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proximity in distance: levinas and plotinus John Izzi It may appear strange to find the name of Emmanuel Levinas, a phenomenologist and an advocate of alterity, beside that of Plotinus, who (from Levinas’ perspective ) would be considered a metaphysician of identity. My intention is not to dismiss the differences between them but to show that a close reading of their philosophies, at least according to some decisive texts, helps us to understand how the same has a relation with the other that preserves both the identity of the same and the alterity of the other. The other here refers to what Vladimir Jankélévitch calls the “absolutely other, always-wholly-other” (absolument autre, toujours-tout-autre).1 I want to show that the same’s relation to the other consists of proximity in distance. Transcendence and the Other The principal danger to avoid when describing the relation between the same and the other, one that Levinas believes is often disregarded, is the theoretical construction of an all-encompassing totality. Levinas is opposed to the philosophical tradition started by Parmenides and continued by Spinoza and Hegel, in which he would situate the thought of Plotinus (TI 102–104). These philosophies are interpreted by him as misguided attempts to reconcile the same and the other by incorporating them into a larger whole (TI 104). Levinas objects to totalization because he believes that it excludes the transcendental relation, which alone preserves the identity of the same and the alterity of the other. It will here be helpful to recall the opening section of Totality and Infinity, where Levinas establishes the framework for the essay on exteriority that follows. 196 11 Taking his point of departure from the distinction between need and desire, he describes the relation between the same and the other as transcendence. Needs can be satisfied. They complete me by filling a lack, by being “reabsorbed into my own identity as thinker or possessor” (TI 33). Objects of need do not transcend my being because they are eventually assimilated by me. In need, I ultimately long to belong to myself. My search for self-completion ends in self-possession, whereby the other gets reduced to the same. Desire tends toward a term that is other than anything I can think or possess. The term of desire neither fills a lack nor completes my being; rather, it expresses itself in and through distance. The desired is not comprehended by a concept; it is known or understood (entendu) by its alterity (TI 34).This alterity is irreducible to a concept because it transcends my grasp. Unlike need, desire is set in motion by an alterity that “overflows” all my efforts at conceptualization, that eludes all my attempts to possess it.The term of desire and I cannot merge into a totality because the alterity of the other and the identity of the same would be abolished.The transcendence that permits their relation would thereby be eliminated. Positioning himself in the tradition founded by Plato (Republic 509b9), Levinas places the term of desire, the Good, beyond being. “The Good is good in itself and not by relation to the need of which it is wanting; it is a luxury with respect to needs. It is precisely in this that it is beyond being” (TI 103). For Levinas the Good transcends the totality of being because desire for it does not result from a lack but occurs in one whose essential being is already complete. As the title of his second major work suggests, the Good is “autrement qu’être ou au-delà de 1’essence” (otherwise than being or beyond essence). Not surprisingly,Plotinus develops the Platonic tradition of placing the Good beyond being. The life and term of desire are as boundless for him as they are for Levinas . In the treatise entitled “How the Multitude of the Forms Came into Being and on the Good,” Plotinus writes: “When you cannot grasp the form or shape of what is longed for, it would be most longed for and most lovable, and love for it would be immeasurable. For love is not limited here, because neither is the beloved, but the love of this would be unbounded” (VI.17.32).2 Desire for the One is boundless because the One, unlimited by form (eidos), is beyond being (epêkeina ontos) and substance (ousia): Since the substance [Intellect] which is generated [from the One] is form . . . the One must be without...

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