Levinas: Subjectivity, Affectivity and Desire.

243 Pages·2014·2.68 MB·English

0

Levinas: Subjectivity, Affectivity and
Desire.

Thesis Summary
The thesis argues that Emmanuel Levinas(cid:8217)s later concept of ethical subjectivity, explicated in his
late work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, can really only be understood by taking into
account the very early work On Escape. The thesis argues that the concept of ethical subjectivity
emerges from his work via his attempts to articulate transcendence. Transcendence itself is
ultimately identified with ethics. My thesis traces his continued attempts at a satisfactory
conception of transcendence through the early works (Existence and Existents and Time and the
Other), and via his other major work Totality and Infinity.
On Escape articulates a very specific notion of need in terms of a need for escape which forms the
conceptual seeds of Levinas(cid:8217)s idea of transcendence, and which will ultimately become his notion
of metaphysical Desire. His notion of ethics as the arresting of the spontaneous ego(cid:8217)s conatus by
the face of the Other, will turn out to ultimately requires the articulation of ethical subjectivity.
The notion of ethical subjectivity is made possible, and thus his work reaches maturity, by the
introduction of the notion of the trace. I argue that the idea of subjectivity as openness and
vulnerability and the notion of an otherwise than being can be traced to the early work.
My thesis takes as its starting point Levinas(cid:8217)s engagement and criticism of the philosophy of
Martin Heidegger. I argue that Levinas can best be understood as always in some sense in
conversation with Heidegger.
1

THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL

Levinas: Subjectivity, Affectivity and
Desire

being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of

PhD in the University of Hull

by

Anthony Edward Wilde BA (with Honours First Class) MA (Philosophy of
Mind)

July 2013
i

Contents
Introduction .............................................................................. 1

Ethics or metaphysics .......................................................................................................................1
Experience as Encounter with Otherness ...................................................................................3
Truth and Freedom ...........................................................................................................................5
Participation .......................................................................................................................................7
Philosophy(cid:8217)s Recourse to Neuters.................................................................................................9
The Idea of the Infinite .................................................................................................................. 10
The Philosophy of the Same as Conatus Essendi .................................................................... 12
Is it Righteous to Be? ...................................................................................................................... 13
Face ..................................................................................................................................................... 14
From Sensibility to Persecution ................................................................................................. 18
Heidegger .......................................................................................................................................... 19
Chap 1 Heidegger and Being-in-the-World.............................................................................. 19
Chap 2 Corporeal Enjoyment ....................................................................................................... 20
Chap 3 Needs in On Escape ........................................................................................................... 20
Chap 4 Need and Desire ................................................................................................................ 20
Chap 5 The Il y a .............................................................................................................................. 20
Chap 6 Eros and Fecundity ........................................................................................................... 21
Chap 7 The Trace ............................................................................................................................ 21
Chap 8 Ethical Subjectivity ........................................................................................................... 21
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 22
Appendix ........................................................................................................................................... 22
1. Heidegger and Being-in-the-World ................................... 23

The Importance of Being and Time ........................................................................................... 23
Dasein ............................................................................................................................................... 25
ii

World ................................................................................................................................................ 27
The Ready-to-Hand ....................................................................................................................... 27
Being-with-Others ......................................................................................................................... 29
The Ontological Difference ......................................................................................................... 30
Concern and Care........................................................................................................................... 31
Dasein(cid:8217)s Essence is Existence ..................................................................................................... 34
States-of-Mind or Moods.............................................................................................................. 35
Thrown Projection as Understanding (Verstehen) .............................................................. 35
The They (Das Man) ...................................................................................................................... 37
Idle talk ............................................................................................................................................ 38
Curiosity ........................................................................................................................................... 39
Ambiguity ........................................................................................................................................ 39
Anxiety .............................................................................................................................................. 40
Authenticity and Inauthenticity ................................................................................................ 41
Guilt and the Call of Conscience ................................................................................................. 42
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 43
2. Corporeal Enjoyment ......................................................... 44

Levinas(cid:8217)s notion of Enjoyment (Jouissance) ............................................................................ 44
Enjoyment not Representation ................................................................................................... 46
Enjoyment is Sincere and not Fallen .......................................................................................... 47
Enjoyment is Beyond Being ......................................................................................................... 48
Enjoyment and Care (Sorge) ........................................................................................................ 49
Enjoyment and Need ...................................................................................................................... 51
Enjoyment and Sensibility ........................................................................................................... 52
Enjoyment and the Elemental ..................................................................................................... 53
Enjoyment and Subjectivity ......................................................................................................... 55
Enjoyment and Representation .................................................................................................. 56
Beyond Being ................................................................................................................................... 59
3. Need in On Escape .............................................................. 60

