Abi Doukhan Lévinas, Emmanuel Lévinas A Philosophy of Exile

Emmanuel Levinas
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Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy
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Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach
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Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes
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Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert
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Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure, Nicole Anderson
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Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin
Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte
In the Shadow of Phenomenology, Stephen H. Watson
Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
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Michel Henry, Jeffrey Hanson
Nietzsche and the Anglo-Saxon Tradition, Louise Mabille
Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, James Luchte
Phenomenology, Institution and History, Stephen H. Watson
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
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Thinking Between Deleuze and Kant, Edward Willatt
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman
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9781441195760_FM_Final_txt_print.indd iv 7/20/2012 3:40:10 PM
Emmanuel Levinas
A Philosophy of Exile
Abi Doukhan
L ON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W Y OR K • SY DN EY
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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2012
© Abi Doukhan, 2012
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on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EISBN: 978-1-4411-3624-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Doukhan, Abi.
Emmanuel Levinas : a philosophy of exile / Abi Doukhan.
p. cm. – (Continuum studies in Continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-9576-0 (hardcover) – ISBN 978-1-4411-3624-4 (ebook pdf)
1. Levinas, Emmanuel. 2. Other (Philosophy) I. Title.
B2430.L484D68 2012
194–dc23
2012010141
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain
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Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: The Problem of Exile 1

1 A Life and Thought in Exile 7
2 An Ethics of Exile 20
3 Exile and the Political 36
4 The Exile of Love 49
5 Truth in Exile 67
6 A Metaphysics of Exile 82
7 An Aesthetics of Exile 100
Conclusion: The Wisdom of Exile 118
Notes 125
Bibliography 151
Index 159
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Acknowledgments
This book had its beginnings in my dissertation, which I defended in 2008 at

the University of Paris X-Nanterre under the direction of Catherine Chalier. My
first words of gratitude go out to her, for the inspiration of her own work and
teachings, her infinite patience as I tentatively developed as a writer and thinker
over the years of dissertation writing, her impeccable intellectual integrity in her
evaluation and critique of my work, and finally, the risk she took in taking me
on as a PhD candidate coming from the United States and still rather new to the
French academic scene.
My journey into the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas did not begin in France,
however, but rather in the American Midwest, at Michigan State University
where I first encountered philosophy. I am deeply indebted to Professor Richard
Petersen for his keen intuition of my philosophical persona and interests and
for his orienting me to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. I owe him the
beginnings of my philosophical journey and am grateful to him for this. I thank
him also for directing my BA thesis thereby nurturing my first philosophical
attempts at the philosophy of Levinas. Finally I am grateful for my entire
experience as a student of philosophy in a department which played a great part
in kindling in me a passion for philosophical concepts and ideas.
The ensuing two-year experience of studying philosophy at the University of
Paris IV-Sorbonne and the privilege of listening to some of the most beautiful
ex-catedra lectures on French philosophy remains one of the most beautiful
experiences of my life. My fond memories go back to Professor Marquet for his
humble and unassuming yet brilliant presence and teachings on the philosophies
of Hegel and Bergson. I also remember with pleasure the classes of Jean-Luc
Marion and his uncanny way of trudging through medieval texts tailed by an
amphitheater of 300 students. I owe him the art of struggling with a text and
a meticulous attention to the written word. Finally, I recall fondly Professor
Darriulat for his entranced and passionate presentations on Greek philosophy.
The next seven years as a PhD candidate at the University of Paris X-Nanterre
were a “baptism of fire” whereby I morphed from a mere lover of wisdom to
a philosophy professional. I am indebted to the philosophy department for
accepting me as a candidate at a very late notice. I also recall with pleasure the
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Acknowledgments ix
classes of Catherine Chalier and Didier Frank whose unassuming scholarship

and attention to text have stayed with me ever since. I also want to thank
Professors Emmanuel Housset, Jean-Michel Salanskis, and Edvard Kovac for
accepting to be members of my dissertation committee and for making my
defense a memorable experience. I especially fondly recall the gentlemanly
gesture of Dr Kovac who, during the break, offered his handkerchief to dry my
hands as I shakily came back from the woman’s room.
My first job on American soil was offered to me by Elon University. I am
deeply indebted to the Elon philosophy department for believing in me and
for nurturing my first steps as a young philosophy professional. I am especially
grateful to Elsebet Jegstrup for her friendship and mentoring, as well as to Ann
Cahill for seeing my potential and walking me through my first book proposal.
I recall with pleasure the many conversations on Levinas’ philosophy with
other members of the philosophy department which played an important role
in my fine-tuning certain ideas and arguments. Finally, I am indebted to Elon
University’s 2010 Spring Term Levinas class for serving as “guinea pigs” for my
first explication of what would constitute the major themes of this book. Their
intellectual curiosities as well as the sharpness of their questions and critiques
have been very helpful in articulating the initial draft of this book.
I am thankful to Philosophy Today for publishing a version of my second
chapter: “From Exile to Hospitality: A Key to the Philosophy of Emmanuel
Levinas” in their 2010 Fall issue as well as for giving me permissions to reprint
a revisited version of it in my second chapter. I am also indebted to Claire Katz
for accepting a paper based on my third chapter at the North American Levinas
Studies conference in Spring 2012 thereby allowing me to expose and confront
my ideas to some of the best Levinas scholarship. Finally, I am deeply grateful
to Robert Bernasconi for his critiques and comments of my paper during the
conference as well as for his kindly accepting to take the time to read and
comment parts of my manuscript. His critiques played a key role in the revisions
I made of the manuscript as well helped me adapt my writing to an American
academic audience.
I also am thankful to Sarah Campbell from Bloomsbury for initially seeing
the promise of this work as well as to her editorial team, Rachel Eisenhauer,
Laura Murray, and Srikanth for fast and efficient work on the manuscript. I am
indebted to my good friend Sonja Stojanovic for her meticulous and minute
proof-reading of the entire manuscript, her excellent editorial work—converting
my “Frenchisms” into American English—and her patient formatting work.
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x Acknowledgments
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents for giving me a safe haven

within which to do my writing. I am indebted to my father for inspiring in me
a passion for Jewish philosophy, to my mother for never stopping to believe in
me, and for my cat Zizou for her faithful and daily vigil at my work-table. I
am grateful to my friends from university, Bogdan, Izzy, Sejin, Kefei, Daliwonga,
Adrian, Graham, Dorna, Karima, and Benjamin for serving as the inspiration of
this work. Their struggle as exiles as well as their friendship is the raison d’etre of
this work. This book is dedicated to them.
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Abbreviations
The following references for the writings of Emmanuel Levinas are given in the
text according to the following table of abbreviations:
BV Beyond the Verse
DF Difficult Freedom
EE Existence and Existents
EP “Enigma and Phenomena,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 65–79.
GP “God and Philosophy,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 129–49.
HA “Humanism and Anarchy,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 127–41.
HO Humanism of the Other
LP “Language and Proximity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 109–27.
MB “On Maurice Blanchot,” in Proper Names, pp. 127–56.
MS “Meaning and Sense,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 75–109.
NI “No Identity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 141–53.
OB Otherwise than Being and Beyond Essence
OS Outside the Subject
PH Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism
PI “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers,

pp. 47–61.
PN Proper Names
RR “The Ruin of Representation,” in Discovering Existence with Husserl, pp. 111–22.
RS “Reality and its Shadow,” in The Levinas Reader, pp. 129–44.
TI Totality and Infinity
TN In the Time of the Nations
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Introduction: The Problem of Exile
Our era is profoundly marked by the phenomenon of exile. While the problem
of exile has been observed in the past, the scale to which it is manifested in our
contemporary world makes it a unique phenomenon in the history of the Western
world.1 Indeed, the condition of exile, in the past relegated to the oppressed or
to the poor, has now become a universal condition. There is not a nation which
has not contributed to the flux of exiles in our contemporary world. There is not
a nation which, at some point, has not had to welcome a flow of immigrants.
In both cases, exile is seen as a problem, as the result or as the cause of various
sociopolitical malfunctions. In the former case, exile is seen as the disastrous
consequence of conflict or economic deprivation. In the latter, exile can be seen
as a threat to the social and political status quo, as a disturbance of the peace. The
exiled always carries with him the shadow of a past threat or of a potential threat
to the country which welcomes him.
As a result, one can observe an equally universal phenomenon of xenophobia
toward the exiled.2 The exiled is always suspect. We do not know where he
comes from. We do not know where he is going. The exiled among us strangely
resembles the criminal fugitive of bygone days. Significantly, in the history of the
Western world, the exiled has always carried with him an aura of criminality, of a
dark and inscrutable past.3 And indeed, the exiled with her completely different
worldview and way of life seems to pose a threat to the very cohesion of society.
A society whose cohesion has hereto been based on a common ethnicity or
worldview, will see the intrusion of the stranger as a threat to its survival.4 Such
a society sees its very end inscribed in the presence of the exiled within its walls
and will do anything to expulse this life-threatening element. It is this negative
connotation of exile, as well as the social and political problems associated with
it, which has given rise to the profound distrust of the exiled among us.
This contemporary political and social crisis brought about by the exiled—
unprecedented in the Western world—makes it necessary to ponder anew the
problem of exile. Because of the irreversibility of the phenomenon of exile and
the increasing suffering and injustice associated with the xenophobic reaction
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2 Emmanuel Levinas
to it, it has become increasingly urgent to rethink the concept of exile and our
stance toward it. This renewed reflection on the problem of exile brings to the
fore a number of interrogations as to a necessarily negative connotation of exile.
Indeed, is there not another way to understand this exilic condition? Can one
not shed a different light on the condition of exile, a more positive light? Is there
not a contribution of the exiled to the societies it finds itself expulsed into? Is
there not a wealth, a wisdom, to be gained from the experience of exile? Such
a novel reinterpretation of exile is offered by philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.
For him, the experience of exile is one that holds both redemptive and ethical
implications. Far from being a factor of the disintegration of the social fabric, as
it is thought by the Western world, Levinas will argue that exile constitutes the
very glue of the social rapport. The experience of exile, is, according to Levinas,
what allows a deep and genuine encounter with others and, as such, consolidates
rather than disintegrates the social bond.
Such a conception of exile is, incidentally, in line with that of Jewish thought.
Indeed, the history of the Jews is one of perpetual exile and has given rise, as
a result, to an ever-deepening reflection on the experience of exile. In Jewish
thought, exile has evolved from a negative condition, marked by the curse of
God’s punishment,5 to an experience pregnant with redemptive and ethical
possibilities.6 Far from being reduced to its punitive function, exile has come to
be understood in diaspora literature as redemptive, as that which allows for the
turning of a wayward heart back to God and to one’s fellow human beings. Far
from constituting a threat to society, the memory of exile serves, in the Jewish
tradition, to sensitize one again to the plight of the stranger and of the alien,
hence ensuring their protection within the Hebrew nation.7 There are thus ethical
implications hidden in the condition of exile and it is precisely these that Levinas,
in line with the Hebrew understanding of exile, will explore in his work.
However, the relationship between exile and ethics remains to be thought.
While the connection between exile and ethics is simply stated in the Hebrew
scriptures,8 it is never explained. But what is this connection? It is difficult to
understand how the condition of the exiled, himself completely cut off from
his roots and his community of origin, could ever contribute to ethics. The
exiled seems on the contrary to testify to the very disintegration of that bond.
It is, nevertheless, precisely such a connection between exile and ethics that
Levinas will explore in his philosophy. Drawing from his own experience of
exile as well as from the Hebrew tradition and understanding of exile, Levinas
will, for the first time, confront this tradition of exile with Western thought’s
negative conceptualizations of exile. He comes up with what we will show to be

