Abstract
This paper explains the nature and origin of what I am calling Transgressive Realism, a middle path between realism and anti-realism which tries to combine their strengths while avoiding their weaknesses. Kierkegaard created the position by merging Hegel’s insistence that we must have some kind of contact with anything we can call real (thus rejecting noumena), with Kant’s belief that reality fundamentally exceeds our understanding; human reason should not be the criterion of the real. The result is the idea that our most vivid encounters with reality come in experiences that shatter our categories, the way God’s commandment to kill Isaac irreconcilably clashes with the best understanding of ethics we are capable of. I explain the genesis of this idea, and then show it at work in Heidegger and Levinas’ thought. Understanding this position illuminates important aspects of the history of continental philosophy and offers a new perspective on realism.
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Notes
Critics accuse anti-realism of mistaking features of our epistemological limits for metaphysical features of reality (Alston 2002, p. 27; McCormick 1996, p. 138, 173). This “solution to skepticism” is often criticized for surrendering even more to the enemy than Kant did (Kulp 1997, p. 109; Searle 1995, pp. 167–168). See Cooper (2002, p. 11–17) for a helpful survey of various discussions of humility and realism.
Hume’s “empirical derivation… cannot be reconciled with the scientific a priori knowledge which we do actually possess, namely pure mathematics and general science of nature; and this fact therefore suffices to disprove such derivation.” Kant (1965, p. B128).
Kant (1965, pp. Bxii, Bxviii, Bxx, A122, A125, A177/B220, A196/B241).
Kant (1965, pp. Bxxvi, A288/B344–5, A827/B855).
Kant (1965, pp. A190/B235, A288/B344).
“Objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is again to a certain extent subjective. Thoughts, according to Kant, although universal and necessary categories, are only our thoughts—separated by an impassable gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from our knowledge.” Hegel (1975, p. 67/§41R2, see also Ibid., pp. 35/§22R, 93–94/§60R1; 1977a, 81, 96–97, 187; 2002, pp. 26/§13S, 45/§44, 117/§140, 209/§272; 1969, pp. 45, 62, 163, 327, 507, 756, 593, 779–780, 785; 1977b, pp. 47/§73, 72/§44, 88–89/§146, 145/§238, 162/§112).
“It argues an utter want of consistency to say, on the one hand, that the understanding only knows phenomena, and, on the other, assert the absolute character of this knowledge, by such statements as ‘Cognition can go no further’; ‘Here is the natural and absolute limit of human knowledge.’… No one knows, or even feels, that anything is a limit or defect, until he is at the same time above and beyond it.” Hegel (1975, pp. 91–92/§60).
“The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.” Nietzsche (1954, p. 486, italics in original). For Hegel’s version, see Hegel (1969, pp. 36, 49, 62–63, 69, 76, 531, 639, 756; 1977b, 98/§159, 151/§249, 246/§409; 1975, pp. 185/§128R–129, 223/§160, 226/§162, 261/§194R2, 274/§212, 275/§213, 291/§234R).
Heidegger (1992, p. 81).
Kant (1965, pp. B160n.a, A654/B682).
Hegel (2002, pp. 55/§58, 84/§101).
“Consciousness, however, as essence is this whole process itself, of passing out of itself as simple category… into the object, and of contemplating this process in the object, nullifying the object as distinct [from it], appropriating it as its own, and proclaiming itself as this certainty of being all reality, of being both itself and its object.” Hegel (1977b, p. 144/§237, see also Ibid., p. 102/§164; 2002, pp. 142/§175, 150–151/§187, 260/§352; 1969, pp. 39, 60, 536, 587, 597, 611, 732–733, 755, 801, 823; 1975, pp. 65/§40, 66/§41).
Hegel (1969, pp. 71, 74, 330, 835; 1975, pp. 43–45/§24R3, 221/§159, 224/§161R, 276/§213R; 1977b, pp. 16/§28, 32–33/§53, 479–480/§798, 485/§797, 491/§806). This process culminates in consciousness becoming in actuality what it has been potentially. Hegel (1977b, pp. 14/§25, 487/§802; 1969, pp. 536, 748).
