"My effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an immanence, and that there is no rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge; and on the other hand, that in communication of knowledge one is found beside the Other, not confronted with him, not in the rectitude of the in-front-of-him. But being in direct relation with the Other is not to thematize the Other and consider him in the same manner as one considers a known object, nor to communicate a knowledge to him. In reality, the fact of being is what is most private; existence is the sole thing I cannot communicate; I can tell about it, but I cannot share my existence. Solitude thus appears as the isolation which marks the very event of being. The social is beyond ontology." "...I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his affair. It is precisely insofar as the relation between the Other and me is not reciporcal that I am subjection to the Other; and I am "subject" essentially in this sense. It is I who support all...The I always has one responsibility more than all the others."
Levinas, the French philosopher, was born in Kaunas, Lithuania to Jewish parents. He moved to France in 1923, and, between the years of 1928 and 1929, resided in Germany where he studied under Husserl and Heidegger. Levinas published his first book, Theorie de l'intuition dans la phenomenologie de Husserl, in 1930, and became influential in France for his translations of Husserl and Heidegger into French. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, Levinas began to formulate his own philosophy which became increasingly critical of Heidegger's philosophy, and, with his critique of prior phenomenological thinkers and Western philosophy in general, Levinas began to assert the primacy of the ethical relationship with the Other.
Levinas' scholarship directly influenced the movement of existential-phenomenology in France. His translations and secondary texts influenced thinkers such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In the last several decades, Levinas has become increasingly influential in continental philosophy, and his influence is evident in Jacques Derrida's more recent writings, where he has increasingly emphasized a Levinasian ethics as being at the heart of deconstruction. Derrida, a close colleague of Levinas, influenced Levinas' attempt in his book, Otherwise than Being (1998), to go beyond the still too ontological language of his Totality and Infinity (1969).
Levinas' philosophy is directly related to his experiences during World War II. His family died in the Holocaust, and, as a French citizen and soldier, Levinas himself became a prisoner of war in Germany. While Levinas was forced to perform labor as a prisoner of war, his wife and daughter were kept hidden in a French monastary until his return. This experience, coupled with Heidegger's affiliation to National Socialism during the war, clearly and understandably led to a profound crisis in Levinas' enthusiasm for Heidegger. "One can forgive many Germans," Levinas once wrote, "but there are some Germans it is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to forgive Heidegger." At the same time, Levinas felt that Heidegger could not simply be forgotten, but most be gotten beyond. If Heidegger is concerned with Being, Levinas is concerned with ethics, and ethics, for Levinas, is beyond being--Otherwise than Being.
Levinas' work, particularly beginning with his Totality and Infinity (1969), is a critique of Heidegger and Husserl, not to mention all of Western philsophy, in the service of ethics. Levinas is concerned that Western philosophy has been preoccupied with Being, the totality, at the expense of what is otherwise than Being, what lies outside the totality of Being as transcendent, exterior, infinite, alterior, the Other. Levinas wants to distinguish ethics from ontology. Levinas' ethics is situated in an "encounter" with the Other which cannot be reduced to a symmetrical "relationship." That is, it cannot be localized historically or temporally. "Ethics," in Levinas' sense, does not mean what is typically referred to as "morality," or a code of conduct about how one should act. For Levinas (1969), "ethics" is a calling into question of the "Same":
"A calling into question of the Same--which cannot occur within the egoistic spontaneity of the Same--is brought about by the Other. We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other ethics. The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplishmed as a calling into question of my spontaneity as ethics. Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the Other by the Same, of the Other by Me, is concretely produced as the calling into question of the Same by the Other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes the critical essence of knowledge." (Totality and Infinity, p. 33)
