Margins of Religion: Between Kierkegaard and Derrida

10. Origins of Negation

Origins of Negation Criticism and Hypocriticism If criticism is regress upon the conditions of knowledge as exemplified in the Critical philosophy of Kant, hypocriticism (or hypoCriticism) will be regress beyond those conditions. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is about hypocriticism that Levinas is writing when he refers to criticism as re-ascent (remontée) or regress (régression) beyond, below, or this side of (en deçà de) the condition of knowledge.1 One of his section headings announces that what is to be treated in that section is “L’investiture de la liberté ou la critique.” But what is argued in that section is that the investiture of freedom, whatever that may turn out to be, is called for by freedom, freedom being referred to as the condition of knowledge . Therefore the investiture is beyond that condition. Hence the investiture of freedom should be referred to either in scare-quotes as a “condition” or as a quasi-condition. That is why, strictly speaking, we should distinguish criticism from hypocriticism. Because the “structures” Levinas says he is examining are very complex (fort complexes) his term “criticism” will be retained in what follows in order to avoid multiplying complexities beyond necessity, but what his term hides should not be forgotten. It could be said that his choice of term itself exemplifies a tendency to forget that is one of the topics of the section in question. It TEN 170 | margiNs Of religiON indicates a tendency among philosophers to speak of “conditions of possibility” as though they were all presuppositions logically deducible by classical, transcendental , or dialectical logic from what they condition. Philosophers since Plato have considered it their task to seek knowledge of knowledge by tracing the conceptual or categorical conditions of knowledge. Thus Levinas couples philosophy with criticism. Critique or philosophy, he writes, equating them, “is the essence of knowledge.”2 This is a way of saying that philosophy is knowledge of knowledge. Philosophy is this thanks to such retrocession to the conditions of knowledge as takes place when Plato argues from the untutored slave-boy Meno’s learning how to solve a particular problem in geometry to the conclusion that learning is recollection, when Descartes argues from experimental doubting to the indubitability of sum, when Kant argues from the admitted experience of temporal succession to the apriority of the forms of sensibility and the principles of the understanding, and when Hegel purports to demonstrate how from the illusion of sense-certainty one is compelled toward the thinking that thinks itself which he calls absolute wisdom. Levinas argues that philosophy thus conceived as looking for knowledge or philosophy as love of wisdom overlooks philosophy as wisdom of love. The latter is a wisdom where looking arises not simply from being looked at, in the ways described for instance by Sartre; in what could be called sophophily it is learned that looking and being looked at have their “origin” in being looked to, in the ways described by Levinas. Love that has knowledge or wisdom as its object hides love as Desire that is not desire for compresence with an intentional accusative. In love as Desire the lover is accused. Whereas philosophy as love of wisdom is the essence of knowledge, the purpose announced in the title of one of Levinas’s later books is to remind us of what is beyond essence. The word “beyond” in that title, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, translates not “en deçà de,” but “au-delà de.” Whatever significance, if any, hangs on the choice of the phrase, “au-delà de” may be used in the title because this book declares itself to be a book of philosophy in the Greek tradition handed down from Plato. That tradition is occupied with questions as to what makes things what they are, that is to say, with the essence of what is. Therefore if, as in Plato, philosophy finds itself having to press on beyond questions concerning being and what is to questions concerning the good, these last questions will come after the others in the order of inquiry (ordo cognoscendi). At the same time, the questions that come later in the order of inquiry can be earlier in what would traditionally be called the order of logic or ontology (ordo essendi). In the latter order they will be this side of, en-deçà de, the questions of being and essence. But this side of both the ontological order and the epistemological order is the order of what...