Introduction 3
a comprehensive philosophy of exile. This study of the dimensions of exile in the

philosophy of Levinas shall prove profoundly topical and relevant in that it will
allow for a reframing of the concept of exile in a more positive light and enable
a new perspective to emerge on the present problem of exile undergone by our
societies. The purpose of our work will be to shed light on the dimensions of
exile in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas in order to show the connection
between exile and ethics versus the present conception of exile as posing a threat
or a danger to the cohesion of society and to its ethos.
This brings us to the main thesis of this book: that Levinas’ philosophy
can be understood as a comprehensive philosophy of exile. If exile has been
perceived by commentators as a central feature of Levinas’ biography,9 style,10
and vocabulary,11 we will show that it is his philosophy which most reflects
this centrality. The purpose of our project will be to the argue that the place of
exile exceeds the mere preoccupation of our philosopher with ethics and can
be understood as a central concept permeating the totality of his work, from
his discussion of the political, the erotic, the epistemological, the aesthetic, and
the metaphysical. Indeed, inasmuch as, for Levinas, ethics is a transcendental
concept, every other investigation must rest upon the analyses conducted
around ethics. If it can be shown that exile plays a central role in this conception
of ethics as first philosophy, can we then not think of the concept of exile as a
guiding thread in the elucidation of other parts of Levinassian philosophy, tying
it not only to the ethical, but also to his discussion of politics, love, knowledge,
art, and spirituality? This is what our work will set out to investigate: can exile
be read as a central and pivotal concept not only in Levinas’ ethics but in the
entirety of his philosophy?
Before reading exile as a central concept in the philosophy of Levinas,
something must be said as to the centrality of the experience of exile in the
life of our philosopher. A preliminary chapter will be necessary in order to
understand how Levinas’ biographical experience and Jewish background have
informed his thoughts on exile. It can be argued that Levinas’ philosophy is not
a purely abstract reflection, but emerges above all from a life in exile as well as
from Levinas’ contact with a millennial tradition of exile: the Jewish tradition.
Our first chapter will then attempt to understand the “Sitz im Leben” of Levinas’
philosophy of exile by delving into moments of exile in Levinas’ life susceptible
of having influenced his thinking on exile. We shall examine the elements within
the Jewish tradition behind many of Levinas’ intuitions on exile. Both moments
will give way to a positive understanding of exile as intrinsically connected with
the question of ethics. However, before directly addressing the nature of this

4 Emmanuel Levinas
connection, we shall have to define what exile and ethics have come to mean for
Levinas and how their specific signification differs from their traditional uses by
philosophers and nonphilosophers alike.
Our second chapter will address directly the connection between exile and
the very heart of Levinas’ philosophy: ethics. This connection between exile
and ethics seems, at first glance, uncanny. Indeed, ethics has been associated in
the Western world with a set of common principles, with a shared worldview
resulting in a common way of doing things, with an ethos of a society based
on commonalities. In such a context, the exiled can only be seen as disruptive
and as posing a threat precisely to the ethos, hence to the very foundations of
an ethical society. How then can exile be associated with ethics? We shall show
that for Levinas, it is precisely this disruptive intrusion of the exiled in a given
society or world that constitutes the original moment of an awakening to the
ethical dimension. Before there can be any talk of a set of common principles
monitoring our behavior with others, the very dimension of otherness must be
opened. We shall see that this dimension can only emerge from an encounter
with a genuine otherness, an otherness which does not fit within our world and
which explodes all of our categories, an otherness understood as ex-ilic—as
always outside of our world. The encounter between subjectivity and the exiled
other thus constitutes, according to Levinas, the original ethical moment and
encounter with otherness from which will be derived common principles and
shared worldviews serving to preserve and protect that newly found other.
The ethical implications of exile will serve in our third chapter to shed light on
the origins of society. This chapter will try to establish a connection between exile
and society. Again, we shall encounter a similar problem as when we studied the
concept of ethics in our second chapter. Inasmuch as a society is defined along
the Hobbesian line as a community assembled by a common objective—be it
that of protecting one’s possessions or of building a better world together—the
exiled will always be seen as a threat to the very cohesiveness of that society. The
exiled is precisely the one who does not fit within a given paradigm, who does not
partake in the common objective, who thinks, acts, lives differently and according
to another order. Moreover, the exiled in his destitution, always presents a threat
to my possessions. The exiled strikes a false note in the harmonic whole of
society, thus weakening the social bond rather than strengthening it. Why then
does Levinas juxtapose the two? We shall show that, far from compromising the
social bond, the condition of exile is at the very origin of that bond. Contrarily
to Hobbes who bases the social bond on enmity and war, Levinas will found
the social bond on a discovery of the world as a shared entity. This discovery is,

Introduction 5
however, possible only upon encountering a human being capable of putting my

possessive grasp on the world into question and broadening my world into the
shared world which constitutes the very basis of society.
Our fourth chapter leads us from the public square to the more intimate realm
of love. Again, it is possible to establish a connection between love and exile in
the philosophy of Levinas. Once more, we are struck with the uncanniness of
this association. Ever since Plato, love has been understood not as an exile, but as
a coming home, as a return to an original wholeness. The beloved is for the most
part not an exiled other, but the long-lost soul mate, a companion, a familiar
“you” in the Buberian sense. The connection between love and exile is thus again
disconcerting. Although Levinas returns several times to the Platonic conception
of love, he also opposes it. The beloved, for Levinas, is much more than a long-
lost soul mate, she is also a stranger in our world and the intensity of the erotic
desire rests precisely on this strangeness, on this perpetual exile of the other from
our own world. If the beloved receives the lover in an act of hospitality, she is also
the one who escapes his grasp and his attempts at possession, remaining forever
“virginal,” forever out of his reach, and as such, in exile. Such is, according to
Levinas, the ambiguity of love and the very structure of erotic desire.
From love we move, in our fifth chapter, to the love of wisdom, or truth. Once
more, a connection can be made between this love of truth, essential to the quest
for knowledge, and exile in Levinas. But again, this connection seems unusual
inasmuch as the Western philosophical tradition’s reflection on knowledge
has always been in terms of finding a foundation, a sul, for it. What is needed,
according to that tradition, is a firm basis, a first certainty on which to build
the enterprise of knowledge. There seems to be no place, in such a tradition,
for exile. Yet, according to Levinas, exile plays a central role in the quest for
truth. We shall show that, far from springing from secure foundations, truth
is accessible only to the mind capable of experiencing an exile away from its
preconceptions and prejudices. Only the mind porous enough to be receptive
to the questions, perspectives and concerns of an interlocutor, of an other exiled
from the self, which confronts it from the outside, is worthy, according to Levinas
of journeying toward the truth. In this sense, there can be no genuine knowledge
without a reference to a disruptive and transcendent other, without a reference
to an exiled one. And it is the welcoming of that other, of his or her questions
and objections, which purifies the mind of its solipsism and prepares it for an
encounter with a truth which is not a construction or a production of the mind,
but the fruit of an intersubjective dialogue and search.

6 Emmanuel Levinas
Our quest for truth now leads us, in our sixth chapter, to the quest for the
ultimate Truth, that of God. Levinas will once more associate exile with this new
spiritual endeavor. Again, this seems counterintuitive. In the main traditions of
spirituality, exile is, on the contrary, seen as a degenerative state and spirituality is
seen as a coming home or as a return. The neoplatonic conception of spirituality
especially sees exile in a pejorative light. The exile of the soul from the One
must be overcome by a turning back and a homecoming to that One. This
conception can be found again in Jewish and Christian understandings of exile
as the painful journey of the believer in a transient world which can only be
overcome by conversion understood as a return to God. In all three cases, exile is
seen as a condition to be overcome in order to achieve genuine spirituality. Not
so for Levinas. Inspired by postexilic Jewish thought, Levinas will forge a novel
conception of exile as a necessary component of spirituality. We shall show how
exile, for Levinas, is central to the spiritual experience and to the encounter with
transcendence. Not only is God in exile for Levinas, but exile, far from testifying
to a separation from God, constitutes the very nature of the journey toward
God.
Finally, our last chapter will lead us to another form of spirituality, that of
art. Here again, Levinas’ understanding of the alienating, even disruptive nature
of certain art forms will come against common conception of art as beauty and
as a testimony to the hidden harmony of the cosmos. Opting against Plato for
the discordant forms of art over and against harmonious and beautiful forms
of art, Levinas will come up with a unique aesthetics in which exile will play
a central role. But this taste for the discordant and for the disruptive over and
against the healing virtue of beauty raises the question of what accounts as
art. Can the ugly, the meaningless, the shocking count as art? Or must art be
relegated to the domain of the harmonious and of the beautiful? We shall see
that for Levinas, these discordant and fragmented forms, in that they testify to
the fragility and intrinsic exile of the human condition must count as art, in
the sense that they achieve a truthful representation of reality and testify to its
essential fragmentation.

