Chapter 5- Emmanuel Levinas and the 'Love of Knowledge'

In the book, Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas explores the structure of the Ethical in his depiction of the I-other relation. In this intricate song, Levinas weaves a contextual web that points toward a remarkable conversion in the deepest recesses and at the most elevated heights of human experience- at the point where reception halts and initiation irrupts. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate the structure and working of this remarkable conversion.
I hope to accomplish this assistance by first indicating the point of origin where this implication arises. Then I will magnify it by depicting this conversion with regard to a focus of the act; which Levinas resists; in a moment necessary to the structure of the I-other relation. This avenue of inquiry will then lead us to a presentation of language needed to affect this conversion. We will then elaborate on our findings and explore an avenue within the dynamics of the act that can expand the range of Levinas theory and bring about a balance that does not erode or explode the structure of Levinas work.
The context in which this conversion arises begins to emerge in the very beginning of the text. Levinas takes the I-other relation as a presupposition for his approach to metaphysics. He speaks of the I-other relation as a reciprocal process, a movement that pre-exists the very reaching of the I inherent in and necessary for this relation. Levinas does this by establishing the I-other relation in a contextual fashion by juxtaposing the dynamic nature of metaphysical desire at the outset of the book with an already achieved, already presupposed ethical relation.

"The effort of this book is directed toward apperceiving in discourse a non-allergic relation with alterity, toward apperceiving Desire-where power, by essence murderous of the other, becomes, faced with the other and "against all good sense", the impossibility of murder, the consideration of the other, or justice. Concretely our effort consists in maintaining, within anonymous community, the society of the I with the Other-language and goodness".1

I have no dispute with Levinas critical exposition, nor the point of origination, however there is a profound reaching in the separation from the I in the I-other relation that is as necessary to expound as the relation itself. It is part of the fabric of the relation itself and thus cannot be presented completely in a contextual format. The relation of I-other as ethical occurs through an effort, through a stage, a moment that centers on the soliloquy of the I in its reaching toward the other, in an act that becomes relation, and thus is a negative anti-violent act. We must begin form the language of egoism and then move to that of the ethical relation.
The 'face' is thus already a recognition in Totality and Infinity, therefore respect is presupposed. We wish to show the I-other in its struggle for recognition, its struggle toward the relation. The movement of complete separation Levinas espouses; which demands an upsurgence of the I; allows distinction out of the flat mass of content. It is the I-other relation that is to be achieved. The I-other must be presented as possibility, as hope. Discourse is an achieved relation.
I dispute the presentation on the basis that it leaves unexamined an essential element in the I-other relation. Before the I comes to be other, it is found alone. Levinas shows this2 but evades how the soliloquy towards dialogue and thus the relinquishment of egoism of the I-other relation comes about.3 Pluralism is not always realized, does not always emerge.
An example of the difficulty of Levinas project to present a non-allergic relation as the metaphysical relation is shown in his analysis of the act. Levinas includes an extensive analysis of the act in Totality and Infinity, and what characterizes this presentation is that acts cause a violent uprooting for Levinas, which is directly contradictory for him and his presentation of the metaphysics of the ethical relation. He wishes to show the emergence of the I as non-allergic.

Levinas, pg. 109. "if cognition in the form of the objectifying act does not seem to us to be at the level of the metaphysical relation, this is not because the exteriority contemplated as object, the theme, would withdraw from the subject as fast as the abstractions proceed; on the contrary it does not withdraw enough. The contemplation of objects remains close to action; it disposes of its theme, and consequently comes into play on a plane where one limits another. Metaphysics approaches without touching. Its way is not an action, but is the social relation. But we maintain that the social relation is experience preeminently, for it takes place before the existent that expresses himself, that is, remains in himself."

What Levinas misses is that in the soliloquy of the I in its relinquishment of egoism there can be a nonviolent act. This is an act that becomes relation in its negative motion and is thus a negative, anti-violent act.
Conversion is merely implied, is not constitutive, in Levinas' exposition of the I-other relation in Totality and Infinity. First in the claim to reach the other, the emphasis in the analysis is on the trace of what has already been absolved in the circuit of communication to insure his idea of invocation as a maintenance. This is the result of a reflective stance toward speech because there are instances where the other is not respected in the face-reaching-toward-face encounter. There is an intention of intimidation in some moments of spoken word, and there are also efforts to eradicate and terrorize through the face to face encounter.

