Abstract
This article examines the metaphysics of Emmanuel Levinas in relation to his principal works Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, situating his thought within the broader context of phenomenology and in dialogue with Derrida’s critique in “Violence and Metaphysics.” Levinas directed phenomenology towards an overcoming of essentialist conceptions of being and towards the Other, calling this movement a flight away from the totality of Being towards embracing the infinity of the Other. The article argues that while Levinas’ radical empiricism represents a significant ethical intervention in phenomenological thought, Derrida demonstrates that this move ultimately repeats metaphysics rather than escaping it, as the transcendental and empirical are related through iterability and differance rather than standing in ontological separation.
Keywords: Levinas, phenomenology, metaphysics, Derrida, the Other, differance, ontology, ethics
Totality and Infinity
Levinas, like Ricoeur, directed phenomenology towards an overcoming of essentialist conceptions of being and towards the Other. Levinas calls this the overcoming of ontology towards metaphysics; his movement is a flight away from the totality of Being towards embracing the infinity of the Other, as the Other exerts a demand and responsibility upon being. Indeed, the Other holds one hostage and exerts an ethical demand upon one to be responsible to the Other, thus limiting one’s freedom. Like Ricoeur, Levinas critiques an ontology of ipseity, the Same, and essence, directing phenomenology towards Otherness and a transcendence of Being towards embracing the Other as the exteriority which defines and limits Being.
According to Derrida in “Violence and metaphysics,” this flight towards Otherness is a repetition of metaphysics in a Jewish rather than Greek sense. Derrida seeks to trace the conditions of possibility of phenomenology as the trace or differance between Jew and Greek, presence and absence, everything and nothing. Levinas writes in a Jewish idiom with his ethics for the Other in mind, with phrases such as “neighbour” and the “infinity” of the Other, as well as “care” and “responsibility”; it is a Jewish ethics of care and compassion for the Other, in Judaeo-Christian religious ethics of loving the neighbour as oneself that is being elaborated by Levinas. At the foundation of his concerns on “responsibility” and “justice” are a definition of an ethical relation to the Other which has the holocaust in mind; Levinas’ ethics are defined in relation to the horrors of the holocaust and are an imperative for an ethics which takes Jewish alterity as the ‘Other’ in account.
In Totality and Infinity, Levinas describes the fundamental unit of phenomenology as the face of the Other. The face of the Other is naked and destitute, thus exerting a strong demand on one towards responsibility for the Other. Self is defined according to a countenance of the face of the Other, who exerts a burden of responsibility upon one and a demand for transcendence of Being and selfhood towards the infinity of the Other, as the self becomes circumscribed, defined and limited by this relation towards the Other. Levinas contrasts the totality of the self and Being with the infinity of the Other; the other is a site of transcendence as one goes beyond the bounds of ego to relate to the Other in a transcendent ethical relation with alterity and difference.
Levinas argues that ontology reduces the Other to the same, and thus renounces metaphysical desire. This metaphysical desire is the desire for transcendence of the self towards the exteriority of the Other which exerts a limit on it and thus curtails one’s freedom, because it exerts the burden of responsibility upon one. This relation, a calling by the Other to responsibility upon the self, Levinas calls an ethical relation. Levinas argues that this transcendence towards the infinity of the Other in an ethical relation is a more accurate portrayal of existential circumstances than the ipseity of ontology. Yet this reversal of the reduction of the Other to the Same is but a repetition of metaphysics rather than a deviation from it.
Levinas’ radical empiricism is no different from transcendental idealism because the transcendental and empirical are the same; nothing separates the transcendental and empirical, as argued in the Husserl chapters. The transcendental and empirical are related in paradoxical identity in non-identity, sameness in difference, as nothing separates the transcendental and empirical. The movement of the trace relates the transcendental and the empirical in a paradoxical institution of a difference which is a sameness. Transcendental and empirical are thus repetitions of the same through iterability.
Levinas further argues that the self can only be defined in relation to the Other; selfhood does not exist without the Other as an interlocutor. Levinas describes the relationship with the Other as the ultimate relation in Being. Levinas argues that comprehension of Being cannot dominate the relationship with the Other; the Other is not subordinate to the ego but essential to defining selfhood. Indeed, selfhood is defined by an existential confrontation with the Other as interlocutor. Levinas is concerned to reverse Heideggerean ontology which is an ontology of power with its emphasis on Being. Levinas describes Heideggerean ontology as an essence murderous of the Other; ontology has occluded the Other with a violence of suppression, while Levinas describes phenomenology as ethical and defined only in relation to this irreducible Other.
Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence
In Otherwise than Being, Levinas further defines his ethics of alterity and otherness:
The infinite orders to me the neighbour as a face, without being exposed to me, and does so the more imperiously that proximity narrows. The order has not been the cause of my response, nor even a question that would have preceded it in a dialogue. I find the order in my response itself, which, as a sign given to the neighbour, as a ‘here I am’, brings me out of invisibility, out of the shadow in which my responsibility could have been evaded. This saying belongs to the very glory of which it bears witness.
Levinas describes the face of the other as the fundamental unit of phenomenology which commands one into existence. It exerts an ethical demand upon one and calls one to responsibility for the Other. Levinas describes it as a trace of a wandering cause, inscribed in the self. According to Levinas thus, the relation to the Other is not secondary but primary as it calls being into existence; it is a command to respond with responsibility and an ethical relation. Further Levinas argues:
Consciousness is born as the presence of a third party. It is in the measure that it proceeds from it that it is still disinterestedness. It is the entry of the third party, a permanent entry, into the intimacy of the face to face. The concern for justice, for the thematizing, the kerygmatic discourse bearing on the said, from the bottom of the saying without the said, the saying as contact, is the spirit in society.
