The Problem with Levinas

by Simon Critchley, Alexis Dianda (Editor)

Levinas's idea of ethics as a relation of responsibility to the other person has become a highly influential and recognizable position across a wide range of academic and non-academic fields. Simon Critchley's aim in this book is to provide a less familiar, more troubling, and (hopefully) truer account of Levinas's work. A new dramatic method for reading Levinas is proposed, where the fundamental problem of his work is seen as the attempt to escape from the tragedyof Heidegger's philosophy and the way in which that philosophy shaped political events in the last century. Extensive and careful attention is paid to Levinas' fascinating but often overlooked work from the 1930s, where the proximity to Heidegger becomes clearer. Levinas's problem is very howto escape from the tragic fatality of being as described by Heidegger. Levinas's later work is a series of attempts to answer that problem through claims about ethical selfhood and a series of phenomenological experiences, especially erotic relations and the relation to the child. These claims are analyzed in the book through close textual readings. Critchley reveals the problem with Levinas's answer to his own philosophical question and suggests a number of criticisms, particular concerningthe question of gender. In the final, speculative part of the book, another answer to Levinas's problem is explored through a reading of the Song of Songs and the lens of mystical love.

Genres: Philosophy

168 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 16, 2015

About the author

Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960 in Hertfordshire) is an English philosopher currently teaching at The New School. He works in continental philosophy. Critchley argues that philosophy commences in disappointment, either religious or political. These two axes may be said largely to inform his published work: religious disappointment raises the question of meaning and has to, as he sees it, deal with the problem of nihilism; political disappointment provokes the question of justice and raises the need for a coherent ethics [...]

Reviews

[Chungsoo Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book consists of the four lectures Simon Critchley (imagined he) gave at the New School, NY, and reads like lecture transcripts. It lacks the rigor of a book. He uses the fictional lecture format in order to employ 'drama' as a philosophic method, which he argues Levinas also employed in the performative sense in his texts. The benefit of such a method, however, in Critchley's text at least, is not clear. I am not convinced whether Levinas texts are performative in the sense of a drama. I believe they are performative, provoking readers' response to the sayings of Levinas, but Levinas's texts lack the progression or a plot that a drama requires. In any event, Critchley does not explain what he or Levinas means by 'drama' and what the structure of a drama might be in general or in Levinas's texts (if any).

The book, The Problem With Levinas (Oxford U. Press, Nov. 2015), is difficult to follow because the author at times refers to three to five different authors at a time in one or two paragraphs. A patient delineation and development of exposition or argument is lacking. For a new reader of Levinas, hoping to be introduced to Levinas by this book, this book offers more confusion than clarity for understanding Levinas texts, which are difficult by any philosophic standards.

