AFFECTIVITY, AGENCY

AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY
Peter Sajda et al.
Llfarmattan
2012
This book has been published with financial support from the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak
Academy of Scienccs in Bratislava
The volume has been produced as part of the grant project VEGA no. 2/0201/11 as well as of the
international project On the Boundary o f Phenomenology, which was developed on the basis of an
Agreement of Cooperation between the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
(Bratislava) and the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Prague)
Copyright Florin George Clian, J akub apek, Martin Murnsky, Szabolcs Nagypl, Martin Nitschc,
Matthew Post, Martin Ritter, Peter Sajda, Pavol Sucharek, J ana Tomaoviov, Anton Vydra, J aroslava
Vydrov, Zoltn Wagner, David Weberman
Reviewers: Ivana Komanick, Petr Urban
Translation: Radomr Masaryk
Copy editor: Matthew Post
Cover illustration: Mikls Szalay, Tegyl k (2002)
*
C o n t e n t s
Introduction
F l o r i n G e o r g e C l i a n
Platos Psychology of Action and the Origin of Agency
M a t t h e w P o s t
Unity, Identity and Otherness in Hegels Account
ofLife-and-Death Struggle
P e t e r Sa j d a
From Pathos to Ethos\ On the Notions of Intersubjectivity
and Community in Bubers Pre-dialogical Authorship
J a r o s l a v a V y d r o v
Phenomenology in Communication and Interdisciplinary Relations
Mutual Interconnections and Tensions from the Point
of View of the Phenomenological Methodology
of the Sixth Cartesian Meditation
M a r t i n M u r n s k y
On the Way to the Things Themselves.
On Heideggers Interpretation of Husserls Phenomenology
J a n a T o ma o v i o v '
Existential Analytics and the Social Sciences
M a r t i n N i t s c h e !
Thinking Non-violence within the Framework
of Phenomenological Ontologies
J a k u b a pe k
Merleau-Ponty on Actions, Reasons and Words
D a v i d W e b e r ma n
Does the Endeavor to Understand the Other Suppress
the Others Otherness?
Pa v o l Su c h a r e k
A Voice from Heaven Cried Out: Who Has Revealed
to My Children This Secret of Angels? 153
M a r t i n R i t t e r
Movement of/to Inwardness. Intersubjectivity
in J an Patokas Concept of the Movements of Existence
A n t o n V y d r a
Solitude as a Philosophical Stance in the Later Bachelard
Z o l t n W a g n e r
Second-Order Desires, Self-Management and Intersubjectivity
SzABOLCS N a g YFL
Assisting Interreligious Dialogue by Intersubjective Mediation
L i s t o f C o n t r i b u t o r s
173
187
202
217
234
A Vo i c e f r o m H e a v e n C r i e d O u t :
W h o H a s R e v e a l e d t o M y C h i l d r e n
T h i s Se c r e t o f A n g e l s ?
Pavol Su chare k
Everyone will readily agree that it is of the biggest importance to know whether
we are not duped by morality.1With these words, Levinas introduces his most
well-known volume Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. And truly, it is
very important to know whether or not are we being misled by morality. At the
same time, it is important to know if we are not being duped by Levinas himself.
His philosophical concept of the primacy of ethics leads to several very interesting
problems. We however first need to ask ourselves several questions: 1. Why would
he consider ethics to have primacy over every ontology? 2. What does it mean
when Levinas equates ethics with metaphysics? 3. How could we accept Levinass
elementary presumption that the access to the face is ethical through and through?,
and lastly 4. Why is it not possible to be more sceptical toward ethics? In the
present paper, we search for answers to the questions listed above.
As a point of departure I shall choose the paper by Levinas titled Is Ontology
Original?,2 because this text represents his first explicitly formulated problematisa-
tion of the primacy of ontology. A philosophical search should in no way be
satisfied with the reflection of itself or of existence. Reflection provides us only
with a narrative about a unique incident, about the private soul that keeps coming
back to itself, even at the point wen it is trying to escape itself.3In this we can
not only see a critical evaluation of Heideggers philosophy but also the obvious
distance from Levinass previous philosophical investigations in Existence and
Existents and Time and the Other;4The basic departure point for Levinass thinking
had always been represented by the meeting with the Other; however, ever since
1 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority (The Hague, Boston and
London: Martinus NijhofF Publishers, 1979), p. 21.
2 Emmanuel Levinas, L'ontologie est-elle fonda merit ale? Revue de Metaphysique et de Mo
rale 56 (1951), pp. 88-98.
3 Ibid., p. 98.
4 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Exis tents (The Hague: Martinus NijhofF, 1978); Emmanuel
Levinas, Time and the Other (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987).
153
that moment, this relationship was not mediated by a preliminary precondition of
sociality or the understanding of Being. Meeting the Other occurs without any
intermediation which means that the Other is the basis of sociability and human
ity. At this point, Levinass stance does not significantly differ from the post
metaphysical interpretation of the autonomy of the person and their relationship
toward their own existence as the source of morality. A person is autonomous, and
only for this reason they may be free and responsible, i.e. moral. The problem
however is the status of this autonomy (exteriority or alterity) which only learns
about itself through inter-subjectively functioning and mutually balanced social
relationships. I f the principle of autonomy should still present the basis of think
ing about ethics, then, according to Levinas, it cannot be based on sociality.
Autonomy would thus lose its own content. Describing what the autonomous
status of an ethically acting individual is based uponthis is Levinass own phil
osophical problem.