Levinas adopts a style of writing that is fluid and includes self-effacing double-movements. Ethics cannot be reduced to a set of propositions--cannot be reduced to the Same (or, thinking in terms of Lacan, to the One of the Symbolic)--and so Levinas must repeatedly unfold and then withdraw his propositions. Even as he uses the language of ontology, his style of writing endeavor's to resist ontology's totalizing grasp. "Western philosophy," writes Levinas (1969), "has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the Other to the Same by interposition of a middle and neutral terms that ensures the comprehension of being" (pp. 33-34). As ontology, philosophy is narcissistic, seeking pleasure by incorporating the other into the Same. Philosophy, in this sense, is an "egology" whenever it asserts the primacy of the self, the Same, the subject or Being. Ontology as totality admits to no outside. Thus, if Levinas is to preserve the Other, the Other cannot become an object of knowledge or experience within the totality of an egology. In the enjoyment (jouissance) of egology, the I is the "living from" which uses up the other in order to fulfill its own needs and desires. The "transmutation of the other into the same," writes Levinas (1969), is "the essence of enjoyment" (p. 113). The other, in this sense, however, is not the Other. Only the other, not the Other, can become a source of enjoyment. The transcendence of the other is not a threat to the self, but rather a source of satisfaction and happiness:
"The I is, to be sure, happiness, presence at home with itself. But, as sufficiency in its non-sufficiency, it remains in the non-I; it is enjoyment of ‘something else,' never of itself. Autochthonous, that is, rooted in what it is not, it is nevertheless, wtihin this enrootedness independent and separated." (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 1969, p. 152)
The relation with the Other, however, is a "relation without relation" (p. 79). The Other is never reduced to the Same, thus remaining unknowable, outside of the totality of the Same. The encounter with the Other calls egology into question. The "I" can no longer live in the fantasy of a unique possession of the world. The power and freedom of the Same are called into question. The Other cannot be possessed, resists enjoyment, and, as the I encounters this Otherr, it is called back to the meaning of its freedom--a freedom which is founded by the Other and which, in this encounter, is called to responsibility and obligation towards the Other as genuine freedom.
As responsible for the infinite Other, I am called to guard her against the systematic determination of any moral law. "For Levinas, the God that provides sanctity for the Other can never be reduced to a set of commandments because the Other calls me only as herself" (Cornell, 1998, p. 140). To reduce the Other who calls me as a unique self in the face-to-face to a set of a priori moral principles is a violence to her alterity. And since my responsibility to the Other is to the Other in her uniqueness and alterity, my responsibility is infinite. "It is precisely because the Good is the good of the Other that it cannot be fully actualized" (Cornell, 1998, p. 141).
The French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) made ethics the central point of his philosophical inquiries. He considered ethics to be the prima philosophia, the first and foremost central issue of all philosophical investigation, in spite of the Greek tradition that from the time of Aristotle onwards had always allotted this first place to metaphysics. Levinas believed that metaphysics and ethics were in fact one and the same. In this equation of metaphysics and ethics he wanted to underscore the Hebraic element in Western thought, though he knew well that the Greek Socrates also had made endeavors to show the metaphysics of ethics. But the difference with Socrates is the fact that Levinian ethics are more rooted in a religious view on life, while Socrates wanted to show the rationality of right ethical conduct.
This has brought a number of students of philosophy to believe that there is a mystical element in the thought of Levinas, precisely because he wants to transcend rationality as the source of his ethics. This makes it worthwhile to consider the similarities and the dissimilarities between the thought of Levinas and mysticism. That way we may perhaps in the end be able to answer the question whether Levinas was a mystic or not; whether his thought is mystical or otherwise indebted to mysticism.
Ethics
To understand Levinas´ thought we must begin with his teacher, the German Edmund Husserl. Husserl had discovered that all consciousness is characterized by intentionality. With intentionality he meant that consciousness has an innate tendency to objectify all external objects and all internal and external psychisms. This objectifying isn´t done in any random manner. It has a certain purpose built into it: it aims at making all exteriors fall into the very matrix of consciousness itself. According to Husserl every act of objectification is in fact an act of subjectification. Consciousness wants the object to become an object to me as a subject. So this will of consciousness is to equate, to make what is strange familiar, to make the other the same. All perception, all experiencing, all understanding -all modi operandi of consciousness- have precisely this intentionality: they aim at possessing the outside world in logical terms, to make psychologically and intellectually mine what seems remote and strange.