As Levinas argues, the Other calls the self into existence; consciousness is only born as the presence of the third party. Phenomenology is an account of this third party and the Other as the fundamental unit which calls the self into existence through existential confrontation and a demand for responsibility. The Other is an infinity which commands one out of solipsism into existence; selfhood does not exist in a vacuum but in an ethical relation to the Other as a neighbour.
As argued above, this radical empiricism in the flight towards the Other repeats metaphysics as the empirical is no different from the transcendental. The trace, which separates the transcendental and empirical, translates into a difference which distinguishes nothing and separates nothing. Transcendental and empirical are thus paradoxically identical in their non-identity, and an empirical idealism thus is not a divergence from transcendental idealism but a repetition of it.
Violence and Metaphysics
Derrida defines Levinas’ metaphysics as a Jewish metaphysics rather than a Greek metaphysics which had privileged light and being. Derrida argues that metaphysics is actually the difference or differance between Jew and Greek, presence and absence, everything and nothing. Derrida thus describes the relationship between empiricism and metaphysics as complicity rather than inversion or negation as Levinas would have it. Derrida describes the relation as an economy and solidarity rather than one of exclusion and negation, so Levinas does not, in his radical empiricism, manage to escape metaphysics. Further Derrida argues:
Are we Jews? Are we Greeks? We live in the difference between the Jew and the Greek, which is perhaps the unity of what is called history. We live in and of difference, that is, in hypocrisy, about which Levinas so profoundly says that it is “not only a base contingent defect of man, but the underlying rending of a world attached to both the philosophers and the prophets.”
Derrida thus argues that there is no difference between Levinas’ non-philosophy and philosophy as there exists a complicity between the Jew and the Greek; truth is to be situated between Jew and Greek, truth is neither Jew nor Greek metaphysics but quasi-transcendental. Jew and Greek thought are not negations but repetitions of each other; they are the same and not negations or inversions of each other. Truth is quasi-transcendental and the difference or differance between Jew and Greek rather than either strictly Jew or Greek.
In “Phenomenology, Ontology, Metaphysics”, Derrida argues that Levinas’ notion of metaphysics has been informed by a need to overcome the “egology”, ‘sameness’ and ‘being’ of ontology which has confined metaphysics to a totality and interiority. It is blind to the infinity and exteriority of the Other which exerts an ethical demand on one towards transcendence, thus transforming metaphysics and ontology into ethics through embracing the infinity of the Other.
Derrida thus defines the confrontation with the absolutely Other as something which exceeds the confines of the concept relationship as it is not a representation, limitation nor a conceptual relation to the same. It is an encounter which resists conceptualization, resistant to all categories, something which exceeds the bounds of conceptualization or categorization. In a move which anticipates Derrida’s own, Levinas locates the encounter in a future and beyond that is present not in ontology, presence, ipseity or horizons but the trace, present at the heart of experience. The encounter of the Other is an ethical relation which is religious, encompassing the religiosity of the religious, not achieved by an intuition of a positive presence, but as a prayer addressed to freedom or a commandment.
Levinas’ restitution of metaphysics thus radicalizes and systematizes previous reductions of phenomenology and ontology by opening up metaphysics towards seeing the Other as Other and infinite in its beyond, grasping the Other not as a concept or totality which reduces it to the same but as a trace. This confrontation is deeply religious and commands the self into a recognition for the Other as an infinite beyond, irreducible to the self or sameness.
The fundamental unit of Levinas’ metaphysics, the face, is a unit which exceeds conceptualization and categorization as well. It is not a metaphor or a figure, but a fundamental expression which calls one into existence through exerting a command on one into responsibility and ethical obligation to the Other. Derrida argues that God exists in the play between presence and absence rather than as a strict presence to the world; as God is differance, written in the play between everything and nothing, presence and absence, in which history unfolds.
Derrida argues that God is not infinitely Other as a positive infinity, but in a relational sense, through differance. God is not an either All or Nothing, Life and Death but named in the difference or differance between these terms; God is inscribed in this difference which we term history. Levinas is not a thinker of differance or the quasi-transcendental but inversion of metaphysics or radical empiricism, which is a negative theology that repeats metaphysics rather than departing in any meaningful sense from it. Differing from Levinas, Derrida demonstrates that metaphysics is economy rather than alterity. Metaphysics is the difference between Jew and Greek, presence and absence, all or nothing, unfolding between these limits as history and inscribed as God rather than a choice of either totality or infinity as Levinas would have it.
In his later commentary on Husserl in Rogues, Derrida affirms that Husserl had located the aporia of phenomenology — in reifying itself into two extremes of irrationalism and objectivism, truth is to be located as quasi-transcendental and the difference between these two extremes rather than a return to privilege presence and transcendental idealism. Derrida argues that the crises is resolvable by acknowledging it is not a matter of choosing one extreme over the other but acknowledging paradox and aporia as truth. Reason can thus be saved by acknowledging the failure of reason is only apparent; it is resolvable by acknowledging aporia rather than committing to transcendental evil or freedom. Truth is quasi-transcendental, neither materialist or transcendental, but the space between that conditions the thinking of both.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press, 1978.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise than being: or, Beyond essence. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Hague; Boston: M. Nijhoff; Hingham, MA. 1981.
---. Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. The Hague; Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers; Hingham, MA: distribution for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Boston, 1979.