Zizek's Critique of Levinas

In light of some of our recent discussions, I thought I would try to provide a preliminary sketch of what I take Zizek's critique of Levinas to be. I'm relying on Zizek's essay, "Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence," that appears in the book The Neighbor. Sections of this essay appear in The Parallax View.

As I read him, Zizek's critique of Levinas has 3+1 elements, that is, three criticisms and a counter. The criticisms focus on: the big Other of the Symbolic order, the implicit privileging that results from the asymmetry of the call of the Other; and the Musselman. The counter involves Zizek's view that others are an ethically indifferent multitude.

Put in most general terms, the disagreements might be thought in terms of the ethics of the other. Zizek rejects this view, as he must with his basic assumptions of the subject as lack and of the symbolic other has lacking, incomplete. Any fundamental emphasis on the call of the other would involve filling in/covering over/denying the lack in the subject and hence eliminate the very space necessary for freedom. Additionally, we might say that unlike Deleuze (and Agamben?) Zizek does not equate ethics and ontology and unlike Levinas Zizek does not think of the ethical as pre-ontological/transcendental. Rather, for Zizek, ethics emerges in and as the gap within immanence, as the split or that cuts through our relations or interactions with all sorts of differentiated others. This split might be thought of as a no to these relations, as a calling into question their givenness, as a withdrawal from their everydayness.

1.    The Symbolic.
    Zizek argues that Levinas ultimately anchors the symbolic order of norms in the face. Why? Because the face is that which guarantees itself. It is always already there as an ethical a priori that establishes the conditions of possibility for ethics. In Zizek's view, this grounding is fetishistic insofar as it covers over the lack in the symbolic, the fact that there is nothing that guarantees it and that it remains essentially non-all.
    Zizek does endorse one aspect of Levinas's ethics, however, the way that it is fundamentally anti-biopolitical, the way that it endorses something that is beyond mere life.

2.    Asymmetry
    Zizek argues that the asymmetry in which I am always already responsible (hostage) to the Other ends up "privileging one particular group that assumes responsibility for all others, that embodies in a privileged way this responsibility." In support of this claim he cites a passage from Difficult Freedom regarding the ultimate duties of the chosen people and a moral consciousness that knows itself to be the center of the world. Yet, his argument also runs along a different course, namely, that what I'll call the hostage notion of subjectivity results in questioning one's own basic right to exist, as self-questioning that Zizek finds to be speculatively identical with self-privileging: I am the center whose existence threatens all others. Ultimately, the matter is one of privileging, whether of a group or of a singular moral consciousness.
    Not surprisingly, Zizek's response emphasizes the subject as lack, the subject as the hole in the order of being.

3.    The Muselmann
    Zizek emphasizes that the Muselmann is one who cannot answer the call of the other and who cannot be seen as addressing us--he is faceless, a blank wall. He rejects the possibility that Levinasian ethics can include the Muselmann because of the way that the Muselmann is an overlap of innocence and evil, and hence subverts the sense of absolute authenticity to which the idea of the face is supposed to attest.

+1    Justice is not with regard to the neighbor
    Zizek argues for a cold justice that chooses against the face for the third. For him, this is an uprooting of justice, one that severs the 'contingent umbilical link that renders it embedded in a situation' (and, my question here is whether this marks a disagreement with Badiou's ethics of the situation or an agreement insofar as it is indifference to difference.)
    More specifically, Zizek argues in this regard that grounding ethics in the relationship to the Other's face is

a priori impossible, since the limitation of our capacity to relate to Others' faces is the mark of our very finitude. In other words, the limitation of our ethical relation of responsibility toward the Other's face which necessitates the rise of the Third (the domain of regulations) us a positive condition of ethics, not simply its secondary supplement. If we deny this--in other word, if we stick to the postulate of a final translatability of the Third into a relation to the Other's face--we remain caught in the vicious cycle of 'understanding.'

So, what is choosing the third? It is not choosing some kind of others with positive features; it is not recognition caught in some kind of imaginary or symbolic relationship to others. Rather, it is a kind of radical indifference to others, the abstraction of the law. This indifference is also the space of love, love for one who stands out from the multitude toward whom I am indifferent. And, this indifference is preferable to something like love for all insofar love for all relies on the logic of universality and its exception: there can only be an all whom I love insofar as there is one whom I hate. (Preferable, then, is the reformulation in terms of the feminine formula of sexuation: there is nobody whom I do not love--which is connected with I do not love you all (the all remains incomplete, non-all).

Comments

[Marc Lombardo]

The importance of the relation to the Other IS the third. I agree wholeheartedly with the emphasis upon the latter, but it seems to me that phenomenologically speaking, one can also say that the third appears in the face of the other. This is by no means to say that the third is reducible to the other, and so on and so forth... only that my experience with the other is the experiencing of a third.

[Marc Lombardo]

I should also say that I favor Dewey's description of the face-to-face to Levinas'... the face-to-face is any relationship which serves as a schema for creating a genealogy of causation. By contrast, the third (for Dewey, the public) is the externality presupposed by any such genealogical operation. For example, if someone were to punch me in the face, I would directly attribute the action to him or her not because the individual is where the ultimate onus of responsibility lies, but because in this case the individual is the final point at which my ability to perceive the cause of the blow stops. Surely, there are an innumerable amount of factors which led to the consequence of this bloke's punching me (e.g. not only did the bloke had to be born, he also had to live his life exactly as he did up to this point, leading up to his meeting me face-to-face here and now) but it is more than likely that I am unable to perceive exactly how all of these precarious factors coalesced beyond the fact that he is the one punching me. The proper ethical position then, is to attempt to craft our face-to-face relationships in such a way that by constant trial and error we can better ascertain the way that the third, the undecidable, effects us. For example, after the bloke punches me for what I said, perhaps I could ask him to look back upon my words and realize that I meant no ill-will, but it was only the indeterminacy of language which was to blame. Clearly, I had offended him by what I said (and he has certainly offended me by punching me in my snout!) but in realizing that our disagreement was the fault of the third, we can attempt to relate in the future without blaming each other.