1
A Life and Thought in Exile
Introduction
Before anything can be said about Levinas’ thoughts on exile, a chapter dealing
with the personal and historical context of that reflection on exile is necessary.
As Srajek observed in his essay on Levinassian ethics, one cannot understand
a problem without first going back to the context or horizon of emergence
of that problem. Thus, “it would be negligent to read [this philosopher] of
transcendence without realizing that somewhere in [his life] such transcendence
must have its ‘Sitz im Leben.’”1 It is precisely to these biographical elements that
we must now turn to if we are to understand the genesis of Levinas’ thoughts
on exile. This intrinsic connection between Levinas’ own experience of exile
and his reflection on exile has already been, incidentally, noticed by Srajek.
Speaking of both Derrida and Levinas, Srajek observes that “their biographies
. . . are marked at least in part by the fact of their Jewishness and the fear,
persecution, hatred, and exile which they had to confront because of that
heritage. In reading their texts, we have to remind ourselves continually of the
perennial societal ostracism to which the two thinkers were exposed in order to
understand the connections with the philosophy they write that centers around
absence, the no-place (‘non-lieu’), exile, etc.”2 It is precisely this connection that
the present chapter will attempt to not only posit but also elaborate and this,
by first showing how Levinas’ reflection of exile stems from his own experience
of exile as a Jew, but also, by showing how his interpretation of exile is shaped
by his familiarity with Jewish interpretations of exile. Finally, we shall show
how the latter will influence his understanding of ethics as well as his use of the
concept of exile.
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8 Emmanuel Levinas
I Emmanuel Levinas: A life of exile
Emmanuel Levinas was born on January 12, 1906, in Kaunas, Lithuania, in a

traditional Jewish family. Lithuanian Jews were well integrated in the Lithuanian
community because of their openness to the surrounding culture, holding many
trade and intellectual connections with Russia and the West. The death of Tsar
Alexander II, however, brought about a wave of anti-Semitism and pogroms
making life increasingly difficult, if not unbearable, for the Jewish community
of Lithuania and forcing many into exile. Levinas’ family also chose to leave and
settled in the Ukraine to escape ostracism and persecution. Yet, between 1918
and 1920, pogroms started in the Ukraine as well, and Levinas chose exile again,
this time to France. In 1923, at the age of 17, Emmanuel Levinas journeyed to
Strasbourg and registered as a student at the University of Strasbourg. A few
years later, in 1928, he spent a year at the University of Freiburg where he worked
under philosophers Husserl and Heidegger; after which, Levinas moved back to
France and started his own philosophical work with the writing of a dissertation
on the thought of Husserl.
Shortly after his return to France from Freiburg, war broke out and Levinas
joined the French army in 1939, only to become a war prisoner a year later and
find himself transferred to a labor camp for Jewish prisoners. The particular
exile experienced at the work camp was, however, profoundly different from
Levinas’ prior experiences of marginalization. He describes this exile in a short
essay later published in Difficult Freedom as follows: “There were seventy of us
in a forestry commando unit for Jewish prisoners of war in Nazi Germany. An
extraordinary coincidence was the fact that the camp bore the number 11492,
the year of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain under the Catholic Ferdinand V.
The French uniform still protected us from the Hitlerian violence. But the other
men, called free, who had dealings with us or gave us work or orders or even
a smile—and the children and women who passed by and sometimes raised
their eyes—stripped us of our human skin. We were subhuman, a gang of apes.
A small inner murmur, the strength and wretchedness of persecuted people,
reminded us of our essence as thinking creatures, but we were no longer part of
the world” (DF 152–3).
What is interesting about this passage is that it does not describe a mere
cultural or geographical exile but an ontological exile. What Levinas experienced
in his stay in the prison camp is an exile from the human condition as expressed
by the behavior of the “free” men, women, and children which “stripped” him
of his “human skin” (DF 153). For these, the prisoners were not considered

A Life and Thought in Exile 9
human, but “subhuman,” belonging to a “gang of apes.” It is such an experience

of being “no longer part of the world,” that is to say, of the human world, the
human condition, which will mark the beginning of his distanciation with the
Western philosophical tradition giving rise to a single question: How is it that
being at the forefront of philosophy, the arts, and religion, the West could arrive
at such degrading actions toward other human beings? How could the West,
the birthplace of the Enlightenment, give lieu to the systematic ostracism and
eventual massacre of the human other as was evident in the Holocaust? And
indeed, while the West benefited from a millennial tradition of ethics, it found
itself curiously lacking in moral strength in the face of the radical evil incarnated
by Nazism. Levinas himself observes this weakness, all the while recognizing
that while “European moral conscience did exist . . . it flourished in that happy
period in which centuries of Christian and philosophical tradition had not yet
revealed, in the Hitlerian adventure, the fragility of their works” (DF 5).
The question is, of course, what was missing in the European ethos that caused
it to give way so easily to the tide of Nazism. An overview of Western ethical
systems shows an ethos primordially concerned with the next of kin. Such an
ethos is built around a community of “like individuals” (TI 213) belonging to “a
common concept” (TI 213). The neighbor with whom one must show solidarity
belongs, for the most part, to the same community as the self; such an ethos has
no glimpse of “a human society and horizons vaster than those of the village
where we were born” (DF 23). Modernity has no concern with the stranger or
the exiled as such, and when it does deal with those dimensions, it is strictly
terms of their assimilation to the dominant ethos.3 What characterizes Western
ethics is thus a radical neglect of the dimension of the stranger or the exiled as
such. Whatever ethics there are, in Western philosophical thought, it is limited
to the next of kin. But what of the stranger?4 What ethics is there for the exiled?
Is not this neglect of the dimension of the stranger the very cause of the downfall
of the Western ethos? Is not the allegiance to the next of kin, to the detriment of
the stranger, the very moment of inversion of Western ethics into immorality?
Moreover, is not the stance of the exiled the only possible ethical stance in an
ethos entirely dominated by xenophobia and anti-Semitism? In a context where
hatred of the other has become the norm, it seems that only one who is able to
maintain himself or herself in exile with regard to the dominant ethos of the time
is capable of retaining a sense of the humanity of the other.5 In a context where
evil is rampant, only a “small inner murmur” can ascertain that one is still a
human being, still a Mensch. Only that which resists the system—be it one’s own
conscience or one’s own individual stance against the dominant ethos—retains,

10 Emmanuel Levinas
in the context of radical evil, an awareness of ethics, a sense of the humanity

of the victims. Levinas illustrates this phenomenon by telling a very poignant
story of a dog encountered during his time as a war prisoner in Nazi Germany:
“Halfway through our long captivity, for a few short weeks, before the sentinels
chased him away, a wandering dog entered our lives. One day he came to meet
this rabble as we returned under guard from work. He survived in some wild
patch in the region of the camp. But we called him Bobby, an exotic name, as
one does with a cherished dog. He would appear at morning assembly and was
waiting for us as we returned, jumping up and down and barking in delight. For
him, there was no doubt that we were men” (DF 153).
In this story, there was but one witness of the humanity of the prisoners: a
stray dog. The description of it as a “wandering dog” is particularly interesting,
as though only a wandering, exilic stance, could resist the overpowering
ethos of xenophobia and genocide characterizing Nazi Germany. This stray,
wandering dog is “the last Kantian in Nazi Germany” (DF 153), the last witness
to the humanity of the victims, to their being “ends” and not mere “means,”
to their being persons worthy of respect in the midst of their annihilation and
degradation by the Nazi apparatus. In this context, the exilic stance, far from
signifying the dissolution of ethics, must be recognized as its sole and lonely
guardian. Moreover, in this context, ethics is no more a set of rules binding to a
given community, but the keen sense of the humanity of the other.6 Ethics is no
more an external imposition of abstract principles, but the “inner murmur” of
a conscience7 sensitive to the humanity of the victim even at the basest moment
of their degradation by their persecutor. The ethical subject is thus no more a
subject capable of deliberating over right and wrong and acting willfully, but
the exiled, de-centered subject susceptible of being affected by the suffering of
another human being. But more will be said on this reformulation of ethics by
Levinas later.
Suffice it to say at this point that exile constitutes, arguably, a pivotal moment
in Levinas’ reflection on the crisis of ethics undergone during the Nazi era:
His own experience of exile brings up the urgent question of the status of the
exiled and of the stranger in the Western ethos as well as the realization that
the condition of exile, far from going against ethics, might in fact constitute
the very condition of ethics as “the inner murmur” of a conscience oblivious
to the external and despotic imposition of values. Thus, it can be argued that
exile will take on for Levinas, not only a central place but a positive signification
in his working out of an ethics susceptible of resisting radical evil. Our work will
show that the problem of the stranger and of the exiled will become the very

locus of Levinas’ ethics inasmuch as the neglect of the latter constitutes precisely,
according to him, the malady of the Western ethos. Likewise, the exilic stance will
take on a strategic place in the articulation of his ethics, inasmuch as it is only
such a stance which can maintain itself, according to our philosopher, in the face
of radical evil. Far from signifying an arbitrary position and a threat to ethics, we
will argue that exile will come to signify for Levinas the very condition of ethics.
It is no more a central subjectivity capable of deliberation and action which will
constitute, for Levinas, the ethical subject, but an exiled, de-centered subjectivity
acutely aware of and sensitive to the suffering of others. This central place given
to exile in Levinas’ reworking of ethics is, however, profoundly similar to the
Jewish significations of exile. Indeed, Levinas’ twofold emphasis on exile, while
unfamiliar to Western readers, resonates with the writings of Judaism.
II Levinas and Hebrew thought
The Hebrew conception of exile

