March 6, 2012
Illeity
The concept of illeity stresses how God is absolutely Other than human beings. God is non-comprehensible; and if we have an idea of God in our minds, that idea is not God. This concept stresses that God’s transcendence can never be totally contained; God is always ahead of us and we can never catch up. Levinas, in stressing transcendence, is showing that God is majestic and absolutely different from us. But although he is distant and different he is non-indifferent to us.
To stress the transcendence of God is to stress that God is not an idol. An idol is something that one can command, manipulate, or predict. We cannot expect God to do the things we want. When atheists say “God does not exist”, they have in mind certain ideas of God which, upon critical reflection, must really be killed. Nietzsche was correct when he said certain ‘ideas’ of God must be smashed. Sometimes it is as if God is absent, but perhaps we only have a pre-judgement of how God should manifest.We make God conform to our image, instead of us coming closer to God. This is not the God of illeity. God’s presence is not usually manifested in ways we want or expect.
Though God is not a phenomenon and he is not perceived nor does he hide himself. Because He is always ahead He only leaves behind a ‘trace.’ God shows himself in our responsibility and our genuine relationship with Others. Because God cannot be seen or perceived, it is through the witnesses that he makes himself felt. The glory of the infinite is revealed in what it changes in the witness. Illeity is almost considered absent in order to bring about the creativity of the human being.
This presence is one which retreats to create space so that the human being can be responsible for the Other. The glory of the infinite consists in our creativity for the Other. The infinite is also in me because I am inspired by the Other. Ethics is not just external impositions, but it something that is inside me, disturbs me, and pushes me out to testify.
Prophetism
(Notes on Interview number 10)
Every human being is called to be prophet or witness. The fact that one can be responsible means that one can be a prophet.
Levinas says that responsibility is beyond knowledge and should not remain within knowledge; however, one must go through knowledge. Levinas cannot make us responsible, he can only speak of responsibility. Prophetism is the moment of the human condition itself; every human being assuming responsibility for the Other is assuming responsibility for the Infinite.
Ethics and religion go together. Ethics is the responsibility for the Other. Levinas is showing that the love of God is not the love of God without love of Other.
This responsibility is spelled out in more complete rules and norms in religion. Sometimes people console themselves by following the letter of these rules but are not really following its spirit. When people just confine themselves to fulfilling those rules, they may be ‘religious’ but they are not practicing religion. Religion is the good you do to the Other. There is a difference between a ‘religious’ person and an ethical person.
Leo and Levinas Walk Into a Bar 
Levinas teaches us an important lesson – that what is most essential is to make the ethics decision over the lawful one if given a conflict. Once again he dwells on the concept of the Infinite and God, and how it goes beyond us, beyond the container-contained paradigm and overflows outwards. This is what we should be as well: overflowing and letting all that we have to give and share and love flow out from us.
We do so of course by being responsible for the Other, practicing our faith in the truest sense possible by going beyond religious and becoming ethical. This is what is missing in many Catholic Filipinos these days, and is something that we should all realize and start becoming, a truly ethical Catholic Filipino for others.
it’s sad how people nowadays think that just because they go to mass every Sunday or they go to confession or participate in the other sacraments, they are doing what they need to do. for me, i agree with the thought process of Levinas in thinking that being religious and being ethical are 2 completely different things because attending the sacraments of the Church is half the job. it cannot and should not end there. after mass, what do we do? after confession, how do we act? it’s not just about participating in the sacraments but the true question here is that what do we do after we participate in these?
becoming religious and becoming ethical directs us to revelation because it is what our actions toward the Other reveal about the kind of person we truly are. it’s about doing good to the Other, giving ourselves to the Other, sacrificing for the happiness of the Other…it’s about directing our lives for the Other.
we cannot continue on with our lives without thinking of the Other and all the distant others we influence because being human means including not just the “I” but also the “you, he, she, they, and each one.” in our every action, we are responding to all the people we have met & who we will ever meet because what we are responding to is the presence of every other, the person.
it is not enough to believe, but we need to understand to believe [ethical] & we need to believe to understand [religious]
God is not an idol that we can command nor contained. He is the infinite other whom we cannot see, feel, nor hear but leaves a “trace”. First of all, why are we created? We were NOT created to use God as a Being to wish upon and to command to fulfill our wishes.
