Third Party

Previously we discussed responsibility as radical passivity: even before we decide, act, and think there is already a passivity in us which relates us to the Other. It is a passivity whereby the Other has already sort of invaded us and sort of claimed us.

Responsibility as Economic

Now we discuss responsibility as economic.  It is hypocritical to go to the Other with empty hands. My responsibility consists in giving food for the hungry and giving shelter to those who have no homes.

We must have a good appreciation of the material. The material and the spiritual are linked. You can do a lot of things with resources. We must stress being-in-the-world and embodiment. Because I am embodied, I can open the door for someone. I can donate blood. Responsibility must be embodied and it must pass through my body and my hands.

Levinas discussed the sociality of money. Money is a beautiful invention because it is the fastest way to help others. People who are enterprising are asked to cultivate their skills, to give work to those who have no jobs. Economy includes time, talent, skills, capabilities. You must share your talent and whatever you are capable of doing with your insight and skills.

 

Responsibility Implies a Conversion

Responsibility implies a conversion. Why did Levinas describe jouissance? He spoke of things that we really enjoy. When we give something, it must be something that we really appreciate. It is as if you are about to eat your sandwich but you happen to see someone who needs it more, and you give it away. He speaks therefore of self-emptying or kenosis. I really made a sacrifice in order to be responsible. He uses the word dis-inter-ested-ness which shows that you are tearing yourself away from yourself. The hyphen is supposed to visualize that.

 

The Third Party

The experience of the face is not just the experience of hearing the command of “Thou shall not kill” but also to understand social justice. This is because there are many Others beside the Other. There are Third Parties.

It’s wrong to interpret his philosophy as if there are only two people. When we do something, we have to be aware that there are others. Levinas is trying to establish the presence of the third party, a distinction between the closed society of two people who have only eyes for each other and the open society who are open to all see. Without our knowing it, when we do something to the Other, it has an effect on Others and we may not be aware of the hurt that we do to the Others.

He shows the universality of the Other. If I am responsible not just to a particular Other but to the universal Other. We are dealing with the Other not on the basis of particular characteristics relative to her but according to that universal essence which is found in all human beings. When I respect this particular Other I also respect what is present in all the Others.

I am responsible for the Other. The universal Other includes all the Others and also myself. Part of my responsibility is self development. How can I be responsible if I do not develop myself? There is a distinction between self-development which is just for oneself and ethical self-development, which is self-development in view of Others.

Since the two people are always in a particular society, we have to discern our responsibility to each person. This is why we have law. In society, we will have to make laws and rules, to make the Others conform to what is good for everybody. On the level of just institutions, justice is important: that each one gets what is due to him.

 

Radical passivity

Previous philosophies put freedom and autonomy before responsibility. When you’ve done something, you’re responsible for what you have done. However, Levinas puts this into question; He says you have responsibility first and then freedom. The subject is not free first but is responsible first. Subjectivity is responsibility.

In Levinas’ two great books Totality and infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, one notices that the description of the subject shifts. In Totality and Infinity, the subject emerges from il y a and experiences jouissance. He is a needy subject and is happy for these needs. In Otherwise than Being, he stressed on radical passivity. Before I can think, choose, act, or begin anything, there is this radical passivity to the Other.

Levinas uses the terms ‘responsibility’ ‘substitution,’ ‘obsession,’ ‘hostage,’ ‘persecution,’ ‘accusation,’ ‘saying,’ and ‘proximity’.  Before I actually act, the Other is experienced as if he was accusing me. The Other, before I can claim the Other has already chosen me and imprisoned me. This is what is meant by hostage. These are actually very difficult terms and they will be called hyperbolical and exaggerated. What does it mean to say that before I think, use or act, I am already a hostage and I am responsible for the Other? It is not a temporal priority, it is a conceptual priority. Levinas wants to show that radical passivity is the transcendental condition for the things that I do. It is the condition for human social existence.

This passivity is vulnerability. It’s not the solitary I that wants to relate with the Other, but even before the actual relation, the I is already related to all the Others.

We may be different and separated, but there is a relation. From the very beginning, there is already that basic responsibility and it is that basic responsibility that emerges in those senseless acts of kindness. The Other has already invaded me and charged me. It is a structure that does not resemble the intentional relation, which, in knowledge, attaches us to the subject. Proximity and nearness is not about intentionality or knowledge.

 

Face and Discourse

We are always with people but what is the meaning of being-with? When are you really with people? The experience of Other as Face is concrete and particular and this reality has a name. It’s important to know the names of people, to see them for their concreteness and particularity. We acknowledge the other. Even before I greet the Other, there is already the acknowledgement of a bond. This is the experience of the Face.

Face

In the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, though there is a return to lived experience, it is the subject who gives meaning to the object and to the Other. The I describes the way the Other appears. Phenomena is that which appears, and phenomenology is a study of how things appear in consciousness.

However, Levinas does not just refer to what appears or what the I describes. He speaks of a reality which is the source of its own meaning. So therefore, this cannot strictly be phenomenology in the Husserlian sense. When one looks, there is always a certain objectification; the other becomes an idea in one’s head. Vision and conception is always a search for adequation.

