Bernasconi, throughout his article, challenges the notion “that there is little to no political philosophy in Levinas”, while also acknowledging how this is not an easy connection or assumption to have. Bernasconi’s challenge, not only, brings to light the depths of Levinas’s philosophical argument but also Emmanuel’s personal and ethical struggles to find a path out of the climate of Heidegger. To begin, Bernasconi opens his argument by first pointing out Levinas’s attentiveness to social Darwinism and its kinship to modern philosophy, which harbor and expound human suffering. Particularly what animates Levinas is the application of Darwin’s ideas in philosophy, especially in Heidegger’s conception of “Dasein” and Kurt Schilling’s conception of an individuals “struggle for existence”. Eugenics (as Bernasconi acknowledges) and its contribution to human suffering in the western world via the creation of “modern state” (also, the arguments of the welfare state) owes it intellectual energies not only Darwin, but Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, Charles Lyell, and biological sciences. Levinas’s inquiry towards the relationship between human suffering, eugenics, social Darwinism, and philosophy makes his attunement of the political evident. Furthermore, the connection between Kurt Schilling’s Darwinism is also apparent. But the connection between Heidegger and social Darwinism appears almost improbable, but is an endeavor (in consequence) that pulls Levinas’s argument to new heights and paradoxes.

On a intimate level, Levinas own personal suffering, not only when it comes to his exposure to Nazism but his severed relationship with Martin Heidegger brings light to his commitment and formulation to his own project. There is an ambiguity in Levinas’s reading of Heidegger and its connection to social Darwinism. It is only in two interviews Levinas draws out segments of Heidegger’s thought that he believes connections Martin to Darwin. One piece, was Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, which Levinas believes in its elaboration of the Dasein is “in almost [a] Darwinian fashion as a being which is concerned with his own being”; the second interview, Levinas states, is Heidegger’s beginning statements in Being and Time again constructs the Dasein as “a being who in his being is concerned for being itself. That’s Darwin’s idea: the living being struggles for life”(Bernasconi 173). Moreover, I personally do not believe Darwin’s idea of biological preservation evokes Heidegger conception of the Dasein and Bernasconi points this out when he asks ‘is Dasein concerned with it existence in the sense of its longevity, its preservation’ (173)? The Darwin and Heidegger connection becomes even more ambiguous when one acknowledges, as Bernasconi does, that Martin in several lectures raises crucial objections to Darwin’s thought and its impact on how we conceive being(175). Even though the connections are not cemented, Levinas commitment to exposes guises of Heidegger’s thought-to-believe neutral concepts, illuminates his personal inflictions and also his struggle to unveil the paradigm of western thought he finds in the air of Heidegger.

On a philosophical level, Bernasconi raises attention to the fact that even though Heidegger is the aim of most of Levinas’s philosophical polemics, his quarrels are not dependent on Heidegger’s “ecstatic conception of existence with provides the immediate context”(Bernasconi 172). To be exact, when Levinas speaks of the climate of Heidegger he is referring to the ‘conatus’ of his thought, which resonates in the being that is concerned for it own being. It is the relationship between existent and existence, which harbors the elemental evil that Levinas is trying to combat. One could find the conatus or the conception of the “struggle for existence or perseverance in being” in philosophical though since the Hobbes, Spinoza, and Heraclitus (176). Additionally, Levinas target it is also the teleological philosophies in western though, especially the philosophies which totalize the human being into a conception or an idea, which creates divisions in humanity and violence(177). Furthermore, Levinas wished to turn the attention, not to eliminate it, from the struggle for existence, or a being that is concerned for it own being, to the struggle against violence which is engulfed with the ethical question of “my right to exist”(177).

Does Levinas question of the ethical, which is a central question in all of Levinas work, resolve the political realties of human suffering? Also does Levinas solve the issue of violence or the bad consciousness that is harbored in it? Finally does Levinas move us beyond and through the thinking which philosophy extorts? For Robert Bernasconi, these questions are left unresolved, but are still attended to Levinas thought. This is an interesting position because, politically, Levinas was strongly opposed to the violence of nationalism but was in strong support of the establishment of the state of Israel. This political move for Levinas reflects the aporia of violence itself. What is the difference between State violence versus revolutionary violence? As Bernasconi points out, what is in violence we cannot escape because one would need violence to combat violence, he writes, “Hence the problem of violence gives way to an aporia: the only violence that one could engage in with a good conscience is a violence that arises from the agony of a bad conscience, fearful of making the innocent suffer. The aporia arises from the ambiguity of the face…Levinas declares that ‘the true problem for us Westerners is not so much to refuse violence as to question ourselves about a struggle against violence”(178). This struggle against violence, in my own personal opinion it is the task of not only politics, but political philosophy to take on the unending and evolving question towards the ethical and political organization. Bernasconi believes, which I also do, Levinas “failure to take his political philosophy to the point of a philosophy of institutions is a serious omission”(Bernasconi 180). Either way, Bernasconi’s article reoriented the layered and problematic aspects of Levinas thought, while also acknowledging the political philosophy grounded in his own work and the struggle to approach the political.

Waldenfels quotes Levinas from Otherwise Than Being, identifying the Saying as what is subjected to the rules of linguistics and manifested thusly as the Said. This perversion of the Saying comes at the cost of speech and is essential for intercourse. However Levinas also stipulates that the Saying comes before language; a point that Waldenfels stresses in order to point out that the Saying spans beyond a simple speech act, that it takes precedence as an event. He explicates the sentence “I promise you to be here tomorrow” to show the indication within linguistics of certain tenses, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and space, a system of indications. “The absorption of the Saying by what is said cannot be taken as a failure of linguistics, but it is due to certain practices and techniques of speaking and writing which take “as true being what is only a method” (88). Waldenfels wants, at least partially, to exonerate linguistics from any claims to failure, to equate the exchange of speakers as a sort of forgetfulness.

