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In 1963 G. Deledalle and D. Huisman published a collec-tion of texts in which most of the outstanding French philoso-phers presented their life and work: Les philosophes franaisdaujourdhui par eux-mmes: Autobiographie de la philosophie

franaise contemporaine. Emmanuel Levinass self-presentationis found on pages 325-28. Under the title Signature, this textalso forms the closing pages (321-27) of his own book DifficileLibert , which appeared in the same year. For a Dutch collectionof his work,Het menselijk gelaat (The Human Face), in whichSignature, under the title Handschrift (Handwriting), g -ured as the opening section, Levinas added a few paragraphs,and the French text of this version appeared in the secondedition of Difficile Libert .1 Its sober enumeration of facts andthoughts calls for additional information and meditation in or-der to grasp the full meaning of his modest statements. On thecourse of Levinass life and his intellectual development, one cannow consult a large number of interviews, especially those print-

1 Difficile Libert: Essais sur le judaisme, Prsences du judaisme, 2ndrev. ed. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1976), 373-79. This book will be cited as DL. A translation into English by Sean Hand is available as Difficult Liberty:Essays on Judaism (Baltimore, MD: the Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1991). The rst translation of Signature into English was by W.Canavan in Philosophy Today, 10, no. 1 (1966): 31-33; a second one, byM.E. Petrisko and annotated by A. Peperzak, was published inResearchin Phenomenology 8 (1978): 175-89.Les Philosophes Franais waspublished by the Centre de Documentation (Paris, 1963).Het menselijk

gelaat was published by Ambo in 1969 and republished many times (theeighth, strongly revised, edition was published in 2003).


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ed in Emmanuel Levinas:Qui tes-vous?2 and thique et Infini.3 Whereas the former tells us many details of his life, the latterone, which concentrates on the starting points and the evolutionof his thought, offers the best introduction to his work.

Even without resolving the general problem of the relationsbetween thought and existence, one can safely state that atleast some acquaintance with the personal and cultural back-ground of Levinass thinking is very helpful, if not necessary, tounderstand his criticism of the Western philosophical traditionas well as his own, surprisingly original thought. I will there-fore begin this introduction by mentioning rst some events andin uences that are relevant for a correct and sympathetic un -derstanding of his texts. Thus we will encounter several authorsand traditions toward which Levinas had to take a stand bywholly or partially integrating, rejecting, or transforming them.It will provide us with a rst, provisional sketch of what, in hiscase, it meant to become a philosopher.

Born in 1906 of Jewish parents in Kaunas, Lithuania, Levi-nas was initiated very early into Jewish orthodoxy. Being aLithuanian Jew, he was soon confronted with the surroundingChristianity a Christianity not free from anti-Semitic tenden-cies and actions and with the Russian language and culture,which dominated the school system. His father had a bookshop,and besides the Bible, which Emmanuel early on learned toread in Hebrew, the great Russian poets and novelists Pushkin,Gogol, Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc., read in the origi-nal language, formed his mind.

In 1923 Levinas left Russia for Strasbourg to study phi-losophy. Because of the political freedom and the philosophicaltradition found in France, he came to love that country, and,shortly after having published his dissertation in 1930, he be-came a French citizen. His studies familiarized him with theclassical texts of Greek and modern philosophy and with theFrench literary, psychological and philosophical tradition, asthey were presented in French universities during the twenties. A decisive turn was his introduction to Husserls phenomenolo-

2 F. Poiri, Emmanuel Levinas: Qui tes-vous(Lyon: La Manufacture,1987). An English translation is given by Jill Robbins in herIs It Righteous

to Be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas, Stanford University Press,2001: 23-83.3 thique et Infini: Dialogues avec Philippe Nemo(Paris: Fayard &

Radio France, 1982), translated by Richard Cohen asEthics and Infinity:Conversations with Philippe Nemo, Pittsburgh, Duquesne UniversityPress, 1985.


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gy.4 Husserls reception in France would still take a long time,but Levinas soon decided to write his dissertation on the funda-mental concepts of his phenomenology. He focused on the roleof intuition in Husserls thought and spent a year in Freiburg(Germany), where he attended the masters teaching during thesummer semester of 1928. Heidegger was still teaching in Mar-burg, but during the winter semester of 1928-1929 Levinas couldattend Heideggers rst course in Freiburg, titled Introductionto Philosophy.5 In 1929 he published a review of HusserlsIdeas:Sur les Ideende M.E. Husserl6 and in 1930 his dissertation,La thorie de lintuition dans la phnomnologie de Husserl,7 which received a prize from the French Academy. In the meantime, however, Levinas had come to recognize that, more thanHusserl, the author of Sein und Zeit was performing a radicaland most promising revolution in philosophy. Heideggers in u -ence is clear in Levinass dissertation on Husserl, and througha series of essays on Being and Time Levinas would remain formany years the leading French interpreter of Heideggers phi-losophy.

After the completion of his studies, Levinas returned toFrance. In Paris he participated in the administration of theschools through which the Alliance Isralite Universelleeducat-ed young Jews, who would become teachers in Turkey, the Mid-dle East, Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Later, from 1946-1961,he would become the director of thecole Normale OrientaleinParis, where these future teachers were formed.

Aside from some articles on Husserl and Heidegger and a

4 According to Levinass own statements, it was another student,Gabrielle Peiffer, who drew his attention to Husserls philosophy, which

he began to study in 1927-28 together with Jean Hring, who wrote therst French book on phenomenology: Phnomnologie et philosophiereligieuse (Paris, 1925). Cf.Emmanuel Levinas: Qui tes-vous, 73 andSignature in DL 373.

5 This course was published in 1996 as Volume 27 of theGesamtausgabe of Heideggers work by Klostermann in Frankfurt/Mainand translated as The Actual Problematic of Philosophy.

6 Revue Philosophique de la France et de Ltranger54 (1929): 230-65.

7 Paris: Alcan, 1930; 2nd and 3rd eds., Vrin, 1963 and 1970.English translation by A. Orianne: The Theory of Intuition in HusserlsPhenomenology, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenologyand Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1973). Together with Gabrielle Peiffer, Levinas translatedalso Husserls Cartesian Meditations (Edmond Husserl, MeditationsCartsiennes: Introduction la Phnomnologie[Paris: A. Colin, 1931]),and he wrote the article Freiburg, Husserl et la Phnomnologie in theRevue dAllemagne et des pays de langue allemande5 (1931): 402-14.


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series of reviews,8 Levinass philosophical production remainedmodest. Apart from some short pieces of a religious or, as he jokingly said, parochial character, he wrote only one thematicessay: De lvasion (translated as On Escape), a dif cult textin which some aspects of his later work are already visible.9

In the early 1930s, Levinas was preparing a book on Hei-degger, but only fragments of it were nished, when Heideggerscollaboration with the Nazis and his rectoral address of 1933became known. This news was a terrible shock and a turningpoint for the young Levinas. Although he continued to see Hei-degger as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth centuryand Sein und Zeit as one of the ve greatest books of Westernphilosophy,10 his philosophical judgment about Heidegger be-came increasingly critical. Initially still rather mild, his criti-cisms developed slowly into a sharp polemic against the paganinspiration of Heideggers thought.11 Even Hitler did not pro-voke Levinas to violent criticism during these years. His articleThe philosophy of Hitlerism (1934) is a relatively mild attack,which Levinas later dropped from his C.V., because he regrettedto have honored his target by naming it a philosophy.12

The victories of the Nazis, the French mobilization, and thewar silenced Levinas for several years. As a French militaryof cer, Levinas, once captured, was sent to a prisoners camp,where he had to do forced labor.13 His wife and daughter hid in aCatholic convent in France, but his wifes mother was deportedand his parents and brothers who had stayed in Lithuania weremurdered by collaborators of the Nazi occupation.

8 Some of these reviews were published in the short-lived reviewRecherches Philosophiques, founded in 1931, in which several migrs,such as Eric Weil, A. Koyr, and K. Lwith, published.

9 De lvasion was published inRecherches Philosophiques5(1935-36): 373-92. It was republished, with a letter from Levinas, byJacques Rolland, who added an introduction and notes (Fata Morgana,Montpellier, 1982).

10 The other four are Platos Phaedrus , Kants Critique of PureReason, HegelsPhenomenology of Spirit, and Bergsons Essai sur lesdonnes immdiates de la conscience(Paris, 1888).

11 See below more on Levinass relations to Husserl and Heidegger.For a review of his development in this respect during the rst periodof his re ection, see From Phenomenology through Ontology toMetaphysics: Levinass Perspective on Husserl from 1927 to 1950in my Beyond: The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas(Evanston, IL:Northwestern University Press, 1997): 38-52.

