinas contends, is deprival of every reference:

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Le visage du prochain dans sa haine pers cutrice peut, de par cette m chancet mÞme, obs der pitoyable – quivoque ou nigme que sans se d rober, seul le pers cut priv de toute r f rence (en tant que priv de tout recours et de tout secours – et c’est l son unicit ou son identit d’unique!) est mÞme de supporter (AE 175).

This accusation of the subject, in other words, is such that I cannot question its legitimacy and cannot escape it; the Other obsesses and persecutes me in a seemingly Kafkaesque situation. Not only does Levinas seem to advocate the questioning of one’s right to exist, as we saw in the first section of Chapter 1, but this extreme humility sometimes seems to amount to moral masochism, as when Levinas cites Lamentations 3:30 to describe the passivity of persecution: “Tendre la joue celui qui frappe et Þtre rassasi de honte” (AE 176). Turning the other cheek and being satisfied by shame – what is this if not the descriptions of a pathological condition, where the excess of responsibility threatens the very dignity of the self ? Before we consider the objections against Levinas’ pathological language in more detail, we should notice that Levinas is well aware of the pathological aspect of this violent language when he describes the ethical relationship as “madness of the soul”: “l’un-pour-l’autre, peut Þtre possession et psychose; l’ame est d j grain de folie” (AE 111). There are, however, different ways of reading these allusions to madness. On the one hand, some readers have been strongly critical toward the possible negative implications of this lack of reference in the ethical relationship and see it as an advocacy for a dangerous ethics of self-sacrifice.8 It has also been asked what such a traumatic affection like persecution, obsession and questioning of the subject means for the possibility of a responsible responding to the Other, for response-ability. Does not such a responding require a healthy self, rather than a “madness of the soul”? Others have tried to “save” Levinas from these accusations, not only by pointing to other aspects in Levinas which help modify the most radical utterances, but in particular by going into the methodological considerations of how such passages are to be read. Simply put, the claim is that since Levinas with his notion of traumatism operates on a preintentional level (prior to the altruism which would require reflection or freedom of choice), he cannot be accused of advocating an ethics of self-sacrifice. This would also make any direct application of Levinas’ pathological descriptions problematic. The obsessive structure – seen as what breaks up the intentional structure of the self – should rather be understood on a phenomenological level, as a condition for both morality and freedom. This level prior to morality is revealed when Levinas sees the condition of hostage as what opens the way for goodness in the first place:

8 See e. g. John Milbank (2001)

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C’est par la condition d’otage qu’il peut y avoir dans le monde piti , compassion, pardon et proximit . MÞme le peu qu’on en trouve, mÞme le simple «apr s-vousMonsieur.» L’incondition d’otage n’est pas le cas limite de la solidarit , mais la condition de toute solidarit (AE 186).

The condition of hostage – the immediate, traumatic relationship to the Other – is thereby seen as anterior to and constitutive of freedom, which “alli au Bien, situe au-del et en dehors de toute essence” (AE 187).9 In order to further clarify the level at which Levinas speaks here, we should consider his own reflections on the objections to his radical claims on responsibility. In the interview published as Ethique et Infini, Philippe Nemo asks Levinas about the meaning of such claims. Levinas maintains that “I always have a greater responsibility than the others,” or that “I am even responsible for the persecutions that I undergo,” but in the same breath he seems to moderate his claims. First of all by emphasizing that responsibility can only be assumed from a first person perspective: “je suis responsable des pers cutions que je subis. Mais seulement moi! Mes ‘proches’ ou ‘mon peuple’ sont d j les autres et, pour eux, je r clame justice” (EI 95). In other words, Levinas is reluctant to present responsibility as a universal prescription; as we have seen, he rather seeks to grasp the meaning of what happens to the subject, or the meaning of this exception or “uncondition” of the self through which ethics is possible. Second, in the concrete ethical situation, Levinas admits that the justice claimed for the Other should also be valid for oneself. The quotes about excessive responsibility are according to him extreme and must not be understood apart from their contexts: “Dans le concr te,” he claims, “beaucoup d’autres consid rations interviennent et exigent la justice mÞme pour moi.” This statement may seem surprising: Is it not the loss of context precisely what happens in the ethical situation? This is true, but as we have seen, the ethical does not signify in terms of an alternative to ontology, and the loss of context is not all there is to say about how ethics signifies. Justice is also important, although Levinas claims that “la justice n’a de sens que si elle conserve l’esprit du d s-inter-essement qui anime l’id e de la responsabilit pour l’autre homme” (EI 96). Levinas here demonstrates the two “levels” that are at work in his ethical thought, reflected in his notion of diachrony. On the one hand, Levinas recognizes the need for justice, not only for the Other but also for myself. The notion of justice in Levinas’ works is connected to the notion of the third. This notion is introduced in TI in the section called “Autrui et les Autres,” to discuss the problem of an infinite responsibility toward Autrui – facing the presence of the third as the Other’s Other or the plurality of Others (TI 233 – 236). As we will see in the next chapter, there is also a religious dimension to the notion of the third, but the important matter here is that the plurality of 9 Here we again see an ambivalence regarding the foundational problematic, where the hostage is seen to be a “condition” for freedom but at the same time described as an “uncondition.”

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Others requires justice and thereby the ability to discern and judge, in other words, precisely the reflection and consciousness that the ethical traumatism is seen to break with. On the other hand, however, Levinas claims that this level of justice cannot be foundational – it only makes sense if it maintains the spirit of disinterestedness that animates responsibility, in which the subject, in Levinas’ words, becomes “hostage.” This condition of hostage is for him both utopian and in some sense inhuman: “On peut se montrer scandalis par cette conception utopique et, pour un moi, inhumaine. Mais l’humanit de l’humain – la vraie vie – est absente” (EI 96). This utopian – or placeless – moment of ethics is important. If we recall the analysis of the Saying and the Said from the last chapter, we saw there that pure Saying could not be maintained as another being, but signified as a questioning or un-saying of the Said. This implied that the Saying and the Said could not be understood as ethical “alternatives” or different views of life, but had to be seen in a movement of oscillation. It is this oscillation that is thematized here; the level of justice or the third (corresponding to the Said) is animated or receives its meaning through the radical questioning of the self in responsibility (corresponding to Saying). But the utopian character of this Saying means that the loss of context that happens in persecution and traumatism cannot be taken as a state, but rather as a questioning of consciousness. While this does not mean that there are no problems left connected to this discourse, we should nevertheless have come closer to understanding how Levinas himself regards the problems of ethics and pathology. This brings us to the question of the ethical significance of notions like substitution. Many readers have remarked that it is problematic to regard substitution as a request in an ethics of self-sacrifice. In his article “To which question is ‘substitution’ the answer,” Robert Bernasconi, on the one hand, suggests that “Levinas introduces the concept of substitution to address the question of what the subject must be like for ethics to be possible” (Bernasconi 2002, 234 – 235). In this sense substitution is not taken as an ethical request, but as a transcendental or quasitranscendental condition for ethics (Bernasconi 2002, 250). But for Bernasconi substitution is also something more than an ethics of ethics; it also concerns the meaning of concrete experience: “Substitution happens. In some sense it has already happened. But in so far as it is so, it radically alters the meaning of the transcendental question” (Bernasconi 2002, 250). This experience leads Levinas to explore the meaning of persecution, obsession, substitution, etc., as something other than prescriptions for a preconstituted subject. The meaning of substitution is rather something that for Levinas is an-archical and thereby challenges the transcendental constitution of the self.

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The critique of pathology One of the most severe and recurring complaints against Levinas, particularly important parts of his later thinking, concerns the pathological character of his descriptions of the ethical relationship to the Other. The way he considers ethical signification as exceeding the intentional, the theoretical, etc., is similar to what we saw earlier, but the more severe implications of this lack of horizon or meaning are now explicit when Levinas characterizes this relationship as obsession, persecution, etc. To be sure, Levinas maintains that the exposure to the Other in vulnerability is a good thing, as an accusation in which the self is put in accusative and accused in a way that dispossesses the Moi from its dominating imperialism (AE 174 – 175). However, he also wants to make a point of the excessiveness or non-sense involved in this relationship. Particular to Levinas’ notion of infinite responsibility is that it is not correlated with actual guilt or freedom of choice. As we have seen, Levinas is instead concerned with understanding the conditions for goodness and compassion precisely in the “uncondition” or independence from oneself (AE 186). Substitution refers to something that happens prior to choice, which means that the ethical relationship as a being-for-the-other cannot be understood as free commitment, as Levinas claims in a headline: “l’un-pourl’autre n’est pas un engagement” (AE 214). He explains what he means by claiming that the ethical signification as proximity is not justified by commitment, but the other way around: “Ce n’est pas l’engagement qui d crit la signification, c’est la signification – l’un-pour-l’autre de la proximit – qui justifie tout engagement” (AE 217). Although several readers have overlooked this premoral level of Levinas’ analyses, other readers seem to know what Levinas is aiming at and still question his premises. We shall go into some of the most important objections here, some of which shows an awareness of Levinas’ level of discourse and some of which seemingly do not. One of the things that have provoked several readers is precisely the emphasis on the ethical relationship of responsibility before freedom. Michel Haar points to the paradoxical in the attempt to unite passivity and responsibility : “Si le sujet est ‘otage de l’Autre,’ sans choix possible […], cette ‘responsabilit passive’ est un complet paradoxe, folie aux yeux de la philosophie” (Haar 1998, 535). Apart from making no sense, the problem for Haar is that Levinas’ emphasis on the immediacy in ethics is also that a relationship to the Other is no longer possible; for him, an ethical relationship must imply mediation, a detour or a place between the self and the Other where there can be an ethos or an ethics (Haar 1998, 536). Let us look at the latter objection first. We have seen that Levinas does recognize the need for a place where ethics operates in the concrete, although he also sees the need for a utopian moment in the relationship to the Other.

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This ambiguity between place and utopia is also reflected in an ambiguity of otherness, concerning both with the concrete neighbor and an absent transcendence. This means that, although Levinas is no doubt concerned with the concrete relationship to the Other, there is also something in this relationship that resists mediation and thereby also challenges the place of ethics. This ambiguity may appear confusing, but it is crucial to have in mind if one is to recognize Levinas’ level of discourse. The former objection about the paradox of responsibility before freedom is more interesting, although we also shall see that the call to responsibility has metaphysical implications. Paul Ricoeur is nevertheless among those who seem to assume that, in order to speak meaningfully about responsibility, one has to presuppose a certain freedom to respond to the call of the Other, so that the voice of the Other telling me not to kill can become my own. This is expounded in his book Soi-mÞme comme un autre, where Ricoeur considers Levinas’ talk of a responsibility before any prior commitment as belonging to a hyperbolic or excessive language (Ricoeur 1990, 390 – 391). Ricoeur raises critical objections to the shift in language from Totalit et Infini (1961) to Autrement qu’Þtre (1974), not only because he understands the excessive language of the latter to be meaningless, but also because the immediacy and lack of reference may open a way to violence within the ethical relationship. With expressions such as obsession, persecution and substitution, “l’autre,” Ricoeur writes, “n’est plus ici le ma tre de justice, comme c’ tait le cas dans Totalit et Infini, mais l’offenseur, lequel, en tant qu’offenseur, ne requiert pas moins le geste qui pardonne et qui expie” (Ricoeur 1990, 390). For Ricoeur the self is so exposed to the Other that there can be no protection for a self that might be able to respond responsibly to the appeal of the Other. In contrast to the language of AE, Ricoeur underlines the importance of presupposing “une capacit d’accueil, de discrimination et de reconnaissance, qui rel ve mon sens d’une autre philosophie du MÞme que celle laquelle r plique la philosophie de l’Autre” (Ricoeur 1990, 391). Only a self that is reflectively structured, he claims, can discern the good from the bad Other and prevent the subject from being violated. In other words, Ricoeur accuses Levinas of presenting us with a poor notion of the self, and wanting to add to this self the capacities of reception, of discrimination and of recognition: Il faut bien accorder au soi une capacit d’accueil qui r sulte d’une structure r flexive, mieux d finie par son pouvoir de reprise sur des objectifications pr alables que par une s paration initiale. Bien plus, ne faut-il pas joindre cette capacit d’accueil une capacit de discernement et de reconnaissance, compte tenu de ce que l’alt rit de l’Autre ne se laisse pas r sumer dans ce qui parait bien n’Þtre qu’une des figures de l’Autre, celle du ma tre qui enseigne, d s lors que l’on doit prendre en compte celle de l’offenseur dans l’Autrement qu’Þtre? Et que dire de l’Autre, quand il est le bourreau? Et qui donc distinguera le ma tre du bourreau? le ma tre qui appelle un disciple, du ma tre qui requiert seulement un esclave? (Ricoeur 1990, 391)

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Ricoeur’s accusations that the Levinasian conception of the self is unable to discern the good from the bad Other – and is thereby open to abuse – are severe. They should be taken seriously, despite the fact that Ricoeur did not really address the problem according to Levinas’ own premises (which he rejects as excessive) and may thereby be imposing his own premises on the Levinasian matter. The latter is exemplified with the question of choice; whereas the characterization of the ethical relationship as traumatic and obsessive precisely excludes the choice that an active self-sacrifice presupposes, Ricoeur still seems to imply that there must be a choice prior to the ethical relationship to the Other in Levinas. Another problem with Ricoeur’s reading is that, as we have seen, Levinas actually does recognize the need for judgment and reflection when considering the notion of the third, which according to Levinas – at least as expressed it in his interview with Philippe Nemo – is necessary “in the concrete.” Christine de Bauw explored the different conceptions of self-structure prior to the arrival of the Other underlying Levinas’ and Ricoeur’s thinking. For Ricoeur, she explains, the relationship to the Other is characterized by a hermeneutical distance absent in Levinas: Le caract re herm neutique de ce rapport signifie que ce qui pr c de la subjectivit , sans se livrer purement et simplement, se prÞte toutefois l’interpr tation […] La r flexion consiste dans ce rapport. tre soi, c’est pr cis ment d velopper cette «identit narrative» o se temporalise le rapport du sujet ce qui la pr c de et ses propres productions (De Bauw 1997, 143).

As we have already seen, Levinas understands ethical identity different than the reflective understanding of Ricoeur’s narrative identity. Richard A. Cohen likewise pointed to what he sees as a “fundamental misinterpretation” in Ricoeur’s reduction of the Levinasian Other to a “master of justice.” According to Cohen, Ricoeur reduces alterity to norms and relies on Gadamer’s understanding of authority, where the recognition of the Other’s superiority is an act of freedom and reason and where “authority has nothing to do with obedience, but rather with knowledge” (R. Cohen 2001, 292 – 293). Yet despite such objections against Ricoeur’s reading of Levinas, doesn’t Ricoeur still point to a crucial difficulty with Levinas’ mixing of pathological and ethical language? For although Levinas’ analyses of the substitution of the self is to be considered on a level prior to the subject’s ability to choose and reflect, how is it possible to think this deep passivity of sensible exposure as a source of ethics? Is it possible to draw such a clear line between an ethical interpretation of the language of pathology and pure madness? Let us look at this dilemma by discussing the meaning of traumatism for Levinas and his various readers.

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Traumatism and psychoanalysis When exploring the notion of traumatism in Levinas, several readers have tried to understand Levinas’ language with respect to the psychoanalytical trauma, especially that of Freud and Lacan. This may seem problematic, not only because Levinas himself sometimes displayed a deep skepticism toward the psychoanalytical paradigm10 but also because there are methodological differences between psychoanalysis and the phenomenological (and especially the metaphysical) level on which Levinas operates. We shall return to the question of methodology and how Levinas moves beyond psychoanalysis in the next section, but first let us look at the interesting parallels to the psychoanalytical descriptions of trauma, as this brings to the fore the possible dangers with Levinas’ pathological language. In the article “The Traumatized Subject,” Rudolf Bernet remarks that it is “astonishing to note how much the Levinasian analysis of the ’traumatically commanded’ subject […] agrees with psychoanalytic conceptions of trauma” (Bernet 2000, 165). In the psychoanalytic sense, he writes, trauma “is the event of the encounter of the subject with something totally foreign that nevertheless irremediably concerns it and does so right in its most intimate identity” (Bernet 2000, 162). In psychoanalytical analyses, this encounter is seen as something bad and destructive for the subject, whereas Levinas sees the immediacy of the trauma as something good, indeed as the very (un)condition of goodness. One of the central questions to answer here is to what degree Levinas’ ethical trauma resembles a bad trauma in the psychoanalytical sense. There are differing opinions about this among Levinas’ readers, who have related the Levinasian trauma to a psychoanalytical paradigm, as exemplified in the readings of Rudi Visker and Simon Critchley. Despite his disagreement with Levinas, Visker maintains that for Levinas the ethical trauma is good and healing and must be distinguished from the bad trauma of psychoanalysis (Visker 2000). Critchley, for his part, defends a reading that brings Levinas closer to psychoanalysis and implies that Levinas must be read against his own denials of and resistances to psychoanalysis.11 We need to discover whether the parallels between Levinas’ ethical trauma and the trauma described in psychoanalysis are mainly formal and concern the violent language, or whether there are also important parallels in the content of the trauma. And if 10 According to Critchley, Levinas’ skepticism toward psychoanalysis is due to the fact that “[f]or Levinas, psychoanalysis is simply part and parcel of the anti-humanism of the human sciences, which, in criticizing the sovereignty of ‘Man’ risks losing sight of the holiness of the human (la saintet de l’humain)” (Critchley 1999:2, 185). 11 According to Critchley, Levinas’ closeness to psychoanalysis is exemplified in his analysis of the subject, which “proceeds from a rigorous distinction between subject and consciousness or between le Soi (the self) and le Moi (the ego),” displaying strong parallels to the Freudian notion of the unconscious (Critchley 1999:2, 186 – 187).

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so, can trauma – normally considered as something bad – still represent something good? If we first consider the more formal characteristics of trauma, we can find parallels between Levinas’ notions of time, trace and diachrony to those found in the trauma of psychoanalysis. In both cases the subject is deeply affected by something that escapes representation and meaning. For Levinas, the break with representation in traumatism involves the notion of a temporality other than my own, one that is not constituted by capacities of intentionality for retention and protention: “Le prochain me frappe avant de me frapper comme si je l’avais entendu avant qu’il ne parle. Anachronisme qui atteste une temporalit diff rente de celle qui scande la conscience. Elle d monte le temps r cup rable de l’histoire et de la m moire o la repr sentation se continue” (AE 141). This reference to an affection that belongs to an irretrievable past prior to what happens in the concrete encounter with the Other presupposes the notion of diachrony – where the time of the Other is different from my own and escapes my attempts to grasp it. The suppression of my capacities of representation, imagination, etc., happens in proximity, where, according to Levinas, a commandment is heard as if coming from an immemorial past: “Dans la proximit s’entend un commandement venu comme d’un pass imm morial: qui ne fut jamais pr sent, qui n’a commenc dans aucune libert . Cette faÅon du prochain est visage” (AE 141). The reference to the immemorial past may seem far from the concrete past of the psychoanalytical trauma. Nevertheless, in psychoanalysis we may find similarities to Levinas’ temporality. Rudolf Bernet drew attention to how the appearance of the Other as trace in Levinas is reflected both in Freud’s notion of a “quite particular temporality that characterizes the traumatic event” where the symptom becomes a representation of what the subject cannot represent, as well as in Lacan’s “analysis of trauma as the irruption of a real deprived of imaginary or symbolic representation” (Bernet 2000, 161). According to Bernet, Lacan’s “real” is of such foreignness that it “evades all signification,” and thereby points to a more radical otherness than does the Freudian symptom.12 But just as Levinas’ notion of traumatism entails a disturbance of the power of imagination, both Freud and Lacan understand trauma as the breaking through of something irrepresentable. The example of trauma that Bernet uses – following Freud and Lacan – is that of sexual seduction of a child by an adult. Being incapable of saying “yes” or “no,” the seduced one is not yet a subject, and “such a seduction is untimely and premature.” At the same time, it is not nothing, “since this event touches the subject without it knowing how to speak of it and since it leaves indelible 12 As Bernet points out, this is connected to the fact that for Lacan “the trauma does not manifest itself under the form of a neurotic symptom but of a hallucination” (Bernet 2000, 164). The shock of this trauma also “has the strange property of blinding only the traumatized subject and of opening the eyes of all external observers” (Bernet 2000, 165).

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traces” (Bernet 2000, 162). Prior to the constitution of the adult subject, the traumatizing event is experienced as a shock, as Freud exemplifies with the famous case of “Emma,” who had a traumatic experience of being sexually approached when she was a child. As an adult, Emma developed a phobia against entering a clothing store alone, having first been groped as a child through her clothes by a grinning shopkeeper and then as a 12-year-old having fled a store in panic after having experienced two salesmen laughing at what she believed to be her clothes. Rudi Visker cites Freud in saying that the latter laughter “awakened the (unconscious) memories of the other, first shop, which in turn exposed her to what ‘she could not have experienced then, a release of sexuality, which asserted itself in anxiety’” (Visker 2000, 259). Visker explains: The scene with the salesman provided the more sexually «mature» Emma with a context through which her psychic apparatus could, via association, «read,» interpret, and understand the first scene as something sexual (Visker 2000, 260).