I do not agree with Critchley's main thesis which he announces in the beginning and carries out to the end: that Levinas was trying to address the problem of facticity, as articulated by Heidegger; or, more precisely put, how to escape facticity of being. (Again, the facticity of being in Heedigger is not explained but is assumed to be understood by the reader.) If facticity in Heidegger is understood to mean finitude, death as dasein's ultimate possibility, then Levinas does offer an alternative. (Surprisingly, Critchley does not discuss Levinas's rich discussions on death.) Death, for Levinas, is the impossibility of the possible (a reversal of Heidegger's position: that death is the possibility of the impossible). Death does not annihilate the meaning of being (or life), as Heidegger would have it, but cuts off short the life or the meaning of life (i.e., the meaning understood in terms of one's service to the others). Levinas goes further. The meaning of life (in ethics) or the life of ethics, however, may perpetuate in fecundity, by propagation of a child, in which the I lives on in the other, the child, who is thus both I and non-I. (The final chapter of Critchley's book almost exclusively deals with this topic.) Thus death is overcome; and the possibility of ethical life continues beyond one's death, in one's child, without succumbing to and relying on the unethical or violent structures of politics, administration, state, and history. Levinas thus offers an escape from human finitude, as Critchley recognizes and exploits it. Eros and fecundity thus offer a mode of transcendence that parallels (but not to be confused with) the ethical transcendence; and fecundity via the child perpetuates the life of ethics in a way uncontaminated by the continuity of politics and history. This solution Levinas offers, however, is not entertained or discussed by Critchley in light of the Heideggerian challenge Critchley poses to Levinas (i.e., the question of escaping finitude). Rather, Critchley problematizes this Levinasian solution by utilizing Irigaray's gender critique she levels against Levinas. (Irigaray reads Levinas as a male chauvinist, perhaps following Derrida's clue in the last footnote in his Violence and Metaphysics: that Totality and Infinity could not have been written by a woman. This quote is repeated by Critchley several times. Indeed, from the beginning of Levinas's introduction to American in 1980's, Levinas was always filtered through Derrida's essay--to the detriment of Levinas's thought!) Critchley does not remain with Irigaray, however, but moves on further to suggest--moving away from Levinas's purported problematic descriptions of eros and fecundity--that we examine (surprisingly) the mystical and religious descriptions of eros (going against Levinas) in Song of Songs as interpreted by various Christian mystics (mostly female mystics). This is a surprising move made by a non-religious writer that Critchley is. But Critchley's interpretation of Song of Songs and his approach toward Christian mystics' interpretations of the text, is essentially Freudian (i.e., Lacan and Betaille). That is, he reduces the religious dimension of mysticism in Song of Songs to psychology--very much in the same way that he reduces Levinas's description of substitution (i.e., proximity, expiation, hostage, persecution, obsession, and most notably recurrence, etc.) to masochism. (I agree with his observation that 'recurrence' may be the most important term (and not just a metaphor) for Levinas in the description of substitution. Also his insight is very helpful: that the word hostage (otage) is related to the verb ôter: 'to remove myself.' But he does not capitalize on the etymological connection and says: "The argument Levinas is making is that I cannot remove myself from responsibility. I am, therefore, a hostage" (ebook location, 1834). I believe the etymological connection can be capitalized in in the following way. The subject is a hostage because the I is removed from itself. The I is dethrowned, decentered by the approach of the Other. I am already sent away from myself to the other. The I is removed from itself in such a way that the I (the nominative) becomes the 'me' in the accusative in 'me voici.' 'Here I am' means 'send me'--away from me to the other. The I of 'here I am' is the One-for-the-Other, the one who is always already sent. The I (moi) removed from itself is hostage, the subject understood as oneself (soi-même) substituting for the others (OB 55). This is what Levinas tries to articulate in the chapter entitled 'Substitution.' Critchley, however, wants to understand (contrary to his Doktorvater, Robert Bernasconi, whom he mentions specifically) the term 'oneself (soi-même)' as In-itself (en-soi) in Sartre, the inert thing that is closed in on itself, shut from all possibility of exceeding itself and of being opened to the not yet or to what is not (pour-soi). For this reason, Levinas's description of 'substitution,' for Critchley, does not succeeds in breaking the gridlock of the tragic finitude of being. The subject is stuck in itself like a dead rock sunk to the depth of the sea. Interpreting 'substitution' in this way, knowing full well that this reading is contrary to Levinas intention, Critchley suggests that Levinas fails to escape the Heideggerian fate of being-toward-death. Critchley, a careful reader of Levinas, cites several passages to support his thesis. To his credit, I must say that Levinas's terms allow for such a misreading, such as following, which Critchley cites: "[the ego is] ill at ease in one's skin, as though the identity of matter weighing on itself concealed a dimension allowing a withdrawal this side of immediate coincidence, as though it concealed a materiality more material than all matter ('Substitution,' 1968, in The Basic Philosophical Writings, 86); or "The subject is in the accusative, without recourse in being, expelled from being, that is to say, in itself. In itself one" (Sub, 88). But Critchley's reading is mistaken. What is inescapable is that the self is sent, that one is always already one-for-the-other. The self is inescapably "in itself one[-for-the-other]." The weight of responsibility is so heavy that it is inescapable, like "a materiality more material than all matter," but responsibility does not have the structure of self-enclosed, windowless monads. It is open to the exterior, like a lung is exposed to the air. (This biological metaphor appearing at the end of OB strikes Critchley as bizzard.) For this reason, Levinas's subject understood as 'substitution' succeeds in breaking away from Heidegger's fateful and fatal tragedy of being. Human subjectivity (understood in Levinasian terms) overcomes the fate of being that is deadlocked in its march toward death. One can be otherwise than being. This is the basic thesis of Levinas that Critchley rejects. For Critchley and for many Heideggerians who read Levinas, one cannot escape being (however the word 'being' is understood either under an erasure, with the capital 'B,' or both). That we cannot escape being is also Derrida's thesis in his landmark essay on Levinas that I referenced above. Such a thesis, or the orthodox belief of the West, is exactly what Levinas tries to refute when he declares in God and Philosophy that "Not to philosophize is not still to philosophize." No one seems to believe Levinas on this thesis. That is to say, no one takes him seriously to the point of doing a philosophy in a radical and new way, trying to philosophize that which is exterior to philosophy, which Levinas attempts in Totality and Infinity, which he subtitled "An Essay on Exteriority." To reject Levinas is to give in to the philosophy's old claim (since Parmenides and culminating in Hegel) that it can think of all, that there is nothing else to think if not already thought through in philosophy. Under this mantra, there is indeed "nothing new under the sun." But is this true? Does not Levinas offer a fresh and bold attempt to think 'otherwine than being'--granted with all the risk and difficulties one faces in the attempt?

