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II,1 Levinas’s Ethics as First Philosophy

II,1.1 Levinas Grew up with the Jewish Religious Ethics

Emmanuel Levinas tells us that the Hebrew Bible directed his

thinking from the time of his earliest childhood in Lithuania.

He was born in 1905, and entered the University of Strasbourg in 1923.

Besides studying philosophy and learning its history in the West and

besides learning the contemporary philosophy of Heidegger and Husserl,

he made a study of Talmudic sources under the guidance of a teacher

who communicated the traditional Jewish mode of exegesis.

Just as Maimonides came forth with a Jewish version of Aristotelian

philosophy in the thirteenth century and just as Spinoza gave us his

Jewish version of ethics in modern times, so Derrida and Levinas

give us their Jewish version of the postmodern approach to ethics.

From his perspective of Jewish responsibility Levinas reworked

the whole history of Western philosophy and Totality and Infinity,

which he published in 1961, gives the full view of the early Levinas.

My world is a totality and I try to control every aspect of it.

I might even explain it to myself and others with a philosophical theory

that gives an account of its beginning, its process, and its purpose.

Each person‘s religious worldview could let him or her order

everything in a totality that again makes sense of all the parts.

But, according to Levinas, the face of the other can call me out of

my totality into an infinity of responsibility of care for others.

Levinas entitles the first section of Totality and Infinity with

a parallel when he calls it “The Same and the Other” and it is the face

of the other than can breach my totality and open me to transcendence.

Levinas sees ethics in the West as a self-realization ethics in which

I will be virtuous in order than I might be happy but he sees Judaism

as having an ethics that looks out for the good of the other and especially

for the needs of widows, orphans, and aliens who look to me for help.

The Hellenic philosopher loves wisdom to understand the totality

and the Hebraic sage is given wisdom’s love when he welcomes infinity.

II,1.2 Philosophy’s Love of Wisdom and the Wisdom of Love

In his book Levinas and the Wisdom of Love Corey Beals quotes

Levinas’s Otherwise than Being (p. 161):

Philosophy is the wisdom of love

at the service of love.

This formula of the wisdom of love as distinct from the love

of wisdom may distinguish Hebraic ethics from Hellenic

philosophy and get to the main point of Levinas’s philosophy of

ethics in which he wants to show how ethics is beyond philosophy.

On page 13 Beals quotes Derrida who, after reading Totality and Infinity,

said that it “proceeds with the infinite insistence of waves on a beach.”

Beals says that this means that Derrida sees Levinas as just

insistently repeating the same point and Richard Bernstein

takes up the metaphor and agrees that Levinas is always repetitious.

However in trying to be clear about Jewish postmodernism we

will here explore the ideas that once Derrida criticized Totality

and Infinity Levinas took it to heart and moved on to the new

position of Otherwise than Being, which stresses the wisdom of love.

As we examine the repetitious points of Totality and Infinity

we will prepare ourselves to see why and how Derrida criticized

the very relation of totality as logically exclusive of infinity.

In Totality and Infinity Levinas’s main point is that Jewish ethics

is based upon a belief in a bond of responsibility between all

members of the family of man and I should be responsible

to the face of others especially widows, orphans, and aliens.

The look of need on their face calls me to an infinite responsibility.

However, Derrida shows how Levinas is working with a logic of

exclusive opposites characteristic of modern logic.

Totality and infinity might better be conceived as mixed with

each other, and with that in mind Levinas moves from the image

of widows, orphans, and aliens to that of the suffering servant

who reveals the glory of God by suffering for others with love.

II,1.3 By Letting my Totality Welcome your Infinity

In Section One of Totality and Infinity Levinas discusses

the same and the other and the totality of the same has to do

with everything in my world making it up in the same way.

I can enjoy each thing within my world and the peace

of this enjoyment is the first form of my egoism, which is

a movement by which my self-centered life is a being for-itself.

But then the face of the other can look at me and make

a demand upon me and I can become responsible to the other.

If I in my totality welcome the other I discover that they can

make infinite demands upon me and thus infinity invades

my world by making more claims than I can imagine.

In my world I can enjoy others but if I respond to the call

of the other and become responsible to him or her my responsibility

is not a pleasure but a pain and an affliction in which I

welcome my neighbor so that he is more important than myself.

Welcoming the other’s infinite demands becomes

more important to me than the totality of my own world.

On page 75 of Totality and Infinity Levinas gives a good description

of what it is like for my totality to welcome your infinity.

The nakedness of the face is destituteness.

To recognize the Other is to give.

But it is to give to the master, to the lord,

to him whom one approaches as “you”

in a dimension of height.

In a footnote he says that the “you” is the “you” of majesty

in contrast to the “thou” of intimacy so that widows, orphans,

aliens, and any one whose face pleads with need is my lord

and master and thus they have a special height and majesty.

The welcoming of Levinas sees the great worth and dignity

that is equal in every person and takes responsibility for that person.

II,1.4 With a “me voici” beyond Buber’s “I and Thou”

Martin Buber’s I and Thou beautifully expresses how the

Jewish religious ethic works as it poetically shows how

love is the responsibility of an I for a thou, which is

an attitude that is given me by grace and which I then will.