The emphasis given to exile within the Jewish tradition is, however, not
incidental inasmuch as Judaism is a worldview which itself was shaped in
exile. Since Biblical times, the Hebrew’s experience has always been one of
exile, from the calling of Abraham out of the land of his fathers to the Exodus;
from the twice-repeated Babylonian exile to the present Diaspora of the
Jews. Hebrew thought, in this context, is indissociable from the experience
of exile and has constituted itself with a constant reference to this exile. As
such, however, Hebrew thinking will come to profoundly differ from Western
categories themselves constituted within a framework of sedentarization and
nation-state. Miguel Abensour describes this profound difference between
Hebrew and Western thought as an “opposition between paganism, closed off
within the world and powerless to leave it, and Judaism, the anti-paganism
per excellence, because lacking any definitive stance in the world” (PH 102,
my translation). This exilic stance of Judaism will give rise to an interpretation
of exile which would come to profoundly differ from Western views on exile.
While the West has always viewed exile with suspicion, as a curse or as a lesser
state, the Hebrew tradition will come to see exile as a pivotal concept laden
with positive significations and possibilities.
Far from being a symptom of degradation, exile in the Hebrew tradition
signifies the elevated stance of a subjectivity attuned to transcendence.

12 Emmanuel Levinas
Comparing the Plotinian account of the exile of the soul with the Jewish
perceptions of exile, Levinas comments: “Contrary to the philosophy that
makes of itself the entry into the kingdom of the absolute and announces in
the words of Plotinus, that the soul will not go towards any other thing, but
towards itself . . . Judaism teaches us a real transcendence, a relation with him
whom the soul cannot concern and without whom the soul cannot in some
sense, hold itself together” (DF 16). Contrarily to the Greek view of the soul’s
exile as a degradation of its prior state of unity with itself, the Hebrews see exile
as the prerequisite of genuine transcendence, that is to say, of a rapport with a
transcendent God and a transcendent other. For the Hebrews, exile constitutes
thus a veritable pedagogy of otherness in that it constitutes a rupture of the
self ’s hereto self-enclosed world thereby preparing it for an encounter with
otherness. As such, exile opens up the self to the dimension and possibility
of sociality. According to Levinas, “the Jewish man discovers man before
discovering landscapes and towns. He is at home in a society before being so
in a house. He understands the world on the basis of the other rather than the
whole of being functioning in relation to the earth. He is in a sense exiled on
this earth, as the Psalmist says, and he find a meaning to the earth on the basis
of a human society” (DF 22). Far from posing a threat to sociality, exile is seen
as the very prerequisite of society and a sensitivity to the humanity of others.
Levinas concludes: “Freedom with regard to the sedentary forms of existence is,
perhaps, the only human way to be in the world” (DF 23).
It is, hence, this capacity for exile to approach the dimension of otherness
which gives it its positive connotation as a factor of ethics and of spirituality.
Inasmuch as the condition of exile profoundly transforms the structures of
subjectivity as to make room for transcendence, it becomes a condition worthy
of respect. The exiled is henceforth seen not as a nuisance but rather as a valuable
presence testifying to the possibility of a rapport with the transcendence of God
and of the human other. This positive signification given to exile explains its
privileged status within Hebrew society. Alluding to an oft-cited passage in the
book of Deuteronomy, Levinas comments: “One follows the Most High God
above all by drawing near to one’s fellow man and with concern to the widow, the
orphan, the stranger and the beggar. An approach that must not be made with
empty hands. It is therefore on earth, amongst men, that the spirit’s adventure
unfolds” (DF 26). Far from being seen as a threat to society, the exile embodied
in the figures of the widow, orphan, stranger, and beggar, constitutes a figure of
transcendence. Inasmuch as God is wholly other and can only be approached by
a subjectivity already sensitive to otherness, the welcoming of the exiled figures
of the widow, orphan, stranger, and beggar paves the way for a subjectivity

capable of encountering God. For only when subjectivity has learned the lesson
of otherness through its engagement with the widow, orphan, stranger, and
beggar, will it be able to encounter the Wholly Other.
The Jewish significations of exile thus profoundly differ from Western/Greek
views on exile. While the West views exile as a negative condition, as a lesser
state and even as a curse, the Hebrew view privileges the condition of exile as
well as the interaction with the exiled as a pedagogy of transcendence and as
the prerequisite of a subjectivity capable of engaging with an other. Exile, in
this context, entertains an intrinsic connection with ethics, that is to say, with a
subjectivity capable of relating to an other, to a dimension exterior to itself. Such
an understanding of exile as containing ethical possibilities will, incidentally, be
precisely what we will find in Levinas’ reflection on exile. There are thus profound
resonances between Levinas’ philosophy of exile and the conclusions of Hebrew
thought. But more needs to be said here of Levinas’ connection with Judaism.
The problem of Levinas’ Jewish source

Indeed, Levinas’ close connection with Judaism has cast a shadow on his
work and stance as a philosopher. Peperzak speaks of certain critiques’
understanding of this connection as a “contamination of philosophy by
religious reminiscences.”8 Inasmuch as Judaism is seen primordially as a
religion, the problem of the place of Judaism in Levinas’ thinking must be
addressed. Is Levinas doing theology? Or is he simply trying to conduct a
philosophical apologetics of the Jewish religion as some commentators have
argued? We remember here Peperzak’s observation that “some interpreters
think that Levinas’ work is nothing more than a translation into contemporary
French of old pre and non-philosophical thoughts and commandments.
Such a translation may be praised as a new version of Biblical spirituality but
would not justify the promotion of its author as a first class philosopher.”9 Is
Levinas simply giving a philosophical garb to religious ideas and beliefs?
Is he simply using philosophy to sustain a religious position which in turn
goes unquestioned? Were he to be doing so, this would be a grave accusation
inasmuch as philosophy is above all a questioning of the very foundations of
belief. How then can one be a philosopher all the while assuming a position that
goes unquestioned? Levinas would then appear as a pseudo-philosopher: One
that uses philosophical language but whose agenda is far from philosophical.
One way to solve the problem of Levinas’ philosophical ties to Judaism
is to think the rapport between the two in terms of exile and hospitality. In
this context, Levinas’ Jewish source is no longer a position which needs to

14 Emmanuel Levinas
be affirmed or strengthened through apologetic means but rather a stranger

in a strange land. Hebrew thought, in fact, defines itself as a thought in exile
in the words of the Psalmist: “I am a stranger on the earth, do not hide your
commands from me” (Ps. 119.19 New International Version). The commands
here refer to the very core of Judaism, that is to say, to the Law constituting
the basis of all Hebrew thinking and endeavor. Yet, far from seeking universal
affirmation, these commands attach themselves to the “stranger,” to the one
who is not of the world and who remains on the fringes of existence. Hebrew
thought thus profoundly differs from Western thought. Whereas Western
thought is ever in search of universality and objectivity, Hebrew thought
remains intrinsically bound to the particular, to the “secret of interiority.” As
such, Hebrew thought refuses to be encompassed in a universal or rational
argument. Its attunement to the concrete and the particular dimensions of
human life resists such a reduction to abstract and universal categories of
thinking. In fact, the temptation to establish itself rationally and to attain a
philosophical foundation goes against the very structure of Hebrew thinking
which, as we shall see, is intrinsically unfounded and, in Levinassian terms,
an-archic. To do an apologetics of Hebrew thought would thus go against
its very essence. Even the Medieval masters, as intent as they were to find
a rational grounding for Judaism, had to admit the limitations of this task
as far as Hebrew thinking was concerned.10 Accordingly, Hebrew thought is
intrinsically exiled, or an-archic, and must remain so, even in the Western
context of thinking if it is to maintain its specificity.11
Reciprocally, the philosophical tradition of the West could come to adopt a
novel stance in the face of otherness. Instead of attempting to integrate it and
assimilate this thought in its own categories, thereby neutralizing anything
which does not fit its worldview, it could adopt a different stance: a welcoming
stance. Thereby, the Western philosophical tradition would not show itself, as it
usually does according to our philosopher, allergic to a thought which thinks
differently than itself, but rather would welcome this novel way of thinking in a
way that would enrich and deepen its own search for truth. This would entail,
however, that philosophical thinking sees itself no more as emerging from itself,
but as capable of being inspired by another. This revolutionary reorientation of
Western thought toward an other that precedes it, is that which is inaugurated
here by Levinas, as observed by Catherine Chalier in her book L’inspiration
du philosophe: “His attentiveness to the Hebraic source remains intimately
connected to his philosophy, that is to say, to his desire to disturb the foundations