What was said above however suggests the overall shift and specification of
basic categoriesat least on the level of Levinass attempts to de-ontologise his
own language and vocabularyof Totality and Infinity. However, Levinas shall
later criticize the language of the book as still too oncological. This evaluation
of the language of Totality and Infinity can be found in the Leyden discussion on
the occasion when Levinas was honoured with the honoris causa doctorate. Levi
nas claims, The ontological language employed in Totality and Infinity is not at
all a definitive language. The language in Totality and Infinity is ontological because
it wants above all not to be psychological. But in reality, it is already a search for
what I call the beyond being, the tearing of this equality to self which is always
beingthe Seirt...5 The importance of L'ontologie est-e!lefondamentale? is based on
Levinass alchemic attempt to limit the possibilities of ontology as theoretical
knowledge at the point of a basic event, the encounter -with the Face of another hu
man. I n his opinion,.ontology loses its privileged position vis-a-vis this event
because to grasp the Other on the ontological level and to get to know them
paradoxically means to lose them. The reason is that manifestation does not belong
to the light of knowledge and the Face is manifested just as something that cannot
be looked at in principle. Questions formulated by Levinas at this point sig
nificantly define the specific nature of this problem. Levinas asks: Why seeing a
face is not seeing any more but it is rather listening and words? I n which way could
an encounter with a face be described as a condition of consciousness? What are
the conditions of the revelation of a face?fi I t is no wonder that the later Levinass
5 Emmanuel Levinas, O f God Who Comes to Mind (Stanford, California; Stanford University
Press: 1998), p. 82.
6 Levinas, L'ontologie est-elle fondamentale?" pp. 97-98.
154
concept of ethics as metaphysics, shall be structured in connection with the terms
of listening, word, and revelation.
In the same year Levinas published another article, Libert et commandementJ
where we find two terms describing the interhuman relationship. In addition to
the term religion, there appears a new term, metaphysical relationship. A
metaphysical relationship with the one external to me (l'extrieur) is only possible
as an ethical relationship.**The context points out that the external is the Other.
The next paper in chronological order, Le Moi et Totalit? follows up on this un
derstanding of metaphysics and emphasizes, to put it in Heideggerian terms, the
existential loneliness of separation: 'Thinking starts right there where conscious
ness becomes the consciousness of ones own uniqueness. (...) when it becomes
the consciousness of I and at the same time the consciousness of exteriority where
it transcends its nature, when it becomes metaphysics. Thinking is the relationship
of I toward the exteriority that it does not accept.10In this sense, metaphysics is
the expression of the relationship between I (the interiority) and the exteriority.
This exteriority (the Other) is however not absorbed through I. In its relationship
with subjectivity, it remains forever separated. Metaphysics thus expresses the
relationship of interiority to exteriority when the interiorityI is located in the
totality (of the whole of the world), and at the same time it is absolutely separated
from it (conscious of its separation and uniqueness).
The most detailed elaboration of this topic is to be found in the volume Total
ity and Infinity. According to this volume, the place for metaphysics is the human
relationship, The ethical relation is defined, in contrast with every relation with
the sacred, by excluding every signification it would take on unbeknown to him
who maintains that relation.11He thus puts ethics before ontology, which, accord
ing to him, presumes some preliminary understanding, a certain grasping horizon.
However, a social relationshipan ethical relationshipis primarily a Revelation
which does not presume any non-existent: light of generality (an ethical norm)
yet which illustrates that the possibility to accept a human is infinite. I t reaches
further than the understanding that stops with its object, which means that it
thematises and absorbs its; object. In Heidegger, for example, this means being
open to Being (this is not the same as a beingthis is not an entity) which is a
7 Emmanuel Levinas, Libert et commandement, Revue de Mtaphysique et de Morale 58
(1953), pp. 264-272.
8 Ibid., p. 271.
" Emmanuel Levinas, Le Moi et Totalit, Revue de Mtaphysique et de Morale 59(1954),pp.
353-373.
Ibid., p. 354.
11 Levinas, Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority, p. 79.
155
necessary precondition for the revelation of a being as something, as an entity.
On the other hand, Levinas does not hesitate to denote the revelation in relation
to objectifying cognition as its inversion}2 According to Levinas, revelation is
discourse, speech occurring between two separate beings. The Other is mani
fested KO0 (xuTO, based on itself, andwhat shall be especially important for us
laterwithout previous intermediation. The metaphysical relationship should be
purified of any participation and objectification. According to Levinas, classic
instruments of ontology (intentionality, representation, abstraction and synthesis)
fail to adequately describe the relationship toward the Other. This may partly be
because this ethical relationship presents a break-up of the formal structure of
thought. Informal, maybe even non-objective thinking, is the true metaphysics
according to Levinas.
Levinas's aspiration is to base ethics as metaphysics on the event that inevitably
transcends the requirement for ultimate comprehensibility of philosophical dis
course, This experience is paradoxical and at the same time absolute. I t is the
experience of the face of another human who does not need to hide because he or
she is invisible. The experience of the face, this is the contact with the invisible.
One could object, Is not the face of another human* on the contrary ones visible
part? Is not the face of the Other my initial image? Is there any image at all that
would not have a certain level of comprehensibility, that would not be articulated
in some way, and that could not be transferred to a certain terminological unit?
Why does Levinas emphasize the invisibility of an obviously visible phenomenon?
Is Levinas actually talking about a human face?