The signification of trauma is not accessible at the time of the trauma, but “only attaches itself to the first experience ’retroactively’ (nachträglich) at the time of the later event, and manifests itself in the symptom of phobia” (Bernet 2000, 162 – 163). Here we find important structural similarities to Levinas’ descriptions of ethical trauma. In both cases the trauma refers to something that happens to the subject prior to its ability to choose, and the notion of Nachträglichkeit has strong similarities to the notion of the trace. The notion of a face without form as a signification without horizon or context is, according to Bernet, not only close to the notion of the real as “that which remains ‘beyond signification’” – it is also senseless in relation to the symbolic codes of the world (Bernet 2000, 165 – 166). The similarities between Levinas’ notion of the face and Lacan’s notion of the real has also been noted by Simon Critchley, who points out that the real belongs to “the limit of all symbolization” and is a “guarantor of what Lacan calls, following a certain idiosynchratic and radical reading of Freud, das Ding, la Chose, the Thing.” According to Critchley, this latter term is overdetermined with “suggestive but unspecific Heideggerian and Kantian allusions,” suggesting something ungraspable that withdraws from comprehension, like Levinas’ face. And indeed, Critchley claims, “nothing prevents the face of the other being das Ding and, furthermore, that there is a common formal structure to the ethical experience in Levinas and Lacan” (Critchley 1999, 2, 198 – 199). But even if the formal structure of the experience – as the rupture of symbolization, another time, etc. – is the same, how are we to think of the content of the traumatizing event? What or who traumatizes and is it fruitful to compare pathological traumas – like those caused by sexual abuse – and the ethical trauma? Are they simply speaking of quite different things, or does the pointing out of the similarities indicate that Levinas’ demarcation between

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mental illness and ethics is indeed challenged? Readers of Levinas have emphasized different aspects of trauma in order to argue for or against the “sanity” of his ethics. Whereas some have focused on the Other in the ethical trauma as weak and vulnerable, in order to emphasize what trauma really is about, other readers have been more attentive to the weakness of the traumatized subject. Let us have a closer look at this discussion of the traumatizing event, with the implications of these differences in focus. As Rudolf Bernet sees it, the important difference between Freud’s and Lacan’s conceptions of trauma on the one hand, and that of Levinas on the other, is that for Levinas the attention is directed toward what is unbearable for the Other and not for me: “it is always a matter of the alterity of the other person and of what is, in the first place, unbearable for him and not for me, of what his life lacks and not mine” (Bernet 2000, 166). The pattern then does not seem to be that I suffer because of the Other’s violation, but rather that I suffer because of the Other’s suffering (which eventually makes him violate me). The subject is affected by the weakness of the Other, as Levinas claims when he describes the face of the Other as escaping representation not because it is too brutal but because it is too weak. The face of the Other chappe la repr sentation; il est la d fection mÞme de la ph nom nalit . Non pas parce que trop brutal pour appara tre, mais parce que, en un sens, trop faible, nonph nom ne parce que «moins» que le ph nom ne. Le d voilement du visage est nudit – non-forme – abandon de soi, vieillissement, mourir ; plus nu que la nudit : pauvret , peau rides: trace de soi-mÞme. (AE 141)

In describing the nonphenomenality of the face as nakedness, poverty and wrinkled skin, Levinas not only emphasizes the secrecy of the Other and the unattainability of his or her otherness, but also the vulnerability of the Other. Catherine Chalier also pointed out that it is the Other’s misery and vulnerability that is in question: The face of the Other forces me to ask what happens if I abandon it and thereby reveals my infinite responsibility (Chalier 1998, 49). Such vulnerability of the Other certainly evokes fear in the subject, she maintains, but this is fear for the Other and not for the subject itself: “Levinas explique comment la crainte suscit e en soi, par la vulnerabilit d’autrui et par sa nudit promise la mort, d passe la peur qui habite chaque personne quant son destin propre” (Chalier 2002, 230). Chalier is among those readers of Levinas who have tried to defend him of the charges of pathology, stressing that the sacrifice in question is not submission to the violence of the Other, but responsibility toward him, which requires the sacrifice of egoist force but never submission (Chalier 2002, 210 – 211). This reading seems to imply a rather strong notion of the subject, and Chalier also emphasizes the moment of holiness or sanctity in the ethical subject. In La trace de l’Infini she traces Levinas’ thoughts back to Jewish sources that emphasize the notion of sanctity – not as self-perfection but as gift of life (Chalier 2002, 208) and a source of renewal (ibid. 230). This

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attention to life and renewal corresponds to a discourse of hope and futurity that is especially important in works like TO and TI. When it comes to the more negative affect of fear, Chalier sees this feeling as secondary. She connects it to Jewish sources that understand fear as part of (and thereby subjected to) love – never the other way around: “la crainte tant comprise dans l’amour mais jamais l’inverse, comme l’ crit par exemple R. Isa e haLevi Horowitz” (Chalier 2002, 230). To understand fear as a condition for love would leave one exposed to violence and masochism, but the religious aspect of infinity revealed in the subject affected by the Other prevents the fear for the Other from being turned into eros or enthusiasm (Chalier 1998, 69). Chalier further discusses the critical readings of Levinas that conclude that the self is not protected from the violence of the tyrant. For her, there are important differences between the heteronomy in the face of the tyrant and the heteronomy in the face of the Other. For her the latter has to do with the weakness of the face, which is what awakens freedom and marks the subject as elected. The submission to the tyrant, on the contrary, abolishes freedom and provokes masochism, in which the intensity of evil provoked by submission is confused with the good (Chalier 1998, 94). Whereas the confusion of good and evil would be a possible danger with the psychoanalytical bad trauma, Chalier maintains the importance of a clear distinction between good and evil. Evil is, she says quoting Levinas, “[n]i c t , ni en face du Bien, mais la deuxi me place, au-dessous, plus bas que le Bien.” The idea of a bipolarity between good and evil, she continues, is “la suprÞme ruse du mal” and the accusation that goodness is really evil in disguise is the diabolic lie of evil (Chalier 1998, 70 – 71). The idea of a good beyond being is important for her reading of trauma as something good, and central to this notion is an emphasis on the weakness of the Other together with the freedom of the subject. I believe Chalier and Bernet are undoubtedly right in emphasizing that the weakness of the Other plays a crucial part in Levinas’ trauma, and that this marks an important difference from the pathology of the psychoanalytical trauma described by Freud and Lacan. But in order to understand Levinas’ trauma, I also believe we have to take into account the more sombre aspects of the trauma, for example, when he describes the affection to the Other even in its persecuting hate and the deep challenge to subjectivity that follows from such descriptions. It is therefore interesting to consider also other readings, which more strongly have emphasized the weakness of the finite and vulnerable self that is affected by the Other. Simon Critchley, particularly in his book Very little… almost nothing, defended a less metaphysical reading of Levinas, in which the differences between Levinas’ notion of trauma and those found in Freud or Lacan are seen to be smaller than normally apprehended. Instead of relying on religious or metaphysical notions of a good beyond being involving life and renewal, Critchley argues that the Levinasian trauma must be read closer to the socalled “second Freudian topography,” where the death drive plays a role as

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important as the pleasure principle, and where “there is a direct link between the analysis of trauma and the introduction of the speculative hypothesis of the death drive” (Critchley 1999, 2, 185, 195).13 This means that the Levinasian subject, as Critchley puts it, becomes a “recurrence of the self without identification, a recurrence of trauma that is open to death, or – better – open to the passive moment of dying itself (le mourir mÞme), dying as the first opening toward alterity, the impossibility of possibility as the very possibility of the ethical subject” (Critchley 1999, 2, 194). The attention is directed not so much toward the weakness of the Other as toward the weakness of the traumatized self. We also see that such a notion of an ethical dying is different from Chalier’s emphasis on sanctity as a gift of life. But in what way can the death-drive – or dying – have an ethical meaning? Is there not a risk of a nihilistic confusion between good and evil, something Chalier saw as essential to the diabolic lie? Central to Critchley’s argument for an ethical significance to a certain notion of dying is the distinction between dying and death that he develops based on a reading of Maurice Blanchot. Critchley here refers to two “slopes of literature that also entail two conceptions of death” (Critchley 2004, 57). According to the first conception, which he determines as a Hegelian-SadisticHeideggerian notion of death, death is “the most fundamental possibility of the Subject, which enables consciousness to assume its freedom” (Critchley 2004, 77). The subject remains strong and powerful. In the second conception of death, as dying, based on the Levinasian notion of the il y a, the subject is weaker, and dying is characterized as the “impossibility of possibility” (Critchley 2004, 87). Critchley sees in the notion of il y a the idea of a fate worse than death, namely, the interminability of existence where I lose the ability to die and where the dead seem to rise up from their graves. Dread, on this second slope, cannot be characterized as Being-toward-death, but is rather dread in the face of the irremissibility of Being itself (Critchley 2004, 77).

And he concludes: “Through its very weakness, the thought of le mourir proves itself stronger than la mort” (Critchley 2004, 83). But why is the weakness of dying stronger than the possibility of the subject assuming its death and thereby its freedom? What is important for Critchley with this notion of dying is that dying prevents the absolutization of the self in death and the tragic heroism that is precisely what is seen as ethically problematic in Heidegger : Dying is the impossibility of possibility and thus undermines the residual heroism, virility and potency of Being-toward-death. In the infinite time of dying, all 13 Critchley presents Freud’s notion of the trauma as an economic concept that “refers to a massive cathexis [= affect-fixation to persons or things] of external stimulus that breaches the protective shield of the perceptual-consciousness system or ego,” something that implies that “the pleasure principle is momentarily put out of action” (Critchley 1999, 2, 191).

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possibility becomes impossible, and I am left passive and impotent. Dying is the sensible passivity of senescence, the wrinkling of the skin – crispation: the helplessly ageing face looking back at you in the mirror. (Critchley 2004, 87 – 88)

For Critchley, the ethical potential of dying must therefore be sought in the lack of meaning to my finitude – a meaning that is falsely sought in suicide as an attempt to control death. He thereby seems to depart – and this is an important difference from Chalier – from the weakness of the traumatized subject and not the weakness of the Other. The “ageing face looking back at you in the mirror” is the face of the traumatized subject. Although we have seen that Levinas claimed the unveiling of the face is “[…] vieillissement, mourir ; plus nu que la nudit : pauvret , peau rides: trace de soi-mÞme” (AE 141), in Critchley’s reading these words mainly seem to be significant for the affected subject. Another difference concerns the relationship to goodness. Although the notion of dying exceeds the pleasurable as well as any promise of happiness, Critchley sees it as a relationship to something good (Critchley 1999, 2, 195). But instead of relying on a notion of good beyond being, the good here comes close to the horror of the il y a, in other words, close to the confusion of good and evil that Chalier saw as essential to the diabolic: I would like to claim, with Blanchot, that what opens up in the relation to the alterity of death, of my dying and the other’s dying, is not the transcendence of the Good beyond Being or the trace of God, but is the neutral alterity of the il y a, the primal scene of emptiness, absence and disaster, what I am tempted to call, rather awkwardly, atheist transcendence. (Critchley 2004, 97)

When Critchley claims that the il y a is central to ethical openness, he not only takes a different – nonmetaphysical – approach to ethical goodness than Chalier, he also operates with a weaker notion of the subject, one in which Levinas’ notion of aging is emphasized more than his notion of election. For Critchley, access to metaphysical sources outside of one’s finite limits seems to be radically excluded, as the expression atheist transcendence indicates. This brings his reading of Levinas closer to the analyses of the il y a we discussed in the first chapter. Despite their differences, I contend that many important elements in these different readings may be seen as supplementing each other. I believe Critchley’s emphasis on the role of the il y a is important in order to grasp the Levinasian trauma, although I believe it is still crucial to maintain a transcendence that is more than the neutrality of the il y a. In order to understand how both of these concerns may be thought together, however, we should discuss how the relationship between il y a and ethical transcendence really is in works like AE. Whereas we saw that in Levinas’ early work il y a was connected to the depersonalizing meaninglessness, we have now come to get an idea of how it also plays a role for ethical meaning. Let us therefore continue

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our discussion of trauma by exploring what kind of transcendence is at play in the ethical trauma, and which role il y a plays for such transcendence.

Traumatism between transcendence and il y a Whether trauma can be considered something good not only concerns the question of whether it is pathological according to medical terms, but also requires a more basic discussion concerning what kind of “goodness” we are talking about. As we have seen, both Chalier and Critchley emphasize the potential goodness of the ethical trauma, but sees this goodness somewhat differently – either as a metaphysical good beyond being or as a more neutral alterity. Whereas the latter reading allows for a closeness to the psychoanalytical trauma – and something I have called a weak notion of the self – the former implies a stronger distance from psychoanalysis and a stronger self. Let us therefore start by discussing what might be said to distinguish Levinas’ ethical trauma from that of psychoanalysis, before we go into the question of what kind of goodness or transcendence is at play and what this implies for the subject. Like Rudolf Bernet and Simon Critchley, Rudi Visker also sought to understand the Levinasian notion of trauma in relation to psychoanalysis. In his article “The Price of Being Dispossessed: Levinas’ God and Freud’s Trauma,” Visker examines the characteristics that distinguish the “good” trauma of ethics from the “bad” trauma of psychoanalysis. He concludes from Levinas’ own emphatic insistence that the affection by the Other happens “without alienation” that the trauma for Levinas must be a good trauma, a “trauma which heals” (Visker 2000, 248). He further insists that, if one is to follow Levinas’ argument (toward which he is fundamentally critical), one cannot dispense with the metaphysical and religious aspects. These aspects, however, do not reduce the similarities between the ethical and the pathological language into mere linguistic ones. In the article, Visker opposes readers whom he finds unwilling to take trauma for what it is, thereby making Levinas’ philosophy incomprehensible. These readers are either reducing Levinasian ethics to a thaumaturgy which miraculously heals us of contact with the Other or the Other’s appeal, or which discards it for having failed to bring to the problem of the subject and the Other more than a mere reversal where the Other is to constitute me rather than me the Other (alter ego) (Visker 2000, 253).

The healing dimension of the trauma in other words cannot exclude the disturbance and pain it brings to the subject, although there is also a religious moment in the trauma that protects the subject from alienation. Visker tries to develop the difference between what he calls the bad trauma

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of psychoanalysis and the ethical trauma by analyzing the feeling of panic in bad trauma and comparing it with the feeling of shame as ethical discomfort in good trauma (Visker 2000, 258). The feeling of panic is present in the case of Emma, for whom the mere trace of the trauma – the laughter of the salesmen turned into grinning – is “petrifying her just as does the il y a which emerges as all familiar forms fall away, leaving nothing to protect us from the power of suction thus coming into existence” (Visker 2000, 261). Pathological and bad trauma is associated with the bad infinity of participation, which we saw in Chapter 1 as a situation in which the distinction between subject and object is effaced, where pure being is horrified at the impersonal vigilance and impossibility of death. i. e., the il y a from which Critchley develops his notion of dying. But while Critchley emphasized the positive sides of this “atheist transcendence,” Visker connects it to Levinas’ analysis of the particular kind of religiosity where the “tremendum which determines Emma’s life would not be very different from what he describes elsewhere as the fascinosum” (Visker 2000, 266). As the next chapter on religion shows in greater detail, Levinas is deeply skeptical regarding such religious fascination and participation. The shame of the ethical trauma, on the other hand, is distinct from panic in that it allows the subject to exist on its own. We have already noted how the feeling of shame for Levinas is connected to the notion of subjectivity, whereas the participatory moment of, say, esthetical enjoyment could be seen to be accompanied by a certain shamelessness. In ethical shame, the subject is certainly strongly affected – something Levinas calls “traumatized” – by the Other, but the subject does not fuse with the Other because at the same time there is a radical difference or distance between the subject and the Other. For Levinas ethical proximity is thus not only about closeness to the Other, but also about distance, which seems to be the reason why Visker believes it is so important to take Levinas’ metaphysical presuppositions into account. But how does the distance of the ethical trauma save the subject from alienation? Visker first points to the counterintuitive nature of the thought that something can liberate me that “escapes my freedom, thus something of which I am not the subject but to which I am subjected,” and asks whether the loss of interiority and loss of privacy that characterizes Levinas’ notion of proximity approaches terror and totalitarianism. But then he goes on to explain how this interpretation is based on a rather narrow reading of Levinas’ ethics (Visker 2000, 253), one that does not accept the metaphysical presuppositions of his thinking. It is these presuppositions that make ethical disintegration differ from the one effected by the il y a. Visker describes the otherness of the il y a in terms of “the disintegration that overwhelms me and makes itself my master when the absolute Other that Levinas calls the il y a emerges, and which is characterized precisely by opening me to the apeiron … – the monstrous and formless which, for example, some science fiction and horror films try to capture in an image.” The otherness of the ethical Other, on the contrary, “is

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not absolute in that sense. Not only because the Other is a trace of God, but moreover because I, too, am a trace of God” (Visker 2000, 257 – 258). Visker thus sees the “trace of God” as what distinguishes ethical trauma from what he views as the bad trauma of psychoanalysis. What concerns him with the latter is the freedom lost when trauma is understood as being close to the il y a. According to Visker, one therefore “understands why Levinas turns his back on psychoanalysis: not because he did not wish to acknowledge it, but to the contrary precisely because he had indeed recognized it. The place of psychoanalysis – this is the place of the il y a” (Visker 2000, 268). What happens in psychoanalytical trauma is then incompatible with Levinas’ humanism: The figuration in which angst is bound up – Freud’s “phobic” outer structure (phobische Vorbau) […] – is at the same time the forecourt where the gods are born. And where, as Levinas would add, humanity is debased and enslaved: for – like Emma – it will have to bring sacrifices to keep its peace and tranquility, in an attempt to bring the gods which are unreliable (and which Lacan therefore locates in “the real”) into the symbolic order, in the hope that they will answer and that a covenant may exist. (Visker 2000, 266 – 267)

Instead of leading to this religiosity of “the gods” based on fear and trembling, Visker argues that trauma for Levinas involves distance and separation. The next chapter on religion shows how this separation is crucial to Levinas’ notion of the holy as opposed to the sacred (in which difference is effaced). The radical difference of separation is seen to involve the thought of diachrony as the radical difference between my time and the time of the Other, a difference in which the Other can only be present as a trace of something radically absent, something that in fact was never present. But what in the connection to religious terms (like the trace of God) prevents the traumatized subject from being alienated, suppressed and victimized? In Visker’s reading, Levinas’ notion of the trace “differs from all other traces, the trace of a ‘God’ who has passed without ever having been present, thus the trace of an ‘absolute past’ which has never been present” (Visker 2000, 264). This emphasis on the absolute distance in Levinas’ notion of the trace would – in contrast to the fascination of bad trauma – protect the subject from an unhealthy and violent participation where it would be crushed by the Other, and instead liberates the subject to assume ethical responsibility. But, one might add, could not the subject also be crushed by God, in adherence to a blind faith? Indeed, but what is interesting about Levinas’ notion of God – something we will analyze in greater detail in the next chapter – is that it involves a distance that, according to Visker, is good because of the humility of God’s withdrawal (Visker 2000, 269). Such a God can only be related to “as if” he exists:

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Levinas’s whole effort is to draw the philosophical consequences of this as if: I behave as if I have been commanded, and yet there is no one who spoke. Do I hear voices then? No, says Levinas, but it is the voice of God which I hear “in the face of my neighbor.” God himself, I do not hear. God only lets himself be heard in an affect which is not directed to him. (Visker 2000, 270)

Although Visker’s point is that God (unlike in Critchley’s reading) is involved in what for Levinas becomes a trauma that heals, it is therefore not “God himself,” but his trace in the face of the neighbor. In contrast to the bad trauma of psychoanalysis – where the subject is seemingly caught in a dual relationship in which no third is allowed to interfere – this reference to a God that withdraws involves a third being that would seem to be what “saves” the subject in the ethical trauma. Levinas here presents a notion of a God that is so separated from the subject that no affection toward him is allowed. This is the illeity (as “him-ness” or “it-ness”) of a God that is so distant that he cannot be approached directly, but must be referred to in the third person. We will come back to the religious significance of this distance in the next chapter. But first we must ask why Levinas sees a connection between distance and goodness, and whether this goodness has to be understood as a good beyond being (and beyond the il y a). In AE, the “illeity” or remoteness of the good means that it cannot be approached even in desire. Instead, the Good is said to bend the desire away from the desirable (idea of the) good toward the responsibility for the Other : Que, dans sa bont , le Bien d cline le d sir qu’il suscite en l’inclinant vers la responsabilit pour le prochain, cela pr serve la diff rence dans la non-indiff rence du Bien qui m’ lit avant que je ne l’accueille; cela pr serve son ill it au point de la laisser exclure de l’analyse (AE 196).

This nondesirability in ethics prevents the subject from falling in love with his own moral self – which would be both narsissistic and possibly masochistic. Instead, Levinas operates with the notion of a Good that chooses me, although this assignation of the subject by the Good according to Levinas “survives the death of God” (AE 196). Metaphysical presuppositions thereby seem to be mixed with rejections of the object of metaphysical desire. This ambivalent relationship to God will be more thoroughly discussed in the next chapter when we look at what kind of metaphysics Levinas acknowledges. What is clear from the passages above is that Levinas does in fact assume a notion of the Good, but that this is a good that can neither be an object to ideology nor approached in desire. Is it then part of a thinking that would “save” ethical trauma as something good in the sense that it brings futurity and hope to the subject that is crushed and condemned to being? In short, does ethical trauma represent an “overcoming of being”? Simon Critchley is one of Levinas’ readers who have most strongly questioned the tendency toward thinking ethics as a kind of overcoming. In

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his book Very little… almost nothing, he draws on thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno and Samuel Beckett, for whom the metaphysical ideas of hope and reconciliation are strongly problematic. Critchley wants to avoid any thought of overcoming and presents ethics more in terms of a continuous and almost hopeless endeavor. This is the background for his insistence on the connection of trauma with the il y a. Throughout his analysis of the ethical significance of the il y a, Critchley believes that otherness must imply a certain neutrality (which is not an impersonal one), in order to leave us with the primacy of the human relationship, without smuggling “a metaphysical presupposition into a quasi-phenomenological description.” He insists on human finitude and questions whether “radical otherness [has] to be determined as good or evil in an absolute metaphysical sense” (Critchley 2004, 95 – 96). In contrast to Visker, who disinguished the ethical trauma – involving the metaphysical and religious goodness of illeity – from the trauma of the il y a, Critchley insists that there is an ambiguity between the two notions that is essential to the ethical: Is not the il y a like a shadow or ghost that haunts Levinas’s work, a revenant that returns it again and again to the moment of nonsense, neutrality and ambiguity, like Banquo’s ghost returns Macbeth to the scene of his crime […] Might one not wonder whether the ambiguity of the relation between the il y a and illeity is essential to the articulation of the ethical in a manner that is analogous to the model of skepticism and its refutation, where the ghost of skepticism returns to haunt reason after each refutation? (Critchley 2004, 92)

Now, we have seen that, also for Levinas, particularly in works like AE, the il y a does play a role for the ethical. The question is how to conceive of this relationship between il y a and illeity. As we see, Critchley seems to expand on the deconstructive elements he finds in Levinas’ text; the mentioning of skepticism and its refutation reflects the deconstructive double reading that is exemplified in a tension between nonsense, neutrality and ambiguity on the one hand – and reason on the other. But how does this tension reflect the relationship between il y a and illeity? The danger to the metaphysical notion of illeity seems to be that, despite its emphasis on withdrawal, the insistence on goodness would risk freezing the idea of identity. The neutral non-sense of the il y a, on the other hand, would be necessary in order to preserve the radical difference of the other. In this interpretation we see that even ethical trauma would imply the pure verbality involved in the amphibological difference. Levinas himself clearly recognizes the importance of the il y a when he claims that il y a is a modality of the being-for-the-other (AE 255). Il y a thus no longer seems to be a state that is to be overcome by ethics, but is it nevertheless in some sense secondary? Rudi Visker suggests this, claiming that there is “an il y a ‘of ’ ethics (subservient to ethics), but no ethics of the il y a” (Visker 1999, 269). In light of Levinas’ insistence on the connection between ethical difference and responsibility and subjectivity, I too do not find it

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plausible to call Levinas thought an “ethics of the il y a.” But this is not to say that it would be possible to overcome il y a, following Levinas’ own analyses. Although the identity of the elected signifies before being, the il y a is nevertheless necessary in order to “endure without compensation,” as Levinas puts it: L’identit de l’ lu – c’est- -dire de l’assign – qui signifie avant d’Þtre, prendrait pied et s’affirmerait dans l’essence que la n gativit elle-mÞme d termine. Pour supporter sans compensation, il lui faut l’excessif ou l’ cœurant remue-m nage et encombrement de l’il y a (AE 255).