of rational thinking . . . in order to awaken the mind from its slumber. His whole
philosophy rallies itself to this awakening, thereby paving the way for a more
demanding thought which breaks with the primacy of ontology in order to revive
the memory and the disquietude of an alterity incommensurable to concepts . . .
This alterity does not do violence to the life of the spirit but forces it to take a
new direction. It dislodges philosophy from its masterful position, signifies to it
that rationality does not possess the ultimate key to intelligibility, and orients it
to the weakness, the vulnerability, and the precariousness which signify, before
concepts, in the word of the prophets, towards a call to responsibility.”12
In this context, it is no longer about philosophy giving a philosophical
grounding to Jewish thought, but, on the contrary, about Jewish thought giving
a new “inspiration”13 and orientation to Western thought. Thus, far from seeking
philosophical garb in order to establish itself, Hebrew thought as manifest
in Levinas’ philosophy, serves to give a new impulse to Western thought and
open new venues in philosophy. In the words of Lorenc, the Jewish source
in Levinas’ writings would constitute “an attempt at constructing a vision of
culture which, being alternative to the generally accepted paradigm of Western
European culture, would offer a chance for endowing the ideas of humanism
and universalism with new contents.”14 It is precisely this new impulse given by
Hebrew concepts to Western structures of thought which makes for Levinas’
profound originality and for his specificity as a Jewish philosopher. And indeed,
what distinguishes Jewish philosophy from Western philosophy is precisely
this attunement to an other which precedes the self. While Western thought
originates in the self, Jewish thought thinks and philosophizes with the keen
awareness of its having been preceded by an other, by revelation.
Philosophy is, in this context, no more the enterprise of a solitary subject
erecting itself at the origin and foundation of truth as in the Cartesian endeavor,
but the product of a de-centered subjectivity, always preceded and inspired
by an other. Such a subjectivity is thus no more the grounded and central self
of the Cartesian egology, but the de-posited, exiled self whose philosophical
questioning has not emerged from itself but constitutes a response to an other
which precedes it. Levinas speaks to this effect of an “ontological inversion”
brought about by an attentiveness to a thought which precedes oneself (TN 133).
It is as such that the Jewish philosopher, and the emerging Jewish philosophy, is
an-archic inasmuch as it cannot find an origin within itself but is always relative
to an other which has come before it and which has inspired, or more precisely,
awakened it to its fundamental questions.

16 Emmanuel Levinas
III Ethics and exile in Levinas
This “ontological inversion” brings out the intrinsic connection between exile
and ethics inasmuch as it is only a subjectivity which has undergone a rupture
of its categories and found itself de-posited by a thought which exceeds it,
that can approach a transcendent other. But more needs to be said here of
Levinassian ethics. Indeed, the description of ethics just mentioned comes
from an understanding of ethics that profoundly differs from the traditional
conception of ethics as a set of rules and principles binding to a community.
Levinas is not concerned, in Bernasconi’s terms with “generating an ethics.”15
Levinas is not occupied with the prescriptions of an “ought” to his readers based
on rational categories of good and evil as Kant has done. Ethics for Levinas is not
the product of a rational subject. The rationalizations of good and evil are rather
a by-product of a subject already interested in, already awakened to ethics. In
other words, the moral deliberation of a given subject is but the result of its
already having a sense of ethics. Part of our work will be to show that ethics is,
for Levinas, a sensible event rather than a rational one. The ethical subject is
not a rational subject capable of moral deliberation, but a sensible one capable
of sensing another’s need. There lies the originary moment of ethics according
to Levinas, in this capacity to hear another’s plea for help. There lies the first
awakening of the subject to ethics, that is to say, to an other capable of disturbing
the hereto peaceful and self-possessed world of the self.
This understanding of ethics as pertaining to the sensible realm rather than
to the rational realm is, incidentally, profoundly Jewish. In the Hebrew tradition,
ethics, as taught by the prophets, was not a factor of the intellect, but rather of
the senses. The lack of ethics denounced by the prophets had nothing to do with
an intellectual deficiency on the part of the people of Israel, or with an incapacity
for them to make the right judgments in terms of right and wrong, but rather on
an incapacity on their part to “see” or to “hear.” Catherine Chalier comments on
this appeal to the senses of sight and hearing on the part of the Hebrew prophets:
“When the prophets denounce the deafness and blindness of man, it is not just
an appeal to the heart to open up to the good. Before interpreting the eyes and
ears as metaphors, one must take seriously their sensorial potentialities. The
prophets demand above all that one hears and sees differently, and yet that this
hearing and seeing remain on the level of the sensible inasmuch as there exists
a profound connection between the sensible and the spiritual realms.”16 We now
understand better Levinas’ strange statement that “ethics is an optics” (TI 23).
Far from being the product of an intellectual deliberation, ethics is seeing and

hearing a plea, it is a sensibility to an other, a sense for the other’s suffering and
wretchedness.
Thus, ethics does not emerge, as it did traditionally, from a solitary and
central subject capable of rationally deliberating over right and wrong, as the
Kantian subject for example, but from a de-centered, exposed subject capable
of seeing its central stance put into question by another’s need. We have
now a better sense of how exile is intimately connected to ethics in Levinas’
philosophy. It is no more a masterful subject who is capable of ethics, but a
vulnerable subject, acutely sensitive to its surroundings and susceptible of being
dislodged from its comfortable stance in the world by the pain he sees around
itself which, for Levinas, constitutes the originary moment of ethics. Ethics is
in this context no more a set of rules, but an inner disposition on the part
of subjectivity. Levinassian ethics is no longer prescriptive of an “ought,” but
descriptive of an “ethical constitutedness of human beings,”17 of a given subject’s
capacity to sense the presence and need of an other and to be dislodged by such
a need. Framed as such, it is possible to better grasp the connection between the
subject’s fragmentation or exile and their capacity to encounter otherness. But
this exile of subjectivity needs to be further analyzed.
Indeed, we have not yet clarified in what sense Levinas will understand
that exile. Does he mean a concrete exile out of a given physical space, or is
he merely describing a metaphorical exile taking place within the psyche of a
given subjectivity? Our analyses of exile shall reveal that there are two main
dimensions of exile in Levinas: a phenomenological exile and an ethical exile. One
must be reminded that although Levinas draws his inspiration from Hebrew
thought, his starting point is phenomenological. Drawing on the Husserlian
analyses of the constitution of otherness in the sphere of the self, Levinas will
attempt to work out the structure of the encounter between subjectivity and
a human other. All the difficulty of this enterprise will reside, however, in the
description of the phenomenalization of an other who by essence must exceed
the structures of consciousness. The other qua other cannot be comprehended
by a given consciousness. He or she must necessarily remain outside of the
scope of consciousness if they are to maintain their otherness. The other is thus
necessarily ex-sul, that is to say, exterior or outside (ex-) the world or ground
(sul) of consciousness. The question of exile is then, first and foremost, a
phenomenological one. Levinas will speak to that effect of an “exile” of the face
(TI 213) out of the world of consciousness. Of course, the problem will arise of
the possibility of such an encounter. How indeed is it possible to relate to a being
who remains resolutely exiled from the world of consciousness?

18 Emmanuel Levinas
We shall see that this problem will lead Levinas to translate the problem of
exile from a phenomenological setting to a sensible one, to the concrete level
of embodied existence. Indeed, our analyses will show that, while the other
cannot be encountered in Levinas on the cognitive or phenomenological level, she
can be encountered on a sensible level in the daily occurrences of her need and
desire for my help and resources. Thus, for Levinas, the other is no more the one
who escapes my perceptions and categories, but the one who solicits my help
from the margins of my world. We shall see that, in this context, the encounter
with the exiled other is only possible at a price: That of sharing one’s world and
resources with that other and as such, of acknowledging that the world one hereto
was the sole possessor of, is in fact a shared world. Thus, ascertains Levinas, the
other can be encountered but only at the price of an exile, this time of the self,
whereby it sees itself de-posited of its central position in the world in a generous
gesture toward the other. Thus the exile is no more a phenomenological exile of
the other from the intentional structures of the self, but an ethical gesture on the
part of the self toward the other. The details of this shift in the understanding
of exile from the phenomenological to the ethical still need to be explicated and
this will be the purpose of our second chapter. Yet, one can already ascertain
the profoundly Jewish character of this shift from the cognitive to the ethical
operated by Levinas.
This emphasis of the ethical and embodied dimension of human existence
over and against the cognitive and abstract realms constitutes the specificity
of Jewish thought versus Greek thinking. Whereas the Greek advocates a
departure from the sensible and material realms of the body for the realms of
ideas and wisdom, the Jewish mindset continually resists this vertical movement
for the more mundane preoccupation with the realm of human existence here
and now. The exilic thought of the Hebrews never constitutes, as for Greek
thought, a flight unto the spiritual and heavenly realm, but rather serves to
bring the Hebrew back to one’s responsibilities on earth. The Hebrew’s exile has
the purpose of awakening him to plight of other exiled. As Levinas observes:
“the condition—or incondition—of strangers and slaves in the land of Egypt
brings man closer to his fellowman” (HO 65–6). We are here reminded of the
distinction effectuated by Abraham Heschel between the Greek philosopher and
the Hebrew prophet. While the Greek philosopher seeks a flight to the world of
ideas, the Hebrew prophet remains weighed down by mundane events of injustice
and corruption: “What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy
who turns from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the
prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of

trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of
matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations
about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the
marketplace. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the
mind, the prophets take us to the slums.”18
Likewise, the problematization of exile, while primordially a phenomenological
one, will always find itself, in Levinas, brought back to the realm of ethics. While
Levinas’ problem of exile is first and foremost a phenomenological one—that
of the exile of the face from the cognitive world of consciousness—it sees
itself almost simultaneously translated into an ethical concern for the widow,
orphan, and stranger. As such, Levinas’ thought is closer to the prophetic (in
the Heschelian sense) than to the philosophical. His preoccupation is less the
structure of the phenomenology of the face within the world of the self, than the
ethical possibilities opened up by the face. And indeed, we shall see throughout
our analyses of exile in the philosophy of Levinas, an oscillation between these
two moments of exile: phenomenological and ethical, cognitive and concrete.
Thus, our chapter on ethics will begin with the problem of the phenomenological
exile of the face which Levinas will resolve by translating the exile of the face on
the concrete and embodied level of ethics. Our descriptions of the origin of the
social bond will show that, for Levinas, the emergence as well as the preservation
of society rests on this ethical moment of exile. Our descriptions of the erotic in
Levinas will likewise begin with a description of the concrete exile of woman
from the possessive grasp of the self, only to open upon the possibility of the
self ’s ethical and concrete exile and gift in order to open up a space for the
woman as a person. Our chapter on Levinas’ epistemology will begin with an
acknowledgment that cognitive knowledge necessitates the ability to relate to an
object retaining a certain epistemological exteriority or exile with regard to the
constituting activity of the self. We shall argue that such an ability, however, rests
on the ability of the self to concretely and ethically engage with a human other.
Our chapter on Levinassian metaphysics will likewise begin with the problem of
the epistemological exile of God, absent from perception, only to invert into a
God accessible as trace in the face of the exiled other and through ethics. Finally,
our chapter on Levinas’ aesthetics can be read as an essay contrasting classical
art’s escapist exile into the world of forms to modern art’s depiction of human
frailty and precariousness thus paving the way to an ethics.