Securing the complete set of forms of intuition concepts of understanding and is very important to Kant. He regards his enterprise as “the only one of all the sciences which dare promise that through a small but concentrated effort it will attain… such completion as will leave no task to our successors… without their being able to add anything whatsoever to its content. For it is nothing but the inventory of all our possessions through pure reason, systematically arranged. In this field nothing can escape us. What reason produces entirely out of itself cannot be concealed.” Kant (1965, p. Axx, see also Ibid., pp. Bxxiii–xxiv, Bxxxviii, Axiv, B23, A13/B27, A64/B90, B79, A83/B109, A148/B187–8, A338/B396, A403, A462/B490, A591/B619, A676/B704, A805/B833, A847/B875).
“Sensation is just that element which cannot be anticipated. On the other hand, we might very well entitle the pure determinations in space and time… anticipations of appearances, since they represent a priori that which may always be given a posteriori in experience.” Kant (1965, p. A167/B209, see also Ibid., pp. A217/B264, A246/B303, A762/B790, A767/B795).
“That all events in the sensible world stand in thorough-going connection in accordance with unchangeable laws of nature is an established principle of the Transcendental Analytic, and allows of no exception.” Kant (1965, p. A536/B564, see also Ibid., pp. A216/B263, A227/B280, A419/B446n. b; 1995, pp. 29/412, 73/455). Indeed, removing potentially disruptive issues such as God, freedom, and immortality from empirical scientific investigation is an important part of the project (Kant (1965, pp. Bxxx, A255/B310–1)).
“It became the habit some time ago… to heap every kind of slander on the Notion, on what is supreme in thought, while the incomprehensible and non-comprehension are, on the contrary, regarded as the pinnacle of science and morality.” Hegel (1969, p. 583, see also Ibid., p. 648). Some have seen premonitions of Kierkegaard in “The Unhappy Consciousness” sections of Hegel (1977b, pp. §207–230, see also 2002, pp. 5–6, 128/§149).
Hegel’s position is somewhat more sophisticated than this. Up to the final one, each stage of Geist’s development is flawed, which continually spurs it on to higher realizations of truth and goodness. World-historical individuals are right to violate contemporary standards because their breaking the contemporary rules is what allows in the next, better phase. However, these individuals are extremely rare and, as Kierkegaard points out, one can only know whether one is a Napoleon or an Al Capone retrospectively, which is of no help at the moment of decision. Therefore, the only standards available to the vast majority of people reside in their community’s accepted facts and norms, draining the search for truth of all melodrama and controversy. “What special course of action is good or not, right or wrong, is determined, for the ordinary circumstances of private life, by the laws and customs of a state. It is not too difficult to know them.” Hegel (1953, p. 37, see also Ibid., pp. 53, 87; 2002, p. 128/§150).
Kant (1965, p. A105, see also Ibid., pp. A42/B59, A251–2, A370–1, A287–8/B344, A383).
“If knowledge is to have objective reality, that is, to relate to an object, and is to acquire meaning and significance in relation to it, the object must be capable of being in some manner given.” Kant (1965, p. A155/B194, see also Ibid., p. A492/B520).
Hegel (1969, p. 395).
I am, for the purposes of this paper, ignoring the problems involved in Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonyms and will attribute views in the pseudonymous works to “Kierkegaard.” I am examining the views in these works and whether or not the historical person held them is immaterial to my paper.
“All learning and inquiry is interpreted as a kind of remembering; one who is ignorant needs only a reminder to help him come to himself in the consciousness of what he knows. Thus the Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him.” Kierkegaard (1962, p. 11).
“A great, perhaps the greatest, part of the business of our reason consists in analysis of the concepts which we already have of objects. This analysis supplies us with a considerable body of knowledge, which, while nothing but explanation or elucidation of what has already been thought in our concepts, though in a confused manner, is yet prized as being, at least as regards its form, new insight.” Kant (1965, p. A5–6/B9, see also Ibid., pp. A313/B370ff.; 1993, 148/141). Since religion is fundamentally based on morality which is in turn based on “reason alone,” even on topics like eternal life, “the teacher’s exposition is only the occasion for [the learner] to develop them out of his reason” (Kant 1996, p. 263/7:37, see also 1960, pp. 95, 142n.).
