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Joby Tharamangalam (MPh I)
Human actions are regulated by ethical systems functioning in the society. There are ethical codes, moral rules available which are guide to our ways of relating and acting. Though there are many moral codes given by countries, religions and political systems we see there are irregularities and disharmony in our Being-together in this world. What is actually lacking? Are the moral codes to be redefined and restructured? Does the existing ethical system lack the inner strength to motivate the ethical agent? Is there an urgency of change of perspective in the way we understand ethics? This paper is an attempt to investigate on this concern going through the ethical thoughts of Emmanuel Levinas.[1] I would take up the aspect of humanness which Levinas emphasises, as the building block of ethics and as motivation and soul of ethics.
1. Possibility of a New Way of Looking at Ethics
We are always concerned about our existence. The way we realize the meaning, purpose and worth of our own existence will define the movement of our inner world. One might envision danger and hell in front of the moment one lives. In the same context another might see colors and smiles invoking him or her to participate in the celebration of life within this finiteness.
According to Hobbes, to ensure self-preservation, men desire security and its corollary, power. To ensure power, men must have more power. Since other men also ceaselessly desire power, each is an enemy to the others. In such a world there can be no science, no knowledge, no arts, ‘no Society; and which is worst of all, continual[l] fear[e], and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor[e], nasty, brutish, and short.’[2] Here the role of ethics comes into picture. A sound code of ethics is to help people to do what ought to be done. To hope to do right things, more than doing things rightly we must go beyond ethical codes and reflect about the ethical issues that may confront us.[3]
In any given situation motivation is the inner force that makes us act in some particular way. Laws and regulations do not motivate us. They remain before us as mere words. The Socratic conception of ethics as the study of how we ought to live seems to be a minimal conception of what ethics should be. The moral quest is much more demanding, because of “the subjective and cultural relativity of life and the doubt whether there are or should be universally shared values that guide how we all ought to live.”[4] What we need to reflect would be, how learn humanness? This would mean the quality of ethics that helps humans to bear with each other in order to protect their common humaneness.
Confucius emphasises on benevolence which is in us and which we need to nurture. Benevolence was more than a worthy standard; “it was a dynamic, creative, energising moral force – the very spirit of life where by man could transform himself, his society and ultimately the entire universe.”[5] According to Mencius, a follower of Confucius, “all human are born with incipient compassion for the suffering of others. We need to fill our innate compassion so that it extends to other people in a reliable way.”[6] For the Daoists in China “injunction is to live naturally and spontaneously rather than living according to codes, principles or laws that are mistakenly supposed to be inherent in the Dao. They hold that ethical rules cannot capture the creativity required for persons to lead their lives.”[7]
Moral principles do not motivate us to act but the qualities like benevolence, compassion and sympathy do inspire us to conduct ourselves for the well being. In that way moral world is a sympathetic world. Sympathy does not mean to try to suffer the feeling of the other (identification) or to feel like the other (imitation), but instead to keep the reflective distance of someone that recognises and acknowledges and, in this sense feels, with the other. Lévinas’s ‘compassion’ also includes such reflective identification. He takes compassion in an empathetic sense: “you cannot suffer in my place, yet you can suffer together with me by projecting your feelings into my position and so my suffering can gain a new meaning.”[8] In other words “sympathy is a turning towards the world in the company of others. It is a capacity for feelings things together.” [9]
For ancient Greeks ethics was not so much about following the norms their society imposed on them thereby pleasing other members in the society and was not so much about following religious orders in order to please their gods; rather, ethics was mainly about one’s choice to live a beautiful life. But what did this beauty actually mean for them? The “beauty” of this existence, its “aesthetic” effect, lies in its moral worth.[10] So it was the moral worth of the person the beholder saw as the beauty. Now we must investigate what could make this moral worth in a person.
2. Ethics as the First Philosophy
Levinas’s thinking has very much influenced the current evaluation of ethics, which has established ‘concern for the other’ as the very foundation of ethics. “Ethics insists on the necessity of our response to others, and the unique circumstances of each such response, rather than attempting to reduce such responses to standard instances and norms of general application applicable to whole communities and capable of being largely settled in advance.”[11] Levinas’ concern is not about the moral imperatives.
