The Intersubjectivity of Time: Levinas and Infinite Responsibility

1. Bergson and Heidegger: Overcoming Scientific Time

17 ONE Bergson and Heidegger Overcoming Scientific Time The notions of time and temporality play a prominent role in contemporary philosophical thought, and as Richard Cohen observes, these notions are as central today as eternity was in ancient and premodern philosophy.1 In order to fully appreciate the extent to which Levinas’s interpretation of time breaks new grounds, it is crucial to understand the relation between his view of time and the views provided by Bergson and Heidegger.2 In his conversation with Philippe Nemo, Levinas mentions four philosophical texts he admires; among them are Bergson’s Time and Free Will and Heidegger’s Being and Time (EI 37–38). But despite the influence these thinkers had on Levinas, his thought goes against and beyond them. Considering the interpretations of time offered by Bergson and Heidegger, focusing primarily on these two texts Levinas esteems, will provide the background for later showing that Levinas begins his discussion of time where Bergson and Heidegger left off. Bergson and Heidegger freed us from the cosmological, scientific notion of time after a long tradition, beginning with Aristotle, in which time had been considered in terms of an infinite succession of instants moving from the future to the past via the present, or as an infinite succession of nows independent of human existence. To a certain degree the liberation from scientific time continued to weaken the prominent role eternity had in contemporary philosophical thought. David Scott insightfully claims, “There remains a kind of iconicity in the scientific function of clock, whereby the clock makes 18 The Intersubjectivity of Time time eternity, even after it is divorced from transcendence.”3 Bergson and Heidegger no longer regard time primarily as a physis, as a natural , even objective phenomenon, but reveal the relation between time and the human structure of existence. This innovative approach to time opened up a new vocabulary for its discussion—one that associates the primordial, real time with the finitude of human beings, entailing the emphasis of the finite aspect of time. Consequently, both thinkers distinguish between two primary experiences of time, which in many ways exclude one another. One is the traditional, Aristotelian position, which regards time as a linear series of points that can be measured, and is seen as a modification of presence—the past is what is no longer present, and the future is what is not yet present. According to this view, time is basically infinite, public, and exterior to us. The second experience of time is the temporal perspective, which Bergson and Heidegger believe to be the more real or authentic way for understanding time. Duration, or temporality, is the understanding of time as equivalent to the individual’s existence or life. However, for the most part Bergson and Heidegger focus respectively on the consciousness or existence of the individual, and this raises the problem as to whether they fail to see the possibility of an authentic communal aspect of time. Considering the relation between time and ethics in the thought of Bergson and Heidegger, and exploring the issue of political time, the question remains whether their views open the way to an original, collective time that does not unite the individuals under a totalizing structure (such as clock time), which Levinas later names synchronic time. BERGSON: DURATION, ETHICS, SOCIETY Bergson’s innovative approach to the issue of time in general and to the question of its reality in particular bears not only metaphysical consequences but ethical implications as well. In his thought, Bergson focuses on the notion of duration (durée). He does so in order to show its priority over scientific clock time, or spatial time. Bergson and Heidegger 19 Duration In contrast to symbolic, spatial time, duration is the real and concrete time: “In a word, pure duration might well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without precise outlines, without any tendency to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without any affiliation with number: it would be pure heterogeneity” (TFW 104). Spatial time, like space, is understood as made of homogeneous units (days, hours, minutes, etc.), whereas duration is heterogeneous and uncountable. This difference is derived from Bergson’s distinction between two types of multiplicity: quantitative and qualitative. The first kind is the homogeneous multiplicity of material objects that are counted in space (87). This multiplicity is a numerical multiplicity, which only...