This attitude that I can have toward nature, humans,

and spiritual beings is contrasted with the I-it attitude

in that the I-thou is exclusive, direct, present, and

mutual while the I-it does not relate to the other as unique

and mediates the relation with knowledge and relates to it

in the past and the it does not relate mutually to me.

Buber shows how it is the exalted melancholy of our fate

that every thou in our world must become an it, but

with grace and will they can once again become our thou.

Also, in every I-thou relation we do meet the eternal thou.

On pages 68 and 69 of Totality and Infinity Levinas says that he

does not have the ridiculous pretension of “correcting” Buber, but

he is critical of the mutuality of the I-Thou relation and thereby

thinks of our responsibility called forth by the face of the other as

a “me voici” relation rather than an “I-Thou” relation in order

to give the other that height of being more important than myself.

For Levinas the I is the subject of my totality that is nourished

by enjoyment and will kill for a crust of bread in preferring self.

The me of the “me voici,” the “here is me” at your service, is

the me of the accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative,

responsible self who will give the bread out of my mouth to the other

so that it is given to me to give by the call of the other who is

to be served by me with a duty that is mine before the other I.

Levinas builds upon the notion of love as responsibility of an I

for a thou by seeing love as coming from the lowly humble me

who can serve the noble other as the I who makes demands on me.

II,1.5 And a Transcendence beyond Plato’s Divine Madness

Plato’s philosophy explains this world of Heraclitean physical

becoming in terms of the Parmenidean metaphysical realm of Being.

This realm of Being is central to Heidegger’s ontology and is not

all that helpful when it comes to formulating a sensitive ethics.

But Levinas sees in Plato’s metaphysics a Good beyond Being

that the Platonic philosophy of love in both The Symposium

and in The Phaedrus gets in touch with as the Beautiful Good.

On page 43 of Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes:

Western philosophy has most often been an ontology:

a reduction of the other to the same

by interposition of a middle and neutral term

that ensures the comprehension of being.

Just above that on the same page he writes:

A calling into question of the same

which cannot occur within the egoist

spontaneity of the same

is brought about by the other.

We name this calling into question

of my spontaneity

by the presence of the Other ethics.

On page 48 Levinas begins to discuss “Transcendence as the Idea

of Infinity” and he shows how the metaphysics of Plato and

Descartes discovers a divine infinity that is transcendent.

To think the infinite, the transcendent, is not to think an object.

On page 49 he writes:

The “intentionality” of transcendence

is unique in its kind;

the difference between objectivity and transcendence

will serve as a general guideline

for all the analyses of this work.

He then discusses the divine madness of Plato’s sublimated eros.

II,1.6 And an Infinity beyond Descartes’ Infinite

Levinas treats Plato and Descartes together as he shows how

they each in different ways had a transcendent infinity

in their metaphysics and this was felt in Plato’s Phaedrus.

On page 49 Levinas writes:

Against a thought that proceeds from him

who “has his own head to himself,”

he affirms the value of the delirium

that comes from God, “winged thought.”

This enthusiasm and divine madness is thought in its highest

sense and is a kind of ecstatic possession by the divine Other.

Plato discovered something akin to Levinas’s infinity that calls

me and teaches me of the other when I behold the face of the other.

Levinas shows how Plato and Descartes are not thinking of

an object but are in touch with the transcendent, the other.

However, the transcendence that is the point of Levinas’s book

does not empower the I by sublimating the power of vulgar passion

to become the energy of noble passion and its new creativity.

Rather, the face of the other, as Levinas writes on page 50,

lets the desire proper to the gaze

turn into a generosity incapable

of approaching the other with empty hands.

This has to do with the Jewish loves of hesed and ahava

which are called to care for widows, orphans, and aliens and

which will even let the Jewish people become a suffering servant.

As Descartes considered what it was that let him be certain

when he was able to say, “I think, therefore, I am,” he saw

that his criterion had to be an idea of perfection within his mind

that only a perfect being could cause.

That standard that let him know when an idea was certain

or not was the idea of the infinite or the perfect beyond limits.

But again this is not the infinite transcendence of the needy other.

II,1.7 And a Face beyond Heidegger’s Ontology

Levinas sees his ethics as totally opposed by Heidegger’s ontology.

On page 46 Levinas writes:

A philosophy of power, ontology is,

as first philosophy which does not

Call into question the same,

a philosophy of injustice.

Aristotle really emphasized an ethics of self-realization and did

not emphasize my self-sacrifice to love and serve the needy other.

Heidegger is like that with his ontological ethics of authenticity.

I can be authentic if my life is a connected whole throughout my time.

If I see that every decision makes me guilty because in choosing

for something I must choose against something else then I can go back

to my first decision and live it in my guilt, just as I can see

that anxiety is being threatened by the indefinite so that if I

anticipate my death in anxiety my ecstatic time can be authentic.

With anticipatory resoluteness as a being-unto-guilt and a

being-unto-death I can realize myself as an authentic Dasein.

Levinas sees this ontology as a first ethic as being a philosophy

of power in which I empower myself by integrating my life.