Levinas also emphasizes the necessary overflowing of meaning by non-sense, the disturbance of meaning that secures the radical passivity of the ethical self (AE 255). In light of such passages, the identity of election can hardly be thought of as healing the self in the sense of making it harmonious. The goodness in question must rather – as Critchley puts it – involve the notion of a split subject, which he also describes as a subject of melancholia: The Levinasian subject is a traumatized self, a subject that is constituted through a self-relation that is experienced as a lack, where the self is experienced as the inassumable source of what is lacking from the ego – a subject of melancholia, then. But, this is a good thing. It is only because the subject is unconsciously constituted through the trauma of contact with the real that we might have the audacity to speak of goodness, transcendence, compassion etc.; and moreover to speak of these terms in relation to the topology of desire and not simply in terms of some pious, reactionary and ultimately nihilistic wish-fulfillment. Without trauma, there would be no ethics in Levinas’s particular sense of the word. (Critchley 1999:2, 195)

Critchley here recognizes the goodness and transcendence of the trauma, but at the same time he considers this transcendent goodness as linked to the real or the Freudian death-drive, which we have seen him explicate in his notion of dying as opposed to death. He thereby presupposes a weak notion of the subject that shares the same point of departure as Adorno and Beckett; only the acceptance of radical finitude could for Crithley allow for the ethical relationship. Through his comparison with the psychoanalytical death-drive, Critchley also contends that traumatic neuroses – involving compulsion and repetitiveness – are important to ethical trauma. But is it possible to imagine a traumatic neurotic – as Critchley in his later book Infinitely Demanding calls the Levinasian ethical subject (Critchley 2007, 61) – together with the idea of a good and healing trauma? In this book, Critichley is critical of the “ethical overload” in Levinas, claiming that it “risks producing an ethics without sublimation, which risks being disastrously self-destructive to the subject.”14 14 Critchley is here still critical of what he determines to be the “metaphysical residue and religious pietism present in Levinas’ texts, but even more present in certain interpretations of those texts” (Critchley 2007, 67 – 68).

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In the quote mentioned above, however, Critchley explores the goodness of the trauma by linking it to the melancholy of an unattainable desire. Before we approach the question of sublimation or healing in an analysis of religion, we should therefore ask what might possibly be good about the melancholic subject. As we shall see in the next section, there are strong parallels between Levinas’ ethical subject and descriptions of a pathological melancholy, but there is also a religious dimension to the melancholic tone in Levinas’ work that is crucial in order to understand the dimensions of meaning in such an ethics.

The problem of melancholy In order to discuss whether there is a melancholic element in Levinas’ notion of the ethical self, we should first clarify in what sense melancholy is understood here. I do not limit the word melancholy to the narrow clinical sense of a deep depression, but use it in a much broader sense, which may indeed include the element of depression, but which also seeks to explain the phenomenon in a cultural context. As we shall see below, it is in this sense fruitful to connect the notion of melancholy to a certain “death of God” or a breakdown of meaning. Although Levinas does not touch on the notion of melancholy explicitly in the works we have referred to, many of his descriptions nevertheless correspond to other characterizations of melancholy,15 as we can see especially in the comparison with Freud given below. But before we discuss these parallels, let us reflect on the possible differences there are from the psychoanalytical paradigm. Although we saw that there were important parallels between the trauma of psychoanalysis and the ethical trauma, we nevertheless concluded that the distance and the shame involved in the ethical trauma could be seen to protect the ethical subject from alienation and from being totally crushed by the Other – at least according to what seems to be Levinas’ intentions. Is there something about the transcendence in terms of a distant goodness that protects even the melancholy of ethics from its possible pathological implications? If this is so, the distance of the relationship may no longer be one that saves melancholy as a good thing, but rather as part of the problem. When we compare trauma and melancholy, we see they have certain characteristics that appear as opposites; if trauma implied an immediate attachment to the undesirable and the impossibility of representing the command that comes from the Other, the feeling of melancholy appears to be a painful implication of this loss of ideals, bringing about a condition that involves distance instead of immediate attachment. But what kinds of ideals are lost in the trauma? In his 15 Many of the following observations are more thoroughly explicated in Jean-Luc Lannoy (1994).

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article “Beginning’s Abyss. On Solitude in Nietzsche and Levinas,” John Drabinski discussed the melancholic tone that marks the discourse of Levinas (as well as of Nietzsche): It is melancholic insofar as it lacks an object to mourn, lacks an attachment or alternative catharsis and is at the same time affectively saturated with pain and loss. The evacuation for both Nietzsche and Levinas is the vacating of an illusion, a lie that has come to dominate the West. Nietzsche and Levinas lose that illusion and are left with nothing. All idols are dead. Whatever the pleasures in what is possible after the illusion vacates, there is also pain. First and irreducibly, there is pain. (Drabinski 2009, 135)

When Drabinski situates Levinas close to Nietzsche and the breakdown of illusions, then melancholy is no longer limited to being an individual condition, but is extended as something valid for a culture in crisis, connected to the breakdown of metaphysical illusions or the death of a certain God.16 In this regard it is interesting to note – as Jean-Luc Lannoy showed – that the German psychiatrist Hubert Tellenbach claimed melancholy to be more present where the social and cultural sphere appears to be independent of the rhythm of the natural world and liberated from the rhythms of feasts and sacred periods. Especially through song and dance the periodic and cyclic events, he explains, express the participation and belonging of the individual to the natural and mythic world (Lannoi 1994, 46). In Levinasian terms, melancholy seems to be a painful consequence of the up-rootedness or solitude that arises when participation breaks down. As we have seen, this participation was in EE described in negative terms and is connected to the depersonalizing condition of the il y a. The emphasis on rhythm, participation and myths in Tellenbach’s description of what is lost in melancholy also seems to correspond to Visker’s characterization of bad trauma as “the forecourt where the gods are born.” Does this mean that the painful loss of ideals in melancholy – the absence that, as we shall see, nevertheless evokes a particular affection – maintains an ethical difference present in illeity but not in the il y a? Can the melancholic breakdown of illusion be seen as part of the healing process of good trauma? I believe this is close to how Levinas would understand it, but before we can approach these (possibly positive) implications of melancholy in the chapter on religion, we should discuss the more negative implications for the ethical self in light of psychoanalytical and other descriptions of melancholy. A common way of approaching melancholy is to compare it with mourning. The most famous example is Sigmund Freud’s article “Mourning and melancholy,” in which he compares the two conditions. Both of them, he claims, are reactions to the loss of a loved object, though with melancholy the 16 Levinas himself accepts this premise in seeing the election by the Good as a “relation qui ‘survit’ la ‘mort de Dieu’” (AE 196).

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loss is of a more ideal kind than with mourning (e. g., to an object that has not actually died but is lost as an object of love). Contrary to mourning, the objectloss in melancholy also seems to be withdrawn from consciousness (Freud: MM 253 – 254). As we saw above, Drabinski also emphasized this lack of an object to mourn in melancholy, understanding it to be “the refusal of a connection between what is lost and what remains,” whereas mourning “is that relation in which what is lost remains connected to the subject” (Drabinski 2009, 137). What for Freud is also absent in mourning but striking in melancholy is a strong diminution of self-regard and impoverishment of the ego on a grand scale: “In mourning,” he writes, “it is the world which has become poor and empty, in melancholia it is the ego itself. The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable” (Freud: MM 254). Although for Freud the melancholic has a “keener eye for the truth” than other people, there is seemingly no correspondence between the degree of selfabasement and its real justification. This dissatisfaction with the ego on moral grounds is, according to Freud, the most outstanding feature in the clinical picture of melancholia (Freud: MM 255 – 256), and this noncoincidence between the melancholic’s presumed guilt and its justification according to common sense would for him be part of the picture of melancholy as a mental illness, as a deep depression the characteristics of which can be summarized in the following quote: The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment. (Freud: MM 252)

According to Freud the symptoms of moral inferiority are further “completed by sleeplessness and refusal to take nourishment, and – what is psychologically very remarkable – by an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life” (Freud: MM 254). Although to my knowledge Levinas himself does not use the expression “melancholy,” we find many of the same characteristics not only in his early writings on the crisis of meaning connected to the facticity of being, but also in his descriptions of the ethical in his later work. Our question in the following will therefore be how seemingly pathological descriptions can have an ethical signification, and whether the questioning of meaning in his early descriptions on ontology is later transformed into a melancholic ethics. Let us begin by comparing Levinas’ earlier writings to the Freudian understanding of melancholy before we discuss the eventual melancholy in the descriptions of the ethical situation. First of all, parallels to Freud’s descriptions of melancholy implying a feeling of dejection and loss of interest in the world are similar to the

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descriptions of fatigue in Levinas’ earlier writings. There the feeling of fatigue was seen as occurring where being is understood as a condemnation, as the need to depart when – as for the voyageurs of Baudelaire – there is nowhere to go (EE 32). This hopelessness of any attempt of escaping being could be connected to the breakdown of illusions mentioned above. For Levinas, such hopelessness is connected to an aversion for the effort, which is not due to a fear of pain; its idleness is rather described as a fear of living and as a powerless and unpleasant aversion against existence itself as a burden (EE 38). This also evokes a condition of nausea, which is shameful “not only because it threatens to offend social conventions,” but because of a fault consisting in “the very fact of having a body, of being there” (OE 67). Levinas finally connects this torment and aversion against existence to the il y a, which like Freud’s melancholy is accompanied by sleeplessness or vigilance: “Par une vigilance, sans recours possible au sommeil, nous allons pr cis ment caract riser l’il y a et la faÅon qu’a l’exister de s’affirmer dans son propre an antissement” (TA 27). Although we have seen that this condition of hopelessness is opposed by an analysis of the ethical relation, particularly in works like Totalit et Infini and Le temps et l’autre with their emphasis on the possibility of ethical renewal as an opening of future, we can see that elements similar to fatigue and despair return in Levinas’ later writings as important elements in the ethical situation. This does not mean that Levinas no longer opposes a depersonalizing participation, but as we have seen, the identity of the ethical subject is now challenged and understood in terms of a unity in fission; the unrest of the subject makes it constantly split and open (AE 169). In Tellenbach’s observation, quoted by Jean-Luc Lannoy, an essential characteristic of melancholy is despair : the etymological meaning of the German word Verzweiflung is traced back to both doubt (zweifel) and duality (zwei) (Lannoy 1994, 34 – 35). This evokes associations to Levinas’ despairing self, constantly questioning himself, constantly awake. In Levinas’ analysis of the self as recurrence, there is also an aspect of disinterestedness that, from the outside, may resemble Freud’s lack of interest in the outside world: “Le retournement du Moi en Soi – le d -position ou la de-stitution du Moi c’est la modalit mÞme du d s-int ressement” (AE 86). Apart from parallels when it comes to the understanding of identity, Levinas’ notions of guilt and responsibility also find parallels in various descriptions of melancholy. According to an observation made by Tellenbach, the melancholic’s guilt blocks the path leading to an opening of the future, and it forces the subject to continuously search further in the past until it reaches the place where it was lost in the fault (Lannoy 1994, 43). As we have seen, such an attention to the past also becomes increasingly important for Levinas when he searches the source of responsibility in an unimaginable and unreachable past – more than the attention to futurity and hope that characterizes works like TI and TA. An interesting similarity to Freud’s emphasis on the noncoincidence between culpability and its

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“justification” can also be found in Levinas’ claim that “plus je suis juste, plus je suis coupable” (Lannoy 1994, 40). For Levinas, responsibility does not correspond to any specific committed crime, but has its source in an unimaginable past prior to self-consciousness: “C’est l’obsession par l’autre, mon prochain, m’accusant d’une faute que je n’ai pas commise librement qui ram ne le Moi soi en deÅ de mon identit , plus t t que toute conscience de soi, et me d nude absolument” (AE 147). We have seen that this lack of reflection in responsibility is connected to its “uncondition,” which is also expressed through the emphasis on the infinite extent of responsibility and moral self-accusations. Levinas quotes Dostoyevsky to underline this infinity of responsibility : “Each of us is guilty before everyone for everyone, and I more than the others” (AE 228). This strong emphasis on guilt is taken to an extreme when Levinas poses the most essential question not as “why is there something rather than nothing?” (following Leibniz and Heidegger), but as “do I have the right to be?” (EI 120). Is this questioning of one’s own right to exist anything more than the extinction of the survival instinct of Freud’s melancholic? And might not the emphasis on the surplus of responsibility imply an exaggerated perfectionism in which the ethical subject keeps the moral upper hand, whereas weakness and vulnerability is reserved for the Other? Or is it possible to maintain an aspect of hope and meaning despite the melancholic undertone of Levinas’ ethics? In order to answer this, I first believe it is important to keep in mind the discussion of the different levels at which Levinas’ ethics operates: the melancholic tendencies may only be part of the picture. In addition, and in light of the breakdown of illusions mentioned above, I believe it is crucial to discuss also the religious dimension of this problematic. The next chapter discusses the religious dimension of the responsible self in greater depth, but we saw already in the last section that the withdrawal of God or any idea of the good was – despite its painfulness – seen to be a condition for responsibility and thereby for ethical meaning. Is melancholy then simply a side effect of the alone-standing responsible self ? On the other hand, it might not be an unproblematic side effect, although Levinas’ statements on the responsible self might not always be taken as ethical prescriptions. Is there no danger in seeing the painful aspects of ethics as so closely connected to the (anarchical) source of the ethical? Let us explore some of the possible negative implications of this melancholic questioning of meaning and hope. First of all, symptoms of melancholy, like lack of interest in the outside world and reduction of self-regard, could be seen not only as problematic with respect to oneself and one’s own happiness, but also as actually hindering the responding to and the relationship with the Other. In addition, if what Levinas describes in his later ethics really comes close to depressive tendencies and a feeling of hopelessness, could this not also imply a narcissism that may lead to aggression rather than generosity? Both Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva discussed this possible connection between narcissism and aggression in

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melancholy or depression, so let us briefly look at their understanding of what is at stake. Both Lacan and Kristeva refer to Melanie Klein’s theory of the development of the self in their discussion of the dangers of narcissist integrity. This development implies a passage from a situation of disintegration where the limits between the self and the other are not yet established, through a mirror stage where the image of the Other forms the child’s identity and implies an erotic-aggressive tension of depression: “The child does not exteriorize itself. It does not project itself in an image. Rather, the reverse occurs. The child is constituted in conformity to and by means of the image” (Julien 1994, 32). Lacan further emphasizes the connection between narcissism and aggression at the moment when the ego is formed by the image of the Other. As Philippe Julien puts it: Narcissism, in which the image of one’s own body is sustained by the image of the other, in fact introduces a tension: the other in his image both attracts and rejects me. I am indeed nothing but the other, yet at the same time, he remains alienus, a stranger […] Lacan would little by little discover that this erotic-aggressive relationship corresponds to what Melanie Klein had called the depressive position. Either the other kills me or I kill the other. (Julien 1994, 34 – 35)

In Kristeva’s terms, this development implies that the depressive position comes after an archaic paranoid and schizoid position in which the subject is fragmented. But Kristeva also emphasizes the function of this depressive affect as a “defence against parceling”: Indeed, sadness reconstitutes an affective cohesion of the self, which restores its unity within the framework of the affect. The depressive mood constitutes itself as a narcissistic support, negative to be sure, but nevertheless presenting the self with an integrity, nonverbal though it might be.

This defense is, however, weak, since through its denial of meaning in symbolization it also denies the meaning of the act and may lead to suicide (Kristeva 1989, 19). We thereby see that for these thinkers depression or melancholy has a function in the development of the self, but that its potentially aggressive narcissism provides the self with a weak integrity. The question is how are these negative implications of melancholy relevant challenges to Levinas’ ethics, when he puts such a strong emphasis on responsibility and the relationship to otherness – and even seems to form his whole ethical thought as an alternative to an aggressive narcissism? First of all, Levinas’ descriptions of the self do not claim to operate on the level of psychological development; both the trauma and the melancholic tendencies are rather ethical characteristics that do not appear according to a given order or scheme. It is nevertheless interesting to compare the possible negative implications of the trauma and those of melancholy. Although the conditions share many of the same negative characteristics, we have seen that

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the traumatized subject seems to risk being overwhelmed and depersonalized by the intense contact with the Other, whereas in melancholy the opposite happens: The desired Other is so distant that the subject cannot reach it and thus risks remaining caught up in himself. But this difference is precisely what we have seen as characterizing the ambiguity of the relationship to the Other in Levinas. On the one hand, the relationship is described as the proximity or vulnerability of corporeal exposure: at the same time, as it is characterized by a radical distance or withdrawal from both memory and representation. The traumatized and the separated subject thus seem to be moments of the same self, relating to an Other – which is simultaneously extremely close and extremely distant. But it is questionable whether the closeness of the trauma (if this is taken to be a truly traumatizing event) is what “saves” the melancholic subject by allowing it to respond and relate to others in a harmonious way. In order to address the difficulties of both traumatism and melancholy, we should therefore finally pose the question of a potential healing, both from a psychoanalytical and a Levinasian perspective. Like Freud, Kristeva sees melancholy as a pathological mental disorder that should be cured (Bale 1997, 283 – 284). She thinks this cure involves the notion of a third (in different forms), and as we will see in the following chapter on religion, the third is also crucial to any discourse about hope in Levinas. However, if the hesitations regarding Levinas’ ethical melancholy are to some degree justified, one may also ask whether or not the ethical, melancholic self is in need of healing to a greater degree than what Levinas himself seems to suggest. Simon Critchley defends this view in his book Infinitely demanding, when he, also with reference to Melanie Klein, suggests that “the trauma of separation requires reparation, the ethical tear requires repair in a work of sublimation that would be a work of love” (Critchley 2007, 68). In Critchley’s opinion, Levinas’ work does not go far enough in the direction of healing or reparation, whereas readers like Chalier would more strongly emphasize that Levinas’ ethics – through the religious notion of election – already implies a renewing power of love: it “renouvelle le temps et fait passer sur les vies une br ve mais tr s reconnaissable joie, celle qui toujours annonce la proximit de l’amour” (Chalier 2002, 207). In order to determine, however, whether Levinas’ ethical language is in need of being supplemented, we should explore how Levinas himself thinks about both of these tendencies – melancholy and hope – together. To understand the complexities of this relationship between hope and melancholy – which may also be understood in terms of the relationship between the meaning and the meaninglessness of the ethical – we therefore turn to some of Levinas’ explicit analyses of religion.

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2.3. The religious dimension of sensible transcendence Religion and phenomenology In the last chapter we saw that Levinas’ descriptions of the ethical encounter seemed to imply an oscillation between hope and melancholy which had implications for the meaning or meaninglessness of the ethical. Whereas we shall see that the melancholic tone of his work could be associated with the solitude or even an atheism of the separated self, Levinas also considers that substitution liberates the subject from the melancholic boredom of the self. Since melancholy or boredom is seen to be a characteristic of our contemporary godless world, this leads us to the question whether substitution implies a reconnection to God. If so, what can be said about this God? Does it lead Levinas back to metaphysical presuppositions that break with the phenomenological concreteness of his analysis of the ethical encounter in the sensible? Or does an analysis of sensible transcendence open the path for a new notion of God, in which the search for religious transcendence is not characterized by escapism, but rather found in the concreteness of the ethical demand? Before we go into these questions, it is important to remind ourselves of the differences between Levinas’ main works. As we have seen, the changes in focus from Levinas’ earlier to his later writings involved his increased attention to the problem of language and mediation; although transcendence is seen as more distant and unspeakable, Levinas at the same time emphasizes the necessity of its betrayal. This means that, although the analyses of the otherness of the Other are not abandoned, his attention is directed much more to its trace in the vulnerability of the subject, which implies that sensibility is ethicized as exposure to suffering and enjoyment. This attention to the transcendence of the sensible and concrete seems to imply a problematization of the metaphysical presuppositions of Totalit et Infini. Etienne Feron pointed to a change in the understanding of transcendence in Levinas’ texts, from one that tended to understand the transcendent in terms of a metaphysical good beyond being, with the implicit danger of creating a separate ethical realm, toward one in which the transcendent is understood within a broader notion of being, as something disturbing the same, where the transcendent is paradoxically in the same. It is now time to explore to what degree such a change is traceable in Levinas’ later reflections on religion, and how these reflections contribute to the question of the meaning of the ethical.

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When it comes to the topic of religion, one of the changes that is most remarkable is the fact that in TI Levinas strongly emphasizes the notion of separation in terms of a sharp distincition between interiority and exteriority, whereas in AE he is more concerned with the question of how a relationship between them – which is essential to Levinas’ notion of religion – is nevertheless possible. This leads him toward important reflections concerning the problem of language. What he comes to realize is that the concepts of same and other still belong within a single logic, which he now thinks necessary to challenge. This is exemplified in the notion of “inspiration,” which is seen as “au-del de la logique du mÞme et de l’autre, de leur adversit insurmontable” (AE 221). That Levinas wants to leave this logic of same and other behind does not mean, however, that he gives up regarding a radical exteriority as a condition for ethical subjectivity. What he changes in fact is the way in which he thinks about and talks about this transcendence. As Robert Bernasconi expresses it: “in Totalit et Infini the alterity of the Other arises for a separated I, whereas the analysis of substitution has recourse to Rimbaud’s ‘Je est un autre.’” (Bernasconi 1995, 78). The emphasis is in other words changed from the separation between the same and the other to the notion of an otherness within the same, or an Other-in-me, as shown with the notion of substitution. The difficult question is here how Levinas can maintain his claim that the Other is transcendent together with his emphasis on phenomenological concreteness. As we have seen, the increased attention to the problem of language not only means that Levinas approaches the significance of transcendence beyond logos in the notion of Saying; in the admission that such an approach necessarily involves a betrayal of what it aims at, it also involves the question of how transcendence can and must signify within ontology or the Said. As Critchley puts it, “Otherwise than Being is a performative disruption of the language of ontology, which maintains the interruption of the ethical Saying within the ontological Said” (Critchley 1999, 8). At the same time, Levinas continues to speak of God in his later works. Does that mean that this interruption of ethical transcendence within the Said again has a religious signification that leads it away from the concrete? Levinas’ relationship to phenomenology and religion has particularly been discussed in light of the famous debate that Dominique Janicaud initiated with his book Le tournant th ologique de la ph nom nologie franÅaise. Janicaud’s critique is there that Levinas – along with a number of subsequent thinkers working within the same “spirit” – turned away from classical phenomenology’s nonmetaphysical emphasis on concreteness (a tradition continued with nonreligious thinkers such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and toward a thinking filled with religious and metaphysical presuppositions through categories such as absence and invisibility (Janicaud 2000). Levinas himself acknowledges the importance of metaphysics, and his allusions to religious categories such as creation and holiness are numerous, as we shall see in the following. At the same time, the emphasis on absence and invisibility for

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Levinas is associated precisely with the proximity of the concrete encounter with the Other, so that there is a strong ambiguity between presence and absence in this encounter. The question of whether and how this implies an exceeding of the limits of phenomenology depends not only on what Levinas means by metaphysics, but also on how narrow phenomenology is to be regarded. First of all, it is disputable whether Levinas may be said to have recurred to metaphysical presuppositions in its traditional form, at least not in the form that Heidegger determined and criticized as “onto-theology.” What Heidegger considers essential to this tradition is above all what he calls its “obsession with the quest for grounds.” Levinas explicitly seeks to avoid such a foundational thinking with his contemplations on anarchy and the importance of critique. His struggle with language when speaking of the transcendent also testifies to a strong reluctance to determine the transcendent in ontological categories. Levinas’ thought can thus at least not be considered as onto-theological in a Heideggerian sense. This does not necessarily mean a rejection of the whole metaphysical tradition, as the Heideggerian interpretation does not necessarily do justice to its intentions.17 Both Plato’s “good beyond being” and Descartes’ idea of infinity are notions that for Levinas would escape the onto-theological scheme. The question is then whether such notions as infinity and good beyond being are thinkable within the limits of phenomenology, or how much is really left of the phenomenological approach. While Levinas believes himself to be true to the spirit of phenomenology, he is not thinking of the eidetics of intentional consciousness in any Husserlian sense, toward which we have seen that he is highly critical. Nor is it the transcendence toward the world of a Heideggerian concern that comprises this spirit. In this sense it is clear that there are important differences in the methodological approach from what Janicaud considers as phenomenology in its “pure” form. Nevertheless, precisely in the phenomenological method – in terms of critique – more than in the results of the classical analyses Levinas sees his affinities to phenomenology ; this element of critique would for him rather deepen than break with the phenomenological attitude. The challenge from a phenomenological standpoint is perhaps when the critical attitude is conceived of so radically that it questions the whole notion of meaning, which is so crucial to phenomenology and its emphasis on intentionality. This is precisely what happens in Levinas’ thought, and in order to understand the radicality of such a critical questioning of meaning, it is necessary to discuss in what way there might be a religious dimension to this critical attitude. As we have seen, the critique or questioning of meaning is for Levinas not only an epistemological matter, but an ethical one; it is directed 17 For a critical discussion of Heidegger’s characterization of the Western tradition under this label, see Peperzak 2003, 107.

