Abstract
With almost a century of historical distance between Heidegger’s retrieval of the question of being and contemporary concern about the Other, we have accrued invaluable experiences for critical leverage about what it is to ask one another questions. I offer a sketch aimed at adapting Tillich’s theological system grounded in existential questioning to today by juxtaposing him with Levinas’ philosophical ethics. Tillich and Levinas provide motive for reflection on the topic of questioning in particular. In the case of Tillich, questions constitute a crucial moment in the dialogue between our contemporary existential situation and religious symbols, or in what he called the ‘method of correlation.’ Furthermore, Tillich locates in the very structure of questioning the germ of our participation in our essential nature despite existential disruption. Beneath his more provocative and prophetic discourse on the absolute desolation and height of the Other, Levinas sees in questions a different kind of possibility. It is not our essential and existential selves, but oneself and the absolutely Other who come together in the question yet retain their infinite difference. Heidegger is the immediate predecessor from whom both Tillich and Levinas inherit a predilection for reflection on questioning. What is at stake is not merely the legacy of Heidegger’s construal of questioning, but, more importantly here, the fundamental sources Tillich and Levinas posit as the origin of our questioning.
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Notes
Levinas describes the question as rhetorical, though a trace of the depth of the question can still be heard in it. He writes, ‘A questioning of the affirmation and confirmation of being, which is found in the famous—and easily rhetorical—quest for the “meaning of life…’” (Levinas 1998a, 129). Moreover, the majority of analytic philosophers consider the question to be poorly formed (see Wiggins 1988).
The possibilities of philosophical and theological parallels are often striking. For instance, is Levinas’ concept of ‘face’ as that which bears the trace of the infinite a ‘self-negating symbol’? Alternatively, is the ‘power of being’ also ‘otherwise than being’?
When it comes to matters concerning the Other, for Levinas, a failed, rather than fulfilled, experience ‘is inverted… into a beyond experience, into a transcendence whose rigorous determination is described by ethical attitudes and exigencies, and by responsibility, of which language is but one modality’ (1998b, 106).
Tillich considers this formulation to be senseless because ‘[t]hought must begin with being…. If one asks why there is not nothing, one attributes being even to nothing’ (1951, 162).
This is Heidegger’s famous formulation of the question: ‘Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word ‘being’? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of being’ (1996, xix).
Tillich declares that this is the ontological question (1951, 163).
As Tillich writes, ‘Anxiety is self-awareness of the finite self as finite’ (1951, 192).
As Heidegger writes, ‘In Angst, Da-sein finds itself faced with the nothingness of the possible impossibility of its existence’ (1996, 245).
Tillich agrees with this when he writes, ‘This experience of ontological shock is expressed in the cognitive function by the basic philosophical question…’ (1951, 113).
This is the implication of Tillich’s claiming that ‘[t]he threat of nonbeing, grasping the mind, produces the “ontological shock”…’ (1951, 113).
Scharlemann reads Tillich as identifying the ‘unconditional’ as another origin of the ontological question, and does this by way of reading Tillich’s analysis of the arguments for God’s existence back into the ontological question. As Scharlemann writes, ‘The question of being arises from an experience of an unconditional element and a threatening element… [One] can ask the question because there is an unconditional element in the structure; [one] must ask it because the structure—by which [one] is constituted—is threatened’ (1969, 141–142). I find this identification of the origin inadequate because, as Tillich says, the ontological question is implied in human existence, which I take to mean that while some people might not actually ask the question, the question is nonetheless latent in their lives. So we can and must ask the ontological question under the conditions of being threatened by nonbeing. On this reading, we might say that the ‘unconditional’ element orients the sense of the question, thus making it meaningful to ask the question.
In Tillich’s words, ‘Only man can ask the ontological question because he alone is able to look beyond the limits of his own being and every other being. Looked at from the standpoint of possible nonbeing, being is a mystery. Man is able to take this standpoint because he is free to transcend every given reality. He is not bound to ‘beingness’; he can envisage nothingness; he can ask the ontological question’ (1951, 186).