This brings to my disagreement with Critchley's basic thesis of the book, which is, as I mentioned above, that the entire Levinas's project is an attempt to escape the Heideggerian tragedy of the fateful finitude of being. I beg to differ because the question is not whether or not we can escape the fate of being. It is whether or not we can think otherwise than being, whether or not we can think outside philosophy. Critchley wants to bring back Levinas within the realm of being (assuming that Levinas was at one point or other outside philosophy, if that is possible) and asks if Levinas could escape the fatality of being in its facticity. Such a posture ignores the very project Levinas engaged in from the start of his career: to think the 'good beyond being' in the manner of Plato.

Levinas's two ways of escape from ontology (or, as I'd rather put it, two ways of moving beyond being), namely via ethics (substitution) and via fecundity, is thus rejected by Critchley, while proposing an alternative way of incorporating Levinas notion of eros to Christian mysticism (borne out of a reading the Song of Songs), in such a way that ethics and eroticism would coincide (this would violate Levinas clear distinction between the indiscreet Other and the discreet feminine). Thus Critchley writes in the Afterword: "My hypothesis and hope is that the Song of Songs might give us a picture of an encounter with the other, at once erotic and ethical, which avoids the problem that Levinas falls into, namely, his patriarchy" (ebook loc., 3141). This thesis remains at the exploratory level. Since I am not convinced of the "problem" Levinas was purportedly engaged in, the solution proposed in the book does not strike me as promising either. Ethical pornography, if this is what is hinted at as a solution to the "problem," is an oxymoron, let alone in bad taste.

[Errol Orhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critchley provides a reading of Levinas' work by delving into: the relationship between Levinas and Heidegger, the problems that drive Levinas' work, and the problems with his work. The book is based on lectures delivered in Tilburg and the format makes for accessible reading. I personally found the arguments convincing and they are also provided in the way such arguments should be provided, with a claim, an explanation and evidence from the texts themselves.
The project is an excellent introduction as the author investigates both early and later works of Levinas, and both his essays and his books. As such, I would recommend reading it alongside William Large's reading of Totality and Infinity.
I thought it made excellent and stimulating reading, though the reading of the Song of Songs as an alternative to Levinas' solution seemed it bit out of place. Nevertheless, it was fascinating as well!
Of course, Critchley provides a reading of the work, and we don't have to agree with it. I believe another member of this forum provides an excellent overview of why the author's argument does not work.

[Joeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this writing on a few lectures about Levinas, the question is explored how a more ethical subjectivity (or selfhood) is possible in terms of in a relationship to the Other. Critchley attempts to show how Levinas aims to move beyond the tragedy of finitude in Heidegger's philosophy.

The book is quite accesible for a topic this complex and might help readers to better understand some crucial questions concerning Levinas' philosophy.

[Gareth · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this seems like a good introduction to Levinas, although I'd be interested to hear from someone who has not read Levinas before whether that is actually the case... The most interesting/useful aspect of this book was to hear someone as well versed in Levinas as Critchley describe him as too masochistic. He provides an excellent account/overview of many key aspects of Levinas's work in outlining his own argument for how we escape the tragedy of the finitude of being through Levinas.