EMMANUEL LEVINAS ETHICS AND INFINITY Conversations with Philippe Nemo Translated by Richard A. Cohen Duquesne University Press & Pittsburgh1431814 7 First published in French > under the title Ethiqu et infint © Librairie Avthéme Fayard et Radio France, 1992 English translation copyright © 1985 by Duguesne University Press All Rights Reserved Manufactured inthe United States of America [No part of this book may be wsed or reproduced in any manner iwhalsoevrtithout orien permission except inthe case of short quotations for use in eritical ‘articles and reviews. Published in the United States of America ‘by Duguesne University Press 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282 I Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Levinas, Emmanuel. | Eikics and Infinity. Translation of Eikigue enfin Bibligrply: 1, PhilesophyAddreser, eps, lette. 1. Tile BoO.LAWSI3 1985 194 85.1582 ISBN 0-8207-01785 i | | ] | iContents Interviewer’s Preface Translator’s Introduction Transtator’s Note Bible and Philosophy Heidegger . The “There Is” . The Solitude of Being Love and Filiation Secrecy and Freedom ‘The Face Responsibility for the Other , The Glory of Testimony |. The Hardness of Philosophy and the Consolations of Religion Bibliography of Levinas’ Major Works Index of Names Seexasrene mW 123 125Sia SS WL ENERO eRe eer BS)ae = SERUEN AGISUEAMIIT Ph.N.: In Totality and Infinity you speak at great length of the face. It is one of your frequent themes. What does this phenomenology of the face, that is, this analysis of what happens when I look at the Other face to face, consist in and what is its purpose? E.L.: I do not know if one ean speak of a “phenomenology” of the face, since phenomenology describes what appears. So, too, I wonder if one can speak of a look turned toward the face, for the look is knowledge, perception. I think rather that access to the face is straightaway ethical. You turn yourself toward the Other as toward an object when you see a nose, eyes, a forchead, a chin, and you can describe them. The best way of encountering the Other is not even to notice the color of his eyes! When one ob- serves the color of the eyes one is notvin®svcialETHICS AND INFINITY face can surely bedominated by perception, butwhatis specifically the face is what cannot be reduced to that. There is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without defense, The skin of the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute. It is the most naked, though with a decent nudity. It is the most destitute also: there is an essential poverty in the face; the proof of this is that one tries to mask this poverty by putting on poses, by taking on a countenance. The face is exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time, the face is what forbids us to kill. Ph.N.: War stories tell us in fact that it is difficult to kill someone who looks straight at you. E.L.: The face is signification, and significa- tion without context. I mean that the Other, in the rectitude of his face, is not a character within a context. Ordinarily one is a “character”: a professor at the Sorbonne, a Supreme Court justice, son of so-and-so, everything that is in one's passport, the manner of dressing, of presenting oneself. And all signification in the usual sense of the term is relative to such a context: the meaning of something is in its relation to another thing. Here, to the contrary, the face is meaning all by itself. You are you. In thi sense one can say that the face is not “seen”. I what cannot become a content, which your thought 86> would embrace; it is uncontainable, it, leads you beyond. It is in this that the signification of the face makes it escape from being, as a correlate of a knowing. Vision, to the contrary, is a search for adequation; it is what par excellence absorbs being. But the relation to the face is straightaway ethical. The face is what one cannot kill, or at least it is that whose meaning consists in saying: “thou shalt not kill” Murder, it is true, is a banal fact: one can kill the Other; the ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity. The prohibition against killing does not 1 prohibition is maintained in the bad conscience about the accomplished evil — malignancy of evil. Italso appears in the Scriptures, to which the humanity of man is exposed inasmuch as it is engaged in the world. But to speak truly, the appearance in being of these “ethical peculiarities” — the humanity ofman— is a rupture of being. It is significant, even if being resumes and recovers itself. Ph.N.: The Other is face; but the Other, equal- ly, speaks to me and I speak to him. Is not human discourse another way of breaking what you call “totality”? E.L.: Certainly. Face and discourse are tied. The face speaks. It speaks, itis in this that it renders possible and begins all discourse. I haye just refusedETHICS AND INFINITY