But this only builds up the ego and does not call it into question

as does the look of the other for Levinas. And consequently Levinas

sees the whole project of Being and Time as a philosophy of injustice.

Heidegger’s philosophy is still part of modernity in standing alone

before Being as the powerful, authentic individual looking

down on the inauthentic.

In an article by William Richardson in Adriaan Peperzak’s book

Ethics as First Philosophy (p. 123) we get a good picture of how

Levinas thought of Heidegger as even working with the Nazis.

Richardson quotes Levinas:

In 1943, my parents were in one concentration camp

and I was in another.

He implied that Heidegger had something to do with that injustice.

II,1.8 And a Responsibility Beyond Kierkegaard’s Subjectivity

Levinas mentions Kierkegaard only twice in Totality and Infinity.

On page 40 he writes:

It is not I who resist the system

as Kierkegaard thought; it is the other.

On page 305 he writes:

The I is conserved then in goodness

without its resistance to system

manifesting itself as the egoist cry

of the subjectivity still concerned for

happiness or salvation, as in Kierkegaard.

In Proper Names Levinas explains this more fully with two

articles on Kierkegaard and on page 76 he writes:

[W]hat disturbs me in Kierkegaard

may be reduced to two points: . . .

he bequeathed to the history of philosophy

an exhibitionist, immodest subjectivity . . .

The second point. It is Kierkegaard’s violence

that shocks me . . . That harshness

of Kierkegaard emerges at the exact moment

when he “transcends ethics.”

When Kierkegaard leaps from the ethical stage on life’s way to the

religious stage of absolutely relating to the absolute Levinas points

out the violence that is done by paying attention totally to God and

not being concerned with other human beings in our world here.

As Kierkegaard leaps into the religious he leaves behind the ethical,

but then for Kierkegaard there is the second movement of the leap

by which the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling gets Isaac back

a second time and returns to the ethical and loves the neighbor.

Levinas seems to take literally with nothing further in it that

“unless you hate your father, mother, wife, child and even

yourself, you cannot be my disciple.” So Kierkegaard is violent.

II,1.9 And beyond Nietzsche’s Philosophizing with a Hammer

Levinas also mentions Nietzsche only twice in Totality and Infinity.

On page 28 Levinas writes:

The relation between the same and the other

is not always reducible to knowledge

of the other by the same, not even to

the revelation of the other to the same,

which is, already fundamentally different

from disclosure.

In a footnote to this he discusses Nietzsche’s notion of “drama.”

There can be a dramatic unfolding of Apollo or Dionysus

through their actions in maybe five acts of a tragic drama.

On page 203 Levinas continues this contrast between the ethical

of me and the other and Nietzsche’s character as a work of art.

In Proper Names Levinas links Kierkegaard and Nietzsche together

in going beyond the ethical to a religious level that is more mystical

than ethical and concerned with my fulfillment rather than the other’s.

He sees them both as contributing to a Heideggerian view of a self-

centered, egoistic authenticity that can support National Socialism.

So Levinas does not look into the face of Nietzsche any more than

he looks into the face of Kierkegaard: he treats neither

The Works of Love, which belong to Kierkegaard and not his pseudonyms,

nor the amor fati and love of all existence that in The Antichrist

Nietzsche connects with the all-loving Jesus.

Nietzsche’s Jesus has an agape that really loves the enemy

for Nietzsche loves most of all the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount.

Derrida is a much more complete reader of both Kierkegaard

and Nietzsche than is the Levinas of Totality and Infinity and

so when Derrida deconstructs the early Levinas and helps

him move to the later Levinas of Otherwise Than Being Derrida

will have the complete Kierkegaard and the complete Nietzsche

in mind and not settle for a misreading of the faces of those two.

II,2 Derrida’s Deconstruction of Totality and Infinity

II,2.1 With a Jewish Aporetic Ethics That Deconstructs

Derrida greatly appreciates Levinas’s ethical philosophy and

in his seventy-five-page essay on Levinas’s early thought, which he called

Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas,

Derrida refers to “[t]he great book Totality and Infinity” and

approaches it with an Introduction and five parts:

Introduction 79

I. The Violence of Light 84

II. Phenomenology, Ontology, Metaphysics 92

III. Difference and Eschatology 109

IV. Of Transcendental Violence 118

V. Of Ontological Violence 134

Right away, at the beginning of his preface to Totality and Infinity

Levinas discusses the violence of war and reminds us that we

are constantly involved in war and winning at any price, which

means that we are most concerned about conquering our enemies.

Ethics, insofar as it has to do with loving other persons,

even our enemies who do not love us, is forgotten and self-defeating.

Most ethical ways of thinking have to do with self-realization

and to even preserve ourselves in a state of nature that is

“nasty, mean and brutish” we have to be constantly unethical.

From his Jewish tradition Levinas knew about caring for

widows, orphans, and aliens and, as he says right away

in his preface, he does think of an eschatology and a place

that living ethically can help bring about if we really take

responsibility for responsibility and try to bring about shalom.

