The Philosopher's Gaze "nsd0e9057"

7— The Invisible Face of Humanity: Levinas on the Justice of the Gaze

1. Anton Chekhov, "A Day in the Country," in Bernardine Kielty (ed.), A Treasury of Short Stories (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), p. 57.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 1.

3. Jürgen Habermas, "Historical Consciousness and the Post-Traditional Identity: The Federal Republic's Orientation to the West," in The New Conservativism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 251.

4. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (London: New Left Books, 1988), §68, p. 105; Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980), bd. 4, p. 116.

5. Emmanuel Levinas, "Apropos of Buber: Some Notes," in Outside the Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 43.

6. Levinas, "The Meaning of Meaning," in Outside the Subject , p. 94.

7. Adorno, Minima Moralia , p. 105 in the English, p. 116 in the German.

8. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1973), p. 191; Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), Gesammelte Schriften , bd. 6, p. 192.

9. Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," in Walden , in Carl Bode (ed.), The Portable Thoreau (New York: Viking Press, 1947), p. 266.

10. Rainer Maria Rilke, "Arrival," in Poems 1912-1926 (Redding Ridge, CT: Black Swan Books, 1981), p. 113.

11. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1985), p. 423.

12. Hermann Hesse, "Iris," in The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), p. 245.

13. See the discussion by Martin Jay, "Hostage Philosophy: Levinas's Ethical Thought," in Tikkun , vol. 5, no. 6 (1994), pp. 85-87.

14. On the double tonality that figures in Heidegger's writing, and in the corresponding hermeneutical experience of "hearkening," see David M. Levin, The Listening Self (New York: Routledge, 1989).

15. On this process, see Eugene Gendlin, Experience and the Creation of Meaning (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2nd revised, 1997); "Experiential Phenomenology," in Maurice Natanson (ed.), Phenomenology and the Social Sciences (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973); and "How Philosophy Cannot Appeal to Experience—and How It Can," in David M. Levin (ed.), Language Beyond Postmodernism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997). break

16. Martin Heidegger, "The Essence of Truth," in David F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings of Martin Heidegger (New York: Harper & Row, 1994), pp. 126 and 129; Das Wesen der Wahrheit (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1949), pp. 15 and 18.

17. Levinas, "Paix et Proximité," Les Cahiers de la nuit surveillée , ed. by Jacques Rolland (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1984), p. 343; quoted in Adriaan Peperzak et al., Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 166.

18. See Simon Critchley, "Diskussion zu Axel Honneth: 'Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit,'" Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie , vol. 42, no. 6 (1994), pp. 1028-29.

19. Levinas, "Language and Proximity," in Collected Philosophical Papers , trans. by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 124.

20. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence , trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991, p. 193; Autrement qu'être, ou au-delà de l'Essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 120. Hereafter the English translation will be cited as OB and the French original as AE. Also see Paul Davies, "On Resorting to an Ethical Language," in Adriaan Peperzak (ed.), Ethics as First Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 95-104.

21. See Critchley, "Diskussion zu Axel Honneth," pp. 1028-29. Critchley argues that, "insofar as his [Levinas's] theses are phenomenological, they are descriptive and not prescriptive, and they claim to bring out something of the deep structure of subjectivity that remains hidden at the level of the empirical or the natural attitude." He is quite right with regard to what he takes to be their claim; but I would argue that the phenomenological descriptivity of Levinas's discourse is not incompatible with its being also prescriptive—or, as I would prefer to say, performative. For Levinas is no longer working in terms of the static correspondence theory of truth.

22. See Axel Honneth, "The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism," in Stephen White (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 289-323. The original paper, "Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit," was published in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie , vol. 2 (1994), p. 195ff. Also see Honneth's Kommunitarianismus: Eine Debatte über die moralischen Grundlagen moderner Gesellschaften (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1993).

