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June 10, 2006
Mitchell Verter's succinct account of the relationship between Heidegger and Levinas on vision that I stumbled into here is pretty informative.
Levinas commends fundamental ontology for uprooting the detached viewpoint of classical theoretical philosophy. Heidegger challenges both the Platonic model of a soul that co-exists with eternal ideas and the Cartesian notion of a mental substance detached from empirical facts. For him, each individual exists as a Dasein which is always and already involved in a temporal world. Therefore, Dasein does not merely sit back as a spectator who observes objects. Instead, Dasein's visual modalities commit it towards its world, defining its affectivity and its involvement.
By questioning the classical visual paradigm, Heidegger limits the power of spectatorship. Not only does Heidegger’s analysis of engaged existence demonstrates the limits of theoretical mastery over the world, it also shows that Dasein does not even exert complete control over its own being. Dasein does not inhabit a detached position hovering over phenomena. Therefore, it can never manipulate existence enough to guarantee its absolute mastery. At best, Dasein, as a Being-in-the-World, must authentically accept that temporality, as the forces of heritage and fate, render it unable either to be-a-basis of itself or to control the consequences of the possibilities it projects.
Despite all of his philosophical innovations, Heidegger follows a traditional optical model that subordinates the particular to the universal. Even though Dasein does not internalize an object within its consciousness as a classical subject would, it still views beings by going beyond their specificity in order to envision them in the luminous horizon of Being. So argues Levinas.
Levnas argues that though Heidegger's ontological model goes beyond the individual being to the Being of the being Levinas asserts that this viewpoint ignores the exceptional position of the Other. The general horizon of Being only illuminates certain ways of knowing the Other. The Other’s alterity, his existence as a separate being, remains entirely refractory to vision and possession. Levinas opposes the philosophical motif of visuality and the correlated notion of comprehensive reason by asserting that language conditions the possibility of sight.
Levinas explains that vision finds its limit during the encounter with the visage of the Other. I can not appropriate or exercise power over the Other as if he were either an object internalized by a subject or a revelation of Being. Levinas explains that I cannot grasp the particular Other against a background of universality because of the manner in which the Other manifests himself: I view the Other in his "depth" as an independent being who can see me looking at him. The vision of the Other coincides with an invocation of the Other; I can not know him without already acknowledging him. In this face-to-face confrontation, my visual orientation towards the Other doubles as a linguistic relationship between us. Because I must speak to the individual Other whom I encounter, I can not detach him from his particularity by locating him in a universal horizon. Therefore, the interlocutory Other always remains outside of my comprehension and beyond my power.
Verter helps us to understand why Levinas thinks that it is inappropriate, if not impossible, to try to relate to the Other through the mediation of the light.:
By viewing the Other in the context of Being rather than directly confronting his visage, I violate his alterity. I do not encounter an individual human Other, but rather a being that offers itself for my possession. However, this attempt to dominate the Other through vision ultimately fails. Although one can acquire categorical knowledge pertaining to the Other through sight and consciousness, the Other’s living presence remains refractory to this power. Whereas T&O described the termination of the solitary existent’s power as death, IOF contends that the possession of the Other is only possible as complete negation, as murder. However, even murder can not provide me with an absolute power over the Other. Although a man does possess the actual power to kill another man, this does not make the other man his possession. I can only grasp the Other in the horizon of Being as a set of dead qualities, but can never appropriate his living being. Because even this ultimate attempt of negation never exercises any complete domination over the Other, Levinas states that the Other presents himself as an infinite resistance to my power and my murderous will.
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Wow! Nice post on Levinas' response to Heidegger. I have been arguing on my blog about "radical difference" and just now have started to get into the question of whether there is a radical difference betwen self and Other.
I see the point that we cannot classify a living Other under a universal, but what does it mean to say that the Other "call us into question" or "holds us hostage"?