Levinas’ analysis of light and his opposition to Heidegger can be understood through a comparison of the Jewish and the Christian accounts of creation. Following Nietzsche, Heidegger explicitly critiques Christianity as a popularization of the Platonic reduction of the logos (logoV.) Heidegger contends that the logos originally referred to Dasein as the gathering-place for the strife (polemoV) of Being. Christianity obscures this notion of logos-as-gathering by interpreting Christ as the logos. Following the Alexandrian-Jewish[1] philosopher Philo, the Gospel of John describes Jesus as the phenomenon which mediates man’s relationship with the divine. Furthermore, John 1:9 explains Christ as the source of divine light as it is revealed to men, “That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world.” Therefore, this book collapses the concept of the logos as light with the notion of a publicly accessible Word which subsists outside of man’s existence. Against this, Heidegger forwards an almost Gnostic idea[2] that each Dasein, as an individual, can potentially exist as its own true light, lighting itself as it comes into the world. In contrast to both John’s and Heidegger’s accounts of revelation, the Book of Genesis introduces God’s first act of creation in the following manner: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” Contrary to the implicit claims of both John and Philo, this verse does not merely imply that revelation occurs through a substantive word, through the nominal. Rather, it describes the light of phenomena as preceded by and issuing forth from God’s exercise of speech.[3]
Levinas describes the light of truth and of representation as something which becomes manifested between speaking interlocutors. In his book Totality and Infinity, he carefully describes the phenomenological transformations of this discussion. Levinas describes me as I posit myself in a “Now,” in a present moment in which I speak to the Other, am heard by her, and receive a reply from him.[4] As with Heidegger, Levinas employs the resources of Husserl’s phenomenology to follow the course of this discussion. Although Levinas, like Heidegger, opposes Husserl’s model of intentionality for implicitly positing a spectatorial subject which merely looks at an object, he finds metaphysical notions within Husserl which subvert the apparent ontological interpretations. He claims that Husserl’s major insight was that “notions under the direct gaze of thought that defines them are nevertheless, unbeknown to this naive thought revealed to be implanted in horizons unsuspected by this thought ... The break-up of the formal structure of thought (the noema of a noesis) into events which this structure dissimulates, but which sustain it and restore its concrete significance, constitutes a deduction — necessary and yet non-analytical.”[5] Levinas demonstrates that the intentional relationship which separates consciousness from its objects is not foundational, but rather is itself produced through certain genealogical developments of the relationship between the Other and me.
Levinas claims, “The difference between the Other and me do not depend upon different properties. ... They are due to the I-Other conjunction, to the inevitable orientation of being “starting from oneself” towards “the Other.” The priority of this orientation over the terms that are placed in it (and which can not arise without this orientation) summarizes the theses of the present work.”[6] Levinas description of Being is as radically perspectival as Nietzsche’s.[7] However, whereas Nietzsche describes the experiences of a subject whose being and whose perspectives are determined by its will to power, Levinas describes my experiences in having my being and my perspectives be determined by my ethical position as the interlocutor of the Other. Derrida’s analysis of the structure of Levinas’ writing illuminates his intricate perspectivism. “In Totality and Infinity the thematic development is neither purely descriptive nor purely deductive. It proceeds with the infinite insistence of waves on a beach: return and repetition, always, of the same wave against the same shore, in which however, as each return recapitulates itself, it also infinitely renews and enriches itself.”[8] As Heidegger might say, Levinas’ writing repeatedly presents the same “factical situation,” yet, each time, it thematizes this situation from a new perspective. By varying perspectives, Levinas does not merely give the reader a “better view” of the same event. Rather, these different perspectives constitute each situation as a new and different ontological, phenomenological, and metaphysical event. These perspectives are produced as and through my intercourse with the Other. The evolution and transformation of our discussion produces intentional relationships which connect us and which orient me metaphysically. I speak to the Other who responds to me. As will be shown in this paper, each event within this complex intercourse reveals its own intentional horizons.
To fully understand Levinas’ conception of vision and power, one must trace how these capacities evolve and transform throughout each stage of my ethical development. Against Heidegger’s description of Dasein as a dynamic temporalization, Levinas analyzes the time of discourse as a series of discrete, separated moments in which I am born, die and am reborn. In Time and the Other, he describes the birth of an individuated ego as his power to posit his identity, thereby escaping from the there is, an impersonal and eternal realm of undifferentiated existence. Totality and Infinity no longer refers to this event of separation as a power, but rather as the capacity to resist totalization. Levinas states, “The separation of the Same is produced in the form of an inner life, as psychism ... It is already a way of being, resistance to this totality. ... The dimension of the psychism opens under the force of the resistance a being opposes to its totalization.”[9] In direct opposition to Heidegger’s assertion that Dasein’s power develops from its futural appropriation of its heritage, Levinas explains that my capacity to resist the weight of the past in a present moment constitutes my force of resistance. Previous to this moment of separation, this separation in and as a moment, I had effectively perished when my works and my statements were alienated from myself by the impersonal institutions and public interpretations which subsumed them. I break with the domination of the totality by shedding my former manifestation and founding myself in a new moment in which I have an opportunity to make a new statement. Not only does this psychism separate me temporally, it also separates me ontologically. Against Heidegger who sees Dasein’s Being as always embedded within the impersonal dominance of Being, Levinas reappropriates the Cartesian distinction between an internal mental sphere and an external reality. According to Levinas, I resist being absorbed by the tyranny of Being by establishing the limit of my identity and creating an interior psychical realm which can not be violated by any external force or person.
My birth in the instant initiates the life cycle of the moment. Therefore, my separated existence begins in the infantile state of enjoyment. I steep myself in the elemental qualities of the world, experiencing my sensations as the contents of my existence. Levinas explains that this state arises prior to my development of a vision or a consciousness which would posit the world as a set of individuated objects. He states, “...The sensible life is lived as enjoyment. This mode of life is not to be interpreted in function of objectification ... Sensation recovers a ‘reality’ when we see in it not the subjective counterpart of objective qualities, but an enjoyment anterior to the crystallization of consciousness, I and non-I, subject and object”[10] Because I bathe in the elemental medium I enjoy, I can not assume any external point of view regarding it. For example, I do not experience the analytic qualities of the painting I view, but rather I live from my immersion in these colors. In order for me to view this painting as an object, I must have already submerged myself in the painting’s affective qualities. Not only does enjoyment precede my capacity to view objects, it also occurs before I have the capacity to represent my own existence to myself. Because I absorb myself in an elemental medium, I can not achieve a distance from myself from which I can observe myself. Through this analysis of enjoyment, Levinas describes a relationship with the world which arises prior to my understanding of the world as a set of usable tools. For Heidegger, circumspection requires Dasein to view both the beings in the world and its own potentiality-for-Being. Because enjoyment precedes the objectification of vision, it also prevents me from manipulating the world as a set of objects. Levinas explains that, “Tools themselves, which are in-view-of-...become objects of enjoyment.”[11] Against Heidegger, Levinas would claim that before I turn a handle to go through a door, I enjoy the sensation of cold brass pressing against my palm.
Although this state of enjoyment precedes my development of vision, Levinas does not conclude that I am sightless, but rather that this state can not be circumscribed within this dialectic. Levinas only employs the language of blindness to describe entities which lose their identity when they are forced to participate in the totality of the there is. He states, “To-be-in-the-element does indeed disengage a being from blind and deaf participation in a whole, but differs from a thought making its way outward.”[12] Because the there is forces everything to go along with the current of anonymous existence, it subsists prior to the self-identification of an I who can feel its existence and its pleasures as its own. Through my sensibility, I overcome my depersonalization, separating myself from the there is. However, this absorption in the elemental does not allow me the imperialistic freedom which I weld through representational vision. Whereas vision requires a distance from which to view objects, the elemental I merges with the element. “I am content ... with this horizon in which I live, turn to me; I do not ground them in a more vast system. It is they that ground me. I welcome them without thinking them.”[13] Levinas’ reference to horizons and his statement that “liberation flashes in the light of happiness, in separation”[14] indicate that the state of enjoyment is determined by a certain intentional relationship. However, rather than establishing my own horizons through a noetic intention, the enjoying I finds itself already implanted within certain horizons. As will be explained below, these horizons of separation ultimately emerge from the light emanated by my mother and father, the Other.