Maybe he is not. When the face of an Other appears in front of me, it is not
manifested according to Levinas in the manner of a phenomenon. I t is not a phe
nomenon that I could comprehend in the horizon of my representations. A face
is not only its physiognomy describable in the terms of appearance. I t appears
immediately. However, the contact with the face cannot be the relationship of
cognition. I f the experience of a face cannot be reduced to the relationship of
cognition, it means that this is not a phenomenon that would always be immanent
to consciousness. The Other appears to me as a face. However, the face is not a
spectacle, it is a voice. And the face speaks. However, what the face speaks is not
a message that needs to be deciphered. It is not information that needs to be read.
I t is not an image that needs to be understood. Levinas says this about the face,
The face is a living presence; it is expression. The life of expression consists in
undoing the form in which the existent, exposed as a theme, is thereby dissim
ulated. The face speaks. The manifestation of a face is already discourse. He
13 Ibid., p. 67.
156
who manifests himself comes, according to Platos expression, to his own as
sistance. He at each instant undoes the form he presents. The way of undoing
the form adequate to the Same so as to present oneself as other is to signify or
to have a meaning.13
To manifest does not mean to represent, and manifestation cannot thus be the
condition of representation. To represent something means to accommodate it to
oneself, to absorb it into oneself, and thus to deny the alterity of the presented.
The Other however in their face signifiesmakes themselves knownin the space
of thinking that does not have the nature of cognition. This thinking is referred to
by Levinas as metaphysics. It is the thinking of the expression based on the mean
ing that was never articulated, that is an articulation of itself. The meaning of the
expression is articulated from withinit is a strange type of knowledge whose
messenger is simultaneously the very messageas explained by Levinas.14As we
shall see, the paradoxical nature of this affection shall be resolved by Levinas with
the paradox of revelation. I am intentionally using the term affection in connec
tion with the term thinking. I n one interview, editor Philippe Nemo asked
Levinas the following question, How does it happen that a human starts to think?
Is he or she primarily driven by events based on which we start to ask ourselves
and about ourselves?15Without hesitation Levinas answered: at the origin of
thinking there is a trauma or a shocksome separation, a violent scene, a sudden
realization of the monotony of time.16This subordination of intentionality in the
classic Husserlian sense of the original impression (which is affection) has since
then become a classic, mainly thanks to Levinas. Affection became the condition
of the possibility of intentional relating to the world, and to thinking itself. Au
tonomy, alterity, exteriority or absolute differencethis is the face of another
human, according to Levinas. This means the original affection that cannot be
synchronized with ones own consciousness because it is not an equal and sym
metrical relationship but rather an asymmetric one.
The original affection of the face of the other thus appears as the key to au-
tonomising the ethically motivated behaviour of an individual, at least in two
points. Firstly, affection is always the experience that cannot be reduced to anything
because the face of the other is not quantifiable content or datum. Secondly, it
goes hand in hand with a significant change in the current status-that is why
13 Ibid., p. 66.
14 Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1990), p. 48.
15 Emmanuel Levinas, Etbique et infini (Paris; Le Livre de Poche. Biblio essis, 1994), p. 11.
16 Ibid., p. 11.
157
Levinas always refers to it as a traumatic event or an injury.17This peculiar connec
tion between affectivity and traumatism, pain or shock, explains Levinass spe
cific understanding of the optics of ethical thinking. Despite the fact that the
original face to face experience is not representable in consciousness, it could be
thought in the categories of proximity and immemorial difference'.
Face to face..At is not a qualitative datum added empirically to a foregoing
plurality of l s or of psyches, or interiorities, like contents which can be, and
are, added together into a totality. The face that here commands assembly
founds a proximity different from that which regulates the synthesis uniting
what is given into a world, or the parts into a whole. It commands a think
ing that is older and more awakened than knowledge or experience. To be sure,
I can have an experience of the other man, but precisely without discerning in
him his difference as an indiscernible. Whereas the thought awakened to the
face, or by the face, is the thought commanded by an irreducible difference: a
thought that is not a thought of..., but from the outset a thought/or..., which
is not a thematization, which is rather a non-indifference for the other, disrupt
ing the equilibrium of the equal and impassive soul of knowing. This awaken
ing must not be interpreted immediately as intentionality, or as a noesis equal
lingas a full or an empty intentionits noema and simultaneous with it. The
irreducible alterity of the other man, in his face, is strong enough to resist
the synchronization of the noetico-noematic correlation and to signify the
immemorial and the infinite, which do not hold in a presence or in re-pre
sentation... The indiscernible alterity of the other is precisely missed. As an
alterity irreducible to the one that we attain by grafting a characteristic or a
specific difference onto the idea of a common genus, this alterity is irreducible
to a diversity assured of synthesis in a timewhich is supposed and synchro-
nizablewherein it is dispersed as irreducible to theiultimate homogeneity
necessary to all representation.18
The relationship toward the Other is thus on my side a relationship (reference), or
in the etymological sense of the word, of subordinance (deference) or of that which
cannot be represented (that of which we, for some reason, cannot say that is),
but in its absolute difference it cannot be indifferent to me. This means face as a
question, as an ethical problematisation of the hegemony of the subjectnon-in
17 Emmanuel Levinas, O f God Who Coma to Mind, pp. 70, 96; Emmanuel Levinas, God,
Death, and Time (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 139, 145,152,
178, etc.
19 Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, pp. 160-161.
158
difference, non-lethargy in differencepassivity or patience without any synthe
sisbeing subordinated in a relationship to that which infinitely transcends the
possibilities of a subject. The face as a question, and, thanks to this, something
that is infinitely more than a representation, possession, contact, or answer. Levinass
ethics is actually the thinking of the original affection: a difference in non-in
difference. The inception of the autonomy of I cannot thus be found in any
original self-affection, in the sovereign subject that could in a certain moment
freely look the Other in the face. On the contrary, the inception of ones own
autonomy should according to Levinas be seen in the traumatism that does not
have a moment of inception (in myself), that precedes any possession of oneself.