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against oneself on the deepest level, as a guilt or shame of life, of what is unjustified in one’s existence. Such an ability to radically question oneself is for Levinas a presupposition for ethical responsibility. An interesting question is therefore whether such a radical guilt or shame is understandable from the ethical situation alone or whether it presupposes a more specific religious hermeneutics. This brings us especially to the question of influence from (Jewish) religious sources, as Catherine Chalier (among others) has shown,18 although readers have also emphasized affinities to a Christian Kierkegaardian tradition.19 The parallels between Levinas’ thought and important thinkers of Judaism are especially visible in his so-called Talmudic readings and other works that especially relate to the Jewish religious tradition. These works were published by different publishers and were thus distinguished from Levinas’ philosophical works, and this is one reason why they have often not been taken into consideration in the philosophical reception of his work. A consequence thereof, of course, is that one risks underestimating the importance of the strong religious motivation that pervades Levinas’ work – to the benefit of a “purely ethical” approach. At the same time, if we analyze his religious work, we see that the essence of his approach to Judaism is strongly ethical, in the same way as his philosophical work cannot be abstracted from its religious content. It is indeed the strong connection between religion and ethics that is characteristic of his work as a whole. We shall see below examples of how crucial this connection is in both his religious and philosophical writings. When I have hitherto as well as in the following put the major emphasis on his philosophical works, this has first to do with the fact that there seems to be no major differences between the so-called religious and philosophical works concerning the question of the meaning of the ethical. In addition, this question primarily seems to depend on the major philosophical context analyzed in the preceding section, although we discuss below whether it may also have some more specific religious implications. Not only the notions of guilt and shame, but also Levinas’ approach to the meaning of the ethical in terms of excess, intrigue, trauma, etc., show how he imagines the otherness of phenomenological critique. We mentioned in the Introduction that it could be difficult to grasp what the “more” of otherness was, but concluded that Levinas in his later philosophical work recurs to the study of subjectivity and the first person voice in order to outline its practical impact, which is what really matters here. As we shall see in the following attempt to outline more of the content of religion, the practical dimension never leaves Levinas’ focus. This means that a fundamental characteristic with Levinas’ religious’ thought is not primarily its theoretical foundation in notions of God or creation, but its practical-ethical implica18 For a discussion of such parallels, her book La trace de l’infini is particularly valuable. 19 See, e. g., Samuel Moyn (2005).

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tions. Levinas not only downplays other aspects of religion than what can be traced back to the ethical, he is also deeply skeptical toward religious practices that have their basis in a more magical or ecstasy-seeking attitude, as we shall see below. An interesting question in the following will also be the influence of the changes that we have described as occurring from TI to AE on the religious motives. In the former parts of the chapter it will be particularly important to look at how notions like separation are connected to a certain atheism, whereas the latter parts especially touch on the implications of Levinas’ notion of transcendence in sensible terms. What kind of religion is expressed when Levinas pays more attention to the subject’s affectedness by the transcendent than to the otherness of the Other, something that implies a betrayal of the infinite in ontology – and perhaps in esthetics as ontological par excellence? In order to understand the implications of these changes, let us first look at some of Levinas’ writings from the period of TI by analyzing one of the notions that are most important for understanding what this religion is about: the notion of holiness.

Holiness and separation We saw in the Introduction that in an interview Levinas said his task was not to construct an ethics, but to seek the meaning of the ethical. In other places he formulated his main concern somewhat differently, as in the conversation Derrida refers to in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas: “You know, one often speaks of ethics to describe what I do, but what really interests me in the end is not ethics, not ethics alone, but the holy, the holiness of the holy” (Derrida 1999, 4). Perhaps this can be thought of as a clarification of the first quote, as a hint of what remains when the “constructing” elements of morality have been removed; the holiness as the height of the Other, the nongraspability in front of which my abilities fall short, which is what opens for responsibility toward the Other. It is not quite clear, however, whether Levinas’ notion of holiness remains the same throughout his work, especially not in light of what we have seen happens with the notion of transcendence, where the necessity of an impure approach toward transcendence goes together with an increased attention to subjectivity. A similar change in attention might be seen to occur with the notion of holiness: Whereas the holy in earlier works primarily belongs to the Other, in his later works Levinas is also increasingly concerned with the sanctity of the witness, as we have seen in his messianic descriptions of the ethical self. This does not mean that the two perspectives should be seen as mutually exclusive, but I believe it is important to have this displacement of attention in mind when we discuss what implications it has for the meaning of the ethical.

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Both in Totalit et Infini as well as in many of his shorter writings from the same period, Levinas is concerned with the distinction between the holy and the sacred. His notion of the holy is characterized by a strong emphasis on separation as opposed to the participation in the sacred. This separation of the holy is for Levinas essential for responsibility in the ethical relationship to the Other, whereas the participation in the sacred erases this difference or distance in the relation, carries the subject away and thereby represents violence (DL 29). In the previous section on traumatism and religion, we saw that Rudi Visker distinguished between two different kinds of religion characterizing the bad trauma of psychoanalysis on the one hand and the good trauma of ethics on the other, and that these two kinds would correspond to the sacred and the holy. Whereas the first was seen to involve fascination, participation and a religiosity of “the gods,” the latter’s goodness would involve the transcendence of an infinite God or goodness. It was precisely the distance in the relationship to the Other that prevented the subject from being swallowed by the Other and alienated, as occurs in the violent participation of the bad trauma. But why holiness is characterized by separation is not primarily because it protects the self, but because separation prevents the Other from violation. This notion of holiness as separation marks an important distinction not only from the fascination and depersonalization of the sacred, but also from a seemingly more positive connection between holiness and wholeness – a connection implied in the German word Heil. In his book The HypoCritical Imagination, John Llewelyn points out the importance of this notion of the holy for Levinas and compares it with that of Heidegger : Toward the end of his life Levinas was apt to say that what his thinking had been most concerned with was the holy, the saint. Heidegger too could have said this of his own thinking. However, Levinas equates Heidegger’s notion of the holy, the heilig, with the heil understood as a kind of wholeness and haleness. Levinas interprets the holy as the apart, the kadosh (Llewelyn 2000, 121).

For Levinas, the problem with the holy understood as wholeness or sacredness lies in its totalizing tendency and its closeness to participation, which makes it lose real transcendence. Levinas’ notion of the holy as the kadosh implies that transcendence is in no way mixed in immanence, despite the fact that he describes religion as a relationship between the same and the Other, as in the following characterization of religion as “the ultimate structure”: “o le rapport subsiste entre le MÞme et l’Autre en d pit de l’impossibilit du Tout – l’id e de l’Infini” (TI 79). In Totalit et Infini, holiness is thus strongly linked to the notion of the Other’s transcendence. Levinas seeks to secure this transcendence by claiming that the idea and desire of the Infinite is not born in the subject, but in the object (TI 56), thereby reversing the notion of intentionality. This implies to

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Levinas a certain notion of revelation – as opposed to a natural religion that departs from an “emptiness of the soul”: L’id e de l’infini ne part donc pas de Moi, ni d’un besoin dans le Moi mesurant exactement ses vides […] L’id e de l’Infini se r v le, au sens fort du terme. Il n’y a pas de religion naturelle […]. C’est le D sir qui mesure l’infinit de l’infini […] il na t partir de son «objet,» il est r v lation. Alors que le besoin est un vide de l’Ame, il part du sujet (TI 56).

This understanding of metaphysical desire as something revealed and not as something evolving out of a lack or need is important for Levinas in TI. But this revelatory religion does not contain any concrete message; it implies no substantial theology that seeks to grasp the transcendent through logic and representation. Rather, the infinite signifies in terms of the desire it evokes, a desire that for Levinas does not originate in the self but in the Other. This idea of revelation, however, not only presupposes the separation of otherness, but also the notion of a separated self that does not participate in metaphysics. But what does this notion of a separated self imply, and how does it carry religious significance? In TI, separation is determined as interior life or as “psychism,” and according to Levinas this is what keeps the distance that separates the metaphysician from metaphysics and its resistance to totalization (TI 112). The notion of an independent and separated self thus has the function of preserving transcendence. But the notion of separation in TI is first analyzed in its function of securing the independence and freedom of the self – against totalizing attempts to include the interiority of psychism in history as something irrevocable. This separation of psychism is thereby opposed to the impersonal participation in being and, as Edith Wyschogrod puts it, psychism “is a being such that its being is an absolute beginning […] Psychism breaks into history as memory allowing us to put into question what history designates as irrevocable, to rescind the past, to master it” (Wyschogrod 2000, 85). This mastering is described by Levinas in terms of an inversion of historical time in memory, which protects the subject against the fatality and destiny of objective history : Par la m moire, je me fonde apr s coup, r troactivement: j’assume aujourd’hui ce qui, dans le pass absolu de l’origine, n’avait pas de sujet pour Þtre reÅu et qui, d s lors, pesait comme une fatalit […] La m moire comme inversion du temps historique est l’essence de l’int riorit (TI 49).

This analysis of memory as a way of mastering historical time is thus, on the one hand, a positive condition for freedom from an impersonal destiny or, as he also puts it, freedom from the “place”: “Par le psychisme, l’Þtre qui est dans un lieu, reste libre l’ gard de ce lieu” (TI 47). We have seen that the independence from participation in itself is not sufficient for ethical subjectivity. Levinas claims, however, that the satisfied

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and autonomous being that results from this separation is the only condition from which the Other can be sought (TI 56). Although Levinas seems to connect separation to the idea of the subject as the origin of the world and meaning – in other words close to the transcendental violence as described in Chapter 1 – he would not regard the separated subject of interiority as a transcendental condition for ethics. Instead, as Richard A Cohen puts it, “it is from the other’s separation, from the other’s independence, that the other transcends and ‘reconditions’ the self” (R. Cohen 2009, 167). The separation of the self can thereby not be thought independently of the separation – as height – of the Other. This implies that separation can be interpreted as what preserves the transcendent to the point of its absence. Josh Cohen read Levinas in light of his relationship to the Talmudic tradition, where the designation of the holy as kadosh considers “a mode of being or a beyond of being rather than a quiddity.” This means, as Cohen points out, that “the Talmudic ‘Name’ merely signifies His refractoriness to naming. Naming in the Talmud enacts a theology which only ever speaks its own impossibility, the insufficiency of its logos to the theos it approaches” (J. Cohen 2003, 97). Separation is thus what secures God’s holiness. But in TI this holiness can be approached only as the face of the Other ; Levinas claims that God reveals himself only in the height of the other person: “Autrui n’est pas l’incarnation de Dieu, mais pr cis ment par son visage, o il est d sincarn , la manifestation de la hauteur o Dieu se r v le” (TI 77). This latter quote illustrates the unmistakably ethical motivation behind Levinas’ emphasis on separation; it concerns the otherness of the Other, which as face reveals the height of a God that cannot be included in any theology. The ethical character of holiness is for Levinas necessary in order to prevent the holy from being mixed with the violent esthetical elements that is contained in religions of the sacred. The rejection of esthetic elements of religion is particularly visible in Levinas’ reading of Kierkegaard. Despite Kierkegaard’s “overcoming” of the esthetical stage as described in Fear and Trembling, Levinas distrusts his religious stage precisely because of how Kierkegaard’s trust in divine intervention seems to involve an idolatry that dispossesses the self (involving a dispossession that does not arise out of the ethical encounter). As we have seen, this kind of dispossession also characterized Levinas’ notion of esthetical transcendence. In other words, Levinas is critical toward Kierkegaard’s way of understanding the hierarchical stages of the esthetical, the ethical and the religious. Instead, he elaborates the meaning of his ethical religion by critiquing Kierkegaard’s reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard develops his understanding of faith by exploring the meaning of Abraham’s obedience when told by God to sacrifice his own son. Whereas Kierkegaard puts emphasis on the obedience of the religious stage that exceeds the ethical stage of public morals, Levinas criticizes the violence

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of Kierkegaard’s religious stage (PN 76). “The harshness of Kierkegaard,” he writes “emerges at the exact moment when he ‘transcends ethics’” (PN 76), when Abraham’s faith is so strong that he is ready to sacrifice his own son. Several scholars have remarked that the accusation of violence misses Kierkegaard’s (or his pseudonym de Silentio’s) point.20 Without touching upon this discussion, however, Levinas’ problem lies in a religion that is dissociated from ethics, or perhaps a religion in which faith is too strong. In Levinas’ own reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac, the voice that first tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac does not come from God, but from a false transcendence. The second voice that Abraham hears, however, the one that tells him not to kill after all, represents the good transcendence and is the central moment of the text: “Abraham’s attentiveness to the voice that led him back to the ethical order, in forbidding him to perform a human sacrifice, is the highest point of the drama” (PN 77). The word God is not mentioned here. Instead, Levinas talks about a return to the ethical order, and even declares himself disturbed by Kierkegaard’s “completely naked subjectivity that, in its desire to avoid losing itself in the universal, rejects all form” (PN 76). Does this mean that Levinas’ good transcendence requires form after all, despite his earlier claim that the face is opposed to form? The question is important, as it concerns the role of the il y a, which we saw was characterized by the ontological violence as a “formless swarming.” This violence of being is undoubtedly what Levinas wants to avoid here, and in light of this analysis of the sacred, Levinas seems to reject a kind of religion in which a certain distance is lost – in participation. Levinas’ critique of this rejection of form could thus be seen as a distance from the irrationalism of the il y a. If we recall the observations made by Visker in connection with trauma, the rejection of form would here be central to what he characterizes as a bad trauma of fear and trembling. The good ethical trauma, on the other hand, would imply the thought of a transcendence that withdraws – in order to bend the desire away from the transcendent toward the other person. While Levinas does not mention God in connection with Abraham’s return to the ethical order, this does therefore not mean that the ethical has replaced the religious. The withdrawal or separation of transcendence rather represents precisely the moment of holiness in the ethical relation, as it prevents the subject from being dazzled or charmed by God’s glory. The latter is what happens in the bad transcendence of the first voice that Abraham heard which would belong to a religiosity of the sacred and not the holy. Levinas’ ethical religion and his emphasis on holiness are thus characterized by a strong sobriety. Visker points out, however, that the notion of God that withdraws still has metaphysical presuppositions. This would not imply that the ethical order is miraculously revealed through metaphysics, but rather that the thought of 20 For example, Michael Strawser remarked, “would in all likelihood have been avoided if Levinas had taken into account Kierkegaard’s major ethical work, Works of Love” (Strawser 2008, 127).

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God’s withdrawal seems to require what one might call a “metaphysical atheism” – or a-theism (with a hyphen marking the difference preventing divinity from becoming substantial). However, how Levinas conceives of metaphysics also has implications for how he thinks about God. In the next section, I continue to look at works from Levinas’ early and middle period and ask how the metaphysical atheism that seems to accompany the thought of a radical separation can be seen to characterize Levinas’ ethical religion in relation to more specific religious traditions. Does the a-theism of a God that withdraws leave the subject so separated from the transcendent that one may – as Visker showed – talk of the transcendence as if, in a way that makes metaphysics itself ambiguous? The ambiguity of metaphysics and the problem of purity become more visible in light of Levinas’ later reflections on religion, where he maintains his major points of view at the same time as he is increasingly concerned with thinking the trace of God as a manifestation in being, which has implications for his thoughts about religious subjectivity. But let us first look at Levinas’ reflections on God and atheism in relation to the religious traditions of Judaism in particular.

Judaism as a religion for adults When we discuss Levinas with respect to more specific religious traditions, we cannot overlook his numerous religious writings, which can be distinguished from his more philosophical works not only by the use of different publishers, but also by the different sources that he refers to. Whereas his philosophical works are strongly dependent on the European philosophical tradition (and Jewish philosophers like Rosenzweig), many of his religious works rely on the rabbinic tradition where interpretations of the Talmud play a crucial role. Levinas himself wrote several so-called “Talmudic lectures,” but also more thematic articles on religion as those collected in Difficile Libert , which we have already referred to. One of the articles in Difficile Libert that most clearly signals what kind of religion Levinas aims at is “Une religion d’adultes” – a religion for adults. Levinas here seeks to understand the role of Judaism in the modern world, and the reference to adulthood means that religion cannot let people put their trust in a God that intervenes in the world and makes up for human mistakes. Instead, man is himself responsible in a way that takes on messianic dimensions. The notion of messianism is also explored more explicitly in another important part of Difficile Libert called “Textes messianiques,” where Levinas writes:

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Le messianisme, ce n’est donc pas la certitude de la venue d’un homme qui arrÞte l’histoire. C’est mon pouvoir de supporter la souffrance de tous. C’est l’instant o je reconnais ce pouvoir et ma responsabilit universelle (DL 130).

The question we should approach here is how Levinas believes this strongly ethical religion to be compatible with the fundamental insights of a monotheist, and in particular, Jewish belief. In the last subsection, we saw that the notion of holiness in terms of separation was crucial to Levinas’ ethical religion, and that this was opposed to a religiosity of the sacred. This latter form of religion, involving participation as a kind of depersonalization, is seen by Levinas to characterize paganism, whereas the break with the sacred of paganism is essential to monotheism. This implies, however, as Levinas puts it in “Une religion d’adultes,” that monotheism is atheist with regard to religions with “numinous and numerous gods,” and that Judaism in this sense is close to the Occident, meaning philosophy : Le monoth isme marque une rupture avec une certaine conception du sacr . Il n’unifie ni ne hi rarchise ces dieux numineux et nombreux; il les nie. A l’ gard du divin qu’ils incarnent, il n’est qu’ath isme. Ici, le juda sme se sent extrÞmement proche de l’Occident, je veux dire de la philosophie (DL 29).

What does Levinas mean here by regarding monotheism and Judaism as atheist? Does the alleged closeness of Judaism to philosophy mean that religion on its way to adulthood is released from itself, or is there rather another religious dimension common to both Judaism and philosophy? To answer this, we should note exactly how Levinas sees atheism as closely connected to monotheism, whereas both atheism and monotheism are opposed to paganism and its worship of the sacred. Atheism is for him a risk that is involved in the necessary destruction of the numinous concept of the sacred, but through this process alone man can raise himself to what he calls “the spiritual notion of transcendence” (DL 30). But atheism seems to be more than a risk; what makes this spiritual notion of transcendence possible is for Levinas the radical separation, which, in its break with participation, reveals a certain atheism: “On peut appeler ath isme cette s paration si compl te que l’Þtre s par se maintient tout seul dans l’existence sans participer l’Etre dont il est s par ” (TI 52). As separation and independence from the participation in being, atheism is thus a condition for transcendence in Levinas’ radical meaning. In the last subsection we saw that separation was crucial to Levinas’ notion of holiness, but is it possible to say something more about the religious significance of this “atheist monotheism,” if we may call it so? Catherine Chalier suggested that Levinas is influenced by Jewish sources that often perceive immanence as “desert e par Dieu, abandonn e la desolation et au Malheur,” as opposed to the optimism found in Hassidism, where divinity is

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present in everything (Chalier 2002, 83). The goal of this emphasis on a godless immanence is to hinder participation in the sacred, which would distract attention from the transcendence revealed in the ethical relationship to the Other. Levinas relies on sources in the ethical-Talmudic version of Judaism that he had met in the rational Vilnius tradition, whereas other more emotional or enthusiastic approaches to transcendence, for example, in Hassidism, are disapproved of. This notion of a God that withdraws is also found in the Jewish cabbalistic notion of Tzimtzum: the idea that God withdraws from his creation to leave room for his creatures. In his article “Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz” (Jonas 1994, 206) Hans Jonas connected this notion of withdrawal to the problem of theodicy, or the theoretical problem of maintaining a belief in an almighty God facing the problem of evil, especially in light of events of extreme evil like the Holocaust. This background also seems relevant for understanding Levinas’ atheism, which implies that the problem of evil and its lack of meaning should evoke a practical rather than a theoretical “solution.”21 But the atheism in question is no simple reduction to the ethical. Josh Cohen claimed that Levinas’ atheism must be understood as a metaphysical atheism, which is to be distinguished from all forms – logical, scientistic, existentialist – of rationalist atheism. For Levinas, to deny God is merely to invert the positive appropriative mode of knowing in religion. Metaphysical atheism, in contrast, designates not the denial of God, but God’s sovereign denial of Himself to human knowledge or representation (J. Cohen 2003, 157, n. 34).

This reading also corresponds to the metaphysical interpretations of good trauma as we saw in the chapter on traumatism – where God withdraws and thereby bends the desire away from himself toward the Other. We have seen that Levinas himself acknowledges the metaphysical dimension of his work, and such a metaphysical atheism seems to be present when Levinas talks of the atheism of a created being (DL 30). What is important is that Levinas denies that our relationship to metaphysics must be a theological one that implies thematization: “L’ath isme du m taphysicien – signifie positivement que notre rapport avec le M taphysique est un comportement thique et non pas la th ologie, non pas une th matisation, f t-elle connaissance par analogie des attributs de Dieu” (TI 76). Other readers have also remarked that Levinas’ atheism is not primarily theoretical 21 As Claudia Welz has shown, Levinas’ refusal of theodicies for ethical reasons is thematized in e. g. the article “La souffrance inutile” in Entre Nous. Levinas claims that “la justification de la douleur du prochain est certainement la source de toute immoralit ” (EN 109). Welz also points out, however, that Levinas “does not seek to ‘solve’ the problem of theodicy through ethical activism,” as this would “expect too much of fallible persons and ignore situations of helplessness.” Instead, she emphasizes the importance of Levinas’ notion of compassion (Welz 2008, 314).

