EMMANUEL LEVINAS ETHICS AND INFINITY Conversations with Philippe Nemo Translat ted by Richard A. CohenSeven The Face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: T do not know if one can 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 forehead, a chin, and you can deseribe 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 not in social relationship with the Other. The relation with the —a5—ETHICS AND INFINITY face can surely be dominated by perception, but whatis 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. Ivis 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 dillicult to kill someone who looks straight at you E.L.: ‘The face is signification, and significa. tion without context, [mean that the Other, in the rectitude of his face, is not a character within a context, Ordinarily one is a “character”: a professor ai 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 (o 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 this sense one can say that the face is not “seen”. It is what cannot become a content, which your thought —s6— —_-- oORoOoODW OE A THE FACE 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 render murder impossible, even if the authority of the prohibition is maintained in the bad conscience about the accomplished evil — malignancy of evil. It also 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 ofman— ant, even if being these “ethical peculiarities” — the humani is a rupture of being. It is signi 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, it is in this that it renders possible and begins all discourse. I have just refused —s7—ETHICS AND INFINITY the notion of vision to describe the authentic relation- ship with the Other; itis discourse and, more exactly response or responsibility which is this authentic relationship, Ph.N.: But since the ethical relationship is beyond knowledge, and, on the other hand, it is authentically assumed through discourse, it is thus that discourse itself is not something of the order of knowledge? E,Ls In discourse I have always distinguished in fact, between the saying and the said. That the saving must bear a said is a necessity of the same order as that which imposes a society with laws, instinu- tions and social relations, But the saying is the fact that before the face Ida not simply remain there contemplating it, [ respond to it. The saying is a way of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer for him, [tis 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.: In the face of the Other you say there is an “elevation,” a “height.” The Other is higher than Tam, What do you mean by that? —se— THE FACE E.L.: The first word of the face is the “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an order. ‘There is a command- ment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me, However, at the same time, the face of the Other is destitute; do all and to whom I owe all. And me, whoever I may be, but as a “first person,” Tam he who finds the Fesources to respond to the call the poor for whom T can Ph.N.: 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 submission and my wealth, is primary. It is the presupposed in all human relationships. If it were not that, we would not even say, before an open door, “After you, sir!” It iginal “After you, sir!” that I have tried wo 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? [ 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 —s9—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 ele has an understanding with him or his vietim? 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 men; 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 your metaphysics: that which permits eseaping 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? EL My task does not consist in constructing ethics: I only try to find its meaning. In fact I do not elieve 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, but 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? «Lt 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- (ive, 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. Iam 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 ——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 Laat to which it leads. In the access to the face there is certainly also an access to the idea of God. In Descar- ws 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, hut a Desire. I have tried to describe the difference between Desire and need by the fact that Desire cannot be satisfies ishes itself on its own hung that Desire in some way nour and is augmented by iis satisfaction: that Desire is like a thought which thinks more than it thinks, or more than what it thinks. IL is a paradoxical structure, without doubt, but one which is no more so than this presence of the Infiniwe in a finite act —— Eight all Responsibility for the Other