In the present study I generally hope to explore the relation between Levinas’s account of ethics and that of religion. There are indeed other studies on Levinas as a philosopher of religion. Jeffrey Kosky’s excellent book, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, explains how Levinas “offers a way to think and speak about religion within the contemporary horizon of thought.”54
He argues that Levinas’s ethics gives rise to an account of subjectivity that is accessible to those who are not committed to a particular religious tradition. More than simply an account open to religious questions, I will argue that Levinas’s ethics is inherently tied to his perspective on religion, as an infinite openness to the infinite Other. Without taking his religious perspective into account seriously when analyzing his ethics, one may do injustice to the overall project that Levinas is undertaking. In this sense I see as inadequate any attempt to interpret Levinas’s ethics that neglects his religious perspective, as if the two aspects were completely divorced from each other. This is not to say that Levinas’s ethics is theology, as Janicaud charges. Here I agree with Critchley who argues that Levinas’s ethics is “not theology.”55
But I disagree with his claim of the total equivalence between ethics and
54 Jeffrey L. Kosky, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 2001), xviii. See also Michael Purcell, Levinas and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
religion in Levinas, namely, that religion has no place in Levinas other than in ethics. Instead, I argue that for Levinas the ethical relation with the human other is a necessary condition for one’s relation with God. Only in the relation with the Other can one find what Levinas calls the traces of God.56But the ethical responsibility for the Other as such,
I argue, does not exhaust the meaning of religion. In this sense Levinas’s ethics must be understood in the wider perspective of religion.
By placing Levinas’s ethics in the larger context of religion, I will also argue that any true religion, for Levinas, must be necessarily ethical. By emphasizing the fact that the trace of God is to be found in the encounter with the Other, Levinas challenges religion to look into its ethical stance in a very concrete manner. Religion may offer the much needed consolations for humanity, but it cannot dispense with the ethical requirement that is predicated upon itself, as Levinas has shown.57 Thus, it is my hope
that this study will establish a firmer link between Levinas’s ethics and his account of religion, showing not only their deep affinity, but also the inadequacy of one without the other.
In pursuing the argument of this study, I will use Levinas’s philosophical writings rather than his Talmudic ones. The use of the latter, only few of them, serves only to illumine the issue of the relation between ethics and religion. The reasons for this choice are as follows. First, Levinas often claims that what he is doing is philosophy, or more
56Richard Cohen (ed.), “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas,” in Face to Face with Levinas (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1986), 20, 31.
57See Levinas’s comment on the consolations of religion: “Religion in fact is not identical to philosophy,
which does not necessarily bring the consolations which religion is able to give. Prophecy and ethics in no way exclude the consolations of religion; but I repeat again: a humanity which can do without these consolations perhaps may not be worthy of them” (EeI, 117/EaI, 118)
specifically, phenomenology, and not theology. This claim finds a great deal of support in his philosophical writings, although one can always argue that what he is doing is quasi- phenomenology or even beyond phenomenology. As I argue, ethics as the responsibility for the Other remains his major concern. It is more than appropriate, therefore, to rely on his philosophical writings when analyzing his notion of ethics. Second, as early as 1951 in his philosophical essay “Is Ontology Fundamental?,” Levinas begins to introduce the notion of religion in his writings. Ten years later in Totality and Infinity he elaborates the meaning of this term, particularly in relation to his concept of ethics. I take this to mean that Levinas wants the discourse on religion to take place as a philosophical issue, and not a theological one. Ethics and religion are indeed intimately connected in his thought. It would be proper, therefore, to treat these issues at the level where he wants it to be done. Third, the decision to focus on Levinas’s philosophical writings in pursuing the argument of this study is also made in order to avoid any influence of his Jewish perspective in which context he composes his Talmudic writings. While in many cases such influence is inevitable, I think it is important to keep it minimal.
