Emmanuel Levinas

Ethics, Justice, and the Human Beyond Being

Lis Thomas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135875435
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book explores Levinas's rethinking of the meaning of ethics, justice and the human from a position that affirms but goes beyond the anti-humanist philosophy of the twentieth century

CHAPTER 1
Subjects of Being

1.
THE QUESTION OF BEING AND THE HUMAN

Levinas’ published dissertation, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1930) and his essay Martin Heidegger and Ontology (1932) are not only significant for bringing the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger to the attention of French thinkers.¹ These works also demonstrate some of Levinas’ early philosophical concerns. While The Theory of Intuition offered an introduction to Husserl, it was already influenced by Heidegger as Levinas acknowledges in the introduction to this work (TIHP xxxiii). This influence is also apparent in Levinas’ suggestion toward the conclusion of the book that Husserl falls prey to a certain intellectualism.² Regarding the phenomenological reduction, Levinas claims that it has the goal of presenting us with “our genuine self, although it presents it only to a purely contemplative and theoretical sight which considers life but is distinct from it” (TIHP 149). This early critique of Husserl mirrors Heidegger’s own critical engagement with Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger’s development of the notion of “factical historical life” and the problematic of its own selfinterpretation was guided by the question of the relation between intentionality and lived experience and began by questioning “anew the traditional mode of conceptualisation from the ground up” (Pöggeler 1989: 29). The existential analytic of Dasein in Being and Time offered Levinas an insight into the new methodology—a new critical approach to the problem of the relation between the transcendental ego and ‘life’.

While the development of his approach occurred primarily in the encounter with Husserl, this by no means remained the only context of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger. Heidegger was also undertaking a critical reinterpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, bringing him into conflict with the neo-Kantian philosophy dominant in Germany during this period. For Levinas, present at the famous Davos encounter between Cassirer and Heidegger in 1929, Heidegger’s work challenged the last bastion of Enlightenment humanism and idealism.³ This encounter and its consequences gave weight to the apparently more theoretical problem of the relation of theo retical intentionality and lived experience, for the Heideggerian reading of Kant provides an explicit discussion of the question of the relationship between the question of being as he introduced it in Being and Time and the question of the relation between the human [der Mensch] and being.⁴ The following examines this issue before turning to Levinas’ own work.

In Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes a brief discussion of the relation of the analytic of Dasein to philosophical anthropology with the intention of distancing his work from the latter. He writes that not only is the analytic solely “oriented toward the guiding task of working out the question of being” and thus in this sense is not guided by the question of the human, but furthermore, it cannot even be understood as providing a preparatory analysis of the human which would provide the condition of a future philosophical anthropology. At the very least, it may provide some not inessential “pieces” and is not only “incomplete” but “provisional”—“[i]t merely brings out the being of this entity, without Interpreting its meaning” (BT38/H17). It would seem that this interpretation of the human can only begin—can only properly take place—once the proper method of interpretation [Auslegung] itself has been worked out in the questioning of being as such. It could be assumed that only after this repetition of the analytic on a“higher and authentically ontological basis” (BT38/H17) could the ontological conditions of any future question of the meaning of the human be completely and unprovisionally established. However, this is probably going too far as it projects the question of being ultimately back to the question of the human.

While it is clear that Heidegger is not concerned with explicitly addressing the question of the human in Being and Time it might still be argued that there remains an unavoidable “tension” or “magnetisation” with regard to the question of the relation of fundamental ontology and the question of the human in so far as the project has any pretensions to provide even some of the “proper” and essential conditions of any future thinking or approach to the question of the human.⁵ There is little doubt that Heidegger was acutely aware of this tension as this debate around the relation of Being and Time and its relation to philosophical anthropology began immediately on its publication. Michel Haar points out that by the time of the publication of Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik in 1929 there is already a discernible shift in Heidegger’s discussion of Dasein.⁶ Haar writes that Heidegger:

…impatiently repatriates a difference in[to] man that Being and Time had understood more prudently as an extrinsic distinction, or an opposition between man of the tradition and being-in-the-world. (Haar 1993:xxxii)

Haar goes on to suggest that Dasein increasingly becomes the intimate essence of the human reflected in such expressions as the “Dasein in man” [Dasein im Mensch] used in the Kant book (Haar 1993:xxxii). What then does Heidegger have to say in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics?