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atheism, but an atheism that is practically motivated. As Michael Purcell suggests, his atheism should be seen as “not so much the denial of the divine, but rather the refusal of a theism in which God is reduced to theory and abstraction, a God who could be approached other than by way of the detour of the other person” (Purcell 2006, 62). But Levinas’ atheism seems to be more than a replacement of theism with ethics. This is clear when he claims that it is a great honor for God “d’avoir cr un Þtre capable de le chercher ou de l’entendre de loin, partir de la s paration, partir de l’ath isme” (DL 30). Some notion of God as creator is in other words presupposed besides – or beyond – atheism. Does this mean that atheism is “overcome” by exteriority? In Difficile Libert it may indeed seem to be the case, when Levinas suggests that the ignorance of the true God in atheism is only a partial evil – “un demi-mal” – because it is surpassed in monotheism: “l’ath isme vaut mieux que la pi t vou e aux dieux mythiques […] Le monoth isme d passe et englobe l’ath isme, mais il est impossible qui n’a pas atteint l’ ge du doute, de la solitude et de la r volte” (DL 31). This latter emphasis on solitude and doubt indicates that, although Levinas seems to presuppose the notion of God as creator, the created being can reach its creator only based on atheism. There undoubtedly seems to be a certain form of dialectics at play here, but of what kind? And what are the implications for the conception of atheism? Do we see the outline of a Hegelian-dialectical scheme where monotheism is atheism “aufgehoben,” and where the doubt, solitude and revolt of atheism appears to be a necessary “stage” on the path to a true (and voluntary) relationship to the creator? This indeed seems plausible in light of some of Levinas’ formulations in DL, but in light of other passages it might be more fruitful to draw parallels to the negative dialectics of Theodor W. Adorno, in which the notion of an “Aufhebung” is problematized.22 This means that, instead of asking how atheism signifies in light of an overcoming toward the absolute – which would conflict with Levinas’ refusal of any return to a totalizing scheme – we should rather explore how the moment of doubt, solitude and revolt keeps recurring. How the problem of overcoming affects the notion of God in Levinas’ later thought is further explicated below. Some readers have also remarked that we can hear the echo of the Protestant dialectical theology in Levinas, although this tradition is perhaps not as attentive as Levinas to the problem of overcoming. However, both the absence of natural theology and the notion of God as the wholly Other that reaches us “senkrecht von oben” comprise important parallels to Levinas’ view, and Samuel Moyn has shown that, although Levinas in his articles on religion is

22 Hent de Vries also argued for this in his book Minimal Theologies, where he compares Levinas and Adorno and claims that “Levinas’s thought […] sketches a dialectical and negative metaphysics of sorts” (De Vries 2004, xxi).

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mainly concerned with Judaism, this direction had a profound (yet indirect) influence on him.23 What is Levinas’ more general consideration of Christianity? Can Christianity also be a religion for adults, or is this label reserved for a certain interpretation of Judaism? First of all, the proximity to atheism and philosophy is for Levinas central not only to Judaism but to monotheism in general because of its emphasis on holiness. As is clear from his ambiguous treatment of Christianity, however, he does not always consider the break with paganism to be so strictly maintained in the Christian tradition. In early articles like “Quelques r flexions sur la philosophie de l’hitl risme” from 1934, he is mainly concerned with the parallels. There he talks about a (religious) independence in terms of freedom from the place and from destiny, as not only characterizing Judaism, but also Christianity : “Cette libert infinie l’ gard de tout attachement, par laquelle, en somme, aucun attachement n’est d finitif, est la base de la notion chr tienne de l’ me” (QRPH 11). According to Josh Cohen, Levinas sees in the (Christian) hierarchy of soul over the body – “whose legacy is so clearly visible in the French Enlightenment’s proclamation of the sovereignty of reason” – the liberation of the human “from the suffocating grasp of mythic nature” (J. Cohen 2003, 6). Both Judaism and Christianity are thereby for Levinas first seen as emphasizing human independence from what we in the chapter on esthetics have seen characterizes participation: anonymity and irresponsibility. After the war, however, Levinas regarded freedom from the place as more essentially Judaic, whereas Christianity is more prone to fall into paganism and its esthetic tendencies. In “Le Lieu et l’utopie” from 1950, Levinas writes the following about Christianity : Que les choses d’ici-bas importent, le christianisme ne l’a jamais contest . Mais il surestime et sous-estime la fois le poids de la r alit qu’il veut am liorer. Il le surestime parce qu’il y voit une r sistance totale l’action humaine. Les rapports que l’homme entretient avec lui-mÞme et avec ses prochains – lui apparaissent fig s, inalt rables, ternels. Il les sous-estime, car il esp re d’une intervention miraculeuse de la Divinit une transfiguration totale de cette brutale pesanteur. (DL 144)

For Levinas, Christianity tends to put its trust in divine intervention instead of emphasizing the possibility of human freedom, and it also tends to regard the relationships to oneself and to others as unchangeable, in other words as destiny. This critique is similar to the one raised against Heidegger. The latter’s affiliation with Nazism might well have influenced Levinas’ at times negative view of Christianity, although Levinas’ dislike of Heidegger, as Robyn Horner 23 One of Moyn’s main theses is that Levinas incorporated “the interwar Protestant rhetoric into one of the foundational phrases of postmodernism, ‘wholly other’” (Moyn 2005, 251). For an analysis of the relationship between Levinas and dialectical theology, see also the works of Graham Ward.

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has remarked, “is expressed most powerfully not in any personal attack on Heidegger and National Socialism, but in a philosophical (or quasiphilosophical) attack on the totality and neutrality of being” (Horner 2001, 56). In his article “Heidegger, Gagarine et nous,” Levinas accuses Heidegger and Heideggerians of this attachment to the place linked to an “eternal seduction of paganism”: Le myst re des choses est la source de toute cruaut l’ gard des hommes. L’implantation dans un paysage, l’attachement au Lieu, sans lequel l’univers deviendrait insignifiant et existerait peine, c’est la scission mÞme de l’humanit en autochtones et en trangers (DL 325).

In other words, paganism is the root of racism for Levinas. Its mystical relationship to things and places – its participation – transports humans beyond their own will instead of securing human independence: “Le numineux ou le sacr enveloppe et transporte l’homme au-del de ses pouvoirs et ses vouloirs” (DL 28). The attachment to the place is thereby connected to esthetic sensation, rhythm – and the transcendence of things (and not others). Judaism, on the other hand, is described by Levinas as having disenchanted the world: Le juda sme a d sensorcel le monde, a tranch sur cette pr tendue volution des religions partir de l’enthousiasme et du sacr . Le juda sme demeure tranger tout retour offensif de ces formes d’ l vation humaine. Il les d nonce comme l’essence de l’idol trie (DL 28).

This critique of paganism as religious idolatry is motivated by the same skepticism toward the image we saw in Levinas’ writings on esthetics. In RO, the idol-character of the image was connected to the plasticity of the statue and to its cessation of time, which would imply a reintegration of strangeness into the world and, in Levinas’ eyes, in destiny. The reference to destiny and the attachment to the place as characteristics of the paganism Levinas wants to break with emphasizes that his kind of ethical religion implies freedom and independence. But there are several problems with this seemingly utopian position. First of all, we have seen that the problems of purity to which Derrida drew attention precisely prompted Levinas to explore the importance of being as the place where transcendence breaks in and is testified to. We shall see what happens with the religious notions when we turn to the problems of language and mediation in the final two subsections. But before that, we have to delve more into another problem regarding the implications of holiness as separation and atheist transcendence for the subject. We shall see that these notions are crucial to Levinas’ conception of freedom, i. e., a freedom that is not totally disconnected from the Other but rather closely connected to shame. At the same time, the question is whether separation and atheism run the risk of producing a

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melancholic subject, and if so, whether this melancholy can or should be overcome.

Religious freedom and melancholy As we saw in the last chapter, the break with participation and rhythm was seen to lead not only to the subject’s independence and freedom, but also to melancholy. Melancholy was not only taken in its psychological form as a depressive mood, but also connected to the cultural condition of the breakdown of meaning following the death of illusions or the death of God. Is the melancholy that follows from this break with participation a good thing, or does it rather have unhealthy implications, such as rendering the subject so alone in its excessive responsibility that relationships to others are made difficult? In the last chapter, we asked whether the goodness of melancholy depended on an ethical difference between the self and the Other, a difference that seemed to be present in illeity but not in the il y a. It was in other words asked whether a religious moment could save the ethical relationship from its mere pathological implications. This is what we have to expand on in the following sections. The iconoclast tendencies described in the previous subsections – implying atheism and separation – could, on the one hand, be seen as close to the melancholic mood of a free but solitary subject. At the same time, we have seen that these tendencies are connected to the notion of transcendence, which could be seen to open the melancholic subject to the Other. This tension between the freedom of melancholy and the relationship to the Other is particularly striking in Levinas’ descriptions of ethical freedom as a freedom constituted in shame. In the same way as shame was seen to distinguish the ethical trauma from the panic of the psychoanalytical trauma, shame here plays a crucial role in preventing the mere pathological interpretation of melancholy. The pathological character of melancholy could be seen in what Kristeva and Lacan pointed to as the melancholic’s danger of aggressive narcissism, something that could be overcome only through a connection to language or the third. This will certainly also be important for Levinas’ notion of relationality, as the next section shows. On a more fundamental level, however, it is crucial to explore how for Levinas the ethical relationship to the Other involves a certain shame. Let us therefore start by looking at how freedom and its melancholy are connected to shame. In Difficile Libert , it is clear that the freedom in question is not independent of an ethical relationship to exteriority. As the title of the article “Une religion d’adultes” indicates, the break with the violence of the “uncontrollable surplus” of the sacred is also a break with the childlike irresponsibility of destiny. Instead, Levinas emphasizes the importance of independence and a freedom, which is seen here not as a goal in itself, but as

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“la condition de toute valeur que l’homme puisse attendre” (DL 28 – 29). Although this description of freedom as a condition for value may seem close to a (Kantian) transcendental freedom, this freedom is not seen as independent of a desire for transcendence; Judaism understands the human “ la fois jaloux de son ind pendance mais assoiff de Dieu” (DL 31). But, Levinas asks, how can this strong demand for freedom be integrated into the desire for transcendence? Although Levinas claims that freedom is a condition for value, this sovereignty or autonomy is again established by the ethical relationship with exteriority, in which “le contact avec un Þtre ext rieur, au lieu de compromettre la souverainet humaine, l’institue et l’investit” (DL 31). How is this ethical moment of freedom expressed? Levinas emphasizes in TI that ethical freedom is a freedom that questions itself and even is ashamed of itself. This moment of critique is crucial to the atheist tendency of monotheism, and it is important for understanding both ethical freedom and philosophy in general. In Totalit et Infini, Levinas sees the origin of knowledge – not unlike Kant and Husserl – in a critical move of distrusting oneself: “Le savoir ne devient savoir d’un fait que si, en mÞme temps, il est critique, s’il se met en question” (TI 81). According to Levinas, such a critical move can be understood on the basis either of the subject’s weakness or of its indignity/guilt. The former is for him predominant in most of the European tradition, the result being that freedom does not really question itself: “On peut distinguer dans la pens e europ enne la pr dominance d’une tradition qui subordonne l’indignit l’ chec, la g n rosit morale elle-mÞme, aux n cessit s de la pens e objective. La spontan it de la libert ne se met pas en question” (TI 81). What for Levinas needs to be questioned is precisely the arbitrariness of freedom, which can only be done if the subject is not only weak, but also guilty or unworthy. The way Levinas understands critique in terms of indignity or guilt thus emphasizes the otherness that is involved in such freedom. But how can Levinas know that the questioning of one’s arbitrary freedom is not itself arbitrary? Kant and others solved the problem of freedom’s arbitrariness by identifying reason and will in a rational and moral freedom contrasted with the simple freedom of choice. Such identification would for Levinas be a too rationalist solution where one tries to grasp oneself in a totality (TI 86). Transcendental freedom in TI is itself characterized as irrational and arbitrary : “La libert ne se justifie pas par la libert ” (TI 339). For Levinas, freedom cannot be justified by itself, and it is not justified in “la conscience de la certitude, mais dans une exigence infinie l’ gard de soi, dans le d passement de toute bonne conscience” (TI 340). The freedom of responsibility thereby results from the situation of being judged. In TI, this situation is determined as a first sociality, since judgment cannot come from an impersonal (TI 340). For Levinas, this means that consciousness of my immorality or the arbitrariness and violence of freedom cannot be due to a fact (of reason), but to an infinite Other. This Other is then not described

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as a threatening obstacle, but as someone who is desired in my shame: “La conscience premi re de mon immoralit , n’est pas ma subordination au fait, mais Autrui, l’Infini. La libert pouvant avoir honte d’elle-mÞme – fonde la v rit (et ainsi la v rit ne se d duit pas de la v rit ). Autrui n’est pas initialement fait, n’est pas obstacle, ne me menace pas de mort. Il est d sir dans ma honte” (TI 82). This aspect of shame is what seems to distinguish the consciousness of moral indignity from mere consciousness of weakness. The latter, according to Levinas, is unable to found theory and truth, whereas the consciousness of moral indignity precedes truth (TI 82). Critique understood as shame or consciousness of indignity also relates to an Other in a more radical way than does the consciousness of weakness; it enables the subject to question itself in a way that leads beyond its freedom and beyond its very condition (as constitutive of itself). According to Levinas, this can only happen in a being that is created: Le savoir comme critique, comme remont e en deÅ de la libert – ne peut surgir que dans un Þtre qui a une origine en deÅ de son origine – qui est cr . La critique ou la philosophie est l’essence du savoir. Mais le propre du savoir n’est pas dans sa possibilit d’aller vers un objet […] Son privil ge consiste pouvoir se mettre en question, p n trer en deÅ de sa propre condition. (TI 83)

Levinas believes the condition of creation to influence the very essence of knowledge, which is not found in the intentional direction toward an object, but in a radical questioning of oneself and one’s freedom. This selfquestioning is basically a response to a questioning from the outside; the Other performs a reduction on me, to put it in Husserlian terms. This questioning from the outside of the arbitrariness of freedom is not primarily a logical one, but one in which I am ashamed. The meaning of creation for Levinas would thus not primarily lie in a theoretical claim of creation ex nihilo; it is rather the creation of a moral being, what Levinas calls the miracle of creation: La merveille de la cr ation ne consiste pas seulement Þtre cr ation ex nihilo, mais aboutir un Þtre capable de recevoir une r v lation, d’apprendre qu’il est cr et se mettre en question. Le miracle de la cr ation consiste cr er un Þtre moral. Et cela suppose pr cis ment, l’ath isme, mais la fois, par-del l’ath isme, la honte pour l’arbitraire de la libert qui le constitue (TI 88)

The creation of a moral being requires atheism – with its moment of doubt, solitude and revolt – on the one hand; on the other hand, beyond atheism, it demands shame of the arbitrary freedom that constitutes atheism. Both atheism and shame are thus necessary “ingredients” of morality, and it is shame – not reason – that protects freedom from arbitrariness. The question is now what the relationship between atheism and shame means for the possibility of the subject’s relationality. Is the separation in question so strong that its purity or sobriety leads the subject back to a melancholic condition

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and not toward the other person? Or can shame rather be seen as what opens one up for the concrete relationship? This may especially be relevant in light of Levinas’ anti-esthetic drive in the works discussed above, where ethical religion is presented as strongly dissociated from esthetics and connected to skepticism toward a religion in which esthetics “pollutes” metaphysics. According to Levinas, such a pollution happens by means of an imagination captured by things and a victim of participation: C’est, enfin, partir des relations morales que toute affirmation m taphysique prend un sens «spirituel,» s’ pure de tout ce qui prÞte nos concepts une imagination prisonni re des choses et victime de la participation (TI 77).

Purification from this “pollution” further requires an atheism or a separation through which one relates to the Other – and is at the same time already absolved from the relationship: Se rapporter l’absolu en ath e, c’est accueillir l’absolu pur de la violence du sacr . Dans la dimension de hauteur o se pr sente sa saintet – c’est- -dire sa s paration – l’infini ne br le pas les yeux qui se portent vers lui […] Seul un Þtre ath e peut se rapporter l’Autre et d j s’absoudre de cette relation (TI 75).

This means that the critique of esthetic participation already includes a problem of relationship and thereby a tendency toward melancholy. Such ambiguity of the ethical relationship as described above – where one is both related and always already absolved from the relationship – for Levinas has certainly to do with the possibility of responsibility. Not only because the separation protects the transcendence of the Other, but also because it hinders what, according to Levinas, happens in esthetics, where the subject is carried away and “fait partie de sa propre representation” in the passage to anonymity (RO 775). Ethical separation implies a refusal to be a part of such a drama where I am not the author, a refusal to “figurer dans un drame du salut ou de la damnation, qui se jouerait malgr moi et de moi” (TI 78). Levinas’ ethical religion in writings like Totalit et Infini and Difficile Libert is in other words characterized by a strong antiesthetic drive, and the primacy of ethics over an “impersonal, esthetic or ontological sublime” is emphasized by Levinas as one of the aims of Totalit et Infini (TI 77). We saw in Part 1 that one of the reasons for Levinas’ distrust of esthetics was its tendency toward shamelessness. Whereas Levinas would consider shame to be inherent to the self-positing of subjectivity, the lack of shame in art or esthetic enjoyment results from the abandonment of subjectivity (and thereby responsibility). When in TI Levinas opposes ethical transcendence to a mere esthetical one, it is the same seriousness as opposed to a shameless depersonalization of art that is at stake; what characterizes ethical transcendence as opposed to a mere esthetic one is the shame of the arbitrary freedom of the self. This ability to question oneself in shame is connected to

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the fact of being created and not – as in certain esthetic attitudes – of being one’s own creator. However, when Levinas suggests such a close link between atheism and shame (one that presupposes a notion of creation), the melancholy in question cannot be as radically separated and solitary as the one that leads to aggressive narcissism according to Kristeva and Lacan, at least not according to Levinas’ intention. And perhaps it is also the ambiguities of Levinas’ attempt to keep the balance between atheism and shame that leads to a certain shift in language in his later descriptions of subjectivity. As we have seen, although Levinas maintains the thought of transcendence, an analysis of the affected subject and the need for mediation through language comes to play a more important role in works like Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence. This also means that notions like atheism and separation are not as important in Levinas’ later works as they are in Totalit et Infini. Instead, Levinas increasingly understands the Other in terms of a traumatic “Other-in-me.” How does this affect the melancholic tendency of atheist transcendence? Also in Levinas’ later work there are strong similarities between Levinas’ ethics and psychoanalytical descriptions of melancholy ; both the melancholic’s excessive feeling of guilt and the extinction of survival instinct were seen to resemble Levinas’ descriptions of the ethical situation. We also asked whether the seeming perfectionism of Levinas’ subject position – where the subject is always more responsible and thereby has the moral upper hand – was in danger being engulfed by the narcissist aggression that, according to Lacan and Kristeva, was associated with melancholy. At the same time, we have already suggested that trauma and melancholy represent two seemingly opposite motifs in Levinas’ work which are nevertheless crucial to his ambiguous notion of the self-other-relationship, as characterized both by radical proximity and radical distance. The question is whether the radical proximity of the trauma could be seen to prevent the dangers of melancholy of the strong separation of the self and Other, when the Other is now understood more as an Other-in-me that challenges the ego on a more fundamental level. Can the trauma be seen as a good and liberating trauma, one that opens the subject to the relationship to the Other, as readers like Chalier and Visker have interpreted Levinas? The liberating potential of the trauma is especially visible in the notion of substitution, which is seen to bring about a freedom that precisely frees the subject from melancholy or from what Levinas calls the “boredom of the enchainment to oneself.” We should therefore start by analyzing what happens with freedom and melancholy with the notion of substitution. Interesting here is first of all that, despite all the emphasis on the passivity of substitution as trauma and persecution, Levinas considers what happens in substitution as important for freedom. Ethical freedom still comes before the transcendental freedom to choose between good and evil (AE 194). Whereas this freedom in TI presupposed an ambiguity between atheism and the shame

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of arbitrariness in atheism, now Levinas no longer mentions the separation of atheism, but is instead concerned more with the “dispossession” of the self and how the freedom of substitution is radically instituted from the outside. This otherness of freedom was certainly important also in TI’s analysis of ethical shame and guilt as presupposing the notion of creation, though now Levinas’ Other seems to have a more active or even an intrusive character. This means, for example, that he can speak of the freedom that comes after responsibility as resulting from an election by “the Good”: “Cette ant riorit de la responsabilit par rapport la libert signifierait la Bont du Bien; la n cessit pour le Bien de m’ lire le premier avant que je sois mÞme de l’ lire, c’est- -dire d’accueillir son choix” (AE 195). In other words, the “goodness of the good” is so transcendent that I am unable to choose it freely before it chooses me and thereby “institutes my freedom.” Levinas describes this election by the Good as an initial sociality, but does this imply that the subject is now rid of its melancholy? In this regard Levinas does not mention the concept of melancholy, neither as a personal nor as a cultural diagnosis. But both in AE and in the passage below from his later work DDVI he does speak of a crisis that bears similarities to melancholy : a crisis of boredom in our contemporary godless world: Le monde contemporain, scientifique, technique et jouisseur, se voit sans issue – c’est- -dire sans Dieu – non pas parce que tout y est permis et, par la technique, possible, mais parce que tout y est gal. L’inconnu aussit t se fait familier et le nouveau, coutumier. Rien n’est nouveau sous le soleil. La crise inscrite dans l’Eccl siaste, n’est pas dans le p ch , mais dans l’ennui. (DDVI 31)

The crisis of boredom is connected to the experience that renewal is impossible, and that everything remains the same, which is what happens precisely in a world “without God.” We have seen how this crisis in Levinas’ early works was connected to the il y a and to the facticity of being understood as an enchainment to oneself. Now, although we have pointed to how the il y a comes to play an important role also in Levinas’ later ethical thought, he is also concerned with how ethics may be seen as breaking with the enchainment to oneself. In AE, the ethical encounter with the Other is seen not only to awaken the subject to responsibility and free it from destiny, but also to free the subject from the boredom of this enchainment. This is precisely what happens in substitution: “La substitution affranchit le sujet de l’ennui, c’est- -dire de l’encha nement lui-mÞme” (AE 198). The freedom from the enchainment to oneself in substitution implies an exclusion of self-relationship: Dans cette substitution o l’identit s’invertit, dans cette passivit plus passive que la passivit conjointe de l’acte, au-del de la passivit inerte du d sign , le soi s’absout de soi. Libert ? Libert autre que celle de l’initiative. Par la substitution aux autres, le Soi-mÞme chappe la relation (AE 181).