Derrida, also a Jewish philosopher, wants to lessen

violence as much as possible and to do that he wants to

become more and more aware of the limits of making

ethical decisions and even to decide to have an infinity

that excludes any totality for already that distinction is violent.

II,2.2 Levinas’ Logic of Exclusive Opposites

At the beginning of his essay on Levinas in Writing and Difference

Derrida (p. 79) quotes Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy:

Hebraism and Hellenism—between these two points

of influence moves our world.

At one time it feels more powerfully

the attraction of one of them

at another time of the other;

and it ought to be, though never is

evenly and happily balanced between them.

As Derrida thinks back to the ethics of the Greeks he goes especially

to Socrates, who first moved from Greek physics to ethics.

Socrates was concerned for the care of the soul and in taking

this responsibility he decided that the best approach was skepticism.

He claimed that he was the wisest man in Athens because he alone

knew that he knew nothing and he trusted in that humble way.

In Greek a road or pathway and even the pathway of thinking

is called a poros and “a” negates that so that aporetic means

that there is no certain way of knowing just how to decide things.

As Derrida claims, following Socrates, we can only make

decisions over the abyss of indecidability because things are

so complex that we never know the total big picture with certainty.

Because we live in a world about which we are always learning more

we should have the best of intentions but given that the future

might reveal all sorts of things of which we were ignorant.

When Derrida thinks about Levinas’s ethics he appreciates

the infinity of things so much that he is skeptical about totality.

We may think we know a totality but we never really can.

In following the Socratic aporetic ethics Derrida begins

to deconstruct Levinas’s non-skeptical logic of exclusive opposites.

As Derrida develops his aporetic ethics in which deconstruction is

justice he opts for a metaphysics of excess and a logic of mixed opposites.

II,2.3 And Levinas’s Deconstruction of Buber’s I and Thou

Buber’s theory of the I-thou relation is strongly criticized by

Levinas for four reasons: (1) it is reciprocal (2) it is a private

relation between two (3) it is a reality that can change into its opposite

and (4) it makes ethics depend upon theory so it is not first philosophy.

The four characteristics that make the I-thou relation different

from the I-it relation are each critically destructed by Levinas.

Buber’s mutual, exclusive, direct and present I-thou relation

is not at all like the ethical responsibility of Levinas for the

face of the other who teaches me his paradoxical destitute-height

demands of me to give to him and others the bread out of my mouth.

Derrida mentions Buber on page 105 of his essay and shows

how Levinas is opposed to Buber because Buber has his

intimate reciprocity and does not start with any ethical relation.

Derrida is doing a very careful reading of Levinas looking

at him from many angels and helping his readers read Levinas.

Derrida takes up Levinas’ thinking about the face of the other

which calls me before I think and by page 108 he is thinking

the face of God or the face of Yahweh who is never named in

Totality and Infinity and Derrida discusses the face of Yahweh

that is hidden from Moses and quoting Jabes on page 109

Derrida wonders what Levinas would think:

“All faces are His; this is why He has no face.”

Buber’s I-thou always reveals the eternal Thou but

Levinas’ infinite face of the other does not reveal the Face of God.

So are there some insights of Buber that might help us in

questioning Levinas as Derrida seems to be questioning him?

Levinas with his destruction of metaphysics which is like

Heidegger’s leads Derrida’s to a deconstructive reading

instead which comes out of Derrida’s aporetic first ethics which

does not simply treat Buber as right or wrong but lets Buber

by way of Jabes help us with a better reading of Levinas.

II,2.4 And Levinas’ Deconstruction of Husserl’s Phenomenology

As Derrida treats Levinas’ use of Husserl’s phenomenology

he primarily concentrates on three main points: (1) It is

a theory of consciousness which sees all consciousness as being

intentional. (2) It is an attitude of respect for the concrete.

(3) It is a method of description. Husserl’s first philosophy

was to go to the things themselves and to describe them in their

great variety of relationships with the sciences and philosophy.

Husserl saw all consciousness as consciousness of something.

As Levinas used phenomenology to develop his ethics as first

philosophy he saw consciousness not as intending an object

but rather as being intended by a subject whose face is

calling out to me and teaching me of the one who needs my care.

In the Preface to Totality and Infinity Levinas writes on page 27:

This book will present subjectivity

as welcoming the Other, as hospitality;

in it the idea of infinity is consummated.

Hence intentionality, where thought remains

an adequation with the object, does not

define consciousness at is fundamental level.

All knowing qua intentionality

already presupposes the idea of infinity,

which is preeminently non-adequation.

Derrida discusses Levinas’ critique of Husserl and on page 87

of Violence and Metaphysics writes:

In his critique of Husserl,

Levinas retains two Heideggerian themes . . .

Husserl perhaps was wrong to see

in this concrete world,

a world of perceived objects, after all.

As we will now see in looking at Derrida’s treatment of Levinas

on Husserl and Heidegger Derrida will try to be non-violent.

II,2,5 And Levinas’ Deconstruction of the Heidegger’s Ontology

Derrida develops his practice of deconstruction out of

Heidegger’s practice of the destruction of metaphysics that enabled

him to move from Husserl’s phenomenology to his hermeneutical way.