People nowadays pray to God asking and demanding good things to happen in one’s life. Can we blame some of them for making such prayers to God? Destitution and poverty leaves people asking “Does God exist?” A response to this question would be: “How can we show them God exists?” We, who are prophets, can show it through our responsibility for the Other that goes beyond knowledge. With this, we can connect ethics, our responsibility for the Other, and religion, the love of God with the love for the Other.
“Levinas is showing that the love of God is not the love of God without love of Other.”
How can one love God, who is infinite, incomprehensible, and majestic? And if you’re Catholic, how can you love Him enough to match the love that he showed when He sacrificed His only Son for us? One can never love God enough, but what we can do is to love others and try to show our intense love of God through the choices that we make to cultivate the good of the other. It will also do us good to remember that, “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”
Levinas’ philosophy makes the ethical person the truly faithful follower of God. Sir had repeated a lot of times in class the statement that goes something like this: “perhaps, it is the atheists who are the true Christians”. I felt the danger that we might just love our neighbor and forget about loving God. This was one of the problems discussed in our theology class- the eclipse of love for God. One of the main reason for this eclipse is that people tend to forget that loving our neighbor is just one of the two greatest commandments and it’s still very important to fulfill the first commandment in being a true Christian.
In the last paragraph, i believe that ethics and religion do have to go together in order for one to be genuinely responsible for Others. This also shows that ethics is above religion because if one follows the “rules” without any meaning and is forced, then religion makes no sense here. The point of this is that we all need ethics in order to carry out what we’re doing. Also, I do not like the fact that there are people of different religions who look down on others. It just shows that they feel that their religion is more superior and ethical than other religions which is not true. This depends on the person himself. If he is genuinely looking out for the Others.
I think that it is important that we note as well prophets as mediums of the revelation of God. In the Old Testament, Moses, Isaiah, and the other prophets revealed the reality of God by being mediums of Him so that He can fully reveal Himself to us. Even as early as that, God tries to reveal Himself. As a result, He indeed became one with us in Jesus Christ, and this made God fully revealed, as God the Father is co-equal with God the Son. Also, God continues to be revealed in today’s context by the many people who proclaim His news. In short, any one of us can be prophets if we reveal the reality of the Absolute Other. In relation to what Levinas says, prophetism means that we have to be responsible to the Other, that we can be witnesses of the Other. As a result, we ‘give way’ to the Other and how he will grow fully, and thus we appreciate how she is indeed Other.
We should all strive to be prophets, to testify to the infinite other in us that inspires us and pushing us ut to responsibility to the other. The meaning of life, i believe, is to be social. But to never forget that being social is equivalent to being ethical. We are already responsible for the other as soon as we emerge from ilya so our lives should be a testament to that responsibility – a response to the face of the other, which holds the trace of the infinite.
This reminds me of a lesson from our Theology class. We learned that sacraments can be valid and effective. It is valid when the rites of the sacrament was completed, but it will only become effective when the doer actually put his heart into it and will do what must be done sincerely. Similarly, we become truly responsible when we help the Other sincerely and faithfully for the Other’s sake.
This goes hand in hand with what we have been learning in theology as well, how truly loving pushes us to be other-centered. That what brings us joy when we love someone isn’t the feeling of romance but the effort we we put to care for someone. In our previous lesson we have learned about filiality, and how that seems to be a perfect example of truly loving someone. The hard work and effort our parents go through to nurture us. Though it may be a “right of a child”. Most of our parents go an extra mile to provide for us, and try to give not only what we need but what we want as well.
What we should value then in our lives are the relationships we form, because they are nothing but a representation of God’s love. and only through the other can we, in return, show our Gratitude towards God.
i remember that one of the concepts that really stuck with me in philosophy was that you cannot really defined God, or even attempt to do it. ‘Coz if you do, you are limiting God to that very definition. Precisely, He transcends all definitions. He transcends everyone.
I like to stand by the concept that we are all compelled by the Other to respond and be responsible for them. We still enjoy the freedom to make our own decisions, but in the end we are really obliged by the Other to do good work and to make ourselves responsible for them. This is where I think Philosophy and Theology meet, and something we as Christians learning philosophy can better appreciate.
Again, we find Levinas’ concept of the Other. It is true that nowadays, we find people who are religious but are not at all practicing religion itself. Practicing it requires action with the Other. Doing good. Showing responsibility for the Other is showing responsibility for God. God who calls us to be prophets, who are responsible for their actions and who practice their responsibility on the people (the Other). For example, a snatcher would go to Church every sunday. However, with this religious act, he never shows or act as a religious person and would continue on snatching people’s stuff. In reality, he would have gone good and shown that he is a responsible Christian. He never ‘lives’ as a Christian.
