To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

TWO: A Commentary on "Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite"

CHAPTERI T W O A Commentary on uphilosophy and the Idea of the Infinite" Having taught several courses on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas as expressed in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, I have found no better introduction to the reading of these books, especially the first, than the 1957 article "Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite."l Not only does this essay show clearly how Levinas's works sprang from a profound meditation on the very roots of Western philosophy ; it also indicates the path by which his thought separates itself from the Husserlian and Heideggerian versions of phenomenology , to which he is nonetheless heavily indebted. In comparing this article with Totality and Infinity, one gets the strong impression that it was the seed from which Levinas developed the book. Indeed, it is notable that the argument of the essay follows in almost all points the argument of the summary of Totality and Infinity, which Levinas, after defending his book as a dissertation for his doctorat d'Etat, published in the Annales de l'Universite de Paris. 2 The one notable difference is that the essay deals with the face (section 4) before speaking of desire (section 5), while Totality and Infinity and its summary reverse this order. The purpose of the running commentary on "Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite" that follows here is primarily didactic and introductory: through a series of notes on the article, the main lines of Totality and Infinity's argument will emerge, as well as its important connections with the sources of Western thought. 1 "La philosophie et l'idee de l'Infini," Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 62 (1957): 241-53, collected in EDHH 165-78; CPP 47-60. 2 Cf. Annales 31 (1961): 385-86. 138 39 Commentary Autonomy and Heteronomy Without indulging in the despair of the skeptics or the cynicism of the sophists, Levinas begins with what could pass for a platitude , were it not the point ofdeparture for all Western philosophical and even cultural undertakings: the passion for truth realizes itself through inquiry. The sciences themselves would lose all nobility if they did not, in their own fashion, inquire after the truth of things. In calling the philosophical passion eros, Levinas refers, at the very beginning of his study, to the father of philosophy. In some way, and beyond Nietzsche's critique, we must "recover Platonism," as the end of the aforementioned summary clearly states.3 The idea of truth presents itself as an idea with two faces, both of which have called forth the reflection of thinkers since the beginning of wondering. Truth is looked for and understood, on the one hand, as something that the thinker does not yet know-to find it one must have an experience, that is, one must be surprised by an encounter with the unexpected. On the other hand, truth only gives itself to someone who appropriates and integrates it, becoming one with it as if it had always been present in the depths of the soul. In later texts, Levinas claims that "truth," as the ideal of Western philosophy, already leans too much in the latter direction , that of integration, anamnesis, and freedom, while the former aspect-contact with the most "real" reality-is then characterized as a relation that surpasses being and truth. "Truth" then is considered to be equivalent to the truth ofBeing. Even the word "experience," which serves here to indicate the surprising aspect of the discovery of truth,4 will later be reserved for the world of integration and totalizing autonomy. 3 Cf. Annales 31 (1961): 386. Cf. also HAH 55-56 for a new Platonism as antidote against a world disoriented and "dis-occidentalized." 4 The French expression "vers l'etranger" (EDHH 167), synonymous with the immediately following "vers hi-bas," has been translated as "toward the stranger" (CPP47). This might, however, hide an aspect that is crucial to Levinas's thought, who again and again insists on the fact that truth comes from the outside, from afar and abroad. L'etranger has two meanings and is intentionally ambiguous; it expresses simultaneously the foreign country from which the truth comes to me and the stranger who knocks at my door in order to receive the hospitality of my home. 40 I C HAP T E R TWO In Totality and Infinity, the word "being" (~tre...