We'd had a somewhat interesting discussion on Levinas last week. An anonymous interlocutor suggested I didn't know Levinas terribly well. Which I fully agree with to a point. I've gone through a reader of many of his major papers and then Totality and Infinity. I've not yet read Otherwise Than Being yet. Although I really should. Anyway in that discussion last week I asserted that Levinas only allowed humans the category of Other in the sense he uses it. (Well, other than God) My point was that we should apply it not just to people but to animals and all "things" themselves. All have unplumbed depths that escape our totality. My interlocutor said this was evidence I didn't know what I was talking about since my example, a dog, was actually discussed by Levinas in his book Difficult Freedom. Not having ever read this I couldn't say much. So of course I visited Amazon. Well my order arrived on the weekend so I can say a bit now.
First, let me say I'm very glad I purchased this. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. In fact this is arguably my favorite thing of Levinas I've read. And yes, it does suggest that Levinas treats at least some animals as "Other." (More on that later) The book itself is a collection of very short (often only 2 - 3 pages) writings on Judaism. Much has a very rabbinical feel to it although some have more philosophical overtones.
The essay on the dog in quite interesting. It is primarily a commentary on Ex 22:31. "And ye shall be holy men unto me: neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs." Levinas asks the question, "who is the dog?" The context is Bobby, a dog who befriended Levinas in a Jewish POW camp in WWII. As Levinas says, "At the supreme hour of his institution, with neither ethics nor logos, the dog will attest to the dignity of its person. This is what the friend of man means. There is a transcendence in the animal! And the clear verse with which we began is given a new meaning. It reminds us of the debt that is always open." (152)
Of course what makes the dog open seems to be Levinas' willingness to give it a name. One immediately thinks of Derrida who makes Plato's khora from the Timaeus (basically space - although for some prime matter) into a proper name of Khora. So for Derrida this place, which I believe is roughly matter or the real 'world,' is given a proper name and thus becomes like Bobby the dog "a debt that is always open." The question remains for me. Would Levinas countenance that expansion? (Pun intended for those of you familiar with Levinas)
The Timaeus is such an interesting dialog and is one everyone ought read even if you think Plato is the worst thing to have ever happened to philosophy. Right around 47e Plato stops talking about souls and bodies and starts talking about the structure of matter. Roughly one has three categories, the model (the forms), the imitation of the model (the phenomenal world of becoming) there is then the khora which is "the receptacle of all becoming." (49a) We thus have a trichotomy which is later picked up by Plotinus and the various strains of neoPlatonism. For Derrida this khora is kind of a bifurcation of Being and is basically the Other than Levinas talks of. However as one can quickly see, despite making it a proper name, it becomes space in general. That is, matter. Plato also uses very sexual imagery to discuss it.
So likewise it is right that the substance which is to be fitted to receive frequently over its whole extent the copies of all things intelligible and eternal should itself, of its own nature, be void of all the forms. Wherefore, let us not speak of her that is the Mother and Receptacle of this generated world, which is perceptible by sight and all the senses, by the name of earth or air or fire or water, or any aggregates or constituents thereof: rather, if we describe her as a Kind invisible and unshaped, all-receptive, and in some most perplexing and most baffling way partaking of the intelligible, (51a)
I raise all this because I think it a key way to think through this. Even when he is not speaking of it the Timaeus is, I think, always in the background of Derrida's writing. And of course this all related to my two posts on the Maverick Philosopher's critique of Heidegger. (Dr. Vallicella himself says that what Levinas says of Heidegger is consistent with his critique.) Of course I think that Levinas' critique in Totality and Infinity has problems, precisely because it doesn't take quite as seriously the categories Plato raises in the Timaeus. And this is one way to read Derrida in "Violence and Metaphysics."
Derrida critiques Levinas' attempt to allow one to encounter a face unmediated. For Derrida the face is not the face but a resemblance. That is the trace of a trace (or sign of a sign). Unmediated encountering never happens. We always have mediation. I turn again to Plato.