12 Quelques r exions sur la philosophie de lhitlerisme, Esprit 2(1934): 199-208.

13 A glimpse of the situation in the camp is given in Nom de chienou le droit naturel, Difficile Libert (1976), 199-202.


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When Levinas returned to Paris after the war, he publisheda small book with the programmatic and provocative titleFromExistence to Existents.14 In it he presented for the rst time an albeit still fragmentaryphenomenology of his own. The titleannounces a reversal of Heideggers enterprise. Whereas thelatter starts from a re ection on beings ( Seiendes, ltant, orlexistant) in order to unconceal being (das Sein or lexistence)itself, Levinas describes here the way of truth as a reversemovement fromSein (existence) to existents (Seiendes). Thebook attracted little attention because its style of descriptionand analysis were very uncommon and dif cult, its orientationunexpected, and the author unknown. Twenty years later, the

rst edition was not yet sold out.Not having obtained a doctorat dtat15 and without a uni-

versity position, Levinas remained marginal to the philosophi-cal scene in the academic world. His relations to Maurice Blan-chot, Gabriel Marcel, and Jean Wahl did not make him famousoutside of a small circle of experts. However, Wahl, who himself had a chair at the Sorbonne, invited Levinas to give talks ina lecture series which he had organized under the name Col-lge Philosophique. The four lectures Levinas delivered thereon Time and the Other were published in 1947, together withtexts of Wahl, Alphonse de Waelhens, and Jeanne Hersch, un -der the title Choice-World-Existence.16

Although Levinass philosophical production between 1947and the publication of Totalit et Infini17 in 1961 remained mod-est, some important articles from this time show a highly in-dependent and forceful but dif cult thinking. Besides six new

14 De lexistence lexistant, (Paris: ditions de la Revue Fontaine,

1947). A part of this small book had been published under the title Ily a in Deucalion: Cahiers de Philosophie1 (1946): 141-154. The bookwas later taken over by J. Vrin, who, in 1978, published a second editionwith a new preface by Levinas. The English translation by A. Lingis waspublished as Existence and Existentsby M. Nijhoff (The Hague-Boston,1978).

15 The doctorat dEtat is the doctors degree granted by the nation,not by a university. It often leads to a professorship at a French university.

16 Le temps et lautre, in J. Wahl et al., Le Choix-Le Monde-LExistence, Cahiers du Collge Philosophique(Paris: Arthaud, 1947),

125-196. The text was published again in a separate book and with apreface by Levinas by Quadrige-PUF (Paris, 1983).17 Totalit et Infini: Essais sur lextriorit , (The Hague: Nijhoff,

1961; 1974). The excellent English translation by Alfonso Lingis (Totalityand Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority)was published by Nijhoff (TheHague) in 1969 and several times reprinted.


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articles on Husserl and/or Heidegger,18 one on Proust,19 and oneon Lvy-Bruhl,20 Levinas published a short paper for the 1948International Congress of Philosophy, held in Amsterdam,21 and ve very dense thematic studies, in which his originalposition became more visible.22 The distinction between Levi-nass studies of other authors and his own thematic re ec -tion is a rather super cial one, since his rendering of othersthoughts most often is also a profound and original meditationon the questions treated by them. His very important articleon Heidegger, Is Ontology Fundamental? (Lontologie est-elle

fondamentale?),23 for example, not only gives a critical inter-pretation of Heideggers thoughts on being but also sketchesLevinass own different orientation and the beginning of somenew lines of thought that will develop from it. The essays Free-dom and Command24 and Ego and the Totality25 anticipateparts of Totality and Infinity, whereas Philosophy and theIdea of the In nite 26 already exposes the main coordinates of that book.

18 Lontologie dans le temporel (1948), De la description lexistence (1949), Lontologie est-elle fondamentale (1951), Laruine de la reprsentation (1959), Re xions sur la techniquephnomnologique (1959), and Le permanent et lhumain chezHusserl (1960). Some of these essays have been translated in RichardCohen & Michael B. Smith, Discovering Existence with Husserlin 1988.

19 Lautre dans Proust, Deucalion: Cahiers de Philosophie2 (1947);117-23; also in Levinas, Noms propres (Montpellier: Fata Morgana,1976), 149-56.

20 Lvy-Bruhl et la philosophie contemporaine, RevuePhilosophique de la France et de ltranger82 (1957): 556-69.

21 Pluralisme et Transcendance, Proceedings of the Tenth

International Congress of Philosophy(Amsterdam 11-18 August 1948), Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1949, 1:282-83. With afew modi cations and under the title La transcendence et la fcondit,this text has become a part of Totalit et Infini. See TI 251-254.

22 La ralit et son ombre (1948), translated by A. Lingis asReality and Its Shadow in:Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers [CPP] (Boston: Nijhoff, 1987), 1-14. La transcendance des mots: Apropos de Biffures de Michel Leiris (1949), Libert et commandement(1953), Le moi et la totalit (1954), and La philosophie et lide delIn ni (1957).

23

See note 18.24 CPP 15-24, translation of Libert et commandement,Revue deMtaphysique et de Morale58 (1953): 236-241.

25 CPP 25-46, translation of Le moi et la totalit,Revue deMtaphysique et de Morale59 (1954): 353-373.

26 CPP 47-60, translation of La philosophie et lide de lIn ni,Revue de Mtaphysique et de Morale62 (1957): 241-53; reprinted inEDHH 165-78.


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In addition to these philosophical studies, Levinass re-newed concentration on his Jewish roots is evident in a mul-titude of papers on various aspects of Judaism. From 1947 to1960, he published more than fty of these more explicitly Jew -ish pieces.27

It was only in 1961 that Levinas gained international fameby publishing his main thesis for the doctorat dEtat: Totalit et Infini.28 A continual stream of invitations, talks, articles andinterviews followed. Together with all the translations of hiswritings, the 1990 edition of Roger Burggraeves bibliographycounts more than nine hundred publications through 1985, andmany others were to follow.29

Although Levinas was already fty- ve when he obtainedhis doctorat dEtat, soon after which he became a full professorat the University of Poitiers, he had not yet reached the end of his philosophical evolution. The next landmark was the publi-The next landmark was the publi-cation of Autrement qutre ou Au-del de lEssence30 in 1974.This book expressed not so much a turn or Kehre, as somecommentators have said,31 but rather a radicalization of thethoughts reached in 1961. The earlier adherence to a partiallyontological language, still maintained in Totality and Infinity,has been transformed into a more consequential style, and theconsiderable dif culties of Levinass attempt to think beyondontology are thematized with greater force and lucidity thanbefore. However, one cannot say thatOtherwise Than Being or

Beyond Essencerepresents the nal stage of Levinass devel -opments; for, although most of the topics treated in his pub-

27 See the numbers 34, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 , 75, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85,86, 86, 88, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109,604, 606, 816 of R. Burggraeve,Emmanuel Levinas: Une bibliographie primaire et secondaire (1929-1985) (Leuven: Peeters, 1986).

28 Totalit et Infini. Essai sur lextriorit (Phaenomenologica, vol.8), La Haye, Martinus Nijhoff 1961. Instead of a second book, as formerlyprescribed by the statute of the doctorat dEtat, Levinas was allowed topresent and defend the totality of his preceding philosophical studies.

29 The most complete bibliography of Levinass writings is stillRoger BurggraevesEmmanuel Levinas. Une bibliographie primaire etsecondaire (1929-1985) avec complement (1985-1989),Leuven, Peeters1990. An online bibliography from 1929-2007 is available at http://www.uvh.nl/levinas/.

30 Phaenomenologica, vol. 54 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974). TheEnglish translation by Alfonso Lingis was published by the samepublisher under the title Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence(TheHague, Boston, London: Nijhoff, 1981).

31 Cf., for instance, St. Strasser, Jenseits von Sein und Zeit: EineEinfhrung in Emmanuel Levinas Philosophie, Phaenomenologica, vol.78 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), 219-223.


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lications after 1974 are already contained in this second opusmagnum, they are also preparations for a new and independentbook on time as diachrony, for which he has written fragmentswithout having been able to nish this project.

Many writers on Levinas present his work as a synthetic, hy-brid, or paradoxical result of Greek and Jewish culture, neglect-ing or denying thereby the importance of other traditions likethe Roman, Russian, Christian, or Germanic ones.32 Such aninterpretative scheme has the advantage of all simpli cations:by approaching a limited number of aspects from partial per-spectives, it illuminates them against an obscure backgroundinto which other aspects may have disappeared. As an initialorientation, it may nevertheless be helpful if it indicates its ownpartiality and oversimpli cation.

The scheme of Jewgreek or Greekjew has the advantagethat in opposition to a strong but forgetful tendency in con-temporary philosophy it does not altogether neglect the over-all importance of the Bible and its many Jewish and Christianinterpretations for the social and spiritual history of Westerncivilization. We will have various occasions to show the impact of a certain Judaism on Levinass thinking, which does not therebybecome less philosophical than, for example, Heideggers philo-sophical interpretations of Hlderlin or Trakl. Here I only wantto stress that, as a Lithuanian-born, culturally Russian Jew,French-educated citizen of Europe, and philosophical memberof contemporary humanity, Levinas is not only heir to (a cer-tain) Greece and (a certain) Israel but also to the Roman Empirewith the medieval and modern transformations of its legal andcultural system, to Slavic and Germanic elements that enteredinto his formation, and even to a certain form of Christianitythat has marked and impregnated two thousand years of Eu-ropean history. All these elements have some independence vis--vis one another; and although the ways in which they havebecome aspects of the common culture cannot be considered themost genuine or pure, it is impossible to reduce Rome to Greece,the Germanic traditions to nothing at all, and Christianity to asubordinate heresy of Judaism or to an amalgam of Jewish faithand Hellenistic philosophy. Characterizations of Western cul -

32 A clear example of such a treatment is J.-F. Lyotard, Oedipe Juif,Critique 21, no. 277 (1970): 530-45 (review of J. Starobinski,Hamlet etFreud (Paris, 1967); E. Levinas, Quatre lectures talmudiques (Paris,1968); andHumanisme et Anarchie (Paris, 1968); see also J.-F. Lyotard,

Drive partir de Marx et Freud (Paris: Union Gnrale dEditions,1973), 167-88.