Now, it must be asked what is it about the third such that I can best describe it by rendering it as a scapegoat? The third marks the limit at which my own narratives can no longer account for the workings of the world. When consequences impress themselves upon us without our being able to appreciate from whence they came, this is often experienced as a kind of impotence... even if I have "good luck," how do I know that this isn't just the world playing with me, setting me up for something much worse... I don't, because by definition it is out of my control. However (and here is the positive spin on the third), by recognizing that things often are outside of my control and hence that my actions have many more and other consequences than I could ever predict, I can act in a way that possibly harnesses this undecidability and thereby enables a reconstruction better than any I could imagine.

[Kenneth Rufo]

The face is not, for Levinas, the source of authenticity. It is in fact the very announcement of an alterity that is both comprised and beyond the individual other with their individual face; hence the formulation that "every other is every bit other". Arguably, what Agamben terms the Musselman can only be accounted for by this face, and not through the decision of or for the third, since only the call of the other, our being-in hostage to them, disrupts the sense of ontological certitude on the other's behalf, rather than through the abstraction of a system and its gaps. Just such an abstraction happened, of course, and just such a hoped for response was given: by the so-called Canada group, the denizens of Auschwitz who aided in the processing and liquidation of bodies. When the gaps of which subjectivity is made are gaps not produced first and foremost by the other, it's easy to discern a system that is devoid of any obligation to those others, no matter how heinous the consequences of one's participation within it.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Point in fact, it's Heidegger who sees in the call of conscience and eventually the call of Being a source for authenticity as the claiming of an relationship to one's own: the eigen of Eigentlichkeit. This sort of ontological vocabulary plays little role in Levinias' discussion of the face, especially from Beyond Essence on.

[Julian]

Thanks for the focus on Zizek and Levinas, Jodi.

I would like to offer some detailed responses to your summary, but that will have to wait til later when I have the time it deserves.

Just to start, though it is perhaps worth noting that this positioning of Zizek with respect to Levinas is very close to Derrida's positioning with respect to Levinas, hence supporting the comments made here and elsewhere that Zizek is nearing Derrida's positions.

To give one example, on your 2 (assymetry), Zizek's Kierkegaardian side needs to be read alongside Derrida's reading of Kierkegaard in "The Gift of Death," or Derrida's "Violence and Metaphysics."

To make one quick broad point, though, Z reads L as ethical in a Kierkegaardian sense. I question this reading (although it was also Levinas's reading of Kierkegaard). Kierkegaard and Levinas are actually very close in that they both try to show how the universally comprehensible is lacking. To Kierkegaard this break comes in the leap of faith. To L it is (to quote Critchley) "the everyday event of my responsibility for another." Derrida helps connect these two possibilities in "The Gift of Death."

Now I'm off to answer the call of my filial other from preschool!

[mattcalarco]

Jodi--thanks for taking the time to flesh this out. Lovely work! If this were not a blog, I'd write a lengthy response. But just to show you very briefly how somebody who spends a lot of time reading Levinas (me!) would respond to each of these points:

1."Zizek argues that Levinas ultimately anchors the symbolic order of norms in the face. Why? Because the face is that which guarantees itself."
>>>The face does not anchor norms or guarantee itself. It *presents* itself kath auto, beyond any intelligibility I supply. And this presentation is utterly ambiguous. The only access I have to it is indirect; a trace of the Other appears in the jamming of my conceptual machinery.

2. Asymmetry
>>>In the discussion of asymmetry, Zizek is confusing Levinas's ethical/philosophical and religious/confessional writings. The asymmetry of the ethical is always singular, never collective. To remark on the other's responsibility would be to contradict asymmetry. The other's responsibility? C'est son affair.

3. "Zizek emphasizes that the Muselmann is one who cannot answer the call of the other and who cannot be seen as addressing us--he is faceless, a blank wall."
>>>With regard to the Muselmann being unable to be addressed, perhaps. If all responsivity is gone, then yes, the Muselmann cannot be addressed. of course, given the logic of asymmetry, this is not Levinas's concern or focus (see above). His focus is the address of the Other. Levinas says repeatedly that the face is not full speech but expression, the saying that subtends the said. This occurs in many forms and in many ways--the curve of the shoulder, the nape of a neck, etc. Levinas suggests that babies have the capacity to address and call egoism into question, so I doubt he would deny the Muselmann the same capacity. The Muselmman may not speak but he/she certainly *expresses*.

+1. "Zizek argues for a cold justice that chooses against the face for the third."
>>>This is the part I laughed out loud about when I read Z's essay. Levinas has always argued that this move is necessary. The face of the other is straightaway political, that is, it straightaway involves the third party and pushes me into the political sphere. Just have a look at Levinas's essay on Kierkegaard and Abraham--he makes Zizek's argument for him. The only point Levinas would want to underscore is that this turn to the third party is not made in good conscience.

Derrida has made a career out of examining this tension between the face of the singular other and the third party, under various names and rubrics.

Now, Z thinks he is making original points with these arguments. To me, he is simply one step behind Levinas (and two steps behind Derrida). The debate is just so, so much more advanced than Z seems to realize.