“This is the complete, self-closing movement which has arrived at that which constituted the beginning; what arises is the same as that from which the movement began, that is, the finite is restored; it has therefore united with itself, has in its beyond only found itself again.” Hegel (1969, p. 147, see also Ibid., pp. 701, 731, 759, 824; 2002, pp. 260–261/§352; 1977b, pp. 100/§162, 102/§164, 140–141/§233, 479–480/§798). Hegel sometimes uses the term “erinnert” to express Geist’s simultaneous recollection and internalization (1969, p. 389).
Kierkegaard (1962, pp. 13, 64, 75).
Kierkegaard (1962, p. 55, see also Ibid., pp. 16–17, 76, 80).
Kant (1993, pp. 19/20–21, 24/25; 1995, pp. 5/389, 24/408, 26/410 n., 42/426, 59/442). Jesus’ birth would seem to compromise universal access by unfairly depriving virtuous people who had the misfortune of living before God’s historical manifestation. Kant gets around this by arguing that Jesus represents only the archetype of a perfectly moral human. Morality is contained within us; “we need, therefore, no empirical example to make the idea of a person morally well-pleasing to God our archetype; this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason.” Kant (1960, p. 56, see also Ibid., pp. 57, 94, 100, 109–110, 123, 143–4, 150, see footnote 36 above). In a proto-Hegelian move, Kant states that over time, religion purifies itself of all contingent, empirical appendages of tradition in favor of what each can know by reason (Ibid., p. 112). Disarming this threat to universality by making the entire event gratuitous including, as Kierkegaard reminds us, the passion and suffering of Christ, seems rather like throwing the Baby Jesus out with the baptismal water.
Kant explicitly compares the two: the mind’s structuring of experience into lawful nature without “appealing to the hyperphysical” (Kant (1965, p. A773/B801)) resembles the necessity “to discover the principles of morality without depending for this discovery upon alien sources.” Kant (1965, p. A472/B500, see also pp. A752/B780, A772/B800–A773/B801, A795/B824; 1993, pp. 132–133/126, 135–136/129; 1995, pp. 52–53/435–436; 1960, pp. 3, 90).
Kierkegaard (1985, p. 96, see also Ibid., p. 83).
“Even the Holy One of the Gospel must be compared with our idea of moral perfection before He is recognized as such.” Kant (1995, p. 24/408, see also Ibid., p. 60/443; 1965, pp. A583–4/B611–12, A818–9/B846–7; 1960, pp. 81–82, 101n., 102–103, 131–134n., 142–143, 146, 157n., 174–175; 1985, pp. 60, 85, 98). At times, Kant applies the Humean argument (concerning the possibility of miracles breaking natural laws) to apparently divine immoral commands: no evidence that they actually come from God could be strong enough to counteract our absolute, a priori knowledge of morality. It always makes more sense to attribute the command to errors in the telling and copying of the “fact” in question like a scriptural game of Telephone, or demons disguising themselves as divine agents (Kant 1960, pp. 91n., 100–101, 175). Kant applies this argument specifically to the story of Abraham and Isaac (Ibid., pp. 81–82,175). At one point, Kant takes the uncompromising precedence of our morality over revelation to mean that “every man creates a God for himself” since we must decide whether or not to recognize the divinity of any deity empirically presented to us, with only our moral code to guide us (Ibid., p. 157n.). Incidentally, Sartre uses the same argument to prove the futility of bad faith: even the attempt to heteronomously submit to another’s will is freely chosen.
“If this duty [to God—LB] is absolute the ethical is reduced to the relative.” Kierkegaard (1985, p. 98).
Kierkegaard (1983, p. 88).
In the book I am presently writing on this topic, I will discuss, at a somewhat less culpable length, other philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Marion, Nancy, Speculative Realists and Quentin Meillassoux, as well as horror literature and avant-garde theatre.
Heidegger (1962, pp. 492n. iv, 494n. vi, 497 n. iii).