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Although this quote may be read as signifying the exclusion of any relationship at all, it is the exclusion of self-relationship that is implied from the context, in which Levinas also talks about an incomparable relationship of responsibility (AE 181). By posing substitution as freedom from the boredom of the self, Levinas seems to suggest that substitution frees the subject from the (melancholic) crisis of meaning that we saw was so important in some of his early analyses. But if the subject is rid of the self-relationship and instead is constituted as an Other-in-me, the question remains whether such an otherness is open to a relationship to the Other in terms of sociality and not only a relationship to the goodness of an absent Other – that is even conceived of in the third person. This leads us to the discussion of the notion of the “third,” which in Levinas’ later work is intimately connected to the notion of God. How can God – in terms of the third – represent hope or something meaningful beyond melancholy? And how can we conceive of this hope beyond melancholy? Does it mean overcoming meaninglessness or does something of the crisis of meaning remain, involving an involvement with darkness or the il y a? As the final sections below will show, the latter is the case inasmuch as il y a is described as a modality of the ethical relationship. But before we go into this, let us first turn to the question of religious meaning in Levinas’ later work and start by analyzing the notion of God and the third.

The intrigue of God The question of the meaning of the word “God” is explicitly addressed in the book De Dieu qui vient l’id e (first published in 1982), where Levinas claims in the Preface that his different analyses of the word God are considered independently of the question of God’s existence or nonexistence. What is in question is rather the possibilities and the limits of a phenomenology for grasping the meaning of the word God; or as he puts it, how the notion of God – as something nonphenomenal – can still signify in phenomenological concreteness: “Ce qui est recherch ici, c’est la concr tude ph nom nologique dans laquelle cette signification pourrait signifier ou signifie, mÞme si elle tranche sur toute ph nom nalit ” (DDVI 7). In other words, Levinas would claim that the word God signifies in an ambiguity between phenomenality and nonphenomenality. This ambiguity may also be understood with respect to the tension between Saying and the Said. But, one may ask, how can God – as something transcendent – be visible in phenomenality at all? Does this attention to phenomenological concreteness not imply that Levinas has abandoned his earlier strong claims of radical transcendence and separation? Levinas recognizes this difficulty when he goes on to pose the question of how a phenomenological approach can avoid rendering the absolute immanent:

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On se demande s’il est possible de parler l gitimement de Dieu, sans porter atteinte l’absoluit que son mot semble signifier. Avoir pris conscience de Dieu, n’est-ce pas l’avoir inclus dans un savoir qui assimile, dans une exp rience qui demeure – quelles que soient ses modalit s – un apprendre et un saisir? Et ainsi l’infinit ou l’alt rit totale, ou la nouveaut de l’absolu n’est-elle pas restitu l’immanence […]? (DDVI 8)

Although Levinas searches for the significance of God in phenomenological concreteness, he is conscious of the difficulties connected to the attempt of articulating this transcendence of God in a legitimate way. He therefore continues to develop the notion of a thought that is not reducible to thematizing intentionality and that does not compromise the novelty of the absolute (DDVI 9). How is this possible? As in TI, Levinas takes recourse to Descartes’ idea of the infinite, which for Levinas is important not because of its theosophical proof, but because it marks a rupture of consciousness (DDVI 104 – 105). This rupture, however, is not a theoretical rupture; the way it signifies for Levinas is as disinterestedness and pure patience: Id e de l’Infini – pens e d gag e de la conscience, non pas selon le concept n gatif de l’inconscient, mais selon la pens e peut-Þtre la plus profond ment pens e, celle du d s-inter-essement: relation sans emprise sur un Þtre, ni anticipation d’Þtre, mais pure patience (DDVI 10).

We thereby see that the meaning of the infinite is not found in any powerful manifestation of glory, but rather in the phenomenological concreteness of bodily passivity. We have already analyzed the traumatic structure of this passivity ; now we have to understand why Levinas brings in the notion of God here. As Rudolf Bernet remarked, there is something contraintuitive to Levinas’ notion of transcendence in sensibility.24 This is especially visible in his notion of God. According to Levinas, the word God has an extraordinary character : It can be understood neither as a proper nor as a common name, and it does not apply to the common logical rules of sense. Rather, it is a “tiers exclu de l’Þtre et du n ant” (AE 236). Levinas indicates the impossibility of grasping this notion of God according to common logic, but what exactly does he mean by this notion of God as an “excluded third” (of being and nothingness)? And how does it relate to Levinas’ other ways of expressing the notion of the third? Levinas speaks of the third in terms of the third person and as “illeity”, and we should start by recalling what these notions are about. The third person is what disturbs the proximity of the immediate relationship to the other ; this third is “autre que le prochain, mais aussi un autre prochain, mais aussi un prochain de l’Autre” (AE 245). Although this third is described as the third person, Levinas remarks that it should not be understood as an empirical fact; 24 In a conversation in July 2007.

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the demand for universality and justice is instead always already present in the relationship with the Other : “d j l’obsession crie justice” (AE 246). The fact that there are other Others or a plurality of otherness calls for justice, something that forces the subject to compare and judge, and hence presupposes the symmetry of consciousness and language (as opposed to the asymmetry of the ethical relation), in other words the Said. But then Levinas also speaks of the religious thirdness of illeity signifying “selon une ‘tertialit ’ diff rente de celle du troisi me homme” (AE 234). The term illeity, which might be translated as “himness” or “itness,”25 is understood against the background of the traditional Jewish prayer that starts with “Blessed are Thou, He who ….” This prayer underlines the remoteness of God by the fact that, precisely when he is addressed directly, he must be spoken of in the third person. In a similar way, Levinas describes illeity as the Infinite’s detachment from the thought that seeks to capture and thematize it [the Infinite] (AE 230). In other words, the third signifies both as presence (in consciousness) and as absence (expressed with the notion of illeity). Levinas goes more into how this detachment from thought in illeity implies transcendence by developing what he calls the kerygmatic character of the word God. This character implies that the mentioning of the word God is either prayer or blasphemy : “mot s’ nonÅant d j comme k rygme dans la pri re ou le blasph me, gardant ainsi dans son nonc la trace de l’excession de la transcendance, de l’au-del ” (AE 237). The trace is thus connected to an essential ambiguity (and latent hypocrisy) connected to any mentioning of the word God, which requires the word to be “unsaid” as soon as it is said. It is this “unsaying” that prevents the transcendence – or illeity – from the corruption of immanence: Bouleversant v nement s mantique du mot Dieu domptant la subversion de l’Ill it ; la gloire de l’Infini s’enfermant dans un mot s’y faisant Þtre, mais d j d faisant sa demeure et se d disant sans s’ vanouir dans le n ant (AE 236).

When Levinas refers to God as an “illeity” that is corrupted in being, but immediately reduced or unsaid, he seems to understand God precisely within the ambiguous oscillation between Saying and the Said. But what is the significance of this ambiguity of the word God for ethical meaning? The paradox of absence in presence should not be taken as a hidden theology ; the absence in presence rather signifies as intrigue “qu’on est tent d’appeler religieuse, qui ne se dit pas en termes de certitude ou d’incertitude et ne repose sur aucune th ologie positive” (AE 230). Levinas goes on to say that the word God is perhaps nothing but a word, but then emphasizes the 25 The connection of the word to the pronoun “il” is pronounced in the article “La trace de l’Autre” (EDEHH 277)

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“perhaps” as precisely what expresses the ambiguous significance of the word God: R v lation de l’au-del de l’Þtre qui certes n’est peut-Þtre qu’un mot; mais ce «peutÞtre» appartient une ambigu t o l’anarchie de l’Infini r siste l’univocit d’un originaire ou d’un principe; une ambigu t ou une ambivalence et une inversion qui s’ nonce pr cis ment dans le mot Dieu – l’hapax du vocabulaire, aveu du «plus fort» que moi en moi et du «moins que rien» d’un rien d’un mot abusif, un au-del du th me dans une pens e qui ne pense pas encore ou qui pense plus qu’elle pense. (AE 244)

The word God in other words contains such a strong ambiguity or ambivalence that it is said to belong to “a thought that does not yet think or thinks more than it thinks.” With such tentative and paradoxical language Levinas seeks to express the difficulties in thinking transcendence. But there is more to say about the content of this than to remark on its excessiveness. In the Preface to DDVI, Levinas describes the “thought that thinks more than it thinks” as the responsibility that is not concerned with reciprocity – as “pourl’autre homme et par l -Dieu” (DDVI 13). The ambiguity of transcendence is herein thought in terms of responsibility, which is expressed with the notion of an approach to God that at the same time is a retreat ( -Dieu as adieu). But how is this ambiguity of God in terms of adieu or -Dieu important for ethical responsibility? We have already seen that the notion of detachment is important for the ethical relationship insofar as it preserves the difference between me and the Other. In Josh Cohen’s reading, the effect of Levinas’ doubling of the word adieu “is to render the approach to God ( Dieu) indissociable from a retreat (adieu),” and he claims that this adieu is immediately turned into responsibility toward the other human being: To be drawn toward the Good is to be turned away from it: this is the constitutive paradox that structures the religious relation. The approach to the Absolute – God or the Good – takes the form of an infinite detour toward the other human being; responsibility is what opens me to the Absolute and what, in interposing the “one degree more”, sends me away from it. (J. Cohen 2003, 93)

This is in accordance with what we saw in the last chapter : Goodness for Levinas was good because it rejects the desire for it, what was seen to preserve the difference of otherness. The ethical relationship to the Other thus implies a negation of the absolute, an adieu that, however, is the only real -Dieu or approach to the divine. In order to understand the ethical significance of this, however, it is important to pay attention to the radicality of this retreat. For Levinas, it is clear that the adieu is directed not only toward the notion of God or the Good, but also toward the meaning of being or worldliness altogether. In DDVI, he asks whether the passive synthesis of aging that signifies as “adieu au monde, la terre ferme, la pr sence, l’essance […] ne signifient-ils pas un -Dieu?” (DDVI 87) In Levinas’ view, there is a connection between the

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approach to God and the radical passivity of aging. It is important to pay attention to the radicality of this retreat for Levinas. For does not the emphasis on -Dieu as aging signal a melancholic approach to God, marked by the meaninglessness of the absence of an object to mourn? In TI, aging was characterized in negative terms as belonging to the mortal being and opposed to the renewal of fecundity (TI 315). In AE, however, the passivity of aging receives an ethical significance as part of of the diachronic temporality of a self not coinciding with itself (AE 96). When Levinas here determines the approach to God in terms of aging, he thereby implies a connection between the approach to God and the deeply sensible passivity. The passivity of aging not only implies bidding goodbye to the world, but also to any meaningful instantiation or thematization of goodness such as a “Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God for Levinas can only signify according to an “intrigue autre que celle qui s’ tale dans le th me” – in terms of “le Dire sans Dit du t moignage” (AE 230). As Rudi Visker showed, for Levinas the concept of intrigue is a technical term for what “attaches to what detaches itself absolutely, without relativizing it” (Visker 1999, 250). We shall see what is meant by the intrigue of testimony in the next subsection; what is important here is that the only possible signification of the kingdom of God is through the ethical passivity of the subject: Le R gne de Dieu […] signifie sous les esp ces de la subjectivit , sous les esp ces de l’unit assign e dans la synth se passive de la vie – sous les esp ces de la proximit du prochain et du devoir d’une dette impayable – sous les esp ces d’une condition finie – de la temporalit qui – vieillissement et mort de l’unique – signifie une ob issance sans d sertion. (AE 89)

The signification of the kingdom of God in its finite conditions of time – understood as the aging and death of the unique – thereby illustrates moving away from the discourse of radical otherness toward its effect in the subject. Subjectivity is seen as crucial to the glorification of infinity ; the Infinite does not receive its glory except through subjectivity as approaching the Other : “L’infini n’a donc de gloire que par la subjectivit , par l’aventure humaine de l’approche de l’autre, par la substitution l’autre, par l’expiation pour l’autre” (AE 231). The intrigue through which God as illeity signifies is an intrigue of subjectivity – as radical obedience or as the Saying without the Said of testimony. For Levinas, the signification of the infinite is not graspable as any “content”; rather, it is testified to in the obedience of the receiver – the receiver of a call that was never present. The transcendence of infinity “ne se passe que par le sujet qui la confesse ou la conteste. Inversion de l’ordre: la r v lation se fait par celui qui la reÅoit” (AE 244). Revelation is thus not given before a response in the subject. What does this tell us about revelation? We have seen that Levinas understands the reduction to Saying as a questioning of the Said, and that he is open to regarding such questioning as the very “pivot of revelation”: “Mais le

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point d’interrogation dans le Dit – alternant, contrairement au logos univoque des th ologiens – est le pivot mÞme de la R v lation, de sa lumi re clignotante” (AE 240). To pose the “question mark” in the Said as the very “pivot of the revelation” involves not only a questioning of oneself, as we have seen in the reference to the reductive truth as a questioning of my right to be or of my place in the sun. At the same time it involves questioning God as a guarantor of meaning. Indeed, it is this very questioning that opens up access to the infinite; it is the contestation of the infinite that implies that “tout m’incombe moi, par laquelle, par cons quent, se produit mon entr e dans les dessins de l’Infini” (AE 240). The contestation of the beyond preserves its meaning; its hypocrisy is reduced in an infinite hesitation of a restless subject. In the next subsection we discuss the implications of this paradoxical notion of God for both subjectivity and ethical meaning: What happens with the subject when the approach to God and the Other signifies as a goodbye to the world or as the radical passivity of aging? Can this seemingly melancholic or split subject be said to be truly meaningful, or does it rather come close to the meaninglessness of the il y a? As we saw, Visker was concerned with distinguishing il y a from illeity in his explication of the difference between the bad trauma of psychoanalysis and the good, ethical trauma. But does not the melancholic approach to God in terms of aging rather imply a certain connection between illeity and the il y a? And is such a notion of subjectivity able to provide for good and healthy relationships to others in a society? In the chapter on trauma we saw that some readers emphasized different aspects of the traumatized, ethical subject; whereas some would claim that the ethical trauma is one that heals – clearly distinguishing it from the bad trauma of psychoanalysis and from the depersonalizing experience of the il y a – others would emphasize more the closeness to both psychoanalysis and the il y a. The first account presupposes the notion of metaphysical goodness and ends up with a rather strong notion of the subject, whereas the latter emphasizes the weakness and finitude of the subject and a goodness that is not dependent on metaphysics. Now, in light of the discussion of the meaning of God, is it possible to claim that the notion of goodness (or God) for Levinas turns the meaning of the ethical into a healing one? In order to approach these questions, let us first examine how this goodness – or God – is expressed through Levinas’ notion of subjectivity in terms of testimony, before we once again approach the question of ethical meaning more explicitly.

The transcendence of subjectivity – and the return to society We have already seen how Levinas’ notion of ethical subjectivity has a messianic structure. Now we have to look closer at the implications of this religious subjectivity by analyzing the testimony or the subject as witness.

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When Levinas claims – as we have just seen – that revelation is given only in the subject’s response, he demonstrates how his notion of testimony is to be understood. The testimony Levinas talks about differs from other usages of the word when he claims that it is something testified to that has never been present and is therefore not re-presentable – like we saw implied in the traumatic structure of the call. When Levinas connects this structure to religious language, he does not claim that what is testified to is God’s existence or presence. Rather, what is testified to is an invisible command only made present as a trace in the infinite or the unconditioned response of the responsible subject. The notion of the face is still important to Levinas, but his conception of testimony underlines his conviction that the signification of the face is not shown as some visible call. The order that commands me to the Other precisely does not show itself – except as a “trace of its withdrawal” made present only in my own obedient voice: L’ordre qui m’ordonne autrui ne se montre pas moi, sinon par la trace de son anachor se, comme visage du prochain; par la trace d’une retraite qu’aucune actualit n’avait pr c d e et qui ne se fait pr sent que dans ma propre voix, d j ob issante – dur pr sent de l’offrande et du don (AE 220).

The trace of transcendence is thus found in my obedience, prior to any visible call or hearing of a command (AE 232). Levinas seeks to preserve the unspeakability of transcendence by emphasizing withdrawal, while at the same time he claims that transcendence can only be shown (as betrayed) within immanence – through my own obeying. It should be clear from what we have seen so far that this voice testifies or obeys as responsibility for the Other. What is important here is that such a responsibility cannot be a given before the giving of the self – before what Levinas calls the “me voici” of inspiration (AE 222). This means that when Levinas claims that the “here I am” of responsibility testifies to God, the obedience is thought prior to the mentioning of God’s name: «Me voici, au nom de Dieu,» sans me r f rer directement sa pr sence. «Me voici» tout court! De la phrase o Dieu vient pour la premi re fois se mÞler aux mots, le mot Dieu est encore absent. Elle ne s’ nonce en aucune faÅon: «je crois en Dieu.» T moigner de Dieu, ce n’est pr cis ment pas noncer ce mot extra-ordinaire, comme si la gloire pouvait se loger dans un th me et se poser comme th se ou se faire essence de l’Þtre. […] Le t moignage est humilit et aveu, il se fera avant toute th ologie. (AE 233)

By posing the humility of testimony before theology, Levinas seeks to emphasize practical responsiveness before any theoretical approaches to God. As opposed to the affirmative “I believe in God,” the “me voici” signals the subject in the accusative – the subject that is accused. But this humility is not toward God directly, but rather signifies as responsiveness in front of the Other

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“in the name of God.” According to Levinas, only through this indirect approach, through the voice of the witness, is infinity glorified (AE 229). This notion of testimony as a radical responsibility without any prior command has evoked some reactions also from a religious point of view. The Christian philosopher Jean-Louis Chr tien opposed the elevated position Levinas apparently gives the religious subject and asked whether not the absoluteness of the accusative makes an absolute of the self and thus the subject too divine: Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence r pond cette question par une phrase proprement tonnante, dont L vinas marque l’importance en la soulignant: «Supporter l’univers – charge crasante, mais inconfort divin» [AE 194] Divin? Trop divin!

For Chr tien the presentation of the subject as supporting the universe would put man in God’s place. Instead, he asks whether “Dieu ne manifeste-t-Il pas que Lui seul supporte l’univers?” (Chr tien 1991, 270). As we have seen, however, Levinas rejects notions of God where his power is manifested or made present by other ways than through the voice of the witness. In order to understand the strength in Levinas’ skepticism to account for such a notion of God, we must attend not only to the epistemological problem, but also to the moral one. The moral problem should be understood in the context of the crisis of meaning connected to the problem of evil: Levinas would not admit any solution to the problem of evil that presupposes the promise of salvation by an almighty God. We have seen that Levinas is explicitly critical toward the Christian notion of redemption, because the hope for divine intervention risks downplaying human freedom and responsibility. At the same time, we need to ask whether Chr tien does not have an important point also from a purely philosophical or psychological point of view. Might not the asymmetry of the ethical relationship – with I (Levinas’ first person subject) as a supporter of the universe – ultimately render the subject very alone? Is there any hope of grace and healing also for the subject, or does the notion of responsibility as testimony result in nothing but a melancholic subject incapable of relating to others and to the world? Is messianism really only about the redemption of the Other and not of the self ? As we shall see in the following, Levinas indeed seeks to attend to both concerns – both the need for a certain redemption for the self as well, while at the same time maintaining the thought of a radical exposure and asymmetry of the ethical subject. This will leave the question of the meaning of the ethical for the subject in an ambiguity of meaning and melancholy or meaninglessness, an ambiguity that we reveal in the last subsection to itself be significant. But let us start by looking at the way in which the redemption of the self may be imagined. In the latter parts of AE, Levinas indeed talks about a certain “grace” through which the subject may return as a member of society. In order to

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understand how this is meant, we must ponder some other aspects of Levinas’ analysis of testimony that concern the betrayal in the Said. It is interesting that Levinas talks of the obedience that we saw testified to the infinite as involving the (metaphorical) inscription of law in consciousness, which is also described as a returning of heteronomy in autonomy: Possibilit de trouver, anachroniquement, l’ordre dans l’ob issance mÞme et de recevoir l’ordre partir de soi-mÞme – ce retournement de l’h t ronomie en autonomie est la faÅon mÞme dont l’Infini se passe – et que la m taphore de l’inscription de la loi dans la conscience exprime d’une mani re remarquable, conciliant (en une ambivalence, dont la diachronie est la signification mÞme et qui, dans le pr sent, est ambigu t ) l’autonomie et l’h t ronomie. (AE 232)

What Levinas describes here is what happens when the infinite of Saying is necessarily betrayed in the Said; it becomes consciousness in a way that reconciles heteronomy and autonomy. Such a connection would at first sight seem to bring Levinas interestingly close to Kant’s moral philosophy. Although Kant emphasizes the subject’s autonomy as a condition for morality, there is also a strong heteronomous moment in Kant – presupposing the notion of a split self – shown in the conception of the moral law as inscribed in humans in the form of a categorical imperative. The way such an inscription occurs, however, is conceived of very differently by the two thinkers. Whereas for Kant the particular maxim is subsumed under the universal moral law, for Levinas the singularity of the Other has priority over its plurality. Put differently, the bodily openness of the Saying has an (an-archical) priority over the conscious reflection of the Said. Whereas Kant would consider autonomy as the primary or “ratio essendi” and heteronomy or the categorical imperative as the (derivative) “ratio cognoscendi,” for Levinas heteronomy is still understood as the source of the ethical. We have already seen, however, that with his emphasis on anarchy Levinas rejects foundationalism, which means that one cannot understand heteronomy as a principle from which autonomy can be deduced, but rather as an an-archical source. What the admittance of the necessity of a return of heteronomy into autonomy does confirm, however, is Levinas’ earlier recognition of the need for contextuality in ethics. The emphasis on consciousness is also seen to play a crucial role in the development of justice in a society, for which we have seen that the entrance of the third is indispensable. Levinas talks about “la naissance latente de la question dans la responsabilit ” (AE 244), and this is what opens the way to knowledge and to the third in the sense of consciousness and the plurality of the Other. There would not be a problem, Levinas remarks, if proximity only commanded me to the Other, since responsibility for the Other is immediate and lies before the question (AE 245). The question is born with the entrance of the third, which introduces a contradiction in Saying; the fact that there are other others requires justice, “c’est- -dire la comparaison, la coexistence, la

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contemporan it , le rassemblement, l’ordre, la th matisation, la visibilit des visages et, par l , l’intentionnalit et l’intellect […]” (AE 245). Justice accordingly requires all that which – belonging to the Said – ethics in terms of proximity is seen to exclude, and Levinas therefore writes that [l]a relation avec le tiers est une incessante correction de l’asym trie de la proximit o le visage se d -visage. Il y a pes e, pens e, objectivation et, par l , un arrÞt o se trahit ma relation an-archique l’ill it , mais o elle se traduit devant nous (AE 246 – 247).