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ture as Platonic, Greek, or Christian presuppose that thehistories to which we belong form one history whose life belongsto one single spirit, but they are too primitive from a historicalpoint of view to be taken as serious attempts at characterizingthree thousand years of civilization and action. At best, suchtitles can give a rst hint of the real orientation, but even thenwe have to ask rst what Greek, Jewish, Christian, etc.may mean.

The name Greece, for instance, as used in this context, isfar from clear. We all know that Plato and Aristotle producedtheir philosophy after the Golden Age of Pericles, and that thegreat period from Parmenides to Sophocles was not the Greecethat the multiplicity of European Renaissances tried to imitate,revive, or renew during the ninth, twelfth, thirteenth, fteenth,seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries. To whichGreece do we refer when we call some tendency of our culture,some work of a great author, or some strain of thought Greek?Is it the Greece of Homer, Aeschylus, Euclides, Demosthenes,Zeno, Epictetus, Philo, Origines, Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas,Erasmus, Winckelmann, Goethe, Hlderlin, Keats, Hegel,Burckhardt, Nietzsche, Heidegger? Many different Greecesexist, as many perhaps as there are Europes or Occidents. Dowe all share one Western world? Is not one of the features thatmakes our civilization simultaneously great and weak preciselyits ability to maintain a more or less peaceful community of rad-ically divergent traditions and histories? Today the price paidfor our moral and ideological pluralism still seems to lie in thesuper ciality or even the emptiness of our general culture as il -lustrated by the media. Is this price too high for peace?

As a philosopher, Levinas is notand is Jew, Roman, Russian,French, European, and therefore also Christian in a certainway. The speci city of his participation in the history of thoughtis marked by all the nonphilosophical traditions in which helived and by the peculiarities of the factual situation (the con-stellation of institutions, teachers, texts, ways of discussion, col-leagues, publishing policies, etc.) in which he has come to ndhimself.

Levinass French philosophical formation familiarized himwith those philosophers who, during the rst half of the twen -tieth century, were considered great; Plato, Aristotle, the Sto-ics, Plotinus, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, Berke-ley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Comte, Nietzsche, etc. The traditionof French philosophy that confronted Levinas as a student wasa special form of idealism (Flix Ravaisson, Octave Hamelin,Lon Brunschvicg), which stayed in touch with mathematics


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and psychology. Good historical studies of ancient and modernphilosophy as well as the great tradition of the explication detextes gave him a solid orientation in the history of philosophy.Henri Bergson had fought against the prevailing position of thesciences, but a Bergsonian school did not exist. Hegel was notread much; Marx still less.

The most striking feature of the philosophy taught at theuniversities of France was the total absence of all philosophiesproduced by Christian thinkers from the beginning of our chro-nology until Descartes and Pascal. Of the rst ve centuries,only writers like Plotinus and Porphyry counted as philoso-phers; neither Philo nor Origenes, Augustine or Pseudo-Diony-sius were treated as examples of independent thinking. No me-dieval philosophers were taken into consideration because theywere branded theologians. The eighteenth-centurys contemp-tuous ignorance about the Dark Ages was still the prevail-ing view. The period between Plotinus and Descartes (a periodof thirteen hundred years) was simply ignored, as if Christianfaith had prevented all brilliant people from thinking.33 Evenafter tienne Gilson and others had proved that one can hardlyunderstand Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, or Hegel without beingacquainted with scholastic philosophy, the general conceptionof philosophical history did not change noticeably.

Like every other student of philosophy, Levinas had to makechoices in his readings and meditations. He answered the ben-e cial challenge of Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenol -ogy by becoming a pupil of Heidegger, but soon the suspicionbecame almost inevitable that Heideggers thought was some-how open to Nazi in uences. The long incubation of Levinassown thought might be related to the dif culty of nding a wayamidst the contradictory tendencies he experienced in the

33 Before giving a diagnosis or criticism of Western philosophy,we should rst ask what we know about the two thousand yearsthus summarized in two words. Since it is physically impossible tohave read all the original and important texts of these millennia (itis even impossible to select them without reliance on the authorityof others who may have read them or depend themselves on others),the representation of Western philosophy is a risky extrapolationbased on a very restricted selection of works. On the basis of the textswe possess of Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, we may say that theirsituation is roughly the same as that of the French university sketchedhere. Patristic and medieval philosophy plays hardly any role in theirdiagnosis. For enlightened thinkers, philosophy tends to be restrictedto Plato, Aristotle (4th century B.C.), the Stoics, and Plotinus, on the onehand, and the philosophers of the last four centuries (from Hobbes andDescartes to the present), on the other.


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twenties and the thirties. As a Jew and Philosopher, he not onlyshared the general crisis of European intellectuals but expe-rienced intensely the apparent incompatibility between Israeland a certain Europe (or was it Europe as such?). Did this op-position and that crisis have anything to do with one another?

Who were and remained his favorite authors? As far as hisworks show certain af nities, the main philosophers he ad -mired are Plato (whose Phaedrus, Republic, Gorgias, and Pha-edo he often quotes), Descartes (mainly as the writers of theMeditations), Kant (the rst and second Critiques), Hegel (ThePhenomenology of Spirit), Husserl, and Heidegger. Of these,Plato and Heidegger are certainly the most important ones. Inthe summary of Totalit et Infini published in the Annals of theSorbonne.34 Levinas even goes so far as to say that a renewalof Platonism belongs to the task of contemporary philosophy. As far as Hegel is concerned, we must be aware of the Pari-sian scene of the years during which Levinas prepared his rstopus magnum. Even in the fties, it was still largely dominat -ed by Alexandre Kojves interpretation of thePhenomenologyof Spirit.35 In his courses of the thirties at the School of theHautes Etudes, this Russian migr transformed Hegels bookof 1807 into a philosophy of history that could compete withMarxs interpretation of world history. It became thereby one of the sources for postwar existentialism.36 Jean Hyppolites muchmore adequate interpretation of the Phenomenology37 had cor-rected Kojves distortions, but the latters more easily under-stood and nicer interpretations have continued to exercise a

34 Rsum de Totalit et In ni, Annales de lUniversit de Paris31 (1961): 9-10. An English translation of this text can be found in myPlatonic Transformations, New York, Rowman and Little eld, 1997, pp.120-121.

35 The rst French author who changed the traditional portrait of Hegel as an extremely abstract and speculative philosopher was JeanWahl, whose book La conscience malheureuse, published in 1928, tried toshow that, in many respects, young Hegel was close to Kierkegaard.

36 On the basis of these courses, Raymond Queneau published in1947 the famous book A. Kojve,Introduction la lecture de Hegel:Leons sur la Phnomnologie de lEsprit(Paris: Gallimard), translatedas Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. J. K. Nichols (Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980).

37 J. Hyppolite,Gense et structure de la Phnomnologie de lEspritde Hegel, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1946). This book had been accepted asthe main thesis for Hyppolitesdoctorat dEtat, whereas the second bookwas his translation of the Phenomenologyinto French.


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strong in uence in France and elsewhere. 38 Levinass explicitand implicit references to Hegel must therefore be read withthis background in mind. Rather than being considered thelast great metaphysician, Hegel was considered to be the rstphilosopher of history. According to this view, history would bethe absolute power that decides the destiny of humankind andpronounces the nal judgment about its meaning. This (mis-)interpretation of Hegel has been so powerful that it sometimespenetrated Levinass interpretations of Heideggers philosophy.

Already in his dissertation of 1930 on intuition, which for Hus-serl was the principle of principles,39 Levinas showed hispreference for Heideggers existential ontology over and aboveHusserls transcendental phenomenology of consciousness. His

rst articles on Heidegger testi ed to a deep admiration andcontained no criticism. Even after 1933, he did not sharply at-tack Heidegger, but Heideggers collaboration with the Nazisdemanded an explanation in which National Socialisms rela-tions to Heideggers thought could not be ignored. Levinassown philosophical approach and style remained, however, muchcloser to Heideggers than to those of Husserl or other phenom-enologists.