Levinas and Jacques Derrida both agree: this intentionality of consciousness is a kind of violence. Consciousness wants to conquer the world by objectifying it. It does not need be. It takes in, with the intent of adapting it to its own. The Other must become the Same. So in the postmodern thought of Derrida this intentionality becomes problematic. Rationality and (relative) consciousness are dismantled as having, so to speak, criminal traits. They want to rob existence of the thing-in-itself. This according to Derrida is the metaphysics of violence.
This criticism of Husserl is also the starting point of Levinas. He wants to show that there is a metaphysical element in existence that always remains totally strange to me. This element defies all objectification of consciousness. It can never be expressed in the classical Greek language of logical thinking. Because of its total strangeness it escapes me. It can never be pinned down. But nevertheless it makes an appeal. It wants itself to be heard, though it can never be understood. According to Levinas this strange other is the voice of ethics itself. It is the goodness of existence that confronts me, shakes me, disturbs me and drags me away from my self preoccupation and self complacency. It can never be subdued because it will always remain the remote and infinite other.
This voice of the eternal other comes to me, as a religious imperative, by way of the countenance of my fellow human being. As an individual I am an autonomous being striving to prolong my own enjoyment by way of consumption, housing, work and the accumulation of property. In these aspects I can shape my own life and I´m free to do as I want. My aim is to bring everything in life to fit the rules that I have set up. But there is something mysterious in the countenance of the other that upsets me and turns my autonomy into an heteronomy. When confronted with the other I loose my freedom. I become responsible for his well being. I cannot escape the claim of ethics in taking care of my fellow human being. The other confronts me with the fact that I will never be able to secure my life on my own. Somehow life needs otherness also.
At the metaphysical-ethical level of existence I can never escape the otherness of the countenance and its appeal. The mysteriousness of that individual other keeps upsetting me. I can not reduce that countenance in front of me to a class or a category. But at an ontological level -ie. within an ontology of immanence- the other becomes reduced to an impersonal class and is fitted into the totalitarian scheme of categorization. He is reduced from a being to being. He becomes part of a greater field and so loses his compelling uniqueness. Instead of that countenance in front of me he becomes simply a nigger, a gypsy, a Jew. At this ontological level violence again is possible. Because the other is robbed of his unique otherness.
The ethical relationship is asymmetrical. The ethical obligation I feel for the other is far greater than the claims I may have on him. Levinas speaks in this respect in almost religious language: the other comes to me ´from above´, he ´descends on me´, like God spoke from the heights of mount Sinai to his people. The countenance of the other is far greater than me, because my own self is always the exception. I may try to picture the other as a self too, but I never succeed in doing so. The self of the other always remains enigmatic, escaping all objectification of consciousness. I am never able to see the other as she or he really is. This makes my small, relatively familiar `I` the exception in a world of silent, hidden and mysterious selves.
So the essence of ethics is metaphysical. Ethics descends on me from a hidden, supranatural world of otherness. But a posteriori, after the instigations of an ethical appeal have descended on me, an element of comparison, an element of rationalization presents itself. Then I start to think about the right way to act. Then justice wants some questions to be answered. I will have to make some -often difficult- choices. This is the problem of justice, because there is always a third who makes the ethical relationship with my fellow human being more complicated. Who should I help first? Who should I help more? Why? This problem would not be there if there wasn´t a third. The third impels us to think.
Criticism
This is a nutshell the philosophy of Levinas. The aim of this article is to compare this philosophy with the insights of mysticism. So it is best to start this criticism now. Later on some other points in the ethics of Levinas will be addressed, but they will be presented in the course of argumentation.
The most fundamental difference between mysticism and Levinas is the axiom of mysticism that the otherness of the other is just an illusion. At a fundamental level I and the other are the same. We have the same divine substantia. We all share the same Self with a capital. When I look the other in the eye and when the other looks at me, we recognize ourselves in our eyes. We love and respect each other, because we are basically the same. This is not a metaphor meaning ´we are all in it together´ or ´we are put up with each other´, no, this is very literally so: my deepest `I´ is no different from your deepest `I´.