Although the immediate relationship to the Other still remains the source of the ethical, the ambiguity, doubt and questioning involved in responding to the Other is thereby necessary in order for ethics not to remain in this duality, but to have an impact on society through justice. Levinas’ thoughts of a betrayal of the infinite seem to open up the possibility of a necessary (albeit reducible) hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that involves even an esthetic-religious dimension. As we have seen, infinity signifies in the testimony of the “here I am” – or in the “pour-l’autre” of sensibility. But then Levinas claims that this signification already implies a betrayal of infinity, in which the subject is given an identity. Levinas’ insists on the necessity of such a betrayal of transcendence, a betrayal of my anarchic relationship with illeity (AE 247). The (utopism of) the immemorial past is intolerable to thought, he claims; one has to stop somewhere – “ananke stenai” (AE 235). Interestingly, Levinas admits the necessity of transcendence taking place, which seems to moderate his earlier emphasis on the utopian character of Judaism. This taking place even happens in theology and art, which Levinas here refers to as “containing” (retiennent) the immemorial past: “Le mouvement au-del de l’Þtre devient ontologie et th ologie. D’o aussi l’idol trie du beau. Dans son indiscr te exposition et dans son arrÞt de statue, dans sa plasticit , l’œuvre d’art se substitue Dieu” (AE 235). The idolatry and hypocrisy inherent to the esthetics of ontology and theology is hence not possible to avoid – although one is still called to reduce it. It is worth remarking that Levinas describes the betrayal in terms of identity, place, beauty or statue; in other words, notions that were associated with the substantivity or instantaneousness of being. This betrayal does not mean that ontology and esthetics are placed on equal terms with the source of the ethical beyond being, but it does mean that the utopian moment is only a moment. What is also important for our questioning is that, through this betrayal of anarchy, the incomparable subject can return as a member of society. This happens, as Levinas puts it, “thanks to God.” He thereby indirectly answers the problem of the ethical solipsism of the excessively responsible subject with reference to a “passing” of God: Trahison de ma relation anarchique avec l’ill it , mais aussi une relation nouvelle avec elle: c’est gr ce Dieu seulement que, sujet incomparable Autrui, je suis abord

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en autre comme les autres, c’est- -dire «pour moi. » «Grace Dieu,» je suis autrui pour les autres […] Le «passage» de Dieu dont je ne peux parler autrement que par r f rence cette aide ou cette gr ce, est pr cis ment le retournement du sujet incomparable en membre de soci t . (AE 247)

Are we returning here to the divine consolation and grace that Chr tien seemed to call for when he criticized the Levinasian subject for being “too divine”? And does the reference to God finally open up the possibility of a healing goodness from the outside? The reference to grace or help to express the “passing” of God may appear strange, as it seems to imply a falling back into a eudemonist belief in divine restoration of justice – and thereby take the edge off Levinas’ own radical statements. Although this reference to (and the legitimacy of) justice for myself is important, the reference to grace does not refer to an intervention by a “heart-scrutinizing” God who restores justice (like in Kant) nor to a grace dissociated from ethics. “My lot is important,” Levinas maintains, but “it is still out of my responsibility that my salvation has meaning” (AE 250). This means that the surplus and asymmetry of responsibility still has priority over equality or reciprocity. “The forgetting of self moves justice”: “[L]’ galit de tous est port e par mon in galit , par le surplus de mes devoirs sur mes droits. L’oubli de soi meut la justice” (AE 248). My salvation or my experience of the grace of being a member of society and entering into reciprocal relationships is hence never placed first. As we saw in the chapter on traumatism, Levinas would also admit that the demand for justice opened by the third be valid for the ethical subject, though in a similar way he claims that this justice only makes sense if it were again “animated” by disinterestedness or the condition of “hostage” of Saying. We again see how the ethical implies an oscillation between Saying and the Said: Saying as hostage or forgetting of self cannot be taken as a state, but as something that breaks up and renews what is, namely, the Said – which signifies the subject in the world or in a society. Ethical subjectivity, in other words, must be constantly broken up or challenged in order not to freeze in the identity of the Said, but ethics cannot be imagined without this Said either. In this way the ethical subject cannot be seen as only split or only healed, but should be seen in a sort of oscillation between the two. What is interesting here is that in the above-mentioned passage Levinas believes God to be involved also in the return of the subject to society – and not connected only to the radical withdrawal of illeity, where religious subjectivity was described in terms of aging and adieu to the world. In other words, God is involved in both of the “orders” of ethical signification: God signifies, as we have already pointed out, in an ambiguity of phenomenality and nonphenomenality. At the same time, however, it cannot be denied that the challenging of the subject’s identity in Saying has an ethical (albeit an-archical) priority for Levinas, and that this happens in a much more radical way in AE than it did at the period of TI. This radicalization of ethical subjectivity can be illustrated by

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analyzing the notion of sincerity, which seems to imply a certain moment of meaninglessness and a break with the notion of separation. This brings us back to the question of the meaning of the ethical, and to how we are to conceive of the element of meaninglessness in his thought. Let us therefore turn to this important notion in conclusion.

Sincerity and ethical questioning of meaning In AE the notion of sincerity is strongly connected to testimony and Saying, where it refers to a lack of secrecy in the notion of radical exposure, implying that the goodness of testimony is a goodness that tears apart. In TI, Levinas had referred to sincerity as belonging to the “droiture” of speech as opposed to the obscurity of writing (J. Cohen 2003, 77). Here, in AE, on the other hand, the sincerity that breaks with the secrecy is described not only in more bodily terms, but also in a more violent way, as the exposure of turning the other cheek: “Exposition sans retenue l’endroit mÞme o se produit le traumatisme, joue tendue au coup qui frappe d j , sinc rit comme dire, t moignant de la gloire de l’Infini. Elle rompt le secret de Gyg s, du sujet voyant sans Þtre vu, sans s’exposer, le secret du sujet int rieur” (AE 227). The radicality of exposure is illustrated by Levinas’ claim here that sincerity breaks the secret of Gyges. What does he mean by this? The myth of Gyges is used in TI in the analysis of separation to illustrate the secrecy involved there. The myth, known from Plato, tells of Gyges, who found a ring that made him invisible and thereby able to perform immoral deeds without being punished. The secrecy of interiority and the separated self is for Levinas challenged by the sincerity of the ethical relationship, as speech. At the same time, the notion of separation and independence continues to have an ethical significance as a condition for the approach to the Other. In AE, however, the secrecy of the self is challenged in a more radical way, when Levinas more strongly emphasizes the radical exposure of the self. The lack of secrecy means that the subject is driven out of itself without possible evasion (AE 226). As we have seen, this withdrawal involves a “denucleation” of the substantial self, where the self in saying “se faisant signe sans se reposer dans la figure mÞme de signe” (AE 223). The subject of sincerity in other words signifies as restless exposure. Such a radical exposure is of course uncomfortable,26 and Levinas claims that the subject therefore has the tendency to seek protection again – in a 26 The question is how the subject can possibly live in such a condition, not to say relate to someone else. Rudi Visker criticized this change and claimed the necessity of an ego in the part of his book Truth and Singularity that is called “No privacy? Levinas’s Intrigue of the Infinite” (Visker 2000).

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return from “exposition” to “position” (which would imply a return to the Said). As we have seen, this return to position is inevitable, and the entrance into being is indeed what opens the way for justice and membership in society also for the subject. But this return to position and relationality is not a stable identity, but is constantly in need of being again reduced or unsaid. Levinas therefore calls for the sincerity of Saying as a “passivity of passivity” in order to “reverse” this entrance into being where passivity returns to activity and the subject becomes complacent and proud: Il fallait donc, pour que la subjectivit signifie sans r serve, que la passivit de son exposition autrui ne s’inverse pas aussit t en activit , mais que, son tour, elle s’expose: il faut une passivit de la passivit et, sous la gloire de l’Infini, une cendre d’o l’acte ne saurait rena tre. Cette passivit de la passivit et cette d dicace l’Autre, cette sinc rit est le Dire. (AE 223)

Through this emphasis on sincerity as passivity and exposure, Levinas shows that he understands the ethical reduction from the Said into Saying as a goodness or glory that tears apart and keeps the subject open, rather than as a healing goodness. The question that remains is how this notion of sincerity (of testimony) contributes to the question of the meaning of the ethical. Is the radical exposure of sincerity – and the priority that Levinas gives to this over its return to position – something that ultimately brings the subject too close to a fatiguing melancholy, close to the il y a and its lack of meaning? Or is the ambiguity of exposition and position – which has here been articulated through the religious problematic – rather necessary in order to preserve the meaning of the ethical? In the section of AE called “Du Dire au Dit ou la Sagesse du D sir,” Levinas indeed points out that the radical passivity of sincerity involves a certain aspect of meaninglessness. The patience of passivity, he claims, must always be overflowed by a meaningless suffering, a suffering “for nothing,” in order not to be absorbed by meaning: Pour ne pas se r sorber en sens, la patience de la passivit doit Þtre toujours bout, d bord e par une souffrance insens e, “pour rien,” par une souffrance de pur malheur. Le Dire prolonge cette passivit extrÞme, malgr son activit apparente (AE 239).

In order to prevent the returning to position, Saying in other words requires the “overflowing of meaning by non-sense” (AE 105) that we mentioned in Chapter 1. What does he mean by such overflowing? In another passage, Levinas speaks of the non-sense as an element of “pure burn” in suffering – through which the meaning of suffering is possible: Cet l ment de «pure brulure» pour rien, dans la souffrance, est la passivit de la souffrance qui empÞche son retournement en «souffrance assum » o s’annulerait le «pour-l’autre» de la sensibilit , c’est- -dire son sens mÞme. Ce moment de «pour

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rien» dans la souffrance est le surplus de non-sens sur le sens par lequel le sens de la souffrance est possible. (AE 186)

What are we to make of this claim of the necessity of a surplus of non-sense over meaning? And in what way may the possibility of meaningful suffering that Levinas here advocates be justified? The passage is complex, but has to be seen in the context of the notion mentioned above of Saying as a passivity of passivity, understood as the sincerity that preserves the meaning of the ethical by hindering the subject from “assuming” the suffering. Such an assumption would not only return the subject to position, but also be pathological, by turning the suffering into an intentional self-sacrifice. Instead, we have seen that the passivity in question affects the subject before it can intentionally assume its passive condition. At the same time, this “before” cannot be taken in a foundational sense, but rather as something an-archical. It is against this background that we must interpret Levinas’ claim that the need to prevent the assumption of the suffering requires a surplus of non-sense over meaning. The question is how close does this “overflowing of meaning by non-sense” brings us to the meaninglessness of the il y a? In light of the above-mentioned passages, Critchley indeed seems to have an important point when he claims that the il y a is “like a shadow or ghost that haunts Levinas’s work, a revenant that returns it again and again to the moment of nonsense, neutrality and ambiguity” (Critchley 2004, 92). But what are we then to make of Visker’s claim that, for Levinas, there is “an il y a ‘of ’ ethics, but no ethics of the il y a”? (Visker 1999, 269). Both Critchley and Visker agree that the il y a plays a considerable role in Levinas’ later ethical thought. What they seem to disagree about is whether there is an ethical overcoming of the meaningless or not, in a way that makes the ethical trauma into a healing trauma. In conclusion let us try to answer this by returning to Levinas’ dense, but for our problematic significant, section of AE called “Sense et il y a.” There Levinas talks of the il y a as a “modality of being-for-the-other,” which certainly indicates at least an “il y a of ethics.” He further emphasizes the connection between the il y a and the non-sense that overflows meaning and makes ethics possible: Mais l’absurdit de l’il y a – en tant que modalit de l’un-pour-l’autre, en tant que support e – signifie. L’insignifiance de son ressassement objectif, recommenÅant derri re toute negation, m’accablant comme le destin d’une suj tion tout l’autre auquel je suis sujet, est le surplus du non-sens sur le sens, par lequel, pour le Soi, l’expiation est possible. (AE 255)

The meaninglessness of the il y a is necessary in order to expiate and endure without compensation, and to maintain the asymmetry and anarchy of the ethical. But what kind of modality does Levinas have in mind here? The theme that preoccupies Levinas in this section is what happens when being-for-theother appears in phenomenality, in the Said. Again, Levinas points out that this

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appearance happens for the sake of justice: “C’est la justice signifi e par al signification, par “l’un pour l’autre” qui exige la ph nom nalit ” (AE 253). In order to understand how the il y a is a necessary modality of being-for-theother, I believe we need to keep this demand for phenomenality in mind, more precisely the amphibological tension we saw implied in the Said of phenomenology. The amphibology meant for Levinas that the substantivity of being that was involved in the beginning of an act had a necessary connection to being’s verbality – understood as a certain resonance connected to the sensible and poetic character of being (AE 61, 70). What happens when substantivity turns into verbality was seen to be similar to what, according to Levinas, happened in the exoticism of art, when intention got lost in sensation. In both cases, we may speak of an ambiguity of meaning (understood as intention, identity or substantivity) and the meaningless (as sensation or verbality) in being. Now, when Levinas talks of the il y a as a modality of the ethical relationship, it seems to be the same ontological ambiguity between meaning and the meaningless he has in mind: “Bourdonnement de l’il y a – non-sens en lequel tourne l’essence et, en lequel ainsi, tourne la justice issue de la signification. Amb guit du sens et du non-sens dans l’Þtre, le sens tournant en non-sens” (AE 254). Since the ambiguity here seems to belong to being, we may read the meaninglessness involved in the overflowing of meaning as challenging the ontological meaning, i. e., intentionality. Indeed, we have seen that intentionality in terms of enjoyment is challenged in Levinas’ ethical suffering; it is suffering in enjoyment that is his concern, not the suffering in itself but the suffering of giving away the bread that I am eating. One may ask whether not Levinas with the element of “pure burn” exceeds the clarification of suffering as a suffering in enjoyment. The point is not, however, to give a higher ethical meaning to what according to common sense we would call meaningless suffering, but rather that ethical passivity must involve a sincerity that excludes any kind of justification of its suffering. It is the self-complacent ego that is challenged with the element of meaninglessness. This not only includes the selfish ego, but also the potential moralist; one never has the moral upper hand, despite the asymmetric excess of responsibility of the ethical subject. The ethical trauma may thus never be healing in the sense of reassuring, nor may it overcome the meaninglessness of the il y a that follows from the necessary involvement with ontology. Ethics for Levinas indeed has its anarchical source “otherwise than being or beyond essence,” but this does not mean that the ethical subject can escape the facticity of being. “It is the law of goodness to produce hypocrisy,” J. B. Mozley has said,27 and the hypocritical 27 John Llewelyn uses this quote as an epigram for one of his chapters on Levinas in his book The HypoCritical Imagination, 121.

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necessity may indeed be seen as crucial to Levinas’ ultimately impure approach to ethical subjectivity. In the last subsection, we saw that this hypocrisy or ambiguity for Levinas was crucial to the religious problematic itself, and that the former attention to the utopian character of true religion was modified by a recognition of the need for illeity to take place and betray itself. This betrayal of illeity was seen to involve the need for esthetics and ontology, and it is in this light that we may also understand Levinas’ claim that we need to go all the way to Nietzsche’s poetic writing. The verbality or nonintentionality of the latter – despite its ontological character – indeed has an ethical significance. But as we saw, the problem with both amphibology and esthetics for Levinas was not the ontological character in itself, but the way in which it became absolute, which in the discussion on esthetics was associated with shamelessness. This is why Levinas is so concerned with the possibility of reduction from ontology and the Said. Although this reduction may not be seen as an overcoming of the meaningless, it indeed opens the way for an ethical meaning that, despite its elusiveness, is visible in its effect – as responsibility.

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Conclusion In the Introduction I proposed the question of the meaning of the ethical to be the central problem of this study. So what is the meaning of ethics and how can ethics be meaningful? The question was assumed to comprise not only a discussion of its referential meaning, or what we mean when we talk about ethics. I have been particularly interested in the more existential dimension of how ethics can be regarded as meaningful in light of Levinas’ pathological descriptions of the ethical situation, involving feelings like melancholy, trauma and shame. The dangers of turning it into a pathological victim ethics have been discussed, but I have attempted to show that such an interpretation is not obvious and does not agree with Levinas’ intention, given the fact that he claimed that his goal was not to develop an ethics, but to seek its meaning. Together with his admission that what really interested him was not ethics or ethics alone but rather the holy, this gives us an indication of the fundamental level at which Levinas’ discussion operates. The problems and inner tensions of this level have been the central focus of my study. Although careful readers of Levinas share the premise that the otherness that is so important to Levinas’ notion of ethical responsibility must be understood as more than the interpersonal Other (though never completely apart from it either), it is unclear how this otherness has been understood. I mentioned in the Introduction that there was a tension between the metaphysically and the religiously oriented readers on the one hand, and the more atheist or neutral interpretations on the other. I suggested that their concerns largely reflected tensions within Levinas’ work itself. This I have shown through a discussion of the changes that took place between Levinas’ two main works, but also within Levinas’ later work, which has played the most central role in the discussion. We saw that, although Levinas’ religious motives are decisive for grasping his work, the way he understands religion is indeed radical; and that this radical character not only concerns its intimate connection with ethics, but also its inseparable connection to sensibility. This connection of transcendence and sensibility is crucial for understanding the meaning of the ethical. Before we try to give a more extensive answer to this, we should briefly summarize some of the main insights from the study. I started the first part by relating Levinas’ thinking to the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Heidegger. It was central to these analyses to develop the problem of meaning in Levinas’ thought, especially with respect to phenomenological and intentional conceptions of meaning. I also showed that there was a tension between Levinas’ ethical meaning as belonging to the Other kath’ auto, and meaning in terms of a radical questiong of the self, also

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involving an element of non-sense. The analyses of ontology in Chapter 1.2 were collected under the label of darkness and emphasized the crisis of meaning connected to the impersonality of the il y a and the impossibility of death, which was seen to imply a critique of the Heideggerian approach to being. The feelings of shame and nausea were further analyzed and shown to play a crucial role for the very notion of subjectivity. In Chapter 1.3 I then discussed the notion of intentional meaning under the label of light, and looked at how Levinas regarded the approaches of Husserl and Heidegger to represent violence. I particularly attended to their approaches to representation and imagination in order to understand Levinas’ skepticism toward the notions as meaning-giving capacities of mind. In Chapter 1.4 I analyzed Levinas’ relationship to esthetics as ontological par excellence and claimed that esthetics could be understood in terms of a tension between darkness and light, or between the meaninglessness of the il y a and the intentional form of beauty that seeks to cover over this lack of meaning. For Levinas the dangers of art would consist of its tendency toward shamelessness in this process, which happens when the value of art is made absolute. At the same time, the analyses of depersonalizing poetry as a central element to esthetic sensation were seen to be interesting in light of Levinas’ later work, where he claimed that it was necessary to go all the way to Nietzsche’s poetic writing, in other words to include an (esthetical) element of meaninglessness in ethics. The last chapter of the first part (1.5) discussed the changes that took place between Levinas’ main works as particularly affecting the notions of sensibility, subjectivity and transcendence. This implied that ontology would come to play a more central role in Levinas’ later ethical analyses, and that the notion of an overcoming of ontology was problematized. The role of ontology in his later works was further analyzed in terms of an amphibology within the Said between the verbality and substantivity of being, which could also be read in esthetical terms as a tension between poetry and beauty or doxa. Although Levinas’ ethical thought was understood in terms of a reduction from this level to what he would call pure Saying, where responsibility was taken as a radical, sensible exposure to the Other, I also showed that ethics was in need of being betrayed in the Said, thereby involving esthetics and ontology. The meaning of ethical transcendence could hence not be found in its purity, but must be sought as transcendence in immanence. The later Levinas could thereby be seen to depend a great deal on a phenomenological framework for imagining transcendence, but also developing and expanding this in his own way. In the second part of the study, I discussed how Levinas worked out this “extended phenomenological” notion of ethical meaning, particularly through his way of understanding transcendence in sensibility. I started with an analysis of sensibility and discussed the implications of the shift from Levinas’ pre-ethical analysis of sensibility toward an ethiziced sensibility understood as suffering in enjoyment in his later work. The latter notion was characterized as proximity, involving an ambivalence between extreme

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closeness and radical distance of the ethical relation. The self of this ethical relationship was thus seen to involve a unity that is in constant fission or kenotic self-emptying. In the next chapter (2.2) this notion of the self was seen to be crucial to Levinas’ notion of infinite responsibility, which gives the subject a messianic structure. The Kafkaesque element of trauma and persecution was here discussed, both in regard to accusations of pathology and to the question of whether one could distinguish it from psychoanalytical descriptions of the trauma. This was indeed seen to challenge the notion of a meaning of the ethical, but an important premise was that Levinas’ ethics operates on two levels, where he, on the one hand, includes justice for everyone, including the subject, while at the same time maintaining the notion of an asymmetry in the relationship where the Other is above the subject. The ethical trauma was seen to have several structural similarities with the trauma of psychoanalysis, though one important difference was that the good ethical trauma was seen to involve a moment of shame, as opposed to panic. This also had to do with the (religious) distance in the traumatizing relationship, which could be seen as reflected in its melancholic tendency. The tension between the immediacy of trauma and the distance of melancholy was further seen to reflect the ambiguity of the ethical relationship – between the proximity of bodily exposure and radical distance of the relationship. The last chapter (2.3) discussed the religious dimension of ethical transcendence, where I first discussed the notions of holiness and religious atheism beyond the mythical or sacred, primarily in Levinas’ early and middle period. Judaism was seen to imply freedom from the place but also as a freedom involving the notion of shame. I showed how, in Levinas’ later work, the increased attention given to the problems of mediation and language influenced the way religion was thought of, and especially how God was thought as an “excluded third” – in an ambiguity between phenomenality and nonphenomenality. The significance of this for our questioning was shown in that the religious ambiguity was expressed in the very notion of subjectivity as testimony before any theology. Although this involved the sincerity of radical exposure, I also showed how the notion of God was involved in the idea of justice as implying redemption also for the self – in returning the subject to society. This means that the betrayal in a place of ontology and esthetics is admitted (which also involves the il y a), despite the primacy of a certain utopian tendency. Ethical meaning can hence never entirely overcome the melancholy or meaninglessness of being, although it cannot be equated with it either. We have thereby seen that the question of the meaning of the ethical does not have a simple answer, but that fundamental ambiguities are involved in Levinas’ work – between meaning and the meaningless, between hope and melancholy. So what is the essence of the new insights this bring to Levinas’ already well-known analysis of ethical responsibility and the face? In light of the difference between the religiously and the more neutrally oriented interpretations of otherness in Levinas, we have seen that there is a tendency

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among the former to emphasize the aspects of meaning and hope over melancholy, whereas the latter put much more emphasis on the meaningless in terms of the il y a. But I believe we miss something crucial in Levinas’ concern, however, if we do not recognize the significance of the ambiguities themselves for ethical meaning. Such meaning indeed implies a questioning of meaning itself. In summarizing the way in which this happens, it is first of all important to bear in mind the ambiguity that for Levinas already belongs to philosophy in terms of ontology or phenomenality. In the last chapter of AE entitled “Au dehors,” Levinas distinguishes between two different ways of philosophy that belong within essence. In the first, Stoic position, the subject is a being subjected to the concept and absorbed in the universal or in death (AE 270), similar to TI’s descriptions of the loss of ipseity in representation. The subject is constituted by the possibility of being confused with the universal, in other words of disappearing as a sensible, individual being – into what Levinas calls the “wisdom of resignation and sublimation” (AE 271). In the second, “extended” Epicurean position, the instant in pleasure is removed from its “retentions” and “protentions”; pleasure is separated from responsibility, and love separated from the law. Levinas connects this position to the “horror of fatality, of the incessant commotion [r mue-menage] of the il y a” (AE 271). The two positions seem to reflect the tension between the substantivity and the verbality of the amphibologial difference, which again reflects the difference between light and darkness, or between prose and poetry discussed in the chapter on esthetics. If we apply these positions to the question of meaning, there would certainly be different dangers connected to them. Whereas the first approach could be seen to tend toward the crime of a (religious or secularized) theodicy by trying to create meaning where there is none, the pitfall of the latter would be the opposite, namely, a nihilistic embrace of the meaningless. These tendencies, however, are never presented as ethical alternatives by Levinas; rather, he seeks to avoid both pitfalls by searching for transcendence beyond being. As he writes in the same chapter with reference to the above-mentioned positions, his project in the book is precisely to seek the source of ethical subjectivity beyond ontology : La pr sente tude met en question cette r f rence de la subjectivit l’Essence qui domine les deux termes de l’alternative voqu e. Elle demande si tout sens proc de de l’Essence (AE 271).

