"We will do and we will hear"
Claire Katz
Texas A&M University
The invisible of the Bible is the Good beyond
being. To be obliged to responsibility has no
beginning… It is responsibility overflowing
liberty, that is, responsibility for others. It is
the trace of a past that refuses itself to the
present, the trace of an immemorial past.
(Humanism of the Other, 54)
In his 1975 presentation to the colloquia of
Jewish intellectuals in France, published later as
"Damages Due to Fire," Emmanuel Levinas confesses
that for him "philosophy is derived from religion. It
is called into being by a religion adrift, and
probably religion is always adrift."[1] In his biography
of Levinas, Salomon Malka cites this comment and then
adds the following gloss to Levinas' reflection:
"Philosophy can lead us only to the threshold of a
mystery, into which it cannot enter" (Malka 136).
Presented ten years before his presentation of
"Damages Due to Fire," the Talmudic reading published
as "The Temptation of Temptation," addresses
precisely the relationship between religion-read here
as an origin of responsibility-and
philosophy.[1]
"The Temptation of Temptation," ultimately, serves
as a critique of philosophy, asking us to consider
philosophy's limits. What makes this Talmudic reading
so provocative is that it becomes a meditation on, if
not an indictment of, philosophy. Indeed, Levinas
recalls that the editors of the Talmud sometimes call
a philosopher, the Sadducee, who says to the Raba
"You should have listened in order to know whether
you were able to accept…" Levinas does not correct
the Talmud writers nor does he defend the
philosopher. Rather, he queries, "An anti-Jewish
Christian?" In the end, Levinas offers in this
commentary the most explicit critique of philosophy
and the sovereignty of the ego, revealing both the
paradox of ethical origins and the limits of
philosophy.
The Talmudic passage, which Levinas approaches,
addresses the moment of creation and the standing at
Sinai to receive the Torah. There are many points to
focus on here, not the least of which is its
placement in the tractate Shabbat, which concerns the
festivals and the observance of the Sabbath. We could
turn to Abraham Joshua Heschel and Avivah Gottlieb
Zornberg for interesting commentaries on this
reading. Levinas' reading, however, explores the
implications of reading the temptation of temptation
"as the temptation of knowledge" (TT 34/74) as a
fundamental shift from the original covenant when the
Israelites accepted the Torah.
He begins his discussion with the provocative
claim that the temptation of temptation-which he
describes as the temptation of knowledge-"may well
describe the condition of Western man. In the first
place it describes his moral attitudes. He is for an
open life, eager to try everything, to experience
everything, 'in a hurry to live, impatient to feel.'
In this respect, we Jews all try to be Westerners"
(32). And a few pages later he observes:
We want a knowledge completely tested through our
own evidence. We do not want to undertake anything
without knowing everything, and nothing can become
known to us unless we have done and seen for
ourselves, regardless of the misadventures of the
exploration. We want to live dangerously, but in
security, in the world of truths. Seen in this
manner, the temptation of temptation is philosophy
itself.... the solid basis of our old Europe. (34)
Levinas' concern about Jewish assimilation
reverberates throughout work and is most apparent in
his essays on Jewish education. The citation above is
especially intriguing insofar as he is insinuating
that Jews are essentially not Westerners-that is, at
the outset of this commentary, "being Jewish" is set
in opposition, or at least in contrast to, "being
Western." What then is this western mode? Levinas
describes it as the need to act with certainty, or as
much certainty as possible. To act otherwise, that is
to act without knowledge is viewed as simply childish
and/or naïve. Additionally, he defines philosophy as
the subordination of any act to the knowledge that
one may have of that act, where the act comes about
after careful deliberation, calculation, the weighing
of pros and cons. He indicates that naïveté is the
counter to philosophy. Indeed, he comments elsewhere
that philosophy is the study of naïveté. And in his
1975 essay, "God and Philosophy," he recapitulates
many of the same themes that he covers in this
Talmudic essay. As a result, we arrive at the
"inability to recognize the other person as an other
person, as outside all calculation, as neighbor, as
first come" (35).
This theme is found throughout Levinas' writings,
from his early work to his later work, in his
philosophical writings and his writings on Judaism.