I discuss this point and show where it can be found in the primary and secondary literature in Braver (2007, pp. 176–181, 187, 221–225, 273–275, 284, 502–504, 508, 532n9).
Heidegger (1962, p. 183/143).
Heidegger (1962, pp. 54–55/31).
Heidegger (1962, pp. 60/35–6, 193/152, 228/183, 251/207, 255–256/212, 269/226, 414/362).
“Today a world dominates in which the decisive question runs: How do I have to represent nature in the sequence of its appearances to myself, so that I am in a position to make secure predictions about all and everything? The answer to this question is that it is compulsory to represent nature as a totality of energy particles of existing mass, the reciprocal movements of which are to be mathematically calculable. Descartes already says to the piece of wax that he holds before his eyes: ‘You are nothing other than an extended, flexible, and mutable thing,’ and thus I proclaim myself to know everything about you that there is to know of you.” Heidegger (2003, p. 8, see also 1993, pp. 129, 153; 1998, p. 235).
Heidegger (1993, p. 275).
For more on this topic, see Braver (2009, pp. 39–46).
Heidegger (1993, p. 151, see also Ibid., pp. 125, 157, 170).
Heidegger (2001, p. 207).
For a more thorough discussion of this topic, see Braver (2009, pp. 50–56).
Heidegger (1962, pp. 100/70–1). This passage distinguishes nature qua raw materials from nature qua subject of a landscape painting, but the latter receives no discussion of its own.
Heidegger (1966, p. 50; see also 1993, pp. 321–322, 326; 1998, p. 313; 1968, p. 135). Heidegger’s later description of the Rhine River harnessed by a hydroelectric plant (1993, p. 321) retunes Being and Time’s discussion of “the wood is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-power” (1962, p. 100/70) into a minor key.
“We can no longer root about for general notions… under which we might subsume language as a particular instance of this or that universal. Instead of explaining language as this or that, and thus fleeing from it, the way to language wants to let language be experienced as language. True, in the essence of language, language is grasped conceptually; but it is caught in the grip of something other than itself.” Heidegger (1993, p. 406).
Heidegger is recorded in a late seminar as saying, “for Hegel, there rules in history necessity which is at the same time freedom. For him, both are one in and through the dialectical movement as the essence of the Spirit exists. For Heidegger, on the other hand, one cannot speak of a ‘why.’ Only the ‘that’—that the history of Being is in such a way—can be said.” Heidegger (1972, p. 52).
“By itself and on its own, no human calculation and design can bring forth a turning in the world’s present condition. Especially not, because human design is already formed by this very condition of the world…. How then could it [human design] still gain control over it [the world's condition]?” Heidegger (2001, p. 266, see also 1968, p. 65; 1993, p. 324; 2002a, pp. 192–193).
“Human willing too can be in the mode of self-assertion only by forcing everything under its dominion from the start, even before it can survey it. To such a willing, everything, beforehand and thus subsequently, turns irresistibly into material for self-assertive production. The earth and its atmosphere become raw material for self-assertive production.” Heidegger (1971, p. 111; see also 1977, pp. 84, 100; 1993, pp. 172, 228–289).
“Where beings are not very familiar to man and are scarcely and only roughly known by science, the openedness of beings as a whole can prevail more essentially than it can where the familiar and well-known has become boundless, and nothing is any longer able to withstand the business of knowing, since technical mastery over things bears itself without limit.” Heidegger (1993, p. 129, see also 1999, pp. 11/§5, 32/§17, 272/§243; 2003, p. 11; 1991, p. 56; 2002b, p. 40; 1971, p. 112).
“In principle the objectness in which at any given time nature, man, history, language, exhibit themselves always itself remains only one kind of presencing, in which indeed that which presences can appear, but never absolutely must appear.” Heidegger (1977, p. 176).
Compare Kant’s claim that the moral law legitimately “interests us because it is valid for us as men, inasmuch as it has arisen from our will as intelligence and hence our proper self” (1995, p. 79/461, see also Ibid., pp. 48/431, 75/457) with Heidegger’s view that “resoluteness constitutes the loyalty of existence to its own Self…. This loyalty is at the same time a possible way of revering the sole authority which a free existing can have.” Heidegger (1962, p. 443/391, see also Ibid., p. 320/275).