the notion of vision to describe the authentic relation ship with the Other; it is discourse and, more exactl response or responsibility which is this authentic relationship. PhNN.: Butsince the ethical relationships beyond knowledge, and, on the other hand, it is authentically assumed through discourse, it is thus that di itselfis not something of the order of knowledge? urse ) E.L: In discourse I have always distinguished, in fact, between the saying and the said. That the saying must bear a said is a necessity of the same order as that which imposes a society with laws, institu- tions and social relations. But the saying is the fact that before the face I do not simply remain there contemplating it, I respond to it, The saying is a way of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer for him, It is difficult to be silent in someone's presence; this difficulty has its ultimate foundation in this signification proper to the saying, whatever is the said. It is necessary to speak of something, of the rain and fine weather, no matter what, but to speak, to respond to him and already to answer for him, Ph.N.: Inlthe face‘of the Other you say there's an “elevation,” a “height.” The Other is higher than Tam. What do you mean by that? THE FACE E.L.: The first word of the face isthe “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an order. There is a command- ment in the appearance of the face, as if a master ee et mn may be, but as a “first person,” I am he who finds the resources to respond to the call. PhN.: One is tempted to say to you: yes, in certain cases. But in other cases, to the contrary, the encounter with the Other occurs in the mode of violence, hate and disdain. E.L.: To be sure. But I think that whatever the motivation which explains this inversion, the analysis of the face such as I have just made, with the mastery of the Other and his poverty, with my submissi and my wealth, is primary. It is the presupposed in all human relationships. ITit were not that, we would not even say, before an open door, “Afier you, sir!” It is an original “After you, sir!” that I have tried to describe. You have spoken of the passion of hate. I feared ‘a much graver objection: How is it that one can punish and repress? How is it that there is justice? I answer that it is the fact of the multiplicity of men and the presence of someone else next to the Other, which condition the laws and establish justice. If IETHICS AND INFINITY am alone with the Other, I owe him everything; but there is someone else. Do I know what my neighbor is in relation to someone else? Do I know if someone else has an understanding with him or his victim? Who is my neighbor? It is consequently necessary to weigh, to think, to judge, in comparing the incompa- rable. The interpersonal relation I establish with the ‘Other, I must also establish with other unen; there is thus a necessity to moderate this privilege of the Other; from whence comes justice. Justice, exercised through institutions, which are inevitable, must al- ways be held in check by the initial interpersonal relation. Ph.N.: The crucial experience is thus here in your metaphysics: that which permits escaping Hei- degger’s ontology as an ontology of the Neutral, an ontology without morals. Is it starting from this ethical experience that you construct an “ethics”? For it follows, ethics is made up of rules; it is neces- sary to establish these rules? E.L.: My task does not consist in constructing ‘ethics; I only try to find its meaning, In fact I do not believe that all philosophy should be programmatic. It is Husserl above all who brought up the idea of a program of philosophy. One can without doubt con- struct an ethics in function of what I have just said, bbut this is not my own theme. —90— THE FACE Ph.N.: Can you specify in what this discovery of ethics in the face breaks with the philosophies of totality? E.L:: Absolute knowledge, such as it has been sought, promised or recommended by philosophy, is a thought of the Equal. Being is embraced in the truth. Even if the truth is considered as never defini- tive, there is a promise of a more complete and adequate truth. Without doubt, the finite being that we are cannot in the final account complete the task of knowledge; but in the limit where this task is accomplished, it consists in making the other become ~~ the Same. On the other hand, the idea of the Infinite implies a thought of the Unequal. I start from the Cartesian idea of the Infinite, where the ideatum of this idea, that is, what this idea aims at, is infinitely greater than the very act through which one thinks it, ‘There is a disproportion between the act and that to which the act gives access. For Descartes, this is one of the proofs of God’s existence: thought cannot produce something which exceeds thought; this some- thing had to be put into us. One must thus admit