Now, Badiou (in contrast to Z; and he is to my mind a much better reader of Levinas) is dead right to criticize Levinas's theological leanings. Frankly, they make me puke! But Badiou is smart enough to leave the critique there. When he moves on to discuss ethics proper, he leaves Levinas out of the discussion and takes on a nameless, multiculturalist quasi-Levinasian position--and he is careful not to saddle Levinas himself with any of the shortcomings he finds there. Perhaps he does this because he realizes that a *rigorous* Levinasian ethics stripped of the religious shite *is* an ethics and politics of the event . . .

Here is where one could begin to have a serious debate with Derrida and Levinas. I'm neither a Derridean nor a Levinasian, so I'm not defending them (in fact, I'm harshly critical of both); but if Z wants to criticize them, he should at least move the debate to something closer to this level or this set of questions--at least, that's what I'd like to see (and I know I'm not alone!).

[Amish Lovelock]

Hasn't neoliberalism and private death broken the face to face? Is this not why Levinas is now the multiculturalist?

Point 2 needs to be dealt with.

[Jodi]

Marc Lombardo: as I understand it, Zizek's point is that Levinas turns the third into the Other. And, what this means for Zizek is that in Levinas's version, the third loses its opacity, its character as a limit, as a limit to what we know and experience and thus as a condition of our finitude. And it is this condition, this way that we find ourselves in situations not of our making and beyond our understanding, situations involving people, that is the condition of justice, and a condition that has to remain abstract, rather than understood in terms of concrete persons. (I think.)

FYI: all the comments are really helpful and interesting. I'm thinking about the points folks have raised.

Can anyone suggest a short piece by Levinas that would be indicative of his ethics? (This might be an impossible request; I couldn't recommend a short piece by Zizek that would be exemplary of his position...)

[Jodi]

Kenneth, if I said 'source' that was a mistake. Zizek uses the term 'stands for authenticity'--would that make a difference?

I think, though, that your primary disagreement is at a different point, a point that involves abstraction as opposed to something else, perhaps something like connection or recognition? But I don't want to continue in that direction if I'm wrong about your point.

[Jodi]

Julian, thanks. I just read a paper that talks about Derrida and Levinas and it does seem to me that Zizek's view is similar there. Which then makes any elisions he makes between Derrida and Levinas all the more disingenous. In the essay in The Neighbor and in Parallax View, he separates Derrida and Levinas more than he has in the past.

Matt C.--thanks! and thanks for your terrific response; I know you've written in this area, so this is mightily helpful (and if you can recommend or send along something you've done that isn't too long that would also be great)--by the way, will we be seeing a book on Agamben from you?

[Jodi]

Matt,

with respect to 3+1: You write: "The only point Levinas would want to underscore is that this turn to the third party is not made in good conscience."

This seems like a big difference, no? So that Zizek sees the relation between I and the Third as ethically prior to (more ethically significant than) the relation between I and you, so he can write that the true ethical step is choosing against the face for the third. (He draws from Benveniste's discussion of verbs to emphasize the priority of the active and middle, over the passive and then the impersonal Other and I such that the term you is a later addition. I'm not sure this helps the argument all that much, myself...)

I think Zizek would want to say that the Muselmann doesn't even express. Why? In part because of the dilemma of witnessing: the Muselmann is a kind of witness who cannot bear witness, who cannot witness at all and who actually expresses this lack; additionally, the Muselmann reminds us that there is no Other capable of receiving the message/testimony.

On anchoring norms: perhaps I put it badly (the point involves covering over the gap in the big Other, or, providing an unconditional ground or basis for ethics; so, Zizek reads Levinas as saying that the ethical call is what constitutes a subject as well as what forms the basis for justice);

Z on L: "The entire domain of laws and universality is grounded in this responsibility to and for the nonfamiliar Other. I enter the domain of justice and universal laws when I renounce my small world and its possessions and offer to see things from the standpoint of the Other. Concepts and their universality are thus grounded in my responsibility to the Other--ethics preexists and grounds ontology."

and

"So when Levinas claims that a face 'can guarantee itself' this means that it serves as the nonlinguistic point of reference that also enables us to break the vicious circularity of the symbolic order, providing it with the ultimate foundation, the 'absolute authenticity.'

[Nate]

hi Jodi,
This is really interesting. If you have time and don't mind, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Deleuze and Agamben on the link between ethics and ontology. On that note, on your description it sounds like Zizek still has an ethics/ontology link - the subject as hole in being is still a claim about being, presumably, and the remarks about the symbolic sound like an ontology of sorts (like an ontologizing, actually, of the symbolic and of the subject's relation to the symbolic).
best,
Nate

[Julian]

I’ve just re-read the Zizek Neighbor chapter and it is a great piece of writing. As always, however, I finish with the feeling that I’ve been hoodwinked – sold something old and reasonably conservative dressed in a radical comic book cover. But it also suggested a response to some of the entries in this discussion which I hadn’t anticipated:

Matt C addressed Jodi’s Zizekian reading of Levinas beautifully – it is very difficult to describe L in a context where the frames of reference (e.g. Marxism, social theory… psychoanalysis to a lesser extent) are so deeply entrenched in ways that he found problematic. My only problem with Matt’s words is in his objection to Levinas’s theological “shite” which he tries to sidestep via Levinas’s claim to have written two corpuses – philosophical and religious. I assume the “shite” is what Critchley calls the “Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics” (Political Theory 32:2) – fraternity, monotheism, androcentrism, the family, and Israel. What fascinates me about Zizek’s piece is that Z takes L’s corpus as a whole and, in doing so, gives a final reading that, far from being anti-Levinas, is perhaps the most Levinasian reading one could have!

