Differences of Focus

Despite the Cartesian import of the idea of the Infinite, it is important for us to realize the differences of focus in Descartes and Levinas in using and determining the role of such an idea in their respective projects. In the Third Meditation Descartes basically seeks to prove God’s existence by appealing to the presence of such an idea within us that cannot be attibuted to us. He accordingly emphasizes the nature of the idea

232_{Levinas, “Outside of Experience: The Cartesian Idea of the Infinite,” DMT, 249/GDT, 215-16.} 233

Ibid., DMT, 249/GDT, 216.

234

Ibid., DMT, 248-49/GDT, 215-16.

as the truest, clearest, and most distinct, whose reality is guaranteed by all the perfections that he conceives as instantaneously joined in God. For Levinas, by contrast, what matters in this argument is not the proof of God’s existence itself, but rather the presence of something within us, namely, the idea of the Infinite, which we cannot account for nor attibute to our own doing or making. Such an idea interrupts the primacy of the cogito and undoes the consciousness that is conscious of it. Not suprisingly, the presence of the idea of the Infinite in us is very intriguing for Levinas and practically shapes his understanding of human subjectivity and of the work of human intentionality. Instead of focusing on the proof of God’s existence, Levinas makes use of this argument to show the deep-seated structure of the subjectivity of the subject and to elaborate on the significance of the idea of the Infinite in us. Even for Descartes himself, according to Levinas, it is the idea of the Infinite itself that eventually becomes primary, even though he starts off with the cogito. This is because the idea of the Infinite is “prior to the cogito, and the cogito would never have been possible if there had not already been the idea of God.”236

Let us now look more deeply into the distinguishing marks of the idea of the Infinite, whose importance Levinas will point out, in comparison with other ideas we have. First of all, for Descartes, as we have seen above, all ideas present in a human subject, except for the idea of the Infinite, can be attributed to the creation of the human

236

Levinas, “Transcendence and Height,” LC, 103/BPW, 25. It is doubtful that Descartes himself makes such an argument. The first part of the argument may be defensible in that since the idea of the Infinite has be ‘placed’ in us, it must be prior to any other ideas or even to the cogito itself. The second part does not seem easy to defend: how is it that the idea of the Infinite makes possible the existence of the cogito? Unless, perhaps, what Levinas means is that since I owe my existence to God, I would not have existed or even have had my cogito had there not been God who created me. But this suggestion pertains more to my existence and not to my cogito as such.

soul. In his estimation the soul does not have the capacities to bring about the idea of the Infinite, as it does with other ideas. The lack of such power is due to, among others, the absence of direct experience of infinity, as he points out in the Meditation. Levinas makes the same point from a different point of view. In the idea of the Infinite, he says, “the distance between idea and ideatum is not equivalent to the distance that separates a mental act from its object in other representations. The abyss that separates a mental act from its object is not deep enough for Descartes not to say that the soul can account for the ideas of finite things by itself.”237_{For Levinas, however, the fact that a finite thought}

could accommodate the idea of the Infinite should be puzzling us.238 _{Second, related to}

the first point, the idea of the Infinite is exceptional because its ideatum, that is, the object of the idea, surpasses its very idea. There is no adequation between the ideatum and the idea: “The exception of the idea of the Infinite implies the awakening of a psyche that cannot be reduced to the pure correlation and the noetic-noematic parallelism which the least prejudiced analysis finds in human thought approached in the context of knowledge.”239

This is what Levinas means by ‘infinity.’ He thus takes the idea of the Infinite in us as “the breakup of consciousness, which is not a repression into the unconscious but a sobering or a waking up [réveil] that shakes the ‘dogmatic slumber’ that sleeps at the bottom of all consciousness resting upon the object.”240 _{Echoing the}

Kantian realization of the subject-object relation, he points to the contradiction that exists in the laws of the life of consciousness, due to the idea of the Infinite in us. For such an

237_{Levinas, “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity,” EDE 238/CPP, 54.} 238

Levinas, “The Idea of the Infinite in Us,” ENP, 227/ENT, 219.

239

Ibid., ENP, 228/ENT, 220.

idea clearly does not fit in the classical phenomenology that is built on the premise of the adequation between the thinking and what is thought, or between the intending and what is intended. The ‘cogitatum’ here, namely, the Infinite, cannot be seized in principle, and is therefore far from being the correlate of my cogito, as classical phenomenology generally claims. The cogito is unable to take control over or to command this particular ‘cogitatum’; it is beyond representation and thematization. As a result, the cogito becomes dumbfounded: “The placing in us of an unencompassable idea overturns this presence to self which is consciousness; it thus forces through the barrier and the checkpoint, it confounds the obligation to accept or adopt all that enters from without.”241

Given the infinity of the idea of the Infinite in us, the intentionality that operates here is different from that of other ideas in that it aims at what it cannot embrace. The I that thinks infinity cannot subject the Infinite to its power nor extinguish such alterity. The Infinite is the radically, absolutely, other. In thinking infinity, Levinas says, from the very beginning the I “thinks more than it thinks.”242 _{Already in Totality and Infinity he}

makes this very point: “The idea of infinity is exceptional in that its ideatum surpasses its idea, whereas for the things the total coincidence of their ‘objective’ and ‘formal’ realities is not precluded; we could conceivably have accounted for all the ideas, other than that of Infinity, by ourselves… The distance that separates ideatum and idea here constitutes the content of the ideatum itself…. The transcendent is the sole ideatum of which there can be only an idea in us; it is infinitely removed from its idea, that is, exterior, because it is

241

Ibid., DVI, 107/GCM, 64.

242

Levinas, “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity,” EDE, 239/CPP, 54; italics original. See “Transcendence and Height,” LC, 85/BPW, 19.

infinite” (TeI, 40-1/TaI, 49). It basically means that the Infinite overflows the thought that thinks it. What is given in the idea of the Infinite exceeds what this idea could mean or intend. The intentionality cannot be reduced to the act of comprehending or grasping, if any, since what is actually happening simply goes beyond what the I can ever account for:

The idea of infinity is then not the only one that teaches what we are ignorant of. It has been put into us. It is not a reminiscence. It is experience in the sole radical sense of the term: a relationship with the exterior, with the other, without this exteriority being able to be integrated into the same. The thinker who has the idea of infinity is more than himself, and this inflating, this surplus, does not come from within, as in the celebrated project of modern philosophers, in which the subject surpasses himself by creating.243

The idea of infinity is simply not a concept that captures its whole content. For this reason the relationship between the I and the Infinite should not be conceived of as that between a container and a content because, in Levinas’s view, “the I cannot contain the Infinite.”244_{Neither should one think of the I as necessarily bound to the Infinite because}

they are separate from each other. In other words, the Infinite remains transcendent despite the presence of its idea in us.