In section two, Waldenfels makes claims to the lack of pure-Sayings and pure-Saids and advocates for a flux of border-experiences. Speech then tends more towards the Said when one speaks what has already been articulated, “repeating given patterns and applying existing rules”(88-89) and conversely towards Saying when one approaches invention and the transgression of rules. The relative purity of this saying is a means of salutation, a method to initiate or conclude a conversation. These “rituals of accessibility” however inevitably end with the saying of nothing, either in the case of acquiescence or refusal (89). Any incongruity that follows from Levinas’ proposal of speech or the coming from the other is excused in Waldenfels defense that “one cannot jump directly from speaking about the Other to speaking to the Other” (89). Thus, any discourse on the Other and the Saying must be founded in language and any attempt to speak outside of this mode would only presuppose its existence.

Section three concerns de-centering and the true speaker. Levinas’ in Totality as well as in Otherwise reverses the order of subjectivity generally as active, coming from me and moving outward towards the other, into a primordial passivity, “my own birth out of the Other’s demand” (90). Waldenfels, rather than enunciating the complete alterity of the other of Levinas, goes on to champion a self within the Other and an other within the self. A melding of speaking, listening, anterior histories and circumstance, entanglement and connectivity, similarity that is at points syncretic.

In closing Waldenfels takes up the subject of seriousness and play where “ gravity is reserved for the Saying, play turns into what is said and to Being” (95). This returns us to the role of living from . . . from Totality. He brings up this final point to outline Levinas’ goal as trying to denounce the common idea of the center of gravity within the self and any self-gratification through”aesthetics of existence” (95). Waldenfels, while agreeing with Levinas’s concept of speaking and response coming from beyond me, tries to return empowerment to the individual self by emphasizing the creative response in responsibility. His argument seems hinged to a play of words that seem to be both relevant and in-accurate, returning continuously to the point that to speak of is to speak otherwise.

Psychoanalyst/feminist theorist Luce Irigaray’s essay “The Fecundity of the Caress” is a biting and lucidly composed response to Emmanuel Levinas’s essay Totality and Infinity. Written in 1984, the piece delivers numerous critiques to Levinas’s work, especially to the section titled “Eros.” Using well-crafted poetic language (when I read a part of the essay to a friend, they commented that it sounded like poetry), Irigaray offers a sharp analysis of Levinas’s conceptions of sexuality and femininity. Her commentary is deeply affecting and poses ideas that are still relevant more than 20 years after its publication, both in an academic venue and in the larger world. By reshaping Levinas’s ideas and constructing a new vocabulary for their expression, she suggests a paradigm for romantic relationships that provides equality, safety, and transcendence for both partners. This restructuring of the sexual relationship lends a valuable feminist perspective to our understanding of various methods for the contemporary application of Levinas’s theories.

Irigaray centers her critique on Levinas’s perception of a wonder that precedes the conscious existence of the subject. This preexisting awe is inspired by the miracle of touch, or the “caress”. The caress exists without understanding or subjectivity-it is “naïve,” “native,” “voluptuous without knowing it” (Irigaray 185). Irigaray’s tone and word choice in the beginning of the essay suggest raw yet supernatural beauty that transports us into the ethereal world inhabited by the figures of the “male lover” and the “female lover.” As she writes at the opening of the essay, “sensual pleasure can reopen and reverse this conception and construction of the world,” can make each lover actively appreciative of their bodies and the otherness of their partner (185).

Throughout her work, Irigaray describes how this sensual pleasure occurs in a way that lifts both man and woman away from their limited subjectivity and into a plane of ultimate transcendence. Here, the two lovers rediscover their innocence and “realize a birth that is still in the future” (187). This birth replicates the incredible intimacy between mother and child and renews each lovers’ sense of self. It is a “new dawn for the beloved. And the lover” (189). While Irigaray distinguishes between the activity of the male lover and the passivity of the beloved woman at this juncture in her essay, she will soon do away with these distinctions as she launches into a critique of Levinas’s illustration of gender. In the following pages, she insinuates that although she and Levinas both believe that the love relationship carries partners away from the totalizing realm of sameness, his vision’s dependence on gender inequalities still inscribes them in a totality. She wishes to eradicate the violence of Levinas’s portrayal of the beloved woman and wonders “How to preserve the memory of the flesh? Above all, for what is or becomes the site that underlies what can be remembered?” (191). In short, how can the act of love be made meaningful for both partners while giving each of them a stronger sense of self and self-efficacy?

As she quickly and fiercely reveals, this shared meaning cannot be found in the objectification experienced by the beloved woman under the lover’s gaze as depicted by Levinas. She claims that this gaze reduces the woman to a vulnerable and stagnant object, not the vibrant and moving being that Irigaray perceives her to be, Such a lively creature is able to derive her own meaning from the sexual act, she does not need the male love to create meaning for her. Irigaray disregards Levinas’s depiction of the male lover awakening his beloved woman. Instead, she is fascinated by how both partners refashion themselves in the act of love.

This does not occur within Levinas’s vision of the woman as a dwelling place, an “abyss,” for the man to get lost inside (194). Irigaray contends that this depiction equates the woman with animality, nature, maternity-states that separate her from her power and movement. She harshly accuses Levinas of avoiding the woman’s “own call to the divine,” of undermining her brilliant connection to the cosmos (197). This positioning of the woman places her in a fundamentally contradictory role to the man, thus violating the unity of their coupling. He is elevated during the act of love, while she is cast down towards the space of childishness and animality. She is without a will, instead operating under the man’s desires and his need for transcendence (198-202). The “fecundity” of this union is only found in the creation of a son, a continuation of his father and a reaffirmation of himself. This product brings no pleasure to the woman, who still takes no responsibility and finds no meaning in reproduction-she loses herself (202-203).

The violence contained in this disparate power dynamic leads Irigaray to state, “Modesty is not found on one side only. Responsibility for it should not belong to only one of the lovers. To make the beloved woman responsible for the secret of desire is to situate her also, and in the place of the beloved man-in his own modesty and virginity, for which he won’t take ethical responsibility.” In her paradigm, the lovers are in fact equal, and they can both be affected by the divine’s role in their relationship. Fecundity is actually rooted in God’s guidance of their union. This god can “encourage the risk of encountering the Other with nothing held in reserve” (205). In this realm of total vulnerability and lack of expectations, the lovers “[become] creators of new worlds” together (205).