To explain: those of us who have become wrapped up in Levinas’s work have tended towards him as an example of what Zizek calls the “Good” Judaism (justice, respect, responsibility) as opposed to the “bad” Judaism of Jehovah (vengeance, state violence, etc.). Levinas’s sorties into the latter realm are notorious (and embarrassing) for those of us in the Levinas cult (e.g. his scandalous comments about the 1982 Sabra and Chatila refugee camp massacres, the role of women in ethics, as critiqued by Irigaray, etc). My point is that the only way to account for the whole Levinas is probably something very much akin to Zizek’s reading. I doubt L would disagree with much of Zizek’s essay (perhaps Zizek’s critique of Levinas’s survivor’s guilt might have been too painful – I winced, but it is a provocative point). That’s to say that I think Zizek has a somewhat thin reading of Levinas, but that his critiques were themselves Levinasian in that they got to the bits of Levinas many of us struggle with.

Getting to your question, Jodi, about an easy access point to Levinas: you could try “Ethics and Infinity” or some chapters in “Is it Righteous to Be?” as first contact points. They are certainly accessible, but that takes them further from what one gets from plowing into “Otherwise than Being.” The guy is trying to write beyond the entire tradition of thought since Thales! There has to be something of a leap of faith to read him, I fear. Perhaps Badiou is right and Levinas is religious and far from “all that can be gathered under the name of ‘philosophy.’”

[By the way, is Badiou evidence of the final descent of neo-Marxism into solipsism, or what?]

[mattcalarco]

Jodi--thanks for your remarks. All of them were very helpful. You point out that the "good conscience" remark denotes a significant difference between Z and L. I would say, yes, absolutely! I should have noted that. I think L would wholly subscribe to Z's position of cold justice, and yet wholly subscribe to the contradictory demands of the face--and at the same time. There is a tragic pathos in Levinas (and in Derrida) that is not often apparent in Z's work (maybe he intends that--I'm never sure; he's certainly not affirmative in the Hardt and Negri mode). The political question emerges properly, I think, at this point. What is it that motivates us to move toward the third party and politics?

As for the "religious shite" remark, I should have been more careful. Actually, I find Levinas's explicitly confessional/religious writings kind of interesting. I don't mind them at all (not that I subscribe to them). What I can't tolerate, and what irritates me to no end in Levinas, is the attempt to smuggle non-naturalistic elements into his philosophical writings, such that responsibility to the face and third party appear as miracles and inexplicable in naturalistic terms. In other words, Levinas defines nature and being as selfish and egoistic, and makes radical altruism into something belonging to a non-natural domain. That's bad biology and even worse philosophy.

For single essays by Levinas, I'd recommend "Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity" for Levinas's early work, and "Substitution" for his later work. Peperzak's book has a long discussion of the former essay. Bernasconi has a discussion of the latter in in the Cambridge Companion to Levinas.

And, yes, I think I'm gonna do the Agamben book. I'm negotiating the contract with Polity right now. I only hope it will be as good as you Zizek book promises to be!

[Ken]

Josef K. Thanks for the Birkbeck citation on Derrida/Badiou.
One quick point on this very interesting discussion -- wish I had more time today. Julian: do you really think Levinas attempts "to smuggle in" nonnaturalistic elements? I know it happens -- obviously -- hence the range of critiques from Derrida (engaging and productive about this residual religious haunting) to Badiou (respectful as you say, but ultimately dismissive); but it seems to me that Levinas himself works very, very hard not to smuggle such things in to the discussion. It is just that, in the end, he can not. This is tied to his longstanding habit of keeping his "religious" writings separate from his "philosophical" writings. This is important, I think, because -- curiously -- it is the secular/naturalistic/materialisticcultural studies group that ignored this distinction, inadvertently bringing Levinasian gestures into a larger critical discussion -- again, without separating religion from philosophy. Or, perhaps, like Zizek now with the attempted movement through Christianity, "they" (sorry for the vague pronoun -- in my own field -- early modern literary studies -- the proper name for this is Greenblatt) thought their own materialist beliefs sufficient to take from Levinas what they liked -- ignoring its religious sources AND Levinas's own efforts to draw a distinction.

[Keith]

Jodi - thanks so much for this. Though I sidestepped Zizek and Levinas completely for a section of my post for the upcoming LS symposium, I spend a (very) brief amount of time on the face - but it's via Agamben and Deleuze. I went back last night and read Zizek's "Jews, Christians, and Other Monsters" that appeared in Lacanian Ink (don't know if it's actually a cut and paste from the one you're referring to) and Z seems to take a very *Deleuzian* position of the face. That is, his understanding of what is missing from Levinas concerns the radically *inhuman* nature of the face subtracted from the norm. In that sense (to me at least, provisionally) Z's quasi-call to embrace the "faceless background" is no different than D&G's call to escape faciality or facialization and dismantle the face by becoming (becoming animal, becoming imperceptible or inhuman)- which to me is really to say the same thing as Agamben's "be only your face". They both involve a removal/refusal of legibility within the State.

As far as Z not equating ethics and ontology, I can't say...still severely lacking in the "Zizek books read: " department at this point.

[jake]

Is Levinas' ethics of the Other so different than, say, the ethics of reciprocity? Levinas ethics seems a bit like a psychoanalytical version of the Golden Rule to some extent, and thus somewhat related to normative ethics--interpersonal. And yet that may be its shortcomings, from either contracturalist or marxist grounds. By what means are humans obligated to follow an ethics of reciprocity? Like the Kantian imperative, an ethics of reciprocity only appears to be valid a priori; in reality, humans don't abide by reciprocity, except perhaps if contracts/covenants are agreed upon and there is a threat of punishment (as Hobbes understood). And in some sense the reduction of ethics (and thereby politics) to the individual level, however existentially satisfying, misses a great deal of political thought: distribution, equity, even utilitarianism and economics. But finally I think the ethics of reciprocity is overturned not by philosophy, but by more Malthusian concerns--there may be no atheists in a foxhole; there are no ethicists either

[Discard]

Regarding the question of tragic pathos in Zizek, Derrida, Levinas, etc... Agreed that Zizek lacks the tragic pathos of the other two. At the same time, I wonder whether there is actually an intersting relation to tragedy. Speaking with a teacher of mine, he spoke of Z seeking a politics capable of tragedy. And i find this right. Clearly, Z has been weak on offering a political prescription in full, but it seems his interventions could be read as an attempt to resist the politics-as-management approach now prevalent. Politics, for us, cannot be tragic, because we have no attempt to follow a desire for politics. We can't even fail.