Needs Not a Lack ............................................................................................................................. 60
iii

Need and Thrownness (Geworfenheit) ..................................................................................... 62
Thrownness and the Body ............................................................................................................ 63
Need as Ontological ........................................................................................................................ 65
A Phenomenology of Need............................................................................................................ 68
The Inadequacy of Satisfaction to Need.................................................................................... 70
Pleasure ............................................................................................................................................. 72
Heidegger, Care and Mineness .................................................................................................... 76
Pleasure as a False Promise ......................................................................................................... 78
Shame ................................................................................................................................................. 80
Nausea................................................................................................................................................ 83
4. The Distinction between Need and Desire ....................... 86

The Quest for Transcendence ..................................................................................................... 86
Existence and Existents ................................................................................................................. 87
Time and the Other ........................................................................................................................ 89
Need and Satisfaction in Levinas(cid:8217)s Mature Philosophy ........................................................ 90
Desire ................................................................................................................................................. 94
The Formal Features of Desire.................................................................................................... 97
5. The Il y a ............................................................................ 100

Heidegger and the Nothing......................................................................................................... 100
There is (il y a) no Nothing ......................................................................................................... 102
Insomnia ......................................................................................................................................... 107
Consciousness ................................................................................................................................ 109
The Haunting of the Elements ................................................................................................... 111
Escape From Being ....................................................................................................................... 112
Dwelling .......................................................................................................................................... 114
Habitation and the Feminine ..................................................................................................... 116
Labour and Possession ................................................................................................................ 120
Effort, Fatigue and Indolence .................................................................................................... 122
Pain and Death .............................................................................................................................. 125
6. Eros and the Face ............................................................. 128
iv

EROS IN EXISTENCE AND EXISTENTS AND TIME AND THE OTHER
............................................................................................... 128

The Centrality of the Face ........................................................................................................... 128
Convention and the Other .......................................................................................................... 128
The Feminine ................................................................................................................................. 131
(cid:8216)Eros, strong as death(cid:8217) .................................................................................................................. 132
Eros not a Power Relation .......................................................................................................... 133
The Caress ....................................................................................................................................... 134
The Importance of the Face ................................................. 135

The Face .......................................................................................................................................... 135
Eros in Totality and Infinity .................................................. 145

The Ambiguity of Eros ................................................................................................................. 145
The Audacity of Love .................................................................................................................... 146
The Frailty of the Other ............................................................................................................... 147
The Ultramateriality of the Carnal ........................................................................................... 148
Identity of Feeling ......................................................................................................................... 149
Subjectivity in Eros....................................................................................................................... 151
Beyond Eros .......................................................................... 152

Fecundity ........................................................................................................................................ 152
Filiality and Fraternity ................................................................................................................ 155
Towards Ethical Subjectivity ..................................................................................................... 157
7. Beyond Totality and Infinity ............................................ 158

Two Problems with Totality and Infinity ................................................................................ 158
The Trace ........................................................................................................................................ 161
The Gift ............................................................................................................................................ 165
The Enigma of the Trace ............................................................................................................. 175
The Difference between Levinas and Derrida(cid:8217)s Notion of the Trace .............................. 178
8. Ethical Subjectivity ........................................................... 181
v

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 181
The saying (le Dire) and the said (le Dit) ............................................................................... 182
The Connection to Need .............................................................................................................. 184
The Deconstruction of the Subject ........................................................................................... 185
From Openness to Exposure ...................................................................................................... 188
Proximity to the Other ................................................................................................................ 191
Proximity and Enjoyment........................................................................................................... 192
Obsession ........................................................................................................................................ 194
Trauma ............................................................................................................................................ 195
Accusation, Persecution and the Condition of Being a Hostage ....................................... 200
Substitution .................................................................................................................................... 202
Summary ......................................................................................................................................... 205
Conclusion ............................................................................. 208

Appendix Levinas and the Feminine ........................... 219

Simone de Beauvoir(cid:8217)s Criticism ................................................................................................ 219
Women in the Home..................................................................................................................... 220
The Feminine and the Erotic ..................................................................................................... 226
Maternity ........................................................................................................................................ 227
Bibliography .......................................................................... 230
1