The rst article to manifest Levinass growing distance isthe essay De lvasion (On Escape) of 1935, in which Levinasasks how thinking can escape an all-penetrating domination of being.40 It is the reverse of the question whether and how tran-scendenceis possiblea question that, from now on, will inspireand dominate all his re ections. As a questioning beyond being,it names its point of orientation by different terms such as theother, the in nite, the metaphysical, God. Many titlestestify programmatically to this orientation by opposing being(which, as all-embracing, is connected to totality) to somethingelse: Totality and Infinity, Other(wise) Than Being, Beyond

38 For example, on Merleau-Pontys essay Lexistentialisme chezHegel,Sens et non-sens, 109-22. Also in the U.S.A., where some Hegelscholars even have transposed the Master-Servant fable of the PhGinto a quasi-Hobbesian piece of social philosophy.

39 See E. Husserl, Ideas, vol. 1, section 24.40 Recherches Philosophiques5 (1935-36), 373-392. De lvasion

was later published as a separate book with an introduction and notesby Jacques Rolland (Montpellier, Fata Morgana, 1982).


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Being, Thought of Being and the Question of the Other.41 Onthe other hand, the discussion with Heideggers meditation onbeing always accompanies Levinass search not only as a tar-get but also and primarily because the question of the beingof beings and being itself constitutes an essential element inany radical thought. In Levinass interpretation, Heideggersontology is a splendid renewal of the Western philosophicaltradition inherited from Parmenides. A thorough critique of Heidegger is therefore necessary if one wants to know wherewe stand as heirs of the tradition who experience the crisis of contemporary civilization.

The attempt to characterize Western philosophy as a wholefrom a critical distance in order to grasp its principle(s) or spiritis a metaphilosophical topos practiced by most of the great phi-losophers since KantsCritique of Pure Reasonand HegelsPhe-nomenology of Spirit. Although Levinass diagnosis shows simi-larities with Heideggers critique, the latters thought is seen asan examplealbeit a revolutionary oneof the Western modeof existence and thinking. This mode should not, however, becalled metaphysical, as Heidegger claims, but ontological. Against the constant attacks of contemporary philosophy onPlatonism and their attempts to overcome metaphysics,Totality and Infinity tries to rehabilitate simultaneously a newform of metaphysics and the most profound inspiration of Pla-tos philosophy. Better than ontology, the word metaphysicsexpresses the transcending movement of a thinking that goesbeyond the realm of being. Indeed, if we accept Heideggers in-terpretation of the Greek physis,42 it should not be translated bythe word nature but rather by being. Insofar as it grants toall beings their emergence and unfolding into the truth of theirphenomenality, the physis is the all-embracing source to whichall beings owe their coming to the fore. According to Levinas,however, the ultimate toward which all thought and existenceare oriented coincides neither with any being or with the total-ity of all beings nor with being as that which gives them genera-tion, growth, and corruption. The ultimate does not manifestitself to a logoswhose perspectives are con ned to the horizonsof beingness and being; in order to be heard or contacted, it de-mands another transcendence; and another beyond.

Just as Heideggers thought of being cannot be understoodif it is cut off from the classical texts and traditions present in

41 Cf. La pense de ltre et la question de lAutre,Critique 29(1978): 187-197.

42 Cf. M. Heidegger, Vom Wesen und Begriff der Fu,sij: Aristoteles,Physik B 1 in Wegmarken, GA 9, 239-301 (309-71).


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its retrievals, Levinass philosophy cannot be separated from itspolemical connections with Western ontology and its greatestcontemporary representative in particular. An intrinsic reasonfor this lies in the impossibility of simply rejecting or abolish-ing ontology, since it is an essential element of all philosophy.This statement, in which I summarize a connection thatas Iwill argue belowunderlies many passages of Levinass work,sounds rather Hegelian. Did Hegel not understand every sin-gle philosophy of the past as a necessary but partial half-truth,the real truth being possible only as the ultimate whole of alltruth(s)? In order to become truly (i.e., fully) true, every singlephilosophy had to be integrated, subordinated, relativized, andthus redeemed from its falsehood by becoming a functional mo-ment of the complete and nal truth, which is represented in theabsolute knowledge of the ultimate philosophy. Levinass inte-gration of ontology, however, differs no less from Hegels Auf-hebung than from Heideggersretrieval. More than Heideggersthought, Hegels systematic completion of Western philosophyis the symbol and summary of the Western tradition. This maybe the reason why Levinas sometimes seems to Hegelianize Hei-deggers thought. If, however, this impression were the wholetruth about Levinass interpretation of Heidegger, the questionwould arise whether they are not allies in their anti-Hegelianattempt to renew the paths of philosophy, or even whether Levi-nas does not simply continue Heideggers search for a beyond of totality.

Husserls renewal of philosophy through phenomenology canbe summarized in the word intentionality. He saw not onlythat all consciousness is a cogito of something (cogitatum), butalso that the intentional structure of consciousness cannot becharacterized as the relation between a representing subjectand objects met by that subject. Feeling, walking, desiring, ru-minating, eating, drinking, hammering are also intentionsorrather clusters of intentions, related in a speci c, nonrepresen -tational way to speci c correlates. The task of philosophy in -volves the intentional analysis of all the modes of phenomenal-ity in which the whole variety of different intentions is givento consciousness, that is, it involves an adequate description of their givenness and peculiar structure. Such analyses show thatevery single intention is composed of, supported by, and embed-ded in other intentions, whose interwovenness with yet otherintentions should be analyzed in their turn. A complete analysiswould reveal the speci city of all real, necessary, and possible


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phenomena in their correlatedness to all the real, necessary,and possible intentions constituting human consciousness.Since nothing can be given outside of those intentional corre-lates, such an analysis would encompass a complete descrip-tion of an all-embracing consciousness and of the totality of allbeings capable of manifesting themselves. The criterion for theauthenticity and truth of all statements that can be justi edon the basis of this approach to the phenomena is the evidenceof their being given in bodily presence. The impossibility of denying the immediate experience of their givenness was con-sidered the solid rock on which Husserlian phenomenology. es-tablished its hope for the nal promotion of philosophy to thedignity of a valid and rigorous science.

Although Husserl recognized the fact that, in addition to objectifying, presenting, and representing intentions, conscious-ness is also constituted by affective and practical intentions, hemaintainedat least in his earlier worksthe primordial andexemplary role of the theoretical or doxic intentions. Notwith-standing his effort to purify consciousness from all contingentand particular features in order to reach a truly transcenden-tal perspective, consciousness remained primarily a panoramicreview of the universe as a presently given, remembered, oranticipated world of phenomena. All forms of nontranscenden-tal consciousness were parts of this universe, and the spirit of this phenomenology remained faithful to the modern urge forautonomy. Following the path of Descartes and Hegel, it strovetoward the absolute self-possession of a transcendental ego in-cluding the truth of all that is given in the knowledge of itself.

An extension of the structure of doxic intentions to otherspecies of intentionality by additional analyses of emotional ex-periencesas Max Scheler presentedis not a suf cient reme -dy against the egological illusions of Husserlian phenomenol-ogy. Affective and emotional intentions, too, can be interpretedas partial structures of a universe that opens up for a centraland all-encompassing consciousness. However, the experienceof our existence shows that consciousness is never so univer-sal as to embrace also its own being and beginning. Besides anelement of self-consciousness, every single experience includesalso the acceptance of a surprising element that is irreducibleto a spontaneous production by ego itself. And not only knowl-edge but all intentions and consciousness as such af rm thesurprising otherness of an a posteriori element that cannot bereduced to a moment of the cogito or its well-controlled pan-orama. Self-consciousness discovers itself as an original andirreducible relation to some other that it can neither absorbnor posit by its own, a priori, capacities. The origin is not to be


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found in a transcendental ego; it is the absoluteness of an ulti-mate relation.

Heideggers transformation of phenomenology has taughtus that consciousness is rooted in deeper levels of being-therethat precede all sorts of objectifying knowledge and represen-tation. Hammering, caring, being busy, being thrilled, etc., arespeci c ways of understanding the being of beings before anythematization. Dasein is openness and transcendence towardthe truth of beings; it is enlightened by the original light thatallows them to appear. The understanding of being implied inour ways of existence is the horizon that allows the coming intobeing and the phenomenality of all phenomena and their inter-wovenness.

Notwithstanding Heideggers constant insistence on thedistinction between the totality of beings (das Seiende im Gan-zem) and being (Sein) itself, and notwithstanding his contrast-ing Dasein with the autonomous subject of modern philosophy,Levinas is convinced that Heideggerin the end does not escapefrom the totalitarian and egological tendencies of the Westerntradition.

A rst line of attack characterizes Heideggers thought asan attempt to identify the ultimate instance as an all-embracinghorizon. Although Levinas, at least in some oral discussions,43 clearly stated that Heideggers Sein does not signify a total-ity, various passages of his work seem to say or suggest thatbeing is so intimately united with the universe of beings thatit cannot be freed from its totalitarian character. As an all-encompassing horizon within which all beings (humans, gods,and God included) are allowed to be, being is the ultimate uni-versal. Even if it were possible to distinguish it from beingsand their inherent beingness without making being itself intoan ultimate, originary, and fundamental being, it would not bepossible, according to Levinas, to conceive of it as a nontotal-izing instance.

