Levinas, Messianism and Parody

Terence Holden

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781472505644
• eBook ISBN: 9781441108869
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

There is no greater testament to Emmanuel Levinas' reputation as an enigmatic thinker than in his meditations on eschatology and its relevance for contemporary thought. Levinas has come to be seen as a principal representative in Continental philosophy - alongside the likes of Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno and Zizek - of a certain philosophical messianism, differing from its religious counterpart in being formulated apparently without appeal to any dogmatic content. To date, however, Levinas' messianism has not received the same detailed attention as other aspects of his wide ranging ethical vision. Terence Holden attempts to redress this imbalance, tracing the evolution of the messianic idea across Levinas' career, emphasising the transformations or indeed displacements which this idea undergoes in taking on philosophical intelligibility. He suggests that, in order to crack the enigma which this idea represents, we must consider not only the Jewish tradition from which Levinas draws inspiration, but also Nietzsche, who ostensibly would represent the greatest rival to the messianic idea in the history of philosophy, with his notion of the 'parody' of messianism.

Chapter 1

Levinas and Rosenzweig:
Messianism and Parody

Introduction

In a consideration of messianism in Levinas, a comparison with Rosenzweig would be a natural point of departure. That Rosenzweig had a profound influence on Levinas is without doubt, and has been the subject of much scholarly attention.¹ From the outset, however, an important qualification to this should be made: there is a danger of over-reading Levinas into the text of Rosenzweig, a fault common in the secondary literature and which has been recognized by more than one scholar.² While it is true here that we are returning to Rosenzweig principally in order to shed light on the eschatological element at work in Levinas, this is in order to highlight the multifaceted character of Rosenzweig’s work which Levinas–Rosenzweig scholarship sometimes neglects. Indeed, rather than looking back on Rosenzweig from the perspective of Levinas, the reverse in fact appears to be a more profitable exercise. There is a certain dynamic which has been observed at work in Rosenzweig’s eschatological vision, which can be profitably transferred to that of Levinas.

In much comparative literature on Rosenzweig and Levinas we are often confronted with what amounts to two allegorical constructions, ‘philosophy’ and ‘Judaism’, the relation between which the messianic dimension in the work of both Levinas and Rosenzweig is to represent in parallel terms the embodiment. There is a tendency to envisage these in essentialist fashion as expressing something invariable and inalienable about philosophy and Judaism as such. This relation is interpreted variously as to details, yet as to its fundamentals there is a broad consensus. I wish to follow, however, and render in greater detail one possible way which departs quite significantly from this consensus, although it does have as precedent some quite notable figures in the context of Rosenzweig scholarship. In so doing, I will give consideration to one aspect of Rosenzweig’s theory perhaps until now not given sufficient prominence, namely the proximity of Rosenzweig’s messianic discourse precisely to the discourse which would seem to be its most implacable rival, that of Nietzsche. I will in turn consider the possibility of transferring this dynamic between philosophy and Judaism from the context of Rosenzweig to Levinas scholarship. Our consideration of Rosenzweig’s work will be limited for the most part to his chef d’oeuvre the Star of Redemption, although appeal will be made to other works wherever useful in explaining certain passages in the latter text.

Messianism and Philosophy in Rosenzweig

An understanding of messianism in Rosenzweig requires an understanding of the specific role it plays within the wider problematic of the Star. Messianism in Rosenzweig is called on to fulfil a quite specific function within this problematic, as one of the nodes of what Rosenzweig frames in quite idiosyncratic fashion as ‘theology’. The need for theology arises, according to Rosenzweig due to the predicament in which a certain branch of contemporary thought finds itself.

To be precise, Rosenzweig’s vision of Redemption takes on significance in the context of his discussion of the relation between philosophy and theology, a discussion which takes as its point of departure the rejection of the Hegelian model for philosophy. This is the philosophy of the comprehensive and impersonal universal into which all individuality, including that of the philosopher himself, is lost. Rejecting this model, Rosenzweig instead allies himself with the model of the ‘new philosopher’ provided principally by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, for whom the philosopher himself, in the very irrationality of his individuality and mortality, becomes the irreducible point of departure from which all philosophical intelligibility is to be articulated. Rosenzweig summarizes this transition: ‘no longer is the objectively intelligible All its subject, or the intellection of this objectivity. Now it is the Weltanschauung, the idea with which an individual mind reacts to the impression which the world makes on him’ (Rosenzweig, 1971 p. 105). This is the philosophy with which Rosenzweig engages and from within which he formulates his own vision. The possibility of a trans-personal universal is abandoned in the face of the perspectivism of a subject in immediate and vital engagement with the world: ‘its new point of departure is the subjective, the extremely personal self, more than that: the incomparable self, immersed in itself’ (ibid. p. 106).

