Dear Gary,

This site has appeared whilst a search for Levinas and understanding was taking place on the internet.

There is a particular problem which needs addressing, and hope that you can help: how does one get from the immanent, transcendent being to action in the intentional, desire-world? Is the gulf unbridgeable, or is there a possibility of action which is founded on the good-being?
A response is eagerly anticipated.
Regards and love,
fergus brown.

fergus brown:

Since your question has been languishing for a few days, I thought I'd try to give a response. But I'm not sure what you mean by the "immanent, transcendent" and getting to "the intentional desire-world". Do you mean transcendence within immanence? In which case, we haven't left the world. And Levinas speaks of the relation to the other precisely in terms of provoking a desire (for the good as "beyond Being"). (The set up is similar to Lacan, even if the purport and implications are much different). But the relation to the other is modal, not intentional; it's the obverse of the intentional and subtends it. That's the distinction between the "saying" and the "said". But there's no question of the "transcendence" of the relation to the other being "out of this world". Levinas is assuming and paralleling Heidegger here. Rather the relation to the other at once "folds", lifts out and erodes the "constitution" of the self within the world. There's no loss or absence of agency here, but rather a kind of consecration or dedication of its responsibility. Levinas could be seen as attempting to restore the sense of agency, in the face of its multiple naturalistic dissolutions in modern theoretical thought. But, of course, prescinding from this level of "pre-original" description/analysis, Levinas recognizes that the other is also other to others, thirds. Is that the intentional desire-world? The point Levinas is making is that it might well become "necessary" to pick and choose amongst the others, in the very "name" of the relation to the other, even to the point of violence. But nothing of what one chooses to do allieviates the "pre-original" responsibility toward and for the other. One still bears one's responsibility to the other through all the others, which should effect how one chooses the "violence" of one's intentions. "God" only "exists" for Levinas in the traces left by the other in his/her passing; he declares is thinking "officially" onto-theo-logically atheist. "God" only "exists" as the permanent suspicion that one might "prove" to be utterly in the wrong. And then one is overthrown, truly "in God's hands".

I dunno if that helps with your question.

john,
Thank you for responding.Some of what I said was unclear: my apologies.
That existence as Levinas has it is in the world is not an issue; this was already understood. That 'saying' is the way in which the good beyound being is made manifest, in responsility and sincerity, is also within my grasp.
Where I am struggling, is with the link, if indeed there is any, between the 'good-beyond-being' immanent existence in the world, and the intentional, if you like, 'post-original' being of action-in-the-world.
Your response suggest that all actions, any actions, are necessarily 'violent', or demand violence.
By 'intentional desire-world', I am trying to refer to the world in which desire, shame and action exist (not a different world to the pre-original). How can the goodness of the good-beyond-being be made manifest here?
Is all 'intention', being the 'other side of the coin', a falling away from the good?
I hope this makes my question clearer.
Once again, thank you.

fergus brown:

I didn't mean to say that all intentional action is necessarily "violent", just that Levinas recognizes that it could become so, precisely in the "name" of desire for the good. Levinas is far from being the moral sentimentalist that some of his fans take him for.

Levinas is very difficult and I'm far from claiming to be beyond the struggle to grasp his meaning, let alone from claiming myself to be "responsible". But that's perhaps part of the form and "intention" of his work.

The Levinasian self is "fully" embodied and exists in the plenitude of a material world, among the elements, which s/he enjoys in the light of day and which rustles menacingly before and beyond his/her ken in the dark of night. Shame, fatigue, need, self-seeking desire are all part of the package. So how is the good-beyond-being manifest here? Precisely through the "face" of the other, in its denudedness and destitution, in the invocative dimension of any situated communicative act, its call to response. From which, as with Heideggerian "Being", the other withdraws through its very manifestation. Hence Levinas' insistence on the assymmetry of the relation to the other: I am responsible to and for the other even to the point of being responsible for the other's responsibility even in his/her very irresponsibility. And my responsibility only grows in proportion to the degree to which I "fulfill" it; the desire for the good is irremissible and never quenched. The Levinasian self bears the entire weight of the world on his/her shoulders, in his/her existence, through the responsibility to and for the other. Difficile liberte', indeed. That's the "scandal" of my responsibility "preceding" my freedom, because "freedom" is no longer measured and conceived through the mastery of causality, which I can control, but through its "rootedness" in the modal relation to the other. The Levinasian paradox is that human responsibility exceeds human agency, "freedom".