In this discussion, the ontological difference is at stake. Canwe distinguish clearly between beings (including the modes of their being) and being itself? In the rst chapters of Autrementqutre, Levinas, through an original retrieval of Heideggersthought, gives his own interpretation of the beingness of being;but neither there nor in Totalit et Infini does it seem to be dif-ferent from the beingness of beings (to on h i on). In evoking

43 For example, in a seminar we gave in May 1983 at the NapolitanInstituto Italiano di Filoso a. In the fth Conclusion of Totalit etInfini (270/294-95), Levinas seems to af rm very clearly that Heideggersontology is a panoramic thought and a philosophy of totality.


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Heideggers ontology, Levinas most often uses the word tre toindicate two things at once: (1) that by which all beings are giv-en as what and how they are (being itself), and (2) (the wholeof) reality as such, that is, (all) beings insofar as they exist. If the distinction between these two cannot be made in a compre-hensible way, how then can we escape from identifying being asthe monistic horizon or source of universal participation?

More detailed study of the relationship between Heideggerand Levinas must revise, correct, and re ne the summary giv -en here as a provisional orientation. By way of anticipation,it might be stated already that the very perspectives of bothauthors are so radical and so radically different that it may re-main doubtful whether we can understand their thoughts asanswers to one and the same question.

In Levinass view, the central and all-mastering positionof the modern ego is retained in Heideggers analysis of Das-ein, notwithstanding its profound transformation of all formerphilosophy of consciousness. Even if it is true that the funda-mental passivity of Befindlichkeit,mortality, and contingencyis stressed and that Heidegger attributes the initiative of dis-covery and truth more and more to being itself, the subject of acceptance and letting-be is still the center of a panoramicuniverse, an open space well protected against invasions anddisruptions by other humans, other histories, or God. If godsexist, they are there for men. Other humans are mentioned onlyas companions within anonymous communities, not as disturb-ing forces that rob me of my central place.

Heideggers radicalization of phenomenology has estab-lished the domination of the most radical and original of allintentions: the essence of the human being-there is tran-scendence toward the granting clearing of being, to which allphenomena owe their truth. From the beginning, alwaysalready ( je schon), all beings are caught in the fundamentalunderstanding of a subject that, thereby, has always alreadybeen familiar to them. According to Levinas, Heideggers insis-tence on this prepredicative familiarity is a new version of Pla-tos interpretation of knowledge as remembrance (anamnesis)and of Hegels claim that the core of all empirical givenness canbe deduced from self-evident principles.44

Besides the rather abstract considerations just summa-rized, Levinass oeuvre contains passages in which he attackscertain analyses of Heidegger from a strictly phenomenologi-cal point of view. Levinas understands Heideggers attempt to

44 Cf. T. Sheehan, Excess, Recess, Access,Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 41 (1979): 635.


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think being in the light of the expression es gibt (the normalGerman equivalent of the English there is and the French il

y a) as the celebration of a profound generosity by which beingwould bestow light, freedom, truth, and splendor to all beings.Il y a does not, however, strike Levinas as particularly gener-ous but rather as an indeterminate, shapeless, colorless, cha-otic, and dangerous rumbling and rustling. The confrontationwith its anonymous force generates neither light nor freedombut rather terror as a loss of selfhood. Immersion in the lawlesschaos of there is would be equivalent to the absorption by adepersonalizing realm of pure materiality. With regard to thisbeing, the rst task and desire is to escape or evade it (cf.On Escape). The source of true light, meaning, and truth canonly be found in something other than it.45

In his new preface to the 1978 reprint of De lexistence lexistant, rst published in 1946 , Levinas singles the descriptionof there is out as a portion of his former thought that he stilldefends.46 Without rejecting his former description, he describesthe essence of being in Autrement qutre(1974) as an interesseor interestedness that rules all beings, while connecting themtogether by a reciprocally interested self-interest. Positing everybeing as a center for itself, it is through their performance of being, characterized by Spinoza as aconatus essendi, that all be-ings participate in one community of self-preservation. Being asa universal interestedness makes all beings, and especially theliving ones, mutually competitive and dependent. Their needsrelate them to one another and create an economic system of mutual satisfaction as well as a political network of resistance,tension, hostility, and war for the sake of self-satisfaction. Ruledby universal interest, human history is an alternation of warand truce on the basis of needs.

The preceding pages have argued that if all knowledge presup-poses the experience of something that can be neither given norwholly integrated by consciousness as such, then there must besomething other than being. Against the thesis that all truthsand values can ultimately be reduced to the transcendental ac-tivity of an autonomous subject, Levinas insists forcefully on

45 The description of il y a was the prepublished part of Levinassrst thematic book, De lexistence lexistant(1947). However, the

opposition to Heideggers description of being was already present in Delvasion, of 1935-36.

46 He alludes to it also in TI 116, 117, 165-66; cf. 132-34.


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the irreducible moments of heteronomy. Instead of seeing allrealities as unfolding or surrounding elements of one basic andcentral instance called the Same, which realizes itself by ap-propriating them, the irreducibility of Otherness must be recog-nized. This recognition supplants the overt or hidden monism of ontology by a pluralism whose basic ground model is the rela-tion of the Same (le Mme) and the Other (lAutre).

The otherness of the Other is concretized in the face of an-other human. The proof for Levinass basic principle lies in themost ordinary, simple, and everyday fact of another facing me.I can see another as someone I need in order to realize certainwants of mine. She or he is then a useful or enjoyable part of my world, with a speci c role and function. We all belong to dif -ferent communities, in which we function more or less well onthe basis of reciprocal needs. Ican also observe another from anaesthetic perspective, for example, by looking at the color of hereyes, the proportions of his face, and so on. But none of theseways of perception allows the otherness of the other to revealitself. All aspects manifested by a phenomenological descriptionthat starts from these perspectives are immediately integratedby my self-centered, interested, and dominating consciousness.These ways of looking at them transform the phenomena intomoments of my material or spiritual property. The sort of phe-nomenology based on these and similar observations is a formof egology.

Another comes to the foreas other if and only if his or herappearance breaks, pierces, destroys the horizon of my ego-centric monism, that is, when the others invasion of my worlddestroys the empire in which all phenomena are, from the out-set, a priori, condemned to function as moments of my universe.The others face (i.e., any others facing me) or the others speech(i.e., any others speaking to me) interrupts and disturbs theorder of my, egos world; it makes a hole in it by disarraying myarrangements without ever permitting me to restore the previ-ous order. For even if I kill the other or chase the other awayin order to be safe from the intrusion, nothing will ever be thesame as before.

When Levinas meditates on the signi cance of the face, hedoes not describe the complex gure that could be portrayed bya picture or painting; rather, he tries to make us experience orrealize what we see, feel, know when another, by looking atme, touches me:autrui me vise; the others visage looks at me,regards me. Similarly the word language, often used in thiscontext, evokes the speech addressed to me by some living manor woman and not the linguistic structures or anonymous mean-ings that can be studied objectively or practiced by a style-con-


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scious author. Autrui me parle primordially, it is not importantwhat is said; even if the words are nonsensical, there is stilltheir being addressed. Neither is it relevant who speaks to me;any other is the revelation of the Other, and peculiar featuresdeserving special attention would only lead me away from theabsolute otherness that is at stake. IN order to concentrateon the others otherness, Levinas often stresses the nakednessof the others face: if I am touched, if I am conscious of beingconcerned, it is not because of the others beauty, talents, per-formances, roles, or functions but only by the others (human)otherness.

As disrupting the horizon of my egologicaland thus, onto-logicalways of handling and seeing the world, the others re-sist a description that would present them as a particular sortof phenomenon among other phenomena within a universal or-der of beings. Since they show and present precisely thoserealities that do not t into the universal openness of conscious -ness, they cannot be seized by the usual categories and modelsof phenomenology. the other transcends the limits of (self-)con-sciousness and its horizon; the look and the voice that surpriseme are too much for my capacity of assimilation. In this sense,the other comes toward me as a total stranger and from a di-mension that surpasses me. The otherness of the other revealsa dimension of height (hauteur ): he/she comes from on high.

Husserls theory of intentionality, based on an adequate andsymmetric correlation between nosis and noma, no longer

ts. A forgotten element of Descartess analysis of conscious -ness, however, offers a formal structure much closer to the re-lation meant by Levinas. According to Descartes thirdMeta-

physical Meditation, all human consciousness contains not onlyand not primarily the idea of itself but also and precedingly theirreducible idea of the in nite, that is, an immediate and a

priori given relation of the conscious subject to a reality thatcan neither be constituted nor embraced by this subject. Thismeans that the cogito from the outset is structured by a bipo-larity other than the bipolarity of the noetico-noematic relationof phenomenology, in which an idea and itsideatum t one an -other adequately. Descartes still knew (as all great metaphysi-cians before him) that consciousness thinks more than [or be-yond] that which it can think. The in nite is different from anynoma orcogitatum, for it essentially surpasses our capacity forconception and embracing. Although Descartes identi es thein nite with God (i.e., the God of the traditional, late scholas -tic philosophy), we can consider the formal structure he discov-ers to be the structure of my relation to the other in the formof another human being. When I am confronted with another,


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I experience myself as an instance that tries to appropriate theworld by labor, language, and experience, whereas this otherinstance does not permit me to monopolize the world becausethe Others greatness does not t into any enclosurenot eventhat of theoretical comprehension. This resistance to all inte-gration is not founded on the otherswill; beforeany possibilityof choice andbeforeall psychological considerations, the merefact of anothersexistenceis a surplus that cannot be reducedto becoming a part or moment of the Same. The Other cannot becaptured or grasped and is therefore, in the most literal sense of the word, incomprehensible.

