Levinas and the Wisdom of Love: The Question of Invisibility

1: Levinas and Invisibility

Chapter 1 Levinas and Invisibility 3 You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, “No one sees me.” Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, “I am, and there is none besides me.” Isaiah 47:10§1 Histories of Invisibility Levinas draws from two sources—one traced to Jerusalem and the other to Athens—which both have histories whose opening pages involve invisibility. The Greek historian Herodotus, often referred to as the “father of history,”1 opens his famous work, Histories,2 with an account of Gyges, who was a servant to Phrygian king Kandaules in the seventh century B.C.E. Gyges is enticed by king Kandaules to hide behind a screen to observe his wife undressing in order to confirm to him that she is the most beautiful of women. Gyges hesitates but eventually does as his king requests only to be noticed by the queen who, angered, later calls him in and tells him that she will either have him killed or require that he kill the king in revenge for this indecency. Gyges, not surprisingly, takes the option to kill the king and once again hides behind the screen in the royal chamber—this time using his invisibility to strike king Kandaules dead while in bed. The result of these acts of invisibility is that he marries the queen and becomes the king, beginning a new royal dynasty that lasts for many generations. 4 Levinas and the Wisdom of Love Like this first story in the Greek history, the first human story in the Hebrew history also involves invisibility. After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve both cover themselves in an attempt to hide their nakedness, and they also hide in the garden, attempting to become invisible to God. It is interesting that in both accounts invisibility is attempted, though not achieved. In the Greek history, however, Gyges’ hiding is ultimately rewarded, while in the Judaic history, Adam and Eve’s hiding is followed by severe consequences , and the very place in which they sought invisibility was permanently hidden from them. Gyges gets to enter into and possess that which he observes from behind the screen of invisibility. But that which Adam and Eve see with new understanding is taken from them. The Hellenistic story is one of using invisibility to possess what one did not possess, while the Hebrew story is one of invisibility leading to a dispossession. So how does Levinas, who draws from both of these traditions, treat invisibility? First, I should note that Levinas refers to visibility primarily as a visibility of conceptual understanding, which also can refer to a linguistic expression of that understanding. Colloquially, this view of visibility is commonly experienced when someone says in a moment of comprehension , “Oh, now I see what you mean.” Visibility, as used here, is equated with cognition. As such, which tradition does Levinas draw from in his treatment of invisibility? Does he endorse the tradition that opposes invisibility, or the tradition that rewards it? It is not surprising that the Jewish Levinas most centrally is opposed to his own invisibility and inveighs against its harms to himself and to the Other. But he goes further than just opposing his own invisibility while keeping the Other visible. He speaks of the need to preserve the invisibility of the Other. To see the Other is to think of the Other in terms of a category or a theme, and Levinas shows us that the Other is irreducible to any category of thought—the Other always exceeds any concept I might try to use to ‘capture’ or understand her. In Totality and Infinity, he even calls the Other ‘invisible’ and says that the “Invisible is the very elevation of height and its nobility” (35). But we quickly see that what he means by invisibility is not a simple absence of the Other. Instead, the invisibility of the other points to the impossibility of a complete reduction of the Other to a concept. As Levinas is using the term, “invisibility does not denote an absence of relation; it implies relations with what is not given” (TI, 34). Levinas and Invisibility 5§2 Asymmetrical Vision But the question that deserves close attention is how my visibility relates to the invisibility of the Other with whom I am in relation. Levinas’s analysis of the ethical relation with the Other is...