Through this description of life as enjoyment, Levinas allies himself with a Reichean strategy of opposing the affirmation of pleasure to totalitarian control. He states “Here lies the permanent truth of hedonist moralities: to not seek, behind the satisfaction of need, an order relative to which alone satisfaction would acquire a value; to take satisfaction, which is the very meaning of pleasure, as a term.”[15] Levinas makes this radical embrace of sensuous pleasure central to the relationship between the Other and me. Both the Other and I exist as our love of our lives. This enables each of us to exist as separated entities who resist being reduced to abstract categories. By affirming the importance of enjoyment, Levinas answers Nietzsche’s claim that morality is grounded in a life-negating, ascetic ressentiment. Sounding very much like the Nietzschean philosopher Georges Bataille, he states, “To enjoy without utility, in pure loss, gratuitously, without referring to anything else, in pure expenditure — this is the human.”[16] Furthermore, Levinas explains that, throughout the ethical relationship with the Other, I always maintain my separation through my sensibility. “Whatever be the transfigurations this egoism will receive from speech, it is for the happiness constitutive of this very egoism that the I who speaks pleads.”[17] Through this concept of enjoyment, Levinas adopts Nietzsche’s idea that philosophy should affirm life while rejecting his assertion that this affirmation must be an expression of a will-to-power. He thereby avoids the nihilism of traditional morality, yet does not describe life as a virile existence based either on heroic self-projection like Heidegger or on brutal excess like Bataille.
By making enjoyment the initial mode of relating to the world of things, Levinas subverts the notion of virility implicit in Heidegger’s description of concern. As described in Being and Time, Dasein’s relationship with the world as equipment posits Dasein as the master over the world of objects, manipulating them to suit its own ends, to project its own possibilities.[18] In contrast, the enjoying I relates to the element through a paradoxical combination of sovereignty and submission. Immersed in the elemental medium, I possess the qualities it offers to the extent that I let myself be possessed by it. Levinas contends, “The paradox of “living from something” ... is precisely a complacency with regard to what life depends on — not a mastery on one hand and a dependence on the other, but a mastery in this dependence. Living from... is the dependency that turns into sovereignty, into happiness — essentially egoist.”[19] Absorbed in pure sensual qualities such as the warm radiance of the sun, I depend upon the alterity of what it is not myself as the contents of my existence. At the same time, I integrate these sensations into my interiority, thereby establishing my own independence. In contrast to Heidegger who analyzes of thrownness as the submission of Dasein, Levinas’ discussion of sensibility outlines a more symbiotic relationship.
Levinas explores the paradoxical coincidence of the enjoying I’s submission and mastery through his descriptions of suffering and need. For the newly-birthed I, suffering functions as the relative negation of enjoyment. He states, “The happiness of enjoyment flourishes on the “pain” of need and thus depends on an “other””[20] Similarly, he states, “Far from putting the sensible life into question, pain takes place within its horizons and refers to the joy of living.”[21] Levinas explains that my satisfaction with the fulfillment of my needs determines my life of happiness. This satisfaction develops from the suffering I feel from being dependent upon the relative alterity of the element. This suffering therefore does not contradict my enjoyment, but rather acts as a foil which I oppose in the name of more enjoyment. Levinas explains that my dependence upon the elemental medium threatens me with the insecurity of the future. Because these momentary sensations are immediate and evanescent, the unforeseeable future threatens to disintegrate them. However, I can flee from the deprivation of my needs in search of enjoyment. The insecurity I feel wrenches me out of the present, opening me up to a duration during which I can forestall this disappearance. Whereas my dependence upon my milieu causes me to suffer, my needs determine my sovereignty. “The alterity of the other the world is is surmounted by need, which enjoyment remembers and is kindled by; need is the primary movement of the same. To be sure, need is also a dependence with regard to the other, but it is a dependence across time ... Needs are in my power. They constitute me as the same and not as dependent on the other.”[22] By founding an interval of duration between myself and the immediacy of the element, I establish a distance through which I can subordinate the relative alterity of the milieu in the satisfaction of my needs.
I articulate an interval which separates me from the element through the founding of a corporeal domicile. I establish this home through my intimate relationship with the gentle visage of the feminine Other.[23] The home enables me to mature from my infancy into my manhood. Through it, I can transform the antecedent, conditioning influences of the element into things which seem to be posterior to and conditioned by my consciousness. Levinas states, “Consciousness of a world is already consciousness through that world. Something of that world seen is an organ or an essential means of vision ... Hence the subject contemplating a world presupposes the event of dwelling, the withdrawal from the elements ... recollection in the intimacy of the home.”[24] Levinas’ usage the term “recollection” to refer to this withdrawal from and appropriation of the elements seems to be directed at the Socratic theory of knowledge.[25] Socrates argues that all knowledge is derived from the self’s remembrance of the knowledge which he had obtained during his past lives. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas demonstrates that my gnosis and my relationship with my past can only be mediated through the Other. Through the feminine Other who gives me birth and who listens to my speech, I establish a home which acts as a precondition for my initiatives of power and my capacity for sight. Through my labor, I master the threatening insecurity of the chaotic element by seizing it. Levinas states, “Labor in its possessive grasp suspends the independence of the element: its being. ... Possession masters, suspends, postpones the unforeseeable future of the element — its independence, its being.”[26] By distancing myself from my immersion in the milieu, I grasp the element as if it were matter which offered resistance to my hand. I exert my power over the element by positing it as a set of permanent, possessable things which can be deposited in the dwelling. The home establishes my psychism by delimiting a separated position for me. Labor continues this separation by absenting my interiority from the works I have objectified so that I can pursue an existence independent of them.
The dwelling and the labor which take place in it enable me to acquire the capacity for representational vision. Levinas explains, “The dwelling remains in its own way open upon the element from which it separates. The ambiguity of distance, both removal and connection, is lifted by the window that makes possible a look that dominates, a look of him who escapes looks, the look that contemplates.”[27] The home capacitates vision by separating me from the element, giving me a distance from which to direct a spectatorial gaze at the world. The home transforms the sensible enjoyment which conditions me into a spectacle which I can represent as something conditioned. “In clarity an object which is first exterior is given, that is, is delivered over to him who encounters it as though it had been entirely determined by him.”[28] Representational vision therefore functions as perhaps the primary way in which the embodied I forestalls the insecurity threatened by the unforeseeable future. Levinas states, “Vision is a forgetting of the there is because of the essential satisfaction, the agreeableness of sensibility, enjoyment, contentment, with the finite without concern for the infinite. In fleeing itself in vision, consciousness returns to itself.”[29] Whereas the enjoyment of visual sensations separates me from the domination of the there is, the visual sense as it is articulated in the body enables me to absorb all phenomena within my own consciousness. Furthermore, the temporal interval which is produced as this dwelling suspends my immediate reactions to the element so that I can observe myself. Against Heidegger, Levinas asserts that only an embodied and domiciled I who regards both itself and objects can relate to the world in view of a greater attention to its own possibilities.
Whereas Heidegger tends to collapse the vision and the grasp, Levinas explains that I require the labor of the hand before I can develop sight. The hand establishes my first mastery over the ominous element. By assuming the element as a permanent possession, I stave off the insecurity I feel in the face of the unforeseeable future, the horror I feel in the face of the there is. He states, “Labor, the hold on matter, is not a vision or thought in which matter already determined would be defined by relation to infinity; within the grasp matter precisely remains fundamentally indefinite. ... But it renounces its anonymity, since the primordial hold of labor introduces it into a world of the identifiable, masters it.”[30] The hand which labors seizes the element before I have fully articulated the subject-object distinction which vision capacitates. Therefore, the hand does not function with the intentionality of a sense organ, but rather as a blind grasping which masters the element by relating it to me. By doing so, the hand suspends the obscurity of matter, making it identifiable. Out of the chaotic and unforeseeable element, labor posits discernible things which I can represent to myself. This domination therefore illuminates a world which I can apprehend in my consciousness. Levinas explains, “The ‘representation’ of the end and the movement of the hand that plunges towards it thorough an unexplored distance, preceded by no searchlight, constitute one and the same event.”[31] The blind groping of the hand therefore determines the world which I can contemplate as a visual spectator.
The development of the visual faculty consummates the foundation of my sovereign interiority. Representational vision views the world through the safe distance which the dwelling effects between the ominous element and me. The light which possession sheds upon the world neutralizes the relative alterity of the unforeseeable element. After the chaotic element has been stabilized, the securely domiciled I can comprehend this elemental exteriority within its interior world. “Vision is essentially an adequation of exteriority with interiority: in it exteriority is reabsorbed in the contemplative soul and, as an adequate idea, revealed to be a priori.”[32] For Levinas, vision function as the ability to absorb alterity, the ultimate power of the Same. In addition to accommodating my power of sight, the house allows me to maintain the invisibility of my interiority. The house not only provides a window through which I can look, it also provides a space in which I can conceal myself from the outside world, from the element, from the totality, and even from the gaze of the Other. Like Gyges, the I who maintains the power of vision can see everything while evading sight.
