Introduction
Michael R. Paradiso-Michau, Guest Editor
North Central College
Welcome, dear reader, to this special volume of
the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, devoted
to "Emmanuel Levinas and Philosophy."[1] It is my hope that
the essays that follow will make an important
contribution to the members of the Society for
Scriptural Reasoning in particular, and more
occasional visitors in general. As a programmatic
indication, the essays in Part One focus on Levinas
and scripture, and the contributions in Part Two
offer a provocative conversation about Levinas and
pragmatism. The contributions to each Part had their
respective origins in a dialogical encounter where
the participants conversed with audiences and with
one another. The essays attempt to capture that
physical presence while expanding and translating
their formats for the online reader. This special
edition of JSR continues the "open-ended
practice of reading- and reasoning-in-dialogue among
scholars of the three Abrahamic traditions."[2] As noted
above, Part One offers a collective and supplemental
reading of one Levinasian text, and Part Two offers
an open-ended engagement between Levinas and a major
figure in American philosophy, William James. Taken
together, the essayists and I bear witness to the
deep and abiding relationships that exist between
Levinas, his readers of various methodological,
theological, and philosophical stripes, and the
mission of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning.
For readers unfamiliar with the person or work of
Emmanuel Levinas, some relevant background details
may prove helpful. Born and raised in early twentieth
century Lithuania, Levinas recounted that a certain
style of living Judaism was all-pervasive, too
present to be identified. While initially drawn to
Russian literature, he became interested in the study
of philosophy, and attended university in Strasbourg,
France. At this time, the phenomenological studies by
Edmund Husserl and his handpicked successor Martin
Heidegger were revolutionizing the practice of
philosophy in Europe, so Levinas decided to attend
graduate school in Freiburg, Germany. He was among
the first in France to address and translate German
phenomenology, particularly in his award winning
dissertation on the theory of intuition in Husserl's
work. During World War II, Levinas, who had become a
citizen of France, was deployed to military service,
and was soon thereafter captured by the National
Socialists. He spent five years in a prisoner camp
having been arrested as a French officer-and not as a
Jew, which would have spelled a very different
fate-while his wife Raïssa and young daughter Simone
were hidden in a monastery in Belgium. Many members
of his immediate family were killed by the Nazis in
Lithuania, as the dedication of Otherwise than
Being, or Beyond Essence commemorates. After the
war, Levinas recommenced his duties as educator and
administrator at Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale
(ENIO), a school for teachers of Jewish culture in
the Mediterranean basin.
In 1961, Levinas published his doctorat d'etat,
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on
Exteriority. In this groundbreaking text, Levinas
offered a phenomenological exploration into the
ethical dimension of human subjectivity.
Confronting major philosophies and philosophers of
the Western tradition, Levinas promoted "ethics as
first philosophy," and this notion offered a critical
response to, among other philosophers, Heidegger,
Husserl, Hegel, Kant, Spinoza, and Descartes. In
Totality and Infinity, Levinas highlighted the
vulnerable status of the Other individual in the
face-to-face encounter. This text propelled Levinas
into the public spotlight, and Levinas was flooded
with invitations to teach, lecture, and publish. In
1974, he published his second magnum opus, the
aforementioned Otherwise than Being, or Beyond
Essence. This book responded to criticisms of
Totality and Infinity, and undertook a radical
investigation of the human subject as a mode of
responsibility to the point of hostage or
substitution. Levinas died in 1995, having left
behind a formidable intellectual corpus through which
scholars are still combing.
Amidst his philosophical production and teaching
duties at ENIO, Levinas was extremely active in the
Jewish community in Paris, contributing numerous
essays and occasional pieces to various Jewish
publications. Throughout his life, Levinas insisted
that his philosophical writings be kept separate from
his confessional Jewish texts and lectures. His
overall trajectory, however, was to "translate"
Hebrew into Greek; which is to say interpreting the
language and moral wisdom of the Bible into the
parlance and practice of philosophy. His intellectual
legacy weaves together an honest and existential
engagement between Scripture and the all-too-human
resources and abiding power of Reason. This volume of
the Journal of Scriptural Reasoning appears to
present readers with an apt venue to discuss the
legacy of Emmanuel Levinas. While the essays in Part
One will directly engage Levinas' idiosyncratic
method of reading Scripture, one crucial Talmudic
passage in particular, Part Two takes a different
direction and assesses the stakes for placing Levinas
into conversation with American pragmatist
philosopher William James.
Part One. Levinas and Scripture
As noted above, in addition to being a philosophy
professor and school principal at various stages of
his professional life, Levinas was an active member
of the Jewish community in Paris throughout his adult
life. He gave numerous public commentaries on Talmud,
the centuries-long collection of interpretations on
Torah. On October 25, 2009, I hosted an event on the
University Park campus of Pennsylvania State
University entitled "We Will Do and We Will Hear:
Emmanuel Levinas and Talmud." Invited scholars
interacted with undergraduate and graduate students,
as well as members of the local community, in a
discussion of Levinas' somewhat peculiar method of
reading and commenting on Talmud. The event was
intentionally focused on one of Levinas' Talmudic
readings, "The Temptation of Temptation," and its
goals were pedagogical in nature. The presentations
delivered at that event, since being expanded and
edited for this journal's readership, make up Part
One of this volume.
Annette Aronowicz, who translated Levinas' Nine
Talmudic Readings, offers a scintillating
introduction to "The Temptation of Temptation,"
offering her thoughts on Levinas' method of
interpreting Scripture with a critical eye toward the
cultural, religious, and philosophical status of
twentieth century Europe.[3] "The Temptation of
Temptation" in particular, and Levinas' thought in
general, reinvigorate the age-old confrontation
between reason and revelation, between Athens and
Jerusalem. Aronowicz and the other three essayists
here breathe new life onto those smoldering
embers.
In "We Will Do and We Will Hear," Claire Elise
Katz focuses closely on Levinas' critical
contribution to a Jewish approach to the
ethical status of the human. As her title
indicates, Katz's study underscores the
phenomenological discovery that "ethics is first
philosophy" and its utterly radical implications for
human life. The section of Talmud on which Levinas
comments highlights the secret of the angels, that
they do before hearing. Theirs is the ambit of
unlimited responsibility. For Levinas, the ethical
dimension of human subjectivity points to the
possibility of saintliness, wherein the human
displaces his or her egoism in favor of responding to
the face of the Other person.
James D. Hatley's essay looks backward and
forward. He places Levinas into conversation with the
most well regarded Jewish thinker of all time, the
medieval rabbi Moses Maimonides, as well as with
Hannah Arendt, a twentieth century German-American
Jewish political theorist. In his pithy rabbinic
response to Levinas and Talmud, Ira F. Stone gently
instructs or reminds readers that Levinas's seemingly
distinctive and cavalier method of Talmud
interpretation surprisingly has important forbears in
the Mussar movement.
Taken together, the essays in Part One
appropriate, practice, and extend Levinas's method of
Talmudic commentary by offering original commentaries
on both Talmud and Levinas, and indicate new and
exciting directions for Levinas' ideas in human
experience. Aronowicz, Katz, Hatley, and Stone "'rub
the text' to arrive at the life it conceals."[4] This
practice of close Scriptural reading and careful
commentary, which Levinas and our essayists in Part
One undertake, is directly in line with the methods
employed by the Society for Scriptural Reasoning.
Part Two. Levinas and Pragmatism
In what initially appears to be an unlikely
pairing, Megan Craig has placed the ethical
phenomenology of Levinas into conversation with the
pragmatism of William James. At the sixth annual
meeting of the North American Levinas Society (NALS),
held at Texas A&M University in Spring 2011, one
of the sessions featured a lively discussion of
Craig's book, Levinas and James: Toward a
Pragmatic Phenomenology.[5] The essays collected in
Part Two expand upon these discussions, and display a
thinking with Craig's ideas along promising
lines drawn from the NALS book session. What could
these apparently disparate thinkers have to say to
one another? How could Levinas' phenomenology be
placed into conversation with James's pragmatic
philosophy? More importantly, what does this attempt
to intellectually cross the Atlantic Ocean have to do
with us, here and now?