In all his works, Levinas has endeavored to show that the(human) other radically differs from all other beings in theworld. The others coming to the fore cannot be seen as a varia-tion of the general way of appearance by which all other beingsare phenomenal. This is the reason why Levinas reserves theword phenomenon for realities that t into the totality of be -ings ruled by egological understanding. Since the other cannotbecome a moment of such a totality, it is not a phenomenon butrather an enigma. However, if an enigma cannot be de ned inphenomenological terms, we must ask: can it be de ned at all?If visibility, in a broad and metaphorical sense, is a feature of every being that can become a phenomenon, one may even callthe enigmatic other invisible.47

The other imposes its exceptional and enigmatic othernesson me by way of a command and a prohibition: you are not al-lowed to kill me; you must accord me a place under the sun andeverything that is necessary to live a truly human life! Yourfacing me or your speaking to mewhatever form your address-ing me might takeforbids me to suppress, enslave, or damageyou; on the contrary, it obligates me to dedicate myself to yourwell-being. It is not your will or want or wish that makes meyours truly, but your emerging, your being there, as such. In-dependently of your or my desires, your presence reveals to methat I am for you, responsible for your life.

We meet here an exceptional, extraordinary, and absolute fact: a fact that is and exists simultaneously and necessarily asa fact and as a command or norm. By seeing another looking atme, or by hearing someones voice, I know myself to beobliged.The scission between factuality (is) and normativity (ought)ascission many philosophers since Hume have believed inhasnot yet had the time to emerge here. The immediate experienceof anothers emergence contains the root of all possible ethics as

47 Cf., e.g., TI 4 (TaI 34). See also Enigme et Phnomne, inEndcouvrant, 203-217 (CPP 61-74).


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well as the source from which all insights of theoretical philoso-phy must start. The others existence as such reveals to me thebasis and primary sense of my obligations.

The abstract structure that was opposed to the tautology of egocentric monism has now been concretized into a relationbetween the selfhood of an ego and the otherness of the otherperson who comes toward this ego. This relation posits a certainconnection still to be quali ed, but also a separation. The latteris necessary in order to avoid the consequence that the indepen-dence and difference of both the other and me are drowned in afusion, or lifted up into a higher unity. The connection lies inthe fact that the others emergence answers the deepest desirethat motivates me.

At rst, the statement that the commanding and demand -ing Other corresponds to my deepest desireand thus is themost desirable for memust surprise. Can an imperative thatmakes me the others servant be experienced as desirable? Doesmy desire not desire my own ful llment, satisfaction, and plea -sure or joy? Can obligations provide these? Do they not rather,as Kant so often stated, cause humiliation, pain, and dissatis-faction?

The argument of Totality and the Infinite begins with ananalysis of desire and the movement it motivates. We will ana -lyze that analysis, but here a brief provisional hint seems need-ed. Levinas contrasts desire with need. Needs encompass notonly hunger and thirst, but also many other wants and drivesthat motivate certain activities. Aesthetic and spiritual pur-suits, for example, also move us from a lack or privation towardsatisfaction and ful llment. Although, in the rst pages of TI,Levinas alludes to Platos analyses of Ers in the Banquet andthe Phaedrus , where the lovers ful llment and joy seem to beconstitutive of the desired end, we will see that Totality andInfinity rather should be read as a treatise about conversionfrom a basic, egocentric Need to an outer-directed, even morefundamental Desire, which dedicates, offers, and empties theDesiring self in the name of its dedication to the well-being of others. According to Levinas, true Desire is not a need; it is notfocused on self-satisfaction, not even in the form of ones ownsalvation, but it does desire something absolute, somethingthat cannot be subordinated tonor even compared withany-thing else. Desire is too deep and too empty ever to be fullysatis ed. Its hunger grows to the extent that it comes nearerto the desirable. The most radical Desire is a hunger that feeds


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on itself. It points to an absolute that does not t into the com -prehensive capacity of the desiring subject. The answer givenby the absolute, in the form of the invisible other, is not akind of satisfaction but instead an in nite task: the task of myresponsibility toward everyone I shall ever meet.

The dissatisfaction of this Desire with all nite and visiblephenomena shows its absoluteness. It is a Desire for the Abso-lute.48 This is another reason why Levinas characterizes it asDesire for the invisible and why he calls the desired absoluteinfinite, but we must still discover what in nity and invis -ibility in this context mean.

Desire is another name for human transcendence, if weunderstand this as a reaching out toward that which is abso-lutely or irreducibly other and exterior to the form and contentof a human interiority. The desired desirableness cannot be-come part of an egocentric life. Desire opens the dimension thatLevinas, in the subtitle of TI , evokes by the word exteriority,as contrasted with the self-enclosed interiority of an ego thatdoes not accept its pre-original transcendence to the other.

To Desire is to be toward and to live for the Other, and thisinvolves a limitless responsibility. But to endure my responsi-bility for others, I must be someone: an independent being withan initiative and a concrete existence of its own. What are theconditions for this independence? In the unfolding of his answerto this question, Levinas proceeds like an accomplished phe-nomenologist. He analyzes thoroughly the intentions throughwhich the I is constituted as an independent subject or self.In doing so, he criticizes the Heideggerian analyses of Daseinsbeing-in-the-world, as found inSein und Zeit. Human selfhoodis due to a speci c way of commerce with the surrounding real -ity: to be an ego means to rise out of the elements and dominatethem from an independent perspective, for example by consum-ing or using parts of the world by eating, washing, inhabiting,etc. The character of my commerce with terrestrial food is notprimarily utilitarian, however. The world is not primarily a con-text of useful tools and referential networks but rather a milieuin which we establish ourselves to enjoy the pleasures it offers.We stand on the earth and walk from place to place; we bathein water, air, and light. Food and drink are enjoyed, not pri-marily sought out of rational considerations but because theyare good, that is, pleasurable. If we did not establish a homein which to dwell, we would be lost and without orientation.Only a dwellingwhich ts no better than food and beverageinto Heideggers category of the ready-to-handenables us to

48 TI 1-2 (TaI 33-34).


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settle and to labor. Regular work would not be possible werethere not at the same time a kind of immersion in the environ-ment and a certain distance with regard to material reality. Thelatter enables us to objectify the world, but all objecti cationpresupposes that we are already settled and, to a certain extent,familiar with the world. Objecti cation is made explicit and the -matized in scienti c considerations of the reality, but it emergesfrom a primary kind of osmosis with the world.

The description of being in the world, as given inTotalityand Infinity, has features of an earthly paradise. To love and toenjoy the earth, by eating, drinking, dwelling, etc., are activitiesthat have not drawn much attention from Western philosophers.By way of his phenomenology of terrestrial existence in light of an all-embracing hedonism, Levinas shows that our search forhappiness is not bad but rather a necessary condition of the pos-sibility of the self-possession through which the I acquires itsautonomous substantiality. In this still-solitary dimension, thelaw of life is: Enjoy life and enjoy the earth as much as possible.

Appropriation, integration, and assimilation are constitu-tive, and thus necessary, elements of any concrete human indi-viduality. It would be possible to systematize Levinass descrip-tions of this existential dimension and to range all the aspectsthus revealed as organized elements of an ontological hierarchy,but such an encyclopedic enterprise is not the purpose of hisphenomenological style. It is thus not immediately clear fromhis texts how exactly the bathing in the elements of light, water,and air relates to our immersion in the there is (il y a). Afteropening up new paths, Levinas attempts again and again to de-termine how he can hold them open and prolong or adjust them.He also asks how different paths may converge or meet, but his

goal is not the full description of a complete map wherein allways and crossings have received their proper assignments andproportions. Although certain sorts of totality are good and nec-essary, Levinas is much more concerned about the relevance of the Others disruption of all horizons than about the systematicconstruction of a well-articulated universe.

Through his analyses of a paradise-like existence, which lla large part of Totality and Infinity, Levinas legitimizes the ego-centrism that is at the heart of all hedonisms. The enjoyment of

a corporeal and terrestrial existence is constitutive for any ego:the I establishes itself as a self through the absorption of ele-ments, things, and events or by submitting them to the Is domi-nation and possession. Without this appropriating and hedonicegocentrism, there would be no relationship to other personsbecause this relation presupposes a basic level of individual in-dependence, even if further analysis will show the relativity of


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this independence. An encounter of unfree, wholly dependentand in this sense sel ess beings can result only in fusion orconfusion. To the extent that the world of dwelling, eating anddrinking, sleeping, working, and so on, satis es the needs of theego and con rms its position of ruler and owner, it can be called,in a broad sense of the word, the world of economy. The law(nomos) by which this dimension is ruled is the law of being inthe world as being in ones own home (oikos).