To add on to what 092784 said,
It kinda takes us back to one of our discussions about helping the Other, you don’t do it to try to get “bonus points” for heaven. You do it because you want to. Sometimes, people think the same thing when it comes to actually going to church. To be honest, I thought in this way when I was younger. There are a lot of people who, let’s say, do injustice to the Other(s), but they think that coming to church every Sunday will give them these “bonus points” for heaven when in fact there is much more to being a Christian than just going to church. You have to also be responsible for the Other. It is when we take responsibility for the Other that God is present.
The idea of God is so immense that it cannot be fully grasped, cannot be placed in a certain container. For me, I think,it is like putting water or sand in your hands. One can never hold those things since they always overflow and fall. However, there is a trace that is left behind – droplets of water or tiny bits of rocks and sand. Like God, though we can never fully comprehend Him, He leaves a trace. We can see Him mostly in our acknowledgement of the human Other. At the same time, one can also see Him in me when I do good to the Other. One of my theology professors said that in the word Christ-ian, the ‘ian’ may stand for ‘I am nothing’. Without Christ, I am nothing. I think this is the true meaning of religion. Some people only pray because they need something; this just shows the self-centeredness of some people which is not religion at all. If I used the phrase, ‘I am nothing without God’, religion is redefined as something that is inclined to make one go out of oneself and be there for the Other. Religion is having an ethical relationship to the Other which is a clear manifestation of the Infinite Other.
Adding to my earlier comment,
People go to Church after they have done something wrong, and after asking for forgiveness, they would repeat the bad thing they have done and would ask for forgiveness once again. This cycle would go on and on until one sees and realizes what he/she was doing. This is learning (we learn through the Other), and through learning we become practicing Christians.
I can correlate this idea with my own disposition that God is love and in every act of love that we do, we will be able to see and come closer to God. It was said here that God is our very responsibility towards the Other. This also implies that we can only see Him when we go through an experience of the ethical. I do agree that true religion must mean doing good things to others. This is because when we do these acts, we also affirm the essence of God. And this is something that is passed over in the present. Many believers only believe, they do not try to extend an effort to really materialize this belief. The priest in our place even told us during his homily before that many Christians are only Christians when they are inside the church. We are only religious in name and that is why a true believer must strive to exemplify and live out his or her beliefs. The challenge here lies on how we express our religion not just in the confines of our place of worship but also in every moment of our lives.
If we would come to think of it, as Christians, we are asked to give our service to Others as we shall follow the footsteps of Christ who died on the Cross to save us from our sins. As responsible Christians, God asks us to do service for the Others. We now look at the Works of Mercy and we would realize easily that these “works” are acts towards the Others.
The corporal ones:
To feed the hungry.
To give drink to the thirsty.
To shelter the homeless.
To clothe the naked.
To visit and ransom the captive, (prisoners).
To visit the sick.
To bury the dead.
and the spiritual ones:
Instruct the uninformed
Counsel the doubtful;
Admonish sinners;
Bear wrongs patiently;
Forgive offenses willingly;
Comfort the afflicted;
Pray for the living, the sick and the dead.
In essence, the idea of “trace” here should be realized. God is omnipresent but we cannot see Him. Why is this so? Because God is in every face of the Other. If you have helped the Others, you have done good to God. And if we have done even the slightest good to the Other, we would leave a trace that they would see in us as long as we live and reminisce when we die. We would rather want others to say, “Oh! Namatay na siya? Ang bait pa naman niyang tao,” than “Buti nga namatay na siya! Wala siyang puso!”
While I certainly respect and even esteem the views on religion being discussed in this post and in these comments, I think the nature and process of idolatry is incredibly important for human being – let’s not neglect it. Perhaps human being is never closer to God than the moment that it realizes it has been worshiping an idol, and when it turns with a sense of purpose, resolute in the face of the inescapability of this mistake, to re-founding a new and more authentic relationship with the divine.
I also wonder what people here might think of the notion that all idols are fundamentally self-representations that we’ve forgotten or failed to realize as such. The idol as an aspect of oneself, pushed outside and made eternal and transcendent, so that when communion with it is achieved through ritual we may escape death.