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Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic

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Abstract

Blamelessly, most commentators attempt to deduce the political theory of Levinas from his interhuman philosophy. In contrast to the perceived state of ethical life in contemporary politics, the attractiveness of the asymmetric obligations owed by the ego to the Other make the deductive project seem urgent. But an inductive analysis of Levinas’ philosophy yields troubling prerequisites, including rigorous theocracy and a form of sociability in which no epistemological clarity is permitted that could determine in situ interpersonal duties. Such unfamiliar politics enable the celebrated ethical relation of self for the Other. Designed as a polemic with the presumption that politics not ethics is first philosophy, the insights of the inductive analysis of Levinas’ thought will come as no surprise to observers who worry that power and sovereignty cannot be summarily excluded from social or even ethical relations.

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Notes

  1. The author wishes to thank the reviewers of this article and the Political Theology and Beyond panelists at the 2015 Western Political Science conference, especially Shalini Satkunanandan, for their comments.

  2. Levinas (1994a, p. 183).

  3. Levinas (1990a, p. 66).

  4. Derrida (1999, p. 117).

  5. Caygill (2002, p. 181).

  6. Levinas (1994a, p. 61).

  7. Campbell (1994, p. 465).

  8. Critchley (2004, p. 178).

  9. Critchley (2004, p. 179).

  10. Derrida (1999, p. 189).

  11. Alford (2004, p. 163).

  12. Caro (2009, p. 679).

  13. Caygill (2002, p. 132).

  14. Levinas (1994a, p. 180-1).

  15. Baidou (2001, p. 22).

  16. “The principal but also fairly superficial objection that we make to ethics in Levinas’s sense is: what is it that testifies to the originality of my devotion to the Other?” Baidou (2001, p. 21).

  17. Schmitt (1996, p. 6).

  18. Garrett (2013, p. 20).

  19. Steiner (2001, p. 121).

  20. Honig (1993, pp. 2, 244).

  21. Cf. Herzog (2002, pp. 215. 220).

  22. “I was just talking now about the liberal state: isn't it a permanent revisiting of the right itself, a critical reflection on political rights, which are only de facto laws?” Levinas (1998, p. 205).

  23. Caro (2011, pp. 31–34).

  24. Cole (1989, pp. 60–67).

  25. Cf. Levinas (1999a, b, p. 91).

  26. Hägglund (2004. pp. 44, 58, 60).

  27. “The Other proceeds from the absolutely Absent, but his relationship with the absolutely Absent from which he comes does not reveal this Absent: and yet the Absent has a meaning in the Face.” Levinas (1996, pp. 59–60).

  28. Thus, “…as if I were devoted to the other man before being devoted to myself…It is as if the Other established a relationship or a relationship were established whose whole intensity consists in not presupposing the idea of community.” Levinas (1989, p. 83, nt. 8).

  29. Critchley (2004, p. 176).

  30. Alford (2004, p. 163).

  31. Levinas (Levinas 1999a, b, p. 114).

  32. Steiner (2001, p. 128).

  33. McCormick (2001).

  34. Levinas, (2001, p. 166).

  35. Baidou (2001, p. 31).

  36. “The entire life of a nation…carries with itself (concealed, revealed, or at least occasionally caught sight of) men who, before all loans, have debts, owe their fellowman, are responsible - chosen and unique…” Levinas (1998, p. 231).

  37. Wyschogrod, (2000, p. 216).

  38. Baidou (2001, p. 22).

  39. Levinas (1999a, b, p. 59).

  40. Steiner (2001, p. 130).

  41. Loumansky (2005, p. 189).

  42. Steiner (2001, p. 128).

  43. Steiner (2001, p. 128).

  44. Critchley (2004, p. 174).

  45. Thus Caygill (2002, p. 182) relates that Levinas includes in his messianic politics both “conscious Christians” and “Communists.”.

  46. Alford (2004, p.160); Caygill (2002, p. 182).

  47. For example, “behold upon the world’s stage, innumerable masses advancing out of Asia. In the eyes of these crowds who do not take holy history as their frame of reference, are we Jews and Christians anything but sects quarreling over the meaning of a few obscure texts?” Levinas (1999b, p. 83). “The yellow peril! It is not racial, it is spiritual. It does not involve inferior values; it involves a radical strangeness, a stranger to the weight of its past,…a lunar or Martian past.” Levinas (1994c, p. 172).

  48. Kalmanson and Mattice (2013, p. 2). For a defense of Levinas here see Shankman (2013, p. 43).

  49. “The beyond from which a face comes signifies as a trace.” Levinas (1990b, pp. 63–64).

  50. Alford (2004, p. 166).

  51. Wingenbach (1999, p. 230).

  52. Alford (2004, p. 148).

  53. Caygill (2002, p. 169).

  54. Levinas (1990c, p. 263) addresses “sacrifice” regarding the messianic state but in the sense that its citizens should sacrifice their aspirations to be a premier state in the competitive space of nation-states which mundanely seek expansion and glory.

  55. Levinas (1994b, p. 100).

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  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Houston-Downtown, N-1048, One Main Street, Houston, TX, 77002, USA

    Jason Caro

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Caro, J. Against Levinas’ messianic politics: a polemic. Cont Philos Rev 51, 1–21 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-016-9386-0

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