This is not to say that the subject-object structure is not implied in the question of being. This is, rather, to note that the rigorous determination of the basic ontological structure reveals that the subject-object structure is mediated, and thus secondary despite its apparent immediacy.
See also Moran’s summary, where he writes, ‘For Husserl, the most important thing to emphasize is that noesis and noema are correlative parts of the structure of the mental process.... The noesis is “the concretely complete intentive mental process,”’ and the noema is a single complex ideal entity graspable by a special act of transcendental reflection (2000, 155–157).
Cf. Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith (2001)
The following is roughly the same passage in John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson’s translation: ‘Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought… Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about [sein Gefragtes]. But all inquiry about something is somehow a questioning of something [Anfragen bei…]. So in addition to what is asked about, an inquiry has that which is interrogated [ein Befragtes]. In investigative questions—that is, in questions which are specifically theoretical—what is asked about is determined and conceptualized. Furthermore, in what is asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by asking [das Erfragte]; this is what is really intended: with this the inquiry reaches its goal’ (Heidegger 1962, 24).
Cf. David E. Klemm’s exposition of this: ‘Questioning presupposes (1) an activity of inquiring (Fragen), which is guided by what is sought, (2) that about which we inquire (ein Gefragtes), investigated through (3) some concrete reality (ein Befragtes), in order to yield (4) some theoretical result (ein Erfragtes). In posing the question “What does it mean to be?” some interesting connections appear. The activity of inquiring is (1) a mode of being of the inquirer, which reflects (2) being as that which we inquire about, which intends (4) the meaning of being as theoretical result. By choosing the being of the questioner as (3) the concrete reality investigated, all four elements reflect being… A postmetaphysical ontology is possible as the existential analysis of the being that is there in its questioning’ (Klemm 1987, 449–450).
By implication, this would entail that we would anatomize Dasein since Dasein is that which Heidegger determines is the proper being to interrogate about being.
See Bruin’s thoroughgoing phenomenology of questioning modeled on information theory (Bruin 2001).
Bergo uses the word ‘demand’ to translate Levinas′ use of the French verb ‘demander.’ In English, the word ‘demand’ carries more force and burden than its French cognate implies. ‘Demander la parole,’ for instance, means, ‘to ask for permission to speak.’
Although Levinas uses the terms ‘epistemology’ and ‘knowledge,’ it is clear from the context he means something quite similar to Tillich’s characterization of philosophy as a cognitive endeavor.
I choose to write this with the second person pronoun because, as Levinas says, this question comes to me from the Other. Levinas writes, ‘The question par excellence, or the first question, is not “why is there being rather than nothing?” but “have I the right to be?”’ (1998b, 171)
Levinas writes that, ‘The death of the other man implicates me and puts me in question as if, by this death that is invisible to the other who is thereby exposed, I became the accomplice by way of my indifference; and as if… I had to answer for this death of the other and not to leave the other in solitude’ (1998b, 162–163). In his diagnosis, Heidegger′s understanding of death—and Tillich’s by association—is inadequate with regard to the utter passivity of undergoing something. As he writes, ‘The being-toward-death or being unto death is still a being-able-to-be, and death, according to a significant terminology, is the possibility of impossibility and not at all an extreme instant, torn from all assumption; not at all an impossibility of being-able, beyond all [grasp] or all dispossession, and beyond all welcome, pure abduction’ (1998b, 47).