This Other is just Other, and without context. The experience is unique, concrete and particular. You are you. In this sense, this experience of Other as Face cannot be exhausted in perception; the Face is what is visible in the invisible. It is cannot become an idea or a concept in my head. The experience is not a phenomena (that which appears), but an enigma or a puzzlement. The relation to this reality is not in the level of knowledge but of ethics. It’s not about contemplating or looking but it is about doing.

Levinas says that the access to the Other is immediately and straight-away ethical—that is, it is not about looking but it is about responding and acting. It’s true that you do capture something in the classification and objectification of people, but you also miss something when you do.

This is an experience of a reality which is upright. By upright Levinas means physically standing and morally upright, meaning someone who could show his face to the world. The Face is exposed and vulnerable because the Face has no protection. There is a certain essential poverty in the Face and this is why one always seeks to project a certain image of oneself, that’s why we have masks and poses. The Face is exposed, menaced, and inviting. There are people, like children who seem naive and easy to dominate, but the reality says that you shouldn’t. It’s always perverted to make use of your power over people who have less power.  There are realities which command you to stop, and put you into question.

However, this is only an ethical resistance, and not force. You can still kill the Other. The ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity: you can do it though you know you shouldn’t. The humanity of being human is a rupture of Being. His self-sufficiency and drive to domination is put into question.

Discourse

He uses the word Face as a word that evokes the experience of the Other who puts me into the question. The Face is not a category or concept but an experience. He also uses the word discourse, because this reality speaks and it is speaking. The words ‘face’ and ‘discourse’ are synonymous here. The Other as Face speaks to me and I speak to him; the fact that the Other is also a source of speech tells me that I’m not the only one. You cannot program a conversation because you only know your answer after the Other has spoken. Communication is a back and forth.

When the Other speaks, I have to respond. He makes the important distinction between what he calls the Saying (le dire) and the Said (le dit).

If someone tells you they like you but does nothing about it, then there is no Saying there only the Said. There are no times when there is no Said, but someone’s doing is already a Saying. You experience that someone cares for you by really taking care of you, then the Saying is there even though there might not be an explicit Said.

In discourse, we have to distinguish between the Saying and the Said. In a way, the Said would be the legal. However, the legal will not make sense if you do not trace the legal to the ethical. You can interpret the law in a very legalistic sense, and miss the whole sprit. Before rules and legalities, there is this fundamental awareness of the Other.

Cultures have many conventions to show that we acknowledge the Other: it is necessary to speak of anything, no matter what, simply to speak. Filipinos usually ask “Where are you going?” or “Have you eaten?” as a way of showing that there is some humanity in you. If you bump accidentally, you don’t look at the Other as if she was a stone or a potato but you apologize. It doesn’t even have to be spoken, sometimes it could be communicated through body language.

Totality and Infinity

Lecture on January 26, 2012

 

There are two ways of doing philosophy, so far as we can tell. The first one is learning, and just keeping things in your head. But the second way of doing philosophy is to really experience the surprises in life. It’s important to note how Levinas speaks of experience.

The Law of the Other: Surprise and Experience

For Levinas, experience is something that takes you out of yourself. He compares ‘prise’ (to grasp or to take) and ‘sur-prise’. There’s a difference between being surprised, and being controlling and mastering what is before me. There are realities that resist the grasping of the I. Maybe experience is not the comfortable possession of the truth but the other thing as the constant journeying, openness, or hospitality and reception of what is different. It’s important therefore to distinguish the way of thinking that goes out, takes something back to my mind and it rests; and there is a different way where the I is taken out.

When we talk about experience, we are speaking of the otherness of reality, and this experience of otherness cannot be reduced to my mind. There is a reality that faces me as if it was really higher than me, and above me—in the sense that it is demanding something from me, commanding me and it’s a command I cannot escape. Maybe the experience of the Other is the experience of what is different, of what does not physically command me but which nevertheless appeals to me. To be ethical is to have a revolution within oneself where one gives priority to the other, and not to oneself.

The Law of the I: Totalization and Domination

Totality is a way of thinking that reduces the Other to the same; it is the law of the I. This seems to be the prevalent way of being in the world. Is domination, totalization and war the most original or natural situation? However, Levinas claims that we have to look at a more fundamental state. War or totalization is not the most original or natural situation.

He is using the transcendental method. Before and behind the war, there is a fundamental openness to the Other. He claims that behind this totalization there is a glimpse of infinity. If you accept that the law of being is war, then it will lead to a contradiction. If everything is war, then it will lead to a situation where everybody is finally killed because war self-destroys.

This violent reality presupposes a fundamental openness. I could not possibly be here if Others are not responsible for me. The reason why I am here is because there are many others who nourished, protected, and took of me.

He evokes what he calls the experience of being a creature. But he does not mean creature in a theological sense. It means that I did not produce myself. I am given to myself. My being is given to me by others. This is the first experience before the violence and war, this is what is forgotten. If I realize what has been given to me, then I must pass on that gift of to others. If you look at how you come to be, others have given much to you. You are all everybody has given to you, and perhaps that is forgotten.

 

What good is philosophy if it only has ideas that stay only in the mind? To do philosophy is to expose oneself to the surprises of one’s experience. There is a contrast therefore in these two approaches: philosophy as being pulled out of myself to experience something radically other and different, being taken out of myself in a reality which other, and the peaceful possession of ideas in my head. There is a contrast when we see the stress of Levinas on surprises. There is a distinction being made by the surprise.