23. Critchley, "Diskussion zu Axel Honneth," pp. 1025-36.

24. See Max Pensky, "The Limits of Solidarity: Discourse Ethics, Levinas, and the Moral Point of View," unpublished manuscript. Pensky attempts to think, after Levinas, the embodiment of moral experience; but he unfortunately perpetuates the old metaphysical dualism by continuing to think of a "physical substrate." This makes it quite impossible to understand how we could ever form a bodily felt sense of moral responsibility for the other in response to the face-to-face presence of the other. But he is correct in pointing out that Levinas's work shows that "Moral theory . . . cannot follow those [everyday] moral intuitions to the level of bodily movement itself." The task that this continue

problem poses is, therefore, to work out a phenomenology of moral experience capable of thinking how the dispositions of our bodily nature figure in our moral development and moral judgment. I take Levinas to have made some important moves in this direction, but his phenomenology is ultimately disappointing because of its abstractness and thinness.

25. See Heidegger, "The Origin of the Artwork," in Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings , pp. 192 and 198, where he speaks for the importance of escaping "captivity in that which is" and argues that "language alone brings what is, as something that is, into the Open for the first time."

26. See the discussion of "indirect communication" in Sören Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), book 2, part 2, chs. 2 and 3 (especially perhaps p. 247, but also pp. 216-17, 221, 232, 235, 318, and 321 in this first Princeton edition).

27. I would like to mention, as especially helpful for my thinking in this study, the following texts: Robert Bernasconi, "Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics," in John Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction and Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 122-139; Bernasconi, "The Trace of Levinas in Derrida," in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.), Derrida and Différance (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 13-29; Bernasconi, "Levinas and Derrida: The Question of the Closure of Metaphysics," in Richard Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 181-202; Bernasconi, "Failure of Communication as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue between Buber and Levinas," in Bernasconi and Wood (eds.), The Provocation of Levinas (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 100-135; Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992); Critchley, "Eine Vertieferuing der ethischen Sprache und Methode: Levinas' 'Jenseits des Seins oder anders als Sein geschieht,'" Deutshce Zeitschrift für Philosophie , vol. 42, no. 4 (1994), pp. 643-51; Fabio Ciaramelli, "Levinas's Ethical Discourse Between Individuation and Universality," in Bernasconi and Critchley (eds.), Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 85-105; Richard Cohen, "The Face of Truth in Rosenzweig, Levinas and Jewish Mysticism," in Daniel Guerriere (ed.), Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Paul Davies, "The Face and the Caress: Levinas's Alterations of Sensibility," in David M. Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 252-72; Alphonso Lingis, "Face to Face: A Phenomenological Meditation," in International Philosophical Quarterly , vol. 19, no. 2 (June 1979), pp. 151-63; Adriaan Peperzak, "From Intentionality to Responsibility: On Levinas's Philosophy of Language," in Arleen Dallery and Charles Scott (eds.), The Question of the Other in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 3-22; Peperzak, "Some Remarks on Hegel, Kant, and Levinas," in Richard Cohen (ed.), Face to Face , pp. 205-17; Peperzak, Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas continue

(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997); Laszlo Tengelyi, Der Zwitterbegriff Lebensgeschichte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998); and Edith Wyschogrod, "Doing Before Hearing: On the Primacy of Touch," in Francois Laruelle (ed.), Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Editions Jean-Michel Place, 1980), pp. 179-202.

28. Levinas, "Diachrony and Representation," in Time and the Other (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), pp. 97-98; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous: Essais sur le Penser-à-l' Autre (Paris: Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, 1991), p. 165. Hereafter, the English will be designated by "TO."

29. Jacques Derrida, "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), p. 91.

30. See Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience and the Origin of History (London: New Left Books, Verso Edition, 1993), p. 94; Infanzia e Storia: Distruzione dell'Esperienza e Origine della Storia (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1978), also p. 94.

31. Ibid., p. 92.

32. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 92.

32. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 92.

32. Ibid.

33. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 78; for the French, see Totalité et Infini: Essai sur Extériorité (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), p. 51. Hereafter, the English will be referred to by the symbols "TaI," the French by "TeI."

34. See Paul Davies, "The Face and the Caress: Levinas's Ethical Alterations of Sensibility," in Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision , pp. 252-72.

35. Adorno, "Trying to Understand Endgame ," in Notes to Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), vol. 1, p. 247.