The Other is in its face absolutely different than I, resists all identification, because
it cannot be illuminated on the level of the theoretical way of reflection with the
aid of a philosophical lamp, as R. Kearney says. The Other precedes philosophy
and necessarily invokes and provokes the subject before any genuine questioning
can begin.19
The Other thus appears as the precondition for any discursive opposition and
at the same time as the condition of sociality even before the transcendental con
stitution of I , which allegedly constitutes this horizon on which this Other
appears as non-I. The Other invokes subjectivity in the ethical space of a re
lationship that is not based on identity but rather on radical difference. I am thus
speaking about affection as a traumatizing and painful impact, as a special type
of resonance of looking straight into somebodys eyes which does not have its
origin in my need for the Other. It is the Other who needs me.
Ethics...is not a region, a layer or an ornament of being. I t is, of itself, ac
tual dis-interestedness, which is possible only under a traumatic experience
whereby presence, in its imperturbable equality of presence, is disturbed by
the other, Disturbed, awoken, transcended.20
However, what structure could this thinking take up if it is not based on repre
sentation and synthesis, that is, if it will be a kind of thinking that would be
radically different from the representation of being (of the Other) in consciousness?
What form would Levina ss thinking of the original difference have to take?
I t seems that one of the possible answers to this question is suggested by the
paradoxical invisibility of the face, I is affected by what does not constitute an
19 Richard Kearney, Deconstruction and Other, Dialogues 'with Contemporary Continental
Thinkers, ed. Richard Kearney and Paul Ricoeur (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1984), p. 118.
20 Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), p. 203.
159
intentional object and does not have its intentional correlate. I is affected by the
invisiblethus the face of the Other is in principle u n-t he mati sable, unnameable.
It cannot be referred to. Levinas even denies it the status of corporeality.21I thus
finds itself face to face with the Other in the position of utmost passivity. I t does
not thematise anything, it does not touch anything, it does not name or see any
thing. That is catastrophic! However, such is the true nature of Levinass affectiv-
ity, A dazzling where the eye holds more that I can hold.22This holding how
ever means that the blinded eye keeps on lookingit looks on although there is
nothing to see. The question remains, Which structure can this thinking take up,
and in which other ways could affectivity be thought of from the position of utmost
blindness?
Let us try to break down this high-level notion of looking into the face of the
Other into something that is more practical. According to Levinas, the face of the
Other is invisible, which implies that we cannot look at it. Why this is so is
suggested in the paper Lintentionnalitde l amour by the French phenomenologist
J .-L. Marion,
To look someone in the face does not mean to look on their mouth or another
part of their faade; it means to fix the gaze on their eyes, and this means
eyes in their centre which is always a black point because a pupil is actually
just simple emptiness. Even for the objectively on-looking gaze a pupil remains
a living denial of objectivity, an unstoppable denial of the object. Here, for the
first time, at the very centre of the visible, there is nothing to see, only empti
ness that cannot be observed or targeted...When I catch a look it does not
avoid my look, and thus denies it the very horizon of the visible.23
Maybe it means that the living eye has its dead, black centre, which although
seemingly visible hides something that is invisible and ncapturable. However,
one has to realize that the absence of the visible is not altogether negative. Human
gazes meet by exchanging, absorbing each other, one disappears in the eyes
of the Other. I n this unstoppable denial of the object or removing the horizon
of the visible the pure look aims toward that which cannot be defined by bound
aries. What follows is the exchange of looks, the loss of ones sight and finally
complete blindness. It is not the eye that looks on anymore; in a wink of an eye
it was absorbed and got lost in the very centre of the world, in the absolute night
21 Cf. Levinas, O f God Who Comes to Mind, p. 118.
22 Ibid., p. 67.
23 Jean-Luc Marion, Lintentionnalit de l amour, Prolgomnes la charit (Paris: La Diffe
rence, 1991), pp. 101-102.
160
from which there spills out the peculiar black light that marks the eternal empti
ness. I t is the non-existent point of departure or point of destination, the non
existent centre that at most illuminates the contours of nocturnal objects. The gaze
fixed on the eyes of another human is at its most concentrated point the noctur
nal gaze, it tears down the last icon. The last nocturnal image is the devastation
of any image.24
It will not be just a poetic metaphor when I write: a look is aflash of Being from
the night of the world. The night however does not denote the simple succession to
and the opposite of the day; it is something much more. It is the void, the night
when there is nothing to see, or, even better, the night when we have the chance
to see the invisibleon one hand, the night that is opening up for me, in which
the intercepted gaze does not avoid my gaze, on the other hand, the absolute
unavailability. This second, averted side of the night cannot be defined from the
classic ontological perspective of the light and daythe day is a panorama and at
the same time a synthesis, meaning the brightness of seeing and enunciation.
However, visibility and brightness are negative features in this case. The light
exposes mercilessly. Thus the eye is^the two-faced medium of the proximity of the
Other. The eye, on the one side, is the medium of the absolute experience of the
night, yet, on the other side, it remains the messenger of the day.