Whereas the enjoying I constitutes the element only insofar as it is constituted by it, the seeing I determines alterity without being determined by it. The visual sense therefore establishes a distinct type of relationship with the world. When I separate myself from the there is, I maintain the rest of the world in this impersonal totality. Levinas explains, “Thus appears the structures of vision, where the relation of the subject with the object is subordinated to the relation of the object with the void of openness, which is not an object. ... To comprehend the particular being is to apprehend it out of an illuminated sight it does not fill.”[33] Sight relates to the world through the void, perceiving it as if it issued from nothingness. Whereas labor masters the element by stabilizing it, vision dominates the objects which it comprehends. Through this horizon of generality, thematization surprises and captures existents within my world so that they surrender themselves over to my consciousness. The sovereign I apprehends the word through its own points of view, ascribing significance to objects according to the relations which it establishes between them. Vision perceives objects as phenomena, as mute entities which have no capacity to respond to the imperialism of the Same. The independence and resistance of the world disappear within the consciousness which subsumes it. Levinas explains how sight suppresses and possesses the element by suspending its alterity, “The most ponderous reality envisaged as an object of a thought is engendered in the gratuitous spontaneity of a thought that thinks it. ... To represent is not to reduce a past fact to an actual image but to reduce to the instantaneousness of thought everything that seems independent of it.”[34] By suspending the threat of futurity, I reduce the world to the stasis of an instant in which I maintain the unique power to constitute reality. Furthermore, the positing of an interior moment of the present separates me from the past. Just as Heidegger calls the stabilization of Being in a factical Situation an existentially positive “capacity for delusion,” Levinas calls this achievement of a pure present a “power for illusion.”[35] “At the very moment of representation the I is not marked by the past but utilizes it as a represented and objective element. Illusion? Ignorance of its own involvements? Representation is the force of such an illusion and of such forgettings. Representation is the pure present.”[36] For Heidegger, Dasein’s delusory absorption in its facticity distracts it from the power it attains by accepting its heritage and projecting towards a future. Conversely, Levinas asserts that this illusory present establishes the only true power that I maintain over my world, and that my connection with the future and the past divest me of my virility.
Integrating all alterity into an identity and turning the world into the contents of a consciousness, sight acts as the most important power which a free and sovereign interiority can exercise over its world. The development of vision therefore functions as the consummation of my autonomy in the world. By putting boundaries around myself and stabilizing the there is, I make my interiority invisible to the world while gazing out at it and referring it back to my own perceptual horizons. Like me, the Other maintains a visage through which he can see and can hide her own alterity.[37] The visage of the Other manifests this invisibility. “Inasmuch as the access to beings concerns vision, it dominates those beings, exercises a power over them ... The visage is present in its refusal to be contained ... It is neither seen nor touched — for in visual or tactile sensation the identity of the I envelops the alterity of the object, which becomes precisely an object.”[38] The Other’s visage appears in my domicile as a body which, like other material things, can be subsumed within my consciousness. However, the visage’s character as a sensible phenomenon doubles with a transcendent alterity which always lies outside of the my horizons. Beyond the Other’s appearance in my present moment, the Other maintains the capacity to reappear in the unforeseeable future. Furthermore, the Other’s alterity can be understood as the perspectival transformation of Levinas’ analysis of my interiority. Levinas’ statement that “the visage is present in its refusal to be contained” echoes his notion that my psychism “opens under a force of resistance [it] opposes to its totalization.” My interiority enables me to separate myself from impersonal there is which would absorb and neutralize me. Through my separation, I convert the there is into a light through which I can absorb exteriority. The Other’s alterity arises as his resistance to the totalization which my gaze attempts to impose upon him.[39]
Like Nietzsche, Levinas employs perspectivism to overcome the synoptic relations described by idealistic philosophy.[40] He insists, “In the absolute, the subject and the object would still be parts of the same system, would be enacted and revealed panoramically. ... Exteriority is true not in a lateral view apperceiving it in opposition to interiority; it is true in a face to face that is no longer entirely vision, but goes farther than vision. The face to face is established starting with a point separated from exteriority so radically that it maintains itself of itself, is me.”[41] The face to face relation can only be understood from the perspective of an I who looks at an Other who gazes back. Like Heidegger, Levinas asserts that this gnosis can not be understood existentially from the detached perspective of a neutral third party who looks at it theoretically. This panoramic viewpoint would swallow up the Other and me into an impersonal totality, suppressing the multiplicity of existents, eradicating the freedom of separated interiority, and violating the transcendence of alterity. This impersonal gaze asserts itself by imposing a universal time upon the Other and me. It freezes our images in the historical moment of our deaths during which we can no longer speak for ourselves. However, because the conversation between the Other and me propels us through spirals of death and rebirth, we maintain our capacity to reply to this totalitarian violence. By signifying himself through his speech, the visage of the Other indicates that he can answer for the images which he presents. Levinas explains, “Speech is always a taking up again of what was a simple sign cast forth by it, an ever renewed promise to clarify what was obscure in the utterance.”[42] The transcendence of the Other derives from his connection to an unforeseeable future which can not be envisaged in a moment of vision. This futurity allows the Other the infinite capacity to revise the images which he presents in a present instant. Because the Other, as an interlocutor, directs and attends to his appearance, he overflows the representation which I contain within my own consciousness.
Although I can not view the Other as an object for my consumption, I do not become blind during this encounter. According to Levinas, I can only be considered to be blind when I am utterly trapped in the undifferentiated realm of the there is, having no power to assert my own sovereign selfhood. Conversely, the face-to-face relationship with the Other requires an I who possesses the full powers of its selfhood. Most importantly, this relationship requires an I who maintains its power of sight. Because the Other can not be fully absorbed within the horizons of my consciousness, I perceive that the Other transcends them. Therefore, I must look upwards to see him. That is, the relationship with the Other requires a certain type of visual intentionality. Levinas explains, “The eye can conceive of it only by virtue of position which, as an above-below disposition, constitutes the elementary fact of morality.”[43] As discussed above, the Other’s alterity is quite similar to my interiority. However, alterity can not be considered to be the mere correlate of interiority because the Other can not be considered to be a mere “alter ego” of me. Interiority defines the life of a separated I with respect to impersonal totalities. Viewed from my perspective, the “interiority” of an Other appears to me as alterity. The production of alterity depends upon the visual perspective of an I which sees something which vanishes from sight.
Levinas explains that the intentionality of the face to face does not project from my understanding, but rather emanates from the Other. Just as my interiority enables me to maintain a power of sight, the alterity of the Other enables him to stare back at me with his own vision. I do not encounters the Other as a mere thing, but as a visage, as a being which can see. Levinas explains, “Things manifest themselves as answering to a question relative to which they have a meaning — the question quid? .. The question who? envisages a visage ... To aim at a visage is to put the question who? to the very visage that is the answer to this question: the answerer and the answered coincide. The visage, preeminently expression, formulates the first word: the signifier arising at the thrust of his sign, as eyes that look at you.”[44] In the relationship with the Other, sight coincides with speech: the visual perception of the Other transforms into a discursive relationship with him. I can not absorb the Other into my interior world as I do mute objects because the Other can reply to my gaze with his own. Levinas implicitly critiques Heidegger’s emphasis upon the act of questioning for reducing all entities to the neutral substratum of Being. Against Heidegger, he asserts that whenever I ask any question about entities, I must direct this question to my interlocutor, the Other. More significantly, the question asked about the Other can not be answered by Being, but only by the Other. Before I can grasp the Other as a sensible content of my consciousness, the Other has already signified himself as the one who can donate a response to his own epiphany. Before I can question the Other, the Other’s alterity has already thrown my sovereign interiority into question.
Just as the Other transcends my vision, he also lies beyond my possession. Levinas explains, “The expression the visage introduces into the world does not defy the feebleness of my powers, but my power for power [mon pouvoir de pouvoir.]”[45] The Other does not transcend me because he exists as an immense and immobile object, but rather because I can not even begin to relate to him through a horizon of power. Levinas states that the face-to-face eliminates my “pouvoir de pouvoir.” He seems to use this phrase to critique Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein as the projection of possibilities. This French word “pouvoir” connotes both “power” and “ability.” Therefore, the deterioration of my power for power also destroys my ability to be able, my capacity to seize possibilities.[46] Levinas explains that I can exert power only over objects which I grasp in the sensible world. Although the visage of the Other does manifest itself as a sensible phenomenon, his transcendent exteriority to my world and present moment render him intangible. Therefore, I can not convert the Other into a possession; I can only attempt to murder him. Levinas explains, “To kill is not to dominate but to annihilate; it is to renounce comprehension absolutely. Murder exercises a power over what escapes power. It is still a power, for the visage expresses itself in the sensible, but already impotency, because the visage rends the sensible.”[47] I can destroy only the sensible aspect of the Other, his body, but I can not touch the alterity of his visage. Unlike the grasp, homicide does not convert the Other into something which can be possessed. The murderer is left with only a mute corpse. Levinas discussion of murder does not refer to only the concrete, physical act of homicide. Levinas definition of murder[48] seems to be related to the Jewish conception of gossip as loshon ha-ra [literally, “the evil language.”] Traditionally, Judaism has condemned loshon ha-ra because, in it, one speaks ill of another human being without giving this person the opportunity to speak up for himself. Levinas finds the Greek correlate to this Jewish prohibition in the Platonic condemnation of rhetoric. He states, “Rhetoric, absent from no discourse, and which philosophical discourse seeks to overcome, resists discourse. ... It approaches the Other not to face him, but obliquely — not, to be sure, as a thing, since rhetoric remains conversation, and across all its artifices goes unto the Other, solicits his yes ... It is for this that it is preeminently violence, that is, injustice.”[49] I, through the rhetoric of my speech, impose my will upon the Other who has silenced herself in order to listen to me. For Levinas, ‘murder” seems to refer to the attempt to understand someone as if he were dead, in the third person, to reduce this person to the conception one has of him without allowing him to defend himself. Murder forces the transcendent freedom of the Other into a mute compliance. Levinas states that this exceptional possibility of murder is also the “most banal incident of human history.”[50] In our discussion, I understand the Other according to the image he presents and the word he donates. By doing so, I murder the Other at every present moment of our conversation. This murder reduces the life of a human being to a mere “historical event.” However, the Other can overcome this violence of its death through his rebirth in a future moment in which he can defend himself.