Fundamental ontology, Heidegger claims, includes “the problem of the finitude in Man as the decisive element which makes the comprehension of being possible” (KPM § 42 209/240). For Heidegger, rather than shed light on the signification of the human this linking of the question of the human to the question of being sharpens the need for something like a “philosophical anthropology.”⁷ In the fourth and find part of Heidegger’s reading of Kant the problematic nature of the question itself is explored, that is, the question of the relation of the two questions—of the human and of being. Heidegger argues that Kantian philosophy reveals an insight into “the necessary connection between anthropology and metaphysics” (KPM §36 213) and that this is furthermore confirmed in Kant’s own claims that reason concerns itself with three questions: What can I know?, What must I do?, What may I hope for? (KPM §36 214). According to Heidegger this takes anthropology to the metaphysical level for these questions do not determine the human “as a natural being but as a ‘citizen of the world’” (KPM §36 214). To these three questions, Kant will add a fourth: What is the human? when discussing the “field of philosophy pertaining to world citizenship” (KPM §36 214) and he will add that since the first three are all related to the last they can all be classified as anthropology.⁸

For Heidegger, while Kant distances himself from empirical anthropology, he inadvertently uncovers a ‘necessity’ that governs thinking itself—an internal connection between the question of the human and metaphysics. Kant puts the question of human ‘nature’ on hold so to speak. Yet for Heidegger, in this suspension or separation, Kant merely intensifies the question of the human and metaphysics and the need to pursue the “development of a ‘philosophical anthropology’” and furthermore to determine the idea of such an anthropology beforehand (KPM §36 215).

Moving his analysis away from Kant toward an exploration of the significance of this connection for any future understanding and accomplishment of philosophical anthropology, Heidegger suggests that it no longer concerns the exploration of the essence of the human. The connection between metaphysics and anthropology does not lie simply in the fact that the human being chooses to refer these questions back to its own existence. On the contrary there is a necessity which governs the referential nature of the relation before hand. These questions, in some necessary yet unknown manner, already refer themselves to the human:

…wherein lies this ground of this necessity? In the fact that the central problems of philosophy arise out of “Man,” not only in the sense that man poses them, but rather in so far as in their inner form they already have a relation to him? To what extent do the central problems of philosophy find themselves housed in the essence of man? What are the central problems and where does their centre lie? What is it to philosophise such that this problematic has its centre housed in the essence of Man? (KPM § 37)

This quote introduces what might be called the inversion of the question of the human toward fundamental ontology and the question of being. Before anything is said about the essence of the human a new sense or question has been introduced. This is precisely the question of the relation of questioning to the human which Heidegger argues cannot rely on any presumptions about the essential nature of subjectivity. That the “inner form” of questioning has a relation to the human is not disputed but the nature and signification of the “relation” remains governed by a necessity, the meaning of which is yet to be systematically explored. Furthermore, before the question of the relation itself can be answered, the inner form must be systematically outlined in fundamental ontology itself which begins, not with the human as such, but with the Dasein im Mensch.

In this context, the analytic of Dasein in Being and Time can be understood as elucidating the inner form of the questioning of being as such. This is not a question of the manner of the self-sufficient subject’s possession of being, instead it is an analysis of the manner of “possession” or belonging to being of Dasein as preparation for an ontologico-temporal understanding of questioning as such. This questioning is not guided by the anthropological question but rather is completely dominated by the question of being itself. In other words, fundamental ontology, which takes the form of an existential analytic of Dasein in Being and Time, is directed by what is yet to be thought with regard to the question of being. From this point of view the question of the relation of the two questions—of being and the human— appears secondary to the ontological analysis. However, on closer analysis, the two are intertwined in a radical new way. Without doubt it is possible to read Levinas’ early engagement with Heidegger as preoccupied with this issue.