This has two consequences. Firstly, the ethical thinking that is not based on
representation and synthesis cannot in its immediacy head toward the adequacy
of truth. Thinking affected by the experience of the face cannotjustbe the think
ing for oneself but rather thinking against oneself or despite oneself as repeatedly
suggested by Levinas in the book Otherwise than Being.25 The experience has tra
ditionally been explained through its fixation in consciousness. The openness
toward Being becomes imagination or symbolism, that what is being exposed in
openness is transcended and becomes the symbol, the image, the sign. The other
of the face to face" experience loses its own sovereignty at the expense of securing
the power position of the subject of experience. The source of the ethical way of
thinking however cannot be the rational consciousness of stable and continuous
course of reality. Ethical thinking does not have its source in intentional conscious
ness. It has been deprived of all targetedness and it originally is not an act, but
rather passivity and affectivity. The passivity of the non-intent ion al26is thus based
on the face to face experience, which is the relationship of absolute immediacy.
24 Elsewhere Levinas writes: The eye does not glow, the eye speaks." Emmanuel Levinas,
Oeuvres 2. Parole et silence (Paris: Gras set), p. 371.
15 Emmanuel Levinas, Other-wise than Being or Beyond Essence (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publisher, 1991), pp. 16, 51, 113, etc.
26 Levinas, O f God Who Comes to Mind, pp. 174-175.
161
It is the primal structure of affectivity, which, according to Levinas, precedes all
figures of sociality.
Secondly, thinking about affectivity from the point of utmost blindness is
possible by shifting toward the regime of language and hearing. On the level of
language and hearing, Levinas describes specific features of the face to face
relationship which is a certain bond but at the same time a radical separation. The
relationship between me and the Other is the relationship of speech. By speaking
and by addressing someone, the Other enters a relationship with me where one
remains absolutely separated because until the end one cannot become the topic
of discourse. One is irreducible to the content of this discourse. One is not what
is being told about one. One is signifying. This relationship is described by Levinas
as metaphysics because the Other always remains beyond saying. In the ethical
relationship, I become a metaphysician because I am heading toward that which
is absolutely different and invisible. By looking one directly into the face I cease
to look at all. On the contrary, I am listening to one in a way that does not presume
I have looked through the meaning of ones speech beforehand. I am not total
izing, my experience has not gained the status of spmething evident, and each
visible component is dissolved in the immediacy of the non-evident which has not
become an image yet. In this meaning, the original affectivity remains unique,
and for this reason we need to understand the sound as something that is more
than light. The Other that is non-re presentable and invisible appears to me in the
blinding flash that hurts the retina of the eye. Thus the experience of the look
this openness of truth and at the same time brightnessmatures into the trans
parency of the void. What else should signify the look into the eyes of the Other
this dramatic and traumatic experiencethan the injury, than acquiring brightness
and sobriety at the same time? About this peculiar signification of the face of the
other human which is without the context-grasping horizon, Levinas said his
well-known words, * i
The experience of morality does not proceed from this visionit consummates
this vision; ethics is an optics. But it is a vision without image, bereft of the
synoptic and totalizing objectifying virtues of vision; a relation or an inten
tion ality of a wholly different type.27
This is an intention ality of a different type because it is the intentionality in which
thinking does not remain adequate toward its object. It is in the optics of every
honest metaphysics that is targeted, so to speak, against the monologue with
oneself, against the totality of ones own constructs and contents of thinking:
27 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 23.
162
To contain more than ones capacity does not mean to embrace or to encompass
the totality of being in thought or, at least, to be able to account for it after the
fact by the inward play of constitutive thought. To contain more than ones
capacity is to shatter at every moment the framework of a content that is
thought, to cross the barriers of immanence.23
This means that immanencethe monologue of the soul with itselfstructural
ly presumes openness to the voice of the Other, listening provoked by its voice.
Ethical optics can absorb into itself more than what is currently located in its field
of visionthis more is not given in the element of light which grants things
their contours and forms. The face that is the dissolution of the form appears im
mediately from within. In the experience of the face the intention that reaches its
climax in breaking the immanent content of consciousness becomes blind and
at the same time became an unbearable burden, becauseand this is the origin
of that miracle of ethics before the light29this blind vision starts to see more
than it sees. It allows the other to speak up and to listen to their demands. Seeing
suddenly becomes the burden of responsibility,30A metaphysician is thus positioned
vis-a-vis the face as the one who hears this invisible demand. Blindness which
sees more than it sees becomes the blindness which hears more than it sees and,
thanks to this, there remains the paradox that this blindness sees more than it
sees.
However, is this specific optics the ultimate answer to the question of why it
is not possible to be more sceptical toward the ethical commandment. Is not the
structure of this affectivity even deeper and more paradoxical? In other words,
what gives the grounds for the inevitable acceptance of the burden of responsi
bility for the other?
I f we(want to thoroughly investigate Levinass basic presumption, which is based
on the claim that the access to the face is ethical through and through, we must
explore his works Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence and Four Talmudic
Readings. I n the former, Levinas transcends the layer of descriptive phenomenol
ogy by analyzing the immemorial time of the event of meeting the Other in the
terms of proximity, difference and election. The latter work is especially in
teresting due to the way it, in the context of giving an exegesis of the Talmud,
describes responsibility for another human as the immediate and thus inevitable
precondition of sociality as such.
29 Ibid., p. 27.
29 Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, p. 44.