In "The Awakening of the I," Levinas' 1992 interview
published in Is It Righteous to Be?, the
interviewer opens with this question: "You have had
the occasion to say, 'Europe is the Bible and the
Greeks.' ... Could you indicate first what 'The
Bible' represents in this phrase?" (Levinas 2001,
182).[3] And Levinas
replies:
The Bible, or, if you prefer, the Judeo-Christian
source of our culture, consists in affirming a
primordial responsibility "for the other," such
that, in an apparent paradox, concern for another
may precede concern for oneself. Holiness thus
shows itself as an irreducible possibility of the
human and God: being called by man. An original
ethical event which would also be first theology.
Thus ethics is no longer a simple moralism of rules
which decree what is virtuous. It is the original
awakening of an I responsible for the other; the
accession of my person to the uniqueness of
the I called and elected to responsibility for
the other. (182, emphasis added)
The interviewer replies, "The attitude you
describe evokes holiness," to which Levinas
responds:
Holiness is nevertheless the supreme perfection,
and I am not saying that all humans are saints! But
it is enough that, at times, there are saints, and
especially that holiness always be admired, even by
those who seem the most distant from it. This
holiness which cedes one's place to the other
becomes possible in humanity. And there is
something divine in this appearance of the human
capable of thinking another before thinking of
himself. With humanity, holiness thus comes to
transform the being of nature by constituting this
opening of which I was speaking earlier. Very
briefly stated, this is what, in the formula from
which we started, 'the bible' designates. (182-3)
That is, while Levinas is perfectly aware that not
all humans are saints, he nonetheless claims that it
is holiness and the very real existence of saints
that makes ethics possible for the rest of us.
Moreover, for Levinas, notes that there is something
divine in the appearance of the everyday average
human ceding to the other.
We see a similar portrayal in his essays collected
in Humanism of the Other, where Levinas
describes ethics as not simply that the other is my
concern; rather, we must give up the sovereignty of
the ego and the self-certainty of introspection and
reflection and turn toward the other.[6] Levinas'
invocation of the "After you," while seemingly a
reference to a banal discrete event, is not merely
that for Levinas. This turn, to put the other first,
needs to become the guiding condition of our
lives.
In his 1964 essay, "Signification and Sense,"
included in Humanism of the Other, Levinas
addresses the movement that the ego makes turning
away from itself and toward the other (Levinas
2002).[5] In section 7 of the
essay, he refers to the nakedness of the face as
"destitution and already supplication" (32). More
significantly, he notes that this "humility unites
with elevation. And announces thereby the ethical
dimension of visitation..." (32). A few pages later
he observes:
There, in the relation with the face-the ethical
relation-the rectitude of an orientation or sense
is traced. The consciousness of philosophers
is essentially reflective. Or at least
consciousness is grasped by philosophers in the
moment of its return, which is taken for its
birth (emphasis added). In its spontaneous
pre-reflective movements it already casts a
sidelong glance, they believe toward its origin,
and measures the path covered… 'Turn to the truth
with all one's soul'-Plato's recommendation is not
simply a lesson in common sense, preaching effort
and sincerity. Is it not aimed at the ultimate most
underhand reticence of a soul that, in the face of
the Good, would persist in reflecting on Self,
thereby arresting the movement toward Others? Is
not the force of that 'resistance of the
unreflected to reflection… the will itself... [and
is] the will not thorough humility rather than will
to power? (34-35)
Levinas describes this humility in terms of the
one who has no time to turn back to self. It is not a
question of "denying" the self-as in an asceticism,
for the self is not yet of concern. It is not the
choice between me and other, for that choice is not
yet possible. Rather, the self is turned toward the
other. Levinas writes,
...the Ego, in relation with Infinity, is the
impossibility of stopping the forward march, the
impossibility, as Plato expressed it in the
Phaedo, of deserting one's post; it is,
literally, no time to look back, no way to escape
responsibility, no inner hiding place to go back
into self; it is marching straight ahead without
concern for self. Increase of obligations with
regard to self: the more I face up to my
responsibilities the more I am responsible. Power
made of "powerlessness"-that is the challenge to
consciousness and its entry into a contingency of
relations that clash with unveiling. (Levinas 2002,
34)
Throughout this essay, Levinas implies that
responsibility is not simply that which claims me-it
is a way of being in relationship to the other. It is
not that I can say, "I am responsible, but I choose
to do otherwise." Levinas seems to imply that
responsibility-being for the other-is at once the
same as acting for the other. When he says that "to
affirm such an orientation…to surprise in the depth
of an Ego unambiguous sincerity and a servant's
humility that no transcendental method could either
corrupt or absorb, is to ensure the necessary
conditions of the 'beyond the given' that shows up in
all signification, a marvel of language whose 'verbal
origin' will be endlessly denounced by philosophical
analysis" (Levinas 2006, 35) he indicates that no
philosophical method-no method of critique-can undo
this relation.