In Being and Time Heidegger did a hermeneutical phenomenology

of the existential in order to develop his ontological way of thinking.

Heidegger made a fresh start as he identified the metaphysical

preconceptions that underlay Husserl’s theory of consciousness.

Heidegger thought that words such as “consciousness”, “subject”

or “substance” are the results of metaphysical theories which

keep us from really getting to the phenomena of human being.

Thus Heidegger had to destroy the history of metaphysics

in order to get a view of human being or Dasein and thus

on page 41 of Being and Time he writes:

The thing-in-being whose analysis

is our task is we ourselves.

The being of this thing-in-being

is each one’s “mine” (je mines)

This jemeinigkeit or Ipseity helps Levinas move toward

the me who is responsible to the face of the other and Heidegger

also moves towards ethics as he analyses Dasein in his or her

mood-discourse-understanding for we can be in the world

inauthentically in ambiguity, idle talk or curiosity or we

can become authentic and have a proper care for being itself.

Heidegger did develop a philosophy of responsibility and saw

man as the shepherd of Being and thought of thinking as thanking

with a sort of Nietzschean affirmation Heidegger thought that

we should be grateful for all that is and that is responsibility.

So Derrida points out how Heidegger moved beyond Husserl

toward and ethical viewpoint, but Levinas must still move

beyond Heidegger to develop a philosophy of love for

others who call me from desire to possess to desire to serve.

II,2.6 And Levinas Destruction of Plato’s Metaphysics

The title of Derrida’s essay on Levinas is Violence and Metaphysics

and already at the beginning on pages 85 and 86 Derrida says a great

deal about how Levinas gets beyond Heidegger with Platonic eros

and then Levinas must still get beyond the violence of that metaphysics.

Levinas’ philosophy of love and his loving ethics has to do with

two kinds of desire: that which desires to possess and for the infinite

which does not satisfy desire but which opens it to transcendence.

Plato’s metaphysics has to do with the Good beyond Being or the

epekeina tes ousias and as Derrida says on page 85:

In Totality and Infinity the “Phenomenology of Eros”

describes the movement of the epekeina tes ousias

in the very experience of the caress.

Levinas entitles the last section of Totality and Infinity

Beyond the Face and section a of that is The Ambiguity of Love

and then B is The Phenomenology of Eros which Derrida considers.

As Derrida explains on page 93 the affectivity of need and desire

as love are very different for need is self-centered but

Desire, on the contrary, permits itself

to be appealed to by the absolutely irreducible

exteriority of the other to which

it must remain infinitely inadequate.

Platonic eros in its Divine Madness in The Phaedrus is open

to this kind of infinite for it is not an intentionality of

disclosure but of search: a movement into the invisible.

In a certain sense it expresses love, but suffers from an inability

to tell it as Levinas explains on page 258 of Totality and Infinity.

However, while Greek love can go this far and prepare the way

for Jewish ethics it does not reach the alterity of the other in the face

of the poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan and thus

Levinas must with Heidegger destroy the history of Platonic

metaphysics, which Derrida prefers to less violently deconstruct.

II,2.7 And Levinas’ Destruction of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Having learned philosophy as a Catholic Heidegger knew Aristotle

very well as he was developed in different ways by Aquinas and Scotus.

When Heidegger destroyed the history of metaphysics by showing

all of its ideas that should not be used by the phenomenologist

he dealt with the notion of substance which is a thing in itself

that forms the core of the Aristotelian tradition; but Levinas does

not even bother with Aristotle because his ethics is so different.

Levinas sees the ethical relation as totally asymmetrical so that

there is no mutuality or reciprocity between humans and thus

Aristotelians would think that Levinas’ ethics is impossible.

Aristotle does not get rid of the I and develops a self

realization ethics in which by being virtuous I can be happy.

Love for him is friendship and the friend is the other half of my soul.

Derrida stands in between Aristotle and Levinas and sees the

subject as decentered and never at home so I am not a Levinasian

accused me and I am not an Aristotelian substantial thing in itself.

So Derrida deconstructs what would be both the Aristotelian destruction

of Levinas and the Levinasian destruction of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Levinas can identify with Platonic eros and take it in

the direction of his infinitizing desire but Aristotelian friendship

has nothing to offer him and though his philosophy of an ethical

asymmetry would be critical of Aristotle and Aristotelians argue

to a first cause which is pure act and the Supreme Being

but Levinas is interested in the Infinity beyond any such Being.

As Derrida think of the Jewish reciprocal ethics of Buber

and the asymmetrical ethics of Levinas he chooses the ethics

of asymmetry and what he comes to call the ethics of pure giving.

Already in Violence and Metaphysics Derrida is thinking

of the notion of the pure and on pages 146–47 he begins

to think of pure violence and pure non-violence together.

II,2.8 And Levinas’ Destruction of Descartes’ Infinite

At the beginning of his essay on page 82 Derrida writes:

The consciousness of crisis is for Husserl

but the provisional, almost necessary covering up

of a transcendental motif which in

Descartes and in Kant was already beginning

to accomplish the Greek end;

philosophy as science.