Schopenhauer also has pointed to the fact that all ethics are based on this mutual recognition of sameness. When I see someone on the verge of drowning, I will not hesitate a second. Even before I have given it any thought, I will have undone my trousers to get into the water. The help I will give my fellow human being in such distress is not provoked by mental considerations. The instigation to act immediately is premental. It comes from the metaphysical level of Self, from our shared godliness. Before I have thought about, it flashes through my heart -not through my mind-: 'there is ´me´ lying in the water! I have to save ´me´'.
In these premental, ethical and instinctive feelings I equate the life of that illusionary ´other´ with my own life. My respect for the life of others -and in fact for all life- comes from the fact that my deepest and true Self and the Self of that submergent other over there in the water are nothing more and nothing less than Life itself. Life recognizes Life. Forces are joined and ranks are closed. In these decisive moments of great danger and distress all otherness -which was an illusion anyhow- falls away. Man can only be so good and so brave because he is in fact saving ´himself´, when he is saving others. But remember, the ethics of help and braveness are premental: ´why did you do it, risking your own life?´ ´I don´t know. I simply acted.`
If the other would be a total -even a metaphysically total, as Levinas would have it- stranger to me, it would leave me stone cold. I would shrug, walk away and think the old testamentian ´am I my brother´s keeper?` The strangeness of the other would prevent me from having any inner connection. But as it is, in respect, love and all ethics I leave aside the otherness of the other and focus on what we have in common, which is not simply an attribute (which would be an indifferens, in Stoic terms), but which is our deepest substantia.
It is precisely as Levinas describes: the other is holy to me, he has a greater claim on me than I have on him, he comes to me ´from above´ etc. But it is so for reasons that are precisely contrary to the arguments Levinas presents. The otherness of the other is not an epiphany of the sacred. It is an epiphenomenon of the sacred; merely an illusion that is set aside on decisive and deeply felt moments of being touched by the other. The other moves my heart, because she is the God that I actually am. This feeling strikes me, moves me, upsets me and makes me wonder about Who I actually am. This is the source of all ethics: the thunderbolt strikes me that I am actually the other and the other is actually me.
Levinas is right that there is otherness in the other. But his otherness is the same as my own otherness is to me. He is as other to me as I am other to myself. For the otherness of the other is only at the level of personality and ego. At this level I am also other to mySelf. If I identify myself with this level -the wrong assumption that I am so and so and this and that- I also become estranged to myself. I will then be other than myself, an idea not very accurately analyzed within the phenomenology of Husserl nor within the ethics of Levinas, but which is one of the basic insights of mysticism. When I am other than myself, I will also become other to the other. He will not recognize me anymore. If I build up a too strong personalty he will in fact mock me for it, disrespect me for it, aye, even hate me for it. Then the Levinian metaphysicality of all ethics is lost between the other and me.
The mystics also speak of the countenance of the other, but for them it is the mask, the persona, that hides the true essence of the other. That´s why the mystics close their eyes and look for the Original Face -both of the self and the other-, ie. the countenance we have before we were born, which is our true identity if only we would somehow manage to strip ourself of the so and so, the this and that and the then and then. So it is not the countenance of the other that stirs me. It is the eyes of the other that make the appeal, because the eyes reflect our deepest soul. That´s why we never look another in the eyes when we humiliate or violate each other. If I would look the other in the eyes I would only see myself. This would refrain me from any violation.
But the countenance is the mask, the persona, the hypocrite, the stage player. I use my countenance to play my role and hide the real me that I am. One can easily check this with a little experiment. All it takes is to take a mirror and hold it before our face. Within a few seconds we will be ´making faces´ and mimicking to the mirror. Instantaneously the role playing begins. I will play the sad person, or the smiling person, or the person in need etc. We do this all the time, when we meet people. Thus the face is very cleverly trained in serving our needs of the moment. What the personality wants, the face reflects. But the eyes never lie. For Levinas the countenance reflects the countenance of God, after who´s image we are made. But only the eyes do so in fact, the countenance never. For the eyes reflect the divine Self which is the true center of every being. And right away, prementally, it shivers and moves in my soul: `it is Me that I see there in the eyes before me!´ But only because I am able, by looking deep into the eyes, to lift up the mask and see behind any countenance the other is showing.