A human being is, however, more than a cluster of needsand more than a being (feeling, acting, etc.) at home. Desirepoints beyond the horizon of economy. That is why the legiti-mization of egocentric hedonism is not absolute but relative. If it does not submit itself to a higher law, it loses its innocence.The consciousness of an ego protecting itself against all non-economical realities is a bad conscience (mauvaise conscience),because the encounter with another reveals the supreme law:my selfhood must bow before the absoluteness revealed in an-others look or speech. My home, my food and beverage, mylabor, all my possessions and delights receive their de nitivemeaning by being put into the serve of others who, by theirunchosen height, make me responsible. All commandmentstogether form one single order: the other makes me accountablefor his life. I must feed my body and arrange my house in orderto receive the foreigner who knocks at my door. If I possess ahome, it is not for me alone. Expressions such as After youor Make yourself at home say quite well that the person whoenters is received and respected as Other. Here I am does not,then signify that I am the most important being of the world,but on the contrary, that I am at your disposal. The French mevoici expresses it much better by putting the I in the oblique

form. Indeed, the entering of another in my world producessuffering for me, if I have abandoned myself wholly to hedo-nism. The claims implied in the Others existence put limits onmy right to satisfy myself. These limits are so exorbitant thatthey even threaten to reduce my claims to zero. Insofar as I amstill imprisoned in the dream of my paradise-like innocence, theOther awakens, accuses, and judges me.

The absoluteness revealed in the others visage causes anearthquake in my existence. The justi cation of my nestling in

the worldand of the appropriation, labor, and consumption bywhich it is accompanieddoes not lie in the necessity of my sat-isfaction but in the dedication to others that thereby becomespossible. To realize my responsibility for the Other, I myself must be independent; but the deeper meaning of my selfhoodis my being-for-the-Other. The law before which my economi-cal existence must bow is not primarily the autonomy of my


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own reasonability; neither is it the voice of being that summonsme to obey; nor is it a range of prescriptions that would havedescended from heaven. It is the life of the Other who, as a for-eigner, disrupts my being at home in the world as if I were itsmaster and possessor, who enjoys his solitary and premoralself.

From the perspective of the metaphysical relation (as Levi-nas calls the pre-chosen and pre-original relation betweenthe Other and the self), which has thus replaced the founda-tion (arche) or the principle ( primum principium) sought byphilosophy from its Greek beginning, Levinas has developed avery original interpretation of human existence and, in the rstplace, of the human subject, which since Descartes has beenprimarily understood as an ego or an I. In contrast with thoseFrench philosophers who resolutely abolished human subjectiv-ity and autonomy without wondering whether the traditionalway of problematizing them perhaps should not rather be trans-formed, Levinas tries to show that the human self (le soi or lemoi) has a structure other than the one that was presupposedby the tradition.

Oriented by the Desire that directs me to the Other, andthus by the Other whom I cannot assimilate, I am a human bodyof esh and blood, simultaneously independent and pertainingto the Other. Only on the basis of this double-sided factbut notas the most radical truthcan a human being be de ned as aliving being that is reasonable or as a unity of body and spiri-tual soul. The whole of my concretecorporeal, sensible, kinet-ic, emotional, contemplative, strivingexistence is determinedby my orientation toward the Other: I am demanded, occupied,obsessed, and inspired by the Other. As a partial elaborationof this thesis, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being offer extensive and re ned analyses of human corporeality andsensibility not contaminated by any dualism. From the outset,being human is a concrete and physical sensitivity to the claimsrevealed by the Other, a being-delivered to the Other and evena substitute. Since the fact of others existence makes me in -nitely responsible, I am a hostage even before I may know it.The accusative of the accusation in which I nd myself when Itry to live for myself alone reveals itself in the unrest of a badconscience. If I open myself to the Others speech, the meaningof that accusative changes, although I must continue to pleadguilty because I will never completely perform my endless ob-ligation. As hostage and substitute, I am no longer master of


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the situation but vulnerable and persecuted by the fact of theOthers claims.

No more than the body is the spirit a distinct part of a com-position called man. Corporeality, to have giving hands and aconsoling mouth, is itself the concrete way of being human, thatis, of being-for-the-Other; and spirit is nothing other than theinspiration thanks to which corporeal existence has a meaning.

The consequences that this overcoming of dualism has forphilosophical anthropology, and especially for a philosophy of the senses and feelings, are not yet fully seen. In this point,a certain af nity with Heidegger is undeniable, although thelatter did not give much attention to the simplest aspects of ev-eryday life, such as eating and drinking. A great difference lies,however, in the fact that Levinas insists on the primordiallymoral meaning of human life, whereas Heidegger concentrateson the contemplative and poetic aspects.

A rst, rather obvious objection raised in various forms by read -ers and nonreaders of Levinas says: If it is true that the exis-tence of another human being makes me in nitely responsiblefor him or her, this thesis is also valid for everyone other thanme; everybody is an I for whom I and all other humans are oth-ers. All human beings are therefore equally and reciprocallycommanding and serving one another; everyone is master andservant at the same time.

This objection is formulated from a perspective that placesitself outside or above the relation of the other(s) and me; itconsiders all others and me as similar cases of one and the samespecies or genus of beings: both (or all of us) are human beings,who, as humans, appear to one another (and to all people) ascommanding and demanding beings. It is, indeed, possibleitis even inevitablethat we treat the relation between you andme as a singular case of the universal concept interhuman rela-tionship and that we look at human individuals as singulariza-tions of a universal essence: being human.

All the works of Levinas testify to this possibility, which isa necessity. By thematizing all here-and-now concrete realities,the language of re ective discourse transforms them into singlecases of general possibilities. Not always, however, does the con-tent of such a discourseits Said (le dit)adequately renderwhat it wants to say. What Levinas tries most of all to expressin the Said of his writings is the unicity of a unique experi-ence that cannot be universalized: Inot an other ego, but Imyself, named so and so, born there and then, having lived until


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now this life story in connection with these and those relations,friends, etc., who here-and-now, in these particular and contin-gent situations nd myself confronted with, and thereby oc -cupied, demanded, and obsessed by, this Other here-and-now.But is this sentence itself not a statement that can be appliedto all egos, among which I am only one case of ego-ness? In-deed, I should have written: I, Adriaan Peperzak and so on,by way of a summary pointing at the unrepeatable features of one unique life. But are there unique features? And if I writesuch a phrasenot by way of promise, contract, or vow but ina philosophical treatise on ethics (which might be an ethics inthe situational style)have I not already betrayed the intentionof saying something unique? By using such a phrase as an ex-ample, I state through it a general truth valid for any ego. WhatI say in recognizing my being-for-you and your having rights onme is thematized and thereby changed into a universal truthas soon as I write down I, here, now, thus, am obligated,you, and so on.

When we read Levinass writing about the unicity of a sin -gular Other or a singular I that cannot be universalized, we un-derstand what he wants to express, but at the same time we areaware of the abyss that separates the Said, which sounds likea universal truth, from the experience of Levinass discoveringhimself as the one who is totally and uniquely responsible for adeterminate Other, who also, but in a different way (as puttingobligations on Levinas), is unique. The generalizing language of the thematizing discourse that has become the language of phi-losophy is not able to express the uniqueness of such a uniqueexperience.

Levinas calls the uniqueness of my (or your) being respon-sible for the Other an election. I have been chosen, neither bymyself nor by anothers will or decision but by some no-thingthat speaks to me through the Other who shows me his or herface. I have been chosen to be responsible for anybody I shallmeet. I cannot refuse this election, for it has appointed me as anirreplaceable servant who cannot put thismyburden on oth-ers. The Others existence reveals to me a unique task, whichconstitutes the meaning of my life. Only through re ection and not by way of immediate experiencedo I discover that ev-ery human being experiences the same responsibility as I doand that I, toonot through any willing but by simply beingthereimpose an in nite responsibility on each one of them.The discovery of our similarity in this respectand therewiththe thought of a fundamental equality between myself and allother peopleis the fruit of a re ective comparison; it is not si -multaneous with, but comes after, the revelation of a more origi-


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nal asymmetry. This original asymmetry cannot be erased andshould not be obscured or forgotten by concentration on the sec-ondary truth of our equality. Like all people, I can and must beseen as a replaceable instance of one universal being-human(cf. KantsMenschheit), but universal equality masks the moreoriginal asymmetry that relates me to you.

Levinas has tried more than once to cope with the objectionexposed above: It is not I, but the other, who must state and rec-ognize his or her in nite responsibility toward me. For now itmay suf ce, however, to stress the core of the issue. This lies inthe difference between, on the one hand, the recognition in the

rst person of my responsibilityI and only I am responsiblefor any otherand the universal imperative, on the other hand,formulated from an Archimedean point of view unengaged inthe situation, the body, and the time in which I, here and now,without choosing them (malgr moi, as Levinas often writes),

nd myself involved. The radical standpoint that I can neitherabolish nor deny (although I can forget, ignore, or neglect it) ismy being claimed and taken hostage by the Other with whom I,quite contingently, happen to meet. I discover myself as radical-ly different from any other, namely as a me in the oblique, sub- jected to and unable to escape from my being regarded, touched,and put under obligations by my encounters.

