Levinas and the politics of hospitality

History of Political Thought

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 158-180

  Gauthier, David J ^a  

^a ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33947405350     PISSN: 0143781X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (98)

1. The author wishes to thank Cecil L. Eubanks and the two anonymous reviewers from the History of Political Thought for their insightful comments and criticisms of an earlier version of this essay.
2. J. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford, 1999), p. 4.
3. For a good summary of Adieu, see F. Raffoul, 'On Hospitality, between Ethics and Politics', Research in Phenomenology, 28 (1998), pp. 274-83.
4. Derrida also grapples with Levinas's thought in J. Derrida, 'Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas', in Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago, 1978), pp. 79-153,
5. and J. Derrida, 'At this Very Moment in This Work Here I Am', trans. R. Berezdivin, in Re-Reading Levinas, ed. R. Bernascondi and S. Critchley (Bloomington, 1991), pp. 11-48.
6. Among the most notable such works are the following: F.C. Alford, Levinas, The Frankfurt School and Psychoanalysis (Middleton, CT, 2003);
7. D. Awerkamp, Emmanuel Levinas: Ethics and Politics (New York, 1977);
8. B. Bergo, Levinas between Ethics and Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth (Dordrecht, 1999);
9. R. Burrgreave, 'The Ethical Basis for a Humane Society According to Emmanuel Levinas', Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 57 (1981), pp. 5-57;
10. R. Burrgreave, From Development to Solidarity: An Ethical Reading of Human Desire in its Socio-Political Relevance According to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. C. Vanhove-Romanik (Leuven, 1985);
11. H. Caygill, Levinas and the Political (London and New York, 2002);
12. A. Peperzak, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West Lafayette, IN, 1993);
13. S. Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford, 1992);
14. S. Critchley, Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity: Essays on Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought (New York, 1999);
15. W.P. Simmons, An-Archy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas's Political Thought (Lanham, 2003).
16. See J. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. L.S. Roudiez (Brighton, 1991);
17. T.W. Ogletree, Hospitality to the Stranger: Dimensions of Moral Understanding (Philadelphia, 1985);
18. M. Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (London, 1984);
19. J. Derrida, 'Hospitality, Justice, and Responsibility: A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida', in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. R. Kearney and M. Dooley (London, 1999).
20. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 21.
21. 'I always make a clear distinction, in what I write, between philosophical and confessional texts' ('Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas', in Face to Face with Levinas, ed. R. Cohen (Albany, 1996), p. 18). Not all studies of Levinas's political thought have followed his lead in this regard. For example, Caygill's Levinas and the Political fully acknowledges the political import of Levinas's Zionist writings.
22. At times, Levinas capitalizes Other, while in other instances he is content to leave the term uncapitalized. Because the Other has transcendental import for Levinas, the term will be capitalized throughout this essay, even when Levinas and his translators have neglected to do so in the original translation. Since the self is no less responsible for the well-being of the Third than for the Other, the Third will be capitalized as well.
23. For an examination of the theological implications of Levinas's concept of the home, see M. Purcell, 'Homelessness as a Theological Motif: Emmanuel Levinas and the Significance of the Home', Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 16 (2) (1995), pp. 88-104.
24. E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingus (Pittsburgh, 1961), p. 152.
25. It should be borne in mind that Levinas's notion of recollection is not synonymous with remembrance. Instead, recollection is the process by which the self recovers its innate capacity for subjective thought and action.
26. Levinas uses the words self, ego and I interchangeably. For the sake of consistency, I will use the term self to refer to the self-conscious subject.
27. Levinas's notion of an elemental state has drawn comparisons to Locke's state of nature. See R.A. McDaniel, 'Garden-Variety Liberals: Discovering Eden in Levinas and Locke', Polity, 34 (2) (2001), pp. 117-39.
28. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 154.
29. Ibid., p. 156.
30. The welcoming aspect of the home is symbolized by the figure of the woman: 'The woman is the condition for recollection, the interiority of the Home, and inhabitation', ibid., p. 155. Understandably, Levinas's view of the feminine has aroused much criticism.
31. See S. Critchley, 'Five Problems in Levinas's View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them', Political Theory, 32 (2) (2004), p. 174;
32. S. Sandford, The Metaphysics of Love (London, 2000).
33. For Levinas, the self's possessive relationship to the world is accomplished through labour. Furthermore, the annihilation of elemental alterity through labour is the necessary pre-condition for the creation of money: 'Because it is not in itself the thing can be exchanged and accordingly be compared, be quantified, and consequently already lose its very identity, be reflected in money.' Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 162.
34. Ibid., pp. 172-3.
35. Ibid., p. 173.
36. Plato, Republic, 359d-360b.
37. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 171.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid. In his second major work, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, Levinas would deviate from this undifferentiated conception of language by drawing a distinction between the pre-linguistic, non-ontological realm of 'the saying' and the linguistic, ontological realm of 'the said'. Levinas's revised view of language was inspired by Derrida's charge that Levinas's thought relies on the logos of the tradition and is oblivious to the ontological and violent nature of language.
41. For more on the dialogue between Levinas and Derrida, see P. Atterton, 'Levinas and the Language of Peace: A Response to Derrida', Philosophy Today, 36 (1992), pp. 59-70;
42. R. Bernascondi, 'Levinas and Derrida: The Question of the Closure of Metaphysics', in Face to Face with Levinas (Albany, 1986), pp. 181-202.
43. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 172.
44. E. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (The Hague, 1981), p. 91.
45. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 172.
46. By metaphysics, Levinas means the self's journey towards otherness, not the philosophical comprehension of beings in light of a particular being, as Heidegger would argue.
47. For a good discussion of Levinas' concept of the Third, see W.P. Simmons' essay, 'The Third: Levinas's Theoretical Move from An-Archical Ethics to the Realm of Justice and Politics', Philosophy and Social Criticism, 25 (6) (1999), pp. 83-104.
48. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 213.
49. While Buber's I-thou relationship bears a certain resemblance to the self-Other relationship described by Levinas, there are important differences between the two that bear mention. For Buber, the I's obligation to the them is reciprocal and is thus limited in nature. For Levinas, however, the selfs obligation to the Other is asymmetrical and hence infinite in scope. For a discussion of Levinas' relationship to Buber, see R. Bernascondi, ' "Failure of Communication" as a Surplus: Dialogue and Lack of Dialogue between Buber and Levinas', in The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, ed. R. Bernascondi and D. Wood (New York, 1988), pp. 100-35;
50. and A. Tallon, 'Intentionality, Intersubjectivity, and the Between: Buber and Levinas on Affectivity and the Dialogical Principle', Thought, 53 (1978), pp. 292-309.
51. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 213.
52. Levinas, Otherwise then Being or Beyond Essence, p. 158.
53. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 213.
54. Ibid., p. 214.
55. Ibid.
56. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, p. 158.
57. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 300.
58. E. Levinas, 'Contempt for the Torah as Idolatry', in In the Time of the Nations, trans. M.B. Smith (Bloomington, 1994), p. 61.
59. Two other pieces from the Levinasian corpus that merit attention for their focus on similar themes are 'The Nations and the Presence of Israel', in In the Time of the Nations, and 'Politics After!', in Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. G.D. Mole (London, 1994).
60. E. Levinas, 'The State of Caesar and the State of David', in Beyond the Verse, p. 177.
61. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 21.
62. Ibid., p. 300.
63. Ibid., p. 298.
64. Levinas, 'The State of Caesar and the State of David', p. 184.
65. St Augustine, City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (New York, 1984), p. 139.
66. Levinas, 'The State of Caesar and the State of David', p. 178.
67. Ibid., p. 183.
68. Ibid., p. 181.
69. Ibid., p. 180.
70. Ibid., pp. 180-1.
71. Ibid., p. 181.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., p. 180.
74. Ibid., p. 186.
75. Ibid., p. 180.
76. Ibid., p. 187.
77. For a penetrating discussion of Levinas' view of Israel, see Caygill, Levinas and the Political, pp. 158-98.
78. Levinas, 'The State of Caesar and the State of David', p. 187.
79. Ibid., p. 186.
80. Levinas, 'The Nations and the Presence of Israel', p. 97.
81. E. Levinas, 'The Contemporary Criticism of the Idea of Value', in Value and Values in Evolution, ed. E.A. Maziarz (New York, 1979), p. 184.
82. F. Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. W.W. Hallo (Notre Dame, 1970), p. 300.
83. Levinas, 'The Nations and the Presence of Israel', p. 98.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid.
86. 'Publicness initially controls every way in which the world and Da-sein are interpreted, and it is always right, not because of an eminent and primary relation of being to "things", not because it has an explicitly appropriate transparency of Da-sein at its disposal, but because it does not get to the "heart of the matter", because it is insensitive to every difference of level and genuineness.' M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh (Albany, 1996), p. 119.
87. Levinas, 'The State of David and the State of Caesar', p. 155.
88. See, for example, W. Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination (Philadelphia, 1986).
89. Levinas, 'The State of David and the State of Caesar', p. 183.
90. Critchley, 'Five Problems in Levinas's View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them', p. 173.
91. E. Levinas, 'Le Debat Russo-Chinois et la dialectique', in Les imprevus de l'histoire (Montpellier, France, 1994), pp. 171-2.
92. E. Levinas, 'Cities of Refuge', in Beyond the Verse, p. 54.
93. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, p. 117.
94. R. Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political (London, 1996), p. 44;
95. E. Levinas, 'Heidegger, Gagarin, and Us', in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. S. Hand (Baltimore, 1990), pp. 232-3.
96. M. Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York, 1985), p. 135.
97. Levinas, 'The State of Caesar and the State of David', p. 187.
98. O. Eisenstadt, 'The Problem of the Promise: Derrida on Levinas on the Cities of Refuge', Cross Currents, 52 (2003), pp. 478-9.