The recurrent act of murder demonstrates the limit of my power to possess exteriority. The ethical impossibility of grasping the Other’s alterity and reducing it to interiority paralyzes my power, putting my mastery over reality into question. Instead, the Other, as destitute, exercises her mastery over me. Levinas explains, “The nakedness of the visage is destituteness. To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give, But it is to give to the master, to the lord, to him who approaches as “You” [“Vous”] in a dimension of height.”[51] I perceive the Other as destitute from the perspective of my sovereign interiority. Because I have established a domicile which securely houses my possessions and my consciousness, I view the Other as a completely dispossessed stranger with respect to this home. The Other’s presence reveals itself as an absence within the world I have created for myself. Levinas describes this estrangement as a nudity. Because the Other reveals himself as exterior to my consciousness, she enters into my realm without any concept protecting or covering her. The utterly straightforward relationship directly exposes the Other to my hospitality and my violence. Paradoxically, this very destitution establishes the Other’s mastery over me. Viewing the Other shows me a being whose existence lies beyond the horizons of my own sovereign interiority, something which can not be encompassed within or thematized by my consciousness.
The Other masters me by staring at me and calling my sovereign interiority into question. Levinas explains that the visage of the Other views my world from an external perspective, making me feel ashamed of my quest to dominate the world as my property. He states, “The Other measures me with a gaze incomparable to the gaze by which I discover him ... The relationship with the Other does not move (as does cognition) into enjoyment and possession, into freedom; the Other imposes himself as an exigency that dominates this freedom, and hence as more primordial than everything that takes place in me.”[52] The shame which the Other provokes in me requires me to reflect upon my own possessiveness, enabling me to achieve self-consciousness. In this description of the Other’s mastery over me and of the development of self-consciousness, Levinas seems to adapt Hegel’s analysis of the interaction between the slave and bondsman.[53] Like Hegel, Levinas asserts that, in order to see oneself, one must look at someone else who is regarding oneself. However, Levinas departs from Hegel by explaining the mastery of the Other as a teaching rather than a domination. Whereas I maintain my own self-subsistence by containing the world through my grasp and my representational vision, the Other teaches me by showing me something I could never deduce from or absorb within myself. By exposing his own exteriority, the Other teaches me that a world exists beyond the narrow confines of my insular interiority. The Other teaches me the idea of infinity by inserting within my consciousness something which I could never contain by my own power. Finally, the gaze of the Other’s visage masters and teaches me by obliging me to respond to him.
In order to understand fully the Other’s mastery over me, it is necessary to explore what exactly constitutes her destitute absence from my world. I perceive the Other as an absence because I have excluded the Other from the home I have created for my autochthonous existence. I had established this interiority by extracting myself as an individual from impersonal totalizing structures. By building the barriers of my domicile, I do not merely lock out the Other; I slam the door on the rest of humanity. The interiority of my inner realm refuses the public sphere[54] by separating myself from the impersonal, general realm of the third party. Therefore, the destitution of the Other refers to the presence of humanity, of all of the Others, in the visage of the singular Other. Levinas asserts, “The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other — language is justice. It is not that there first would be the visage, and then the being it manifests or expresses would concern himself with justice; the epiphany of the visage qua visage opens humanity.”[55] Not only does the Other call me into question, the Other makes me responsible to everyone.
The presence of the third party in the visage of the Other instills a level of equality within the face-to-face relationship. Levinas states that “[The Other’s] equality within this essential poverty consists in referring to the third party, thus present at the encounter, whom in the midst of his destitution of the Other already serves. Because the visage of the Other refers to the generality of humanity, its mastery also refers to me as an equal.”[56] The emergence of equality from the relationship with the transcendent Other can be interpreted in several overlapping ways. First of all, the third party seems to appear as the sensible aspect of the Other. Levinas explains that, in the discursive exchange between the Other and me, “the visage that looks at it places itself in the full light of the public order.”[57] In our conversation, I present an image and donate a word to the Other. I do not sacrifice my interiority, but rather give the Other a general thing which can be accessed by anyone. By questioning my right to possess the world in my private interiority, the Other refers me to the public world of properties.[58] Not only does the Other accuse me as a property owner, the Other manifests himself in a public light as one constituted by representable properties, as one who is equal to me in his rights to own public property. My perception of myself as an equal also seems to be the effect of a play of perspectives. Levinas asserts that I see the masterful Other already serving. Most obviously, the Other’s servitude arises from her subjection to the public world of property. The Other seems to see me as an Other and therefore also sees Others in my visage which command him to do justice to everyone. Furthermore, it would seem that the Other serves because the Other perceives me as his Other and therefore views me as his master. Because I already approach the Other as a master, I perceive the Other’s servitude as referring back to the generality of humanity.
The perception of the Other’s transcendent servitude invests me with my sovereign freedom. The Other’s destitution masters me by teaching me her poverty and exteriority. However, the Other does not master me in order to make me servile, but rather to make me into a master. The gaze of the Other invests me as a unique individual who has the power to administer to the needs of the Other and the full responsibility to promote social justice. Levinas explains that “[The Other] joins me to himself for service. He commands me as a master. This command can concern me only inasmuch as I am master myself; consequently this command commands me to command.”[59] The notion that the command of the Other orders me to master myself seems to be directed against the Kantian model of autonomy as a self-given law. More importantly, this statement seems to be directed against Heidegger’s Nietzschean tendencies. In Being and Time, Heidegger, following Nietzsche who himself follows the Stoics, embraces the model of Dasein as one who resolutely masters its subjection to its heritage through an authentic projection of its potentiality-for-Being. In his 1936 lecture course on Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, Heidegger projects his concept of resoluteness onto Nietzsche, stating, “[Willing] is the submission of ourselves to our own command, and the resoluteness of such self-command.”[60] Levinas’ assertion that the Other founds my self-mastery continues a critique against Heidegger and Nietzsche which Levinas began in his 1934 essay “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism.” In this essay, Levinas distinguishes between two notions of mastery. He explains that European thought defines truth through the notion of universality. Because an idea can be detached from the person who proposes it and can be accepted by anyone, a universal community of equals can all become masters of a true idea. Even as early as 1934, Levinas had already begun to explain mastery as an intellectual mastery, as a teaching of public truths which founds a general community of masters. Conversely, Levinas explains that the German ideal, shared by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Nazis, analyzes sovereignty and truth in terms of a will to power. They view mastery as a force located within the body of the one who has force. In this model, power does not separate from the one who exerts it nor can it be appropriated by those who are subjected to it.[61] Instead of creating a community of equals, force establishes a world of forceful masters and subjugated slaves. This notion of truth as will to power does not spread through dialogue, but rather universalizes itself through war and conquest.
As mentioned above, Levinas adapts Hegel’s notion that the self requires the gaze of an Other to achieve self-consciousness. Levinas states that the face to face, “this moral experience, so commonplace, indicates a metaphysical asymmetry: the radical impossibility of seeing oneself from the outside and of speaking of the same sense of oneself and of the others, and consequently the impossibility of totalization.”[62] Because I can never leap outside of myself to observe myself, I require the perspective of the Other. Levinas adapts the Cartesian model of the subject’s relationship with God because, in this confrontation “the Cartesian subject is given a point of view exterior to itself from which it can apprehend itself.”[63] The visage of the Other forces me to reflect upon myself and to pay attention to my manifestation. The epiphany of the Other presents me with a being outside of the parameters of my own interior existence, a being with his own independent consciousness. The Other therefore requires me to establish a distance between myself and my elemental existence. By looking at me, the Other breaks me out of my solipsistic, infantile enjoyment, enabling me to establish my own powers of possession and vision. Not only does the face to face produce my relationship with the world of objects, it also produces my relationship with myself. Because the Other questions my sovereign possession of my interiority, he both authorizes and challenges it. To invest me with a responsible freedom, the Other commands me to open up a critical eye to myself, enabling me to attend to my existence in view of my possibilities.
