Toward the Outside: Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas

6. ONTOLOGY/METAPHYSICS

6. ONTOLOGY/METAPHYSICS This chapter sketches out the relation between ontology and metaphysics , then more specifically the way these terms have been understood by phenomenologists, and finally Levinas’s specific understanding and use of them in his own work. The distinction may prove helpful in differentiating the projects of Heidegger and Levinas. Generalities I use “ontology” to mean the study of being and metaphysics as the study of that which does not fall within the realm of the physical. These are fairly standard definitions, though ontology is sometimes used in the sense of the set of kinds of things to be admitted as being in some sense. Thus, an ontology might comprise spatiotemporal entities such as tables, chairs and planets, and also numbers and angels. Moreover, there is some controversy among Greek specialists whether Aristotle’s use of the term “metaphysics” really entailed an allusion to something beyond the physical (meta = beyond) or whether it just referred to the “next” book, which came after the one he called “Phusis” or physics. Ontology as a term is a seventeenth century coinage from neo-Latin; metaphysics a fourteenth century one, from Greek through the Latin of the scholastics. But what of the relation between the two terms? My use of the slash mark between the two words in this chapter might suggest that there is a strong contrast or “bar” between. But in fact ontol66 ogy has been traditionally looked upon as a branch (in Descartes, the “root”) of metaphysics. That situation may be said to have changed since Kant’s First Critique, which cast doubt upon the possibility of the sort of knowledge to which metaphysics was thought to aspire. Heidegger accepts the critique of the metaphysical mansion, but leaves one room standing: ontology. Phenomenology and Ontology It may seem odd that Heidegger, who stands well within the phenomenological tradition, should develop a philosophy that has often been referred to as an ontology. The founder of phenomenology , Heidegger’s teacher Edmund Husserl, was emphatic in his refusal to make any particular commitments with respect to ontological claims. In fact, his goal was to describe “phenomena” as they appeared, prior to any particular theory about their ontological status. The phenomenological reduction was intended to remove (by making them explicit) the traces of any “Einstellung” or ontological “standpoint” that prejudge the meaning of what is observed, either in thought or the “real” world. All the data of consciousness were to have equal status! But the “existential” turn taken by Heidegger’s phenomenology resulted in further attention to the modality of being. Previously there was only one way for something to “be,” whether rock, flower or human being. Husserl had refrained from asserting whether or not something was, in favor of saying what it was: its essence. But these essences were not construed as additional ontological elements. If Heidegger’s philosophy is ontological, it is because it begins by a thorough critique of traditional ontology (the “thing” ontology that tends to treat all beings as variants of the physical object), and introduces a fundamental division between being itself (its verbal sense) and the concrete entity, substance. The “ontological difference” between being (das Sein) and beings or entities (die Seienden) is perhaps Heidegger’s most original contribution. Ontology/Metaphysics 67 Being is not an entity and has a different mode of being than entities . We should not be misled into thinking that Heidegger is simply drawing attention to the difference between abstract and concrete nouns, so that being indicates the abstraction of a quality that all entities have. Such a view would posit beings or entities first and make being an abstraction. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. It is the verbal sense of being that is primary; the “participial” form, das Seiende or the individual, substantial entity, only participates in this verbal being. This is the essential trait of Being and Time that Levinas retained, and this distinction is basic to his own work. It was Heidegger, he claims, who taught us to hear the sound of being: “My admiration for Heidegger is above all an admiration for Sein und Zeit. I always try to relive the ambiance of those readings when 1933 was still unthinkable. One speaks habitually of the word being as if it were a substantive, even though it is a verb par exellence. . . . Heidegger accustomed us to this verbal sonority. This reeducation...