How? How can the two lovers each be reborn in their union? Irigaray asserts that this act must “begin at a distance” This way, the lovers each have the space to invite one another into the partnership-it is an act of each of their wills. They are each choosing to surrender the perception of their bodies as singular units in favor of their coupling (207).

When the lovers meet this way as two independent bodies choosing to share the transcendent union, Irigaray believes that they are protected from violence. They are aware of their shared physical pleasure and its tremendous value. This pleasure exists as a reminder of the act and its significance. Neither lover is blinded to the significance of their love-the female does not get swept into darkness, and the male is not blinded to his own responsibility for the act. Instead, they are able to dually appreciate the significance of their love and its fecundity. Finally, their pleasure is in the domain of the ethical, where it could not reside when it was an act of incredible aggression meeting terrible vulnerability. The memory of the flesh is born, but it cannot be contained in language, in substitution of another being, in religion. Instead, it must exist singularly, because “to destroy it is to risk the suppression of alterity, both the God’s and the other’s. Thereby dissolving any possibility of access to transcendence” (217).

Posted by jdrabinski for Nina Stewart

We set animals aside from humans in order to justify killing them. We also set humans aside as animals in order to justify any number of atrocities. Lippit describes Adorno’s explication of this process. Calling a human inhuman, and believing it, is often justification enough for mistreating that human. This is clearly an atrocity, but one which we have a long history of committing eagerly. This justification is also flawed in several ways. The animal is not simply a thing, worthy of mistreatment. The animetaphor invoked to justify violence against a human is incomplete and cannot succeed. The animal cannot be reduced to being simply a thing, and since the animetaphor refers back to something within us, invoking it can not absolve us of guilt for violence.
The animetaphor functions as a limit of our world; it does not define it, is not strictly a part of it, but instead dances around it, haunting it, present only in its nonpresence. It cannot be adequately explained within, or without, language. Similarly the animal is present in all of us, but our capacity for language has alienated us from it. And yet, we are continually drawn back to it in order to explain our own human condition. We cannot set ourselves apart from it, and yet we cannot integrate it into ourselves. But we can revive the animetaphor to explore the limits of our subjectivity.

The ethical implications of such claims to performativity is explored through Perpich’s discussion of rhetoric. By referring to Michele Le Doeuff’s attention to the peculiar role of images within philosophical discourse, Perpich turns towards a formulation of the aesthetics at work within Levinas. In Levinas’s direct rejection of rhetorical strategies of speech and text (it aims at something, to “trick” or persuade by conviction) as unethical, Perpich asks “What are we to make of this philosophy that denigrates rhetoric as the opposite of ethical language and ethics itself, and simultaneously relies precisely on a figure or trope to express the central notion in virtue of which the ethical relationship is to be understood?” (117) The image (of the face) within Levinas seems to account for what philosophical discourse cannot provide, what emerges from and evades language, acting both as an organizing principal central to ethics and as that which always puts this very thing at risk. In quoting Le Doeuff, Perpich writes that imagery “occupies the place of theory’s impossible.”, “expressing something that the system needs to express, but cannot justify in its own terms.” (119) Perpich’s discussion of this inevitable collapse into the limitations of language and the implications for how we are to engage with the Other’s alterity both on the level of the theoretical (forms, concepts) and the practical (the ethical) is articulated through considering the shifting role of singularity within Levinas’ thought.

In roughly outlining the general trajectory of Levinas’s movement towards a fully developed constitution of singularity, Perpich notes that it wasn’t until the 1950′s that Levinas introduced the primacy of irreducible alterity and the asymmetrical relation it produces. The primary issues for Perpich in the figure of the face are ones that involve the epistemological conditions of singularity, the basic question being, how can we recognize (know) the other as such if we do not possess the faculties of cognition that presuppose knowing? Moreover, how can we realize Levinas’s ethical claims if the form (rhetoric, discourse) he proposes them through remains primarily unethical? In Perpich’s final note she returns to the fundamental inquiry that structures her essay, she writes, “This [refers to the questions above] is the central methodological and ethical problem posed to us by Levinas’s philosophy and reflected through the necessary contradiction of a face that represents the impossibility of its own self-representation.” (120) It seems that while Perpich attempts, through a methodological process of deduction, to locate the problematics that attend singularity throughout Levinas’s work, she nevertheless arrives back at the contradictions that haunt Levinas’ notion of the face. This, however, is a testament not only to the fundamental unresolvability of these tensions, but also to the necessity of these tensions, that “work for and against” Levinas’s philosophical position.

I. ETHICS, METAPHYSICS AND VIOLENCE

In this section of the article many of the arguments we have made in class about the problems in Levinas’ philosophy are summed up by discussing Derrida’s critique. Derrida posses that non-spatial can only be understood through the non-spatial. Therefore considering Levinas’ concept of absolute alterity as the other for ethical relation is highly problematic. Derrida then uses Levinas’ reading of Husserl to also critique from a “reverse side.” Previously Derrida had argued about totality and its problems strictly within the history of totality. He goes on to confront Levinas’ totality within the same phenomenology and ontology Levinas had tried to break. Derrida says that the relationship of ontology and metaphysics—which Levinas proposes—would leave being out of reach. For Derrida the ethical relation to absolute alterity can only be thought of in terms of non-absolute alterity, in other words the return to the same.
The question is not whether Derrida dealt with these problems but if in dealing with them changed the way to look at them.

II. TWO CONCEPTS OF ECONOMY
In this section, the ethical relation that Levinas suggests can no longer simply be opposed to totality. Due to Derrida’s critique of the ethical relation, he also does not believe in pure peace. Philosophy as ontology cannot be opposed to metaphysics as ethics in the manner which Levinas wishes, or even violence to peace. Such an opposition can only be made violently. The difference in the meaning of economy both for Levinas and for Derrida is key. For Levinas economy is the return of the same instead rather than exposure to the other. Derrida distorts the binary when he postulate that Joyce and Hegel are on his side since they also acknowledge that there “can be no opposition between the Greek and the Jew, between the return and the non-return, between the economic and the non-economic” (120). Economy comes to stand as the principle of contamination which will prevent totality being opposed to infinity, and an ethical relation to absolute alterity being opposed to the temporal an terrestrial order of the state and politics. An example given by the article is the answer of which comes first to Levinas and Derrida, ethics or politics. For Levinas it is ethics since the infinity of the ethical comes first if only through a logical dependence or ethical value (121). Derrida however refuses to choose since there exists no “first” place. The totality and infinity are determined by the same economy.