"The claim to know and to reach the other is realized in the relationship with the other that is cast in the relation of language, where the essential is the interpellation, the vocative. The other is maintained and confirmed in his heterogeneity as soon as one calls upon him, be it only to say to him that one cannot speak to him, to classify him as sick, to announce to him his death sentence; at the same time as grasped, wounded, outraged, he is "respected". The invoked is not what I comprehend he is not under a category. He is the one to whom I speak-he has only a reference to himself; he has no quiddity." 4

The turn to language for maintaining the alterity of the other without consuming him is only an ideal. What Levinas misses is that the initial dynamic in the constitution of the I presupposes a completely haphazard relation with the other. It is not a constant relationship, but something to be achieved. His analysis is of a language already respectful, a language that does not devour or repel the other in its hideousness. Communication is always an opportunity, an effort and a chance. It is language at the beginning of a sentence, at the beginning of new speech. Metaphysics in the act, and in the word can wield a feather and/or a hammer. Will Levinas' song as call be heard, be answered? Will it be recognized as respect or terror?
The second point where we differ with Levinas is in his attention toward limiting the upsurgence of the I to language alone. Conversion is present in his depiction here, and an appropriate focus is directed toward the irruption inherent in speech as giving. The subtle distinction I wish to show is the plunge Levinas takes toward the transitive aspect of the I-other relation, as centering on the soliloquy of the I as well as a contextual presentation. This transition occurs properly in all acts. He attempts to show it contextually here. However the emergence of the initiative-I in solitude is inescapable. In the abundance of attention in the ever renewed effort, the I-other relation as ethical is in the reaching stages, and has yet to be achieved. This leads us closer to where reception halts and initiation begins.

"The signification of beings is manifested not in the perspective of finality, but in that of language. A relation between terms that resist totalization, that absolve themselves from the relation or that specify it, is possible only as language. the resistance of one term to the other is not due to the obscure and hostile residue of alterity, but, with contrary, to the inexhaustible surplus of attention with speech, ever teaching brings me. For speech is always a taking up again of what was a simple sign cast forth by it, an ever renewed promise to clarify what was obscure in the utterance.
To have meaning is to be situated relative to an absolute, that is, to come from that alterity that is not absorbed in its being perceived. Such alterity is possible only as a miraculous abundance, an inexhaustible surplus of attention arising in the ever recommenced effort of language to clarify its own manifestation. To have meaning is to teach or to be taught, to speak or be able to be stated."5

Here the terms absolve themselves in reflection because they have already absolved themselves. The reflection is merely a review of it.
Another area where the soliloquy of the I- in its relinquishing of egoism- as the passage through conversion, is shown is in Levinas' exposition of the dynamics of Infinity and totality, in the dynamics of contraction converted to giving, to creation. After presenting the structural version of this dynamics, where the I diminishes, Levinas converts this presentation to the ethical reading, but does not show how the passage occurs.

"Infinity opens he order of the good. It is an order that does not contradict, but goes beyond the rules of formal logic. The distinction between need and desire cannot be reflected in formal logic, where desire is always forced into the forms of need. From the purely formal necessity comes the force of Parmenidean philosophy. But the order of desire, the relationship between strangers who are not wanting to one another- desire in its positivity- is affirmed across the idea of creation ex nihilo. Then the plane of the needy being, avid for its complements, vanishes, and the possibility of a sabbatical existence, where existence suspends the necessities of existence, is inaugurated."6

This passage illuminates the conversion from pure dynamics to the possibility of the ethical horizon; from one type of desire to another, where the pulsation of the I presented within the fluctuating aspects of the master-slave relation are relinquished, merely let go by the I in a manner not dependent and not magisterial, but nevertheless creative. In this passage, this passing through, is shown the location where healing meets giving in the I-towards. But only in a certain way. Where in the act does this occur?
Another element of the practical dimension of conversion is shown in Levinas' exposition of enjoyment as a derivative of need. Enjoyment as a derivative of need places need

"Pure existing is ataraxy; happiness is accomplishment, enjoyment is the mode of the memory of its thirst; it is a quenching. It is the act that remembers its "potency". It does not express the mode of my implantation-my disposition -in being, the tonus of my bearing. It is not my bearing in being but already the exceeding of being; being itself "befalls" him who can seek happiness as a new glory above substantiality;"7

How does this 'quenching ' occur? How is it that one can 'seek happiness' after traumatic injury and horrible assault is incurred? How does one find happiness above substantiality. How can a person injured acquire and develop this marvelous and fantastic way Levinas shows? If joy is derived from its relation from pain, how do we live from pain, from suffering? A hint is found in Levinas' depiction of recollection.