“Ethics,” Derrida writes in a discussion on Levinas, “is an ethics without law and without concept.”[12] He writes about our duty of care to others; he seeks to understand the nature of a neighbourhood; he speaks at great length the idea of “proximity” as a central ethical concept. The demand of ethics comes from the intimacy of an experienced encounter.[13] Levinas is suspicious about traditional ethical theories. “Levinas claims that the ethical tradition subordinates ethics to ontology; ethics is derived from an eminent being or the contemplation of an autonomous individual.”[14] He considers ethics as optics by which he means that ‘my ethical response to the Other provides the ultimate perspective for addressing all other philosophical questions’.
Ethics means an unavoidable responsibility to another. That is why Levinas calls it as “first philosophy” By this he means to say that “without some such initial hospitality or openness to the inarticulate cry of another human being, neither language nor society nor philosophy could ever have got going. At least as opposed to many understandings of justice.”[15] If we are trying to find any reason behind such an ethics we may not find any “except that without it, we would not be here to talk to one another at all. We cannot derive ethics from universal first principles. Ethics is that first principle.”[16]
3. Hospitality as Ethics
Ethics relies on hospitality so much that one cannot speak of ethics without speaking of hospitality. There also can be two kinds of hospitality. One can be formal with its customs and regulations but ethics requires an absolute hospitality. It is as though the laws (plural) of hospitality, in marking limits, power, rights, and duties, consisted in challenging and transgressing the law of hospitality, the one that would command that the ‘new arrival’ be offered an unconditional welcome.[17] In the encounter with the other the self experiences the disruption of his supposed autonomy and discovers itself as a heteronomous subject. Where he used to be a law unto himself he now finds the other has become a law unto him.[18]
No invitation, or any other condition, can ever be a part of absolute hospitality. Hospitality, as absolute, is bound by no laws or limitations. In order to offer unconditional hospitality, the master must not allow for any debt or exchange to take place within the home.[19] Absolute hospitality allows for violence. A new arrival, or guest, stands at the door, at the border, and is welcomed inside without condition. “we thus enter from the inside: the master of the house is at home, but nonetheless he comes to enter his home through the guest—who comes from outside.” In welcoming the guest, the self is interrupted. I give not only to the foreigner, but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other.[20] Such violence turns the home inside out. The host becomes the guest. Because now ‘he feeds my desire for the infinitely other though never satisfied’. The problem of justice (the inevitable presence of such violence) seems to call us to take responsibility as a “thoughtful generosity.”[21] This mode of hospitality is not a pity or compassion; it is neither a responsibility the subject freely and willingly chosen it is a “pre-contracted passivity, which destines the subject for inescapable responsibility for the other.”[22]
Here we can speak about an ethical sensibility with which “even before I meet the other I am prepared to open up to him or her.” Ethical relation to the other includes certain passivity. The understanding, of ‘the other’ changes. The other was described by a “system of perceptions, speculations and representations of the self.”[23] But now the relation of the subject is not to the object but to the other who is desirable to be cared and to whom the subject is responsible. It is a kind of complete reception of absolute strangeness of the other. Thus here the subjectivity is not grasping the other into my cognition but welcoming, feeding and serving him as my master. But there is a power driving me into this inescapable responsibility ie the vulnerability of the other or the uprightness of the naked reality which Levinas calls the face on which there shines infinity. It qualifies the hospitality and mode of ethics.
It is important that Levinas talks about the naked face, the face that is not masked by the whole social apparatus of roles and status. Rather, this is the naked face that stands before us, completely exposed, completely vulnerable, infinitely other, absolutely singular. “The skin of the face is the most naked, most destitute…there is an essential poverty in the face.” Having looked at into the naked eyes there is only one sentiment: “The face is the face of You, and you are vulnerable and dependent on me. Yet you also face me with“uprightness” – face-to-face.”[24] The face “is neither seen nor touched” but obeyed or “welcomed,” precisely because all perception – that is, all grasp of objects asanything in particular – depends on the normative orientation that first arises through that very welcome.[25] The face is not something we can see and touch, while moving within open horizons, passing through changing perspectives, transforming it into a content we embrace and manipulate. The face does not fall into the outer world, open the way to an inner world.[26]
4. Responding Responsible Subject
Responsibility is so extreme that the ego is responsible for the Other’s responsibility. ‘I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it....[27] Thus Levinas holds for a responsibility that is concrete, infinite and asymmetrical. “The subject who responds is also an incarnate being, who can only respond with concrete hospitality. This hospitality is so extreme that the ego must be ‘capable of giving the bread out of his mouth, or giving his skin’”[28] It is quite crucial for Levinas to distinguish the subordination to a tyrant from the subordination to an ethical other. The tyrant attempts by persuasion, rhetoric, propaganda, seduction, trickery, diplomacy, demagoguery, (threats of) torture or physical violence, brainwashing, plagiarism, intimidation, or bribery to bring other free subjects to abandon the autonomous exercise of their freedom in exchange for satisfaction of their needs.[29]
The other cannot be predicted whether the other is a ‘good’ other or a ‘bad’ other, and one cannot know in advance how one should act in relation to him, her, or it. Consequently, there is nothing intrinsically ethical about subjecting oneself to the other, who may always be a brutal tyrant.[30] It is a Reason capable of comparing incomparables, a wisdom of love. A measure superimposes itself on the “extravagant” generosity of the “for the other” on its infinity.[31] Justice does not consist in treating the other as an equal, but “in recognizing in the Other my master” who approaches “in a dimension of height”. Thus, “Goodness consists in taking up a position in being such that the Other counts more than myself”. And this height of the other, as face, “is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed.” [32] My response was to a call from the vulnerable face of the other but responding to that call in generosity I behold the infinite. This only evokes my desire further; does not satisfy and put me to rest.