III. IS THERE AN ETHICS OF DECONSTRUCTION
In this section, assessing the changes between Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being are argued as the best way of looking at the relationship between Levinas and Derrida. Levinas writes the latter clearly with Derrida’s criticisms of Totality. The question becomes if then they embark on a similar if not the same project. In Otherwise, Levinas has answered the question of language by placing new emphasis on ‘the saying’ and ‘the said’.Transcendance is located beyond the reach of ontology instead of in exteriority. Otherwise is still the continuation of the purported system in Totality. Deconstruction should not seek to present itself as moral or responsible when to do so would disable responsibility. Derrida responds to what remains open that which is questionable beyond the question (to not presume/use ethics more than any other word).

IV. TWO FORMS OF MESSIANIC POLITICS
Thomson’s main focus in this final section is on the relationship between Derrida and Levinas’s understandings of the interplay between ethics and politics, and the realization of that interplay in the state of Israel. He refers to this as the “Two Forms of Messianic Politics”. He sees both thinkers as seeking a “Beyond Politics”, and that they both frame it in a “beyond-the-state-in-the-state”. He sees their primary agreement in this theoretical “beyond-in”. However, he argues that the main discrepancy stems from their realization of this “beyond-in”, manifested in their opinions on the Israeli state in particular.
Levinas privileges Israel as the singular place in which exists the possibility of the promise of an ethical invention of politics. He sees a possibility for the infinite in this finite nation. It is the manifestation of the messianic nation- the nation beyond nations. Levinas uses Israel as a means to think beyond the nation state, yet finds himself creating a new, more naturalized nationalism. According to Derrida, Levinas runs the risk in his understanding of Israel of turning beyond politics into “a violent particularism”, in that Israel winds up taking universal significance.
Derrida sees an inherent break in the structure of Levinas’s argument in the very declaration of the infinite in a some place that is finite. For Derrida an ethical imperative “will always already have been broken, betrayed, transgressed, as soon as I have begun to speak, or remain silent…” (143) Derrida believes that no politics, not even Israel, can avoid collapsing “the decision into a programmed rule.” (136) Derrida speaks of a messianism without a messiah. He explains this by describing the revelation present in revealibility itself, with or without a revelation. This destroys the idea of a choice between revelation and revealibility. This is his double logic that differs from Levinas. For Derrida the promise of another politics is ubiquitous but non-locatable and non-finite. However, Thomson still firmly believes that Derrida’s work is first and foremost political.
Thomson proceeds to critique Simon Critchlely’s analysis of the relationship between Levinas and Derrida. He argues that Critchley equates and blurs the two thinkers, and simultaneously simplifies their distinctions as oppositions, something Derrida himself would never claim. He reads Derrida as simply opposing nationalism. According to Thomson, however, Derrida’s critique of Levinas lies in the initial naturalization of the political decision, not in the following nationalism. This is a critique beyond and outside of nationalism or anti-nationalism. To simply oppose all nationalism would be to create an even more dangerous and naïve nationalism that sees itself as universal and beyond nationalism, thus even more naturalized and absolute. Derrida, without opposing or even, according to him, disagreeing with Levinas, sees the inherent violence in the locating of an ethical politics in a nation, even Israel.

The points of diffraction break Derrida and Deleuze into four working dualisms:

Derrida: of unity, of negativity, of the middle place, of interrogation by the other
Deleuze: of duality, of positivity, of non-place, of self interrogation.

Very briefly I will consider the mode through which Platonism is discussed. (For a more in depth discussion, Lawlor’s essay names “Plato the Simulacrum” and Difference and Repetition which has an extended discussion of Platonism Both Derrida and Deleuze articulate a need to reconsider Platonism, in the case of Deleuze, an overturning of the hierarchical thought was more in order. Platonism’s hierarchy manifests itself in thought as the movement from transcendence to immanence through sense. Platonism is adapted from the neo-platonists who describe a three fold system constituted by the unparticipated, the participated, and the participant. For example the system might look like the idea of justice, the quality of justice, and the just. Deleuze maps these components onto the father, the daughter or fiancee, and the claimants or suitors. “The simulacrum is a false suitor…the errant son in relation to the father, a false suitor.” Lawlor then writes that, “The simulacrum is the point of diffraction between Derrida and Deleuze.”(126)

Simulacrum:

Deleuze, Simulacrum/The false suitor is difference in itself. In itself Lawlor explains as “that difference is conceived without any mediation whatsoever.” The simulacrum in Plato is what is excluded from participating. Deleuze says that Platonism consists in “subordinating difference to the powers of the Same and of the Similar, in declaring difference unthinkable in itself, and in sending difference and the simulacrum back to the bottomless ocean.”(127 of Lawlor/ 253 of Logic of Sense) The simulacrum puts resemblance on the outside and lives from difference. Reversing Platonism then consists in making the simulacrum “rise to the surface.”(128)

Derrida, Simulacrum- Derrida’s interest in the simulacrum is to be crude, is in the emergence of meaning/coherence in repetition – a word being double between presence and non-presence. Simulacrum are defined by non-being (of the sort we are used to in Levinas, a type of non-being that is beyond being). Rather than making difference rise to the surface, Derrida is interested in the field into which simulacra are displaced where there is total contamination. Contamination I might have mentioned is Derrida’s attempt to articulate a difference with mediation. ‘Because Derrida is trying to conceive the difference between form and formless as mediation, he conceives the relation as a field.”(129)

Aion (sidesteps the present, “instead of a present that absorbs the past and the future, a future and a past divide the present at every instant, which subdivides it into a past and future to infinity, in the two directions at once.”(135)