In this analysis of my self-mastery, Levinas seems to be thematizing the production of the interior home from an external perspective. In the pure state of enjoyment, my existence does not differentiate itself from the pulsation of the elemental milieu. Therefore, the impersonal there is always threatens to swallow up this enjoying I and negate its individuality. In order to separate myself from this insular state and from the threat of the future, I found a home in which I can assert my sovereignty through possession and representation. The foundation of the domicile therefore seems to be equivalent to the self-mastery which the I achieves through its relationship with the Other’s visage. Furthermore, Levinas explains that the intimacy with the feminine Other is the precondition for the home. He further asserts that the Other’s manifestation of herself as an absence constitutes her femininity. Because Levinas also describes the Other’s masterful destitution as her absence from my world, one can assume that the welcome of the feminine Other is equivalent to the command of the destitute Other. In both cases, the Other is absenced, is silenced, so that I can posit itself in a masterful moment of speech. As will be shown below, Levinas describes the foundation of selfhood from yet another perspective in his description of the erotic relationship between the Other and me.
Levinas also repeats the analysis of my foundation of my power of visual representation from an exterior perspective. Against the Kantian notion of representation, Levinas explains that visual thematization comes from the intentionality of the Other rather than my own solipsism. He states, “Things acquire a rational signification, and not only one of simple usage, because an other is associated with my relations with them. In designating a thing I designate it to the Other. The act of designating modifies my relation of enjoyment and possession with things, places the things in the perspective of the Other.”[64] Because the gaze of the Other puts my enjoyment of the element into question, I can separate myself from this infantile state. I can detach myself from the relative exteriority in order to grasp it as matter. By questioning my possession of the world, the visage of the Other detaches me from this matter so that I can posit it as a set of objects. The external viewpoint of the Other separates this matter from my interiority, referring it to a public economy, referring it to the Other as a donation. Therefore, Levinas contends that I understand the world through the mediation of the face-to-face encounter with the Other. Whereas Heidegger asserts that Dasein relates to phenomena through its own comportment, its own hold on Being, Levinas maintains that I establish this relationship through a vis-a-vis relationship with the visage. Representation does not derive from the thematizing work of an isolated ego, but already depends upon the Other. The critical light which the autosignifying visage sheds determines an orientation and a signification for all phenomena. Through our rapport, the Other and I reveal a public world of property. When I speak a word or present an image, I do so for my interlocutor, the Other. I enact my power to represent as welcoming of the Other into my domicile and as donating my gifts of communication to the Other. Against Heidegger’s assertion that an impersonal Being gives [es gibt] a world to Dasein, Levinas contends that the world is established through the my giving [donner] and the Other’s pardon [pardonner.]
Levinas’ analysis of the will demonstrates how even my existence as a for-myself depends upon the Other. His analysis of the will enables him to make his most radical critique of the phenomenological, both Husserlian and Heideggerian, model of intentionality, I assert my sovereignty in the public, sensible world through the exertion of my will. I evade the threat of the unforeseeable future by establishing my power in the world. I create a domicile from which I can stabilize the world as permanent possessions, to thematize it as objects, and to communicate messages. Through its labor, the will produces visible works from which it absents its interiority. This production exposes the will’s sovereignty to outside influences. For example, the bodily home which preserves a private space for my interiority also posits me as a public, visible object. By willfully asserting myself in the sensible world, I open myself up to the exploitation of the Other. Levinas explains, “Every will separates itself from its work. ... The other can dispossess me of my work, take it or buy it, and thus direct my behavior; I am exposed to instigation. The work is destined to this alien Sinngebung from the moment of its origin in me. It is to be emphasized that this destination of the work to a history I cannot foresee — for I cannot see it — is inscribed in the very essence of my power, and does not result from the contingent presence of other persons alongside of me.”[65] Because I absent myself from the works I create, Others can appropriate these works and turn them against my original intention. Although I may initially project my will, the results of my deeds will be determined by an Other because they will occur in a future which I can not foresee. Against Heidegger, Levinas insists that, due to the very nature of the will, an Other always leaps in for me. My existence is never adequate to my intentions because my intentions are always taken over by an Other. Every possibility which I project escapes my own power. When I donate all of my works to the Other, they acquire their signification from the Other who receives them. Because the will posits its productions in a public, sensible realm, they expose the will to the Other’s vision. Although my interiority remains invisible, my labor externalizes me as a collection of visible products, including my very body. In establishing my own sovereign self-consciousness, the will exposes me to the thematization and objectification of a hostile Other.
Levinas describes this alienation of my will by the Other as war and violence. Rather than positing the will as a heroic, self-asserting will-to power, he describes it as something whose very constitution allows tyrannical violence to force it into submission. Through violence, the Other can subjugate the will by appropriating its products. Levinas explains, “The part of eternal truth that materialism involves lies in the fact that the human will can be laid hold of in its works. ... The for itself of the will, unshakable in its happiness is exposed to violence. ... The will essentially violable harbors treason in its own essence. It is not only offendable in its dignity ... but is susceptible of being coerced and enslaved as a will, becoming a servile soul.”[66] Because the Other can seize the will through its works, he can force it to play a part in a historical fate which it hasn’t willed. The existence of the body articulates the sovereignty and the weakness of the human will. The body grounds me as a home from which I can assert power, but it also subjects me to the subtle coercion and brutal torture of a murderous Other. When the will posits itself as its corporeality, it opens itself up to all of the possible violence which can be done to a body, to the seduction of gold and to the brutality of a gas chamber. Relating to the Other through the public world of impersonal works and general facts opens up the possibility of war. Levinas’ description of violence and war must be read on several different levels. First of all, his account of the susceptibility of the will explains how and why a human being can be degraded through brutality. Levinas’ account of persecution denies the reader the opportunity to romanticize the horror of human suffering. One could not achieve a similar understanding of the harsh, material reality of oppression it one utilized a Heideggerian model of a will which heroically asserts itself against its anxiety.[67] Secondly, Levinas’ analysis of violence seems to describe an event in the conversation between the Other and me. He describes the Other as a murderous Other who brings death upon me. This would seem to suggest that Levinas is here repeating his analysis of murder from the perspective of one who suffers from it rather than of one who commits it. Violence, war, and murder occur to me at the end of my moment in time. When I manifest myself in the instant in my domicile, I externalize a sensible, concrete part of myself. Just as I can murder the sensible aspect of the Other, my body becomes general property which the Other can seize. By manifesting myself, I allow the Other to reduce me to the mere image which I display or the mere word I give. Because each statement reduces the humanity of both the Other and me to an impersonal, public thing, war arises from discourse. Levinas states, “This discourse is therefore not the unfolding of a prefabricated internal logic, but the constitution of truth between thinkers, with all the risks of freedom.”[68] Like Heidegger, Levinas makes struggle into an important phenomenological category. However, Heidegger describes struggle as the work of impersonal Being which draws Daseins together for a common project or as a primordial conflict between an impersonal Being and its There. Conversely, for Levinas, struggle produces this impersonal realm, the violent reductionism of the truth. War does not bring people together, but rather occurs between interlocutors who always maintain their separate freedom from each other, from impersonal forces, and from the struggle itself.
I suffer when the will of the Other forces me into a state of utter submission. Against Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein’s heroically resolute and anxious Being-towards-Death, Levinas explains suffering as a fear and a fleeing away from death. Death is not a state which is my ownmost, but rather a murder which the Other inflicts upon me. Levinas explains, “The unforeseeable of death is due to the fact that it does not lie within any horizon. It is not open to grasp. It takes me without leaving me the chance I have in a struggle. In death I am exposed to absolute violence, to murder in the night.”[69] The language of this statement clearly directs itself against Heidegger’s claim that authentic Dasein must seize and visually understand death as an authentic possibility. In Time and the Other, Levinas explains that death represents not the possibility of the self’s impossibility, but rather the impossibility of the self’s possibilities.. Death never lies within my horizons because, when it arrives, I have already perished. Instead, the unforeseeable Other threatens me with something completely beyond my power. In suffering, that which completely escapes my power and vision, death, imposes itself upon me. This description of suffering again demonstrates the perspectival character of Levinas’ argument. As was discussed earlier, Levinas describes suffering as a state which I already overcame and encompassed within the enjoyment of my needs. Whereas that account relates my retrospective perspective at the (re)birth of my instant, Levinas here describes the my perspective when I look forward to the imminent death of my instant. Death occurs when I, having been totally alienated from itself, become swallowed up by the impersonal totality, the there is, which has been created in the instant.