to an infinite God who has put the idea of the Infinite into us. But it is not the proof Descartes sought that interests me here. I am thinking here of the astonish- ment at this disproportion between what he calls the “objective reality” and the ‘formal reality” of the idea of God, of the very paradox — so anti-Greek — of an idea “put” into me, even though Socrates —91—ETHICS AND INFINITY taught us that it is impossible fo put an idea into a thought without it already having been found there. ‘Now, in the face such as I describe its ap- proach, is produced the same exceeding of the act by that to which it leads. In the access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God. In Descar- tes the idea of the Infinite remains a theoretical idea, a contemplation, a knowledge. For my part, I think that the relation to the Infinite is not a knowledge, but a Desire. I have tried to describe the difference between Desire and need by the fact that Desire cannot be satisfied; that Desire in some way nour- ishes itself on its own hungers and is augmented by its satisfaction; that Desire is like a thought which thinks more than it thinks, or more than what it thinks. It is a paradoxical structure, without doubt, . but one which is no more so than this presence of the Infinite in a finite act. Eight Responsibility for the OtherPh.N.: In your last great book published, Other- wise than Being or Beyond Essence, you speak of moral responsibility. Husserl had already spoken of respon- sibility, but of a responsibility for the truth; Heideg- ger had spoken of authenticity; as for yourself, what do you understand by responsibility? E.L.: In this book I speak of responsibility as the essential, primary and fundamental structure of subjectivity. For I describe subjectivity in ethical terms. Ethics, here, does not supplement a preceding existential base; the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethies understood as responsibility. T understand responsibility as responsibility for the Other, thus as responsibility for what is not my deed, or for what does not even matter to me; or which precisely does matter to me, is met by me as face. —35—ETHICS AND INFINITY Ph.N.: How, having discovered the Other in his face, does one discover him as he to whom one is responsible? E.L.: In describing the face positively, and not merely negatively. You recall what we said: meeting the face is not of the order of pure and simple percep- tion, of the intentionality which gocs toward adequa- tion. Positively, we will say that since the Other looks at me, I am responsible for him, without even having taken on responsibilities in his regard; his responsibil- ity is incumbent on me. It is responsibility that gocs beyond what I do. Usually, one is responsible for what one does oneself. I say, in Otherwise than, Being, that responsibility is initially a for the Other. This means that | am responsible for his very responsibility. Ph.N.: What in this responsibility for the Other defines the structure of subjectivity? E.L.: Responsibility in fact is not a simple attribute of subjectivity, as if the latter already exist- ced in itself, before the ethical relationship. Subjectiv- ity is not for itself; it is, once again, initially for another. In the book, the proximity of the Other is presented as the fact that the Other is not simply close to me in space, or close like a parent, but he approaches me essentially insofar as I feel myself — insofar as T am — responsible for him. It is a struc- ture that in nowise resembles the intentional relation. —96— RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER which in knowledge attaches us to the object — to no matter what object, be it a human object. Proximity does not revert to this intentionality; in particular it doesnot revert to the fact that the Otheris known tome. Ph.N.: I can know someone to perfection, but this knowledge will never by itself be a proximity? E.L: No. The tie with the Other is knotted only as responsibility, this moreover, whether ac- cepted or refused, whether knowing or not knowing how to assume it, whether able or unable to do something concrete for the Other. To say: here I am [me wici].! To do something for the Other. To give. To be human spirit, that’s it. The inéarnation of human subjectivity guarantees its spirituality (I do not see what angels could give one another or how they could help one another). Dia-chrony before all dialogue: I analyze the inter-human relationship as if, in proximity with the Other — beyond the image I myself make of the other man — his face, the ex- pressive in the Other (and the whole human body is in this sense more or less face), were what ordains me to serve him. I employ this extreme formulation. The face orders and ordains me. Its signification is an 1. CE, Genesis 22, lines 1,7 and I, and fsaiak 6, line 8, for