Prophetic Politics

Emmanuel Levinas and the Sanctification of Suffering

Philip J. Harold

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780821443156
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

In Prophetic Politics, Philip J. Harold offers an original interpretation of the political dimension of Emmanuel Levinas's thought. Harold argues that Levinas's mature position in Otherwise Than Being breaks radically with the dialogical inclinations of his earlier Totality and Infinity and that transformation manifests itself most clearly in the peculiar nature of Levinas's relationship to politics.

Levinas's philosophy is concerned not with the ethical per se, in either its applied or its transcendent forms, but with the source of ethics. Once this source is revealed to be an anarchic interruption of our efforts to think the ethical, Levinas's political claims cannot be read as straightforward ideological positions or principles for political action. They are instead to be understood "prophetically, " a position that Harold finds comparable to the communitarian critique of liberalism offered by such writers as Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. In developing this interpretation, which runs counter to formative influences from the phenomenological tradition, Harold traces Levinas's debt to phenomenological descriptions of such experiences as empathy and playfulness.

Prophetic Politics will highlight the relevance of the phenomenological tradition to contemporary ethical and political thought—a long-standing goal of the series—while also making a significant and original contribution to Levinas scholarship.

CHAPTER 1

DEATH, ESCAPE, AND THINKING BEYOND BEING

At the outset of his first original philosophical work, On Escape, Levinas traces the path taken by modern philosophy. The modern approach begins with human freedom and the limitations the real imposes on that freedom—the “non-I” restricts the I, and the I “revolts” against this constraint. Subjectivity is understood as a substantial subject lying behind its accidental modifications: “The simplicity of the subject lies beyond the struggles that tear it apart.” These struggles are heroic attempts to overcome obstacles to fulfillment, understood as self-sufficiency. Being itself is thus conceived as sufficiency; and the subject enhances its being by becoming less dependent on its surroundings—there is an “ideal of peace,” where the I can be “purified of all that is not authentically human in it” and is then “given to peace with itself, completes itself, closes on and rests upon itself.”¹ By successfully overcoming the non-I, the individual subject is able to achieve the goal of autarky. For modern thought, to be is to refer to nothing else, to be absolute, definitive, brutal in self-assertion, inescapable. Beings are; this is a positivity beyond all talk of perfection and goodness.

This approach of modern philosophy is of course critiqued by Heidegger, who looks for a meaning of being grounded in finitude. In opposition to this ideal of peace through autarky, Levinas wants to think the escape from being, a theme that “appears like a condemnation—the most radical one—of the philosophy of being by our generation.”² It is a theme with which he will at the same time oppose Heidegger. Escape occurs not from any defect of the subject or finitude of being, but out from the sufficiency of being. Levinas opposes Heidegger by interpreting facticity as intransitive. (From the beginning to the end of his career Levinas will name Heidegger’s great idea as the discovery of the transitivity of being.)³ There is an affectivity separate from the ecstatico-horizonal constitution of temporality, an “experience of pure being,”⁴ of brutal factuality that asserts itself of itself without reference to anything else.

Existence is an absolute that is asserted without reference to anything else. It is identity. But in this reference to himself, man perceives a type of duality. His identity with himself loses the character of a logical or tautological form; it takes on a dramatic form, as we will demonstrate. In the identity of the I, the identity of being reveals its nature as enchainment, for it appears in the form of suffering and invites us to escape. Thus, escape is the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break that most radical and unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I is oneself.⁵

Levinas’s move here is well described by Jacques Rolland as tarrying on the moment of thrownness and bringing out how it can paralyze projecting.⁶ This can only oppose Heidegger’s fundamental idea as expressed by Thomas Sheehan, to wit, “Thrownness and openedness are the same.”⁷ For Levinas, being needs to be thought in terms of its lack of manifestation, its intransitivity, its absurdity, as shown in the experiences of shame and nausea. Whereas the whole tenor of Heidegger’s thought is the fit between being and man in the play of presencing and absencing, Levinas asks about the situations where there is a lack of fit between man and what befalls him—preeminently, in physical suffering.

Though opposing Heidegger, neither does Levinas accept modernity’s “ideal of peace,” the pursuit of autarky through the successful overcoming the non-I (an idea Levinas connects with a bourgeois ethic, which prefers future security to present enjoyment, a drive for total security that results in a total restlessness). What is escaped in Levinas’s conception is the soi-même, not any property of oneself. These are two very different experiences. It is one thing to wish that one were rich, intelligent, and beautiful so that one would not suffer indignities at the hands of others. In such a revolt against the limitation of being, against finitude, one wishes to be self-sufficient so as not to have to rely on the kindness of others, but to be powerful. The struggle to achieve self-sufficiency of the “I” against the “non-I” is fought by bourgeois capitalism and resulting in a world that, for Levinas, reveals more acutely the need for escape: a universal order. Where everything is ordered, in an age “that leaves no one in the margins of life,” autonomous individuals feel their ineluctable heteronomy—not of the arbitrary rule of a person, but rather of the nonarbitrary regimentation of an anonymous mechanism, which, in granting freedom and mastery, is without limit and must always be obeyed. Levinas’s descriptions ring of Leviathan: the individual “acquires the poignant consciousness of a final reality of which a sacrifice is asked of him,” “feels liable to be mobilized” even on “the solid terrain he has conquered,” and thus, “temporal existence takes on the inexpressible flavor of the absolute.”⁸

The truth revealed by death makes no difference to this anonymous order, but not as with Heidegger’s das Man. Levinas is not expressing the experience of losing oneself in an inauthentic crowd but the experience of being riveted (rivé) to one’s own being. This being is care, the ground for authenticity and inauthenticity alike: a person has to care, one cannot literally be indifferent to one’s own death, to physical injury, to one’s own possibilities. Yet existence is more than just an issue for Dasein. There are moments when the revealing of one’s own being is accompanied by revolt, a revolt against one’s own identity with oneself, a revolt that “no longer has anything in common with what opposed the ‘I’ to the ‘non-I.’”⁹ This revolt is only suppressed by a bourgeois ethic and Heidegger’s thought alike. It is a fact beyond all ethics. Ethical dwelling deals with the perfection of the self and social mores, but being is beyond both, as the

notions of the finite and the infinite apply only to that which is; they lack precision when applied to the being of that which is. That which is necessarily possesses a greater or lesser range of possibilities, over which it is master. Properties can have relations with other properties and be measured against an ideal of perfection. The very fact of existence refers only to itself. It is that through which all powers and all properties are posited. . . . What is, is. The fact of being is always already perfect. It is already inscribed in the absolute.¹⁰

Shame reveals this: “The shameful manifestations of our bodies compromise us in a manner totally different than does the lie or dishonesty. The fault consists not in the lack of propriety but almost in the very fact of having a body, of being there.”¹¹ We are not dealing with ethics that seeks a better mode of dwelling with others in the world, by going somewhere, doing something, or being otherwise. Ethics deals with a certain definition of our being but not with being itself.¹² Later of course Levinas will think escape in terms of our relationship with the other, which he will then call ethical; but this idea and terminology is wholly absent here. Shame does not even require an other who looks at us—Levinas cites nausea, even in solitude, as a manifestation of shame.¹³ Levinas’s penetrating observations on escape are expressed in this short, compact work all the more powerfully because there is a dearth of any ethical language. Here, Levinas tarries on the need to “get out of being by a new path” without providing any clues as to what that path is, enabling us a window on the problem that drives his future thought and the insight around which it revolves.

What is this “experience of pure being”? It is the experience that “will allow us to discover, not a limitation of that being that desires to surpass its limits in order to enrich and fulfill itself, but rather the purity of the fact of being, which already looks like an escape.”¹⁴ Levinas describes it as need. But it is need for something, an emptiness that can be filled, a thirst that can be quenched or a passion that can be satisfied, but rather a need that can never be done away with, a need that overflows all possible satiation, a need that is not a mere lack of being. The way to glimpse an experience of need without in advance inserting an interpretation of it as privation is to think the need that has become imperious, what Levinas calls the suffering of “malaise.”

Malaise is not a purely passive state, resting upon itself. The fact of being ill at ease is essentially dynamic. It appears as a refusal to remain in place, as an effort to get out of an unbearable situation. What constitutes its particular character, however, is the indeterminacy of the goal that this departure sets for itself, which should be seen as a positive characteristic. It is an attempt to get out without knowing where one is going, and this ignorance qualifies the very essence of this attempt. There are needs for which the consciousness of a well-determined object—susceptible of satisfying those needs—is lacking. The needs that we do not lightly call “intimate” remain at the stage of a malaise, which is surmounted in a state closer to deliverance than to satisfaction.¹⁵