Levinas explains that the impersonal events of history function as the graveyard for these slaughtered wills. He states, “Historiography recounts the way the survivors appropriate the works of dead wills to themselves; it rests on the usurpation carried out by the conquerors, that is, by the survivors; it recounts enslavement, forgetting the life that struggles against slavery.”[70] Through the impersonal truth of historical knowledge, survivors, people who live over [sur + vivre] others, appropriate the works of the dead by thematizing them. History obscures my invisible interiority by transforming my existence into something which can be viewed publicly. It erases my interiority as someone who acts within history because it does not allow me to speak up for myself. History recounts the objective details of my life in a third-person narrative, forgetting that a human being, an I, actually existed as these now-impersonal facts. It describes how, during my death, my will was manipulated by others while ignoring how, during my recurrent rebirths, I struggled to reappropriate my sovereignty over my fate. Although suffering threatens me with my extermination, it does not totally eradicate my freedom. Levinas explains that, in order to make an individual suffer, one must degrade him as an object while still allowing him just enough freedom to see this subjugation. The tiny margin of interior sovereignty which separates me from my works makes me aware of my suffering and gives me a prevision of the imminence of my death. Cognizant of this inevitable violence, consciousness avoids it. Levinas explains, “Things have a dominion over man, but to be a man is to know that this is so and to desire the postponement of this inhuman subjection.”[71] I ultimately escape being reduced to historical data through my vision of the unforeseeable future which lies beyond the visible present. The will maintains its autonomy by detaching itself from the works, words, and images which it manifests in the instant. By doing so, I do not remain committed to the destiny which I project, but rather maintain the capacity to efface the historical facts of my present moment and to renounce such commitments in a future moment.
I resist the totality of history by reconstituting the invisibility of my interiority. Levinas defines invisibility as the offense which totalizing systems inflict upon individuals by eradicating their particularity. Therefore, my invisibility can not be represented as a visible event within history, but rather can only be expressed as my personal communication to the Other. I escape death by presenting myself to the Other’s judgment, by speaking up to the Other in order to request his pardon. Levinas explains this as a fundamentally ambiguous event, “The will, whose spontaneity and mastery are belied by death, are stifled in a historical context, that is, in the works that remain of them, of itself seeks to place itself under a judgment, and to receive the truth from it upon its own witness. ... What is this existence the will enters into, placing itself under a judgment that dominates the apology, but does not reduce it to silence? ... The will seeks judgment in order to be confirmed against death, whereas death taken as the judgment of history kills the will qua will.”[72] This account of judgment demonstrates how truth becomes constituted by struggle. In order to defend itself from being reduced to a historical datum, the will speaks to the Other, justifying itself as an individual which can speak for itself. However, by presenting itself to the Other as its justification, the will allows the Other to reduce it to the words which it speaks. Yet I escapes this reduction by maintaining a conversation with the Other. I apologize[73] to the Other, speak to his transcendence, and the Other grants me a pardon, listening to me and allowing me to defend myself by becoming reborn in a new moment of speech. I retain the invisibility of my own individuality through my intercourse with the Other. Because I can not gaze at my own particularity from the outside, I must look at the Other who gazes back at me to reconstitute my own interiority.
I can not distinguish myself from a totality without viewing the gaze of the Other which maintains a conversation with me and which allows me to speak. The destitution of the Other expresses to me the offense which impersonal, visible history inflicts upon the invisibility of particularity. Levinas states, “The invisible offense that results from the judgment of history, a judgment of the visible, will attest subjectivity to be prior to judgment or to be a refusal of judgment; if it is only produced as cry and protestation, if it is felt within me. But it is produced as judgment itself when it looks at me and accuses me in the visage of the Other ... The will is under the judgment of God when its fear of death is inverted into fear of committing murder.”[74] My interiority is preserved by the accusation and the pardon of the Other. By accusing me of murder, the visage of the Other questions my imperialistic possessiveness, wrenching me free of the world of impersonal properties and enabling me to transcend the objectification of history. Levinas states that the Other who judges me does so as God who “does not silence by its majesty the voice and the revolt of the apology. God sees the invisible and sees without being seen.”[75] Levinas description of God as the one who “sees without being seen” clearly refers back to his discussions of Gyges. The transcendent Other which judges does so as a sovereign exteriority who always remains free from totalizing history. Although the Other’s gaze does murder my sensible aspect by reducing me to my visible works, it does not turn me into a possession, into an object. The Other’s visage recognizes me as an interlocutor, pardoning me as a sovereign, invisible interiority which always maintains the right to answer and apologize for itself, and which, through a rebirth, can overcome its visible historical manifestation.
I overcome the death which the Other thrusts upon me by paradoxically willing the death of my own present moment. I expose myself to the murderous Other’s alienation of my will and my works. I let the Other freeze and objectify my instantaneous image so that I can escape into an unforeseeable future. I cease to resist the Other’s violent appropriation, letting the very center of my existence be wrenched out of myself. By accepting this passively and by maintaining my distance from this violence, I transform my suffering into a patient awaiting[76] of the future. Levinas explains, “The situation where the consciousness deprived of all freedom of movement maintains a minimal distance from the present, this ultimate passivity which nonetheless turns into action and into hope, is patience — the passivity of undergoing, and yet mastery itself.” I potlatch myself patiently, refusing not only my attachment to the property I possesses, but even to the very body which I inhabit. I will the abdication of my own will, allowing myself to become radically vulnerable and submissive. This death allows me to become reborn as a new mastery, a mastery which will remember this suffering in the rapture of its enjoyment.
I effect my relationship with the unforeseeable future through my erotic relationship with the Other. In the erotic relationship, the Other and I ignore the public sphere in order to enter an intimate relationship with each other. For Levinas, eros seems to signify the event in which I absent myself from historical works to encounter the feminine Other in her absence. Levinas’ descriptions seem to imply that I encounter the erotic Other at the point of both of our deaths. At this point, the Other’s will has been totally converted into sensible matter. Unlike the Other in its aspect as an interlocutor, the Other which has succumbed to this state of ultramateriality does not speak to me. However, this husk of the Other does not merely appear a mute object; her overwhelming corpse testifies to an alterity which has totally absented itself from her manifestation. In this epiphany, I confront the unforeseeable future as well as death. This clandestine relationship of our absent interiorities drastically alters the nature of our specular face-to-face. As discussed before, I illuminate a world for myself through the labor which stabilizes the element as matter. However, Levinas explains that the Beloved lies beyond my power: she can not be grasped, only caressed. “The caress consists in seizing upon nothing, in soliciting what ceaselessly escapes its form toward a future never future enough, in soliciting what slips away as though it were not yet... It searches, it forages. It is not an intentionality of disclosure but of search: a movement unto the invisible.”[77] In the caress, I attempt to touch the Other in her absence, searching after the invisible privacy of her alterity. Throughout our conversation, the Other remains transcendent because, during every moment that he expresses itself, she refuses to completely reveal herself, thus retaining the capacity to express something completely new in the unforeseeable future. Unlike Dasein’s anticipation which foresees and grasps possibilities, my caress has no horizon within which I can take hold of the future inserted into the present, the not yet. Instead the Lover ceaseless gropes after its Beloved, searching for something which, by definition, dissolves into nothing. Levinas explains how this search disrupts my power of vision. “The essentially hidden throws itself toward the light, without becoming signification..”[78] He continues, “To discover here means to violate, rather than disclose a secret ... The shame of profanation lowers the eyes that should have scrutinized the uncovered. An intentionality without vision, discovery does not shed light: what it discovers does not present itself as signification and illuminates no horizon. The visage of the beloved ... expresses only the refusal to express.” [79] Levinas states that the lover profanes her secrecy by expressing the fact that she possesses a secret which she will not express. This secret can not signify anything for me because signification depends upon a present Other who can speak for himself. Like the Black Monolith in Stanley Kubrik’s 2,001, the epiphany of the lover exposes the existence of a mystery without giving even a hint about its solution. Her mortality indicates that something lies beyond death, but I have no idea what this might be. Eros reveals violently by exposing me to the epiphany of the Other’s absence, tearing from her the thing which she conceals entirely from the visible horizon, the privacy of her alterity. However, I do not relate this to a meaningful light. The Beloved’s exposure does not disclose her as a thematizable object, but rather exhibits the very fact that her unforeseeable mystery, her presence as an absent futurity in the present, can not be penetrated by sight. Whereas Heidegger’s Dasein bravely stares into nothingness, into its guilt of not-being-the-basis-of-itself, Levinas’ “I” lowers its eyes shamefully at its lover’s profanation.