Levinas has a very subtle and nuanced understanding of what it is to question that is distinct from Heidegger and Tillich. It is something we do with others, not the cognitive process performed by the solitary individual. He is critical of giving privilege to the epistemological interpretation of the activity of questioning. He writes, ‘Is the question always, as in functional language (or scientific language, whose answers open onto new questions, but questions that aim only at answers), a knowledge in the process of constituting itself, a still insufficient thought of the datum, which latter might satisfy it by measuring up to the expectation? Is then the question that of the famous question/answer sequence in the soul’s dialogue with itself in which Plato saw thought, initially solitary, moving toward coinciding with itself—toward self-consciousness?’ (1998a, 72)
Cf. the alternative translation in Levinas’ Of God Who Comes to Mind: ‘Must we not admit… that the request and the entreaty, which one could not dissimulate in the question, bear witness to a relationship to another, a relationship that does not remain within the interiority of a solitary soul, a relationship that, within the question, takes shape? […] The relationship to the absolutely other—to the un-limited by the same—to the Infinite; would not transcendence be equivalent to an original question?’ (1998b, 107)
See Levinas’ claim that the ‘essence of discourse is prayer’ (1998a, 7).
Levinas reinforces this in the following: ‘In discourse I have always distinguished between the saying and the said. That the saying must bear a said is a necessity of the same order as that which imposes a society with laws, institutions and social relations. But the saying is the fact that before the face I do not simply remain there contemplating it, I respond to it. The saying is a way of greeting the Other, but to greet the Other is already to answer for him. It is difficult to be silent in someone’s presence; this difficulty has its ultimate foundation in this signification proper to the saying, whatever the said. It is necessary to speak of something, of the rain and fine weather, no matter what, but to speak, to respond to him and already to answer for him’ (1985, 88).
In his words, ‘Language, in its expressive function, addresses and invokes the other… In speech, we do not just think of the interlocutor, we speak to him’ (Levinas 1998a, 32).
Or as Levinas puts it, ‘The very relationship of the saying cannot be reduced to intentionality, or that it rests, properly speaking, on an intentionality that fails’ (1998a, 71).
These three distinctions correspond to the three acts that inhere in every speech act: the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary acts, respectively. It is the perlocutionary expectations that are often thwarted when people do not respond to what we say as we would hope. For an exposition on the components of performative utterances, see Austin’s How to do Things with Words (1976) and Searle′s Expression and Meaning (1979). On questions in particular, see Martin Bell’s article on questioning (1975).
For a brief exposition about this trend in continental philosophy, see Lawlor’s The Being of the Question (2003). See the preceding note for representatives in the analytic tradition.
See Hass’s study of Irigaray’s use of questioning in her article ‘The Style of the Speaking Subject: Irigaray’s Empirical Studies of Language Production’ (2000).
See Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place (2004) where she underscores women’s use of ‘tag questions’ as a strategy for deferral.
I am thinking in particular of Tillich’s effort to convey the power of being to others who feel disabled under the tensions of existence, especially in stressing the courage to accept acceptance, such as in his The Courage to Be (1952).
Pauck cites Tillich as having said this in a seminar discussion at the University of California in Santa Barbara in 1965 (1979, 22; emphasis added).
This is taken from Scharlemann’s superb studies of Tillich’s theology. According to Scharlemann, ‘There is a universal subject... and “God” can be defined in literal terms as that subject.... The prius of thought must be called not just “being” but “being is” or, better, “God is.” If, then, the whole structure of being is not simply the structure of “being” but the structure of “God is,” this would entail that “God” has a literal referent (namely, as the implied subject of any action) as well as a symbolic usage (expressing the ground of subjectivity); that “being” has a literal referent (namely, the objective being in everything that is) as well as a symbolic usage (expressing the ground of objectivity); and that “God is” has a literal usage (to refer to the subject-object structure as a whole) as well as a symbolic usage (to express the depth of the subject-object structure)’ (1966, 98–101).
Cf. Wolterstorff’s recent philosophical analysis of God’s speaking in Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the claim that God Speaks (1995) and ‘Resuscitating the Author’ (2006)
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Dickman, N.E. Anxiety and the Face of the Other: Tillich and Levinas on the Origin of Questioning. SOPHIA 48, 267–279 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0120-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0120-9