Deleuze: The paradox of the voice- the voice has the dimensions of language without having its conditions; “it awaits the event that will make it a language. It i no longer noise but not yet language.” It is, in keeping wih Deleuze’s privedging of immediacy, not a vocal mediator. Noise is the “the noisy events of death.”(136) It s death in its most existential form, the form in which we must always remember that death means the end of all possibilities, it is the possibily from which the possibility of possibilities is presenced. There are two kinds of death that Deleuze articulates. One is the type that happens to my body; it occurs in the present ‘causing me to cry and yell, forcing noise out of me. This noise is not yet language.”(137) There is also the death of the them. this is an incorporeal death “in which one never finishes dying.”(137) This is what Deleuze calls the genuine event. this is the “always to come, the source of an incessant multiple adventure in a persistent question.”(137)

Lawlor gives an example through Deleuze to clear this up. I will through Lawlor try and draw this idea of the voice out and connect it to the other. The example, in the style of Neitzsch, drawn from interogation. In an interogation one is asked to explain oneself and one defers to others to question the legitimacy of such quesitoning. This appeal to the other, the rich friend/connection, hereditary ties, etc. is a type of appeal to something no longer immanent to oneself and for Lawlor is a point at which thinking/thought gives way to the deferral to the Other, the constance of death. “Thinking begins, Lawlor writes, “in silence,when no longer relying on the voice of everyone or no one…” He goes on, “Then the transmutation of powerlessness into power occurs: one invents a responce to the question. The expierence of the voice in Deleuzze therefore is the experience of being ‘demolished’.” Interogation by another i an interogation by the self, the dissolved the, the larval selves.

Derrida’s voice is the voice of the other. Derrida’s conception of the voice begins so to speak in his conception of the structure of language as a constant referal to that which is not present, to that which is beyond being. “By means of its repeatability, language must alway s be the same, univocal, and sent to an other who is not present, who is beyond being, equivocal.” Derrida examines he moment when one reprimands itself. “It is the same me speaking as hearing: univocal. Yet, given that I am not the one speaking when I am the one hearing and vice versa, it is not the same me speaking as hearing; equi-vocal.” This difference in speaker and listener means for Derrida that there is always an other in me, “…in the same, speaking to me or right on me.” (138) there can never be an unmediated other to which i will have comlete interior access to, only re-presentation is possible. So that while the other is not the positivism of an other on the outside, an other person, and is the other inside of me I can only ever have a re-presentation to that other. The other inside of me is always silence, is always beyond being, and for Lawlor is thus already dead. The voice of the other as absence within me leads Derrida to claim that speaking, my disappearence as a unity is implied. Lawlor writes, “My death is implied even when I use an indexical such as “me”; the very fact that it points to me across a disiance implies hat it does not require me o be present, up close to itl the indeical is right on me yet not identitcal me. I am already absent from it.” Self interrogation is thus interrogation by the other.

Lawlor ends the essay by tying into some brief remarks he made earlier about the space f the non-signifying sense as being the space of memory. He writes that foucault saw the overturning of platonism somewhere in the hollowing out of the foundations of history, to denaturalize historical identity. Lawlor speculates that, “This extraction, this going beyond, this hollowing out requires a new kind of kind of memory or even a new kind of “counter-memory.” Perhaps this memory and counter-memory,an ‘awaiting forgetting,” is what “post-modernism” really means.” I wonder about this idea of a productive forgetting, of a type of thought which requires a looseness to think. This looseness cannot be something like a type of thought that allows room for expansion fitting all difference within the space of the same. I think it would have to work through the contingent and the accidental. To view them not as epiphenomenon but as that from which life is borne. It would have to see them as constituting life from the absolute and at the same time from a very small corner which is always connected to the open.

Peperzak emphasizes that despite common objectives, the inspirations that animate the work of Levinas and Heidegger are starkly different. Seeking to ask two different (yet related) questions, their works express deeply different convictions about life, simplified by Peperzak as “Greek” and “Jewish.” For this reason, Peperzak asserts that although quotations from Heidegger’s texts might be used to parry Levinas’s attacks on him, those attacks nonetheless stand as justified criticisms of the spirit of Heidegger’s thought.

As Peperzak acknowledges, Levinas and Heidegger are asking different questions. For this reason, to examine the relationship between Levinas’s and Heidegger’s political and ethical theory, Peperzak, like Levinas, must confront and question Heidegger’s statement that he is not concerned with ethics. Peperzak thus seeks to locate and evaluate the ethical implications of Heidegger’s work by explicating the particular ethos that is implied in his thinking, and by questioning the neutrality of Heidegger’s exclusion of ethics from his fundamental ontology.

Rather than merely postponing questions of ethics, Peperzak argues with Levinas that this exclusion renders ethics a secondary, nonfundamental concern of philosophy. Observing that for Levinas, Heidegger’s philosophy ignores the demands of morality, Peperzak remarks that a mere failure to recognize ethical phenomena for what they are could still be amended. Instead, Levinas regards Heidegger’s approach as being symptomatic of a way of thinking that relegates moral considerations to a secondary and separate discipline. He writes: “According to Levinas, the very suspension or epoche of the ethical, the seemingly neutral decision to postpone philosophical ethics until the foundational questions of philosophy have been treated, testifies to a false understanding of reality” (205). For Levinas, exposition of the ethical is in fact a constitutive component of first philosophy. Levinas asserts that every philosophy true to experience must be ethical from the outset, insisting that it is impossible to think seriously and fundamentally if moral perspective is placed in parentheses. Peperzak elaborates: “First philosophy must show that “is” and “ought,” the theoretical and the practical, are not originally distinguishable, and thus that “the Good” is another name for the very source” (207).

Peperzak describes Levinas’s starting point as the Other, and presents his assertion that “being for the Other” is the basic definition of the I. He proceeds to question whether Heidegger has correctly described the way of being of the phenomenon of the Other. Though Peperzak thoughtfully allows for different interpretations of Heidegger’s work, he concludes in any case that Heidegger has nonetheless precluded the way of being of Levinas’s Other and the morality that emerges from the relationship with it. Summarizing Heidegger’s discussion of others, Peperzak notes that for Heidegger the Other is understood as a being-together/being-with in the form of a we. He writes that Heidegger’s question “remains concentrated on the being of the Dasein that is always mine, and through this on Being in general” (209). Peperzak elaborates: “Insofar as Heidegger thematizes the Other as merely a coconstituting moment of the Dasein that is always mine, and carries out this thematization only within the horizon of Being in general, we can say that for him, too, totality reduces the Other’s particularity to the status of an instance or moment” (209).