[After speaking of the first two categories] and a third Kind is ever-existing Place, which admits not of destruction, and provides room for all things that have birth, itself being apprehensible by a kind of bastard reasoning by the aid of non-sensation, barely an object of belief; for when we regard this we dimly dream and affirm that it is somehow necessary that all that exists should exist in some spot and occupying some place, and that that which is neither on earth nor anywhere in the Heaven is nothing. So because of all these and other kindred notions, we are unable also on waking up to distinguish clearly the unsleeping and truly subsisting substance, owing to our dreamy condition, or to state the truth — how that it belongs to a copy — seeing that it has not for its own even that substance for which it came into being, but fleets ever as a phantom of something else — to come into existence in some other thing, clinging to existence as best it may, on pain of being nothing at all; whereas to the aid of the really existent there comes the accurately true argument, that so long as one thing is one thing, and another something different, neither of the two will ever come to exist in the other so that the same thing becomes simultaneously both one and two. (52a-d)
Sounds quite Derridean. (I think some underestimate just how Platonic like Derrida is)
Now Dr. Vallicella's point was roughly about Being in the Aristotilean sense. So what does Aristotle think of all this?
Now we may agree that the primary materials, whose change (whether it be "association and dissociation" or a process of another kind) results in coming-to-be and passing-away, are rightly described as "originative sources, i.e. elements." But (i) those thinkers are in error who postulate, beside the bodies we have mentioned, a single matter--and that corporeal and separable matter. For this "body" of theirs cannot possibly exist without a "perceptible contrariety": this "Boundless," which some thinkers identify with the "original real," must be either light or heavy, either cold or hot. And (ii) what Plato has written in the Timaeus is not based on any precisely-articulated conception. For he has not stated clearly whether his "Omnirecipient" exists in separation from the "elements"; nor does he make any use of it. He says, indeed, that it is a substratum prior to the so-called "elements"--underlying them, as gold underlies the things that are fashioned of gold. (And yet this comparison, if thus expressed, is itself open to criticism. Things which come-to-be and pass-away cannot be called by the name of the material out of which they have come-to-be: it is only the results of "alteration" which retain the name of the substratum whose "alterations" they are. However, he actually says that "far the truest account is to affirm that each of them is 'gold.'") Nevertheless he carries his analysis of the "elements"--solids though they are--back to "planes," and it is impossible for "the Nurse" (i.e. the primary matter) to be identical with "the planes."
Our own doctrine is that although there is a matter of the perceptible bodies (a matter out of which the so-called "elements" come-to-be), it has no separate existence, but is always bound up with a contrariety. A more precise account of these presuppositions has been given in another work: we must, however, give a detailed explanation of the primary bodies as well, since they too are similarly derived from the matter. We must reckon as an "originative source" and as "primary" the matter which underlies, though it is inseparable from, the contrary qualities: for "the hot" is not matter for "the cold" nor "the cold" for "the hot," but the substratum is matter for them both. We therefore have to recognize three "originative sources": firstly that which is potentially perceptible body, secondly the contrarieties (I mean, e.g., heat and cold), and thirdly Fire, Water, and the like. Only "thirdly," however: for these bodies change into one another (they are not immutable as Empedokles and other thinkers assert, since "alteration" would then have been impossible), whereas the contrarieties do not change. (De Generatione et Corruptione, Book II Chapter 1)
I raise this for two reasons. First, to illustrate that there is a conflict here between Aristotle and Plato. Who should we follow (and more importantly why?) Returning to Derrida and Levinas (and his dog) we have Aristotle's odd comment, "Things which come-to-be and pass-away cannot be called by the name of the material out of which they have come-to-be." So the coming of being and the passing of being (perhaps better phrased as the sending and withdrawing of being) can't have the name of the matter "out of which" they have been sent. This is, of course, exactly Derrida's critique of Levinas. We never have the name, the proper name, properly used. As Derrida says of God as Other (the exemplar for Levinas).