Levinas can turn to "the Good" in this essay, in
Otherwise than Being, and elsewhere, and
further affirm that this turn to the Good does not
need sentiments like care, affection, and so forth,
because being gripped or seized by the Good is being
a different kind of subject. It is not the same
subject that we talk about in modern philosophy-it is
a radical relinquishing of the ego in a turn toward
the other. To be in relation to the Other as Levinas
indicates above, to be seized by the Good, as it
were, is precisely not to be able to harden one's
hear to the other. To say, as Levinas says just two
pages previously, that "the Ego is through and
through, in its very position, responsibility or
diacony, as we see described in Isaiah 53," the
description of the suffering servant-the anticipation
of the Jesus for Christians and Israel for
Jews-leaves very little open to ambiguity (Levinas
2006, 33). For the Ego to be in this relationship to
the Other is to undergo responsibility not simply as
that which one can say "Yes, I am responsible, but I
choose not to act." It is precisely to be unable not
to be for the other. While one could argue that what
Levinas means is that we have this irrecusable
responsibility but we choose to ignore it, Levinas
appears to want responsibility for the other to be
something with more binding force. The irrecusable
responsibility for the other is precisely that which
describes an Ego that is for the other and cannot not
act for the other. He later tells us that the Ego is
infinitely responsible in the face of the Other (33)
and he calls the relation that attaches the Ego to
the Other "the idea of Infinity, which is itself
Desire" (33). What makes this happen? How does the
Ego "erode its dogmatic naïveté in the face of the
Other…"? Where does it mean to be gripped by the
Good? It is not clear. But Levinas says this about
it:
The "term" of such a movement, both critical and
spontaneous-and which is not strictly speaking, a
term, because it is not an end but the principle
calling for a Work without compensation, a
liturgy-is no longer called being. And that is
where one might see how a philosophical mediation
could find it necessary to turn to [de recourir
à, translation altered] such notions as
Infinity and God. (34-36)[6]
Returning then to "The Temptation of Temptation,"
we see that his explicit turn to religion as the
inauguration of responsibility for the Other, an
inauguration that itself cannot be proven. But the
point that Levinas makes here with regard to naïveté
on one side and philosophy on the other is that this
dichotomy, or this relation, grows out of something
prior to it. That is, we discover that the temptation
of temptation correlates to the dichotomy between
philosophy and naïveté, and this dichotomy
presupposes something prior.
In response to the Western mode of knowing before
doing, Levinas reads the Talmudic passage as offering
an inversion of this order of knowledge and
acting-doing before hearing. And more importantly, he
reads this inversion as originary, as founding the
very possibility of knowing at all, as founding this
dichotomy. Thus, whatever this originary moment is,
it must also precede reason. Levinas pre-empts the
possibility of an infinite regress-turtles all the
way down-by introducing Revelation into the
discussion and he reminds us that if Revelation is to
have any use it must comprise elements that reason
itself cannot discover.
We find ourselves, therefore, in a bind: on the
one hand, what does it mean to find these elements
and moreover, what does it mean to accept them and
thereby run the risk of having been duped by the
Devil? (36) On the other hand, and this point is
crucial, if these elements are accepted because they
already recommend themselves to the discernment of
the one who accepts them, "then they are in the
domain of philosophy. They would already be in its
domain even if reason were to decide only upon the
authority of the messenger. The paradox is that
Revelation nonetheless claims to overcome the
apparently insurmountable waverings and doubts of
Reason" (36; emphasis added). And here we have to ask
if his reference to Revelation in this Talmudic
reading carries the same meaning as his reference to
Revelation in Totality and Infinity, a text
that also requires us to ask after the warrant for
the claim made on us by the other.
