(an)Other Blog

As I have been reading Levinas over the past couple months, I have found it rather difficult to locate people who want to engage with me concerning his work and ideas. In light of this, I have simply turned my attention to finding other books that engage his philosophy and settle for people in print. I’ll be the first to admit that his work isn’t the most accessible, but I’m truly convinced that his ideas are worth all the hard work it takes to understand.

With that said, I stumbled across a helpful blog this morning titled “…between Levinas and Derrida…” This blog appears to be a college course on the work of Levinas and Derrida, and issues of otherness in general. As a college course, it may only have limited lifespan, and therefore a limited value, but it looks rather promising for entering into discussions on the work of Levinas. I’m hoping that it will be as promising as it looks. So, if anyone is interested I would encourage you to check it out. I’ve included the link above, or it can also be found on my blogroll.

I have been recently thinking through the nature of the ethical relation between people in the work of Miroslav Volf and Emmanuel Levinas. I have come to somewhat of a wall in my thinking and would love any thoughts and engagement that anyone would like to contribute. You don’t have to have read either of them to add to the conversation because the issues at hand are far larger than these two thinkers. They have simply served as the impetus for thinking about ethical obligations in interpersonal relations.
Here is my dilemma: Both Volf and Levinas address the ethical demands placed upon a subject by the presence of the Other (i.e. my appropriate response toward all people outside of myself), and argue for an “embrace of the other” (Volf) or a “being-for-the-other” (Levinas). The difficulty is that they emphasize opposite aspects of the relation in making their ethical demands.

For Volf, the difference of the Other(s) shouldn’t be the point of focus in the relation, for such a focus often leads to an exclusion of all that are not like the subject (or his community). Volf calls this the “logic of purity” which he understands to be rooted in an “exclusive notion of identity,” that is, an notion of identity which is based in the elements of difference between myself and those around me. Therefore, if I happen to love the color blue and my neighbor loves the color green, then I understand who I am (my identity) as one who loves blue, rather than green. This “exclusive notion of identity,” Volf says, carries consequences that are often deadly in today’s pluralistic world. This, certainly, can be seen simply by turning on the news. There is no objection here on such consequences. However, I have recently been reading Emmanuel Levinas and have found his arguments for the nature of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” to be rather persuasive in certain areas.
For Levinas, the nature of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” is founded upon the difference, or “alterity” in his words, of the Other. In trying to move beyond the violent reduction of the difference of the Other into the sameness of the subject (a reduction he sees inherent in discussion of Western ontology in general, and in the writings of Husserl and Heidegger in particular), Levinas argues for an epistemological exclusion forced by the Other upon the subject. Now, this is no intentional act on the part of the Other but is instead an inherent iconoclasm within the relation that occurs as a result of the intentional act of consciousness of the subject. That is to say, when I, as a subject, try to conceptualize and understand (in cognitive ascent) the being of the Other (who they are), they forever allude my (cognitive) grasp in their othernesss, and shatter my concepts of who I understand them to be. Therefore, for Levinas, ethics is always critique: it is a critique of the subject’s understanding of the Other that takes place by way of the Other’s otherness (their difference that exists beyond the subject’s categories), eliciting a response of being-for-the-Other.
So, here is my question, with which I would appreciate any feedback: How is one to navigate through the maze of the ethical relation between the “I” and the “Other” without the violent reduction of absorbing the Other in the sameness of myself (Levinas’ position of preserving the difference of the Other) or allowing such difference to result in the violent consequences that often follow from what Volf calls an “exclusive notion of identity? As a side note, I must say that it is clear that there is always violence of some sort inherent in interpersonal relations. Nevertheless, how is one to move forward without being intentionally violent. I have some thoughts with regard to these questions, and some possible answers. However, I’m interested in bringing others into the conversation to open it up a bit more. Let me know what you think.

I recently read a great article by Daniel M. Bell in The Princeton Theological Review entitled “The Labor of Communion in a Capital Age.” In this article Bell takes issue with our Capitalist Age and its inherent tendencies to distort human relations with people, God, and the creation. In contrast to the subject of capitalism (homeo economicus), a subject characterized by “struggle, conflict, and competition,” Bell offers a Spirit-formed subject that is corporate and ecclesial in nature. “Unlike its capitalist counterpart this is a subject that is…neither self-interested nor relates to others as commodities in an endless (business) cycle of competition and conflict driven by scarcity but instead participates in the divine gift economy of abundance and ceaseless generosity.”