2
An Ethics of Exile
Introduction
The question of ethics has been traditionally associated with the finding of a
set of principles binding to a given society. Indeed, ethics, etymologically ethos,
pertains to the customs and sets of principles adopted by a given society. Ethics
as we know it, is a communal affair and has to do with a given societal consensus
as to what is a right or wrong behavior. Something is thus ethical if it fits this
societal consensus and unethical if it doesn’t fit. Ethics constitutes the glue
that binds society together and ensures harmony, cohesion, and togetherness.
Philosophers and nonphilosophers have adopted such a definition of ethics.
As such, “to be unethical in the Greek idiom simply meant to be unusual or
unaccustomed. Both Plato and Aristotle make the Greek pun which associates
ethos with ethics, character with habit. Ethics was not something to be generated
or deduced; it was almost by definition, already in place, defining the community
which embraced it.”1 Our interpretation of Levinassian ethics as intrinsically
connected with exile can, in fact, strike one as uncanny. If ethics is understood
as ethos, that is, as the commonality which binds a community together, what
does exile, which testifies precisely to the dissolution of the communal bond and
the expulsion out of one’s homeland or community, have to do with ethics?
This is incidentally Michel Haar’s central question to Emmanuel Levinas: “We
know that before the Greek ethos was applied to any practical rule or behavior, it
originally meant a shared place (topos, lieu), a place where people dwell together,
meet and communicate. This leads us to put a last introductory question about
the meaning of Levinas’ ethics: Can there be an ethics without such a place?
Or would such an ethics exist, as Levinas claims, in exile, given the absence of
topos.”2 In other words, can there be an ethics without an ethos, that is, a common
and shared communal space where the other and the self already coexist?
Does not the presence of the exiled constitute precisely the rupture of such a

An Ethics of Exile 21
common space, of such an ethos, and as such, dissolves the very condition of
ethical behavior? Indeed, Haar’s objection finds its confirmation in the fact that
the experience of exile constitutes more often than not the very breakdown of
the social bond in that the exiled finds herself either cut off from her community
or alienated and estranged within a new community. The exiled is she who never
fits a given societal consensus but, in virtue of her past, always carries the trace of
another world, of another way of life, worldview. But, by introducing by default
such an other worldview or way of life within a given community, the exiled
jeopardizes the established ethos. The presence of the exiled in a community thus
marks the beginning of fissures in the very ethos of this given community. And
as such, the exiled necessarily presents a threat to the cohesion of that particular
society. The exiled hence seems to go against the ethical enterprise, against all
attempts to bind a community together under a given ethos.3
But such an ethics as founded on the Greek conception of ethos, as a code
morally binding to all members of a given community has a central flaw: Such
an ethics can only be wary of the stranger which antagonizes and endangers it, of
the one who does not fit into the prescribed ethos. Thus, ethics conceived as ethos
has no use of the stranger and, indeed, is wary and distrustful of the stranger.
Such an ethics, however, is profoundly problematic in the light of the events of
World War II where the exiled found herself negated precisely in the name of
the common good and ethos. It is such an ethics which has, as a result, “flown
under suspicion.”4 And indeed, after Auschwitz, there can be no more talk of an
ethos limited to members of a given society, to the ones sharing a common space.
The dimension of the stranger, of the exiled, of the one who does not share the
same space, must be reintegrated into the ethical discourse if the events of World
War II must be prevented for future generations. In other words, ethics must find
itself reformulated no more in terms of an ethos which binds people sharing a
common space, but in terms of an ethos opened up to the outsider, the stranger
belonging to another space and world. This is arguably Levinas’ orientation in
his reflection on ethics; attempt which will lead to a profound inversion of ethics
as ethos grounded in a common space into an an-archic ethics, irrupting from
precisely a non-lieu of the exiled.
Levinas’ work on ethics must then not be read as a reiteration of a discipline
which, in the aftermath of World War II up until today, has come under heavy
suspicion, but precisely as the shattering of the traditional understanding of
ethics as ethos and the reformulation of an ethics which no longer expels the
stranger but welcomes her and the disturbance she is susceptible of bringing
to the established ethos. Thus, Bernasconi is right to say that “ethics in Levinas’

22 Emmanuel Levinas
sense is more concerned with questioning than with providing answers . . . to this
extent Levinas has more in common with the contemporary suspicion of ethics
than with the ethical tradition itself. Indeed, Levinas’ response to the hermeutics
of suspicion is to insist that its suspicion of morality has an ethical source.”5
Far from constituting an anachronic voice for ethics, Levinas proposes not only
an inversion of traditional ethics, but the very shattering of the foundations
of traditional ethics—the shared space of the ethos—for an ethics originating
in exile, in the non-lieu of the exiled other. It is this exiled other which will
guide Levinas’ deconstruction of ethics, and as such, which will constitute the
new an-archic foundation of Levinas’ discourse on ethics.
According to Levinas, there exists a deep connection between exile
and ethics.6 The purpose of this chapter will be to show, that, far from going
against ethics, the experience of exile paves the way to an ethics understood
as a relationship with an other, which welcomes this other’s alterity and
transcendence. For Levinas, ethics is more than just harmony and cohesion, or
ethos. Levinas’ ethics describes first and foremost a relationship with an other
qua other, as transcendent and exiled with regard to the world of the self. Such
an ethics implies for Levinas, however, that the other be encountered as absolute
from the world of the self. This description of the other as absolute, that is, as
absolutely exiled from the world of the self will raise a number of objections,
notably from Derrida. Indeed, how is an encounter, let alone a relationship, with
an other remaining stubbornly absolute from the world of the self possible? Our
analyses will have to address these questions and explain how an encounter or
relationship is possible with an other described as absolute. We shall argue that
this encounter, while absolute on the cognitive level, can be read as relative on
the sensible level thus allowing for a relationship to take place. But this encounter
of the other on the sensible level is possible only at the price of a profound
transformation of the self.
Indeed, according to Levinas, the self must itself experience exile—a de-
centering, a de-positing of itself as center of the universe—if an encounter with
the exilic dimension of the other is to be possible. This, however, brings up the
problem of how a de-centered self, a self stripped of all its prerogatives and
stance in this world, can possibly still enter into a relationship with another. This
is in essence Haar’s objection to the Levinassian discourse on ethics: Such a self,
according to Haar, is in danger of being dominated and consequently annihilated
by the other. How then could it constitute the originary moment of ethics? It is
this critique which we shall address in our analyses in an attempt to show the
emergence, in Levinas’ philosophy, of a definition of the self which no longer

claims centrality and priority as the Western conception of the self, but which
gains its selfhood from an intrinsic de-centeredness and relationality. Indeed,
only such a self, for Levinas, is capable of ethics. Thus we will have shown that
it is not a common ethos which, according to Levinas, constitutes the basis of
community, but an encounter with an exiled other. This chapter will show the
centrality of the concept of exile in the Levinassian discussion of ethics. We shall
see that the dimension of exile is present at every stage of the ethical encounter.
Far from being an obstacle to ethics, we shall see that exile paves the way to an
ethics, to an ethical encounter and to ethical behavior.
I The exile of the face
The exile of the face is described by Levinas in a key passage in Totality and
Infinity, which reads as follows: “The epiphany of the face qua face opens
humanity. The face in its nakedness as a face presents to me the destitution of
the poor one and the stranger; but this poverty and exile which appeal to my
powers, address me, do not deliver themselves over to these powers as givens,
remain the expression of the face” (TI 213, my italics). This passage has layers of
meaning and we shall endeavor to uncover each one throughout this chapter.
One of these meanings is that of an exile of the other from the world of the self,
from the constituted world of perceptions and conceptualizations of the self. The
other does not “deliver” himself or herself to the cognitive and perceptive powers
of the self. The other remains in exile (ex-sul): outside (ex-) of the world (sul)
constituted by the self. There is always something within the face of the other
which escapes cognition, which escapes our vision, our understanding. While
the face of the other does lend itself to vision and to a limited understanding of
its features and expressions, there is something within its appearing that escapes,
that refuses to appear. Levinas observes that “the transcendence of the face is at
the same time its absence from this world into which it enters, the exiling of a
being” (TI 75).
Levinas explains this paradoxical way of manifestation by having recourse to
the concept of “nakedness.” The other appears in my field of vision, as a physical
body, as a face rich in features and expressions. And yet, something of that other
escapes me. I perceive, constitute the other as a body within my world, and yet,
along with this body, I sense that something in that other escapes me, I sense that
I can never gain full knowledge of him or her. Levinas speaks of this mystery or
secret of the other in terms of the “nakedness” of the other: “The nakedness of the