Peperzak acknowledges the possibility of defending Heidegger’s work by claiming that Being does not represent a totality or a whole, but rather that which gives the universe its being. Nonetheless, he quotes an array of passages that he suggests render Heidegger susceptible to the accusation that privileging Being grants no place for the infinite dignity of the Other’s existence, and thus for Levinas’s ethics. The passages feature discussions of the wholeness that characterizes Dasein, seeming to render it both primary and self-constitutive. Peperzak quotes Heidegger: “Only because Dasein can be on its own, thanks to its transcendence, can it also be in the world with another self qua thou. The I-thou relationship is not yet itself the relationship of transcendence, but rather is founded on the transcendence of Dasein. It is a mistake to think that the I-thou relationship is as such primarily constitutive for the possible discovery of the world” (211). The interpersonal is subordinate within Dasein’s relation to itself. Peperzak writes: “The originary relationship is the self-reference of care; responsibility for Others is a subordinate moment within this” (212).

Peperzak notes that if Heidegger’s Being is not to be understood as a totality, its violent character would remain for Levinas in that it describes anonymous powers that constitute the world, unsubordinated to the intersubjective and the moral laws this produces. In Otherwise than Being, Being, rather than totality, becomes Levinas’s target. This Being is characterized by Peperzak as a mythology of an anonymous divine that precludes respect for the infinite that is revealed within the faces of other humans. It produces a concept of peace that depends on an harmony that contains balanced conflicts, bringing together through rational structures of society a reconciliation of beings with each other achieved by limiting every egoism. Being is tied to appearance, assuming that beings can be made present through representation or perception. It implies conceptions of truth and intelligibility that are capable of domesticating all that is strange, encompassing the other within the sphere of the same, and allowing beings to be identified, gathered and comprehended. Against this formulation, Levinas presents the look of the Other, which inevitably escapes this adequation, capable neither of being perceived as a bodily presence nor established by a conceptual definition. Peperzak concludes that this does not suggest that Levinas would dismiss ontology or every thought of Being; Rather, for him the concepts of ontology receive their meaning from something other than Being, deriving worth from a right relationship to Others.

Peperzak concludes this chapter by returning again to a question of practice in order to consider the relationship between Heidegger’s thinking and practice that opened up the line of analysis. Peperzak highlights a section of Levinas’s essay “Heidegger, Gagarin and Us,” written after the first voyage to outer space, which explores the meaning of Heidegger’s view of practice. Levinas claims that Heidegger’s critique of the essence of modern technology, a protest against the objectifying, calculating exploitation of nature and humans that reduces us to factors in a utilitarian framework, is rooted in a self-understanding that claims we have lost ourselves by losing sight of Being and our place within it. Peperzak quotes Levinas’s eloquent assessment of this view at length. For Levinas, it is a self-understanding that rehabilitates paganism, revering a holy notion of the world and place. Remarking that the mystery of things is the source of cruelty toward humans, he writes that attachment to place “is the very scission of humankind into natives and strangers. From this perspective technique is less dangerous than the ghosts of the Place” (217). Peperzak concludes by pointing out that this attachment to place, characterized by art and political power rather than respect and justice, has too much affinity with the Nazi glorification of soil and blood. From Levinas’s perspective, technology delivers us from Heidegger’s superstition of the place by allowing us to discover beings beyond the borders of the local. He writes: “Freed from all holy abodes, we can discover the authentic meaning of the human way of being-in-the-world: we are here in order to provide food and shelter for the Others. Disenchanting nature and demystifying the world are the reverse side of existing for the Infinite that exceeds all horizons” (217).

While I found many of the arguments in this chapter to be supple and thought-provoking, I found the logic of the final conclusions unsettling, and they left me questioning some of the arguments about relations between philosophy, ethos, and practice I had previously thought I understood. Without expounding any broader philosophical conclusions, I can say simply that I believe technology is at least equally employed to enable the impersonal and anonymous as to foster connection and communication. It objectifies, frames, and constrains us at least as much as it enables and empowers us. The same revolutions in technology that allow us an unprecedented ability to transcend the particulars of place have simultaneously allowed us to kill other human beings both on a mass scale and in anonymity, without ever seeing or being seen by them. If modern technology indeed provides “invaluable possibilities for liberation” (216), it seems to hold comparable potential to facilitate oppression, exclusion, negation of the personal and human, mediation of relationships by the anonymous, and unthinkable destruction and violence. To greatly oversimplify the arguments that conclude this chapter, I was surprised to see that perhaps the most specific and concrete example in this text of a meaningful connection between philosophy and practice centered on whether and why technology should be either celebrated or critiqued. I have not read enough to know whether this reflects the limits of the two thinkers’ discussions of technology or whether it is Peperzak’s interpretation of them. However, I couldn’t help feeling that without discussing technology in a way that at least acknowledges its diverse operations and aporias, the concluding thoughts seemed to me to show the reality and history in which practice must situate itself being distorted through appropriation by philosophy rather than revealing a more complex or co-constitutive relationship between ethos, practice and philosophy.

Raffoul sets out to, as he puts it, “question the pertinence” of the opposition between ontology and ethics which is posited by Levinas on the bass of his interpretation of Heidegger. Raffoul contends that there is a certain aggressiveness to this interpretation which partly misconstrues Heidegger. His aim is not a critique of Levinas for such a perceived shortcoming but rather to deepen the understanding of the both ethics and ontology. Raffoul attempts to trace the basis of Levinasian critiques of Heidegger so as to question the necessity for the departure of ethics from ontology.

The first major critique of Heidegger by Levinas consists in a disavowal of the neutrality of Being. The neutrality is derived by Levinas through his understanding of Heidegger’s project as a fundamental ontology. As such, it is viewed by Levinas to be “the knowledge of being in general.” Raffoul asserts that this interpolation is equivalent with “the identification of Being with the generality of beings.” Being becomes conceptual generality in that it is the abstraction of beings into Being. The logical entailment is that all beings are subsumed within being so that all relations remain within a totalizable whole and so are both subordinate to the whole and incapable of being alterior to it and hence become symptoms of it; the Same.