The question is whether this avoidance of the two positions creates another (or third) alternative, or if transcendence in some sense is to be imagined lying between them. Etienne Feron’s observation pointed to slightly different ways of conceiving transcendence in Levinas’ work. Whereas TI tended to think of the transcendent as existing in its own way beyond being, AE tended to understand transcendence as questioning being from within. This latter, and

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more mature, approach, which I have emphasized in this study, implies that transcendence signifies through a reduction from the Said to pure Saying. This an-archical source of ethics is of itself a utopian moment that cannot be captured by thought, which implies that a betrayal in another Said – that is, a topos or a place – is necessary. The necessity of betrayal means that we could ask whether or not transcendence must be articulated in ways that emphasize one of the two positions of phenomenality mentioned above, respectively, thereby always approaching the dangers of either nihilism or theodicy. When in the beginning of AE Levinas claims that “one has to move toward the nihilism of Nietzsche’s poetic writing […] toward the laughter refusing language,” this seems to support a tendency toward darkness, poetry or verbality. At the same time, in this latter work Levinas most strongly recognizes the need for hypocritical betrayal in the order of language, judgment and consciousness in order for justice to be established – in other words in the realm of light, prose or substantivity. Although betrayal in essence and language is necessary, the very conception of betrayal witnesses that the questioning from within in terms of reduction reaches for a transcendence that goes beyond the amphibology. This can certainly not be reached in its purity, but there is an attempt throughout the whole of Autrement qu’Þtre ou au-del de l’essence to consider the reduction from ontology in terms of sensible transcendence, in other words, to maintain both the connection to phenomenality and the affectedness from the outside. Notions like trauma and shame are important here for the idea of an ethical subject that, in its affectedness from the outside, questions itself and its own right to be, in an unconditional way. As Chalier has remarked, both Stoicism and Epicureanism attempt to imagine a connection between happiness and virtue, whereas Levinas would reject such a connection because of an “endless inquietude inhabiting the moral subject” (Chalier 1998, 166). We have discussed the accusations that Levinas eclipses the limits between ethics and insanity with such an inquietude and passivity, and we have seen that, although he admits the aspects of madness or pathology in ethics, it is important to recognize the religious dimension of this pathology. We have also seen, however, that the religious dimension does not provide any kind of escapism or overcoming of the meaningless, but is deeply rooted in sensibility. The responsibility that follows from the bodily affectedness of trauma and shame testifies to transcendence before any theology, which shows the primacy of the practical or ethical dimension of religion. Levinas’ analyses of notions like God or the third are, however, important for understanding how Levinas would answer the challenges connected with the question of the meaning of the ethical. In the Introduction we asked whether ethical meaning primarily belonged to the Other, or whether there was a possibility for meaning in terms of redemption also for the self. The messianic self-structure and the asymmetry of the ethical relationship suggests that it is primarily the meaning of the Other

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that is at stake. The way he describes sincerity as a passivity of passivity or as an overflowing of meaning by the meaningless also witnesses to a problematization of any promise of happiness for the self, which seems to render Levinas’ thought a melancholic hopelessness. At the same time, we have seen that in his analyses of the word God Levinas not only seeks to maintain an aspect of holiness in ethics, but also to express the grace of justice also for the subject, in other words, he allows for an aspect of hope. But does this mean that Levinas remains in an endless hesitation between melancholy and hope? I believe that such excessive hesitation is indeed not unproblematic, inasmuch as it might not always provide for the passage from responsibility to actual responding. At the same time, I would claim that it is also the strength and uniqueness of Levinas’ thought that he attends to both of these aspects of melancholy and hope. On the one hand, he recognizes the disaster or the breakdown of meaning and worldliness that has become so important in recent decades. On the other hand, he refuses to give up the thought that there is meaning, although the ambiguity, the “in spite of” – the crisis of meaning – is indispensable to the meaning of the ethical itself. Such a meaning is thus not possible as strong confidence, but rather as implying a critical aspect in terms of indignity or ethical shame. It seems to me that the vulnerability and humility of such an ethical shame is indeed a moment in which both the crisis of meaning and the renewal of meaning are contained. Although for Levinas it would not be possible to fully overcome the crisis, this moment of otherness in the phenomenological concreteness of shame could still be seen to contain a moment of hope beyond the mere melancholic meaninglessness – even if this remains a “weak” hope that is visible only in ethical responsibility. In this way the hesitation between melancholy and hope could be considered as more than a “bipolar” dualism and instead as an expression of a deep ethical humility. This would indeed require a certain rethinking of the strict limits between ethics and pathology, but a rethinking that makes it possible for Levinas to talk of the meaning of the ethical at all.

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Index

adieu 144, 164, 171 Adorno, Theodor W. 63f., 66f., 131f., 152 Agamben, Giorgio 31 aging 28f., 89f., 109, 126, 164–166, 171 alienation 127f., 133 ambiguity 30, 36, 51, 63–65, 69, 82f., 91, 118, 131, 139, 142, 149, 158f., 161, 163f., 168, 170f., 173–176, 179f., 182 amphibology 36, 82–85, 87–89, 105, 175f., 178, 181 anarchy 95, 104, 107, 142, 169f., 174 art 40f., 63–78, 84–86, 92, 100, 158, 170, 175, 178 as if 27, 80, 96, 121, 129f., 149 atheism 24, 140, 144, 149–155, 157–160, 179 au-del 9, 28f., 32, 36, 50, 71, 76–80, 100, 103, 115, 141, 154, 159f., 163f., 168, 170, 181 autonomy 52, 156, 169 beauty 64–67, 71–74, 84–86, 92, 170, 178 Being 9, 22–24, 26, 28–44, 46–50, 52f., 56f., 59–61, 63–67, 70, 73–75, 77, 79–85, 87–91, 95–97, 99, 101–107, 109, 112, 114, 116–118, 121f., 124–136, 139–142, 145–152, 154, 156f., 159f., 162–165, 170–175, 178–180 Bergo, Bettina 79f., 96 Bernasconi, Robert 116, 141 Bernet, Rudolf 43, 51–55, 57f., 101f., 120–124, 127, 162 betrayal 87, 90f., 104, 140f., 144, 169f., 176, 179, 181 Blanchot, Maurice 64, 125f. body 38, 41, 101, 107, 136, 138, 153 boredom 39, 140, 159–161

Caputo, John 61 Chalier, Catherine 123–127, 139, 143, 150f., 159, 181 choice, freedom of 111, 114, 117, 119, 156 Chr tien, Jean-Louis 168, 171 Cohen, Josh 34, 66f., 119, 147, 151, 153, 164, 172 Cohen, Richard A. 34, 66f., 119, 147, 151, 153, 164, 172 contextuality 24f., 169 Critchley, Simon 47f., 82, 88–91, 96f., 120, 122, 124–128, 130–133, 139, 141, 174 darkness 19, 33, 41, 45, 49f., 63, 65, 68, 72f., 88, 99, 161, 178, 180f. death 22, 30, 35–37, 52f., 66, 81, 97–99, 112, 125f., 128, 132, 134, 155, 165, 178, 180 death drive 124f. de Bauw, Christine 119 depression 133, 135, 138 Derrida, Jacques 9, 22, 26f., 45–50, 56, 63, 79, 81, 87, 95, 108, 144, 154 desire 28f., 42, 44–46, 76, 96, 113, 130, 132f., 145f., 148, 151, 156, 164 de Vries, Hent 64, 152 diabolic 124–126 diachrony 61, 88–92, 109, 115, 121, 129 disinterestedness 88, 116, 136, 162, 171 dispossession 69, 84, 106, 147, 160 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 64, 111, 137 doxa 86, 105, 178 Drabinski, John 21, 23, 54, 96, 98f., 105f., 134f. dying 125f., 128, 132

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Index Empfindnis 68, 101f. en deÅ 52, 75–77, 106f., 112, 137, 157 enjoyment 52, 65–67, 72, 79, 95–100, 103, 107f., 113, 128, 140, 158, 175, 178 entre-temps 109 esthetics 41, 61–64, 66f., 69, 78, 82, 84–88, 92, 95, 100, 108, 144, 153f., 158, 170, 176, 178–180 evil 27, 37, 67, 112, 124–126, 131, 151f., 159, 168 exoticism 65, 67–69, 71–73, 76, 86, 175 exteriority 26, 44–46, 52, 63, 68f., 83, 97–99, 101, 141, 152, 155f. face 24–28, 30, 36–38, 40, 54, 56, 69f., 73f., 80f., 85, 95f., 99, 113, 122–126, 130, 147f., 167, 179 facticity 34f., 37, 39f., 43, 67, 74, 79, 106, 135, 160, 175 fatigue 39f., 56, 67, 74, 136 Feron, Etienne 50, 80f., 91, 95, 110, 140, 180 finitude 22, 36f., 39f., 61, 75, 126, 131f., 166 form 25–27, 34f., 38, 44, 54, 63–65, 67–74, 82, 84f., 90, 97, 107f., 121–123, 128., 148, 178 freedom 27, 39, 52, 59, 66f., 70, 75, 88, 102, 114f., 117–119, 124f., 128f., 146, 153–161, 168, 179 Freud, Sigmund 9, 120–125, 127, 129, 133–137, 139 futurity 28f., 54, 56, 66, 74, 124, 130, 136 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 119 God, death of 130, 133, 155 God 24, 36, 64, 70, 126f., 129f., 134, 137, 140f., 143, 145, 147–152, 160–168, 170f., 179, 181f. goodness 26–30, 114, 117, 120, 124, 126f., 130–133, 145, 155, 160f., 164–166, 171–173, 175 guilt 30f., 38, 112, 117, 135–137, 143, 156, 159f.

189

Haar, Michael 117 healing 120, 127, 132–134, 139, 166, 168, 171, 173–175 Heidegger, Martin 9, 21–24, 33–37, 42–44, 46–53, 55–61, 66, 75, 79f., 82, 84, 88, 97, 102, 125, 137, 142, 145, 153f., 177f. hermeneutics 25, 143 heteronomy 124, 169 holiness 120, 123, 141, 144f., 147f., 150, 153f., 179, 182 Holocaust 151 hope 28, 34, 124, 129–131, 136f., 139f., 161, 168, 179f., 182 horror 36f., 45, 53, 70, 72, 126, 128, 180 hostage 113–116, 171 Husserl, Edmund 9, 21–23, 42–44, 46–56, 58f., 68, 77, 79, 88, 97, 101f., 156, 177f. hypocrisy 91, 163, 166, 170, 175f. idol 72–75, 134, 154, 170 illeity 130f., 134, 155, 162f., 165f., 170f., 176 illusion 82, 91, 134, 136f., 155 Il y a 26, 29, 33, 35–37, 39f., 42, 44–46, 50, 53, 56, 63, 65f., 68–70, 72f., 76f., 79, 81, 83f., 88, 92, 95, 99, 125–132, 134, 136, 148, 155, 160f., 166, 170, 173–175, 178–180 image 25–27, 59, 64, 69f., 73–75, 78, 100, 102, 105, 110, 128, 138, 154 imagination 50f., 53, 57, 59–61, 75, 78, 88f., 121, 145, 158, 175, 178 immanence 25, 27f., 56, 66, 76, 80f., 145, 150f., 162f., 167, 178 immediacy 45, 100, 102, 113, 117f., 120, 179 immemorial 89, 91, 121, 170 incarnation 111f., 147 infinity 28, 36f., 46, 48, 50, 64, 111f., 124, 128, 137, 142, 165, 168, 170 inspiration 24, 89, 109f., 141, 167 intentionality 21–23, 42–46, 52–55, 61, 63, 68, 76, 88, 96–100, 102, 113, 121, 142, 145, 162, 175 intrigue 31, 143, 161, 163, 165, 172

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Janicaud, Dominique 141f. Jemeinigkeit 35 Jonas, Hans 151 Judaism 24, 48, 112, 143, 149–151, 153f., 156, 170, 179 judgment 60, 119, 156, 181 Julien, Philippe 138 justice 29, 49, 53, 87, 104, 106, 115f., 118f., 142, 163, 169–171, 173, 175, 179, 181f. Kafka, Franz 31 Kant, Immanuel 9, 46, 58–61, 82f., 86, 105, 156, 169, 171 Kearney, Richard 59 khora 108 kinesthesia 101–103 Klein, Melanie 138f. Kristeva, Julia 137–139, 155, 159 Lacan, Jacques 120–124, 129, 137f., 155, 159 language 24, 30, 36, 47, 50, 64, 71f., 78–83, 87f., 91, 95f., 108f., 114, 118–120, 127, 139–142, 154f., 159, 163f., 167, 179, 181 Lannoy, Jean-Luc 133f., 136f. life 34, 52, 64f., 74, 83, 96–99, 111, 116, 123–125, 128, 135, 143, 145f. light 45–47, 49f., 63–68, 72–73, 86, 99, 178, 180f. Llewelyn, John 33, 145, 175 love 28, 97f., 113, 124, 130, 135, 139, 148, 180 manifestation 23, 25–27, 38, 40, 47, 81, 100, 147, 149, 162 materiality 69, 71, 73, 108 maternity 108f. meaning 19, 21–25, 27–33, 35, 37f., 41f., 44–46, 50–53, 56–61, 63, 65–69, 72f., 75–77, 81–83, 86–90, 92, 95–100, 103, 105, 109f., 115–117, 119, 121, 125f., 132f., 135–140, 142–144, 147, 150f., 155, 157, 161–164, 166, 168, 171–182

meaning, questioning of 30, 135, 137, 142, 172, 180 mediation 25f., 79f., 117f., 140, 154, 159, 179 melancholy 9, 31, 133–140, 155, 158–161, 168, 173, 177, 179f., 182 memory 55, 89, 106, 139, 146 messianism 111f., 149f., 168 metaphysics 46, 48–50, 81, 105, 130, 141f., 146, 148f., 151f., 158, 166 mourning 9, 134f. Moyn, Samuel 143, 152f. Nachträglichkeit 122 nakedness 38, 41, 67, 123 narcissism 137f., 155, 159 nausea 33, 37–40, 63, 136, 178 Nazism 34, 66, 153 Nemo, Philippe 21, 115, 119 Nietzsche 65f., 71f., 75, 77, 134, 176, 178, 181 nihilism 49, 71, 181 non-sense 29f., 32f., 49, 100, 103, 117, 131f., 173f., 178 ontology 22f., 25, 27, 29, 32f., 36f., 43, 47, 49f., 63, 72, 78, 82, 85–88, 91, 95, 99, 105f., 115, 135, 141, 144, 170, 175f., 178–181 orientation 24, 28, 86 otherness 27, 46–48, 52–54, 56f., 67, 69, 72, 76, 99, 102, 118, 121, 123, 128, 131, 138, 140f., 143f., 146f., 156, 160f., 163–165, 177, 179, 182 Other, the 21–31, 34, 36–41, 44–50, 53–56, 58–61, 64–70, 72–76, 79–86, 88–90, 92, 95f., 98–101, 103–119, 121–131, 133–135, 137–148, 151–175, 177–182 overcoming 26, 37, 40, 45f., 56, 61, 130f., 135, 147, 152, 161, 174, 176, 178, 181 panic 122, 128, 155, 179 participation 29, 36, 65, 70, 85, 97, 128f., 134, 136, 145f., 148, 150f., 153–155, 158 passivity 22, 46, 50–52, 54f., 58, 61, 71,

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Index 88f., 109, 112, 114, 117, 119, 126, 132, 159, 162, 165f., 173–175, 181f. past 29, 51, 53–55, 57f., 121, 129, 136f., 146, 170 pathology 95, 116f., 119, 123f., 179, 181f. perception 51, 54, 68, 96, 101f. persecution 29, 107, 113–118, 159, 179 phenomenology 21f., 28, 33, 46f., 50, 53f., 56, 59, 63f., 79, 87, 95, 140–142, 161, 175 place 24f., 27, 29, 48, 58–60, 65, 70f., 77, 79, 86, 90, 95f., 101, 104, 114, 117f., 123f., 129, 136, 144, 146, 153f., 166, 168, 170, 176–179, 181 Plato 46, 108, 142, 172 poetry 65, 69–72, 76, 84f., 178, 180f. prose 70–72, 84, 180f. proximity 100–103, 105f., 113, 117, 121, 128, 139, 142, 153, 159, 162, 169f., 178f. psychoanalysis 120f., 127–130, 133, 145, 166, 179 recurrence 66, 106, 108–110, 125, 136 redemption 28, 168, 179, 181 reduction 42–44, 78, 82, 84, 87f., 90–92, 105, 119, 137, 151, 157, 165, 173, 176, 178, 181 religion 24, 65, 67, 128f., 133f., 139–141, 143–155, 158, 176f., 179, 181 representation 50–54, 56, 70, 72, 77, 80, 88f., 97–99, 101, 103, 108f., 121, 123, 139, 146, 151, 158, 178, 180 responsibility 23, 27f., 30–32, 39, 41, 65, 67, 70, 74f., 79, 82, 87f., 91, 100, 104, 107–118, 123, 129–131, 136–138, 143–145, 155f., 158, 160f., 164, 167–169, 171, 175–182 rhythm 69–71, 84, 134, 154f. Ricoeur, Paul 118f. Robbins, Jill 71 sacred 36, 129, 134, 145, 147f., 150f., 155, 179 sacrifice 34, 104, 109, 123, 129, 147f. Said, the 21, 27, 47f., 78, 81–92, 95f., 98–101, 105, 108, 110, 116, 127, 130,

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140–142, 144f., 161, 163–166, 169–171, 173–176, 178, 181 Sallis, John 57, 59f. Sartre, Jean-Paul 38f., 59, 71, 141 Saying 48, 78, 82–84, 87f., 90–92, 99, 105, 110, 116, 121f., 141, 161, 163, 165, 169, 171–174, 178, 181 self 23, 29–31, 33–35, 38–41, 55f., 61, 67f., 74, 79f., 89f., 95–99, 103–120, 123–125, 127, 130, 132–140, 144–147, 155, 157–161, 165, 167–169, 171f., 175, 177, 179, 181f. self-preservation 31, 89, 92 self-sacrifice 104, 114, 116, 119, 174 sensation 46, 54–56, 68f., 76f., 84, 95f., 100–103, 106, 154, 175, 178 sensibility 22, 60f., 76, 79, 82, 93, 95–97, 100–104, 106f., 113, 140, 162, 170, 177f., 181 separation 36, 43f., 52, 59, 96, 99, 129, 139, 141, 144–150, 154f., 157–161, 172 shame 30–33, 37–41, 56, 63, 66f., 72, 75f., 86, 92, 114, 128, 133, 143, 154f., 157–160, 177–179, 181f. shamelessness 41, 67, 77, 86f., 106, 128, 158, 176, 178 sincerity 42, 44f., 70, 172–175, 179, 182 singularity 56, 105–109, 111, 169, 172 statue 74f., 78, 84f., 154, 170 subjectivity 22, 36, 38–41, 45, 51, 55–57, 65, 67, 69f., 74, 83, 86, 88, 96, 99, 103–107, 109, 111f., 124, 128, 131, 141, 143f., 146, 148f., 158f., 165f., 171, 176, 178–180 substantivity 35f., 83f., 89f., 110, 170, 175, 178, 180f. substitution 90, 104, 111f., 116–119, 140f., 159–161, 165 suffering 97, 103, 107, 112f., 123, 140, 173–175, 178 suicide 37, 92, 103, 126, 138 surplus 28f., 86, 105, 109, 111, 137, 155, 171, 174 survivor guilt 31

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Tellenbach, Hubert 134, 136 theodicy 67, 151, 180f. theology 24, 142, 146f., 152f., 163, 167, 170, 179, 181 theory 46, 52f., 79, 138, 152, 157 thing 21, 24, 26, 33–36, 38, 43–45, 52, 58f., 68, 70–73, 78, 107, 117, 122, 125, 132f., 135, 154f., 158 third 37, 53, 81, 108, 115f., 119, 130, 139, 155, 161–163, 169, 171, 179–181 time 23, 27f., 33, 36, 38, 40, 42, 50–52, 54f., 57f., 60, 62–65, 70, 72, 74f., 77, 79f., 83–85, 87–89, 91f., 95, 105–110, 115, 121f., 125, 128f., 132, 134, 138–141, 143, 146, 149, 153–155, 158f., 164–168, 171f., 174, 178f., 181f. totality 24, 46, 48, 58f., 80, 154, 156 trace 27, 46, 64, 80f., 89, 91f., 121–123, 126, 128–130, 140, 143, 149, 163, 167 tragedy 37, 66, 75, 86 transcendence 25, 35, 43f., 46, 50–52, 55–61, 63, 65f., 74–76, 79–82, 87, 89–91, 93, 95f., 99, 101f., 105f., 118, 126–128, 132f., 140–142, 144–151, 154–156, 158f., 161–167, 170, 177–181 transcendental 22, 25, 43, 46–48, 56, 58, 60, 82f., 86, 91, 97–99, 107, 116, 147, 156, 159 traumatism 56, 90, 104, 113f., 116, 119–121, 127, 139, 145, 151, 171f. truth 21, 31, 56, 64f., 69, 77, 81f., 87, 91f., 100, 105, 135, 157, 166, 172

uncondition 112f., 115, 117, 137 utopia 116–118, 154, 170, 176, 179, 181 verbality 35f., 40, 83f., 86, 88–90, 110, 131, 175f., 178, 180f. Verzweiflung 136 violence 9, 22, 26f., 42, 45–49, 52, 56, 99, 112, 118, 123f., 145, 147f., 155f., 158, 178 Visker, Rudi 72, 76, 120, 122, 127–131, 134, 145, 148f., 159, 165f., 172, 174 vulnerability 27, 30, 75, 79, 102f., 107, 113, 117, 123, 137, 139f., 182 Waldenfels, Bernhard 26 Welz, Claudia 151 withdrawal 52, 71, 90, 106, 129, 131, 137, 139, 148f., 151, 167, 171f. work 22, 25f., 28–30, 32–35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47f., 50, 54, 56f., 63–66, 68f., 71, 74–80, 85f., 95f., 101, 104f., 110, 115, 124, 126, 131, 133, 135f., 139–141, 143f., 148f., 151, 153, 158–161, 174, 177–181 world 21, 24–26, 30, 33, 35, 42–46, 52, 58f., 61, 66–76, 84, 92, 95, 98, 100, 102, 122, 134–137, 140, 142, 147, 149, 154, 160, 165f., 168, 171 Wyschogrod, Edith 26, 52, 146

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