is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Against Antithesis.
I've been trying to figure out how to talk about Nietzsche and Levinas at the same time. This is necessary because Nietzsche, as you probably know, declared that God is dead, whereas Levinas has written that the voice of God is expressed in one human being's ethical response to another human being. And there are of course many other differences, for instance, Levinas chooses a phenomenological method whereas Nietzsche favors genealogy (though neither of their approaches could be called a "method" with any justice, and that is something they have in common�). So how is it I could say that my thought in general comes out of a combination of these two thinkers? It will take me years to explain this, to myself let alone anyone else. These are just some thoughts.
Levinas often gets called a religious thinker, or a Jewish philosopher. Of course he was both Jewish and a philosopher, but when the label "Jewish philosopher" gets placed on him it means the same as "religious thinker": it means that his thought is deeply religious and therefore not secular. (We'll leave aside for the moment that most secular thought is actually disguised theology, with faith in reason or procedure taking the place of faith in God.) I've tried to argue (by which I mean "claim," or "take as a position," but it usually does end up being an "argument" in the colloquial rather than rhetorical sense) that Levinas gives us what might be the only meaningful secular ethics we could have, one that doesn't rely on overt or disguised theological justifications, nor on universalized standards or categorical imperatives. And in trying to explain (to those who don't want to read or think about Levinas, and to those who do but who think when I say "secular" I mean "godless" in some simple way) I've come to realize one way in which Nietzsche and Levinas overlap: they share a commitment to overcoming antithetical thinking and they also share the predicament of being bound within a language and a tradition thoroughly imbedded in antithetical thinking. (When I say "antithetical thinking" I mean thinking in terms of antitheses, like yes/no up/down black/white and if it isn't one it must be the other.)
Sometimes what isn't one thing is also not that thing's opposite. Sometimes what isn't black is also not white, and, get this, isn't even gray! No. It is something else altogether. Something so entirely different (as we say in the academy, something so very Other) that black, white and grey could never have predicted that they would ever have to deal with Yellow. Or Wet. Or High-Pitched. Or Barely Describable in Language.
Historically, negative theology describes God in terms of what God is not, because its practitioners do not believe God can be captured in words. That is one way of dealing with Barely Describable in Language. But that approach leaves us with this: either what matters to religion can be described by reason, or it exceeds reason's ability to describe. Either way, it is reason's bitch, so to speak. It is either explainable by reason, or it is reason's other. Reason has determined what can be thought or spoken in either case. The only way out is mysticism, but mysticism is also an admission of reason's victory because it has no words to speak with (a point made by W--- Large in an essay on the difference between phenomenology and genealogy).
Levinas would argue that thought can have contents made possible by phenomena occurring prior to thought, phenomena that make certain forms of thought (such as ethics) thinkable. Reason comes later than some of the contents it is called upon to describe. In describing some things (like love, or art, or the responsibility human beings have for each other), reason can't help but betray or get wrong some of the pre- or non-rational content of its work. That is how it must be, because language, like all human creations, is imperfect. Reason limits what we can think perhaps as often as it opens up new paths for us. So we shouldn't act like reason was the origin of everything or the answer to everything.
Levinas might say that atheism has the right aim but then misses the point. He wants to get beyond thinking in terms of the reason or nonreason of God so that the content of ethics as "a God speaking in man and man not relying on any God" can be sensed (sensed in a way that is not strictly rational and therefore not a product of reason) and then described imperfectly. Imperfect description of something as important as an ethical demand is better than leaving it all up to a form of reason so clearly capable of justifying cruelty. So: I respond to others in ways that exceed reason, and I do so whether I want to or not, in part because the response to others happens before will or reason could intervene to make a difference. (If that doesn't add up, try thinking of sense in terms of sense organs. Can I choose whether or not I see/hear/smell/etc. the presence of another? No, I am affected by others long before I am capable of using language. Reason and will and decisions about these things come later, if almost imperceptibly later.)
(Digression: I don't think one can call Nietzsche an atheist in any simple way. He recognized that something had changed in the way (Christian) human beings thought about God, the world and their place in it, and he tried to think through the consequences of such a shift while also trying to think beyond the constraints placed on thought by the future hearkened by such a shift. Simply saying that he didn't "believe" in God gets nowhere near what matters about his statement "God is dead.")
So. What I've realized (in part because of an essay by D--- Boothroyd) is that both Nietzsche and Levinas reject a morality of the Same, that is, a morality that presents an antithesis wherein there is a right and a wrong (like Good and Evil, or West and East). Instead, both thinkers offer to us an ethics wherein no antithesis could possibly capture what is meaningful or important about human life or human truth. And both thinkers are constrained to do this within a language that to a certain extent must make its arguments in terms of antitheses. Nietzsche wants to think beyond good and evil, for instance, and Levinas wants to get beyond the difference between same and other, but both speak in terms of these antitheses much of the time. And yet each of their texts also perform a certain undermining of their own authority with regard to these categories, always calling into question the certainty of what they put forth. What this means is that you can only be faithful to either of these thinkers when you are in the act of thinking, when you are allowing your thinking to admit the fluidity of thought. The moment you try to crystallize the philosophy of either Nietzsche or Levinas into a Conclusion or, worse, a Moral to the Story, you have betrayed the intent of their works.
Both philosophers might agree�despite all they would disagree about�that philosophy as a discipline is to blame for much of the crystallized thought that passes for serious thinking.
Coming soon: Nietzschean self-overcoming is Levinasian transcendence of self. Not exactly. But exactitude is overrated!
11:48 p.m. - December 27, 2004
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