30 Cf. ibid., p. 18.
163
When Levinas writes about the inevitability of taking over the responsibility
for the Other with a proximity that is not reducible to the consciousness of prox
imity, anarchically a relationship with a singularity without the mediation of any
principle, any ideality,31what he has in mind is that the relationship of proximity
cannot be transferred to some form of the mode of distance, geometrical connec
tion, or pure representation of the relative. Proximity is already the call, the
utmost urgency, or even the duty that anarchically precedes every engagement. In
other words, this anteriority is older than the a priori''12 Tflie word anarchically
here means the instruction by which I was called upon (in the past that cannot
be brought back by reminiscence any more) by the Other to be responsible, before
consciousness was brought to life. Levinas in this case rules out any initiative or
spontaneity on the part of the subject. According to him, the original affectivity
is an-archic in the sense that it precedes any activity and any engagement, as if it
did not have its point of inception in time. Levina ss thesis about the an-archic
proximity and the passivity of the subject thus goes against every idealism, but
especially against Fichtes idealism,
older than a priori. This formula expresses a way of being affected which can
in no way be invested by spontaneity: the subject is affected without the source
of the affection becoming a theme of representation. We have called this rela
tionship irreducible to consciousness obsession. The relationship with exterior
ity is prior to the act that would effect it. For this relationship is not an act,
not a thematising, not a position in the Fichtean sense. Not everything that is
in consciousness would be posited by consciousnesscontrary to the proposi
tion that seemed to Fichte to be fundamental.33
In the responsibility for the Other that the subject takes up without any engage
ment, Levinas sees the ?m eta-ontological, meta-logical structure of Anarchy
that breaks through the Logos of the thematising consciousness which reduces
everything to the present. This relationship of responsibility is seen as obsession,
a seed of folly (un grain defolie)34of the presence of the Other sown into my in
nermost I. I t however seems that the term that expresses this anteriority in relation
to the presence of consciousness most aptly is election. I was elected and every
thing takes place outside of its activity. At the moment of election was I abso
31 Ibid., p. 100.
32 Ibid., 101.
Ibid.
34 Ibid., pp. 84, 91,142, etc.
164
lutely passive. The Levinasian election is in no way related to the problem of its
eventual acceptance or failure to be accepted. I f it was, we would have to speak
about passivity as something that could be reduced to the passivity of an effect
within some form of cause and effect relationship. The Levinasian passivity has a
very different meaning. In the depth of Self, subjectivity uncovers itself as chosen
and as goodness,
Chosen without assuming the choice! I f the passivity is not reducible to the
passivity of an effect in a causal relation, if it can be conceived to be on the
hither side of freedom and non-freedom, it must have the meaning of a good
ness despite itself a goodness always older than the choice. Its value, that it, its
excellence or goodness, the goodness of goodness, is alone able to counterbal
ance the violence of the choice (and, beyond counterbalancing, be for the bet
ter!). Goodness is always older than choice, the Good has always already
chosen and required the unique one. As chosen without choosing its election,
absent from the investiture received, the one is a passivity more passive still
than all the passivity of undergoing. The passivity of the one, its responsibility
or its pain, do not begin in consciousnessthat is, do not begin.35
According to Levinas, subjectivity manifests itself as goodness called in the an
archic time to goodness, through the Good. I f the subjectivity of the subject is
expressed in principle as the responsibility for the Other (or others), then this ir
revocable election that was made through the Good is the precondition of subjec
tivity as such. The Good is the an-archic source of sociability and humanity. The
term proximity then contains in itself the whole transcendence, otherness of
another human who has already become a neighbour. Proximity is paradoxical
because this is the kind of proximity that can never turn into unity and fusion.
Being.close, in contact, means to be committed to another even before entering
a contract of any voluntary association. Proximity is not the result of freedom, it
is antecedent to freedom.
Proximity represents a community with neighbours. Such a community is based
on accepting a commitment. I t is an irrefutable bond of responsibility. I n this sense
we are faced with an ethical impossibility of refusal par excellence. To get rid of
ones own chosen status is impossible without the alienation or fault experience.36
And this is actually Levinass answer to the question of why it is not possible to
be sceptical toward the ethical commandment. In proximity I am the witness of
35 Ibid., pp. 56-57.
36 Ibid., p. 87.
165
the commandment that comes from the immemorial past. This commandment
was never present and its origin cannot be sought in my free decision. Proximity,
according to this meaning, is the impossibility of distance, so a neighbour cannot
become a correlate of consciousness.
The election that occurred as the antecedence prior to all representable ante
cedence; immemorial (antecedence),37cannot be expressed on the level of ontol
ogy. Since ethics precedes ontology, election has an ethical naturein this sense
we should understand it as the primacy of the Good in relation to Being. I f we do
not want to get caught up in the trap of ontology we need to resolve this reality
by means of a paradox. In ontology, the Good and the subject are synchronized,
and the election would only reveal itself within causality when the Good is the
cause and the subject its effect. Levinas responds to this synchronization in ontol
ogy with the term difference: The Good is before being. There is diachrony: an
unbridgeable difference between the Good and me, without simultaneity, odd
terms. But also a non-indifference in this difference.38This is the proper meaning
of non-phenomenality or the Revelation of the face of the Other: the commitment
invoked by the proximity of the neighbour, transceryiing the horizon of images
that if offers.
Figurative thinking at this point inevitably goes outside of itself, outside of
Kantian formal conditions for the possibility to think in space and time. The in
evitable consequence is the occurrence of contradictions and aporias. It seems that
resolving this conflict is not within the power of phenomenology, and when it
comes to grasping the paradox of the Revelation, even Levinas himself has to rely
on the shift to the religious manner of explication. The most apt description of
the problematic of Revelation could be found in Chapter 2 of Four Talmudic Read
ings, The Temptation of Temptation. Here, Levinas comments on the Tal
mudic discussion about the way the Torah (Gods Commandments) was revealed
to the Israelites. One of the most remarkable features of this acceptance is that the
acceptance preceded the understanding ofthese commandments. According to Levinas,
in this acceptance of the commandments before they were understood lies the
angelic secret of subjectivity, which is shown to be chosen, good, and responsi
ble even before freedom is distinguished from unfreedom, or good from evil. Let
me quote two passages.