Synchronicity and diachronicity
The assumption of the fundamental otherness of the other reveals a deep inner contradiction within the philosophy of Levinas. To make this clear we shall have to describe two philosophical terms Levinas uses in explaining the workings of consciousness and time:
synchronicity
My consciousness collects all sorts of sense impressions, together with the thoughts, feelings, and memories that I have, to bring them together at a single point in time: at this present moment at which I am conscious. Relative consciousness ´sucks in´ the past, the present and the future, so to speak. It does so to give an overall view of my life and its surroundings. Its purpose is to give meaning to every object that is (re)presented. This is the synchronicity of consciousness. Its working is a presence in the here and now. It condenses all time to this nunctuous point of synchronicity. Its function is to shed light on everything that has happened, happens and will happen, but it can only do so at some present moment. I may move the beam of light backwards to the past or forwards to the future, but the projecting of the light and the projector of the light are only at the synchronic level of a nunctuous moment.
diachronicity
So consciousness works at a synchronic level. But my life and my relative existence are located in time. Living as an organism I am in the claws of time. The fleeting of time tends to escape the control of my consciousness. Time has a life of its own. It devours me. In the end it will even annihilate me and my consciousness. Then I will again have fallen into the dark abyss of time. This is diachronic time, the time outside of my consciousness. My consciousness aims at shedding light on this diachronic time to give some meaning to it all, but it only succeeds incompletely and piecemeal.So in the existential philosophy of Levinas the world of light is only the world of our consciousness. The world of light is only at the synchronic level. But outside of this world of light there is the world of diachronic time. This world escapes me. So it is a world of darkness, a world of meaninglessness. I am its victim.
The existence of this world confronts me when the synthesizing capacity of my consciousness has failed me, like in the hours of sleeplessness, in suffering or in the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of erotic pleasure. Levinas calls this world the `il y a`, the ´there is...` of diachronic time.Now the great problem within the philosophy of Levinas is: the other must belong to the dark world of ´il y a´, precisely because he is essentially other than my consciousness. He escapes the light of my consciousness. He always remains the Other. He can never totally be reduced to the synchronic world of the Same. Would this be so, he would not, in Levinian terms, escape the ´violence´ of my consciousness. He would be reduced to the me. This reduction would show my lack of respect and my hunger for control. The other remains outside of my devouring consciousness in the diachronic world of time.
According to Levinas, it is precisely because of this otherness, because of his being outside my synchronicity, that he can make his ethical appeal.But the problem is: the world of ´il y a´ is a world of meaninglessness, of darkness, not the world of light. If the other belongs to this world of ´il y a´ he would be also meaningless to me. I would not have any connection with him whatsoever, but he would haunt my sleepless nights as a source of ignorance, fear and resentment. My consciousness would not be able to locate him in synchronic time. He would literally be a total stranger to my world. In short: his ethical appeal would be meaningless and therefor refused.
Levinas proposed a solution to this problem that has some resemblances with mysticism. He said that not all of the other belonged to the dark world of immanent being, the diachronic world of ´il y a´. The ethical element in my meeting with the other belonged to a world beyond immanent being. He called this the transcendent world of ´other-than-being´, autrement qu`être. All goodness, all ethics come from this other world that is beyond the being of this world.The mystics would nod and assent to this solution, but not wholeheartedly. There would still remain qualms and doubts about this solution. For they would say that precisely this belonging to the world of ´autrement qu´être´ makes us ethically the same. It takes away all otherness of the other. It is not the Other that is the source of all goodness in the world, it is the Same. So the difference between mysticism and Levinas comes down to the problem of the One and the Many. So let´s see what the mystics have to say about sameness and otherness. The metaphysics of mysticism.
