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  • Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology
  • Sami Pihlström
Megan Craig . Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. xxv + 247 pp., imcludes index.

The similarities between William James's and the phenomenologists' ideas have been recognized by scholars for decades, but detailed comparisons between James's pragmatism and radical empiricism, on the [End Page 108] one side, and post-Husserlian and post-Heideggerian phenomenology, on the other—let alone investigations of the relations between pragmatism and phenomenology generally—are still relatively rare. Megan Craig's book is most welcome, as it puts James into conversation with one of the most important Continental (post-)phenomenological thinkers of the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas. These two philosophers might seem to be very different, and their divergences in writing styles, for instance, cannot be denied; yet, Craig shows convincingly that they do share a number of important ideas, many of which should make us rethink the very nature of ethics (and philosophy). She argues that "James brings Levinas down to earth, and Levinas discloses the ethics of James's pragmatic pluralism" (xvi). Breaking with both Husserl and Heidegger in his quest for a "more vital phenomenology", Levinas comes closer to James's radical empiricism than to either of his great phenomenological predecessors (35). Thus, Craig encourages us to reflect on "pragmatic aspects of Levinas's ethics and ethical aspects of James's pluralism" (65).

Just as the Levinasian self is characterized by constant ethical vigilance, James famously rejects (eventually) the "moral holiday" the monistic idealists' Absolute could have guaranteed. We might say that the pragmatist's moral holiday is interrupted by Levinasian "insomnia"—the insomnia that "turns into ethical wakefulness" (15) and "signifies both a risk and a hope: the risk of being subject to a day that never ends, and the hope of awakening to a world of faces that never close" (30). James's "strenuous mood" could, then, more or less be equated with Levinas's vigilance, and with the related conception of ethics as "ongoing labor" (93). The ethical project is endless and infinite: whatever we do in our philosophical thought, or generally in our worldly actions, may have profound ethical significance.

It is precisely for this reason that ethics must, as James and Levinas both in their different ways argued, be brought "down to earth"—to the street, as Craig often puts it. Ethics is not a matter of abstract philosophical principles but of concrete human life together with others. While James wrote little directly on ethics, this apparent neglect of the topic actually goes well together with what might be described as his "Levinasian" insistence on ethics being a "first philosophy", on its being present everywhere in one's philosophical endeavours, rather than finding a particular place "somewhere" on the field of philosophical inquiry. The ethical perspective cannot be restricted; in particular, ethics cannot be a mere sub-discipline of philosophy among others. It is, rather, the point of view from which philosophy begins.

In particular, reading Craig's book should help us appreciate the fact that James's life-long interest in subjectivity and experience (including religious experience) must itself be understood as ethical. The Levinasian ideas that "subjectivity is ethical subjectivity", openness to the vulnerable [End Page 109] other, and that "ethics takes place in the dark" (4), in the context of human suffering and vulnerability, are clearly Jamesian, too. Being a subject is to "feel uncomfortable" most of the time, or rather always; there are no moral holidays (109). If ethics could be captured in a single abstract principle, we might enjoy occasional moral holidays, but such luxury is unavailable. On the street and "in the dark", one must be continuously aware of potentially ethically demanding situations, of others—or "faces"—that one is responsible for. Accordingly, Levinas's "radical multiplicity" serves, for Craig, as an "initial point of contact with James's pragmatic pluralism" (4). What emerges here is a (what pragmatists might call fallibilistic) observation that ethics is "always at risk", without guarantees (33). Levinas's phenomenology is, as Craig perceptively puts it, "a philosophy for the streets here below"; even its religious aspect...

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