Rabbi Eleazar has said: When the Israelites committed to doing before hear
ing, a voice from heaven cried out: Who has revealed to my children this secret
57 Ibid., p. 122.
38 Ibid., p. 122.
166
the angles make use of, for it is written (Psalm 103:20): Bless the Lord, Oh,
His angels, you mighty ones, who do His word, hearkening to the voice of His
word. They do before hearing.39
The antecedence that Levinas ascribes to doing before hearing, this reversal of the
logical order, this angelic secret of autonomous subjectivity, could also be seen in
the second image that describes the conflict between a Sadducee and the J ewish
sage Raba. I n the person of Raba we can see how Levinas is trying to overcome
the allegedly legitimate requirement of philosophy that fights against every
naivety. A philosopher (maybe a phenomenologist, but definitely a European, as
suggested by Levinas) is represented by the figure of the Sadducee:
A Sadducee saw Raba buried in study...He said to him: People in a hurry, for
whom the mouth passes before the ears, you always find yourselves in a state
of headlong haste. You should have listened in order to know whether you were
able to accept, and if you were not able to accept, you should not have ac
cepted. Raba answered hijn: It is written about us who walk in integrity: The
integrity of the upright guides them; about those who walk upon tortuous
paths, it is written: The crookedness of the treacherous destroys them (Prov
erbs 11:3).40
The first passage outlines the general structure of the ethically motivated subjec
tivity that when it is given a command from God answers positively even before
assessing ones possibilities, before doing any calculation or rational deliberation.
The Israelites first fulfilled" Gods will and only then adopted His Law. The
act of giving the Torah is an event that is not comparable with anything else. This
event is the immediacy of the ethical commandment that flows out of the contact
with the face of another human. The; face of the Other is revealed immediately.
However, the contact with the face cannot be a relationship of knowing. The giv
ing of the Torah which one accepts before getting to know it is just like the rev
elation of the faceit means the irrefutable taking over of the responsibility for
the neighbour. This is where lies the paradox of the un-human, or the angelic
secret of ethical subjectivity that happens as a certain confirmation, the original
fiat, that is the practical answer that precedes all rational consent. I t is not a prod
uct of a subjective will but precedes it. It is thus a condition for my relationship to
the Other. I t is not a coincidence that Derrida wrote, whether we want it or not,
39 Levinas, Nine Taludic Readings, p. 45.
J0 Ibid., p. 31.
167
we are responsible.41And the sign of this binding responsibility is this act of
saying yes that I would be unable to consent to as a naturally egoistic being. This
is a consent before consent, or the order wherein fulfilment precedes hearing
out.
Levinas teaches us that this acting before hearing out (before every understand
ing, control, inclusion; before any Sirmgebimg) defines ethics specifically as spiritual
optics, where seeing and understanding is not only transformed into hearing, but
also into a specific and responsible act, as if it were first necessary to blind the eye
sight that thinks it sees something. To put it another way, according to Levinas, we
need to learn to see in the space of blindness, in this invisible space of encounters
between I and the Other. The point of this encounter, some kind of a loophole
of the spirit, is represented by the central part of the eyes retina which is the point
of sharpest vision, the macula that we usually do not perceive because the eye is
in constant motion. Ethics becomes immediate optics, a specific visioni.e. action
in favour of an other human, a moral act in this loophole of the invisible. Because
the face is not a phenomenon, it cannot be thought of as something given." In
this sense, it is only a trace of the original commandment to which I respond
before any consent. An ethicist can see in the space of blindness only by hearing.
What one sees is far from a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction. The spirit in him
or her traumatically captures the resonance of the expression of the Others face,
a sharply resonating expression that may not even be meaningfully read, an un
bearable screaming of human misery, an unbearable and above all voiceless scream
ing detectably only by the ears of angels.
Only an angelic being can look at God face to face. I t is impossible for a hu
man. But approaching the divine face through the human face nevertheless is
possible for a human. This possibility of approach is provided by the immediately
realized ethical act. Thus God can ask in wonder, Who has revealed to my chil
dren this secret of angels? Which could be stressed by asking the question, Who
is tby the act of looking trying to deceive Death, which is the fair punishment for
abiding in Gods presence-which is the prerogative of angels? or Who is trying
to walk in Gods footsteps, which is to desecrate Gods dwelling by self-sanctift-
cation? Such highly exposed questions could however be quite simply transferred
to the level of the categorical imperative: always act in the way that you would also
see God tn theface of the neighbour. The benefit of the categorical imperative formu
lated in this way is that it has not been construed rationalistically, i.e. it does not
lack the moral motivation that Kierkegaard seeks in Kant so desperately.
I t is definitely no coincidence that Levinas defines ethics as the optics of the
blind (of immediate behaviour, the practical fiat) in a text describing the gift of
41 Jacques Derrida, Points de suspension. Entretiens (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1992), p. 398.