Aristotle defined science as a certain knowledge of things through

causes and Descartes begins with the quest for that certainty.

His tree of philosophy has the three metaphysical roots the

second of which is the God of Infinite perfection or infinity

which idea enables him to doubt any idea that is imperfect.

Then growing out of the roots is the trunk of physics and

then there are the branches of medicine, mechanics and morals.

Levinas shows how this Cartesian idea of the infinite does

not have the transcending value of Platonic metaphysics but

belongs to the Aristotelian criticism of Platonism and thus on page 83

Derrida writes:

Levinas seeks to raise up metaphysics

and to restore its metaphysics of the Infinite

in opposition to the entire tradition

derived from Aristotle.

The Platonic Infinity, which has to do with the Good beyond Being,

is central in Totality and Infinity as Levinas uses it in going

beyond the Being of Heidegger to his ethics of the Infinity of the other.

The desire for that Infinity that is an ever increasing desire is

central to the love in Totality and Infinity and remains so in Otherwise

than Being for it makes up the very core of the wisdom of Love.

Descartes as the father of modern philosophy has none of this and puts

all his emphasis on the ego that is not essentially related to others.

The scientific method seeking certainty fits with this individualism.

II,2.9 And Levinas’ Destruction of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Of course, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche together with Dostoyevsky and

Hopkins are the founders of the postmodern ethics as first philosophy.

But Levinas never does come to appreciate Kierkegaard or Nietzsche

even though Heidegger was so positive in many ways to both of them.

Levinas did not seem to know of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love

and his philosophy of loving others as more important than self.

Levinas always seemed to think of Nietzsche as violently

philosophizing with a hammer and only announcing the death of God.

On pages 110 and 111 of his essay on Levinas Derrida defends

Kierkegaard against Levinas and shows that Kierkegaard is not an

egoist thinking only about his own salvation and on page 93 he writes:

Despite his anti-Kierkegaardian protests,

Levinas here returns to the themes of Fear and Trembling,

the movement of desire can be what it is

only paradoxically, as the renunciation of desire.

These two kinds of desire are central to Totality and Infinity and

as Derrida is deconstructing what Levinas says about Kierkegaard

he shows that Levinas is contradictory in critiquing Kierkegaard.

Derrida is very favorable toward both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

and does speak positively of Nietzsche in Writing and Difference.

Jack Caputo pictures Derrida as a Dionysian Rabbi or a

Nietzschean Levinasian and Derrida is very much a Nietzschean.

As Derrida helped Levinas move from Totality and Infinity

to Otherwise Than Being perhaps Derrida’s Nietzsche had more

of a role to ply than Derrida’s Kierkegaard because already

on page 8 of Otherwise Than Being Levinas refers to Nietzsche’s

poetic writing and the reversal of time in a laughter refusing language.

We must now examine the love ethic of Otherwise Than Being

and see if Levinas is being more true to Jewish Ahava and

Hesed here than he was in Totality and Infinity and again

we can continue to think of this Levinas in comparison with Buber.

II,3 The Wisdom of Love in Otherwise Than Being

II,3.1 How the Notion of the Third Opens Levinas

Levinas took Derrida’s deconstruction of Totality and Infinity to heart

and wrote Otherwise Than Being to more consistently state his Jewish ethics.

Corey Beals’s book Levinas and the Wisdom of Love is wonderful in clearly

explaining all that is new in the Later Levinas and he concentrates

on the notion of the third in order to answer many of Levinas’

critics by showing how justice and philosophy are grounded in it.

However, Beals discusses the ambiguity of Levinasian love

in terms of agape and eros and does not make a distinction

between the Ahava and hesed of the Hebrew Bible and Christian agape.

On page 254 of Totality and Infinity on “The Ambiguity of Love”

Levinas does distinguish between a desire that can be the most

egoistic and cruelest of needs and a desire which is ever open

to the infinity of the other in a responsible love for the other.

Throughout his book Beals develops this distinction, which he

calls the two types of love, on page 2:

desire (as a satiable desire, or neighbor love)

and need (as satiable desire, or self-love).

The commandment in the Hebrew Bible is “Love your neighbor as yourself”

and this love of neighbor did become part of Christian agape.

But Levinas does not write about loving oneself; rather, I am

to be responsible to widows, orphans, and aliens even at

my own expense and this is the difference between Buber and Levinas.

In Levinas with the widows, orphans and aliens of Totality

and Infinity and the suffering servant of Otherwise Than Being

there is only an asymmetrical relation that invited much criticism

as we shall see but with The Third Levinas got symmetry.

Beals’s explanation of how The Third opens the way for

justice and philosophy is excellent and he does answer the critics.

But does he not equate wrongly this symmetry with agape?

II,3.2 To the Double Responsibility of Love and Justice

Beals refers often to the book Entre Nous: On Thinking of the Other

in which Levinas in interviewed by a Christian interlocutor.

Especially in chapter 9, “Philosophy, Justice and love,”

Levinas is asked about his views on love:

“So, love is originary?” and on page 108 Levinas answers:

Love is originary. I’m not speaking theologically at all;

I myself don’t use it much, the word love,

it is a worn-out and ambiguous word.