In his appreciative contribution "Levinas'
Empiricism and James' Phenomenology," Randy L.
Friedman poses two critical questions to Craig. The
first deals with ethical implications of the
metaphysics of the self in a cross-reading of Levinas
and James, and the second concerns the possibility of
thinking about Levinas in a new way, in close
relationship with American pragmatist philosophy. Of
course, both Levinas and James share at least one
common interlocutor: German phenomenologist Edmund
Husserl. Husserl and James were not only innovators
in their respective fields, but also active
correspondents regarding fundamental commonalities
within their fields of investigation: the principles
of human psychology, the status of the human self,
philosophical and psychological methodologies, and so
on. While Craig is keen to identify and explore this
formidable point of connection, Friedman critically
considers its feasibility and the possibility for
complicating matters by bringing a third cook into
the kitchen.
As his title indicates, Stuart Rosenbaum's
"Aesthetics and the Face in Levinas and James" zooms
in on two thematic topics on which Levinas and James
can be placed into dialogue: Levinas' rich
description of the human face and the status of
aesthetic sensibility. While he applauds Craig for
aligning Levinas and James on the theme of the face,
offering scientific and psychological sources as
evidence, Rosenbaum cautions Craig against aligning
Levinas and James too closely on the topic of
aesthetics. Both Friedman and Rosenbaum join with
Craig in making allusions to literary works to evoke
the fertile common ground on which Levinas and James
tread.
Stephen Minister, in "Emotions, Ethical Norms, and
Pluralism," offers deep appreciation to Megan Craig
for her painstakingly slow explication of Levinas'
philosophy of art, careful to avoid thoughtless
dismissals and knee-jerk reactions. Like Rosenbaum,
Minister reminds readers of another direct point of
connection between Levinas and James: the French
philosopher Henri Bergson, whose trailblazing
analyses of lived-time with which scholars are still
coming to terms. As Minister announces in his title,
his critical questions to Craig include three pivot
points: "(1) the relationship between emotions and
ethics; (2) Levinas' "ethical minimalism" and the
place of ethical rules, and finally (3) the notion of
plurality in James and Levinas." Rosenbaum and
Minister are equally concerned about the minimalist,
or deconstructive, role that ethics plays for
Levinas, and how this can be squared with James'
pragmatist and largely constructive sense of human
morality.
Megan Craig offers a deeply appreciative and
positive Response to Friedman, Rosenbaum, and
Minister. She aptly notes the lines of thought that
flow seamlessly between the three commentaries, and
in the midst of her engagement with the essayists,
continues the conversation in a dynamic way. Craig,
in reflecting on the reflections on her book,
reintroduces the reader to its impetus and
inspiration: to think along with the insights of
Levinas and James; not to pair the two side-by-side,
but by "rubbing" their texts together to "arrive at
the life it conceals." What is most interesting to
Craig is neither Levinas nor James themselves, nor
their comparisons and contrasts, but rather their
practical ideas about the status of the human person
in its pragmatic and phenomenological dimensions.
Craig observes, "reading Levinas and James together
helps us to envision more creative, experimental
forms of being together than either of them conceived
by themselves."
Taken together, or read in isolation from one
another, these fine contributions add a dimension of
depth for champions and practitioners of Scriptural
Reasoning, while providing new avenues of inquiry for
Levinas studies. I sincerely hope that you enjoy
reading through these contributions, and that you are
inspired to return, again and again, to the
texts—both scriptural and philosophical—on which they
expertly comment. It is in the turning and returning
of the pages of our classic texts that life is
breathed into the ideas that provoke us, that inspire
us, that constitute us.
Notes
[1] I would like to dedicate
this special edition of the Journal of Scriptural
Reasoning to the memory and legacy of Dr. Brian
Hesse: husband, father, friend, teacher, scholar, and
administrator.
[2] "Gateways to Scriptural
Reasoning"
http://jsrforum.lib.virginia.edu/gateways.html.
Accessed 15 October 2012.
[3] Emmanuel Levinas, Nine
Talmudic Readings. Trans. Annette Aronowicz.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
[4] Levinas, Nine Talmudic
Readings, 40.
[5] Megan Craig, Levinas
and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
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