The passivity involved in this structure is opposed to a wayof being that could be characterized as an autonomous initiativeor self-projection. My speaking, for example, is not primarily amagisterial discourse in which I expose my themes from an all-encompassing or transcendental perspective. On the contrary,as a speech through which I express my high esteem for my in-terlocutor, it does not permit me to submit its upward directionto a superior overview of our relation and my speech; my ad-dressing the Other is an apo-logy. In talking to someone, I can-not detach myself from the speech that expresses my dedication.I am not capable of leaving behind or overcoming my nite andobligated selfhood by a transcendental stepping back that wouldposition me as a master of the game that plays between us.

In Otherwise Than Being, Levinas insists on the inner co-herence between the fundamental passivity at the bottom of substitution and suffering for another, on the one hand, and theSaying (le dire) that precedes and never coincides with any Said(le dit), on the other. In complete distinction from those who areinclined to see language as an anonymous power not only rulingbut also producing all writings and speeches of all (pseudo-)au-thors, Levinas insists on the absolute irreducibility and incom-prehensibility of speaking as such, in which somethingsome-onecomes to the fore before its Said is understood. Speaking


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itself cannot be de ned or determined as a content (said) with -in the framework of conceptual discourse. It is surely possible totalk to a speaker in order to reach him or her through language,but that by which the other is someone evaporates as soon asmy language thematizes the utterance of a speech.

Whereas the Saying breaks all the limits of philosophicallanguage, the Said belongs to the dimension of things that areobjecti able. Among them are also the technical, the politi -cal, and the aesthetic works and performances through whichpeople realize history. The Other, the Self, and Speaking, how-ever, cannot enter the realm of the Sayable because in all theirvulnerability and humility they are too originary for a theticthought that would try to thematize them. And yet we hearthem continuously. Before a philosopher submits the Other,herself, or speaking to the categories and structures of her dis-course but also in the course of her re ection, there is, behindher re ecting consciousness, an I that addresses itself throughthat re ection. Speaking addresses itself to listeners, present -ing them with certain contents (Saids) that can be objecti edand talked about, but the horizon formed by you who listen tome, and by me who speak to you, cannot be surpassed by the ho-rizon of a universe in which you and I are parts or participantsonly. All linguistic totalities are transcended by and owe theirexistence to, the relation of speaking a relation that escapesall attempts to reduce speech to an object, a topic, or a theme.

A second objection often made against Levinass insistence onthe relation of you and me can be state din the following way: If the existence of one Other already condemns me to an unlimitedresponsibility and dedication, how, then, can I cope with the factthat I, during my lifetime, am confronted not only with one ora few men, women, and children, but with innumerable other?

This dif culty, too, presupposes a point of view that is nolonger con ned to the unique relation of me-here-and-now tothis unique other here-and-now. The objection is therefore aparticular version of a fundamental question perhaps never an-swered in a satisfactory way: How exactly are face-to-face rela-tions related to collective structures?

Classical social philosophy has always seen people as real orpotential parts, role takers, functionaries, or citizens of differ-ent sorts of social formations. In developing a theory of society,the philosopher (jut like his reader or student) is present twice:once as one of the constitutive elements of the social whole uponwhich he is re ecting, and a second time as the master of a


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conceptual game, that is, as an imaginary and theoretical sum-mit from which that social whole is unrolled. If he, for example,stresses the equality of all human beings, he maintains, in ad-dition to his equality as fellow person, the inequality of himself and the others, since he sits at the top, overseeing the humancommunity of which he, with and like all others, is a part. Thisview does not do justice to the structure of the intersubjectiverelation described above, in which I am the servant and subject of the Other. And yet such a panoramic overview isforLevinas tooinevitable and bene cial if limited to a certain di -mension. The moral perspective itself, the very relation of inter-subjective asymmetry, not only demands an in nite respect forsomebody who confronts me as (a) You; it also imposes a generalcare for all human others whose face and word I cannot perceivepersonally.

We cannot claim that Levinas has deduced a complete so -cial philosophy from the intersubjective relation he analyzed sooften and so well. Neither does one nd in his numerous pub -lications an exhaustive treatment of the relations between theintersubjective relation and the categories of social and politicallife. He does, however, give a number of important indicationsfor the determination of those relations.

Already in The Ego and the Totality (1954) Levinas statedthat the encounter with the Other cannot limit itself to the in-timacy of love because this would exclude all people except myintimate friends from my attention and responsibility. Otherothers stand beside and behind this unique other who obligesme here and now through his or her presence. Since the obliga-tion is not attached to any particular feature of this other butonly to his or her entrance into my world, all others oblige meas much as this one. In this others face, I see the virtual pres-ence of all men and women. Since I cannot, however, behave inany concrete way as everybodys servant, the situation makesit necessary for me to gather all others by means of a universalcategory that allows me to speak about them in general terms.

It is, however not enough to speak about all humans; we areurged to take measures and to follow rules according to whichthe concrete dedication of everyone to all others will be real-ized. This demands a social organizationLevinas often useshere the word administrationin which mutual respect andequality of rights are guaranteed by mores and other institu-tions. At this point, Levinass thinking converges with the main-stream of modern social philosophy. But the inspiration of histhought and his philosophical legitimation of a just and liberalsociety nd their source exclusively in the original relationshipof the(unique-)one-for-the-(unique-)Other, that is, in the moral


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principle explained above. Administration and politics havetheir true source in the absolute esteem of individuals for otherindividuals. All social tasks are consequences of, and prepara-tions for, the possibility of adequate face-to-face relationshipsand good conversations. If they are not directed toward thisend, collective measures lose their human meaning becausethey have forgotten or masked real faces and real speech. Thisforgetfulness is the beginning of tyranny. If the in nite dignityof concrete individuals whom we love has been obscured, theonly outcomes are universal war in the name of innumerablecon icting needs, or the dictatorship of an ego who happens tobe the handiest of all, or an inhuman system in which war anddictatorship are repressed and outbalanced by other aggressorsno less fond of one day becoming dictators in their turn.

In rendering some central topics of Levinass philosophy, I haveborrowed many key terms from the tradition of Western ontolo -gy, such as fundament, principle, origin, and so on. Levinas, too,has used similar terms in his writings. Totality and Infinity, forexample, abounds in such words as experience, being, phe-nomena, absolute, the in nite, etc. In later works, he triesto avoid, as much as possible, the terminology of ontology andthose thoughts that can hardly be separated from it. Due to thisattempt, Otherwise Than Being has become a book exceptionalin its surprising categories and language. From the perspectiveof this later development, Levinas deems his earlier work untiland including Totality and Infinity to be still too ontological. Yet there is no radical abyss between the two main booksandwe cannot speak of a real turnbut rather a difference of de-gree. Even in the later writings, ontological language and con-ceptuality are still irresistible: as long as we philosophize, theyseem to con rm their universal domination. Moreover in earlierworks, too, we are confronted with ashes of heterology thatbreak away from the armature of ontological and phenomeno-logical language.

In calling the relation to the Other the principle or thefundament of this philosophy, we connect it with a whole con-stellation of foundational concepts characteristic of the way inwhich thought has been practiced since Plato and Aristotle.Western thinking has always been a questioning from the per -spective of possible foundation, principle, origins, or grounds.Using the Greek word arch (beginning, principle, ground, orthat from which something starts), we could characterize thatway of thought as an archeology. A thought that would not fol-


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low its patterns and methods could then be called groundlessor an-archical. In this sense, Levinass thought is a philosophyof anarchy.

Levinass critique of the primacy of foundational thought ispart of his attack on the conviction that the human universecould be summarized by reconstructing it as a panoramic total-ity on the basis of solid and self-evident foundations. The searchfor foundationa search that can never stop until it reachesthe one and absolute Principle or Ground of all groundsis anintrinsic moment of the striving for the great Synthesis, whichis as wide as reality. That search itself is founded on the ideathat thought and reality correspond adequately to each otherand ultimately are identical.

When classical ontology uses such terms as principle, ori -gin, end, a priori, precedence, before, rst, and so on,it mostly understands them in a nontemporal, logical, or on-tological sense. As key concepts in the search for a well-con-structed and complete world picture on the basis of a rst andlast foundation, they enable us to represent the universe as anorderly whole that can be comprehended here and now. Such arepresentation poses the universe, and the time in which itunfolds itself, as a present totality. The past and the future arepresented as secondary forms of the present; remembrance andexpectation bring them back or reduce them to the presence of a thought that ties all faces of temporality together in a supra-temporal, eternal Now. This Now, then, is immovable becauseit transcends all mobility by encompassing it within the limitsof an imaginary superpresence.

Heidegger has pointed out that the distinction between timeand being presupposed in traditional ontology is not at all clearand that we cannot separate the temporal dimension from beingby a simple abstraction. Levinas, too, hears in the term quotedabove a reference to temporality.

Presence and presencing characterize the time of the overallsystems proposed in Western philosophy. Levinass analyses of

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