CHAPTER III
NON-INDIFFERENCE
WITHIN DIFFERENCE:
EMMANUEL
LEVINAS ON THE SOCIALITY OF THE
FACE-TO-FACE RELATION
ANGELLI F. TUGADO
INTRODUCTION
This
chapter attempts to confront the problem of diversity in unity by following the
thought of Emmanuel Levinas on the concept of difference found in the ethical
face-to-face relation according to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas.1 Using
Levinas’ phenomenology this paper outlines the link between the spheres of the
face-to-face (person-to-person) relation and of society. The assumption guiding
this paper is that genuine unity within the larger societal and political
context can be achieved through a reasoned respect for diversity within the
experience of human sociality.
Today,
diversity and unity can be seen as complementary. The concept of diversity
usually regarded in apparently negative terms as tension, conflict and
pluralism, can be understood more positively as a form of coexistence that is
life-giving rather than life-threatening, creative rather than destructive,
affirming rather than denying. The concept of unity has evolved from that of the
danger of mere uniformity under totalitarian state authorities to that of
harmonious coexistence. Furthermore, there seems to be a growing consensus that
unity should ultimately be founded on metaphysical and transcendental
principles. In its own way, this paper tries to dig into the "roots of our
sense of unity with others" as it reflects on the fundamental yet often
underachieved fraternity grounded on each person’s ethical respect and
responsibility for the Other in a face-to-face or person-to-person relation.2
To be investigated is how this forgotten respect for the face inspires the
pre-institutional moment that creates the condition for the possibility of unity
despite diversity in a civil society.
The
method of this study is Levinas’s unique brand of phenomenology with regard to
what for him is a fundamentally ethical experience.3
It undertakes a return to the lived experience of the face-to-face or
person-to-person with all the ambiguities such experience entails. To a certain
extent, the method moves out of a strictly phenomenological framework to draw
out the ethical implications of such experience.
The
reader is forewarned that many of the ambiguities are artic-ulated by Levinas in
oftentimes contradictory and at times hyper-bolic terms. Many of the ideas
presented by Levinas need to be done more than said, and thus are more difficult
to say. This warning, however, is given,not as an apology for ambiguity, but for
the peculiar challenge posed by the very problematic of the theme of the paper.
The
first part of the paper develops the notion of fundamental difference that
emerges in face-to-face relations. The second part un-folds the various nuances
of non-indifference that emerge as one responds to the approach of the other
personality or "in-the-face". Finally, the third part reveals
implications arising from the first two parts for the very possibility of unity
this extends beyond face-to-face relations to the larger context of civil
society.
DIFFERENCE
In
our daily dealings with fellowmen it is easy and sometimes even necessary to
take the face for granted. It seems easier to get by in practical and routine
circumstances without considering the sin-gularity of each person with whom we
deal. Most of the time we relate routinely to persons within a given social
context: as bus-inessman, colleague, customer or client. But we have not really
related to other people personally or "in-the-face" as long as we deal
with them in the "usual manner". When conflicts arise, whether or not
intended, when a break in the usual routine occurs, or when a crisis unfolds we
begin really to see the other person in-the-face. For better or for worse, we
come to know persons with whom a break occurs, as we say, "in a different
way," or again as if for the first time. Certain circumstances thus require
that we bracket our usual understanding of other people; it is then that we
experience other people as Other. This is the experience of what Levinas
considers to be forgotten in usual face-to-face relations. Whether in
commonplace circumstances or in critical situations, the other person is related
to as face and as such as a presence; yet something in the Other’s face still
remains "infinitely foreign" no matter how native and familiar to us.
The Other is one who "breaks with the world that can be common to us."4
However,
we do not need dramatically out-of-the-usual circum-stances in order to
encounter other people as faces. The fact that people are (and not only have)
faces is fundamental, yet often it is missed. The strangeness that one now sees
in the Other is easier to see in one who to begin with already is regarded a
stranger; regarding as Other a person with whom we are thoroughly familiar is
more chal-lenging. Levinas’ precise point is for us to render even the
familiar (or so we thought) radically strange, since the other as Other cannot
simply be one’s alter ego, an "appresented analogue of myself"; the
other is "not one’s equal nor a fellow citizen in an intelligible kingdom
of ends."5 For Levinas the difference between one and the other is more radical
and acute than mere difference in habit, interest, outlook, principles, even
religion and other such matters that oftentimes and sometimes irreconcilably
divide people.