Rosenzweig outlines the problematic which arises given such a philosophy:

The old type of philosopher, impersonal by profession, a mere deputy of the naturally one-dimensional history of philosophy is replaced by a highly personal type, the philosopher of the Weltanschauung, the point of view. And here the questionable aspect of the new philosophy steps into plain view, and all serious philosophical efforts are bound to be accosted by the questions put to Nietzsche: Is this still science? (ibid. p. 105)

The problematic for the Weltanschauung philosopher is namely how to philosophize without any element of objectivity. Moses underlines the importance of Nietzsche in the formative period of the Star of Redemption. From biographical sources it is evident that Nietzsche provoked in Rosenzweig a fall into relativism and into scepticism. It was to counter this that Rosenzweig began to give more weighty consideration to religion as a possible solution (Moses, 2003, p. 28). The starting point and basis for the consideration of religion, Judaism and eschatology is a certain conception of Nietzschean philosophy. ‘For the sake of its very status as science, philosophy today requires theologians to philosophize’ writes Rosenzweig. Equally however: ‘the theologian whom philosophy requires for the sake of its scientific status is himself a theologian who requires philosophy – for the sake of his integrity’ (Rosenzweig, 1971, p. 106). Theology equally ‘requires’ philosophy for its ‘integrity’, the ‘integrity’ namely of subjective experience. Theology can import nothing of its narrative and articles of faith from outside that cannot be articulated in terms of Nietzsche’s Weltanschauung orientated philosophy. In other words, the Weltanschauung must be transcended from the inside. Theology, Judaism, messianism are to be formulated from within the parameters provided and exigencies imposed by this philosophy.

Theology in the Star of Redemption is composed of a narrative involving a vision of cosmological time staggered across three great cosmological episodes: Creation, Revelation and Redemption. This narrative charts the movement whereby God, Man and World, initially utterly separate and self-enclosed, emerge from separation to reach out towards each other. They do this in such a fashion that they transform each other and themselves and by so doing create a configuration encompassing a set of interrelations. This configuration is to represent the ultimate fulfilment and indeed redemption of these three elements, including God who in the process of the narrative redeems himself of his own self-contradiction which the original separation of the elements which God should encompass represents. This narrative in fact has four stages. The first is that of the ‘proto-cosmos’, the state of fragmentation ‘prior’ to Creation in which all three elements exist in separation. Creation then appears principally as a relation between God and the World. Revelation is principally a relation between God and Man through the World. Redemption in turn is framed principally as a relation between Man and World which God oversees.

In this narrative special privilege is given to the perspective of Man, which results in turn in special privilege being granted to the cosmological event of Revelation: the cosmological narrative becomes, in other words, the basis of an existential structure which pivots on the axis of Revelation. Revelation is the first meeting point in Rosenzweig’s text of all three elements together: God, Man and World. There has at this point already passed the cosmological episode of Creation, through which the cosmos has become poised for Revelation: God has left self-enclosure to create the World, while the World has left its self-enclosure by expressing its incompleteness, and thus dependency on a Creator. The state in which Man exists before the episode of Revelation is described in terms of the self-enclosure and ‘solitude’ of the ‘tragic’ Man detached from the World, insofar as he pits his unique individuality against the impersonality of the World. The event of Revelation, however, is an interpolation of this ego by God across the World. A self is born in this call from God, a self which emerges from the chrysalis of the detached ego immured in itself. The purely Nietzschean subject, that is, immersed in his own subjective Weltanschauung, his own engagement with the world, is called beyond itself and thus to objectivity.

Revelation is that which constitutes ‘the bridge from maximum subjectivity to maximum objectivity’, as Rosenzweig puts it. Revelation is here understood as the ‘miracle of the personal experience of revelation’ (ibid. p. 106). Revelation is not intended in the sense of a historical Revelation within a specific religion. Rosenzweig rejects the notion of ‘religion’, insofar as this implies a separation between ‘religious’ experience and mere ‘life’: ‘Life’ is already more than mere life, is already in a sense itself religious. The events, the ‘Ereignisse’ of ‘everyday life’ which is always more than simple life are the foundation of Revelation. Rosenzweig offers a primordial form of Revelation, in parallel to that offered by Otto for example, upon which the specifically or positively religious sense is subsequently based: ‘everyone experiences it at some point, because it is given to everyone in some form’ (Rosenzweig, 1998a, p. 114). This ‘primal religion’ for Rosenzweig is essentially the religion of the pure, structural experience of the world.

Revelation becomes the ‘miracle of the personal experience of Revelation’, which can ultimately be abridged to the ‘miracle of personal experience’. Personal experience constitutes a form of Revelation insofar as it constitutes a form of ‘miracle’. Experience takes on this sense insofar as Rosenzweig interprets miracle according to what he frames as its original sense: miracle, Rosenzweig tells us, is not primordially an event which defies understanding or understood physical laws; it is rather an event which represents the fulfilment of a previous prophecy. To be precise, what is fulfilled in the miracle of personal experience is the ‘prophecy’ of Creation. Creation is here understood as the primordial ‘structure’ of the world as a dynamic between individual and species called alternatively the ‘world spirit’ or the ‘logos of the world’. The ‘world spirit’ is characterized by universal validity, insofar as being able to ensure that all of the particulars which stream into it can be allocated a place, without which the meaningful character of experience would not be possible. For each individual to be meaningful and comprehensible it must take a place in the whole. The ‘world spirit’ is both the universal and global integrity of this ‘logos of the world’ at each moment, guaranteeing the meaningful character of each individual experience. Yet the ‘logos’ for Rosenzweig is not to be a rigid formalistic structure. First, it is not a ‘logic’ but what Rosenzweig calls a universal ‘grammar’ of Creation, in which the world is ordered according to a set of general linguistic rather than logical categories: Creation is for Rosenzweig the ‘language’ of God which already in some sense calls to Man. Beyond this, the ‘logos’ is not an atemporal and rigid system of discrete schemata but rather a multi-dimensional and evolving ‘configuration’: ‘threads and relationships run from every individual point to every other, and to the whole’ in which each particular finds its own unique way to the universal logos via its relation with other particulars (Rosenzweig, 1971, p. 52). The world ‘logos’ or ‘spirit’ is not set in stone: it in fact requires constant renewal, given the constant flow of new life and new particularity that enters it.

This logos of the world is caught between prophecy and the miracle of its fulfilment, or between Creation and Revelation, by virtue of the very temporality of the world spirit already implied in Creation. The passage from Creation to Revelation signifies the manner in which the ‘logos of the world’ is put into action with each ‘lived’ moment. Creation for Rosenzweig does not signify a once and for all finished act in the beginning. Creation signifies the manner in which the world expresses its dependence on its Creator not once and for all in the past, but always throughout time by virtue of the fact that, with the constant birth of new particulars from all corners of Creation, the latter is in constant need of a renewal of its ability to render these particulars meaningful, to integrate them into its universal configuration. For this it requires the constant creative activity of God. Thus the world comes out of its apparent separation and shows its dependence on God. God in effect, according to Rosenzweig, recreates universality for the world at each moment. At any given moment, an object can only be affirmed as meaningful, if it can be understood as ‘thus and not otherwise’ (ibid. p. 27). Experience at any given moment must function, that is, according to universal categories. These categories however require renewal, indeed recreation, at each moment. The miracle of Creation, in which it reveals its dependence on a Creator, takes place at every moment and signifies the fashion in which essence can at once be universal and yet be in a process of constant alteration; Each eternity lasts for only a moment: ‘It is the moment which, within its own constricted space, harbours all the weight of destiny, a destiny not “destined” but suddenly there and yet as inescapable as though it were destined from yore’ (Rosenzweig, 1971, p. 160). God renews the world at each moment, creating an ever new momentary eternity without which neither language nor meaningful experience of the world could exist. The logos or grammar of Creation is brought to life at each moment: it becomes speech. This logos or grammar could not forecast or comprehend this moment in advance, because each moment is absolutely singular. It is as such that the grammar of Creation is one of prophecy as opposed to prediction. This prophecy is ‘miraculously’ nonetheless always fulfilled with each moment, with the ever successful and evolving recreation of the meaningful configuration of the world, since despite the absolute singularity of the moment the prophesied structured ‘logos’ or ‘spirit’ of the world is once more accomplished. Revelation represents the advent of objectivity as the ‘vitality’ of the absolute singular moment which fulfils the prophecy of the general logos of Creation in embodying it in ever unique ways.

It is via this process that the experience of Revelation allows contact with the field of ‘maximum objectivity’ beyond the Weltanschauung of the self-enclosed subject. Revelation signifies here the fashion in which the subject himself experiences the novelty of this renewal of the World across time as a relation between himself and the Creator who has accomplished it. The world configuration was valid only for the previous moment: in the transitory present moment this configuration is in the process of being renewed. This present transition is the moment of the pure receptivity of the subject in which the subject is open to an objectivity beyond itself. The moment of Revelation is the moment of ‘maximum’ objectivity in the pure present in the transition in which the present world configuration or world spirit fructifies, crystallizes. Rosenzweig writes of this transition in terms of the object of experience ‘irradiated by the effulgence of a revelation taking place at that very moment’ in which it ‘emerges from its substantive past into its vital present’ (ibid. p. 161). As Rosenzweig relates in the Urzelle, the individual at his particular point in the world experiences an individual morsel of the world following one unique path in the multi-stranded course towards the world configuration (Rosenzweig, 2000, p. 63).

This object as suddenly experienced, encountered in the present, represents God revealing himself through the object. Revelation signifies the momentary vivifying of the object of experience against the background of the renewal of the world configuration of which it is an exemplar. Revelation signifies the experience of the present as the layer of experience in which God, who created the World in the past, expresses himself as Creator. Alternatively, the object is expressed as the Creation of the Creator, is imbued with His ‘breath’ (Rosenzweig, 1971, p. 161). In this vital moment in which God expresses himself through the renewal of Creation, the full weight of the objectivity of God’s potency in Creation is felt. This objectivity is experienced subjectively as the exigency of this call coming in love precisely from elsewhere than the Weltanschauung of the subject. The grammar of Creation becomes speech as the speech of the Creator through His renewed Creation. Faith for Rosenzweig is not thus tied, it is worth remarking, to the realm of the subjective par excellence but, inspired by Schelling’s ‘positive philosophy’, rather the opposite: it is tied to the realm of ‘maximum objectivity’, an objectivity which is to supplement the limited perspectivistic subjectivity. Also worth remarking is the radical character of this move towards objectivity on behalf of faith, as perhaps the condition of possibility of such a move: faith in God can be formulated in this fashion as objective since it has become the experience of pure, structural objectivity as such. Faith is no longer the affirmation of something beyond a given set of present facts but instead becomes one with factuality (Tatsächlichkeit) in itself: it becomes, as Moses puts it, the pure receptivity to the pre-reflexive and non-conceptual factuality of the world. Revelation becomes alternatively, as Cohen puts it, ‘the very eventfulness of the present’ (Cohen, 1994, p. 76).

Built upon this purely structural experience of Revelation, a structural or ontological event upon which an episodic Revelation within the course of history and individual biography is nonetheless also articulated, the character of Redemption in Rosenzweig can be understood.³ Redemption constitutes namely a further modality of this dynamic between ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’ determinative for Creation and Revelation, and which for Rosenzweig constitutes ‘theology’ or ‘religion’ in its most primal form. The fundament of this religion is Revelation as the moment of passivity and receptivity in which objectivity is revealed from beyond the limits of its perspectivism. Redemption represents the mirror image of this moment of Revelation, in which the event of Revelation is reflected back, via and as Man’s vision, upon the World. Subjectivity is not the pure spontaneous source of objectivity, but contains the moment of ‘faith’ as the passive reception of objectivity beyond its own spontaneity. Revelation embodies this moment of passive reception; Redemption on the contrary ‘inverses’ Revelation, as Rubinstein puts it: it signifies in reverse as the subsequently active engagement of this subject with the objective world rendered possible by Revelation (Rubinstein, 1999, p. 52). Once opened to this objectivity, Man who was formerly enclosed within this Weltanschauung now contributes to the further development of this objectivity. Revelation is the concentration into the transitory moment of the objectivity of the world to the subject. Redemption is the inverse process by which Man brings stability, permanence to objectivity, redeeming it of its merely momentary character. Rather than turning within his own circle in self-immersion, Man now aims, in a manner we shall explore, towards cultivating objectivity into enduring ‘Being’, indeed endowing it with ‘immortality’ and ‘eternity’. The momentary appearance of objectivity in Revelation across which God calls to Man is still characterized by ‘phenomenality’, argues Rosenzweig, and must be redeemed of this as such inso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction
• 1 Levinas and Rosenzweig: Messianism and Parody
• 2 Levinas, Messianism and Humanism
• 3 Messianism and Straightforwardness
• 4 Messianism in Totality and Infinity
• 5 Messianism in Otherwise than Being
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index