We should note here the striking similarity
between the themes in this commentary and the themes
that he takes up in his philosophical writings-e.g.,
responsibility for the other precedes choice and
freedom. In the context of thinking about this choice
to receive the Torah, to receive "a freedom of
responsibilities" he asks, "Is one already
responsible when one chooses responsibility?" (37).
That is, if the acceptance of the Torah is itself the
inauguration of responsibility, was responsibility
present prior to this acceptance? What then is this
acceptance? It is not "choice" as we typically
understand that act if it lies outside the structure
of both knowledge and freedom. But nor can this
acceptance have been forced on the Israelites through
violence-ethics cannot issue from that kind of
violence. "The teaching, which the Torah is, cannot
come to the human being as a result of choice. That
which must be received in order to make freedom of
choice possible cannot have been chosen, unless after
the fact" (37). What then is this acceptance or
consent?
Levinas concludes that reason "rests on a mode of
consent that cannot be reduced to the alternative of
liberty-violence and whose betrayal would be
threatened by violence" (37). He suggests instead
that Revelation serves as a reminder of a consent
that is prior to the freedom-non-freedom dichotomy.
As such, revelation does not co-exist with other
kinds of knowledge, with reason that issued from this
originary acceptance. Revelation precedes, indeed it
conditions, reason. Thus, in the study of
knowledge-epistemology-the Torah plays a fundamental
role. It inaugurates reason and all knowledge that
issues from it. For Levinas, this cannot be reduced
to a naïveté, since naïveté is contrasted with
reason; naïveté is such because it is characterized
as "an unawareness of reason in a world dominated
by reason" (emphasis added). Thus if we follow
the relation between Revelation and Reason, we see
that the acceptance of the Torah not only conditions
but also gives meaning to the Real, thus claiming
that "in this anteriority lies hidden the ultimate
meaning of creation" (40). And then he asks, "What is
the meaning of creation: God did not create without
concerning himself with the meaning of creation.
Being has a meaning. The meaning of being, the
meaning of creation, is to accept the Torah." That
is, the acceptance of the Torah is the act that gives
meaning to reality. It is not that God would punish
the Israelites but rather the act of refusing Torah
would simply "bring being back to nothingness."
We find a similar reading in Avivah Gottlieb
Zornberg's book The Beginning of Desire:
Reflections on Genesis, where she tells us that
Rashi's commentary argues that the "main business of
[the second day] was the radical transformation of
reality from the encompassing oneness of God to the
possibility of more than one."[7] The movement of all of
creation is a movement of separation and
individuation, a movement of identity. The movement
of separation, though, often leaves one without a
ground. By its very definition, to be individuated is
to be separated from something. In this case, the
separation may be separation from God and all that
separation means. And another commentator, Resh
Lekesh taught: "God made a condition with the works
of the Beginning-If Israel accepts the Torah, you
will continue to exist; if not, I will bring you back
to chaos [tohu va-vohu].'"[8] The acceptance of
the Torah at Sinai reveals the Judaic theme "to do
and to hear." This expression is understood in
English as "To do and then to hear," that is,
"to do and then to understand." Why is this
significant? The acceptance of the Torah without
knowing what the Torah is demonstrates faith. More
precisely, it is by living an ethical life that one
understands what an ethical life is and the necessity
of living life as such. But this acceptance is not
merely a blind faith. Zornberg writes:
..."to be or not to be" is a question that is
"suspended or standing" till Mount Sinai. ... The
world, till Sinai, awaits its true creation...This
is not simply a matter of a shotgun commitment
being demanded of the people at Mount Sinai. Their
standing at the mountain is an experience in
extremis of the instability, the terror, not
only what would have happened had Israel not stood
before Mount Sinai but also emphasizing the
relationship between God and Israel: "Earth and all
its inhabitants dissolve: 'it is I who keeps its
pillars [amudeha, standing supports] firm'
(Psalms 75:4). The world was in the process of
dissolving. Had Israel not stood before Mount Sinai
and said, 'All that God has spoken, we will
faithfully do' [lit., we will do and we will listen
(Exodus 24:7)] the world would already have
returned to chaos. And who made a foundation for
the world? 'It is I-anokhi–who keeps its
pillars firm–in the merit of I–anokhi–am the
Lord your God who brought you out of the Land of
Egypt.'"[9]
So, according to Rabbinic interpretation, it is
the 'standing at Sinai' that affirms what God is to
create (has created) and therefore, saves the world.