“The things for which we owe thanks are not things we have from ourselves…. But the thing given to us… is thinking…. How can we give thanks for this endowment, the gift of being able to think?” Heidegger (1968, pp. 142–143).
Levinas (1995, p. 74).
“If to be means to exist in the way nature does, then everything which is given as refractory to the categories and to the mode of existence of nature will, as such, have no objectivity and will be, a priori and unavoidably, reduced to purely subjective phenomena which, with their multifarious structure, are the products of natural causality.” Levinas (1995, p. 17, see also Ibid., pp. 9, 114, 130; 1998a, pp. 72, 131–132). This is strongly reminiscent of Heidegger’s many objections to scientism, both early and late (1962, pp. 128–130/95–98, 150/114–115, 198/156; 2001, pp. 94, 110).
“Being is nothing other than the correlate of our intuitive life…. This thesis is obviously directed against any realism or idealism which admits to a thing in itself behind the phenomena.” Levinas (1995, p. 92, see also Ibid., pp. 62, 131–132, 139, 149). The existence of unperceived entities resides in their possible perception (Ibid., p. 21), that of ideal objects in their possible appearance to a non-empirical intuition (Ibid., p. 102).
Levinas (1995, p. 121).
Levinas (1998a, p. 124).
Levinas (1998b, p. 125, see also 1995, pp. 43, 88, 125, 150). Levinas seizes on intentionality for his own thought but, instead of interpreting it in terms of fulfilling empty intuitions, he prizes it as something that can never be sated: “what was taken as an imperfection of human knowledge measured by a certain ideal of self-evidence and certitude becomes a positive characteristic of the approach of a certain type of reality that would not be what it is if it were revealed in another way.” Levinas (1998a, p. 68, see also Ibid., pp. 93–94; 1998b, p. 71).
“I have attempted a ‘phenomenology’ of sociality starting from the face of the other person.” Levinas (1985, p. 109). Levinas often says that, since it defies the standard understanding of experience, this encounter is in that sense beyond experience, and hence beyond phenomenology (1985, pp. 54, 78, 92, 107; 2001, p. 63). Like Heidegger (1962, pp. 62–63/38), Levinas can be seen as a disciple of Husserl who followed the spirit of the philosophy against the letter of the philosopher: “there is here a Husserlian possibility which can be developed beyond what Husserl himself said on the ethical problem and on the relationship with the Other…. The relationship with the Other can be sought as an irreducible intentionality, even if one must end by seeing that it ruptures intentionality.” Levinas (1985, p. 32, see also Ibid., p. 30; 1996, pp. 153, 158; 1998b, pp. 66, 123, 197, 199, 227; 1969, p. 28). He specifically challenges Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity: “I think that through the phenomenology of the other person—perhaps not quite in the sense in which it is carried out presently—there is a way to get outside the subject…. What I have not seen is the other person whose alterity would consist in being ‘more’ than me…. But all this is not in Husserl’s phenomenology.” Levinas (1998a, p. 109, see also 1995, pp. 150–151).
Levinas (1996, p. 12). “The unique is the other in an eminent way: he doesn’t belong to a genus or doesn’t remain within his genus” Levinas (1998b, p. 205). Hilary Putnam, one of the central figures in analytic discussions of realism, insightfully identifies Levinas’ version of realism (2008, pp. 78–79).
Levinas (1996, p. 11, see also Ibid., pp. 18, 153; 1985, pp. 28, 60, 75, 91; 1987, pp. 41, 99, 125; 1969, pp. 42, 124–125; 1998a, pp. 113, 120, 127, 165). “Knowledge is a relation of the Same with the Other in which the Other is reduced to the Same and divested of its strangeness;… the other is already appropriated, already mine.” Levinas (1996, p. 151).