Raffoul claims that there is at stake within this initial reading of Heidegger a misinterpretation. For while Levinas may have understood Heidegger to be the culmination of centuries of Western thought which produced only cases and instances of the same, Heidegger was in fact a rebuttal of that lineage. Heidegger performs his inversion by delineating between beings and Being. By doing so, Raffoul holds, Heidegger has made Being the Other of all beings. In that sense then, the two are anterior to one another. Furthermore, all beings “suppose Being” which entails that beings cannot be an abstraction of Being, since this would be to reverse to order. Thus, an understanding of Heidegger’s Being as a generalized concept is a defiance of “both the spirit and letter of Heidegger’s thinking.”

This demonstration of the manner in which Levinas has directed his own reading of Heidegger also serves within Raffoul’s piece to illustrate the possibility that ethics and ontology need not be opposed. For Levinas’ need to conceive the other as a transcendence of Being arises directly from his understanding that it is being which subsumes that non-relation or openness to the truly alterior. But is the alterior is in fact the basis of Heideggarian ontology, then it seems that seeking alterity outside it is a strategy which is unnecessary because it is predicated on a misconstrual of Heideggarian Being.

The other element of the possible reconciliation between ethics and ontology arises through Raffoul’s investigation of Levinas’ second major concern with Heidegger; the egoism of Being. Raffoul describes the origination of Levinas’ concern with the subsumption of the other in the Same as partially tied to Levinas’ conflation of mineness of Being with sameness. Levinas states, “The other becomes the same by becoming mine.” This thread is expounded in Heidegger, Levinas feels, through Heidegger’s depiction of Being as towards death. Since each of us is a being whose Being is towards death, and since no one but us can be a substitute for our own death, death supersedes the other. At this point, Levinas’ read of Being as neutral combines with the understanding of mineness inherent in the towards death, to make both the effects of egoity. For, if mineness is a symptom of sameness, and each of us is the Being of mineness, then the relation of beings becomes that of the relation of egos. That is, being with becomes predicated first upon the identification of others with ourselves. Hence, Levinas proposes being for as opposed to being with.

Raffoul points out that this second opposition is itself predicated upon the combination of the initial misconstrual of beings as symptoms of Being and also on a second misreading of the mineness and towards death. For, precisely because beings are not abstractions of Being but rather, the disclosure of it, mineness does not indicate an egotistical assertion on the part of beings. Rather it is a character of Being insofar as Being appears as beings. That is, Being is a disclosure of beings which takes the form of mineness and thus the mineness precedes beings such that it cannot be construed to reflect a relationship between beings as the same as one other. Or, “Dasein is understood as openness to the other entity, its individuation cannot be understood to mean the exclusion of the other.” Mineness is, as Being, other to beings and so illustrates the tension between them and it rather than their reproduction of themselves through it.

The reinterpretation of Heidegger’s distinction between Being and beings and hence of mineness leads in turn, to the negation of the critique of Levinas of the Being towards death as also a foreclosure of alterity. Rather than saying that because each being is towards its own death, all beings are the same in being concerned only with themselves, Raffoul argues that Being towards death illustrates the way in which Being is towards death and as such paves the way for a being for another through the possibility of giving one’s life to them. For it is precisely because each person must die its own death that I may “die for another but not in place of another.” In that way then, this essential feature of Being lays foundation for ethical behavior because of the difference I assumes between beings; that one cannot be for another.

Raffoul does an excellent job of succinctly tracing the foundation of Levinas’ aversion to Heidegger and by so doing, illustrates some fundamental misapprehensions, the revisiting of which paves the way for an ethics and ontology which are not at war with one another.

The section on time is called It’s Today Tomorrow and begins with the question
of whether Levinas understands Derrida’s work to be against the philosophical
tradition or simply repeating it. Critchley notes that Levinas views a
trajectory of critical philosophy with its origins in Kant, developed by
Husserl, and completed by Derrida. Here already we get the indication of where
Critchley is headed. Derrida is both within the tradition and a challenge to
it. Specifically, the critical lineage Derrida is attached to is that of the
critique of metaphysics and the transcendental illusion, the idea that a priori
forms of reason constitute the nature of ultimate reality and therefore human
understanding can achieve an absolute comprehension of something like god. Kant
began this project, and Husserl contributed to it: “By bringing Being back from
its sojourn in a supersensible Platonic realm and giving it over to
appearance…”(148). Derrida thinks through the end of metaphysics, according to
Levinas, through his challenge to the possibility of the plenitude of the
presence. Despite Husserl’s advance for critical philosophy, his notion of
presence remained problematic, and it is through his challenge that Derrida
continues the critical project. The point of this challenge is that “The
immediacy of experience is the new transcendental illusion” (149). Derrida
laces his critique into the preceding critiques of Husserl and Kant. If Kant
and Husserl’s work lead to an equivalence of Being and appearance, Derrida’s
work indicates that the phenomenon always slips away from the phenomenologist.
Following this discussion Critchley suggests, in a claim that he thinks
resonates with the thoughts of Levinas, that deconstruction may be operative
between the break with philosophical tradition and its continuity according to
a logic of closure. Critchley reads “Wholly Otherwise” very closely to discern
the character of deconstruction as Levinas sees it, attempting to play out the
critique of presence Derrida fosters and which Levinas finds so satisfying. In
this light, the trace is noted as a sign for an absolute past which has never
been present. The trace leads towards ethical subjectivity and the
deconstruction of presence which reveals this trace is methodologically
ethical. Critchley asserts that for Levinas, “…the futural movement of
difference, its temporization, which always defers the fulfillment, or
parousia, of presence, is reabsorbed into the present, fissuring the latter and
usurping its authority” (154). However, simply due to the operation of this
critique within the tradition, an effect of the challenge is in fact a
restoration. Even in criticizing presence, in splitting it open, presence
endures and is preserved. This doubled reading and doubled writing belongs to
what Critchley calls the logic of closure.

