The Philosophical Sense of Transcendence: Levinas and Plato on Loving Beyond Being

Introduction

1 Introduction T he question of the sense of transcendence is one that has puzzled philosophical thinking from its inception. And even before the question, one might look to the very movement of transcendence as inspiring philosophical thought itself. For transcendence is a movement, an exceeding of boundaries, a crossing beyond. But beyond what, and into what? What are these boundaries, and what lies within and without them? What direction does the movement of transcendence take? What is the source of this movement? How does it affect us? And what can it come to mean for us? These are the questions hidden within the question of the “sense” of transcendence, sense as meaning, to be sure, but also as direction and sensibility or affectivity. The present inquiry aims to address these questions specifically with respect to the sense of transcendence in philosophy: What meaning can transcendence have in philosophy? What direction —organization and order—does it give to philosophy? And how does transcendence affect, touch, or inspire philosophy? Of course, to consider these questions properly, we will have to grapple with the difficult and seemingly endless problem of philosophy’s own self-definition. If we have been philosophizing for at least a few millennia, there have always been and there continue to be vying conceptions, without the hope of 2 Introduction any clear and broad consensus, of what constitutes philosophy itself. This internal division of philosophy is particularly manifest with respect to the question of transcendence. Some take the notion of transcendence to be utter nonsense. Others claim that transcendence may be meaningful in some sense, but not in a particularly philosophical one. And among those who agree that transcendence has philosophical significance, there is much disagreement about its meaning, its scope, and its role. Indeed, it is no surprise that the problem of philosophy’s own self-definition becomes particularly acute when we look at approaches to transcendence in philosophy. Defining philosophy has to do with establishing its limits, delimiting its scope and its meaning. Transcendence has do to with crossing over limits. It seems, then, that the process of defining philosophy necessitates some kind of interaction with the question of transcendence, for how can we define the limits of our thought if we are not already somehow engaged in a movement to cross over these limits? The question of transcendence and the process of defining philosophy are inseparably linked. Religion is another sphere of human life that needs to be considered when addressing the sense of transcendence. Here, “religion” can be taken in a very broad sense to begin with, including religious practice and dogma, theology (philosophical or otherwise), in a word, anything having to do with revelation of, and interaction with some sense of the divine. In philosophy, the question of transcendence is often raised alongside questions concerning religion, the divine, or gods. The notion of transcendence is a central way of naming the relation between the human and the divine. As such, considering the sense of transcendence in philosophy also entails moving beyond the borders of philosophy’s own self-definition toward the relation between philosophy and religion. Three interrelated questions have been raised: (1) the philosophical sense to be given to transcendence; (2) the definition Introduction 3 of philosophy itself; and (3) the relation between philosophy and religion. These are the main questions of this inquiry. To avoid the philosophical hubris of striking out alone into a confusing land for which many good maps have already been drawn, it is important to specify the limits of the present inquiry and to introduce our guides. Our main guide is Emmanuel Levinas, whose thought can be characterized as an extended reflection on the sense of transcendence, both within and beyond the imits of philosophical thinking. As a late contemporary of ours, his thought develops in a context that is still relevant to, and influential upon, contemporary philosophical thought: a context set, among others, by Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, where philosophy is defined in terms of phenomenology and ontology, and philosophical truth and sense in general come to be synonymous with manifestation in the light of human consciousness. Transcendence, in this picture, has philosophical sense as an activity of human consciousness surpassing and returning to itself. In the early Heidegger particularly, transcendence loses any explicit reference to religion and the divine, and...