The existentialism of Levinas accords consciousness only a place within me. So consciousness in the books of Levinas is always a relative consciousness. But in mysticism my consciousness is part of (or more correctly: overlaps with) a larger kosmic consciousness, called Pure or Absolute Consciousness. So in mysticism the beam of light is not only within me, but it is everywhere in the kosmos. This is the misconception that I have to liberate myself from, that I would be the sole keeper of the beam of light. Like Plato said, at a transcendent level we are all inhabitants of a world of light. The only thing I have to do is to transcend this world of immanence. In this transcendence I will find the meaning I am looking for.In religious language: I will have to find God to find meaning. Levinas would assent to this transcendence, but the unsurmountable difference with mysticism is his description of the complete Otherness of God. In mysticism we believe that God and the deepest Me are one and the same.
But suppose Levinas would retort: ´with the complete Otherness of the ´autrement qu´être´, of the other and of God I mean that they always remain different from and strange to my personal me. Is this not an insight of mysticism also, that the form and the personal are merely an illusion? What else does the word ´illusion´ mean than that it is other than Reality? Does this not mean that the substratum and the epiphenomenon of form are incompatible? I do not see any fundamental difference between my philosophy and the philosophy of mysticism.`But I think this is a wrong explanation of the metaphysics of mysticism. For in mysticism the One and the Many are ontologically different -and here Levinas is right- but they also share the same metaphysics, which means that both the One and the Many share the same godliness. The One is in the Many and the Many are in the One. This is the great mystical paradox: ´This world is illusionary. Only Brahman is real. The world is Brahman´. So God is never a stranger to me. Not even to my personal me. He is not the completely Other.
He is the fundamentally Same. In mysticism we transcend all duality, also the duality man versus God. But in the Hebraic thought of Levinas God remains so holy and inapproachable that He always remains the completely Other. The duality is not transcended, but strengthened instead. I think this misconception stems from a wrong understanding of the nature of divinity. For it is true that the deepest godliness of myself, of the other, of all existence always remains to a certain degree unknown and unknowable to me. But we must not confuse this unknowability of God with a complete otherness of God. That something is unknown or not known yet does not mean that it is other. This is jumping to conclusions.If God or my fellow human being were completely other than me, I would not have any rapport with them nor with that other world that is beyond immanent being and its beings, but that is my true home. In mysticism this rapport is felt so strongly because all differences between this so called me and this so called other are in fact illusionary. But let´s not stress the argument too much, because the point is made.Similarities between Levinian thought and mysticism.
The mystical element in the thought of Levinas is his analysis of the ´autrement qu´être´ as mainly ethical. His ´autrement´ is the source of all quality and goodness in the world. Mysticism agrees on this. Whether we believe in an unsurmountable duality between God and the world -as Levinas does- or whether we believe that godliness is the essential element of all life -as mysticism does-, we both believe that quality, happiness and goodness depend on some sort of transcendence. The being moved, the being touched, the friendly smile, the arm around the shoulder, in short, compassion, friendliness and altruistic behavior all have their roots in a mysterious component of life, that is the source as well as the telos of all existence. Levinas and mysticism also agree on the fact that there is infinity and that this fact leads to a fundamental unknowability of the world. When our thought tries to capture this infinity within the finity of its own paradigmata, it behaves in a violent and totalitarian way. It wants to shrink the infinity and the forever newness of the world to fit its own views and claims. This is for Levinas and also for mysticism the ultimate hybris. This brought him to believe that the intentionality of our relative consciousness and its seeking for truth within a mental paradigma have to be transcended. Here Levinas and Zen have much in common. Like Zen, Levinas also wants to break out to a level of no-mind. But for Levinas this outbreak is mainly an ethical one. I can only break out in the ethical relationship I have with the other. In the confrontation with the other I am forced by God to break out. So for Levinas the other is the ultimate meditation in life.
Amsterdam December 8 2005