The
Other as other is separated absolutely from me such that I6
cannot think of the Other only with respect to what I am not. A concrete
manifestation of this difference is the difficulty even in speaking of someone
who is said to be very close (i.e., for the same reasons given above that
sometimes "differentiate" people). There is something in the Other’s
face that resists being spoken of within and outside of the encounter, which
perhaps makes it easier for one to talk about an-Other "in absentia".
If only for this, there is some truth in the quip, "Do not bother to talk
about yourself; others will do that when you leave." Thus, the Other as
face is exterior to myself. All my attempts to speak of the Other, whether
face-to-face or in presence or absence (as is often the case) of the
face-to-face, fail to capture the "essence" of the Other. Something
always escapes all the impressions I may gather of the Other in my contact with
him/her.
Dealing
with a face cannot therefore be reduced to dealing with someone only within the
context of the totality of impressions left behind. Otherwise even one who is
said to "exceed his reputation" may never be met in the face (i.e., in
the area exceeding his reputation) as long as his reputation conditions the
manner or even the very possibility of my relation with him/her. According to
Levinas, the Other in his face is not a set of impressions, but more an
expression. As such, the Other "presses out" of whatever impression or
image I may have and in doing so presents himself to me. Although "I may
turn toward the Other as toward an object, . . . the best way of encountering
the Other is not even to notice the color of his eyes!"7
Further, while "the relation with the face can surely be dominated by
perception, . . . what is specifically the face is what cannot be reduced to
that."8
Thus, the face as such is not merely a "plastic image", a subject of
caricature or even of icons, but the very presence of one who comes to pass,
i.e., as an "epiphany." As presence, the Other reveals him or herself
ambiguously—by entering my world and yet remaining outside it, outside of my
totalizing grasp. An aspect of the difference between the Other and me lies in
the Other being given over and beyond my grasp. The Other faces me from a height
which, however, does not really dominate or efface me.
This
dimension of height also carries a depth. Even if the Other is beyond whatever I
may perceive of him, still I am tempted to domi-nate him if only to bring him
within my grasp. Levinas even goes as far as pointing out the temptation to kill
born out of an "allergic intolerance" of the other. Yet the very
epiphany of the face resists this temptation. The resistance is a show not of
(physical) force, but a moral or ethical force, whose power lies in its very
"defiance of my ability for power." At the moment I think I can do or
say anything I want to dominate or suppress the other, I am proven wrong by the
face, by that gaze. Thus Levinas describes, in haunting terms, the
ambiguity of the Other’s resistance as both a strength and a weakness:
The
Other who can sovereignly say "no" to me is exposed to the point of
the sword or the revolver’s bullet, and the whole unshakable firmness of his
`for itself’ with the intransigent "no" he opposed can be
obliterated because the sword or bullet has touched the ventricles or auricles
of his heart. In the contexture of the world he is a quasi-nothing. But he can
oppose to me a struggle, that is, oppose to the force that strikes him not a
force of resistance, but the very unforeseeableness of his reaction (TI, p.
199).
In the heart of the
face’s vulnerability is its moral strength and authority: it is the face that
"forbids one to kill"9 and
thereby commands respect and nonviolence. For this, Levinas notes even during
war when ethics is said to be suspended it is difficult to kill someone who
looks one straight in the eye and that assassins usually attack their victims
from behind.10
Further, the temptation to kill means not only taking someone’s life by a gun
or other means, but the mere doing nothing to keep him alive.11
The
foregoing, moreover, accentuates another aspect of difference: the disproportion
between one’s own feeble powers of domination and control and the infinity of
the force of the Other’s resistance. In the face of such alterity, I may
regard the Other as adversary, particularly if the Other is seen as a threat to
my own survival. As long as this view is maintained, it is difficult to see how
unity, at the very least with one’s fellowman, can be achieved at all.
NON-INDIFFERENCE
Yet
in its indescribable feebleness and resistance, the face commands my respect as
it orders me not to kill. As the subject of my regard (Il me regarde),
the Other is one I am called upon not merely to look at, but look after, at the
very least by keeping him alive. It must be noted that the Other’s face also
looks at me and talks back.12 I
become more sensitive to this usually taken-for-granted experience of being
looked at or faced in the presence of a different group of people in a foreign
environment. In such circumstances I am called upon to transcend myself and to
meet or face up to the Other who also transcends me, that is, who puts my
autonomy into question and ap-proaches me from a height and from the depth of
his/her resistance to my grasp. Self-transcendence requires me to shift from the
tendency to control to the ability to welcome the Other with open arms but not
with empty hands. Levinas sees this shift as the move to proximity, i.e., when I
meet and respond to the Other who approaches and speaks to me. The Other’s
approach allows me to be deposed from my closed and hitherto sovereign position
and to be disposed to the obligation to respond to the Other’s appeal and
approach.