Levinas’ description of eros seems to indicate that my intercourse with the Other makes copulation impossible. Against all neo-Platonic or mystical descriptions of love, he insists upon the impossibility of a union with the beloved.[80] In the intimacy of love, as in the opposition of war, the Other maintains her transcendent alterity, remaining outside of my horizons and preventing any dialectical fusion. The mystical notion of truth has heavily influenced traditional Western models of truth and of Being. Levinas’ critique of copulation also seems to demonstrate that the copula is impossible.[81] Always maintaining absolute separation, my relationship with the Other occurs neither as a logical joining of subject and predicate nor as a gathering of Dasein and Being. Whereas most traditional philosophy presents truth as something clean and clear, Levinas references to “ultramateriality” and a “sublime materiality” seem to imply that the taint of materiality always weighs down its production. Levinas seems to suggest that, although impersonal truths are produced from the sensible, historical corpses of the Other and me, this very materiality prevents them from being completely melded into a meaningful truth. Levinas refers to the Other as the signifier because he signifies his own alterity in a sensible word that both expresses him and kills him. The signifier can not be reduced to a pure meaning because, having his own irreducible materiality, his embodiment resists assimilation into a systematic totality. Similarly, the true sentence which I utter to speak up against history in defense of my own interiority is produced as a death sentence, but the stench of my corpse[82] prevents an impersonal public truth from erasing me. Furthermore, this corpse which haunts truth is produced as an exquisite corpse: the smell of death is produced as the pungency of the beloved, the body which is excreted[83] is produced as the embodiment of a child.
The materiality congealed in death becomes reborn as a new moment of sensuous pleasure, a residue which prevents any fusion between the lover and the Beloved. Levinas’ narrative of my suffering and death and his description of the erotic relationship with the Other seem to flesh out his analysis of the newly-born enjoying I from a new perspective. Just as imminence of death causes me to suffer, Levinas states that the enjoying I feels insecurity at the there is which threatens to invade it from the unforeseeable future. In order to forestall this threat, I separate myself by putting up the barriers of my home. This separation from the element echoes my detachment from the world of impersonal works. Just as I submerge myself in the element, the effeminized Lover loses herself in her compassionate rapport with her Beloved. Levinas explains that, like the enjoying I, the erotic I becomes both master and slave, possessing the Other in so far as I am possessed by the Other. Just as the enjoying I derives happiness from my past suffering, the extreme passivity of the erotic I transforms my suffering into passion of voluptuosity. “Wholly passion, it is compassion for the passivity, the suffering, the evanescence of the tender. It dies with this death and suffers with this suffering. Being moved, suffering without suffering, it is consoled already, complacent in its suffering. Being moved is a pity that is complacent, a pleasure, a suffering transformed into happiness— voluptuosity.”[84] Lastly, the absence of the Other in my erotic intimacy seems to correlate with the absent feminine intimacy which enables me to establish an interior domicile. Given the similarity of these descriptions, it seems that, for Levinas, eros acts as the womb, “the tranquil eternity of its seminal or uterine existence,”[85] for the birth of a new me.
I ultimately escape death through my fecund reproduction of a new interiority. From the erotic relationship emerges a son who recommences my existence yet exists apart from me. My death in the moment transforms into a rebirth of an Other who inhabits a new moment. I relate to my futurity through a son who is both different than and the same as me.[86] Unlike the Heideggerian future which Dasein seizes and sees, the birth of the son lies beyond my vision and grasp. I neither exert a power over nor project the son because he leads an existence separate from mine. Similarly, the son emerges from a futural world that lies beyond my power of vision. The production of the son therefore marks the end of my character as a virile subject of knowledge and power. In addition to bringing out the feminine aspect of the Other, the erotic encounter also effeminizes me. The Lover does not exert his selfhood through a masculine projection of its ownmost Being, but rather she is moved by the pull of the future. Rather than thrusting myself towards the future, the erotic relationship initiates me into it. Reproduction therefore enables me to escape the closed circle of my own identity. Levinas critiques Heidegger’s notion of destiny because it makes resolute Dasein both the master and the slave of fate. By rejuvenating myself as a son, I do not have to remain committed to the intentions which I had willed and which had been taken over by Others. The son who is both the same and Other than me can reappropriate that which its father had created, overcome the image which he had manifested, and answer for the words which he had spoken. Most importantly, the reborn I possesses the power to renounce my past, to repent for my deeds, and to apologize to the Other.
[1] An analysis of the influences of Jewish and Greek thought in the work of Levinas and Heidegger (and, by extension, Nietzsche) would require another thesis, perhaps even a dissertation. However, one should be reminded of Derrida’s question about Levinas “Do a new élan and some strange community begin to take shape without being the spiraling return of Alexandrian promiscuity?” (“Violence and Metaphysics” p. 84. In Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.) Another important axis for this analysis would be provided by Nietzsche’s statement in Beyond Good and Evil, p. 185 (Translated by Walter Kaufmann. [New York: Vintage Books, 1966]):
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities — and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now — perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are — grateful for this to the Jews.
[2] The appendix of Hans Jonas’ The Gnostic Religion, (Beacon Press: Boston, 1963) Gnosticism, Existentialism, Nihilism argues that Gnosticism and contemporary existentialism struggle with the same sense of alienation in a similar manner. This notion of an inner connection between modernism and Gnosticism seems quite suggestive. Many modernist writers, such as Carl Jung and Harold Bloom, have embraced gnosticism and mysticism as alternative modes of knowing and as solutions to modern existential problematics. Indeed, there has been a great deal of intercourse between existentialist thinkers and students of mysticism. For example, Henri Corbin, best known for his work on Sufism, was the first writer to translate sections of Being and Time into French. This connection between modernism and mysticism also raises the question of whether any rapport exists between Levinas and the kabbalist Isaac Luria. What could the relationship be between Levinas’ idea of the infinite and the Lurianic notion of the emanation of the Godhead? Could Levinas’ analysis of the absencing of the Other which gives birth to a domiciled self be modeled on Luria’s doctrine that God absents himself from the world to allow for man’s existence? I would claim that Luria acts as the foundational modern thinker for Judaism, determining Jewish modernism in the same way that Luther determined Christian modernism. If this statement can be accepted, then is it possible that Levinas consciously reappropriates the thought of this seminal modernist in the same way that he reappropriates Descartes?
[3] Another important axis for this discussion lies in Marcuse’s powerful condemnation of Heidegger, “You write that everything that I say about the extermination of the Jews applies just as much to the Allies, if instead of “Jews” one were to insert “East Germans” With this sentence don’t you stand outside of the dimension in which a conversation between men is even possible — outside of Logos. For only outside of the dimension of logic is it possible to explain, to relativize, to “comprehend” a crime by saying that others would have done the same thing.” (The Heidegger Controversy, p. 164) How does this remark refract upon Levinas’ analysis that the face-to-face conversation with the Other bears witness to the incomprehensible, untotalizable suffering of the transcendental Other? Does Heidegger remain ignorant of this infinite dimension of suffering precisely because he can not think properly of the logos as communication between Daseins, but only as the gathering principle of Being?
[4] Because Levinas opposes the notion of a neutral Being, he often discusses the Other as having a certain gender. Therefore, I will utilize the term “it” only when an overview of the total existence of the Other is presented. In this case, I will use female pronouns to describe the Other as the one who listens and male pronouns to describe the Other as the one who speaks. Levinas rarely speaks of the I in terms of its sex. However, he refers to me as being “engendered,” that is, being born as a son. As will be shown later in this paper, I become feminine in my intercourse with the Other.
[5] Totality and Infinity p. 28 (Translated by Alphonso Lingis. [Pittsburgh: Duquense University Press, 1969.])
[6] Ibid. p. 215
[7] By making this statement, I would like to raise the question of which philosopher can be regarded as the “true heir” of Nietzsche’s legacy. The notion of a true heir is, of course, problematic, especially for a fecund thinker such as Nietzsche. It has been said that every philosopher has his or her own reading of Nietzsche. Nevertheless, it seems fruitful to compare Nietzsche’s influence on Heidegger and Levinas. Throughout his work, Heidegger seems to suggest that he somehow carries the thought of Nietzsche to its logical conclusion. Indeed, it seems that Heidegger has been privileged as a reader of Nietzsche: throughout the 1980s, the composite phrase “Nietzschean-Heideggerian” was widely used to describe, for example, hermeneutics and deconstruction. [In the 1990s, however, Derrida and his readers have drawn attention to Levinas’ influence on deconstruction.] For me, however, Heidegger’s texts has always seemed like readings of Nietzsche which have deleted the joy, the pleasure, and the humor of the Nietzschean text. This sentiment seems to be borne out by Heidegger’s erasure of the Dionysian aspects of Nietzsche’s thought in his Nietzsche lectures. Could a Jew succeed where a Greek never could in reappropriating the reflections of Nietzsche? By embracing notions such as recurrence and enjoyment, could Levinas be answering and continuing Nietzsche’s questions regarding morality? It seems that the key text for this comparison would be, as before, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 185.