24 Emmanuel Levinas
face is not what is presented to me because I disclose it, what would therefore be
presented to me, to my powers, to my eyes, to my perceptions, in a light exterior
to it” (TI 75). For Levinas, nakedness is used metaphorically to describe that
part of the other which escapes the visible “exteriority” of the world. Nakedness
must be understood in Levinas as that which remains hidden within the visible
world of things, sceneries, and institutions. Nakedness, according to Levinas,
can never be disclosed within the world of the self and, in this sense, it reveals an
exilic dimension.7 The other remains exterior (ex-) from my world (sul). It is in
this sense that Levinas speaks of the other as the “stranger” who is “not wholly in
my site” (TI 39). Levinas speaks to that effect of the infinite transcendence of the
other as “infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign” (TI 194). The nakedness of
the other speaks thus of his or her exile from the objective and discovered world
originating from the self; it remains exiled from the world of the self.
But this phenomenology of otherness raises an important question: How is
the other to appear outside of the world of objects? If there is to be appearance,
must it not always be within a world, within a field of vision, of perception?8
How can something appear outside of the world of light, outside of the world of
visible objects? How can something appear in the world and yet present itself as
an absence? These are precisely Derrida’s objections to Levinas’ descriptions of
the exilic character of the face. For the self to enter into a relationship with the
face, it is necessary, according to Derrida, that the latter manifests itself, exposes
itself to the objectifying activity of the self, lets itself be seen in the context of a
world: “My world is the opening in which all experience occurs, including, as
the experience par excellence, that which is transcendence toward the Other
as such. Nothing can appear outside of my appartenance to ‘my world’ for an
‘I am.’ ‘Whether it is suitable or not, whether it appears to me monstrous (due to
whatever prejudices) or not, I must stand firm before the primordial fact, from
which I cannot turn my glance for an instant, as a philosopher.”9
According to Derrida, it is impossible to speak of a relationship with alterity
without such an original moment of “violence” by which this alterity lets itself be
encompassed within my world, “shows itself ” to the self:10 “If light is the element
of violence, one must combat light with a certain other light, in order to avoid the
worst violence, the violence of the night which precedes or represses discourse.
. . . The philosopher . . . must speak and write within this war of light, a war in
which he always already knows himself to be engaged; a war which he knows is
inescapable, except by denying discourse, that is by risking the worst violence.”11
There must be a presentation, a phenomenalization of the face in my world for
a relationship to be possible. How can we then speak, with Levinas, of a relation

with the face without prior vision of that face? How do we encounter the other
beyond appearances? How may we access the genuine self of the other? If all
of our attempts to understand the other in fact distanciate us from this other,
how are we to approach this other in a way that will allow us to have a genuine
encounter with him or her?
According to Levinas, there is another way to relate to otherness which does
not pass by cognition but which allows for a genuine encounter with that other.
While the face will not be approached on the cognitive level, it is nevertheless
possible to approach it, according to Levinas, on the sensible level. To try to
encounter the other on a cognitive level is bound to fail for Levinas because the
other always escapes the mastery of the self. Yet, it is possible, according to Levinas
to encounter this other from the standpoint of the sensible world.12 The sensible
dimension thus becomes the lieu of “proximity,” of what Levinas terms a genuine
encounter with the other qua other: “The sensible is superficial only in its role
being cognition. In the ethical relationship with the real, that is, in the relationship
of proximity which the sensible establishes, the essential is committed” (LP
118). Lingis had already observed this affinity of the manifestation of the other
with the dimension of sensibility in an essay where he describes “two kinds of
sensibility; a sensibility for the elements and the things of the world, a sensuality,
which is appropriation and self-appropriation, and a sensibility for the face of the
other which is expropriation and responsibility.”13 The sensible is then the context
of the ethical, the support of the ethical. But one does not immediately grasp
this connection between the sensible dimension and the ethical. How does the
sensible constitute the medium wherein an ethical relationship is susceptible of
taking place? How does the sensible constitute a better context to an approach of
the exilic dimension of the face? Why is the standpoint of the sensible better than
that of the cognitive world to approach otherness? And, what is this standpoint?
Before we can understand the way the other appears within that sensible world,
we must first understand what Levinas means by sensible world.
Before we perceive objects and turn our interest to understanding the world
around us, our experience of the world is, according to Levinas, a sensible one.14
Before all cognitive attempts to give meaning to the world, we experience this
very world as already given and as a source of enjoyment. Before we see the
world as a multiplicity of objects, we “live from” the world, “we live from ‘good
soup,’ air, light, spectacles, work, ideas, sleep, etc. . . . These are not objects of
representations. We live from them” (TI 110). Before endeavoring to understand
the molecular structure of living things, or the physical properties of light,
before we even come to terms with the things in the world as “objects” distinct

26 Emmanuel Levinas
from ourselves, we live from them, we experience their effect on us, we enjoy
them. This, according to Levinas is a sensible way of relating to the world. This
sensible way comes before and independently of any cognitive and conceptual
understanding of the world. It is preconceptual and precognitive.
The sensible world is thus an experience of otherness which does not pass
through an act of mastery on the part of the self. Moreover, the experience of the
sensible world precedes any act of mastery or power on the part of the self and
affects this self before any act of constitution or mastery on its part. In that sense,
the act of “living from . . .” can be understood as constituting an experience of
genuine otherness, of an otherness which will not be derived from a cognitive
action from the part of the self, but which precedes and affects the self. The
experiences of feeling the warmth of the sunlight on one’s skin, or of desiring a
fruit and tasting it are all experiences which offer themselves to the self before
any initiative on its part—they surprise the self, they affect the self. “Living from
. . .” thus can be understood as the first awakening of the self to a dimension
outside of itself. It is in this sense that for Levinas, the experience of enjoyment
paves the way to the encounter with genuine otherness. Enjoyment, because it
precedes the self ’s activities and awakens it to otherness, can thus be understood
as one of the modes of “proximity,” of an approach to genuine otherness.15
Yet, this conception of enjoyment as signifying transcendence becomes
problematic upon closer analysis when one realizes that, while the movement
of enjoyment does allow for an experience of an otherness preceding all
initiatives of the self, it ultimately reabsorbs this otherness into the self in a
movement of assimilation and appropriation. In the act of enjoyment, the
“exteriority” of life is ultimately assimilated, repatriated to the self and this, in
spite of its obvious external character. The tasting of a fruit or the sensation of
sunlight is reduced to experiences of the self. They remain pure sensations of the
self. And indeed, enjoyment is without object; it is not worried about that which
it is the enjoyment of: “To sense is precisely to be sincerely content with what
is sensed, to enjoy, to refuse the unconscious prolongations, to be thoughtless,
that is, without ulterior motives, unequivocal, to break with all the implications”
(TI 138–9). According to Levinas, the enjoyment of a given sensation occurs
before any synthesis, before any objective preoccupation with the object of that
sensation. Enjoyment is not worried about the objective support of the qualities,
of the sensations it is enjoying; it does not aim at the felt but at the feeling.
One naturally comes to wonder how enjoyment, inasmuch as it is preoccupied
with the feeling over the felt, truly constitutes a movement of transcendence
on the part of the self. If enjoyment does not prolong its sensation into an

object, into an entity exterior to itself, how then does it transcend itself?
Does not enjoyment then become a mere subjective experience which never
leaves the immanent sphere of the ego cogito? One cannot speak in terms of a
true opening of transcendence inasmuch as “the self sufficiency of the enjoying
measures the egoism or the ipseity of the Ego and the same. Enjoyment is
a withdrawal into oneself, an involution” (TI 118). Far from constituting a
transcendent dimension with regard to the self, enjoyment constitutes the
world as “mine.” According to Levinas, the self that enjoys is “at home” in
the world: “The world, foreign and hostile, should, in good logic, alter the I.
But the true and primordial relation between them, and that in which the I is
revealed precisely and preeminently the same, is produced as a sojourn in the
world, the way of the I against the ‘other’ of the world consists in sojourning in
identifying oneself by existing there at home with oneself” (TI 37). In the world
which emerges from enjoyment, beings have meaning, definition only with
regard to myself. While the movement of enjoyment implies an experience
which precedes all cognitive action on the part of the self, it nevertheless ends
up making sense of the world as belonging to the self, as “mine.” According to
Levinas, “an energy that is other . . . becomes in enjoyment my own energy, my
strength” (TI 111, my italics). Thus the world is no longer characterized as a
dimension existing objectively and distinctly from the self, but as existing for
the self. As Levinas observes, “the world is for me” (TI 137).
One can, however, wonder how a relationship with the alterity of the other
is possible in a context where everything is mine. Can otherness subsist in a
world where everything is mine? Can there be an other in such a world? Levinas
himself defines enjoyment as a total ignorance of the dimension of the other:
“In enjoyment I am absolutely for myself. Egoist without reference to the Other,
I am alone without solitude, innocently egoist and alone. Not against the Others,
not ‘as for me’—but entirely deaf to the Other, outside of all communication and
all refusal to communicate—without ears like a hungry stomach” (TI 134). How
then can the dimension of the other appear within the sensible world? One does
not, at this point, understand how the sensible world can possibly constitute the
lieu of an encounter with otherness.
According to Levinas, the other nevertheless manifests herself in such a world;
but she does so as exiled. This exile is not, however, the cognitive exile of a face
which refuses to be grasped or understood. The exile of the face takes on a whole
new meaning in the context of a sensible world revolving around the self: the
meaning of destitution and dispossession. We now understand in a whole new
way the quote cited at the beginning of our chapter describing the exile of the