Proximity
therefore summons my responsibility for the Other. In further deepening this
sense of responsibility, Levinas explains that the other who approaches me
exposed (the nudity of the face as such) and in destitution, calls me to
"bear the bankruptcy and wretchedness of the Other, to suffer for his
suffering." This is the heart of inten-tionality, over and above its
phenomenological significance: to "turn toward the other who remains
separate even in proximity, by also bearing his suffering without light, without
measure."13
Proximity,
however, does not obliterate difference. The other who approaches never comes
near enough to dissolve the distance between the Other and me. I do not lose
myself in the relation that cannot be reduced to reciprocity. In this light, one
wonders whether in the so-called neighborhood, people who are geographically
close may really be in ethical proximity to each other. Ethical proximity,
realized in one’s bearing of responsibility for the Other cuts across
geographical and even ideological barriers. Levinas’ point here leaves us with
the question of how genuine community can be lived, that is, even within
organized (or urbanized) settings.
The
non-reciprocality of my responsibility for the Other marks still another (and
rather strange) feature of difference: the "asymmetry of the face-to-face
relation". I am responsible for the Other, even for his responsibility, but
I cannot expect the Other, in turn, to be responsible for me. Furthermore, my
responsibility for the Other cannot be cal-culated beforehand nor can it be
subjected to auditing or bookkeeping of services rendered in order to be
recompensed.
Levinas’
concepts of ‘obsession’, ‘substitution’ and ‘hostage’ further stress
the acuteness of this asymmetry and the ethical depth of responsibility. My
obsession is triggered by the face: I am extremely affected as one who is caught
up in an accusation for something I have not done. This responsibility is
"an archic", in the sense that something that has been there prior to
any debt incurred, prior to any contract entered into. The obligation of such
responsibility is therefore "more passive than any passivity." I am
summoned by the Other to answer for him, to stand in his place in order to see
to his needs. I myself, and no one else am called; no one can substitute for me.
This establishes my identity as a subject. I am subpoenaed by the Other for a
charge beyond any fault, before any freedom exercised and before any innocence
claimed or any guilt confessed.
Given
this rather extreme formulation of responsibility, apathy seems to be the more
attractive response of one who is closed in upon oneself (the
"practical" question: "Am I my brother’s keeper?). Even that
being granted, the crucial question is whether I have any choice really before
the gaze that singles me out; what becomes of my free-dom? Here Levinas moves to
an ethical concept of freedom as "the acceptance of a vocation to which I
alone can respond or again, the power to respond to it when called. To be free
is only to do what nobody else can do in my place."14 Freedom comes from my whole-heartedly taking the
initiative to respond (Here I am!), expecting no one else to do so in my place.
My responsibility to the Other as other also remains infinite: the more I turn
to myself the more I discover that I am responsible; the more just I consider
myself the more guilty I find myself to be. The infinity of responsibility and
the perpetual unrest that this brings is such that I cannot even have the
satisfaction of knowing whether I have done enough.
Any
skeptic or "practical-minded person" would find this outrageous. Is
this not too much and unfair? And granting that I open myself to this
responsibility to an Other, what about the other Others? In other words the
personal pronoun "I" may not really be that personal. Given my own
finitude, for all intents and purposes, I cannot respond myself single-handedly
and totally to an Other, when there are other persons who also call upon me, for
there are other persons who also share my world. In addressing this objection,
Levinas brings in the concept of the third party (le tiers) which will be
discussed in the next section. Another question that remains about me: Is not
the Other also responsible for me? Levinas replies, "Perhaps, but that is
his affair . . .", again precisely to stress the difference, the non-reciprocatability
and extreme individuation of the responsibility of one who goes out of himself
in non-indifference to the Other.
A
crucial problem remains : how can such a sense of obligation be universalized if
it remains individuated? In other words, how is it possible for a plurality of
individuals to come together in peace and compassion for one another, despite
their difference from each other? This problem must be considered in treating
the issue of unity as fraternity.
TOWARDS UNITY BEYOND
THE FACE-TO-FACE
These
questions present crucial aporiae to Levinas’ conception of responsibility in
the face-to-face relations, which must be overcome if the discussion is to move
beyond the pre-institutionalized moment of face-to-face society. Levinas himself
found problematic the fact that there are not only two people in the world (if
there were, there would be no problem). The problem of justice or at the very
least, justice-for-me also emerges. Furthermore, individuated, nonreciprocal
responsibility of one for another, when stretched to its logical or even
phenomenological consequences, threatens to rule out the possibility of
universalization and therefore unity among a plurality of individuals.