36. For more on Levinas's relation to light, see, for example, Levinas, Totality and Infinity , pp. 189f, and Existence and Existents (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), pp. 46-51.

37. Levinas, Time and the Other , p. 68. For the French text, see Le Temps et l' Autre , p. 53. Hereafter, the English will be designated by "TO," the French by "TA."

38. See Levinas, "Diachrony and Representation," in TO, pp. 99-100; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 166.

39. Walter Benjamin, "Einbahnstraße," Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955), vol. 1, p. 558.

40. Benjamin, Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels, Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 150-51. For the English translation, see The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London: Verso, New Left Books, 1977), pp. 35-36.

41. Levinas, "Language and Proximity," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 118.

42. See, for example, Levinas, "The Transcendence of Words: On Michel Leiris's Biffures ," in Outside the Subject , p. 147. This text originally appeared, in French, in 1949. Also see "Diachrony and Representation," in Time and the continue

Other , p. 98; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 166: in our culture, the other, says Levinas, is typically seized by perception, by an ego-logical gaze, and re-presented, by this gaze, to itself.

43. On this question, see Paul Davies, "The Face and the Caress," in Levin (ed.), Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision .

44. Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), vol. 7, pp. 385-404.

45. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , p. 31. For the original German text, see Benjamin's Schriften , vol. 1, p. 146:" . . . daß Wahrheit nicht Enthüllung ist, die das Geheimnis vernichtet, sondern Offenbarung, die ihm gerecht wird."

46. Levinas, "In Memory of Alphonse de Waelhens," in Outside the Subject , p. 115.

47. Levinas, "L'Ontologie Est-elle Fondamentale?," Entre Nous , p. 19. My translation.

48. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity , p. 60.

49. On intentionality, also see Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence , pp. 65-72, 96-97, and 101; Autrement Qu'Être, ou au-delà de l'Essence , pp. 81-91, 122-24, and 128-29. Also see "Bad Conscience and the Inexorable," in Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas , pp. 35-40.

50. See Rosenzweig, op. cit., pp. 213-14, 239, and 268-69: Rosenzweig here undertakes a critique of the bourgeois conception of the subject and its freedom that is quite similar to the critique that Levinas makes.

51. Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality: an Interview with Emmanuel Levinas," in Robert Bernasconi and David Wood (eds.), The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 178.

52. The problem that the prohibition on utopian images must address is that there is a temptation to idolatry not conducive, of course, to transformative experience—all the more tragic when the images are images of a utopian fulfillment of desire. Idolatry would accordingly be desire fixated on the utopian image, rather than on making use of the image for the transformation of desire.

53. Levinas, "Diachrony and Representation," in Time and the Other , pp. 99-100; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 167. My translation.

54. Levinas, "L'Autre, Utopie, et Justice," Entre Nous , p. 239. My translation. Also see OB 116, AE 147. These are just two of the many instances where Levinas works with this double meaning.

55. Levinas, "The Rights of Man and the Rights of the Other," in Outside the Subject , p. 124.

56. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being , p. 27; Autrement Qu'Être , p. 34. Also see pp. 29-30 in the English, pp. 37-38 in the French.

57. Levinas, Difficult Freedom (London: Athlone Press, 1990), p. 293.

58. Levinas, "On Jewish Philosophy," in In the Time of Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 182. Also see Bernhard Waldenfels, "Re- soft

sponse and Responsibility in Levinas," in Adriaan Peperzak (ed.), Ethics as First Philosophy , pp. 39-52.

59. Michel de Montaigne, "Apology for Raymond Sebond," in Donald Frame (ed.), The Complete Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), book 2, no. 12, p. 436.

60. Ibid., p. 437.

59. Michel de Montaigne, "Apology for Raymond Sebond," in Donald Frame (ed.), The Complete Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), book 2, no. 12, p. 436.

60. Ibid., p. 437.

61. Levinas, "L'Autre, Utopie et Justice," Entre Nous , p. 244. My translation.

62. See Rosenzweig, op. cit., p. 228.

63. Levinas, "The Pact," in Séan Hand (ed.), The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 211-26. For the French original, see L'Au-Delà du Verset (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981), pp. 82-106.