The face of God which commands while hiding itself is at once more and less a face than all faces. [...] The face is neither the face of God nor the figure of man: it is their resemblance. A resemblance which, however, we must think before, or without the assistance of the Same. ("Violence and Metaphysics" 108-9)
For Platonists, the realm of the soul (the second category or imitation of the forms) is roughly the realm of semiotics. Of signs. To seek this "prime matter" we must go behind what is "insparable from, the contrary qualities." We can see Derrida's work in this comment of Aristotle on Plato. Above our prime matter are the contraries (the qualities for Aristotle like hot and cold). Yet they are inseparable from the matter. This work of contraries is the work of the aporia which perhaps (in an almost Hegelian fashion?) allows this common substrate to show itself. If just barely and immediately withdrawn. In the realm of signs though we seek what is behind the sign - its source.
Once again we turn to Derrida.
To be behind the sign which is in the world is afterward to remain invisible to the world within epiphany. In the face, the other is given over in person as other, that is, as that which does not reveal itself, as that which cannot be made thematic. I could not possible speak of the Other, make of the Other a theme, pronounce the Other as object, in the accusative. I can only, I must only speak the other; that is, I must call him in the vocative, which is not a category, a case of speech, but rather the busting forth, the very raising up of speech. Categories must be missing for the Other not to be overlooked, He must present himself as absence, and must appear as nonphenomenal. Always behind its signs and its works, always within its secret interior, and forever discreet, interrupting all historical totalities through its freedom of speech, the face is not "of this world." It is the origin of the world. I can speak of it only by speaking to it; and I may reach it only as I must reach it. But I must only reach it as the inaccessible, the invisible, the intangible. (ibid, 103 - although not he is in part presenting Levinas here)
Returning to our dog, Bobby, one asks to what we address. "So who is this dog at the end of the verse? Someone who disrupts society's games (or Society itself) and is consequently given a cold reception?" (Levinas, 151) "High hermeneutics, however, which is so caught up here in a word-for-word approach, allows itslef to explain the paradox of a pure nature leading to rights." (152) Of course Levinas, by his presumed accent on this second sentence may well not intend this pure nature to really be nature in general nor to intend it to lead to general rights. "And the clear verse with which we began is given a new meaning. It reminds us of the debt that is always open." (ibid) Can I call this open world Bobby?
I should note that the passage from Aristotle I quoted need not (and perhaps should not) be read as advocating prime matter. It is the matter of scholarly debate. And I am even less an Aristotle scholar than Levinas scholar. I quote the whole passage primarily because I think it is relevant relative to Heidegger and the bifurcation of Being. But I have spoken only here of khora. (The name of my new dog?) Ironically the name of my living dog is Einstein who gave us the grandest of recepticals for thinking matter and universe.
Clark: Derrida critiques Levinas' attempt to allow one to encounter a face unmediated. For Derrida the face is not the face but a resemblance.
I have a question. It seems for Levinas the encounter with the other says something about us (calls forth from us), not the other, what difference does it make if the face is a resemblance?
Also, why does Derrida stress the unknowability of the other when it is the resemblance that the I encounters?
Rich
Rich, no. That's actually the position of Husserl which Levinas is reacting against. I'd actually had half a post written Friday on that very topic but didn't have time to put it up. Hopefully tonight although I make no promises.
As for why Derrida stresses the unknowability yet emphasizes the resemblance. This arises out of Christian and Jewish metaphor. Man is in the image of God yet for both traditions God is completely Other. (In a fashion far more extreme than most Mormons can stomach) So both Derrida and Levinas are applying this logic of God to the traditional problem of other minds in the context of Husserl and Heidegger. One of Derrida's critiques of Levinas is that Levinas doesn't take this serious enough and argues for unmediated contact. Interestingly one of his texts for this is the appearance of God to Moses where God hides his face.
Once again these metaphors don't work well for Mormons due to our different theology of God. But it is roughly the idea that God's face is always veiled and we only go through mediation.
I put up the post on Husserl and Others yesterday. If I have time today I'll do a post on the related issue in Heidegger with his notion of Being-with.
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