A cursory reading of Levinas’ paper Martin Heidegger and Ontology reveals Levinas’ starting point and subsequent focus to be the question of being and the critique of the metaphysical subject by Heidegger in Being and Time. According to Levinas, Heidegger not only reveals the presuppositions regarding the concept of the subject as thinking substance but also uncovers the latent intellectualism of the idealist position. Levinas writes that the idealist position:

…seeks to know man, but it means to do so through the concept of man, leaving aside the effectivity [Fakticität] of human existence and the sense of this effectivity. (MO 31/430)⁹

Levinas also explains the distinction between a subject understood as a being [l’étant ici-bas] (the ontic) and a subject conceived in the manner of its being [être ici-bas] (the ontological) (MO 17/405).¹⁰ This is not to reduce ontology to yet another philosophy of subjectivity for while it is the “ontological analysis of the subject” that provides the starting point, this analysis is logically subsequent to and:

…entirely dictated by his [Heidegger’s] fundamental ontological preoccupation, which consists in determining the meaning of the word ‘being’.” (MO 15/403)

While Levinas writes that effectivity, or facticity, refers to the manner of being of subjective being, this is not to reduce the former to an attribute of the latter but to point out the difference and distinction between the ontic subject and the ontological facticity of Dasein. Dasein does not describe the essence of that entity called the subject but asks about the meaning of its existence or its mode of being [l’être]. In other words, facticity refers to the manner of Dasein’s engagement with its own existence. Dasein is a fundamental event of being.

Levinas’ exegesis in Martin Heidegger and Ontology reflects an understanding of the complexity of the question of the relation between fundamental ontology and the question of the human:

For Heidegger, the understanding of being is not a purely theoretical act but, as we will see, a fundamental event where one’s entire destiny is at issue; and consequently, the difference between these modes of explicit and implicit understanding is not simply that between clear and obscure knowledge, but is a difference which reaches unto the very being of man. (MO 16/ 403)

Is there some bias and an intentional slippage back to the question of subjectivity here? While Heidegger refuses the term altogether, the vocabulary of Levinas’ commentary clearly does not reflect this. It might be argued that in its very nature as an introductory exegesis Levinas’ commentary will construct a bridge between a metaphysics of subjectivity and the analytic of Dasein, thus risking a reduction of the analytic of Dasein to a form of philosophical anthropology while not necessarily performing that reduction. Yet this already affirms a certain interest on the part of Levinas—a certain concern for the ‘place’ and signification of subjectivity in the full light of the existential analytic. It can be argued, in other words, that Levinas is concerned with the tension between the question of being and the question of the human. In fact for Levinas this question of the human threatens to implode the fundamental ontology.

While not made explicit in Martin Heidegger and Ontology this threat will become more clear in subsequent work, as we shall see below. If this early paper reflects a primary interest it lies in the emphasis on the radical nature of Dasein’s finitude. For Levinas, Dasein is “riveted to its possibilities” (MO 24/417). He adds:

Having been thrown into the world, abandoned and delivered up to oneself—such is the ontological description of ‘fact’. (MO 24/ 417)

It is not so much the emphasis on the thrownness and abandonment which is of interest here as both are Heideggerian terms describing Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Rather it is the description of Dasein as riveted to its possibilities which is somewhat novel and while at this point he may be referring merely to the radical thrownness of Dasein’s being-in-the-world this notion is soon to be applied to the relation to being as such. The followingwill try to trace the reasoning behind this movement.

2.
HUMANISM IN CRISIS

In the paper Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism published two years after Martin Heidegger and Ontology, Levinas examines the crisis of value confronting the idealist and humanist traditions of Western Europe in the context of a discussion of the rise of Nazi ideology. For Levinas, Nazi ideology is a perverted form of response to the already existing crisis of value. It does not so much participate in the critique and destruction of idealism as reflect a society that has lost touch with its “true ideal of freedom” and thus accepts degenerate forms of the ideal (RPH 70). Replacing a universal humanism with a universalism of blood and race “[i]t questions the very principles of a civilisation” (RPH 64).

Levinas provides a dense account of the critique of ideal...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
• STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
• ABBREVIATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: SUBJECTS OF BEING
• CHAPTER 2: HYPOSTASIS: IL Y A/EXISTENT
• CHAPTER 3: ENJOYMENT: SUBJECT AND WORLD
• CHAPTER 4: THE AMBIGUOUS ECONOMY OF DWELLING
• CHAPTER 5: EROS, ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL TOTALITY
• CHAPTER 6: ETHICS IS JUSTICE
• CHAPTER 7: ETHICS, ONTOLOGY AND JUSTICE
• CHAPTER 8: SUBJECTIVITY AND TERTIALITY: IL Y A AND ILLEITY
• POSTSCRIPT
• BIBLIOGRAPHY