64. See Rosenzweig, op. cit., pp. 213-14, 217-18, 234-35, 252, and 259.

65. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 168. The passage quoted comes from a 1972 lecture.

66. Levinas, "The Meaning of Meaning," in Outside the Subject , pp. 93-94.

67. Ibid.

66. Levinas, "The Meaning of Meaning," in Outside the Subject , pp. 93-94.

67. Ibid.

68. See Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 45 and 103.

69. Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings , p. 192. Italics added. Also see p. 198, where he remarks that "language alone brings what is, as something that is, into the Open for the first time."

70. Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., p. 176.

71. Ibid., p. 168.

72. Ibid., p. 171.

73. Ibid., pp. 176 and 169.

70. Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., p. 176.

71. Ibid., p. 168.

72. Ibid., p. 171.

73. Ibid., pp. 176 and 169.

70. Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., p. 176.

71. Ibid., p. 168.

72. Ibid., p. 171.

73. Ibid., pp. 176 and 169.

70. Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., p. 176.

71. Ibid., p. 168.

72. Ibid., p. 171.

73. Ibid., pp. 176 and 169.

74. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 102. Also see p. 104.

75. Ibid., p. 102.

74. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 102. Also see p. 104.

75. Ibid., p. 102.

76. Levinas, "On Intersubjectivity: Notes on Merleau-Ponty," in Outside the Subject , p. 115.

77. Levinas, "Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity," in Collected Philosophical Papers , pp. 55, 56, and 59.

78. Levinas, "L'Ontologie Est-elle Fondamentale?" Entre Nous , p. 22. My translation.

79. Ibid.

78. Levinas, "L'Ontologie Est-elle Fondamentale?" Entre Nous , p. 22. My translation.

79. Ibid.

80. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings , p. 168.

81. Levinas, "Diachrony and Representation," op. cit., p. 109; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 175.

82. For an anticipation of Levinas's distinction between le Dit and le Dire , see Rosenzweig, op. cit., pp. 108-11, 131-33, 145-51, 227-35, 250-53, and 295-96. On pp. 199 and 231-32, Rosenzweig distinguishes between the contents said by the saying and the tonality of the saying. He himself at times makes use of an incantatory rhetorical mode of discourse. break

83. Benjamin, "Theses," in Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1969), pp. 253-64.

84. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," in Collected Philosophical Papers , pp. 100-2. Italics added.

85. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 351-52. The abbreviated reference to this text will be "PhP."

86. Ibid., p. 242.

87. Ibid., p. 347.

85. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 351-52. The abbreviated reference to this text will be "PhP."

86. Ibid., p. 242.

87. Ibid., p. 347.

85. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 351-52. The abbreviated reference to this text will be "PhP."

86. Ibid., p. 242.

87. Ibid., p. 347.

88. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," op. cit., p. 103

89. Ibid., p. 106.

90. Ibid., p. 104.

88. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," op. cit., p. 103

89. Ibid., p. 106.

90. Ibid., p. 104.

88. Levinas, "Meaning and Sense," op. cit., p. 103

89. Ibid., p. 106.

90. Ibid., p. 104.

91. For further discussion of Levinas's struggles with the language of phenomenology, see my "Tracework: Experience and Description in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas," forthcoming in a collection edited by Bernard Flynn and Wayne Froman which will be published by Northwestern University Press.

92. See my "Tracework: Myself and Others in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas," in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies , vol.6, no. 3 (1998), pp. 345-92.

93. Levinas, "The Ego and Totality," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 34; "Le Moi et la Totalité," Entre Nous , p. 34.

94. Levinas, "The Ego and Totality," op. cit., p. 42; "Le Moi et la Totalité," op. cit., p. 43. Concerning the question of whether or not the animal may be said to have a face, see "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., pp. 169-72.

95. Karl Marx, Capital , vol. 1 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p. 72.

96. Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking ? (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 61. See also Levinas's essay, "Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 55: Levinas here says the same thing as Heidegger in defining the difference between the animal's head and the human face: the animal "is not yet in touch with itself." Heidegger says that the animal does not perceive itself, does not enjoy apperception, and cannot talk. However, in opposition to Heidegger, Levinas extends the ethical to all sentient beings: "It is clear," he says, "that, without considering animals as human beings, the ethical extends to all living beings." (Levinas, "The Paradox of Morality," op. cit., p. 172.)

97. Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? , p. 62.

98. Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State," in Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds.), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (New York: Continuum, 1987), p. 116.

99. Levinas, "And God Created Woman," a 1972 lecture published in Nine Talmudic Readings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 168.

100. Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949), pp. 15-16.

101. Levinas, "And God Created Woman," a 1972 lecture published in Nine Talmudic Readings , p. 168. On masks and faces in relation to racial identity and continue

racism, see Linda Alcoff, "Toward a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment," forthcoming in Robert Bernasconi (ed.), Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy (Indiana University Press).

102. Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 196. For the German, see Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 3, part 2, p. 443.

103. Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," in Sean Hand (ed.), The Levinas Reader , p. 83.

104. See J. Hillis Miller, Hawthorne and History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 57.

105. On the face of the other as angel of judgment, as bringing judgment and awakening one's sense of "bad conscience," see "Diachrony and Representation," in Collected Philosophical Papers , pp. 117-18; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 182.

106. Rosenzweig's discussion of Gyges's ring in Star of Redemption (p. 207) may have suggested the story to Levinas.

107. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future , trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), part 2, §40, p. 51.

108. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 216.

109. Levinas, In the Time of Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 182; À l'Heure des Nations (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), p. 214.

110. Levinas, "Diachrony and Representation," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 107; "Diachronie et Représentation," Entre Nous , p. 173.

111. Levinas, In the Time of Nations , p. 182; À l'Heure des Nations , p. 214.

112. I am indebted to Miller's reading of Hawthorne for parts of the interpretation I am formulating here.

113. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 1, part 1, p. 211. For the English, see The Origin of German Tragic Drama , p. 31.

114. Levinas, Totality and Infinity , pp. 65-66. For the French, see Totalité et Infini , p. 37.

115. Levinas, En Découvrant l'Existence avec Husserl et Heidegger (Paris: Vrin, 1988), p. 208.

116. Rebecca Comay, "Facies Hippocratica," in Adriaan Peperzak (ed.), Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 227. Levinas also writes of the need to "efface" ( dévisager ) the face in order to let the "universal" claimed for justice shine forth. See, e.g., "On Jewish Philosophy," in In the Time of Nations , pp. 174-75.

117. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 147f.

118. Ibid., pp. 150-51. For the German, see Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980-89), vol. 1, part 2, p. 648: "Blicke dürften continue

um so bezwingender wirken, je tiefer die Abwesenheit des Schauenden, die ihnen bewältigt wurde. In spiegelnden Augen bleibt sie unvermindert. Eben darum wissen diese Augen von der Ferne nichts."

117. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 147f.

118. Ibid., pp. 150-51. For the German, see Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980-89), vol. 1, part 2, p. 648: "Blicke dürften continue

um so bezwingender wirken, je tiefer die Abwesenheit des Schauenden, die ihnen bewältigt wurde. In spiegelnden Augen bleibt sie unvermindert. Eben darum wissen diese Augen von der Ferne nichts."

119. Benjamin, fascinated by the allegorical significance of the baroque image of the death's-head, discusses it in a number of different texts: [1] The Origin of German Tragic Drama , p. 166. [2] "Baudelaire," Das Passagen-Werk , in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 19), vol. 5, part 1, p. 463, J78, 4. [3] "Einbahnstraße," Schriften , vol. 1, p. 544: "Unvergleichliche Sprache des Totenkopfes: völlige Ausdruckslosigkeit—das Schwarz seiner Augenhöhlen—vereint er mit wildesten Ausdruck—den grinsenden Zahnreihen."

120. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , in Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1955), vol. 1, p. 289.

121. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, Schriften , vol. 1, pp. 289-90. For the English translation, see The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London: Verso, New Left Books, 1977), pp. 165-66. In the "Introduction" to The Genuine Works of Hippocrates (New York: William Wood, 1886), p. 195, Francis Adams explains the facies hippocratica as follows: This countenance, suffering from "the worst," is marked by "a sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples, the ears cold, contracted, and their lobes turned out: the skin about the forehead being rough, distended and parched; the color of the whole face being green, black, livid, or lead-colored."

122. Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Hyacinthen , quoted by Benjamin in his Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels, Schriften , vol. 1, p. 340; also see pp. 357-58. For English translation, see p. 215; also see pp. 232-33.

123. Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 1, part 2, p. 682. Also see vol. 5, p. 72. Benjamin probably derived this dialectical image from Marx's reference to the Medusa-head in Das Kapital . See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1962), vol. 23, pp. 15, 146f. In the "Preface" ( Vorwort ) to the first (1867) edition, Marx writes: "Im Vergleich zur englischen ist die soziale Statistik Deutschlands und des übrigen kontinentalen Westeuropas elend. Dennoch lüftet sie den Schleier grade genug, um hinter demselben ein Medusenhaupt ahnen zu lassen." ("In comparison with those of England, the social statistics of Germany and the rest of continental Western Europe are wretchedly compiled. Nevertheless, they [the social statistics of continental Europe] lift the veil just enough to let us glimpse the Medusa-head behind it.") On the same page in this preface, Marx also draws on the mythic story of Perseus to call attention to the monsters of capitalism, from the sight of which we obstruct our gaze: "Perseus brauchte eine Nebelkappe zur Verfolgung von Ungeheurn. Wir ziehen die Nebelkappe tief über Aug und Ohr, um die Existenz der Ungeheuer wegleugnen zu können." ("Perseus wore a magic cap in order to hunt down the monsters [without their seeing him]. We pull the magic cap down over our eyes and ears—in order to deny the existence of the monsters.")

124. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception , p. 361.

125. Ibid., p. 362. break

126. Ibid., p. 352. Also see pp. 129, 216, 254, and 352-53.

124. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception , p. 361.

125. Ibid., p. 362. break

126. Ibid., p. 352. Also see pp. 129, 216, 254, and 352-53.

124. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception , p. 361.

125. Ibid., p. 362. break

126. Ibid., p. 352. Also see pp. 129, 216, 254, and 352-53.

127. The fullest presentation of this point is to be found in Merleau-Ponty's published lecture material on "The Child's Relations with Others," in The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964). For a discussion of this material, see my chapter on Merleau-Ponty in this book.

128. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 1986), pp. 102-3.

129. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , p. 166; "Der Ursprung des Deutschen Trauerspiels," Gesammelte Schriften , vol. 1, part 1, p. 343.

130. Berthold Brecht, "Die Auslöschung," Werke , Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, Stücke, 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), vol. 3, p. 78.

131. Interviews with Subcomandante Marcos, in John Ross, "Introduction," and Frank Bardacke (ed. and trans.), Shadows of Tender Fury (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995), pp. 88, 102-5, 195-201, 205, and 246.

132. Adorno, "Trying to Understand Endgame ," in Notes to Literature , vol. 1, p. 249.

133. Levinas, Difficult Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 135, 140.

134. Horkheimer, Critique of Instrumental Reason (New York: Continuum, 1974), p. 22.

135. René Char, "Recherche de la base et du sommet," Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), p. 728.

136. Char, "Sur la poésie," Oeuvres Complètes , p. 1298. Also in Feuillets d'Hypnos (Paris: Gallimard, 1946), p. 83: "Le poète, conservateur des infinis visages du vivant."

137. Robert Coles, "Children as Moral Observers," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values , vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1981), p. 138.

138. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity , p. 92.

139. See Patrizia Magli, "The Face and the Soul," in Michel Feher (ed.), with Ramona Nadoff and Nadia Tazi, Fragments for a History of the Human Body , part 2 (New York: Zone Press, 1989), pp. 87-127.

140. See Robert Bernasconi, "Sartre's Gaze Returned: The Transformation of the Phenomenology of Racism," in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal , vol. 18, no. 2 (1995), pp. 201-21, and "The Double Face of the Political and the Social: Hannah Arendt and America's Racial Divisions," in Research in Phenomenology , vol. 16 (1996), pp. 3-24.

141. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 120.

142. Levinas, "Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Philosophy," in H. Gordon and J. Bloch (eds.), Martin Buber: A Centenary Volume (1984), p. 320. Also see Levinas, "The Meaning of Meaning," in Outside the Subject , p. 94.

143. Michel Foucault, "How much does it cost for reason to tell the truth?" in Foucault Live: Interviews 1966-84 (New York: Columbia University Press, Semiotext(e) Foreign Agent Series, 1989), p. 252. This reference to the face is all the more remarkable, coming as it does some years after his comments on the face in The Order of Things (Les Mots et les Choses) . In the later reference, continue

the face belongs to a singular, concrete other, and expresses the incorporation of social interactions and practices. In the two earlier references, appearing near the end of The Order of Things , the face is the face of Man, an abstract other, and it is identified with a metaphysics committed to essence, totality, homogeneity and a logic of the same. In the earlier references, the face, as the face of Man, is condemned to death. Here are the two references: "What Nietzsche's thought announces is not so much the death of God . . . as the end of his murderer; it is the shattering of man's face in laughter, and the return of masks." See Les Mots et les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), pp. 396-97. In the second, he says: "Man will be effaced, like a face traced in the sand at the edge of the sea" (op. cit., p. 398). The face in question here belongs to the modern representations of Man. This theme of the death of God and finally the death of Man was already prefigured by Foucault's Introduction to Kant's 1798 Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht . Foucault wrote this as an Introduction to his doctoral thesis. See David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault (New York: Pantheon, 1993), p. 89.

144. Levinas, Totality and Infinity , p. 219; p. 194 in French.

145. There is a useful paper in this regard by Fabio Ciaramelli, "Levinas's Ethical Discourse between Individuation and Universality," in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds.), Re-Reading Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

146. Levinas, "Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 69.

147. See Rosenzweig, op. cit., pp. 176, 185-86, 200, and 228, where there are discussions of the "third person" position that prefigure Levinas's discussions of the "le tiers," "third party."

148. See Derrida, "The Politics of Friendship," in Journal of Philosophy , vol. 85 (1988), pp. 632-45.

149. Levinas, In the Time of Nations , p. 174; à; l'Heure des Nations , p. 205.

150. Honneth, "The Other of Justice," op. cit., p. 291.

151. Thomas McCarthy, review of Stephen White (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Habermas , in Ethics (January 1997), p. 372.

152. Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), note 18, p. 16: "The most universal sign of the modern age: man has lost dignity in his own eyes to an incredible extent."

153. Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," in Krell (ed.), Basic Writings , pp. 213-65.

154. See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals , trans. by Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), p. 37; Gesammelte Schriften , ed. Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902), vol. 6, p. 379. Also see Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), §§38-39, where, in reference to the " Dasein in man," the "essence" of man, he speaks of the need "to liberate the humanity in man." For the original German, see Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt , continue

Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983, 1992), §§38-39. For the argument that mirroring double-crosses narcissism, see my "Visions of Narcissism: Intersubjectivity and the Reversals of Reflection," in Martin C. Dillon (ed.), Merleau-Ponty Vivant (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 47-90.

155. See Bernhard Waldenfels, Ordnung und Zwielicht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987) on the ethical asymmetry of Responsivität and the moral-political symmetry of Verantwortung .

156. Levinas, "The Temptation of Temptation," in Nine Talmudic Readings , p. 47.

157. In the preface to the 1987 German translation of Totalité et Infini , Levinas says that, in the original French edition, justice is thought as a synonym for the ethical, just as Derrida had charged in "Force of Law." In Otherwise Than Being , however, he distinguishes these two and emphasizes that the question of justice first arises when the third, who presses for a decision between competing moral claims and puts the face-to-face ethical relation to the other in a specific sociopolitical context, comes on the scene. See, for example, OB, ch. 5, §3: "From the Saying to the Said, or the Wisdom of Desire" ("Du Dire au Dit, ou la Sagesse du Désir"). Also see "The Paradox of Morality," an interview by Tamra Wright, Peter Hughes, and Alison Ainley, in Robert Bernasconi and David Wood (eds.), The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other , p. 171: "In Totality and Infinity I used the word 'justice' for ethics, for the relationship between two people. I spoke of 'justice', although now 'justice' is for me something which is a calculation, which is knowledge, and which supposes politics; it is inseparable from the political. It is something which I distinguish from ethics, which is primary. However, in Totality and Infinity , the word 'ethical' and the word 'just' are the same word, the same question, the same language. When I use the word 'justice' there, it is not in the technical sense as something opposed to or distinct from the moral."