Ciaramelli asks the crucial question for philosophers:
How
is it possible to express in philosophical language a situation [of the
one-for-the-other] so strange that it takes place in the most extreme
particularity, yet concerns the universal meaning of subjectivity? . . . If one
were to be philosophical about Levinas’ concept of responsibility for the
other, can one posit that each and every subject will indeed take responsibility
for an other?15
Possible answers to such
questions can be found indirectly in the notion of the third party, which opens
up to the ethico-metaphysical basis of social and political institutions, as
well as in the idea of the ethical responsibility as prophetic witnessing.
According
to Levinas, ethical responsibility of one for the Other becomes a problem when
there are other Others that have to be considered. The undeniable fact that
Levinas points to is that the Other’s face (i.e., "that
gaze") implicates other Others. This is manifested in certain enduring
patterns of social interaction. It is interesting to note that in language used
to address another person with respect, I also allude to other Others. For
instance, the French autrui, expressing both singularity and plurality,
is addressed as vous (singular and respectful form for "you")
rather than tu in the same way that the Filipino, kayo (the plural
form for "you") is also used for individuals who are to be addressed
politely with respect, as one of the ground rules of civility. I may not only
have a student or a client but other students and clients as well who demand my
availability (the examples are infinite). If it were only a question of one,
then my responsibility would be unlimited, without any measure. But involving
one more Other, and still more, turns my responsibility into a complicated
administrative problem: whom should I respond to first? to what extent? Where is
justice when I give in to one and in doing so am no longer able to respond to
the others? The problem becomes more complicated knowing that this one should be
incomparable from that other. The relation with a third Other thus forces me
into a "comparison of the incomparable."
Levinas
admits that one cannot avoid comparison, weighing, and thus, calculation, even
in situations of face-to-face negotiation of interests. This is where the
significance of social and political institutions as part of the third party
comes in. With the entrance of a third other, and the third party,
"everything is together . . . out of representation is produced the order
of justice moderating or measuring the substitution of me for the other, . . .
and there is also justice for me." The third party somewhat
"corrects" the imbalance, the asymmetry of the face-to-face relation.
For instance, the tragic and sometimes fatal consequences of domestic violence
can be avoided with the timely intervention of genuinely compassionate and just
social and legal institutions. Housing, mass transportation, water and
elec-trical facilities are needed to help concretize responsibility for
others’ needs on a grand scale. Economic measures such as tuition fees and
taxation schemes can be "socialized." However, the threat of
insti-tutional violence which sows hatred of others and even terrorism
involving/instigated-by the third party remains possible. The tragedy of the
Holocaust in the past half century serves as a constant reminder of this threat
(and thus for Levinas is an event never to be forgotten).
It
therefore seems that even the intervention of the third party, that which tries
to render systematic justice to all, above and within the dyadic justice that is
realized in the face-to-face, must be founded precisely on the spirit of
compassion springing from one’s infinite responsibility for the Other
approached straightforwardly and welcomed "in the face." This echoes
what Pope John Paul II once said in an address to the President of Nigeria in
1982: "Development pro-jects must always have a human face. They cannot be
reduced to a purely materialistic or economic endeavor."16
The proximity engen-dered in one’s non-indifference to the Other in the
face-to-face thus serves as a normative basis for the formulation of a
development program that would hold together and nurture masses of people.
What
of the risk of losing the personal touch when societal relations and
institutions become impersonal in the interest of efficiency? Levinas further
argues that "justice remains justice only, in a society where there is no
distinction between those close and those far off, but in which there also
remains the impossibility of passing by the closest."17
Again the absence of distinction here must be spelled out carefully: it is the
non-indifference to difference, the non-indif-ference despite difference. Then
again, he strongly reminds us that a just and egalitarian society can thrive
only on the inequality in the face-to-face, so that "the equality of all is
borne by my inequality, the surplus of my duties over my rights." Justice
is animated by the "forgetting of self" (not synonymous to the
forgetting of the self) or dying to self. Levinas stresses that:
It
is then not without importance to know if the egalitarian and just State in
which man is fulfilled (and which is to be set up and especially to be
maintained) proceeds from a war of all against all, or from the irreducible
responsibility of the one for all, and if it can do without friendships and
faces.18
Despite this, the
problem of universalizing the attitude for ethical responsibility remains. The
problem surfaces on two levels. First, on the institutional level; how can I
argue for or "rally" the others to share in the infinite (and unequal)
responsibility in order subsequently to even out the inequality? How can I be
convinced myself that such magnanimity is not merely the stuff of which saints
and heroes are made and therefore one that gives me the excuse that it is, given
my human limitations, not easily manageable?