Tragedy, then, as a kind of paratactical effect of Z's writing, rather than as a pathos discernible and entwined in the writing of Derrida and Levinas.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Jake, nope. Nothing like that in fact.

[jake]

regardless, it's psychoanalytical, gestalt-ish, rather than rational and/or logical...and since reciprocity is the basis of a great deal of ethics--including Scriptural--I'd say there's some relation---as various online writings of Levinas seem to suggest...there's no mystery knowledge, no psychoanalytic gnosis....and really no basis for Kantian deontology, except after acts/maxims have been assessed in regards to consequences, probable or not

[jake]

Es toot mir Leid. That's a bit of a reduction. Levinas is working from the Heideggerian foundation, so there is all the phenomenological baggage; and the whole idea of the Other seems as much Cartesian as ethical, yet also not capable of any precise definition, as Dasein or even "res cogitans" are not capable of definition. Levinas may be somewhat correct in his critique of Heidegger, but then there are others--Popper, Carnap-- who offered effective critiques of Heidegger as well. Regardless, if one claims "ethics is ontology" then one must be aware that ethical decisions have measurable, and indeed empirical consequences; to think otherwise--that ethics somehow are transcendent or merely gestaltish or something seems rather narcissistic and apolitical.

[Jodi]

Matt and Keith--thanks so much for your reading suggestions. I hope to follow up on them in the next few weeks.
Nate--unfortunately, I can't say more at this point because I don't know enough. But your question is provocation and I will use it to goad me into some more reading and thinking about it!

Discard--I think you are right about Z's rejection of politics as management. And, that such a politics eliminates a space for what we might think of political tragedy or a tragedy that can be politicized rather than individualized.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Jake, stop. Seriously.

Just a few things:

Levinas does not say "ethics = ontology."
The fact that other folks may have authored effect critiques of Heidegger in no way implies those critiques are remotely similar.
The only remotely psychoanalytic thing in Levinas' philosophy is its implict notion of alterity as a constitutive lack, but while that's at least a possible interpretation, it's probably not one that accurately renders his thinking on the subject.
Don't stick to only online texts. There's this new thing, called a library, that may have some longer texts, called books. I'd try reading Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence before you keep dismissing and or summarizing arguments you clearly don't grasp.
A preemptive note: I have no problem with not being interested in someone, but doing quick reductions of a thinker when you clearly don't even understand what that thinker means by the term "ethics" is just insipid.
Everything has "some relation" to some other thing.
"Gestalt" - you keep on using that word. To allude to The Princess Bride, I do not think it means what you think it means.

So seriously, stop.

[jake]

let's put it this way: "otherness" has no necessary definition, nor is there some objective description of how people perceive otherness, or how they should perceive otherness--thus claiming a "duty to the other" is about like saying, "accentuate the positive" or something. The "Other" discussion often looks, tastes, and feels like a quasi-- psychological-philosophical discussion, but I think it is at best metaphorical, and typically so overgeneralized and speculative as to be useless. But really the issue starts with Descartes more than anything: if the res cogitans and Meditations--and Kantian idealism-- are not tenable, then phenomenology (and perhaps Heidegger) barely has anything to stand on either, and this discussion wouldn't be happening. Again, the Marx of the German Ideology certainly is not doing either Cartesian or Kantian analysis, tho there is a tradition of Kantian empiricism which is not so phenomenological. (And I think the early marxist material ontology informs Zizekian ideas as much as psychoanalysis does.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Jodi, I've been thinking about source vs. stands in and yeah, it makes a pretty big difference. I think source implies interpretation, as in Levinas is saying X, while stands in implies more of a Levinas is saying Y which is in effect saying X, and thus more of an argument than an attribution.

But you're right in thinking my disagreement is elsewhere. For Levinas, the face is both of the physical marker of difference that produces the call of the other, but it is also the very marker of alterity (in and of itself) and thus the marker than I am always engaged in a process of recognition made possible by the other before me, and necessarily, all the other others who make possible the relationship to this particular other. So the other's face always already gestures towards the other other, or the third party, as well as making a demand upon me here and now, a demand that I can never know in any unambiguous sense, and yet a demand that compels me, because it is that demand that constitutes the very possibility of myself as subject. This relation, in which the I is formed from and thus hostage to the Other, is what Levinas refers to under the name "ethics," and is the reason why ethics must precede ontology, since the "I" or Dasein that we might think under ontology is only even thinkable through this call/demand that the Other makes of me/gives to me/gives as me.

So my problem with Zizek is that while I think he recognizes this on one level, he seems to just sidestep its particulars and instead reduce it/map it onto a psychoanalytic vocabulary that's not appropriate to it. So the face isn't the marker of the symbolic, it's the thing that gives even the possibility of the symbolic in the first place, more like a broken imago, to go back to Lacan's mirror stage development model. And Z goes further in extending political implications from this break that I think represent not so much a solid argument against Levinas as they do a bizarre and forced reading. As I tried to note briefly previously, the third argument, regarding the Musselman, seems exactly this sort of claim. I'm more interested in the assymetry claim's validity, but I'll wait to comment on that, as I think there we point to a political theory that's inherently problematic in Levinas but that, as with so many others, isn't supported by his own philosophical or religious work.