158. Levinas, "Humanism and An-archy," in Collected Philosophical Papers , pp. 135-36; "L'Humanisme et An-archie," Entre Nous , pp. 77-78.

159. Levinas, "The Youth of Israel," in Nine Talmudic Readings , p. 135.

160. Levinas, "Le Moi et la Totalité," Entre Nous , p. 38.

161. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, IL: North-western University Press, 1968, p. 148; Le Visible et l'Invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), p. 195. Hereafter, the English translation will be cited as "VIE," and the French original will be cited as "VIF."

162. Merleau-Ponty, VIE 152, VIF 199.

163. Merleau-Ponty, VIE 260, VIF 313.

164. Benjamin, "On the Mimetic Faculty," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Schocken, 1986), p. 336. Also see Levinas, "The Trace of the Other," in Mark Taylor (ed.), Deconstruction in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 345-59, and "Enigma and Phenomenon," in Collected Philosophical Papers , p. 68. I also recommend Edward Casey, "Levinas on Memory and the Trace," in J. Sallis, G. Moneta, and J. continue

Taminiaux (eds.), The Collegium Phaenomenologicum (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).

165. Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," in Sean Hand (ed.), The Levinas Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 84.

166. Alphonso Lingis, "The Sensuality and the Sensitivity," in Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas , p. 227.

167. Adriaan Peperzak, "Some Remarks on Kant, Hegel, and Levinas," in Cohen (ed.), Face to Face with Levinas , p. 212.

168. See Robert Bernasconi, " 'Only the Persecuted': Language of the Oppressor, Language of the Oppressed," in Adriaan Peperzak (ed.), Ethics as First Philosophy: The Significance of Emmanuel Levinas for Philosophy, Literature and Religion (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 77-86.

169. Levinas, Difficile liberté: Essais sur le Judaisme (Paris: Albin Michel, 2nd edition, 1976), p. 290.

170. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: Double-day, 1965), ch. 7, p. 80. Translation modified.

171. Levinas, "Messianic Texts," Difficult Freedom , p. 78.

172. Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings , pp. 114-15.

173. For further discussion on the problematic of language and the problem of retrieving the trace, see my "Tracework: Experience and Description in the Moral Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas," forthcoming in an anthology on Merleau-Ponty edited by Bernard Flynn and Wayne Froman.

174. Adorno, Negative Dialectics , pp. 365-68; Negative Dialektik , in Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973), vol. 6, pp. 358-61. English translation modified, italics added.

175. Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama , p. 175; Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels , p. 299.

176. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 140.

177. Levinas, Difficult Freedom , p. 135.

178. Ibid., p. 140.

177. Levinas, Difficult Freedom , p. 135.

178. Ibid., p. 140.

179. Merleau-Ponty, "The Child's Relations with Others," in The Primacy of Perception , p. 146.

180. Merleau-Ponty, VIE 159; VIF 211.

181. See Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). This is an important book. Reading it after I had thought this chapter finished, I realized that I needed to say something here that would remind us that intercorporeality is not necessarily liberating and that the "persecution" and "trauma" of which Levinas speaks can be the "subjection" of oppression, of a recognition withheld, as well as the origin of responsibility and obligation. Thus I was provoked to add a new final section, indebted to her argument on behalf of the many whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by the pressures for normalization inherent in all processes of socialization, all forms of subjection.

182. On this theme, see Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History , cited earlier. break

183. Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State," in Arato and Gebhardt (eds.), Frankfurt School Reader , p. 102.

184. Levinas, "De l'Unicité," Entre Nous , p. 202.