Totality and Infinity at 50

1. Joy beyond Boredom: Totality and Infinity as a Work of Wonder

11 ONE Joy beyond Boredom TotalityandInfinity as a Work of Wonder SilviaBenso “On s’amuse mieux à deux. ” —Levinas, “Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas” Totality and Infinity has been presented variously as a metaphysical treatise; as a book on the primacy of ethics over ontology , on ethics as first philosophy, and on the Other; as a critique of intentionality, a defense of subjectivity, and an essay on hospitality . The subtitle of the book reads: An Essay on Exteriority. The theme of exteriority reappears in the title of the third section of Totality and Infinity, “Exteriority and the Face,” as well as in the title of two chapters in the “Conclusions.” There, the final yet not unexpected claim is that “being is exteriority” (TI 290) and that it produces itself in language, in which “the interlocutor ...is forever outside” such that “the exteriority of discourse cannot be converted into interiority” (295). In a claim reminiscent of ancient philosophical remarks, Levinas announces that 12 Silvia Benso “exteriority is...a marvel” (292)—une merveille: a miracle, astonishment, wonder. It is my contention that Totality and Infinity is, in fact, a work on, of, and by wonder—altogether, a wondrous work. In this sense, the book retrieves the highest inspiration guiding ancient philosophy and, in so doing, restores this metaphysical sentiment to a philosophical tradition that for the most part has forgotten how to wonder. Through an intertwining of boredom and wonder, this essay engages Levinas with the originary inspiration of Western philosophy as expressed in the work of Plato, whom Levinas credits with the notion, fundamental for his own thought, of “the Good beyond being” (TI 102–03). Performed in the Levinasian register of a critique of ontology, a brief analysis of the notion of wonder and the related concept of philosophy that it originates in Plato will prepare for Levinas’s restoration of wonder, which remains in accordance with, yet goes beyond its Platonic inspiration.1 In this move beyond the tradition from within the tradition, the novelty, that is, the wondrous character, of Levinas’s text Totality and Infinity emerges in its full force. And Totality and Infinity proves itself a wonderful work, that is, a work of renewed wonder inspired by the conviction that “on s’amuse mieux à deux.”2 SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT AN ANCIENT MOTIF Levinas’s evocation of wonder as the theme of his first major book—an essay on exteriority where exteriority is said to be a marvel—does not stray from the philosophical tradition with which Levinas so often otherwise contends. As is well known, the association between wonder and philosophy is ancient and is reasserted in various registers across the centuries. In his Theaetetus, Plato has Socrates remark that “this feeling of wonder [thaumazein] shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.”3 Years later, Plato’s words are echoed by Aristotle’s claim that “it is through wonder that Joy beyond Boredom 13 men [sic] now begin and originally began to philosophize.”4 Centuries later, in a completely different geographical, historical , and cultural context, Kant asserts that “two things fill [his] mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”5 This sense of wonder thus originates Kant’s philosophy. In spite of this widespread agreement on wonder as the origin of philosophy, questions remain as to its source: Where does philosophical wonder originate? What is its inspiration? In other words, what is the origin of the origin of philosophy? The answer to these questions will prove fundamental for assessing Levinas’s book, which will turn out to be wonderful precisely for its identification of the source of wonder. According to Heidegger, who is one of Levinas’s major interlocutors in Totality and Infinity, the fundamental philosophical question is: “Why are there beings rather than nothing?”6 It is ultimately disputable (and it is certainly so for Levinas) whether the ontological question is, or should be, the question motivating philosophy. For instance, Nietzsche’s remark that “everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths” compels one to reconsider the possibility that being may in fact provoke wonder.7 Can there be wonder if there are no beings to wonder about? Pre-Socratic philosophy, for example, is arguably born out of wonder not at being, but rather at the multiplicity and seemingly disparateness...