"Recollection, in the current sense of the term, designates a suspension of the immediate reaction the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one's possibilities and the situation. It is already a movement of attention freed from immediate enjoyment, for no longer deriving its freedom from the agreeableness of the elements" 8

Levinas comes very close here to describing the nature of a physical process that allows one to live from pains, for the structure of suspension and solitude depicted in the core of recollection occurs at the core of every act. There is a break with reception at the decision of every act, a repose of the self to itself. In fact recollection differs from other acts because of its attention to the self as past. Other acts, in the focus toward the other; its possibilities, and the situation, belie an even more benevolent and horrible situation where focus is proper toward the other, and where the terms absolve themselves in the act, and thus become relation. To live from pains one needs a type of material 'recollection'.
The real fecundity of the will, its magic and its transformative character is shown when malice is transformed in the ethical in the act of human forgiveness. In the divine-like sweep of forgiveness, malice is transformed into the Ethical. It is here where the act becomes relation, in the negative act of anti-violence. Here is where we create something, ex nihilo, in an ethical effort towards another. It is how man lives from pain. It is context meeting its opposite in a moment where man becomes/ approaches, God; and God becomes/approaches man. It is formation and reformation, an emergence and affirmation simultaneously. Forgiveness is the only beauty, the only creation.
At the root of our being; where reside our most violent, malice oriented acts; the solitude and repose of a self-to-itself can be found. Man pulls away from his injury, moves from it, transascends it, forgets it in a just flash that shows that it is left behind in the course of the act. This repose is a summoning that comes from the self. It is an absorption of being, a congealed and condensed moment, where dynamics become opaque, and opacities become dynamic. This moment is both at rest and initiative of being, it can be called making peace and is at a point where participation in substance occurs. This is the moment of truth in forgiveness. It is healing and divine, while at the same time an inhuman turning away asceticism of the self. It is where suffering and evil can come to nothing.
Violence from hatred stops itself-comes to rest as all outside knowledge does, as recollection does. Its progression occurs in junctures, and at each juncture it takes a decision to perpetuate this causal chain. A break occurs in the priority of focus from receptivity to initiation of new action in an acknowledgment of the existential nature of decision.
I should mention now that it is here where we evoke the Aristotle of the categories, where primary ousia is revealed as the logical subject and secondary ousia is revealed in the logical predicate. This emphasis shows the fluctuation of concrete experience between the determinate character of the subject as noun-- its reified character-- and its dynamic characteristics as actor. The subject location in the sentence at times has bearing on how the predicate becomes. Is this not what Levinas means when he writes "Being occurs as multiple, and as divided into same and other."10 This is why the relation from subject to predicate is not linear but dialogical, interwoven between both subject and predicate. The relation is beyond dialectics. It is originary, not from opposition but in concert, a chorus of prayer, suffering, and grace. This is what we can derive from the passage on pg. 275

"Interpenetration of instants in duration, openness upon the future, "being for death": these are ways of expressing an existing not in conformity with the logic of unity. This separation of Being and the One is obtained by the rehabilitation of the possible. No longer backed up by the unity of Aristotelian act, possibility harbors the very multiplicity of its dynamism, hitherto indigent alongside of the act accomplished, henceforth richer that it."11

This cannot occur with a completely reflective opacity, but in an ‘Interpenetration of instants’, in a metaphysics of permeation that simultaneously allows separation, in a metaphysics that touches as well, in a soliloquy of the I that dissolves its egoism. It is where affinity presents itself as both ‘like’ and ‘Same and other’. It is here that we take issue with Levinas’ overly platonic rendering of existence. By emphasizing the predominantly receptive12 aspects of Plato’s thought, in combination with the contextual presentation of the ethical relation, Levinas inadvertently skips the relinquishment of egoism in the soliloquy of forgiveness; the passage from egoism to the Ethical; and thus preserves egoism. The passage is as equally important in the equation. The passage is ignored as essential from the standpoint of the I-as-egoism throughout the text, however it is admitted in an inadvertent portrayal of the unity of the Aristotelian act in Levinas’ exposition on pg. 51,

“The Aristotelian analysis of the intellect, which discovers the agent intellect coming in by the gates, absolutely exterior, and yet constituting, nowise compromising, the sovereign activity of reason, already substitutes for maieutics a transitive action of the master, since reason, without abdicating, is found to be in a position to receive.”

