Abstract
Interpretations of the passage from the ethical to the political domains in Levinas move between the two perspectives sketched in the previous chapter. The interpretations of the universalization of ethics range from a demand for de facto justice to a highly individualized aesthetic expression, which ultimately has little to do with politics. The first position is exemplified by Simon Critchley who proposes a formal theory of political activity inspired by Levinas’ ethics.1 The second position is that of Gillian Rose, who perceives in Levinas’ political writings the incompatibility of his formal ethics and a pragmatic secular politics.2 Neither commentator addresses prophecy at length as the generalization of ethical responsibility. However, they draw very different conclusions about the political implications of ethical enactment in Levinas. At the heart of their disagreement stands a specific understanding of ethical witness, or prophetism, in its relation to society and politics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Simon Critchley, op. cit.,pp. 220 ff.
Gillian Rose, “New Political Theology—Out of Holocaust and Liberation” in The Broken Middle: Out of our Ancient Past (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), pp. 247–307.ín this chapter, Rose argues above all that Levinas is one of a number of contemporary thinkers who have eliminated the possibility of the dialectisation, or the mediation, of necessity, or nature, and freedom. Such a mediation is, in her view, unavoidable for there to be a viable transition between the `domains’ of ethics, and social existence and political practice. This work is principally critical of post-modern thought, and although the spirit of the thinking herein comes from Hegelian thought, it does not attempt a positive, neo-Hegelian solution.
In regard to Levinas, Rose argues that the former manifests a blindness to one of the major debates in present day Judaism: viz., whether and how to supplement halakah (= “the way to go”; Judaism’s combined Law of the ‘oral’ law, codified in the Mishna [=“Repetition”] and the written law, i.e., of the Babylonian Talmud, principally). The question of a supplement to the prescriptions of halakah turns upon the relation of the holy law of the Tradition, which itself concerns Jews’ ethical behavior in every day life, and another, more secular ethics. As Rose writes, “[The ethics of] Levinas obscures a difficulty which modern Judaism—across the range from cultural orthodoxy to liberalism—admits: that the clash of Judaic law (halakah) and non-Judaic law raises issues concerning the relation of law and ethics within Judaism and between Judaic and non-Judaic judgement and institutions. This obscuring may be traced to the implication that the… `orders’ of `being’ are not themselves ethical when the idea of `order’ implies that they are ethical—normative, general and imperative, immanent and transcendent, actual and ideal, even when dirempted.” pp. 260–261 (my emphasis).
This work of Derrida, entitled in the original, “En ce moment même dans cet ouvrage me voici” appears in the French in François Lamelle, ed. Textes Pour Emmanuel Levinas,(Paris: Editions Jean-Michel Place, 1980), pp. 21–60.The English translation is found in R. Bernasconi and S. Critchley, eds. Re-reading Levinas,pp.11–49.
Critchley throws light upon the term “deconstruction” early in his text with five negative definitions or qualifications. These are so useful to the understanding of Derrida’s (non) method that I want to reproduce them here. Firstly, Critchley writes, “deconstruction is not something negative; it is not a process of demolition (which does not automatically entail that it is positive).”Secondly, “deconstruction needs to be sharply distinguished from analysis,which presupposes a reduction of entities to their simple… elements which themselves would stand in need of deconstruction.” In the third place, “deconstruction is not critique,either in the general or the Kantian sense.” Instead, according to Derrida, the possibility of transcendental critique and the manner in which it is effected can be an interest or object of deconstruction. Fourthly, “deconstruction is not a method… that can be utilized in the activity of interpretation.” Hence it is not one, writes Critchley following Derrida, of a number of methods in competition in various domains of knowledge. Finally, “deconstruction is not an act produced or controlled by a subject; nor is it an operation that sets to work on a text or an institution.” See Critchley, loc. cit.,pp. 21–22 (all but last two emphases mine).On the other hand, the term “deconstruction” does concern the reading of a text. A deconstructive reading, per Critchley who follows Derrida’s own remarks faithfully, entails two `moments’ which are not necessarily successive. These moments must begin with the determination of a level of “minimal consensus concerning the intelligibility” of the text. (Critchley, p. 24, citing Limited Inc. p. 269 tr. p. 146). Such is achieved by a faithful reconstruction of the “dominant interpretation of a text in a layer of ‘commentary”’ (Critchley, p. 25). The second moment of a deconstructive reading—although, again, such a breakdown invariably makes deconstruction appear as if it could be presented qua mode d’emploi or as if in a user’s manual—lies in the much more precarious discernment, which remains within the limits set by the text itself, of those ambivalences and hesitations in the work that work against what the text intended to convey. (Critchley, p. 27) However, this second moment, as Critchley notes, must arise from the first; i.e., out of the words of the work itself. am here following Francis Guibal’s 1986 presentation of Derrida’s work in a colloquium to which the latter was invited, “The Alterity of the Other—Otherwise: On the Traces of Jacques Derrida” in Altérités: Jacques Derrida et Pierre-Jean Labarrière (Paris: Editions Osiris, March 1986), p. 22.