Introduction
Ethics or metaphysics
One of the central problems faced by anyone reading Emmanuel Levinas(cid:8217)s philosophy as a whole is
how the earlier work is to be understood in the light of the later. How are we to re-read Totality
and Infinity (Totaite et Infini) (1961), with its use of ontological language, in the light of Otherwise
than Being or Beyond Essence (Autrement qu'être ou Au-delà de l'essence) (1974) which explicitly
rejects such language in favour of what he calls (cid:8216)ethical language(cid:8217)1? Or how are we to understand
Levinas(cid:8217)s claim in Time and the Other that the feminine is the absolutely other when it is given a
rather subordinate role in Totality and Infinity in favour of the face? And how are we to read
Levinas(cid:8217)s early works(cid:8212) I am thinking specifically of the rather Heideggerian On Escape (De
l(cid:8217)évasion) (1935) (cid:8212) in the light of the later explicitly anti-Heideggerian works?
My reading of Levinas is predicated on the assumption that there is a consistent trajectory to his
thought and thus that the apparent contradictions can be largely reconciled in a reading that sees
his work as centring round certain principal motifs. Put another way I see Levinas(cid:8217)s work as
concentrating on certain crucial questions and his various positions as the trying out of different,
but crucially related, ways of dealing with such questions. Specifically I will argue that a concern
with the nature of the human, and particularly with human subjectivity thought largely in terms of
the body, prior to its social constitution, is central to Levinas(cid:8217)s thinking. This will come as no
surprise to those who know Levinas(cid:8217)s work. What I hope will come as news is the way I trace
Levinas(cid:8217)s notion of subjectivity right back to his early Heideggerian works. I thus propose to read
Levinas against a Heideggerian backdrop. We will see a Levinas more complicated and troubling
than is often thought, but nevertheless a Levinas who clearly formulates, from various different
angles, a specific vision of what it is to be a human being.
It is usual to see Levinas as a philosopher who prioritises ethics, an ethics that centralises the role
of the face of the Other: and this is certainly a correct characterisation. The titles of two fine books
devoted to Levinas illustrate this: The collection entitled Ethics as First Philosophy edited by
Adriaan T. Peperzak2 and the comparative study Interpreting Otherwise than Heidegger:
Emmanuel Levinas(cid:8217)s Ethics as First Philosophy by Robert John Sheffler Manning.3 Both of which I
have benefited from immensely. I am far from disagreeing with this reading. Yet there has also
developed an equally important set of readings which emphasise the role of transcendence over
ethics in Levinas(cid:8217)s thought. Stella Sandford is perhaps the first to clearly articulate this, certainly
she is exemplary. In her excellent study The Metaphysics of Love: Gender and Transcendence in
Levinas she writes:

1 Levinas (1998a), p. 193
2 Peperzak (1995)
3 Manning (1993)
2

My contention (cid:8211) one not entirely absent from in the existing literature on Levinas,
but here elaborated in much greater detail (cid:8211) is that for Levinas ethics is the way to
metaphysics, that (cid:8216)ethics(cid:8217) is the phenomenological elaboration or experiential
attestation of a more fundamental metaphysical claim that would reassert the
necessity of a thinking of (cid:8216)transcendence(cid:8217) as a first principle.4
Levinas(cid:8217)s own words seem to confirm this reading. In Jacques Derrida(cid:8217)s sympathetic reading of
Levinas, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, the author testifies to the fact that in conversation Levinas
confined to him that: (cid:8220)You know, one often speaks of ethics to describe what I do, but what really
interests me in the end is not ethics, not ethics alone, but the holy, the holiness of the holy.(cid:8221)5 If it
is legitimate to identify metaphysics with the search for transcendence(cid:8212) and I will argue that this
is the case for Levinas(cid:8212) and also identify the quest for transcendence with the attempt to glimpse
the holy, which I think is also the case, then it would seem that Levinas is a metaphysician first and
an ethical philosopher afterwards. It might therefore appear that I am trying to have it both ways
when I say that I also fully endorse this reading of Levinas(cid:8217)s work. I hope my thesis will show that I
am not trying to have it both ways but that in an important respect it is both ways: ethics is
transcendence and transcendence is ethics. We can illustrate this by referencing a remark that
Levinas made in an interview with François Poiré. At a certain point the interviewer tries to get
Levinas to specify the precise location of his theme of responsibility for the Other:
Q.: But this theme of responsibility, is it a metaphysical or a moral theme?
A.: I don(cid:8217)t know the difference to which you are referring.6
Clearly a third year undergraduate could make a stab at distinguishing these areas of philosophy,
but the point is that as Levinas understands them there is no clear dividing line: ethics is
metaphysics and metaphysics is ethics. Now since my subject is (cid:8216)ethical subjectivity(cid:8217) then it follows
from what has been said that the thesis could with equal justice have (cid:8216)metaphysical subjectivity(cid:8217) in
the title. As we will see the way Levinas(cid:8217)s thought is articulated from early to late would seem to
favour such a designation. But when we reach Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence we will see
that the early work requires re-reading in the light of the later and in this way a more coherent
narrative emerges.
We cannot however claim that it was Levinas(cid:8217)s intention when writing On Escape, for example, to
begin a theme which can be most fruitfully understood in the light of later writings. This would be
to attribute a level of prescience to the author which is clearly unreasonable. However we should,
I believe, see him as groping toward an articulation of the human which only really comes to
fruition in the later works and so is already present in rudimentary outline at the beginning. I want
to show that his early concentration on Heideggerian themes led him in a completely different
direction to Heidegger, toward a kind of humanism, but a humanism that does not centralise