My friend (and roommate) Adam informed me that The Princeton Theological Review can be found online so I have linked the article and would definitely encourage all to read it. It is fairly short, focused in its concerns (comparing the autonomous subject of capitalism with the Spirit-formed, ecclesial subject), hard hitting in its critiques, and encouraging and hopeful in its proposals. I highly recommend it! Below is a summary quote from the article.

“In sum, the problem with capitalism is that it construes our relations with one another and God in a manner that precludes genuine friendship and communion. Under capital, we relate to one another competitively, agonistically, and God, far from befriending us, far from seeking to deliver us from the sin-induced agony that is this struggle, instead presides over it like a prison guard staging a gang fight. Thus, even if capitalism works, it is still wrong because the agony it fosters and perpetuates among people and with God is antithetical to the true communion for which we were created, to which we were called, and which Christians are empowered to proclaim and embody.”
(Daniel M. Bell, “The Labor of Communion in a Capital Age,” The Princeton Theological Review 35 (Fall 2006), 8.)

“The truth is that the rejection of Creator and creation, which Marcion shares with the wide stream of so-called gnosis, generated not only an ascetical contempt for the body, but also a cynical libertinism, for this too displays in reality a hatred of the body, of man, and of the world…In the false ascetism that is hostile to creation, the body becomes a dirty bag of maggots that deserves only disdain or, indeed, ill treatment. Similarly, the basic principle underlying libertinism is the degradation of the body to a mere thing. Its exclusion from the realm of ethics and of the mind’s responsibility means its exclusion from that which makes man human, its exclusion from the dignity of the spirit. It becomes a mere object, a thing, and thus the life of man, too becomes cheap and common…Where man despises his body–whether as an ascetic or as a libertine–he also despises his own self. Both an asceticism hostile to the creation and libertinism lead man by an inherent necessity to hate this life of his, to hate himself, indeed to hate reality as a whole, and herein lies the explosive political power of both these basic attitudes. A man who feels himself disgraced in this way would like to tear apart this prison of shame, that is, his body and the world, in order to escape from such humiliation. He cries out for another world because he hates the creation and the God who bears responsibility for all of this”
(Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God (San Fransisco:Ignatius Press, 200 pg 43-43)

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and, of coarse, all over people were talking about it. There were articles, radio programs, shows, etc. On one particular radio segment on NPR, interviews were held with family and friends recounting his life and the events taking place in the days leading up to 4 April, 1968.

On April 3rd, Dr. King had been in Memphis, Tenn. speaking in a crowded church regarding a strike that was taking place by sanitation workers over poor pay and working conditions. “The issue is injustice,” Dr. King stated in his message, “The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” Addressing the racial inequalities in the city, and consequent economic injustices, Dr. King spoke boldly and prophetically.
Drawing from Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan, Dr. King spoke of the responses of the Priest and Levite toward the man on the side of the road:

“And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” (All right)

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” That’s the question before you tonight. (Yes) Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to my job?” Not, “If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?” (Yes) The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” That’s the question. [applause]

Dr. King was very well aware of the dangers and threats on his life that were being made as he spoke on April 3. Having been stabbed in the chest several years earlier by a demented woman with a letter opener, the tip of the blade on the edge of his aorta, he daily bore a reminder in the form of a scar. Making his awareness more explicit during his speech, Dr. King acknowledged to his audience that though he had seen the Promise Land, he may not make it there with them. In speaking of his uncertainty about what the “difficult days ahead” may hold, he, nevertheless, proclaimed great personal commitment to the mission at hand:

“[I]t really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. (Yeah) [applause] And I don’t mind. [applause continues] Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will…And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

As a minister of the gospel, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in quoting the biblical prophet Amos, sought to see “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Seeking to bring justice to “the least of these,” those to whom justice had been withheld, Dr. King ran against the contemporary cultural current in pursuing justice and righteousness, in the name of love, by means of nonviolent protest. So why did he have to die, and why do I think he knew it? He had to die because he was seeking to live out the gospel of Christ, and I believe he knew this would most likely result in his death because he was aware of the subversive implications of this gospel-it undercuts and stands directly against all other powers and authorities.