That the good is beyond Being means that it is never reducible to the givenness of any order of Being, but only "emerges" at once within and beyond the horizons of any order of Being. But that doesn't mean it's nothing or nothingness, but rather it's "otherwise than Being". It's an excess of signification within and beyond any signifying order. Think of it perhaps as a transformative "potential", manifested through the "face" of the other, attaching to the modal relation to the other, which "converts" the self.

The relation to phenomenological intentionality in Levinas is complex. He elevates as his leading figure "Insomnia", which he says is "a formalism more formal than any possible formalism". (Some Heideggerian echoes there: Dasein as more subjective than any possible subjectivity and more objective than any possible objectivity. And, of course, the "pre-original" is a level that parallels the "primordial"). But what does that mean? Note what Levinas says about his method of "exorbitation". "Insomnia" is a perpetual vigilance, a process of perpetual moral (re)wakening within the restlessness of the self, inspired by the other which touches the root of the self. But why formal? Well, we are no longer doing transcendental phenomenology, intentionally "constituting" the phenomena through their conditions of possibility, so there is no longer any difference/distinction between the transcendental and the empirical. The "formal" is only to be distinguished, delineated, within the empirical. But all intentional syndromes are touched by the inspiration of the other at their root. Folded over one way that could be the practical intentionality of the worker in the field, another way the cognitive intentionality of theoretical thinking, still another the intentionality of erotic desire.

Levinas is not saying that all intentionality is necessarily "violent", disrupted, impossible, or a falling away from the good beyond being. He's not committing the fallacy of the "beautiful soul". But he is making a fundamental criticism of the dominant tradition in Western philosophy as ontology, as being in league with the violence of this world, through its drive to identify and incorporate all phenonema into the totality of "the same", suppressing the particularity of the other. He speaks of the connatus essendi and one's "place in the sun", of the drive to totality as being in league with the narcissism of the drive to dominative self-preservation. (Compare to Adorno's "self-preservation gone wild"). But it's a bad mistake to see him as advocating an ascetic moralism of self-denial. To the contrary, it's precisely the "richness" and "health" of the self that is eroded/donated in the "face" of the other. And that hearsay where Levinas said he was not really interested in ethics, but rather in "saints" suffers from a mistranslation. He was not referring to an RC conception of an elite moral perfection that is beyond this world. "Saints" should have been translated as "holy ones" and what he was saying is that he is not interested in "ethics" as a formal systematic presciptivism, but that he is rather interested in the illumination cast upon the world by those who act from ethical responsiveness without appeal to "principles".

Think of Levinasian "action" as a counter-historical reparative mode of action. It's a very Jewish conception.

John,
Once again, I thank you for your words.

I don't believe I suffer under any of the misconceptions you are concerned about for my sake, here, though your explanation is still helpful. On much we have a common understanding; are we both philosophy graduates?
There are still a couple of worries, though. You say 'all intentional syndromes are touched by the inspiration of the other at their root. This sounds the same (in coarser terms) as saying that 'good' living, 'good' being, is always and only 'for the other'. This is simple altruism. It doesn't sound right. I'll take into account the recurrence of the transcendent moment of the 'other-than-being', and also the (useful) point that both 'insomnia' ('not-forgetting'?) and a cessation of the 'intention to constitute the phenomenon' are in play here.

But, as you and Levinas say, the other-than-being in-the-world is simultaneously the transcendent/affective and the intentional. And it seems as if all the 'goodness' belongs on one side of the equation. Unless, of coursem the intention is always for-the-other, which it cannot be.

So, is all action (intended) beyond the 'saying' and 'accepting' which is where the transcendent being is made manifest,(please note; this is not intended to be mystical or romantic), even when it is for-the-other, still, as an intention, necessarily a 'falling away'? It seems so, to me.

Finally, for now (your good offices being appreciated but not taken for granted), it feels as if there is no room here for looking ahead with the intention to 'do good'; being good (being 'other-than-being') is the best we can do (ugh; the hardness of the words!).
delightedly,
fergus.