The second section of the chapter is called Scepticism. Levinas is simply a
satisfied reader of Derrida and has important concerns to raise. In a move we
may find reminiscent of Derrida’s own critical posture in Violence and
Metaphysics, Levinas suggests that “What remains constructed after the
de-construction is certainly the stern architecture of the de-constructing
discourse which employs the present tense of the verb to be in predicative
propositions” (156). It seems that perhaps neither Levinas nor Derrida are able
to wholly avoid the logocentric language of philosophy’s tradition. The question
is then raised as to whether deconstruction, far from being a radical
innovation, is merely a modern version of skepticism. Critchley suggests that
while neither Derrida nor Levinas are engaging skeptical projects, Levinas sees
a homology between the refutation of skepticism and critiques of his work. In
the Levinasian view that ontology refuses transcendence by an endeavor towards
totalizing comprehension, the refutation of skepticism has been instrumental in
that process. This refutation is already clear in Plato, and is recapitulated in
Husserl’s phenomenology. Heidegger’s philosophy of Dasein made Heidegger
doubtful of whether a skeptical position was even tenable without suicide.
Levinas’s shift is to acknowledge skepticism as that which always returns to be
refuted; it is a ghost within the tradition. Critchley notes that in this
thought Levinas finds a strange alliance with Hegel who also respected
skepticism for its resistance to dogmatism. Levinas asserts that there is an
irreducible difference between skepticism and its refutation, and that this
difference is effectively a diachrony that initiates a movement not
ontologically simultaneous but transcendent. It is this quality in skepticism,
and the skeptical quality in Derrida that appeals to Levinas. Skepticism is
here proximate to the movement by which the ethical Saying can only be said by
way of ontological thematization that denies it, but which temporizes
diachronically through the trace. It is Critchley’s aim to indicate that
deconstruction is diachronic and therefore fosters the disparity between the
Said and the Saying, thus signifying the ethical despite its betrayal in
ontological proposition. Critchley spends a significant amount of time
reviewing the diachrony between the Saying and the Said in Levinas’s work, as
it is the demonstration of this diachrony that makes deconstruction ethical. He
notes Levinas’s position that the philosopher’s project is the reduction of the
Said to the Saying through a logic of skepticism or of interruption. We may
also understand here a parallel movement of interruption in Levinas Otherwise
than Being, in Derrida’s deconstructive method, and in the ethical subjectivity
itself. Critchley’s review of this movement is effective and takes the time to
play out this notion in both the writings of Levinas and its relations to the
work of other thinkers. I think that this second section of the chapter offers
a very clear and effective reading of the Saying/Said relation through the lens
of skepticism. Critchley writes: “It is as if skepticism were sensitive to the
difference between my unthematizable ethical relation to the Other and the
ontological thematization of this relation,” and further, “Ethics signifies
enigmatically, as a determinate pattern of oscillation, or alternation. One
might say that ethics signifies undecidably” (167-8). Critchley concludes this
section by suggesting that both Levinas and Derrida indicate that ontology and
ethics do not constitute an opposition but are actually interdependent.

The final section of the chapter is called Indication. This section begins with
Levinas’s critique of Derrida for fostering his deconstruction of presence
without leaving the gnoseological signification of meaning; which is to say
that Derrida maintains the theory of knowledge he adopts from his predecessors,
particularly Husserl. There are two aspects to this Levinasian critique. The
first aspect is that Derrida’s characterization of philosophy as a metaphysics
of presence allows for the deconstruction of presence but not for a statement
of non-metaphysical positivity. Derrida travels a path of negation that does
not articulate the Other positively. Critchley wants to claim that despite this
deficiency Derrida’s work signifies the ethical because it declares that the
history of philosophy says more than it wants to say. In proposing totality it
names the ethical. Hidden in the noise of ontology is the whisper of an
originary ethics. The second aspect of the critique is centered on Husserl’s
notion of indication. Levinas’s position is that Derrida fails to radicalize
this notion, a movement that would open onto the ethical. What follows from
Critchley is a summary of the Husserlian analysis of the ambiguity of signs,
and the distinction between expressive and indicative signs. In brief, Husserl
wants to affirm the expressive sign as that which is identical to its meaning
and the indicative as that which is associated with non-given, non-identical
associations. Husserl’s theory of meaning, which privileges the expressive,
necessitates that despite practical interlacing between these two kinds of
signs they are fundamentally distinct. It is this threshold of distinction that
Derrida deconstructs in his text Voice and Phenomenon. Derrida’s position is
that the practical entanglement of these signs is not reducible but
constitutional; as Critchley reports: “…at the origin, indication is always
added to expression in a relation or logic of supplementarity” (173). Derrida’s
move is to complicate the origin necessary for Husserl’s theory of meaning by
hopelessly entangling expression and indication. Where Levinas aims to go
further is in the radicalization of indication. He will affirm that the terms
of an indicative relation are not identical in the way expressive meaning is
logically identical. Thus Levinas will declare an extrinsicality between the
indicated and the indicator. Here we should immediately recognize the method at
work: Levinas is finding diachrony and otherness within the indicative sign. As
the ethical arises from exteriority we can also see that this movement towards
diachrony is also a movement towards the ethical nature of indication.
Indication, as a kind of ethical speech, acknowledges and traces the separation
between the same and the other. The difference between Derrida and Levinas here
is that while Derrida effectively recognized the infection of expression by the
exteriority of indication, he did not see that in doing so he had found the
trace of the ethical. Following this point Critchley moves on to consider the
mode of articulating these signs, particularly the distinction between the
verbal and the nonverbal. This distinction does not resound to that between
signification and non-signification. Signification for Levinas is not simply
verbal, it is facial in the very particular sense of the face that Levinas
offers. Critchley’s concluding remarks refer to the non-verbal quality of
ethical signification. The core point here is that the primary and originary
signification is sensibility, vulnerability to the world. For those who are
interested in such things, the final pages of this chapter describe the
relationship between sensibility and animality in order to complicate
criticisms of Levinas for his humanism and anthropocentrism.

This essay is thorough and careful in its reading of both Levinas and Derrida.
It is clear in announcing its intentions and following through on them. I
believe that it is certainly a powerful articulation of the ethical character
of deconstruction. In addition, the engagement with the philosophical
tradition, particularly Husserl’s theory of meaning, is immensely valuable.