And then, too, there is something severe

in this love; this love is commanded.

Then on page 113 the interviewer asks:

In this perspective, what, according to you

would be the difference between eros and agape?

Levinas responds:

I am definitely not a Freudian; consequently

I don’t think that agape comes from eros . . .

I can say no more about it now; I think

in any case that eros is definitely not Agape

that agape is neither a derivative

nor the extinction of love-eros.

To be faithful to Levinas we have to be clear that agape is not

part of his technical vocabulary and that is why he resists

getting serious with the interviewer about both love and agape.

Beals like the interviewer calls the two loves of Levinas agape

or responsible love of neighbor and then a selfish need love.

But in spite of that his book on Levinas and the Wisdom of Love

is excellent in showing how Levinas develops the idea of the third.

When the face of the other looks at me with a request ethics as

first philosophy is born but for there to be philosophy proper

following upon that first ethical responsibility the look of

a third at us is necessary for us to start thinking philosophically.

II,3.3 With a Wisdom of Love at the Service of Love

On page 157 of Otherwise Than Being Levinas writes;

The responsibility for the other

is an immediacy antecedent to questions.

It is troubled and becomes a problem

when a third party enters.

When the third party looks at the other and me we become

self-conscious and questions begin to arise about justice and

thus philosophy is born so that even responsibility is questioned.

On page 161 Levinas writes:

Philosophy is this measure brought to

the infinity of being-for-the-other

and is like the wisdom of love.

And then on page 162 he writes:

Philosophy is the wisdom of love

at the service of love.

This is the central thesis of Beal’s book and by explaining

this wisdom of love and its serving of love he wants to

explain the central core of all of Levinas’ writing.

Chapter 3 of Beal’s book on Levinasian Love pages 43-64

deals with the relation between altruistic love and self-love.

He gives the criticism of many against Levinas for his exclusion

of self-love and some like Paul Ricoeur see Levinas’

description of altruism as excessive and Ricoeur argues

that especially being a hostage for the other is excessive.

It is Beal’s task against Derrida, Caputo, Kearney,

Ricoeur, Irigaray, and others to show that according to Levinas

altruism and self-love are compatible and it is with the

appearance of the third that the extreme asymmetry is

overcome by the wisdom of altruism than can serve even self.

As a result of Derrida’s deconstruction of Totality and Infinity

Levinas works out this new theory of love in Otherwise than Being.

II,3.4 Which Goes from Loving Widows, Orphans and Aliens

Derrida would see Levinas as an advocate of pure giving which

is impossible because there is always a return for any gift I give.

The asymmetrical relation between me and widows, orphans and

aliens is such that for Levinas I expect nothing in return but

Derrida argues that there will be all kinds of unexpected returns.

As a Jew I might feel happy and proud that I take care of

the poor and do not participate in a caste system helping the rich.

Levinas took such criticism to heart and in Otherwise Than Being

he made the asymmetry even greater with his suffering servant.

When I offer my cheek to the smitter I suffer so much in my

giving it is hard to say that I receive some gift in return.

Levinas gets around Derrida’s problem of pure giving with his

notion of the third that lets responsibility become first philosophy.

The third who can always be there looking at us when I take

responsibility for others brings about an interpersonal personhood.

Max Scheler already developed a philosophy of persons in relation

and Buber and Marcel were influenced by him so Levinas’ notion

of the third had precedents and this is why he is postmodern.

With the third he is explicitly going beyond rugged individualism

and the modern approach that makes of every man an island.

The notion of a trinity prevents an egoism for two even though

with the best intentions one may seek to be a most pure giver.

It is at this point on page 162 of Otherwise Than Being that

we get to “Philosophy is the wisdom of Love at the service of Love.”

Once the third opens us to philosophical questions about

justice we can begin to work out the relation between altruism

and self-love which is the main issue between Derrida and Levinas.

Kierkegaard had to work out the relation between self-love

and the love of God and neighbor so how does Levinas do it?

Is he able to make altruism and self-love compatible?

Does he deal with loving God as well as self and neighbor?

II,3.5 To being the Suffering Servant

In Second Isaiah there are four Suffering Servant poetic pieces

that Mark in the first Synoptic Gospel applies to Jesus.

Levinas’ philosophy has the same structure as Mark’s Gospel.

First in Galilee Jesus goes about caring for widows, orphans, and aliens.

Then he goes up to Jerusalem and Mark shows him as the Suffering

Servant of Isaiah who offers himself even for those killing him.

The early Levinas takes responsibility for widows, orphans, and aliens.

The later Levinas portrays the hostage being persecuted for others.

As Derrida and others point out there can be a self-love even

in the two kinds of altruistic love so as Levinas seeks to be

consistent he develops his notion of the third and a philosophy

of justice that takes him beyond the collision of altruism and egoism.

As Beals (p. 57) points out, Peperzak thinks that compatibilism is

only an option after the arrival of the third and he explains

this further on page 55 when he quotes Peperzak:

the asymmetry of this relation does not seem

to exclude a double asymmetry in which

I am as “high” for the Other as the Other is for me.