Levinas (1987, p. 65). For Husserl, “there exists no knowing but of oneself…. Nothing can enter it, everything comes from it…. In its inner recesses, the subject can account for the universe…. The subject’s coexistence with something other, before being a commerce, is a relation of intellection…. The ego controls all the levels of reality…. To say that the subject is a monad is in sum to deny the existence of the irrational.” Levinas (1998a, p. 82, see also Ibid., pp. 85, 129).
“The breaks in the order reenter the order whose weave lasts unendingly, a weave these breaks manifest, and which is a totality…. The apparent interference of the Other in the Same has been settled beforehand…. Everything is understood, justified, pardoned. And what of the surprise of that face behind the door? That surprise will be denied.” Levinas (1996, p. 68, see also Ibid., pp. 101, 111; 1985, p. 75; 1987, p. 90; 2001, p. 93; 1969, pp. 21–22, 35–36; 1998b, p. 55).
Levinas (1996, p. 19, see also Ibid., pp. 67–70, 76–77; 1985, pp. 62, 77, 107–108; 1987, pp. 87, 117, 102–103, 132, 134; 1998b, pp. 57–58, 69–70; 1969, pp. 69, 101). Notice how closely this resembles Heidegger’s description of earth (see also Levinas’ strikingly similar account of material in artworks at 2001, p. 51). “The void that breaks the totality can be maintained against an inevitably totalizing and synoptic thought only if thought finds itself faced with an other refractory to categories.” Levinas (1969, p. 40).
Levinas (1998b, p. 57; 1996, pp. 75–76, 103, 136, 156–158; 1985, pp. 92, 106; 1987, p. 117; 1969, pp. 22–25, 50, 61–62, 102). Levinas praises Descartes’ proof of God on the basis of finding the idea of infinity which he could not have thought up with the resources of his mind. Levinas (1998b, pp. 200, 219–220; 1996, p. 12).
Levinas (1996, pp. 62, 69).
Levinas (1996, pp. 70, 73–74, 76).
Levinas (1996, pp. 12, 20, 57, 130).
Levinas (1996, p. 151, see also Ibid., p. 14; 1987, p. 68; 2001, p. 38; 1969, p. 44). At times, Levinas opposes this philosophical model directly: “Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I can contain.” Levinas (1969, p. 51, see also Ibid., pp. 67, 69, 73; 1985, pp. 91–92). He refers to the discussion of the “wholly other” in Philosophical Fragments (1996, p. 15), to “the Kierkegaardian God” of Fear and Trembling (1996, pp. 71, 105), and Kierkegaard’s conception of subjectivity (1996, p. 76).
Levinas (1996, p. 19, see also Ibid., p. 75).
“Idealism imposes itself like a tautology: what appears as being—appears, and consequently is found directly or indirectly within the limits of consciousness. What exceeds the limits of consciousness is absolutely nothing for that consciousness.” Levinas (1998a, p. 127).
Kant's “highest principle of all synthetic judgments… that the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience” (1965, p. A158/B197) becomes, in Hegel's hands: "logic therefore coincides with Metaphysics." Hegel (1975, p. 36, §24). Early Heidegger makes the same move when he argues that “only as phenomenology, is ontology possible” (1962, p. 60/35) because “our investigation… asks about Being itself in so far as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein” (Ibid., p. 193/152).
Derrida sums up this point in his debate with hostile critics: “who is more faithful to reason’s call, who hears it with a keener ear, who better sees the difference, the one who offers questions in return and tries to think through the possibility of that summons, or the one who does not want to hear any question about the reason of reason?” Derrida (2004, p. 138, see also Ibid., pp. 147–148).
“That Being itself and how Being itself concerns our thinking does not depend upon our thinking alone. That Being itself, and the manner in which Being itself, strikes a particular thinking, lets such thinking spring forth in springing from Being itself in such a way as to respond to Being as such.” Heidegger (1998, p. 279, see also 2001, p. 266; 1999, p. 169/§122; 1993, pp. 217, 324, 330, 372, 384; 1968, p. 115; 1991, p. 53; 1971, pp. 6, 171).