The face-to-face with God is connected to finding a
foundation. Individuation separates and it is the
commitment to the ethical that puts these early
inhabitants back in relationship to God. Thus, the
giving of the Torah at Sinai necessitates, as
recounted in Deuteronomy 5:4,[10] the ability to stand
"face to face"[11] with God. To be able
to stand in this way with God, "who alone exists and
whose anokhi emerges from a vast silence, is
to take that immensity of the anokhi
immediately within oneself."[12] To stand "face to
face" requires one to be separated, to be
individuated. This next passage from Zornberg
powerfully illustrates this relationship between
standing and separation, and the terror of returning
the world to the chaos and emptiness before
creation:
"You have been shown to know that the Lord alone is
God; there is none beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35).
Rashi's comment emphasizes the visual-mystical
experience of de-realization: "When God gave the
Torah, he opened the seven firmaments, upper and
lower worlds were torn apart and they saw that He
is alone; that is why it says, '[lit.] you were
shown.'" In other words, what the people
overwhelmingly see is that there is nothing,
nothing to stand on. "If you do not accept the
Torah, I shall return the world to chaos and
emptiness."[13]
Like the rabbinic commentators, Levinas also
concludes, "The unfortunate universe also had to
accept its subordination to the ethical order." That
is the universe is such because ethics was
accepted. The question of ontology-how being realizes
its being-consists in how the Torah was received, in
"overcoming the temptation of evil by avoiding the
temptation of temptation" (41). That is, being
realizes its being, by avoiding a return to the
egoism of philosophy, of self-sufficiency and the
sovereignty of the ego asserted via ones desire for
knowledge. In this acceptance of the Torah, the
acceptance of the ethical, the sovereignty of the ego
is subordinated to the other.
In the last part, Levinas returns again to the
question of childish naïveté-clearly troubled by this
problem. The unique nature of the event of the giving
of the Torah: one accepts the Torah before one knows
it. How do we know that we are not duped by evil?
What protects us against this? But for Levinas, this
originary moment is beyond good and evil in that it
precedes it. Everything we do is conditioned by the
ethical, by our responsibility for the Other person.
Rather than see this originary moment as childish
naïveté, Levinas sees this resistance to the
temptation of temptation as a "perfectly adult
effort" (42). And yet unable to "prove" the existence
of this originary moment, the Talmudic text will
nonetheless call the paradox of this inversion-the
origin of trust prior to all examination-an 'angel's
mystery' (42).
To be clear, Revelation for Levinas is not about
God per se-the acceptance of Revelation is the
turning toward the other. Indeed, it seems that for
Levinas, these are one and the same-Revelation = the
acceptance of the Torah = the Light of the face = the
epiphany of the other person, which he declares is
"ipso facto my responsibility toward him:
seeing the other is already an obligation toward him.
A direct optics-without mediation of any idea-can
only be accomplished as ethics. Integral knowledge or
Revelation (the receiving of the Torah) is ethical
behavior" (47). For Levinas, then, to examine without
acceptance, that is the real reversal; knowledge
without faith is "logically torturous," it is a
corruption of morality (48). And yet, it is here that
we can invoke the question that Martin Kavka asks in
his essay on phenomenology and Jewish philosophy: "Is
the epiphany of the face the ground of ethics or its
goal?"[14] It is possible that
the answer to this question is simply, yes, but
acknowledging the tension does not resolve the
problem.
Towards the end of the essay, Levinas raises the
skeptical question to philosophy itself-"will it be
said that this alliance was not freely chosen. But
one reasons as though the ego had witnessed the
creation of the world and as though the world had
emerged out of its free will. This is the
presumptuousness of the philosopher" (49). Can
philosophy prove otherwise? No-and so we find
ourselves confirming Malka's statement above,
"philosophy can lead us only to the threshold of
mystery, into which it cannot enter." The angel's
knowledge, then, is the prior consent, the immemorial
past, this is the "we will do." My turning toward the
other, relinquishing my place in the sun, being
responsible for the other, giving the bread to the
other, this is the commentary-this is the "we will
hear." Is this then the warrant for this ethics, and
if so, what does it mean for those who do not accept
revelation? Whose lives are not conditioned by the
acceptance of the Torah at Sinai? And in light of
where we have gone wrong, or turned away from this
ancient message of doing before hearing, we can ask
if we need to stand again at Sinai? I would say yes,
but not literally-figuratively.