Beals (p. 55) invokes Peperzak’s quotation of Levinas:

I myself can feel myself

to be the other for the other.

Also on page 55 Beals goes on to write about Merald Westphal:

As both Levinas and Kierkegaard emphasize,

neighbor love runs counter to our natural self-love.

and as such, taken seriously,

“the command to practice it is truly traumatic.

How at all, is it possible, even imperfectly?”

For Kierkegaard the natural loves of affection, friendship, and eros

have a built in self-love and he does explain how to overcome this.

So it can help if we see how Levinas and Kierkegaard compare.

II,3.6 Who Loves the Enemy in a Proximity

As Beals writes on page 83, Levinas says quite clearly:

Consciousness is born as the presence

of ‘the third’ party in the proximity

of the one to the other.

On the same page Beals explains:

This view is in contrast to theories of

original hostility, such as Hobbe’s,

which describe humans as naturally at war.

Levinas, on the other hand, describes an ego

naturally obligated to the other.

This obligation, which is one of Jewish justice, has to do with

my being a host and a hostage for every other even if his face

is not calling me because there is a nearness to every human

that obligates us to become our brother’s keeper and lover.

This is what the wisdom of love can teach me as it serves love.

This wisdom of love originates in the responsibility of one for the other.

This is what makes Levinas postmodern in that he goes beyond

the social contract theories that originate in a war of all against all.

The ethical relation is the beginning of political states and institutions.

As Levinas puts it on page 82 of Otherwise Than Being:

Proximity is not a state of repose

but, a restlessness outside the place of rest.

He explains that further on page 88.

In a sense nothing is more burdensome

than a neighbor. Is not this desired one

the undesirable itself.

When the face of the other calls me I should respond with caring love.

But when the third then appears looking at us I see that I am

responsible for him and all others as well and being a host for

any other makes me a hostage to all near me in proximity.

In my passivity I am persecuted as proximity becomes obsession.

II,3.7 That Lets Me Lovingly Substitute for Him

Throughout Otherwise Than Being Levinas has many sayings

that relate to substitution and on page 113 he begins a six-

page section on substitution in which he shows that

we are all responsible for everyone else and that the

material needs of my neighbor are my spiritual needs.

His idea of substitution clearly shows how ethics for him

is not a self-realization ethics such as Aristotle taught.

We do not practice virtue in order to be happy.

Rather, we should live in the best way possible in order to

help others to be happy; the face of the other

calls me to work hard to let that other be happy.

Whereas I used to work for my good I should now

substitute the other for myself and work for them.

Once we are looked at by the third and realize the brotherhood

of all men in newly felt proximity we see that we are the

suffering servant for all and a substitute taking on their needs.

The self as a suffering servant is an hostage and because of

our being the hostage there can be, as he says on page 117,

pity, compassion, pardon and proximity—

even the simple “After you, sir.”

All of this presupposes substitution (page 117):

the possibility of putting oneself

in place of the other.

so that his guilt and pain can become mine and not only his.

The wisdom of love shows us all of this so that we can come to

serve others in love as did the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah.

Before that image was applied to Jesus the Jews saw themselves

as being persecuted by many people and they came to the wisdom

of love which let them offer their suffering even for their enemies.

That is a great wisdom that is at the heart of Levinas’ philosophy.

He explains it even further in terms of the glory of the sufferer.

II,3.8 With a Glory that Manifests the Unmanifest

On the next to last page of Otherwise Than Being as Levinas

is giving a summary of his book he writes, p. 184:

Signification, the-one-for-the-other, the relationship

with alterity, has been analyzed in the present work

as proximity, proximity as responsibility for the other,

and responsibility for the other as substitution: The subject

was shown to be an expiation for another, the condition

or unconditionality of being hostage.

When by my responsible action I say “here I am for others”

as Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel and Isaiah said “Here I am”

I bear witness to their infinity and to the weight of their worth.

That weight or kabod in Hebrew is the glory of infinite worth.

Whereas the five mentioned here gave glory to God by their saying

of “here I am” to Him Levinas has us bear witness to the infinite

worth of every other by welcoming them even by being their hostage.

So the last big theme of Otherwise Than Being is that of glory.

Levinas’ definition of glory is that which manifests the unmanifest

even in its unmanifestness so we must now understand this.

As Levinas begins to treat glory on page 140 in a section called

The Glory of the Infinite he writes about inspiration and witness.

I bear witness to the glory of the other when I respond “me voici”.

That puts it better than even “Here I am” because the me is in the

accusative case and in my lowliness I witness to the height of the other.

Levinas thinks that this is the deepest truth of Judaism that it

can bear witness to the glory of all other faces calling out to me.

Levinas starting on page 142 contrasts his view with Descartes and

Kant and he even speaks off modernity for by keeping philosophy

and religion within the limits of reason alone there is no glory.

On page 146 he writes about the glory of the infinite that orders me

to the other so when I respond I am making this glory manifest.

Others can begin to see this glory when I bear witness to it.

II,3.9 Even in its Unmanifestness

To make manifest means to show somebody something by

holding it in your hand for them so they can hold it in theirs.