See Critchley, loc. cit.,pp. 25 ff. ‘Ibid.,p. 25.
Critchley, pp. 32–33. ‘Context’ appears analogous to linguistics’ notion of the paradigmatic axis of language, that indefinable reserve out of which speech, or the syntagmatic axis, arises as pure spontaneity. Critchley’s remarks here are very helpful. He writes, “For Derrida, this response has a double consequence: first, that the current concept of context is inadequate, and second, that a generalized concept of context would entail an enlargement… of the traditional concept of writing, which could not longer be seen simply as a means of communication for the transmission of meaning” (p. 33).This claim also rejoins Levinas when he denies that language is merely a system for passing on information or instruction. (Cf. Leçon talmudique,p. 99; Revelation in the Jewish Tradition,p. 208; OBBE,pp. 43–7, 193–4, 196–7 [Fr.]; 34–6, 151–2, 154–5 [Eng.]). In the different texts I have written on (against) apartheid, I have on several occasions spoken of ’unconditional’ affirmation or of ’uncondition’ ’appeal’ [appel].This has also happened to me in other ’contexts’ and each time that I speak of the link between deconstruction and the ’yes’. Now, the very least that can be said of unconditionality (a word that I use not by accident to recall the character of the categorical imperative in its Kantian form) is that it is independent of every determinate context,… It announces itself as such only in the opening of context. Not that it is simply present (existent) elsewhere, outside of all context; rather it intervenes in the determination of a context from its very opening, and from an injunction, a law, a responsibility that transcends this or that determination of a given context. Following this, what remains is to articulate this unconditionality with the determinate… conditions of this or that context; and this is the moment of strategies, of rhetorics, of ethics and of
politic…
Critchley, p. 32.
Levinas, Leon talmudique sur la justice,p. 99.
Derrida, Limited Inc.,(Paris: Galilée, 1988), pp. 281–82.English translation Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990), pp. 152–53. Cited, with emphasis, by Simon Critchley, loc. cit.,pp. 31–32.The reference to “deconstruction and the ‘yesrecalls a certain affirmation in Derrida’s writings. Critchley writes, “it is Nietzsche’s ’vast and boundless Yes and Amen saying’,... It is the ’Yes, to the stranger’ that opens… Derrida’s text on Michel de Certeau“ (pp. 40–41).This is a ‘yes’ that affirms no thing; it is a movement that itself issues in no theory. For Critchley, this affirmation is the ”ethical moment that motivates deconstruction“ (p. 41).
Is not this ‘yes’ reminiscent of what Levinas calls the ’glory’ of the self-opening of the Saying? Such a question overflows the present ’context’.See Critchley, pp. 40 ff. He has written, “… and for Derrida the ethical moment is the interruption of the general context of conditioned hypothetical imperatives by an unconditional categorical imperative. Ethics arises in and as the undecidable yet determinate articulation of these two orders.”
Ibid., p. 30.
From Levinas, “Signature” in Difficile liberté. Essais sur le Judaisme (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1975 edition), p. 409. Cited in part by Critchley, p. 4, who writes, “’Moral consciousness is not an experience of values’; it is rather the delineation of the essence of meaning of the ethical in a way that disrupts traditional moral thinking and all claims to good conscience.” (Statement is Critchley’s after the single quotations.) For the textual citation from Levinas, emphasis has been added.