* * *
At a conference I recently attended, we were put
into small groups and asked to discuss a personal
account of someone who lived during Nazi Germany, an
ordinary university professor. This professor had not
thought of the events taking place around him as any
of his affair and only when he heard his young son
refer to the "Jewish swine," did it occur to him that
maybe he had been wrong. Upon moving into these small
groups, we were given a set of questions to consider,
including these: Why did the professor not speak out?
If one person had spoken out, how could that have
made a difference? Was the professor indifferent? Is
indifference wrong? If your life is at risk, do you
still have an obligation to help?
I was intrigued by the most common response, "No,
we don't have an obligation if there is a risk to
life or livelihood." While on the one hand, I tried
to explain, yes, we do have an obligation even if we
choose to do otherwise-to protect or feed our
families, though one could argue that in the long
run, the obligation to one's own family is even
greater when there is a risk to others (the young son
whose mind is now poisoned with hate, and so forth),
the Levinasian point is that the obligation to the
other, precisely if our own life is threatened is
what makes his ethics so radical. In the general
discussion about making moral decisions, it was
clearly important that folks believed they had made
the right decision and thus they rendered the other
choice not really an option. It was striking how much
faith, if you will, they invested in reason. There is
a faith that Reason will tell us the right thing to
do. Granted, this was a philosophy conference-and a
conference on teaching philosophy to children/doing
philosophy with children. And I admit that this view
is not novel-the idea that the humanities and the
study of the humanities make us better people
certainly circulates in the academy.
It was hard enough to persuade these folks that
competing obligations impinge on us and there is
rarely the one correct choice-if only we could reason
better to find it. The more interesting discussion
took place when the conversation turned not so much
to competing obligations but to a perception of
competing "rights," which was essentially the most
basic point in Levinas-whose place in the sun takes
precedence? What is the ethical warrant that will
tell someone to choose funding national health care
over keeping his/her own money? That is, why would
someone accept that life-or a "right" to health care
overrides or is more important than his or her
"right" to what they earned? Why would someone turn
from the idea that their money is theirs to the view
that they are in fact responsible for their neighbor?
Why would someone turn from themselves to the
suffering of the Other, to a view that the other is
in fact his/her responsibility? Reason can easily
offer a justification for either choice-e.g.,
economics, pragmatics, and so forth.[15] Someone will
only part with their money in the service of others
(without benefit to themselves, e.g., the tax break),
if the have first turned to the Other.
While this particular example appears to points to
the underlying obligation that informs both, my point
here is that these two "obligations" are not really
obligations. One is a right that is assumed by
many-my right to my money-and the other is a
responsibility for the other, to give up some of that
money in order for others simply to have health care,
simply to live. That is, there is nothing in a
discussion of competing rights that will turn one
away from one's own rights and to the other. Once
formed in this manner, with a view towards knowledge,
the sovereignty of the ego, and my right to my stuff,
philosophy will simply not be that which changes the
heart. Levinas is pointing to a different relation
the I has to the Other-and it does not appear to be
something that he thinks should happen on a lark or
at my own will. He is describing a fundamentally
different view of subjectivity, one for which he
believes there is an originary warrant and that I
would then argue is secured through a complementary
education-formal or otherwise.
Reason and introspection do not turn us toward the
other nor do they compel us to be responsible for the
other. That is, while reason and introspection might
lead us to understanding they do not guarantee
wisdom-a conflation long ago made in the history of
philosophy, where the love of wisdom (search for
truth?) was conflated with possessing wisdom.[16] And so
the question then is what does? I think the turn here
must be towards education. If Levinas believes that
we need a new subjectivity-or rather a return to the
old, the one that we find accepting the Torah at
Sinai, the one willing to give up the sovereignty of
the ego and the one who will take on those
commandments, which Levinas reads simply as different
iterations of turning towards the other-then the
formation of this subject is found in how we raise
and educate our children. What this education would
look like, I am not certain, but if "being Jewish" is
contrasted to "being Western" to being European, then
the educational system that yields that Western
subject must be changed.
