Abstract
Husserl and Heidegger are, more than any others, the thinkers with whom Levinas is in constant dialogue. From the late 1920’s when he attended their lectures in Freiburg, through the 1930’s when he more than anyone else was responsible for introducing their thinking into France, until the present day when it seems as if it is still virtually impossible for him to write a philosophical essay without referring to one or other of them, Husserl and Heidegger provide Levinas with his starting-point. But it is a starting-point with which he never remains content so that it is invoked only as a basis for saying more. The relation with the Other is presented always as ‘beyond intentionality’ or ‘otherwise than being.’ When it comes to the task of giving a more positive account, Levinas’ favourite recourse is to turn to Descartes. It was above all Descartes who gave Levinas his own voice with which to show what Husserl and Heidegger and indeed, if we are believe to him, the whole tradition of Western ontology from Parmenides on failed to recognise and preserve.1 This is already clear from the very title of Totality and Infinity. Rosenzweig may have provided the critique of totality, a critique to which Husserl and Heidegger were assimilated, but it was from Descartes that Levinas borrowed the word by which he sought to think and say transcendence and thus rupture this totality.
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Notes
Already in the 1949 essay ‘De la description a l’existence’ the last paragraph of Descartes’ Third Meditation was evoked (DEHH 97) and a discussion of infinity may be found (DEHH 101–2). In ‘L’ontologie est-elle fondamentale?’ the word ‘infinity’ may be found used in relation to the face, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 56 (1951), p. 95. But as a corrective to overemphasising the importance of Descartes, it should be noted that even before these essays and without reference to Descartes Levinas may be found in De l’existence à l’existant emphasising the importance of separation in the form of the substantiality of the subject with a view of the ‘good beyond being’ (EE 168/97).
The disproportion of ‘objective reality’ in respect of ‘formal reality’ is observed in Éthique et Infini (Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard et Radio France, 1982), p. 97; trans. R. Cohen, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985), p. 91). And in ‘God and Philosophy’ we read that ‘the cogitatum’s ‘objective reality’ bursts open the ‘formal reality’ of the cogitation’ (DVI 105/GP 133). In the same place Levinas writes ‘In interpreting the immeasurability of God as a superlative case of existing, Descartes maintains a substantialist language. But for us that is not what is unsurpassable in his meditation’ (DVI 104/GP 132). Levinas’ most forthright statements about the way Descartes’ idea of a perfect Being as an idea of the Infinite surpasses the idea of being may be found in the reply he made to a letter written by José Etcheveria after the delivery of ‘Transcendance et Hauteur,’ Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie LIV (1962), pp. 112–3.
I have attempted to sketch the way in which this strategy already governs ‘Violence and Metaphysics’ in ‘The Trace of Levinas in Derrida’ Derrida and Differance, ed. D. Wood and R. Bernasconi (Warwick University, Coventry: Parousia Press, 1985).
‘Le non et le dans.’ Similar discussions are found elsewhere. See particularly ‘Beyond Intentionality’ trans. K. McLaughlin Philosophy in France Today ed. A. Montefiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 113. This essay corresponds to no single published French text, but the passage in question is a shortened version of one to be be found in ‘Amour et révélation’ La charité aujourd’hui Paris, Ed. S.O.S. (1981), p. 145. See also DVI where the dans is identified with ‘l’affection du Fini.’ These discussions post-dating Totality and Infinity deserve separate examination, but reference to them is sufficient to show that Levinas does not refer to this discussion of infinity when in ‘Signature’ he says that ‘the ontological language which Totality and Infinity maintains... is hereafter avoided.’ Difficile Liberté second edition (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), p. 379;
trans. Mary Ellen Petrisko, ed. A Peperzak, Research in Phenomenology 8 (1978), p. 189. It is more likely that Levinas refers to the transcendental language of conditions which permeates Totality and Infinity, although it is not entirely absent later on. The way this apparently transcendental language might be read as having an-other-than transcendental meaning is indicated at the end of this paper and was given a more thorough treatment in my presentation to the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in 1985.
‘Martin Buber et la théorie de la connaissance,’ Nom Propres (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1976), p. 49;
trans. ‘Martin Buber and the Theory of Knowledge,’ The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. P.A. Schilpp and M. Friedman (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1967), p. 149.
Nietszche II (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), p. 433; trans. J. Stambaugh The End of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 30. On the question of the trace of ‘metaphysics’ in the language of ontology, see AQ 216/170: ‘Does not the discourse that suppresses the interruptions of discourse by relating them maintain the discontinuity under the knots with which the thread is tied again? The interruptions of the discourse found again and recounted in the immanence of the said are conserved like knots in a thread tied again, the trace of a diachrony that does not enter into the present, that refuses simultaneity.’
Levinas’ notion of expression which is elucidated in terms of presence and specifically the superiority of speech over writing may seem to contradict this and serve as an open invitation to a Derridian reflex. I say ‘Derridian’ to avoid introducing the name of Derrida himself, who is noticably restrained in his comments on this topic, even though he shows himself very well capable already in 1964 of outlining the general direction which will be taken by ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ (ED 150–153/101–103). It should any way be noted that Levinas does not use the term expression in anything like the sense given to it by Husserl. The idea of a universal thought which dispenses with communication is dismissed (TI 44/72). Levinas makes much of the attendance of the speaker at his own manifestation and he thereby comes to lend his support to the Platonic condemnation of writing in favour of the mastery of speech (TI 41/69). Nevertheless a more careful reading shows that the issue is praise for an always renewed deciphering (TI 157/182) and not the ideal of a total presence where all our questions will be answered, although there are phrases which suggest this. One only needs to reflect on the theme of the failure of communication as it recurs throughout Levinas’ thinking. But there is also no doubt that on this, as on a number of other related questions (the place accorded to experience, for example), Levinas has learned from Derrida’s essay and reformulated his thinking in consequence.
This essay is based on a presentation given to the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in July 1983.
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Bernasconi, R. (1988). The Silent Anarchic World of the Evil Genius. In: Sallis, J.C., Moneta, G., Taminiaux, J. (eds) The Collegium Phaenomenologicum, The First Ten Years. Phaenomenologica, vol 105. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2805-3_14
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