[Jodi]

Kenneth, thanks so much for your thoughtful response. I'm going to think about it before asking more questions. You've posted on Levinas before haven't you at ghost in the wire? if it's not a pain, could you send a link? if it is a pain, don't even bother, I'll look. I also think that I should try to read some Levinas rather than having you have to explain matters. But, I do appreciate your patience. I think the engagement is important.

I'll also add that there is a specific importance to me insofar as Zizek combines his critique of Levinas with a critique of Butler's ethics and I have to write a paper about that, so getting clearer about the stakes is important.

Oh one last thing, your point on forcing things into an inappropriate psychoanalytic vocabulary--that seems right to me; he does this all the time. It could be, though, that this helps get the lines of disagreement and agreement a little clearer--the notion of the subject seems radically different in Zizek and Levinas. But, Z can't say that straight way because that isn't a critique; it's an observation. And then one follow through the different accounts and determines which accomplishes what one wants to accomplish ...

[jake]

"Otherness," in the sense of the affect of other people on the development of personality, may be described to some extent, but not nearly with the level of specificity that the postmodernists seem to think. Many other factors are relevant: the subject in relation to his own family, socio-economic group, language, nationality, sex, race, age, etc.

In the 70s social psychologists attempted to demonstrate or infer an objective mental "schema" but they did not succeed in defining some necessary collection of mental dispositions (say a response to humans of other races), or any sorts of predictable actions/behavior which could be correlated with this inferred "schema." Lacking some sort of well-defined schema--or cognitive apparatus--to refer to, the PC generalizations about otherness are nearly as pointless as right-wing generalizations about "liberals." THat's not to claim that a white suburbanite does not have certain preconceptions about, say, poor hispanics, but that those preconceptions are not easily defined or some particular facts of consciousness that can be identified. As Wittgenstein once asked, how do you know the person sitting across the room is not an automaton? One could say the same about how other people in a cafe are perceiving "Otherness." That question may seem silly or "behaviorist" in a bad sense, but it is not easily answered.

(Of course if you are doing theology, a lack of definitions, proof, or evidence does not present much of a problem).

[Kenneth Rufo]

Html is turned off currently in the comments, so here's the URL for my Zizek/Levinas post:

http://ghostinthewire.org/archives/2006/02/zizek_and_levin.php

Though it's really just an expanded version of my comment at LS. I may post on this subject again over the next day or so, depending on the attention-garnerning activities of my four month old.

If you're looking for a quick Levinas primer, I'll make a few recs. If you want primary, then try "Notes on Meaning" in _Of God Who Comes to Mind, which is on point regarding Zizek's particular claims. That's not to say you'll find it a rejoinder necessarily, as I think you and I start with different levels of sympathy towards big Z, but the "Notes" piece has the benefit of being short and yet pretty nuanced when it comes to situating the face in Levinas' thinking of ethics before ontology, or being-for the other. (Longer primary reading rec is most definitely _Otherwise than Being_, but it's a pretty intense and lengthy text.) If you want a secondary source, I'd personally recommend either Zygmunt Bauman's _Postmodern Ethics_, which is just dizzying and beautifully written, or Michael Hyde's _Call of Conscience_, which reads Levinas and Heidegger together on this question of the other and ethics, within the context of the debate over euthanasia. Self-disclosure: Hyde's a mentor and friend of mine, and we've written on Levinas together in the past. He's still pretty Heideggerian in his read (more than I am), but the strong Heidegger component is actually quite useful when it comes to explicating the mode and context of Levinas' thought, and so his book might actually be very useful as a way of seeing Levinas through a different, non-psychoanalytic vocabulary.

[Julian]

Kenneth: I love your "ghost" piece. Please advertise any upcoming Levinas discussion as much as you can on the blogosphere. I don't want to miss it. After a decade of trying I still find it hard to write about Levinas in a way that does him justice.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Incidentally, if I was going to hazard a guess at this point about the asymmetry argument, which, as I indicated, I think is valid to a point, I would argue that this has little to do with Levinas' conception of ethics or his emphasis on the fac and the call, but rather is a consequence of a spiritual holdover, a politics of spirit, that's inversely correlated to but homologous with the politics of spirit in Heidegger. For H it's Geist, for L it's a reimagining of psyche, but the move to the ethereal is I think somewhat problematic. There's also some issues to be had with his view of televisual media, and there he's almost directly at odds with H, but I'm not sure what role these play in determining much of his political positions.

But what I am confident about is that his state support, especially support of Israel, is related to but not a product of his philosophical work on ethics, and I suspect Z knows that this is would be a tenuous claim at best, not that it stops him from trying to dress the objection in philosophical clothing.

Of course, it's not an entirely illegit maneuver. A philosopher's politics are certainly part of the reception of that thinker's thought, and so it's worth trying to explore the linkages between the two formations. It's the quality and means of the exploration I take issue with, as I often do with the more extreme "Heidegger was a Nazi" arguments, which I often find conducted in the most reductive and hostile manner, and concomitantly, done in a way that offers little productive/heuristic value. (Obvious exceptions: Derrida and Lacoue-Labarthe, who I think stand as the examples of how to do exactly this sort of rigorous exploration. At least when it comes to Heidegger.)

And Julian, thanks for the feedback. I will be posting on this subject in a day or two, so if you get bored, please feel free to visit Ghost. Oh, and Matt C and I are close to finishing round II (on the second chapter) of our posts on Derrida's Gift of Death, which is starting to turn from Patocka to Levinas, and so it might be worth keeping on eye open over at Long-Sunday, assuming you're sufficiently bored or interested :)

[jake]

"In Zizek's view, this grounding (of ethics in the "face") is fetishistic insofar as it covers over the lack in the symbolic, the fact that there is nothing that guarantees it and that it remains essentially non-all.
Zizek does endorse one aspect of Levinas's ethics, however, the way that it is fundamentally anti-biopolitical, the way that it endorses something that is beyond mere life."