SLevinas, Difficile liberté, p. 409.
See J. Derrida, “En ce moment même dans cet ouvrage me voici” in François Lamelle, ed., Textes pour Emmanuel Lévinas, (Paris: Jean-Michel Place, 1980), pp. 21–60. English translation by Ruben Berezdivin, “At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am,” in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley, eds., Re-Reading Levinas ( Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991 ) pp. 11–48.
OBBE, p. 179 (Fr.), 141(Eng.).
Derrida, “En ce moment même…,” p. 27
cited by Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 122. “ bid.
See for example, OBBE,pp. 145, 155 (Fr.), 113–14, 121 (Eng.).
See OBBE,pp. 138–9, 147 (Fr.), 109, 115–16 (Eng.).
See Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 124.
bid.
Ibid., p. 125.
bid., p. 126.
Critchley discerns a three-fold structure in OBBE. He points out that the “exposition begins at the level of the said, of entities exposed in their essence in… the domination of totality. The second moment [of the work] is the move from the Said to the Saying, by peeling off the layers of ethical subjectivity until the structure of substitution is delineated in chapter 4.”Finally, “in a third moment, chapter 5 moves from the Saying back to the Said…, in order to reopen the questions of justice, politics, community, ontology, and philosophy…” loc. cit.,p. 229.
OBBE, p. 182 (Fr.), 143 (Eng.), translation modified.
OBBE, p. 182, 143, translation modified.
Critchley, p. 128. One may see a similar mechanism at work in the verses of Ezekiel 1:1–2:10, for example.
Of the interruption of thematization that is prophecy, Levinas writes, “its signification has not let itself be betrayed in the logos except in order to translate itself before us—a word articulated already as kerygma in prayer or blasphemy, keeping thus in its enunciation the trace of the excession of transcendence, of the beyond.
By these ambiguities prophetism is not the least option [le pis-aller] of a hobbling revelation. The ambiguities belong to the glory of the Infinite. That prophetism might take on the appearances of information circulating among other [information] issued from the subject or from influences undergone by the subject… —there lies the enigma—the ambiguity—but also the regime of transcendence of the Infinite. The Infinite is belied in the proof that the finite should like to give of its transcendence, it [the Infinite] should enter into conjunction with the subject which should make it appear. There it would lose its glory. Transcendence owes
it to itself to interrupt its own demonstration. It voice must be stifled [se taire] or silenced from the moment one listens to its message.… It requires diachrony breaking the unity of transcendental apperception which does not arrive at assembling the time of modern humanity… because incapable of denying the fraternity of men…“ (OBBE,p. 194, 152).
See Critchley, pp. xii—xiii, 220 ff.
Critchley, p. 221.
OBBE, pp. 202–3 (Fr.), 159–160 (Eng.). Cited in Critchley, loc. cit., p. 221.
Critchley, p. 222.
lbid., This is from Levinas’ “Politique après!” in Au-delà du verset (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1982), pp. 221–28.
bid., Indeed, Simon Critchley reminds us at this point that a quietistic politics is exactly that for which Levinas reproached Martin Buber’s I-thou relation.
Ibid., p. 223.
lbid.
T1, p. 189 (Fr.), 214 (Eng.).
bid.
T1, p. 188, 213.
But should not the opening to the beyond of Essence, to the ‘otherwise than being’, signify thus the possibility of seeing,of knowing,of understanding and grasping [de comprendre et de prendre],which by all evidence should come back to thematizing,and thus, to… discover a field for knowledge, for the taking in hand, for movement or displacement [déplacement],for operation and possession? The opening should thus bring the subject, where these intentions were recognized as fundamental or as good, eventually to be otherwise, but not to `otherwise than be. 42
OBBE, p. 225 (Fr.),178 (Eng.), my translation and emphasis. ’OBBE,p. 210 (Fr.), 175 (Fr.).
OBBE,p. ix (Fr.), xli (Eng.). 45OBBE, p. 151, 118.