To take a literary example from Austen, Darcy’s condition after Elizabeth rejects him qualifies as the restlessness of malaise. He wants Elizabeth’s love, but to gain it he would have to be a different person. He therefore wants to conquer his love for Elizabeth or to be a different person, but what he wants and the means to achieve it are botth entirely unclear. If Darcy knew what he must do to win her love, then he could go and do that. But his lack of knowledge and the indefinite nature of the end he desires infects the very nature of the pain he feels. Such a need after his refusal is not a lack, a turning toward the other desiring fulfillment. Before her refusal of his offer, Darcy did feel a lack, a need for completion, and he determined that his affection for Elizabeth is worth the price. Afterward, however, it is no longer a question of completion, nor is it a matter of turning oneself toward the other. This is a more primary sense of need. Need is not an other that is known extrinsically and holds its place within my world as something I depend upon, the lack of which illuminates the world as a totality of references. This paralyzing disquiet is a perturbation without a definite object, nothing like finding a hammer missing. One can always go get another hammer, and Darcy could very well find a different wife with similar talents and charms somewhere else. He could shrug his shoulders and resign himself to this, yet instead experiences the abyss of need.

The experience of one’s enchainment to one’s self reveals being in its sufficiency. This is not a revelation as a process of truth. Truth is not at issue here. Being is not revealed as an event of truth, but as an overwhelming that calls for escape. Being is an invitation to flee, not the offering of a possibility. The need for escape is “the fundamental event of our being.”¹⁶ This insight, difficult to grasp and to accept, has centrality in all the rest of Levinas’s work. Does this not correctly express the passion of our being? Are not the emotions tied to the exposure to a situation we want nothing more than to evade? Levinas follows the insights of Max Scheler, for whom the emotional life gives us access to a type of experience to which thought is blind. For Scheler, emotions can be intentional, can mean an object, without being mediated by comprehension and representation.¹⁷ As Levinas writes, “Affectivity is foreign to notions that apply to that which is, and has never been reducible to categories of thought and activity.”¹⁸

Intentional feeling is immediate, always prior to the representation of it. The representation or observation of pain is almost the opposite of pain, Scheler notes. To think about, represent to ourselves this feeling, is to kill it; it flees upon inspection, shuns the light, conceals itself. Need is such an experience. But what does it reveal? It does not reveal an object or act of fulfillment, but rather the fundamental state of our being. “There is no simple act that could fill the lack announced in need. In effect, the simple act presupposes a constituted being; it is not the affirmation itself of that being.”¹⁹ The basic state of our being is neither an act nor a power, it is need. Our being-in-the-world is an existence that seeks to cover over this nakedness, when it is exposed we feel shame. “Shame arises each time we are unable to make others forget our basic nudity (La honte apparaît chaque fois que nous n’arrivons pas à faire oublier notre nudité). It is related to everything we would like to hide and that we cannot bury or cover up. . . . This preoccupation with dressing to hide ourselves concerns every manifestation of our lives, our acts, and our thoughts. We accede to the world through words, and we want them to be noble.”²⁰ Shame results when we cannot hide this need and our nakedness is exposed. It is not simply a matter of physical nakedness or shame felt over the committing of wrong actions—prior to these is the shame felt over the manifestations of ourselves that we cannot control, in particular the manifestation of ourself in need, the revelation of what Levinas will later call the “face.” We can to a certain degree cover over our nakedness in society—through clothes and myths and morality. Levinas writes, “It is therefore our intimacy, that is, our presence to ourselves, that is shameful. It reveals not our nothingness but rather the totality of our existence. Nakedness is the need to excuse one’s existence. Shame is, in the last analysis, an existence that seeks excuses.”²¹ This is not inauthenticity; Levinas is not preaching an authentic facing up to our own death. Everydayness, the attempt to satisfy and cover over need, is not an alienation to be overcome or mere divertissement.²² Levinas’s whole analysis is opposed to Heidegger’s notion of the comprehension of being as the understanding of one’s possibilities, interpreted by Levinas as “the actual power over self.”²³ Our ownmost bond to being is not revealed in death nor in any possibility, but rather in impotence, powerlessness, a “nothing-more-to-be-done . . . from which we can only depart.” Our relation with death is not immediate for Levinas; death is only able to appear “if escape reflects upon itself.”²⁴

ETHICS AND THE PROPHETIC

Ethics, the search for the good life, requires discerning the reality of what is really good behind the appearances that might at first deceive, a process that necessarily involves working with other people who have different points of view and synthesizing these views to constitute true reality. In this project, ...