I think you are over-emphasizing the Lacanian aspects of Zizek at the expense of the marxist. By necessity an orthodox marixst will have issues with phenomenology and Heidegger (and with psychoanalysis as well), and with those who follow H's programme such as Levinas. Heidegger, in some sense (I assert Dasein is, if not undefinable, mystical rather than philosophical), is yet upholding a cartesian subject which determines experience; sensationalism and empiricism (which would include the early Marx), and thus modern psychology does not permit inferences regarding res cogitans (or the synthetic a priori or Dasein).

That sort of insistence of bare -bones verification might irk continentalists, but it's a mistake to assume that one is "doing" either philosophy or psychology when taking the Heideggerian route, regardless of fluency with a quasi-psychoanalytical or philosophical jargon. It's more akin to like Kierkegaardian muck or something.

Wm. James himself disposed of the Cartesian ghost

[Kenneth Rufo]

Is Jake the Troll of Sorrow? Seriously, I don't know/can't tell.

I know he comments a lot on this stuff, despite not really knowing what he's talking about, and so I can't tell if we're supposed to engage or just roll our eyes.

[jake]

You don't know what your'e talking about. You couldn't provide a definiton of Dasein if someone paid you. It's a basic hypothetical syllogism: if there are no grounds for Heidegger's system (and most non-continentalists would say there aren't) then there are no grounds for the ideas of his followers.

You don't know what philosophy is, or argument: you can't predicate about unidentifiable, unverifiable mental objects/processes as if you were discussing biology. There are no necessary "perceptions/schema" of the Other, or of Dasein, or indeed of ethical thoughts/duties. Yr a theologian, not philosopher.

And you;ve yet to figure out that Zizek is a marxist. That is what grounds his critique for better or worse. Marx is an empiricist, not cartesian or phenomenologist: hes closer to Hobbes than to Hegel.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Well even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once and a while. Jake is quite right: non-continental philosophers do not think there are "grounds" in Heidegger's thought, which is actually kind of right (ok, so two blind squirrels will each find nuts every once and a while), since Heidegger (at least as of Contributions...from Enowning) is all about the abgrund.

Jake, I'll keep playing a bit, but seriously, will you tell me if you're the Troll of Sorrow? Or perhaps trying to be? It's ok to be honest; I'll still find your comments funny and lovable.

[jake]

and Kantianism is itself opposed to phenomenologists, to Heidegger, and the continentalists. Kant does not allow arguments from introspection (tho he may contradict himself); the categories of understanding take perceptions and sensations from observation for their material, or one is doing mathematics and logic. For kant, even with the synthetic a priori, there are no means to truth other than observation/physical science or math/logic. Phenomenologists seem to squeeze between the analytic/synthetic divide and start offering introspection, subjective sensation, "revealing," mysticism as a means to truth. I do not think Kant even approves of theology as it is traditionally conceived; yes, there is a priori knowledge (tho that might be read cognitively at this stage), but understanding either depends on perceived objects (tho, yes, filtered through the subject's own "givens" of space/time), or it works with axiomatic knowledge of math and logic.

[Kenneth Rufo]

And Jake, which Marx are you talking about when you say he's more Hobbesian than Hegelian? German Ideology, Grundrisse, Kapital, all of the above? He does kind of refine and alter his thinking a bit over time...

[Julian]

On symmetry: Our discussion begs a simple question: why do we assume symmetry? We could all trace the origins of symmetrical notions of social space - Comte, "rights of man," etc - but the assumption of symmetry is a weird one to impose on the world as we experience it, surely. I navigate a world of others whom I encounter face-to-face - only when I reflect and analyze those interactions can I think of myself and them in terms of social objects moving in space.

The assymetric assumption only leads to the problems Zizek claims for it if one starts from the assumption of symmetry. So, to return to Jodi's original point 2, to say that Levinas's arguments would lead to "questioning one's own basic right to exist" only make sense if we accept the primacy of that symmetrical view. Moreover, if Levinas is interpreted as a philosopher of sacrifice - a reading I could go along with to a point - and that sacrifice is problematic to Zizek because it suggests a unique role for Jews (in the Difficult Freedom quote [there is an important question here to note: what does L mean by "Jew"?]) then why is that a criticism for Zizek when the whole point of books like "The Puppet" and "The Neighbor" as I read them, is that Christian thought contains a privileged moral consciousness to the extent that it can still think the notion of sacrifice that is needed to counter the economic logic of globalization?

On the issue of the relationship between Levinas's philosophy and the man's own (often difficult-to-stomach-for-progressives) political views, I'd recommend Howard Caygill's "Levinas and the Political" - a book that inspired my earlier comments on what Zizek might have right about L and which tries to see the philosophy and politics together.

Jodi, I want to echo those who recommended "Substitution" as a place to start. It is in "Basic Philosophical Writings" among other places. The books I recommended earlier are interviews which have their uses but also their perils - useful to read alongside something real like "Substitution." Kenneth's point about the importance of L's later writings is vitally important.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Though I do think you might be right about another thing: I don't know what philosophy is. I think I've got a good grasp on argument, but I'm fairly sure argument isn't reducible to philosophy, so maybe you can help me out on this point and let me know? I've been reading quite a bit of stuff that claims to be or has been claimed as philosophy, and I'll be the first to admit, I don't know what that word actually delimits.

[Kenneth Rufo]

So Julian, Levinas and the Political is worth the time/money?? I've been so disappointed in the Lacan and Derrida entries in that series (though slightly impressed by the Foucault book), I've been reluctant to grab any more of them. But I'll trust the recommendation if you tell me to.