One might argue that Levinas’ use of the term `death’ in the context noted above is intended to bespeak the finitude and of conceptualism And this is supported by earlier remarks in that section. (“It is as though the Platonic Ideas themselves owed their eternity and their purity as universals only to the perishing of the perishable…”) But the discussion also turns to the ways in which a subject confronts and refuses its own, factical death. (“This refusal of death in fact measures the depth of its [the subject’s] inwardness in essence,or its interest” (OBBE,p. 221, 175).
Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 225. ‘Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 239.
OBBE, p. 156 (Fr.), 121 (Eng.).
Critchley interprets the `prophet’ to be “the person who puts the community under the word of God, who binds the community and makes it a commonality” p. 226 ff. This seems quite right to me. It further seems that this God—and this double community of ethics and politics which, he reminds us, is called `monotheism’ by Levinas—does not much enter his discussion of politics.`God’ and `monotheism’ are not, themselves, problematized by Critchley. What he does say is that “[tlhe patriarchal and seemingly onto-theo-logical implications of these lines should be neither reduced nor elided.” He does not thereafter return to these implications, however. On the other hand, I believe that Levinas’ notions of God and monotheism are not so much onto-theo-logical in the Heideggerian sense of the term, rather they remind us again of what I alluded to earlier. The spirit of Levinasian hermeneutic phenomenology is the Jewish experience as inscribed in the Talmud and, significantly, in recent history.What do I mean when I refer to `recent history’? I refer, among other things, to a discussion of Jewish identity offered by the sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, whose work Modernity and the Holocaust shows both the uniqueness and the `normalcy’, for our civilization of bureaucracy and technology, of the Shoah. Recent history then shows us the planning and execution of genocide based upon the racism of the gardener’s ideology, viz., the design to weed out elements which by their nature are conceived as incapable of bringing health or beauty to the national garden. Further, there was something quite specific to Jewish `weeds’.Bauman writes, “Hardly any dimension of the endemic Jewish incongruence, however, has influenced the shape of modern anti-Semitism more strongly and in more durable fashion than the fact that the Jews were, to quote Arendt again, a ‘non-national element in a world of growing or existing nations’.… Everywhere [the Jews] served as a constant reminder of the relativity and limits of individual self-identity and communal interest, which the criterion of nationhood was meant to determine with absolute and final authority.” Yet this reminder was supplemented by a paradox, which itself fueled the hatred of anti-Semites.“The Jews,” Bauman writes, “were not just unlike any nation; they were also unlike any other foreigners. In short, they undermined the very difference between hosts and guests, the native and the foreign…. Jews were flexible and adaptable; an empty vehicle, ready to be filled with whatever despicable load `they’ were charged of carrying. Thus Toussenel saw the Jews as the bearers of anti-French poison, while Liesching… accused the Jews of smuggling into Germany the pestilent Gallic spirit.”See Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) p. 52 (Author’s emphasis). I will return to discuss Bauman shortly. For his gardening metaphor applied to modern society, see pp. 91 ff.
Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 233.
Levinas, Difficile Liberté: Essais sur le judaïsme (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1976, 3rd edition revised), pp. 24–42.
Critchley, loc. cit.,pp. 236–241.
Ibid., p. 237.
To the initiators and the managers of modern genocide, society is a subject of planning and conscious design. One can and should do more about the society than change one or several of its many details… cure some of its troublesome ailments. One can and should set oneself goals more ambitious…: one can and should remake the society… One can create a society that is objectively better than the one `merely existing’—that is, existing without conscious intervention.
Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). 5’Bauman, op. cit.,p. 91.
Critchley, loc. cit.,p. 238. It appears that this definition excludes most political orders having a direct or secondary position in a globalizing economy, in which North-South domination is anything but diminished today.
Bauman, op. cit.,p. 108.
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1964), pp. 294–95, cited by Bauman, loc. cit.,p. 177.
BBE, p. 189 (Fr.), 148 (Eng.).
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bergo, B. (1999). The Universalization of Responsibility as a Passage from Ethics to a Politics of Questioning: Simon Critchley’s Reading of Levinas. In: Levinas between Ethics and Politics. Phaenomenologica, vol 152. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2077-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2077-9_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5214-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2077-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive