Existence and Existents by Emmanuel Levinas (review)

466 BOOK REVIEWS speech. The first occupant of the In-Between is Eros, a demi-god; but soon the boundaries of the In-Between are extended to include philosophers , then human beings generally, who desire the vicarious immortality of offspring, and finally all procreative animal life. Rather than something rarified and special, the daimonic state comes to designate ordinary activity and the entire panoply of living things. (I do acknowledge, however, that comprehensiveness, from a different perspective, may reflect favorably upon the daimonic and not constitute a depreciation) . As the speech of Socrates progTesses, the daimonic In-Between regains some of its original markings of spiritual excellence; and Eros is singled out as man's guide in the ascent to the Beatific Vision. But it is also stated that the initiation into love-matters is incomplete-other things need to be said which are not being said. And Socrates admits in conclusion that Eros is the best guide that human nature can easily (radios) find. The same point is made in the Phaedrus, where love of beauty is credited with being- the easiest form of recollection and where true rhetoric, itself an expression of love, is thought impossible without the governing assistance of non-erotic, dialectical knowledge. With this example from Plato in mind, I state my reservation concerning Voegelin as follows: Plato seems to regard the erotic experience as one means of ascent, likely the most common means, but not as simply identifiable with philosophy; Voegelin seems to count them as one and the same-which perhaps explains why in reading Voegelin it is difficult to keep fixed the boundary between religious belief and philosophical inquiry. Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio p ATRICK COBY Existence and Existents. By EMMANUEL J.,F,VINAS. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978. Pp. 101. Existence and Existents, begun before the war and published in 1947 in France, is a difficult book to evaluate in 1978. Evaluating and understanding it are all the more difficult for English-speaking readers who are hearing of the book for the first time and who may not realize precisely how it fits into the development of Levinas's thought and that of contemporary European philosophy. It is very important to note-and one could have hoped to see this noted in the translator's introductionthat Existence and Existents in no way occupies a decisive nor a definitive position in the larger development of European thought, and that it made BOOK REVIEWS 467 no pretention to occupy such a position. Indeed, in the original preface Levinas had called it a preparatory work, and admitted that due to historical circumstances his study did not and could not take into account the work of Sartre. But not only is this book not a major or influential text in post-war French philosophy, it cannot even be seen as a definitive book in the context of Levinas's own thought, for every analysis presented in it has been integrally rethought by the author in his subsequent publications . For those who regard the history of philosophy atomistically, and for whom a book is a book and a text is a text regardless of the place it occupies in relation to an author's entire work, Existence and Existents can possibly appear to be a work of exceptional perceptiveness and descriptive skill, but for others of us who are concerned with the comprehension and comprehensibility of Levinas's phuosophy, a presentation of this book must not omit some comments about its relation to Totality and Infinity and Autrement qu'etre ou au-dela de ['essence. To present Existence and Existents as Levinas's mature thoug·ht is to impoverish Levinas's thought; this book is not on an equal footing with the works that succeed it. We should realize the value of the book and the significance of its being translated in relation to Levinas's philosophy taken as a whole, and thus in terms of the development of this philosophy. In the space that we can permit ourselves at present we will try to throw some light on the relationship between certain themes in Existence and Existents and Levinas's more...