In his 1966 essay, "Nameless," reprinted in
Proper Names, Levinas describes three truths
that correspond to us living more humanly.[17] The
first is that "people need infinitely fewer things
than they dispose of in the magnificent civilizations
in which they live" (Levinas 1996, 21). He is
reminding his Jewish readers of the fragility-and
failure-of their assimilation, when between 1939 and
1945 they lost everything-from food and clothing to
books and synagogues. The second truth, "in crucial
times, when the perishability of so many values is
revealed, all human dignity consists in believing in
their return. The highest duty, when 'all is
permitted,' consists in feeling oneself responsible
with regard to these values of peace. In not
concluding, in a universe at war, that warlike
virtues are the only sure ones…" (121). That is,
maintaining one's belief that in spite of the
presence of war, ethics is still the "truth."
And finally, the third truth, and the one that I
want to note in particular: "we must henceforth, in
the inevitable resumption of civilization and
assimilation, teach the new generations the
strength necessary to be strong in isolation, and all
that a fragile consciousness is called upon to
contain at such times, and here Levinas names the
maquis, those who resisted French collaboration with
the Nazis (122). I simply want to note the link that
Levinas makes between teaching and resisting
evil.
Later in this same essay, under the subtitle, "The
Jewish Condition," Levinas offers the following
connection between religion and the ethical, and it
is worth quoting at length:
The fact that settled, established humanity can at
any moment be exposed to the dangerous situation of
its morality residing entirely in its 'heart of
hearts,' its dignity completely at the mercy of a
subjective voice, no longer reflected or confirmed
by any objective order-that is the risk upon which
the honor of humankind depends. But it may be
this risk that is signified by the very fact that
the Jewish condition is constituted within
humanity. Judaism is the humanity on the brink
of morality without institutions. (Levinas 1996,
122)
It is difficult not to ask if this is what Levinas
hopes for? A morality without institutions? An ethics
without politics? Without need of politics? An ethics
when there is no more war?
At the very end of this essay, Levinas offers at
once a bleak and optimistic picture of morality. On
the one hand, we have anti-Semitism, which he equates
with extermination-anti-Semitic language is an
exterminating language (123). The Jew sits
simultaneously as the object of absolute
annihilation, nihilistic destruction, but also as the
hope for humanity, for it is the morality that came
from the hither side of civilizations, that brought
those forth and blessed those civilizations, that
brings forth that morality again (123). Like his
essays on Jewish education, he locates the Judaism as
the site of this ethical relation, and it is
education that will deliver it.
At this point, one cannot help but recall the
discussion of war and ethics in the Preface to
Totality and Infinity and wonder what is at
stake theologically in that discussion. If we are not
to be duped, the possibility of peace must be
certain-but is it ethics that brings this about?
Recognizing this problem, we can turn to Martin
Kavka's question: Is the epiphany of the face the
ground of ethics or its goal? It is a question, to be
sure, to which I do not know the answer. If it is the
case that Levinas is tracing the priority of the
ethical to the acceptance of the Torah, to a covenant
whereby an agreement is made to live in a particular
way, what does this mean? What does it mean
epistemically? What does it mean historically? What
does this mean philosophically? Does he mean that
this acceptance was quite simply outside of time and
history, that indeed it is an immemorial past?
Levinas deploys terms that are religiously loaded
and these terms do work for him that philosophical
terms simply do not do-"the trace is not just one
more word: it is the proximity of God in the
countenance of my fellowman" (Levinas, as quoted in
Malka, xxiii. Originally from Entre Nous). Can
we really exchange "God" in the previous citation
with "the Good" and have it carry the same meaning,
the same connotation, the same force? It is not a
question of whether I believe in God. It is a
question of what these words might mean for Levinas
and whether "God" can be said to be a placeholder
that can be simply exchanged with another normative
term, like "the Good." For Levinas, "God" invokes an
original covenant that then conditions Judaism-Jewish
ethics and Jewish education. That is, it is not God
who gives moral authority. Rather, God stands in the
background of the acceptance of the originary
covenant. Is there a "secular" or philosophical or
Greek counterpart to this acceptance? It is not clear
that "the Good" does the same kind of work, nor is it
clear that Levinas thinks the humanism of the
Enlightenment is comparable. That is, Levinas' ethics
receive their authority from something not simply
extra-philosophical, but connected to the divine. And
if this is how Levinas understands this
originary moment, how do we translate this into
philosophical language? Or, do we say that we have
arrived at the threshold of mystery into which
philosophy cannot enter?