[jake]

Re : Marx/Hobbes. KM identifies thought with matter. Man is matter which thinks; no transcendence of teh subject/ego. That is str8-up Hobbesian material causality and contra-Descartes. See "the Holy Family" as well GI and intro. to Capital, other places. THat's not to say I completely agree with that, but KM does acknowledge a debt to the English empiricists. His relation to Hegel is something else. His dialectic is material obviously, but merely a model, not an impersonal driving force such as the hegelian Idea. One might give a sort of secular reading of Hegel's dialectic (derived really from Kant's 3rd antinomy, right), and view history as a struggle between man (freedom) and impersonal natural forces, or even organism and environment, but I do not think that leads to any sort of predictable or even plausible conclusions or system. (CS Peirce offers some interesting thoughts on Hegel and phil. of history and time)

Reading through H's What is Metaphysics and Question Concerning Technology, a few things from Sein und Zeit, I am convinced he is a mystic of a rather severe sort, and that Dasein is a mystical concept, as his insistence on "revealing". If that's your thing, cool; but reason or argument it is not.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Well then, nothing says "reason" and "argument" like some reading samples and a conviction.

[jake]

that said, Leviathan has much purported theological material: yet Hobbes early on identifies thought and any presumed God as material; had he proclaimed his atheism he would have been imprisoned if not executed.

in some sense then the battle of analyticals/socio-biologists against the postmods/phenomenologists is anticipated in the Hobbes-Descartes battle, and there are not only metaphysical/ontological issues at stake, but political. At least with Hobbes one is spared the snark hunting

[Julian]

Kenneth,

Not sure if it's worth the money... I got it through our library consortium (like ILL) but I would not have bought it. Just so you understand, my field is philosophy of education and it is of less help in my work, but someone who is a dedicated Levinas scholar might want to read it at least.

It has been a few months since I read it and I have no notes with me so I'm writing this from memory, but I did appreciate the way it helped further separate Levinas and Derrida. Moreover, by holding together L's philosophy and politics and by accentuating and reiterating the extremes of violence in Levinas's life as a backdrop for his writing and political comments made him more of a stranger to me - something which helped me orient myself to his work.

I referred above to the Levinas "cult" and I do think there is a history of hagiographic writing on L, of which I am more guilty than others. The shift one goes through to "get" Levinas is perhaps greater than that for many others, and that can lead to an uncritical appraisal. I have always had a rather Derridean reading of L, but Derrida's comments on L in "Adieu" and other sources lead me sometimes to think of them as closer than I think they were.

I've been reading more secondary literature than I should recently, I think, and not enough L and D. What I am getting (in Thompson, Caygill and post-1999 Critchley) is more separation between the two and, using Thompson in contrast to Critchley, less Marxist residue in the reading of both L and D. I think of secondary texts in a birurcated way - Thompson and Critchley helped me get clearer about L and D, but Caygill problematizes. Both are necessary, of course, but there are better problematisers: Ajenstat's "Driven Back to the Text" for one. I have to wrestle to understand the best problematizers as I wrestle with L and D.

Sorry - a long response to a short question.

[jake]

Sure man. Heidegger ist richtig! Technology comes into Being through no acts of humans themselves, it is a way of Being, how Dasein realized itself. Who needs intention, experiment, decisions based on observations: Dasein just does stuff, magical stuff and a person can, maybe when in a bad mood, understand it: it reveals itself! That time of the month: alethia

I suspect Nietzsche himself would have detested that fat nazi

[jake]

But it's taken the plodding empiricist Me some time to understand what the crafty continentalists are up to with the regular invocations of Heidegger or his progeny, Levinas, Derrida ,etc.: Heidegger, like his more physiological predecessor Nietzsche, is a power vortex, opposed to marxism, and to psychoanalysis, maybe--shall we say, to secularism, multiculturalism, and jewish academics.

He's Deutsch of course, and has some sort of traditional philosophical cred. And tho' I am sure the "leftists" here abouts would protest this assertion, there is a love for the Teutonic philosophical tradition which most in humanities or philosophy or, most importantly, theology implicitly partake in. Deutschland Ueber Alles!

Siding with marxist or egads, sociobiologists, empiricists, logicians, of any type is a weakening, a loss for many, so they are forced to accept the Heideggerian system, regardless how bizarre it may be.

Heidegger is acceptable now even for leftists, but someone like Quine--a real fascist there. Yet if we are forced to side with quasi-fascist philosophers, I think Quineanism is not only superior in terms of applicability, but in terms of ,well, joss: QUine served the allies in the US Navy for one, and made no bones about his dedication to scientific materialism

[Kenneth Rufo]

Jake, you tell the funniest jokes.

[jake]

Not really. What's funny is taking the mish mash of Sein und Zeit or the QCT seriously. ANd not to get deep, but one could pull a Popper and ask whether any of Heidegger's writing (or that of his kinder) falsifiable...nicht-ski on that. And all types of thought--not only science--is subject to falsification, or to some form of verifcation, whether Peircean or Quinean, what have you; unless you are asserting some axiomatic knowledge, and Dasein and the rest is far from axiomatic. It's more Cartesian subjectivity really, just put forth in a bizarre poetic manner...

But I do think, for most yankees, links oder recht, upholding Heideggerian ideas is more like attending a pep rally than putting forth some claim and defending it, arguing for it...

[Stephen Rowntree]

Levinas’ Face

for Levinas the face
that I face is the face
that faces the other
a reflection of the face
I face while facing
the face facing the Other
face but face to face
facing the Other that is
the face that faces the I
that is the Other face other
than I which is I the face
that faces the Other
face to face that is I
and Other than I that is I
as Other face to face
with I the Other