5. Stranger to Infinite - Door to the Destiny
“Ethics is the spiritual optics It is in the face of the concrete other (the human) that we see the absolutely Other (the divine). “The movement of metaphysical desire is thus for Levinas simultaneously vertical and horizontal... it moves upwards by moving laterally, by reaching out towards the neighbor.”[33] It is the invocation from the other that demands my response. It is not the characteristic of his material poverty, but the force of his irreducible infinity, which calls forth my responsibility for him. This notion of infinity affords a break with reductive totalizing thinking and in turn opens up dimension enabling ethical responsibility.[34]In Lévinas, desire creatively causes something to emerge. The other, metaphysically desired, is not "Other" like the bread I eat. The metaphysical desire tends towards something else entirely, toward the absolutely other.[35] While in Lévinas, the essential thing is to pay attention to absolute otherness and absolute difference. This is a metaphysical desire, a never-satisfied desire for transcendence. Metaphysical desire is like goodness-the Desired does not fulfil it, but deepens it. in that it understands [entend] the remoteness, the alterity of the other.[36]According to Levinas, this structure of desire is triggered by the approach of the Other. The ego strives to com-prehend, literally, to grasp the Other, but is unable. The Other expresses an infinitude which cannot be reduced to ontological categories. The ego is pulled out of itself toward the transcendent.[37] Desire in the presence of the Other thus brings an end to the self’s egoistic modalities by awakening apology and goodnesss within the self. The other in misere calls upon the subject from its unprotected and defenceless, naked face. At the same time it calls with the authority of the Infinite, though in the vulnerability of its human face.[38] Though moved by the desire for the absolutely other it is also the possibility of searching after the infinity that made me welcome the anonymous miserable yet powerful other. Faced with the fact of temporality and being in finitude how can I meaningfully walk together with the other?
6. The other Concerns Me
Levinas introduces time into ethics and not into ontology and relates time to the other and not the ego. He emphasizes the absolute otherness of the other and establishes a social relationship between the other and me. All of this gives new meaning to temporality. Heidegger’s Dasein is anxious in solitude. In contrast, Lévinas says that:“the relation with the future, the presence of future in the present seems still to be accomplished in the face-to-face with the other.[39] As the Self sees the vulnerability of the Other’s nude face, he is now being summoned to look after the Other. The Other’s face, the fact that he/she looks at me, makes me a servant. To see the desolate face which cries out for justice is to put oneself as responsible to the being which presents itself in the face.[40] It is this passivity of the self as hostage that ultimately enables pardon, compassion, pity and proximity in the world.