Notes
[1] Levinas, "Damages Due to
Fire," Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette
Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990), 182.
[2] Levinas, "The Temptation
of Temptation," in Nine Talmudic Readings,
30-50.
[3] Several of these
paragraphs are reproduced from my review essay,
"Jew-Greek Redux: Knowing What We Do Not Know – On
Diane Perpich's The Ethics of Emmanuel
Levinas," philoSOPHIA: A Journal of
Continental Feminism 1:1 (January 2011):
103-111.
[4] Emmanuel Levinas,
Humanism of the Other, trans. Nidra Poller
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). First
published in French in 1972.
[5] This is the second essay
in Humanism of the Other.
[6] Indeed, the very last
section of this essay, "The Trace," anticipates the
essay he will publish as "The Trace of the Other." In
this section, we find his discussion of "illeity"-the
origin of the otherness of being" (44), and his
reference to the trace within a discussion of Moses
seeing the back of God.
[7] This passage paraphrases
Rashi's gloss cited in Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg,
The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on
Genesis (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1995), 4.
When citing Rashi, I give the original source. These
next few paragraphs are a version of material that I
published in my book Levinas, Judaism, and the
Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
[8] B. Shabbat 88a. See
Zornberg's discussion in The Beginning of Desire,
27.
[9] Pesikta Rabbati, 21
(100a).
[10] Deuteronomy 5:4 reads:
"Face to Face the Lord spoke to you on the mountain
out of the fire" (Plaut, The Torah, 1354).
[11] This phrase permeates
Levinas's work as a way of describing the ethical
relation. We should find it no coincidence that this
phrase is also used in this ancient Jewish text to
describe the relationship between God and the Jewish
people when the latter were to receive the
Torah-God's ethical commandments-itself.
[12] See Zornberg, 32.
[13] See Zornberg, 31.
Translation modified.
[14] Martin Kavka,
"Phenomenology," in The Cambridge History of
Jewish Philosophy: The Modern Era, eds. Martin
Kavka, Zachary Braiterman, and David Novak
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),
97-127.
[15] Indeed, Levinas
addresses this very point-not the healthcare issue,
but the money issue-in "The Awakening of the I":
"There are of course the frightening aspects of
capitalism and of excessive attachment to money. But
one must fall into the error that consists n
believing that money is accursed and that one must
declare it systematically malignant. I am convinced
that here is an ethical significance to money and
that it can contribute to a humanization of the
world" (Levinas 2001, 184). In an ironic twist,
Levinas sees money as the end of "barter and trade,"
which he takes to be the source of confrontation and
war.
[16] In January 1963, the
Cahiers d'Alliance published an announcement
of Levinas's participation as the external examiner
for William J. Richardson's dissertation defense at
Louvain on November 29, 1962. As is commonly known,
Richardson's dissertation was entitled "Heidegger:
Through Phenomenology to Thought," which was
dedicated to Heidegger's philosophy (4th ed. New
York: Fordham University Press, 1993). Although the
announcement indicates that Levinas's colleagues at
the Alliance are proud of this invitation for him, we
see that the controversial subject matter of the
dissertation does not escape them. They write:
"Philosophy does not guarantee wisdom.... In 1933,
Heidegger was a supporter of Hitler and the magazine,
Mediations, recently published the translation
of some Heidegger texts of that period.... [Levinas's
participation included] trying to denounce [in
Heidegger's philosophy] a fundamentally foreign and
hostile message to the great Biblical tradition...."
(archived document, translation is mine).
[17] Emmanuel Levinas,
"Nameless," in Proper Names, trans. Michael B.
Smith (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,
1996), 119-123.
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