Arthur McGill, in his book Suffering: A Test of Theological Method, also draws from Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan and speaks of the “shocking impracticality of Jesus’ teaching.” McGill asks

“If a man really possesses a readiness to expend himself for others, will they not take advantage of him? Will they not soon take all his clothes and borrow all his money? Of course, says Jesus. Of course, if you live in this way, you will be used up by others. Of course, they will take everything you have. That is why you should expect this self-expenditure to lead sooner or later to your death. He is quite clear and unafraid about the practical implications of his teaching” (McGill, 55).

Discipleship consists of following Jesus, and the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Therefore, following him in his life of self-expenditure will lead to death. However, this is exactly what you want to happen, what you want people to do. McGill continues, “It is the essence of your love to want to be expended for others, and even to die for others” (McGill, 55).

Now, I know that many would likely object to using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of an exemplar Christian due to his extra-marital relations, etc. Nevertheless, just because someone doesn’t reflect Christ in one area of their life doesn’t mean that they can’t in another. My point is not whether or not he was an exemplar Christian in his whole life or had a perfect theological understanding of all of life (no one does!). I simply want to acknowledge that much of his life, his concern for racial equality, economic justice, his non-violent approach to those in opposition, and his willing self-expenditure, was self-confessedly rooted in the gospel, whatever other motiving factors there might have been. Because of this, he stands as a witness to the power of the gospel, a power that demonstrated in weakness, in self-expenditure, and love. In seeking to follow the call of Christ, he sought a life of self-expenditure, rooted in love, for the other. For Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., death was the logical outcome of such a life, just as it is for all who seek such a path in the service of our Lord.

“What, then, does “the name of God” mean? Perhaps it is easiest to grasp what this entails if we look at its opposite. The Revelation of John speaks of the adversary of God, the “beast”. This beast, the power opposed to God, has no name, but a number. The seer tells us: “Its number is six hundred and sixty-six” (13:18). It is a number, and it makes men numbers. We who lived through the world of the concentration camps know what that means. The terror of that world is rooted in the fact that it obliterates men’s faces. It obliterates their history. It makes man a number, an exchangeable cog in one big machine. He is his function - nothing more. Today, we must fear that the concentration camp was only a prelude and that the universal law of the machine may impose the structure of the concentration camp on the world as a whole. For when functions are all that exist, man, too, is nothing more than a function. The machines that he himself has constructed now impose their own law on him: he must be made readable for the computer, and this can be achieved only when he is translated into numbers. Everything else in man becomes irrelevant. Whatever is not a function is–nothing…But God has a name, and calls us by our name. He is a person, and seeks the person. He has a face, and he seeks our face. He has a heart, and he seeks our heart. For him, we are not some function in a “world machinery”. On the contrary, it is precisely those who have no function that are his own. A name allows me to be addressed. A name denotes community. This is why Christ is the true Moses, the fulfillment of the revelation of God’s name. He does not bring some new word as God’s name; he does more than this, since he himself is the face of God. He himself is the name of God. In him, we can address God as “you”, as person, as heart” (Ratzinger, Joseph. The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 200 p. 23-24)

For all their obvious differences of opinions on multiple matters, C.S. Lewis and Emmanuel Levinas seem to be in agreement on at least one point: the iconoclastic nature of the Other. That is, the ability of the other to “incessantly triumph over your mere idea” of them, in the words of Lewis (A Grief Observed, pg 66), and cause a fissure as a “being who breaks my categories,” in the vocabulary of Levinas (Hilary Putnam, The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, pg 42).

In A Grief Observed, Lewis recounts his experience and agony following the death of his wife Joy Davidman. In this, the book provides a powerful and emotional account of one man’s thoughts and emotions from such an extreme loss.

In the passage that I would like to draw attention to, having just read through his previously written thoughts, Lewis is recounting his frustrations with himself in feeling like his writings portray a person who is only concerned with his wife’s death in how it has effected him. In response, Lewis resolves that he needs to “think more about H. [the sign he uses when talking about his wife throughout the book] and less about myself” (GO, pg. 18). However, he quickly realizes that thinking about her isn’t the real problem, but thinking rightly about her, an action that ultimately escapes him apart from her presence critiquing his thoughts. It is not the the things that he thinks of are untrue about H., but they are selective and, therefore, ultimately lacking. Lewis states in his own words that his thoughts are

“[f]ounded on fact, no doubt. I shall put in nothing ficticious (or I hope I shan’t). But won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own? The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly by being so thoroughly herself and not me” (GO, 18).