Hineni. ‘Akio, eC, Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Philo- ‘sophy Tolay, Vol. XX11, no.2,Summet 1978, pp. 127-145. (Tr. note] —97—ETHICS AND INFINITY order signified. To be precise, if the face signifies an order in my regard, this is not in the manner in which an ordinary sign signifies its signified; this order is the very signilyingness of the face. Ph.N.: You say at once “it orders me” and “it ordains me.” Is this not a contradiction? ~E.L.: Itordersmeasoneorderssomeoneonecom- mands, as when one says: “Someone’s asking for you.” Ph.N.: But is not the Other also responsible in my regard? E.L.: Berhaps, but that is his affair. One of the fundamental themes of Tolality and Iyinity about which we have not yet spoken is that the intersubjective relation is a non-symmetrical relation. In this sense, I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his affair. It is precisely insofar as the relationship be- tween the Other and me is not reciprocal that I am subjection to the Other; and I am “subject” essen- tially in this sense. It is I who support all. You know that sentence ig Dostoyevsky: “We are all guilty of all and for ali men before all, and I more than the others.”" This 2. Cf, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamaezv, transl. by Constance Garett (New York: New American Library, 1957), p. 264. 2 —98— RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER is not owing to such or such a guilt which is really mine, or to offenses that I would have committed; but because I am responsible for a total responsibility, which answers for all the others and for all in the others, even for their responsibility. The I always has Ph.N.: That means that if the others do not do what they ought to do, it is owing to me? E.L.: I have previously said elsewhere — I do not like mentioning it for it should be completed by other considerations — that I am responsible for the persecutions that I undergo. But only me! My ‘close relations” or “‘my people” are already the others and, for them, I demand justice. Ph.N.: You go that far! E.L.: Since I am responsible even for the Oth- er's responsibility. These are extreme formulas which must not be detached from their context. In the concrete, many other considerations intervene and require justice even for me. Practically, the taws set certain consequences out of the way. But justice only has meaning if it retains the spirit of dis-inter- estedness which animates the idea of responsibility for the other man. In principle the I does not pull itself out of its “first person”; it supports the world.— —99—ETHICS AND INFINITY Constituting itself in the very movement wherein being responsible for the other devolves on it, subjec- tivity goes to the point of substitution for the Other, It assumes the condition — or the uncondition — of hostage. Subjectivity as such is initially hostage; it answers to the point of expiating for others. ‘One can appear scandalized by this utopian and, for an I, inhuman conception. But the humanity of the human — the true life — is absent. The humanity in historical and objective being, the very breakthrough of the subjective, of the human chism in its original vigilance or sobering up, ing which undoes its condition of bei estedness. This is what is meant by the title of the book: Otherwise than Being. The ontological condition un- does itself, or is undone, in the human condition or uncondition. To be human means to live as if one were not a being among beings. As if, through human spirituality, the categories of being inverted into an “otherwise than being.” Not only into a “being other- wise”; being otherwise is still being. The “otherwise than being,” in truth, has no verb which would desig- nate the event of its un-rest, its dis-inter-estedness, its putting-into-question of this being —or this estedness— of the being. Itis I who support the Other and am responsi- ble for him. One thus sees that in the human subject, at the same time as a total subjection, my primo- geniture manifests itself. My responsibility is un- transferable, no one could replace me. In fact, it is a —100— v RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER matter of saying the very identity of the human I starting from responsibility, that is, starting from this, position or deposition of the sovereign I in self consciousness, a deposition which is precisely its responsibility for the Other. Responsibility is what is incumbent on me exclusively, and what, Aumanly, 1 cannot refuse. This charge is a supreme dignity of the unique. I am 1 in the sole measure that I am respon- sible, a non-interchangeable I. I can substitute my- self for everyone, but no one can substitute himself for me. Such is my inalienable identity of subject. It is in this precise sense that Dostoyevsky said: “We are call responsible forall for all men before all, and I more than all the others.” —101—