Ciaramelli
perceptively asks:
While
preserving the diversity of attitudes, how do we argue for the faith in humanity
(of the responsible subject) in every person and thereby promote au-thentic
harmony and universal justice?19
A way to address this
problem, for Ciaramelli, is found in Levinas’ own insight to the fulfillment
of the ethical face-to-face relation as "prophetical". This marks the
singling out or "ordination" of each indi-vidual, that moment when the
individual becomes individuated. Cia-ramelli reads Levinas as stressing that
each individual as such is called to witness the glory of the Infinite (God)
through the human vocation of his/her responsibility for the Other. The
individuation of each "I" opens up to universality through my
inevitable link with an other. It is within this idea that Levinas hints at the
relevance of institutions. But the singularity of each person is preserved in
that "It is only from the perspective of my own assignation and election
that I can put it into words. My own particular situation remains nonreciprocal
and my position cannot be generalized."20
CONCLUSION
This
chapter has attempted to highlight various aspects of difference between one and
the Other in the ethical relation founded on the face. In so doing, it has tried
also to show how difference is never obliterated even as one refrains from being
indifferent to the other in one’s responsibility for the Other. Furthermore,
it has shown, albeit sketchily, how responsibility for the Other, when assumed
by each individual, who paradoxically cannot presuppose this of other
individuals, opens up the very possibility of genuine unity. Genuine unity
within society cannot be achieved till people become faces to each other.
The
chapter has introduced insights on sociality that breeds non-indifference while
respecting difference. Civil societies survive and flourish only as long as the
people who belong in it do not lose sight of the face. Such insights, however,
need further development. Perhaps all is prayer for a kind of fraternity that
remains to be seen. However, one conclusion has surfaced: civil society can
survive and flourish only so long as the people in it do not lose sight of the
face.
Philosophy Department
Ateneo de Manila
University
Manila, Philippines
NOTES
1.
Among the works referred to in this study are Totality and Infinity: An Essay
in Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 1969 (hereafter cited as TI); Otherwise than Being or Beyond
Essence, trans. A. Lingis, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978 (hereafter
cited as OBBE). also helpful in introducing Levinas’ main thought is Ethics
and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard Cohen,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univer-sity Press, 1985.
2.
In this paper, the word Other (with a capital "O") is used to signify
the other person in his irreducible otherness (Autrui) and other (with a
lowercased "o") or Autre, to refer to the adjective qualifying a
person as other but within the categories of the same (meme), following
Levinas’ own linguistic distinctions.
3.
Such phenomenology incorporates and criticizes a long tradition of phenomenology
founded by Husserl and Heidegger, for which there is no space in this paper to
explore.
4.
TI, p. 194.
5.
John Llewelyn, Beyond Metaphysics? (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press,
1985), p. 154.
6.
From hereon the shift to the first person pronoun becomes crucial. More recent
scholars of Levinas’ works find ethical signifi-cance in the ambiguity of this
pronoun’s antecedent (whether it refers to the author, Levinas, or a pseudonym
for anyone) as we shall see in the later part of this paper.
7.
Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, p. 86. Note, however, that the gaze in
those eyes becomes ethically significant as will be seen in the second section
of this paper.
8. Ibid.,
pp. 85-86.
9. Ibid.,
p. 86.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Wright, Tamra, et al., "The Paradox of Morality: An Interview with Emmanuel
Levinas" in The Revocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, eds.
Robert Bernasconi and David Woods (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 173.
12.
A point that Jill Robbins underscores and pursues in her article, Visage,
Figure: Reading Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, Yale French Studies 79
(1991): 138.
13.
Levinas, "Beyond Intentionality," in Philosophy in France Today, ed.
Alan Montefiore, 1983).
14.
Levinas, L’au-dela du verset (Paris, Minuit, 1982, 178 n. 6, 132),
quoted by Fabio Ciaramelli, "Levinas" Ethical Discourse be-tween
Individuation and Universality" in Re-reading Levinas, eds. Ro-bert
Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991),
p. 88.
15.
Ciaramelli, "Levinas’ Ethical Discourse" in Re-reading Le-vinas, p.
86.
16.
Address to President Alhaji Shehu Shagari in the State House, 12 February 1982,
in John Paul II, Africa: Land of Promise, Land of Hope (Boston, M.A.:
Daughters of St. Paul, 1982), p. 28.
17.
OB, p. 159.
18.
OBBE, p. 159, italics mine.
19.
Ciaramelli, "Levinas’ Ethical Discourse" in Re-reading Le-vinas, p.
86.