As seen in the title of this dissertation, the whole discussion of the relation between ethics and religion in Levinas can be carried out by focusing on three important terms: Totality, the Other, and the Infinite. ‘Totality,’ in the first place, signifies the philosophical intuition to bring every thought into a whole. As such, it lacks nothing because it brings to itself anything that is within the grasp of consciousness. More concretely, totality is where human beings are seen simply as terms or parts of the whole and not as valuable in themselves. It is deeply linked to the economic life in which the
adding up of the sum total occurs incessantly. It is ‘the Other’ (l’Autre), or more precisely, the face of the human Other (Autrui), that breaks up this totality. This is because the face signifies transcendence: it expresses itself without being limited by any social condition or quality that can be given to the human being. Its double feature of weakness and demand puts the freedom of the I into question. Finally, it is ‘the Infinite’ within us, produced as Desire for the Infinite, that orients us toward the Other. The responsibility for the Other, which defines Levinas’s ethics, is the order of the Good through the Desire for the Infinite. This ethics is deeply religious not only because it arises from the beyond Being, but also because it is where one may encounter the trace of God.
I will thus begin this study in Chapter One with the analysis of Levinas’s account of ethics as the outward movement toward the Other and the putting into question of the I by the Other. The face of the Other challenges the self-preoccupation and the conatus essendi of the I, including its tendency to incorporate everything into itself. Through its appeal and demand, the face calls the I to responsibility. The shift from self- preoccupation to responsibility for the Other constitutes the asymmetrical relation between the I and the Other. The chapter will end with the discussion of justice that involves the third party, given the fact that we live in a world that consists of a multiplicity of beings.
In Chapter Two I will examine the subjectivity of the human subject that makes possible the responsibility it carries for the Other. It will show that instead of a conscious and thinking subject that often characterizes the modern conception of human
subjectivity, Levinas offers us a sensible and feeling subject. Sensibility allows the human subject to feel the appeal of the face of the Other and to respond to its demand. The analysis of the relation between the subject’s exposure to the Other and temporality brings out the religious dimension of such human subjectivity that is manifested in the election by the Good to be responsible for the Other.
Chapter Three discusses the metaphysical desire for the Infinite that the very Infinite within the subject produces. It begins with the Levinasian distinction between Desire and Need, which is based on their cause of movement toward their object as well as on their potential fulfillment. The distinction allows us to see that the tendency toward totality in which the face plays no role proceeds from Need. The chapter then analyzes the Cartesian idea of the Infinite and Levinas’s appropriation of it in order to show both the limitation of the intending consciousness and the infinity of the Infinite. After the discussion of the relation between the Infinite, God, and the Good, it brings us to a deeper analysis of the Desire for the Infinite that never reaches satisfaction, but instead gets diverted to the neighbor. The responsibility for the Other is thus never the result of the free choice of the subject, but rather of the order of the Infinite.
Chapter Four brings us to a more evident link between ethics and religion in Levinas’s thought, namely, to the discussion of the face of the Other as a trace of the Infinite. Navigating between presence and absence, the notion of a trace brings out not only the unique signification of the face, but also a new conception of God as Illeity that always escapes representation. As a trace of the Infinite, the face is no longer a phenomenon, but rather an enigma. The chapter ends with the discussion of the structure
of ethical language through the distinction between the Saying and the Said that roughly shows the relation between the subject’s exposure to the Other and the effort to thematize the encounter.
Chapter Five discusses the major elements that bring together ethics and religion in Levinas’s thought. It begins with the analysis of his general concept of religion, which emphasizes, among other things, the relation between God and the human being without totalization and sociality. Then it brings forth the religious character of Levinas’s ethics that was discussed in the previous chapters. Following this analysis is the discussion of the ethical character of religion that is centered on the responsibility for the Other. Religion becomes meaningful only if it fully commits itself to the horizontal and sensible dimension of human existence.
I hope this analysis may help us not only better understand the nature of Levinas’s ethics in relation to religion, but also reflect more critically on ethics in general. Through his analysis of ethics Levinas invites us to look more deeply into moral principles and codes that we live by. Is it not the encounter with the Other that underlies them? There is clearly a certain degree of abstractness to the principles, as opposed to that of concreteness to the encounter with the Other. The actual encounter may offer us a rich experience, particularly when we use sensibility as the measure of reality. It may tell us more about who we really are and our relation to one another than may our consciousness. For Levinas, the ‘more’ is our responsibility for the Other. His analysis brings forth religious issues that pertain to the significance of the encounter and human subjectivity. Indeed, ethics will look very different if it is conceived broadly as the
encounter and the challenge to respond to the Other. It may cease to occupy a separate realm from religion.