Levinas repeatedly criticizes Husserlian phenomenology’s commitment to freedom, since the epochē separates us from all involvements. Levinas (1998a, pp. 75, 83–84). Clinging to this constant escape hatch from responsibilities constitutes an immoral abdication of morality as the obligation to respond to the Other, to cry out “here I am” even though it opens us to uncontrollable demands, even to the sacrifice of that which is most dear. Echoing Kierkegaard, Levinas calls this the religious: “everything I wish to say comes from this situation of responsibility which is religious insofar as the I cannot elude it…. You find yourself before a responsibility from which you cannot steal away. You are not at all in the situation of a reflective consciousness, which, in reflection, already withdraws and hides itself…. It is this exceptional situation, where you are always in the face of the Other, where there is no privacy, that I would call the religious situation.” Levinas (1996, p. 29, see also Ibid., p. 7; 1969, p. 40; 1998b, p. 131). Like Heidegger’s discussion of values, Levinas considers traditional views of the self to be incompatible with ethical responsibility: “human subjectivity, interpreted as consciousness, is always activity. I can always assume what is imposed on me…. Everything happens as if I were at the beginning; except at the approach of my fellowman. I am recalled to a responsibility never contracted, inscribed in the face of an Other. Nothing is more passive than this priori questioning of all freedom…. It is an event that strips consciousness of its initiative.” Levinas (1998b, p. 58, see also Ibid., p. 92; 2001, p. 8). This is why he talks about the trace as a past that was never and can never become present. Levinas praises Heidegger’s advance over Husserl in acknowledging our thrownness (1998a, pp. 84–87, 117–118).
“War is not to be regarded as an absolute evil and as a purely external contingency, which itself therefore has some accidental cause…. Here as elsewhere, the point of view from which things seem purely contingent vanishes if we look at them in the light of the concept and of philosophy, because philosophy knows contingency as a semblance, and sees in it its essence—necessity…. Within the ethical substance, the state, nature is robbed of this might, and the necessity is exalted to be the work of freedom, to be something ethical. The transience of the finite becomes a willed passing away.” Hegel (2002, p. 250/§324, see also 1953, pp. 18, 27, 47; 1969, pp. 336, 580, 840).
Kierkegaard (1992, p. 136). Compare Derrida’s analysis: “God doesn’t give his reasons…. Otherwise he wouldn’t be God, we wouldn’t be dealing with the Other as God or with God as wholly other. If the other were to share his reasons with us by explaining them to us, if we were to speak to us all the time without any secrets, he wouldn’t be the other” (2007, p. 57).
Kierkegaard (1992, pp. 404–405). Kierkegaard uses the metaphor of economies to contrast the ethical individual who “will act prudently in life like those capitalists who invest their capital in every kind of security so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other” with the knight of faith who concentrates his heart entirely on one thing, for which he will “risk everything.” Kierkegaard (1985, pp. 71–72). Derrida uses this metaphor in comparing Hegel with Bataille (1978, Chapter 9), as well as in his analysis of various aporiai such as the gift or hospitality.
Heidegger (1962, p. 164/126, see also Ibid., pp. 312/268, 434–436/382–385). Heidegger’s phenomenological method commits his early work to the Objective Idealist treatment of death “in so far as it Interprets that phenomenon merely in the way in which it enters into any particular Dasein as a possibility of its Being” (Ibid., p. 292/248).
“The unknown of death signifies that the very relationship with death cannot take place in the light, that the subject is in relationship with what does not come from itself…. This way death has of announcing itself in suffering, outside all light, is an experience of the passivity of the subject, which until then had been active…. In knowledge all passivity is activity through the intermediary of light. The object that I encounter is understood and, on the whole, constructed by me, even though death announces an event over which the subject is not master…. Death in Heidegger is an event of freedom, whereas for me the subject seems to reach the limit of the possible in suffering. It finds itself enchained, overwhelmed, and in some way passive. Death is in this sense the limit of idealism.” Levinas (1987, pp. 70–71, see also Ibid., pp. 74, 82; 1969, p. 41; 1985, p. 76; 1998b, p. 131). See Simon Critchley’s illuminating Levinasian critique. Levine (2008, pp. 143–147).
Levinas (1969, p. 101).
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Jon Cogburn, Fabio Gironi, and Anthony Steinbock for their help.