4 Sandford (2000), p. 1
5 Derrida(1999), p. 4
6 Emmanuel Levinas (2001), p. 56
3

reason, freedom or the self. Rather, to quote the title of one of his important books, it is a
Humanism of the Other (Humanisme de l(cid:8217)autre homme).7
By way of introduction I want to first sketch out the very broad contours of Levinas(cid:8217)s philosophy so
that I can introduce specifically Levinasian terms. I follow this line in order that, later, I might be
able to focus in on specific aspects of his thinking without distracting digressions on the way he
uses certain crucial terms and concepts. Once I have done this I will outline the structure of the
thesis and specify the relation between the chapters.
Experience as Encounter with Otherness
As with most original philosophers Levinas understood his own philosophy as throwing into
question the whole of Western philosophy as it had being traditionally conceived.8This in turn
required him to have some kind of summary of what this tradition amounted to. By virtue of such
a summary and the critique he deployed against the tradition, he found it necessary to both use
concepts that belong to this tradition, and to radicalise or reinterpret their import. So in order to
clarify the very broad outlines of his thinking, it will be useful to dwell upon the significance he
bestowed upon two very general concepts, the concepts of (cid:8216)Same(cid:8217) and (cid:8216)Other.9 This will help us to
introduce those other distinctively Levinasian concepts as we proceed. Levinas adopts and adapts
these concepts from Plato(cid:8217)s Sophist,10 where they feature as the highest of the categories of being.
I will clarify them by looking mainly at his 1957 paper (cid:8216)Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity,(cid:8217) (Totality
and Infinity (Totaite et Infini) was published in 1961) which is in any case an excellent introduction
to his overall thinking. Levinas begins by claiming that, (cid:8216)Every philosophy seeks truth.(cid:8217)11 He
concedes that this is too general and empty to be definitive of philosophy, but also characterises,
for example, scientific thought. Nevertheless he draws out from this broad characterisation two
possible directions that the (cid:8216)philosophical spirit(cid:8217)12 can take. Primarily he insists that truth implies
experience. If this is a defence of empiricism then it remains a vague empiricism since no definite
content has yet being given to the notion of (cid:8216)experience.(cid:8217) However given the notion of
(cid:8216)experience(cid:8217) we can specify that for experience to be experience, even at this very formal level, it
is necessary that the experiencer encounter something distinct from him or her self. In Levinas(cid:8217)s
terminology; it is necessary that he or she encounter something Other. Yet this distinctness, this
Otherness, proves to be quite demanding for Levinas. We might feel that when we encounter
nature or the world, external to our minds, as philosophers often put it, we are dealing with
Otherness. But for Levinas this is not the case:

7 Levinas (2006b)
8 We will see that there are significant exceptions to this (cid:8216)whole(cid:8217).
9 I use capitals in order to emphasise the philosophical centrality of these concepts in Levinas(cid:8217)s philosophy. It
should be added, however, that in order for them to function philosophically they must retain much of their
ordinary connotation. The concept of (cid:8216)the Other(cid:8217) will always be capitalised in this thesis if it has the
specifically Levinasian sense. This is not always Levinas(cid:8217)s practice but it will help with clarity.
10 Plato (1993), 254b-256b
11 Emmanuel Levinas (cid:8216)Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity(cid:8217) in Levinas (1998d), p. 47
12 Ibid