This is what we considered in the beginning that a peaceful world is really an ethical world.[41] Levinas’ question “Have I the right to be facing the other man’s suffering?” points to what he regards as the highest human destiny, a holiness, which means a life wholly for-the-other.[42]
Levinas often cites a Jewish proverb: ‘The other’s material needs are my spiritual needs.’ Thus, his ethics demand concrete hospitality for the Other, be it the stranger, the widow, or the orphan.[43] “The face of the other breaks into my world and calls out to me. I am not an I unto myself, but an Istanding before the other. The other calls forth my response, commands my attention, refuses to be ignored, makes a claim on my existence, tells me I am responsible. And this always. I will never be freed from the face of the other. What matters is not so much the declaration of my existence that says, “Here I am”, but the “Here I am” that is the response of my existence to the call of the other.[44] It is the concern for the other, for its pains and death prior to the care for the death of oneself. I wish the other safety, peace, and happiness, which is the expression of concern for the other and its hope, presence, and life.[45]
Levinas argues that it is my fear for the Other’s death and this un-being-presentness-to and ungraspableness of death that individuates me. “I have to be responsible not only for the Other’s food, clothing, shelter, and means of travel, but also for the Other’s death. I must be concerned about the Other’s death! Even though I am incapable of preventing the Other from death, I cannot let him die in solitude; in other words, I must be responsible for the Other’s death.”[46] According to Levinas, the confrontation with death brings the subject into contact with im-possibility. It is impossible to live on and shape my life in freedom. And yet there is something liberating even in the encounter with this threatening figure of death.[47] Even when I lie down in the grave I show hospitality to the other “TAKE IT HERE I AM EAT ~ GET NEARER ~ IN ORDER TO GIVE HIM/HER ~ DRINK”[48] Now even the temporality receives a meaning. Alienate or destroy the “foreigner,” is the usual expression. The nonviolent and nonracist recognition of the other in his otherness incarnates the “wisdom of love,” which as an ethical option is never guaranteed but always returns to present itself anew as a must.[49]
7. Conclusion
Human beings are endowed with varieties of characters and we are living in different complex circumstances. Though we come together differences remain. How this differences to be reconciled? Should I be afraid when I hear the sound of someone walking outside? Is the stranger a danger or someone in need?
We have considered the aspects that Levinas is trying to tell the world. He had in his background the traumatic experience of the wars and the Nazi concentration camps. Faced with death and aftermath of it what he extols is to have concern for the other. It is a very relevant question that he considers: “Who are my people?” and “Who could be my people?”
If we need to consider an ethics that would enable us to live for a peaceful world we must begin to realise that it is possible.The motivational force for our living together would be the inner goodness with which we can grow into a more humane world. We must teach ourselves that the human nature necessarily includes being in ‘neighbourhood’ where we care for each other. Though the welcomed neighbour remains a stranger infinitely it only increases the desire to see the abundant goodness hidden in that strangeness. ‘Neighbour’, in being different does not become an enemy. That is why Levinas emphasises so much on the nearness we need to experience.
Such kind of an ethics does not do away with the ethical codes but it gives an inner dynamism to it. Thus they function as a motivation leading the human king into freedom rather than seeming to be a regulatory force. Here we begin to discover a wide openness within us to all in their differences of expressions; even in the strangeness of their pain and suffering. It is a call that takes the depth of what I am out into a world of compassion.
We saw that the ethical world is a sympathetic world where we feel for each other. There we serve the humanity in absolute hospitality though strangeness eternally remains. But in this world of hospitality the feelings that threaten us disappear. We begin to live in freedom seeing the infinite in the face of the other. There even death becomes a generously welcomed guest.
I here end with a thought for reflection: Is it not possible for our communities, especially the Church to find within a much more abundant and generous richness if we are open to form a conscience that would reflect an ethics of compassion especially towards those whom we tend to condemn..
End Notes
[1] Levinas (1906-1995) is a Jewish French philosopher. He criticized the domination of ontology and epistemology and suggests ethics to be the first philosophy.
[2] William Paul Simmons, “The Third: Lévinas’Theoretical Move from An-archical Ethics to the Realm of Justice and Politics,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 25, No. 6 (1999), 91.
[3] Isidoro Talavera, “Beyond Ethical Codes: A Call for Critical Thinking in Religious Culture,” accessed from http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/vol2011no3/archive/talavera.pdf; accessed on 18th July 2012.
[4] Abraham Oliver, “Phenomenology of the Human Condition,” in South African Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 30, No. 2, (2011), 192.
[5] Walter W. Davis, “China, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.44, No. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1983), 529.
[6] Bryan W. Van Norden, “Virtue Ethics and Confucianism,” accessed from http://faculty.vassar.edu/brvannor/Mypapers/virtueethics.pdf; accessed on 27 July 2012, 111.
[7] Nicholas Bunnin, Yang and Gu, Eds, “Lévinas: Chinese and Western Perspectives, from Book Supplement Series to The Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. 35, (2008), 2.
[8] Abraham Oliver, “Phenomenology of the Human Condition,” ..., 191.
[9] D Weinberger, “ Phenomenological Ethics,” accessed from http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/philscans/phenomenologicalethics.pdf; accesses on 28 July 2012, 11.
[10] Wendyl M. Luna, “Foucault and Ethical Subjectivity,” in Kritike, Vol.3, No. 2 (Dec. 2009), 141.
[11] Desmond Manderson, “Emmanuel Levinas and the philosophy of Negligence,” accessed from http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw-discourse/TortLawReviewArticle.pdf ; accessed on 22 July 2012, 2.
[12] Mark W. Westmoreland, “Interruptions: Derrida and Hospitality,” in Kritike, Vol.2, No. 1 (June. 2008), 2.
[13] Desmond Manderson, “Emmanuel Levinas and the philosophy of Negligence,” ..., 2.
[14] William Paul Simmons, “The Third..., 91.
[15] Desmond Manderson, “Emmanuel Levinas and the philosophy of Negligence,” ..., 3.
[16] Ibid,3.
[17] Mark W. Westmoreland, “Interruptions ...,8.
[18] Vida V de Vos, “Emmanuel Lévinas on Ethics as the First Truth,” accessed from http://scholar.sun.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10019.1/2348/DeVosV.pdf ; accessed on 25 July 2012, 10.
[19] Mark W. Westmoreland, “Interruptions ...,5.
[20] Ibid,6.
[21] Fleurdeliz R. Altez, “Banal and Implied Forms of Violence in Levinas’ Phenomenological Ethics,”inKritike, Vol.1, No. 1 (June. 2007), 67.
[22] Vida V de Vos, “Emmanuel Lévinas ..., 2.
[23] Benda Hofmeyr, “Radical Passivity: Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas”, in Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, Vol. 20, (2009), 95.
[24] Terry A. Veling, “In the Name of Who?Levinas and the Other Side of Theology,” in Pacifica,Vol. 12, (Oct. 1999), 281.
[25] Steven Crowell, “What is Ethics as First Philosophy? Lévinas in Phenomenological Context,” accessed from http://www.unm.edu/~thinker/Documents/What%20is%20Ethics%20as%20First%20Philosophy.pdf ; accessed on 9th Aug 2012, 22.
[26] Simon Critchley and Bernasconi, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: University Press, 2004), 67.
[27] William Paul Simmons, “The Third..., 86.
[28] Ibid, 89.
[29] Roger Burggraeve, “Violence and the Vulnerable Face of the Other: The Vision of Emmanuel Levinas on Moral Evil and Our Responsibility,” accessed from http://theology.co.kr/wwwb/data/levinas/4-levinas.pdf; accessed on 28 July 2012,37.
[30] Martin Hagglund, “The Necessity of Discrimination: Disjoining Derrida and Levinas,” in Diacritics, (Spring 2004), 53.
[31] Fleurdeliz R. Altez, “Banal ..., 68.
[32] Sonia Sikka, “Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on the Locus of Divinity” in Modern
Theology,( July 1998), 313.
[33] Drew M. Dalton, “The Vaccination of the Infinite: Levinas’ Metaphysical Desire and the Call of the Other,” accessed from http://www.jcrt.org/archives/11.3/dalton.pdf ; accessed on accessed on 4 July 2012, 25.
[34] Vida V de Vos, “Emmanuel Lévinas ..., 9.
[35] Sonia Sikka, “Questioning the Sacred ...,128.
[36] Dachun Yang, “Levinas and the Three Dimensions of Surpassing Phenomenology,” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy (2008), 16.
[37] William Paul Simmons, “The Third..., 85.
[38] Vida V de Vos, “Emmanuel Lévinas ..., 11.
[39] Dachun Yang, “Levinas ...,18.
[40] Fleurdeliz R. Altez, “Banal ..., 64.
[41] Vida V de Vos, “Emmanuel Lévinas ..., 20.
[42] Ibid,5.
[43] William Paul Simmons, “The Third...,86.
[44] Terry A. Veling, “In the Name of Who? ..., 281.
[45] Mo Weimin, “Phenomeology or Anti-phenomenology?- The Ethical Subject in Levinas,” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy (2008), 69.
[46] Ibid. 71.
[47] Renée D.N. van Riessen, “Man as a Place of God: Levinas’ Hermeneutics of Kenosis,” in Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought, Vol. 13, (2007), 30.
[48] Ibid, 92 (Original emphasis).
[49] Roger Burggraeve, “Violence ...,43.
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