168
the Torah, and uses it to delineate the paradoxical nature of integrity and of the
autonomy of subjectivity,
The direct relation with the true, excluding the prior examination of its terms,
its ideathat is, the reception of Revelationcan only be the relation with a
person, with another. The Torah is given in the Light of a face. The epiphany
of the other person is ipsofacto my responsibility toward him: seeing the other
is already an obligation toward him, A direct opticswithout the mediation
of any ideacan only be accomplished as ethics. Integral knowledge or Reve
lation (the receiving of the Torah) is ethical behaviour.42
The face of the other is thus a revelationa traceof Gods original command
ment, and ethical optics is the very sighting of God! Levinas confirms this else
where, Ethics is an optics of the Divine. Henceforth, no relation with God is
direct or immediate. The Divine can be manifested only through my neighbour.143
Integral knowledge, that specific manner of sighting, is the Revelation or the
autonomy of the meaning that occurs between two mutually competing forces,
that is, the movement of wiping away, the vanishing of Gods presence in the
world, and the movement of approaching it. However, this meaning is shown to
be impossible. I t cannot be thought on the basis of fullness, presence or the iden
tity of the presented. It is only possible as a trace, i.e. as an irreducible relationship
between I and the Other, as the very precondition for the possibility of all mean
ing. I f the Revelation can be described as the situation in which nothing is given
(because the meaning of the commandment cannot be objectified in any way),
then the antecedence of fulfilling before hearing outthe ethical commandment
presents itself as the ^wari-transcendental precondition for the production of mean
ing. The peculiar nature of the non-given Revelation is aptly explained by J .-L.
Marion in:his paper, Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology.14
God, according to him, is revealed based on Himself, and this absolute self-ref
erence belongs to his definition, God gives us Himself, and does not give anything
I
42 Levinas, Nine Taludk Readings, p. 47.
43 Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom. Essays on Judaism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni
versity Press, 1990), p. 159. Levinas argues elsewhere in the similar manner: The moral
relation therefore reunites both self-consciousness and consciousness of God. Ethics is not
the corollary of the vision of God, it is that very vision (Levinas, Difficult Freedom. Essays
on Judaism, p. 17); The vision of God is a moral act. The vision of God is an ethics (Levi
nas, Ibid., p. 275); Already o f itself ethics is an optics (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p.
29), etc.
Jean-Luc Marion, Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology, Critical Inquiry
20, no. 4, Symposium on God (Summer, 1994), pp. 572-591.
169
else besides Himself. This leads to at least three consequences. Firstly, God giving
Himself from the within is thus given outside of any subjective horizon.45The
response to this giving is represented by the (Levina sian?) act of blinding in which
the eye (consciousness) is unable to encompass His meaning. Secondly, the revela
tion is absolutely present. The adjective absolutely is supposed to suggest that it
cannot be localized in time or space without the risk of reducing it to the object
of consciousness. The absolute presence then refers to His absolute invisibility.
God becomes invisible not in spite of his donation but by virtue of this donation."46
Thirdly, the God who gives Himself in this absolute absence is at the same time
the God who has long departed.
The second passage in which we witness the discourse between Raba and the
Sadducee in a peculiar way once again refers to that angelic secret of subjectivity.
The Sadduceei.e. a European, a sceptic, a philosopher or, in short, a mistrustful
personis one for whom the direct relationship with the truth of the Revelation
shall appear as the greatest lack of good judgement and prudence, which is to say
as naivete and stupidity. The peculiar nature of fulfilling before hearing out, the
original affirmation of the truth of Revelation, is described by Levinas in the fol
lowing manner,
The yes ofwe will do. ..is a lucidity as forewarned as scepticism but engaged
as doing is engaged. I t is an angels knowledge, of which all subsequent knowl
edge will be the commentary; it is a lucidity without tentativeness, not pre
ceded by a hypothesis-knowledge, or by a tria 1-knowledge. But such a knowl
edge is one in which its messenger is simultaneously the very message.47
This is the angelic knowledge to which any subsequent knowledge shall only
present itself as a commentary!that is, ethical optics qr the immediacy of the
relationship toward the Other who is not me and thus can command. This is the
law par excellence, or the precondition of lawfulness and justice as such. I t does
not explain, it does not provide reasons^it does not argue, it just commands.
Moreover, it does not represent a transcendental condition of the possibility of
consent or dissent. The yes according to Levinas is unconditional because it is
direct and honestit is the basic ethical configuration.48
45 Ibid., p. 588.
46 Ibid., p. 589.
A1 Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, p. 48.
Ibid.
170
In Hebrew there is a term for this direct and honest uprightness (in French,
droiture): temimut.49Ethics is direct or immediate optics. And similarly direct is
Rabas answer to the scepticism of the Sadducee toward morality: The human is
placed into a relation to the Revelation even before he or she assumes his or her
stance vis--vis the truth. I t is obvious that two contexts intersect here, a religious
context and a philosophical context. I will discuss the philosophical context first.
Levinas uses the term upright for two different terms, droiture and intgrit. Both
these terms suggest the need to adopt an upright stance toward the ethical require
ment that arrives from the Otherthe upright, the simple, but not the naive or
the stupid. Subjectivity is constituted as this original split emerging from the
direct acceptance of responsibility for the Other, And this split means, on the one
hand, an upright and honest stance toward oneself (the problematisation of ones
own hegemony), and, on the other hand, an upright and honest stance toward the
Other. The split is happening at the same time with the problematisation of oneself
as the lifting up of and the giving preference to the other human before oneself.
However, in the text there resonates yet another meaning of droiture and intgri
t which could refer to another, religious context, translated as the integrity of
orthodoxy.
Temimut, the basic ethical configuration or the specific manner of direct sighting,
thus represents the very structure of subjectivity or the elementary precondition
for sanctifying humanity. Humanity is presented by Levinas as lifting the human
up towardif it could be phrased like this-angelic perfection.
Translated by Radomir Masaryk
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*
\
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11115article was produced at the Institute of Philosophy and Ethics of Presov
University as part of the grant project VEGA 2/0201/11.
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