It is now that we take issue with Derrida in his essay, violence and Metaphysics. Derrida’s position with regard to Husserl’s version of analogical appresentation revolves around the analogical version of synthetic apperception as symmetrical from a permeating opacity, a metaphysics that comes in contact with an almost perfectly reflecting violence. This is not Derrida’s intent, for he attempts to portray a metaphysics that touches, that wounds. His is a presentation of flux and reflection, of permeation, however it is a reflection from a permeating opacity that behaves as if it were perfectly concrete, as if there were not permeation. His presentation is more adequate to a metaphysics of complete separation- there is a symmetry in distance. By showing reflection as symmetrical, Derrida presupposes experience as concrete, his thought reaches the object, but does not reach the object as actor. It does not touch him- does not do justice to the irruption that is violence. Derrida’s reflection does not suffer. A presentation of affinity must leave room for the pain in the emergence of experience, symmetry does not.
We see that Levinas’ presentation of the I-other relation proceeds in a very special way which does approach Husserl’s analogical appresentation. Levinas’ attempt shows the first person affinity of the I-other relation as same in third-person, contextual terms. It is an inverted image of analogical apperception by a large scale, full text juxtaposition that brings one closer to this experience of recognition. Levinas creates distance in a revelation of affinity- shows the rupture- enlarging affinity this way. He says that metaphysics approaches but does not touch, however his presentation, of absolute separation, is of a metaphysics that touches, but does not permeate. “Being occurs as multiple, and as divided as same and other.” This is the pregnant paradox of the term ‘Like’.
As Levinas process of transascendance, as learning advances, the relational poles of the I-other change qualitatively. The I is not what previously was the I completely, and the nature of what a thing is changes as well. As rationality and its opposite both advance, the nature of the ‘thing’ seems to melt, to liquefy. How can a ‘thing’ change if vision is not a revision. How can ‘things’ change without a permeating of the I. Permeation supposes violence only where the act has not become relation, where it has not forgiven. How this comes about from the unity and separation of the I-other is the very power, the creation, the divine and absurd caress know as human forgiveness, but we must decide whether to follow its path.
Within the play of inscription and meaning for the reader, is a play, a float between the anchoring, the opacity with which written signs convey at bottom, and which, through the hierarchy, the height by which they convey other shades of meaning. The absolution between terms occurs both underneath language and above it, in a resonance that show the life in language. It is shown in the correct by differing presentations of affinity- an affinity in fluctuation. It is a reflecting, a confirmation of the opacity as mirror, and as initiative. There is life in this distance. Each sign is not only a note, but the possibility of a chord, the register of which is displayed, preserved and concealed by the- a- moment, the spatiality of which, is the moment itself. Permeation occurs between the life of the letter and its binding, it’s having in the word. In this interplay is depicted the resonance in opacity and permeation, a translucence. Contemplation shares in, touches the, pain of experience, the pain of the object. The likeness, the sameness that we find in things and people, is the forgiveness we find for the violence they do to our thinking.
A limit, and hope of philosophy is the fact that its spirit, is found other than in its lines. It is found above and below, in a resonance. Writing per se is not in itself forgiveness, and easily cannot be written from the caress. Writing and philosophy both reach their peak in the teaching of and leading to- forgiveness. How to forgive and how to love in the act, how to be patient in your fear and in your wound. There is a belief in western thought that the very doing of philosophy leads one to this forgiveness by itself, that there is teleology towards forgiveness. This act needs to be decided, again and again. The thinking of teleology is inherent in every decision of every world leader that is committed to their thought, that believes that it is right, and orders that uprising crushed by force, or its dissenters imprisoned- or think that health care, education and housing should be ransomed for a lifetime of hard labor; because the logic of their power demands it. Violence will not be stopped by violence, it will only wish its power were greater in the next battle. Each moral possibility always presents itself as a horizon. A painting to be made. It is decisive. This risk must be taken.14
The decision to forgive in the act, a healing of the self, can show where we differ from Hegel15, where we think most of the western philosophical tradition has concerned itself not with assisting itself but with feeding its fears in developing a science of the experience of consciousness, in attempting certainty. We concur that Levinas eclipsed dialectical lines and made the passage from egoism through the idea of forgiveness in the act. This is implied in the work of this great master, and can lead philosophy to the point where philosophy can teach; can finally be, the love of knowledge.



Notes
1. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity ( Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pg. 33.
2. The relation here precedes action, but the Ethical places oneself outside of history.
3. Levinas, pg. 69.
4. Levinas, pg. 97.
5. Levinas, pg. 104.
6. Levinas, pg. 113.
7. Levinas, pg. 154.
8. Levinas, pg.
9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment ( New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1951), og. 156, and Remark I, pg. 187, the sections on the aesthetical idea.
10. Levinas, pg. 269..
11. Levinas, pg. 275.
12. Levinas, pg. 51.
13. Levinas, pg. 51.
14. Jacque Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics; an Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas”, in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pg. 130.
15. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pg. 3