Later on in the book Lewis picks this theme back up with reference to images of the divine. God is the great iconoclast he urges, the one who’s presence is so often marked by such shattering of our images (referencing the incarnation as the supreme example of this) (66). “All reality is iconoclastic,” he continues. “The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness…”Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour” (66-67). For Lewis, the tendency we are all confronted with is acknowledging all others (be it God or people) not as who they are, but according to the picture or perception of them that we have constructed in our mind. A critique similar to that of Levinas, leveled against Edmund Husserl.

Emmanuel Levinas is known largely for his insistence upon the primacy of ethics, or ethics as first philosophy. For Levinas, philosophy should not be primarily understood as the “love of wisdom,” as it traditionally is, but, rather, as the “wisdom of love.” So, whereas traditionally philosophers have sought out knowledge and truth as primary, building ethics upon this understanding of “the way things are,” Levinas argues for an ethic of infinite responsibility upon the subject toward the other (a term which in Levinas’s writings almost always refers to an other person) that precedes any understanding of them. Allow me to try and explain in brief.

Given Levinas’s Jewish background, there are many places in his writings where one finds biblical allusions that tend to guide his thoughts. For instance, his discussions of the ethic of responsibility that is placed upon the subject has a background in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament.

Recall, for a moment, the story of Samuel (while 1 and 2 Samuel aren’t usually categorized as “prophetic literature” in many english bibles, the traditional Jewish TaNaK ordering of the OT places them among the prophetic lit.). While Samuel is serving in the Temple under Eli, the LORD calls him. Samuel replies, “Here I am!” (hineni), and mistaking the voice runs to Eli. This occurs two more times until Eli realizes that the voice calling Samuel was the voice of the LORD. He then tells Samuel what he should say if he hears the voice again, etc.

For Levinas, this sort of encounter, between Samuel and the LORD, serves as a paradigm for the the encounter of the other by the subject. In the language of Levinas, the other is spoken of in terms that often have a divine echo in the Hebrew Scriptures. So, in Otherwise than Being Levinas speaks of the encounter with the other as experiencing “the Glory of the Infinite” (OB 140-162), an encounter that elicits an infinite responsibility in the subject and an obligation to be for the other.

It is important to note that, for Levinas, this ethical obligation to the other is not derived from any metaphysical or epistemic grounding. To do so would be an act of violence upon the other, reducing their difference and bringing them into a level of sameness with the subject.  The other, in their difference, will always allude your grasp; and here is the connection with Lewis. As Hilary Putnam has stated in his discussion on Levinas and Judaism (The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, pg 42), the “encounter with the other is an encounter with a fissure, a being who breaks my categories.”

So with both Lewis and Levinas,  the other functions in an iconoclastic role, shattering our images of them in their difference, a difference that ultimately calls us to service. In another work of Lewis he speaks of this encounter that leads to service in terms of recognizing the “weight of glory” in the other. For Levinas it is the experience of the “glory of the infinite.” However, for both, the other elicits our service as a being who alludes our grasp and critiques our images of them. Confronted with something beyond us, we are drawn into to an existence of a giving up of ourselves for the sake of the other.

I will leave you with a quote by Lewis in his essay The Weight of Glory as an attempt to provide some application, from a Christian perspective, on some of these abstract concepts.

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in  some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of  these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people…next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses” (The Weight of Glory and Other Adresses, 18-19)

…and for those who still feel like they need a little more inspiration I have included the following by Thomas Kincade:

Sam,

I was thinking this morning about the books my friend recommended to me and a Žižek excerpt came to mind on toilets and ideology. I may just have to give these books a chance. Who knows, there may be more to them than I thought.

To whom it may concern (or whomever might be reading this blog),

I recently sent an email to a good friend of mine that contained a bibliography for a paper I am working on. I wanted to him to look over it and give me any feedback he saw fitting. He commented on a few of the books, The Evolving Self by Robert Kegan (one of his favorite authors), Exclusion and Embrace by Miraslov Volf (which is a great book despite what the cover suggests, causing one to think that the publisher must have simply drawn a blank and solicited the help of a 7th grade graphic design class, only to select the least creative kid), and a couple of others that I’m unfamiliar with. I don’t know if anyone has come across them in their studies but I thought I would ask around just to see. As with any topic, the problem usually isn’t finding relevant resources, but finding the most relevant resources to read within your given time constraints. Anybody have any helpful feedback on these two below?