[8] Writing and Difference, p. 312 [Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978]
[9] Totality and Infinity, p. 54
[10] Totality and Infinity, p. 187-188
[11] Ibid. p. 133
[12] Ibid. p. 135
[13] Ibid. p. 137
[14] Ibid. p. 147. Italics mine.
[15] Ibid. p. 134
[16] Ibid. p. 133
[17] Ibid. p. 118-119
[18] Although this pragmatist interpretation can be read into Being and Time, Heidegger’s later discussions of technology as the will to power clearly condemn the modern effort to exploit and dominate Being.
[19] Totality and Infinity p. 114
[20] Totality and Infinity p. 144
[21] Ibid. p. 145
[22] Ibid. p. 115-116
[23] As will be discussion below, the femininity of the Other refers to several features of the self’s relationship to the Other. Levinas describes femininity as the “withdrawal and absence” of the Other. This seems to refer to: 1. the Other as the mother of the newly birthed I; 2. the Other as the one who accommodates me, listens to me, and accepts my gifts [my words]; 3. the Other as the recipient of my erotic Desire; 4. the Other as the one who hides herself in her interiority from manifesting itself in the present; and 5. The Other as the self’s wife. This “marriage” signifies that I have gone beyond my infantilism and have become a man. Although each aspect of the Other’s femininity can be viewed separately, all of these coincide in the Other’s manifestation and harmonize with the male attributes of the Other. Finally, it should be noted that, at certain times in our relationship and from certain perspectives, I take upon these feminine traits in relation to the Other.
[24] Ibid. p. 153
[25] For example, Socrates in the Meno states “... For seeking and learning are nothing but recollection” [81d] and “there is no such thing as teaching, only recollection.” [82a] Later in his discussion, however, he asks Meno “Do you suppose then that [the student] would have attempted to look for, or learn, what he thought he knew, though he did not, before he was thrown into a perplexity, became aware of his ignorance, and felt a desire to know?” [84c] The Levinasian motifs of teaching as critique and knowledge as motivated by desire already appear in this Eleatic text.
[26] Totality and Infinity, p. 158
[27] Ibid. p. 156
[28] Ibid. p. 123
[29] Ibid. p. 191
[30] Ibid. p. 159
[31] Ibid. p. 168
[32] Ibid. p. 295
[33] Ibid. p. 189-190
[34] Ibid. p. 127
[35] Ibid. p. 55 “Its power for illusion — if illusion there was — constitutes its separation.”
[36] Ibid. p. 125. Here, Levinas is clearly attacking Heidegger’s assertion that forgetting is an inauthentic mode of relating to the past
[37] Although Levinas never makes this claim directly, the vision of the Other probably can be considered to be an aspect of the Other’s virility, and its invisibility probably can be considered as an aspect of its feminine absence.
[38] Ibid. p. 194 Throughout this paper I will translate the French “visage” as the English “visage” rather than as “face”
[39] As will be shown below, the there is from which the self escapes is produced by the gaze of the Other
[40] Most famously, Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals p. 119, introduces perspectivism to argue against the Kantian idea of a thing-in-itself. Gilles Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy (Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1983]) presents Nietzsche as the anti-Hegelian philosopher of difference.
[41] Totality and Infinity p. 290
[42] Ibid. p. 97
[43] Ibid. p. 297
[44] Ibid. p. 177-178
[45] Ibid. p. 198 Lingis translates “mon pouvoir de pouvoir” as “my ability for power.”
[46] Levinas’ references to Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body as an “I can” [je peux] might indicate that Levinas aims this attack on Heidegger through Merleau-Ponty.
[47] Ibid. p. 198
[48] Furthermore, Levinas’ analysis of murder probably also refers to Nietzsche’s famous discussion of the madman who proclaims the death of God. “‘Whither is God,’ he cried, ‘ I shall tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers.” (In Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 181 Translated by Walter Kaufmann. [New York: Vintage Books, 1974])
[49] Ibid. p. 70
[50] Ibid. p. 198
[51] Ibid. p. 75
[52] Ibid. p. 85-87
[53] G. W. F. Hegel The Phenomenology of Mind, p. 228 - 240. [Translated by J. B. Baille. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.]
[54] Levinas connects the Other’s absence to both the femininity of the Other and to the presence of the public realm in the Other. Therefore, it seems that Levinas transitively relates femininity with the public world. This correlation seems quite important for male modernists. Whereas traditional societies tend to model the home as a feminine realm and the realm of public exchange as masculine, Nietzsche continually warns of the effemination caused by the mob mentality. Heidegger, in Introduction to Metaphysics critiques Russia and America for bringing about the Entmachtung of the spirit. Although this term might be translated more accurately as “disempowerment” (Derrida translates it as “destitution,”) Manheim suggestively translates it as “emasculation.” Also, Heidegger’s reference to the “pincers” of mass culture which trap Germany can also be taken as a metaphor of castration.
[55] Totality and Infinity p. 213
[56] Ibid. p. 213
[57] Ibid. p. 212
[58] I don’t believe that Levinas uses this word in Totality and Infinity, but it would seem to fit well in his analysis. 1. The French term “propre” can be used against the German term “Eigen.” “Property” in this sense connotes ownership, that over which I maintain my exclusive power; 2. “Property” connotes my sojourn in the home as economic as well as my economic exchange with the Other; 3. Philosophically, a property refers to a categorical quality which a subject possesses. By reintroducing this notion, Levinas could oppose Heidegger’s condemnation of categorical ontology and of its division between subject and predicate.
[59] Ibid. p. 213
[60] Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art p. 40. (Translated by David Farrell Krell. [New York: Harper & Row, 1991.])
[61] As will be discussed below, Levinas still contends that the power projected by my will is taken over by an Other.
[62] Totality and Infinity, p. 52
[63] Ibid. p. 210
[64] Ibid. p. 209
[65] Ibid. p. 227
[66] Ibid. p. 229
[67] For example, Heidegger models suffering as Greek tragedy in Introduction to Metaphysics. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Levinas argues throughout his works that true suffering is physical, not spiritual.
[68] Ibid. p. 73
[69] Ibid. p. 233
[70] Ibid. p. 228
[71] Ibid. p. 242
[72] Ibid. p. 240-241
[73] Levinas’ uses the term “apology” to oppose Heidegger’s notion of the logos as a primordial gathering principle. As a legal term, “apology” also connotes the self’s speaking up for itself in the moment that it is judged. Lastly, Levinas might also be referring Socrates’ Apology, the statement he makes before the moment of his death.
[74] Ibid. p. 244
[75] Ibid. p. 244
[76] Levinas uses this word in defiance of Heidegger’s analysis of awaiting as an inauthentic mode of the futural ecstasis.
[77] Ibid. p. 257-258
[78] Ibid. p. 257
[79] Ibid. p. 260
[80] Interestingly, W. T. Stace considers Jewish mysticism to be inferior to vedantic and Christian mysticism because they describe a pure unio mystic, whereas kabbalists insist upon an unbreachable separation between the human and the divine.
[81] In 1947, Levinas explains, “Thus in existentialist philosophy there are no longer any copulas. The copulas express the very event of being.” A short history of existentialism, p. 51.
[82] “Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?” (The Gay Science, p. 181) An analysis of Levinas’ relationship with Nietzsche should take into account their usage of embodiment to disrupt traditional models of truth.
[83] For an illuminating discussion of the correlation between death and excretion, see Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death. Freud’s analysis of excrement as the child’s first production might also illuminate Levinas’ discussion of the self’s externalization of itself through its works.
[84] Ibid. p. 259
[85] Ibid. p. 146
[86] Levinas’ ideas about death and rebirth through fecundity seem to be motivated by his reading of certain ancient writers. Although Levinas probably derives some of his ideas from the Hebrew patriarchs who, being fruitful and multiplying, maintained their patrilineage, it seems that most of his inspiration comes from Plato. Derrida already alludes to this by stating “Further, Plato’s sun does not only enlighten: it engenders. The good is the father of the visible sun which provides living beings with “creation, growth and nourishment.” Republic 508a-509b.” (Writing and Difference, p. 86.) In the Symposium 207 c-e, Diotima tells Socrates that Eros, the conception of the beautiful, is man’s connection to immortality
... For here too, the principle holds good that the mortal does all it can to put on immortality. And how can it do that except by breeding, and thus ensuring that there will always be a younger generation to take place of the old? Now, although we speak of an individual as being the same so long as he continues to exist in the same form, and therefore assume that a man is the same person in his dotage as in his infancy, yet, for all we call him the same, every bit of him is different, and every day he is becoming a new man, while the old man is ceasing to exist, as you can see from his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood, and the rest of his body. And not only his body, for the same thing happens to his soul.