28 Emmanuel Levinas
face: “The face in its nakedness as a face presents to me the destitution of the
poor one and the stranger; but this poverty and exile which appeal to my powers,
address me, do not deliver themselves to these powers as givens, remain the
expression of the face” (TI 213). The exile described in this quote describes the
status of the other who, in a world centered on the self, can only be encountered
as a “stranger” and as a “poor one.” And indeed in a world where everything
belongs to the self, the other can only appear as destitute! There is no room in
such a world for him or her. In a world defined wholly as mine, the other can
only remain exiled. In a world where everything is my possession, the other can
only appear as the dispossessed. In a world possessed by the self and where the
self is at home, the other can only appear as destitute, as not-at-home in that
world, as exiled from that world. But if the other again presents herself as exiled,
as remaining on the margins of my world, how is the self to encounter her? What
encounter is possible in a world where the other finds herself marginalized,
exiled, expulsed?
According to Levinas, an encounter is possible on the sensible level with the
exiled other inasmuch as it profoundly differs from the cognitive relationship
with the face. Whereas the cognitive exile of the face constituted an absence of the
face, an escape of the face from the cognitive grasp of the self, the sensible exile
has a wholly different structure: It does not withdraw from the self, but affects it.
In fact, there can be no escaping this effect of the destitute other on the self, there
is no choice in the matter. But the face does not directly affect the self, rather it
affects it indirectly by affecting its relationship with the world, a relationship
which Levinas characterizes, prior to the intrusion of the face, as innocent and
happy. Indeed, before the intrusion of the destitute face, the self ’s relationship
with the world is that of “happiness”: “Life is love of life, a relation with contents
that are not my being but more dear than my being: thinking, eating, sleeping,
reading, working, warming oneself in the sun . . . the reality of life is already
on the level of happiness. . . . The final relation is enjoyment, happiness” (TI
112–13). This happiness is, furthermore, experienced by the self as innocent: “In
enjoyment, I am absolutely for myself. Egoist without reference to the Other, I
am alone without solitude, innocently egoist and alone. Not against the Others,
not ‘as for me . . .,’ but entirely deaf to the Other, outside of all communication
and all refusal to communicate—without ears, like a hungry stomach” (TI 134).
Before the intrusion of the destitute and exiled other, the whole world is mine to
possess, and my possession is innocent—that is, it does not hurt anyone, it does
not constitute a danger to others.
Everything changes however, upon the intrusion of the destitute and
exiled other. With the intrusion of the other, my relationship with the world

as possession and mineness becomes, all of a sudden, problematic: “Neither

possession nor the unity of number nor the unity of concepts link me to the
Stranger, the Stranger who disturbs the being at home with oneself ” (TI 38).
The other casts a shadow upon that relationship of possession, his/her presence
problematizes this relationship. Yet, at no point, does the other threaten my
relationship of possession. Levinas is not recapitulating here the Sartrean
descriptions of the phenomenalization of the other. Like Levinas, Sartre hinges
the manifestation of the other on my relationship with the world.16 Just like
Levinas, the Sartrean other problematizes that relationship. But unlike Levinas,
Sartre sees the intrusion of the other in the world of the self as, in effect, stealing
the world from the self, as operating a shift in its ownership from the self to
the other: “Perceiving him as a man, on the other hand is not to apprehend
an additive relation between the chair and him; it is to register an organization
without distance of the things in my universe around that privileged object. To
be sure, the lawn remains two yards away from him, but it is also a lawn bound
to him in a relation which at once both transcends distance and contains it . . . we
are dealing with a relation. . . . Inside of which there unfolds a spatiality which is
not my spatiality, for instead of a grouping toward me of the objects, there is now
an orientation which flees from me.”17
For Sartre, then, the other appears as other in my world, not due to a
particular way she presents herself to the self, but in the way in which she
impacts my relationship with the world. Whereas, before the intrusion of the
other, the world was organized and grouped toward me as objects for me, for
my own consciousness, the intrusion of the other reorganizes the world around
a new point of consciousness—that of the other. The world “flees” from me and
manifests itself as also constituting the world of the other, as also belonging to
her. The other, in effect, steals the world from the self. The self sees itself, through
the intrusion of the other, as deposited from its prerogative as center and sole
possessor of the world. The self, in Sartre’s terms, is “decentralized.”18 Levinas’
description of the intrusion of the other follows those lines, yet, without ever
constituting a threat to the self.
According to Levinas, the other does not steal the world, thus becoming,
through a violent act, co-possessor of my world. The other only casts a shadow
on my possession, without ever losing her exilic and destitute character. The
other never appropriates herself of my world. He or she remains on the margins,
on the edges of that world in his destitution. What she does do is transform my
innocent possession into a problem. The joyous possession of the world by the
self is profoundly altered by the intrusion, in that world, of the dispossessed. All
of a sudden, the self realizes that its possession of the world in fact dispossesses

30 Emmanuel Levinas
the other. The self realizes that it is at the origin of the very exile of the other. In
a world where everything is mine, what could possibly belong to the other? In
such a world, the other can only shiver, hunger, and thirst, as nothing belongs to
her—she is not at home in such a world, cannot survive in such a world. That the
other cannot survive in a world defined as mine now casts a huge shadow on the
innocent possession of the world. That possession now is experienced by the self
to be at the very root of the other’s suffering. The self ’s innocent enjoyment of life
is now experienced as the usurpation of the other, as a threat to her own life and
existence, as the very source of the other’s exile and destitution.19
II The exile of the self
The intrusion of the exiled other thus profoundly alters the self ’s happy
immersion in the world, calling it into question: “A calling into question of the
same—which cannot occur within the egoist spontaneity of the same—is brought
about by the other. We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the
presence of the Other, ethics. The strangeness of the Other, his irreducibility to
the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling
into question of my spontaneity, as ethics” (TI 43). The self is, upon the intrusion
of the face, called out of its innocent enjoyment and forced to face the suffering
of the other and its own responsibility in that suffering. This “calling out” of
the self from the world by the other is not unlike Heidegger’s own rendition of
the self ’s emergence from the world. Just like in Levinas, the Heideggerian self
or Dasein, is primordially immersed in the world, albeit not of enjoyment, but
of material things (Seiendes). Thus, according to Heidegger, Dasein lives first
and foremost in a preoccupation for material things that make up the routine
existence of its life. There is no awareness at that point of any reality or concern
outside that daily preoccupation for the material things of the world. There is
one event, however, which will call into question this daily routine: It is the
intrusion, in Dasein’s world, of the event of death. This event forever changes the
way Dasein relates to the world of beings and reveals the intrinsic precariousness
of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. Dasein realizes, upon encountering death, that
its own being in the world is fragile and precarious, that it is not at home in
the world, that this world does not truly hold it or shelter it from annihilation.
In other words, it feels anxious: “In anxiety, one feels ‘uncanny’ . . . But here
‘uncanniness’ also means ‘not-being-at-home’ . . . As Dasein falls, anxiety brings
it back from its absorption in the ‘world.’ Everyday familiarity collapses. Dasein

has been individualized, but individualized as Being-in-the-world. Being-in

enters into the existential ‘mode’ of the ‘not-at-home.’ Nothing else is meant by
our talk about ‘uncanniness.’”20 The realization of the inescapable event of death
through anxiety (Angst) is lived by Dasein as a feeling of uncanniness, of not
feeling at home in the world (Unheimlichkeit). And it is precisely this feeling
which will give birth in Dasein of the higher question of Being, thus ascribing
to it a new destiny—that of becoming the guardian of the metaphysical question
of Being.
Levinas’ description of the intrusion of the other holds similarities with
Heidegger’s description of Dasein’s encounter with death. Just like Heidegger’s
Dasein, Levinas’ self is primordially immersed in the world of enjoyment. Like
in Heidegger, the self is jolted out of that immersion by the intrusion of an other.
The intrusion of the other is thus comparable to the intrusion of death in Dasein’s
world. Levinas himself ascribes to that comparison when he describes the event
of the face as taking place in the shadow of death: “In the being for death of fear
I am not faced with nothingness, but faced with what is against me, as though
murder, rather than being one of the occasion of dying, were inseparable from the
essence of death, as though the approach of death remained one of the modalities
of the relation with the Other. The violence of death threatens as a tyranny, as
though proceeding from a foreign will. The order of necessity that is carried out
in death is not like an implacable law of determinism governing a totality, but is
rather like the alienation of my will by the Other” (TI 234). Like death, the other
puts the joyous possession of the self into question and calls it out of its innocent
enjoyment of the world; the self finds itself expulsed from its immersion in the
world by the other. The other sheds a shadow on its fundamental relationship of
possession, and hence, on its feeling “at home” in the world. With the intrusion
of the other, the self realizes that its being “at home” in the world is profoundly
problematic. Indeed, not unlike Heidegger’s account of death, the other causes
to arise in the self a feeling of uncanniness with regard to its prior relationship
to the world. Its at-homeness in the world is, in effect, ruined by the intrusion of
the destitute other.
The intrusion of the other hence has the effect of expulsing the self out of
its being-at-home in the world. The intrusion of the other exiles the self from
its situation as center and sole possessor of the universe: “The I approached in
responsibility is for-the-other, is a denuding, an exposure to being affected, a
pure susceptiveness. It does not posit itself, possessing itself and recognizing
itself; it is consumed and delivered over, dislocates itself, loses its place, is exiled,
relegates itself into itself, but as though its very skin were still a way to shelter

32 Emmanuel Levinas
itself in being, exposed to wounds and outrage, emptying itself in a no-grounds,

to the point of substituting itself for the other, holding on to itself only as it were
in the trace of its exile” (OB 138). With the intrusion of the destitute other, the
world will never be the same for the self. It will be forever tainted by the presence
of that other. With this intrusion, the world of the self has lost its original purity
and a shadow is now cast on every single possession of the self. In such a world,
the self is not at home anymore, it finds itself a stranger within its own world, it
finds itself expulsed, exiled from its very home. The question remains, however,
as to how this exile can make way to hospitality toward the other? How can such
a “dislocation,” such a “loss,” such an “exile” of the self render a welcoming of the
other possible?21
This is precisely Haar’s objection to Levinas: “If the ego is herself deprived of
every center, possessed by the other, from which place or from which absence
of place can she answer to and for the other . . . can she or he bring something
to the other if the other has been traumatized to the nuclear fusion of her or his
own psychism?”22 In other words, how can this exile of the self bring about a
welcoming of the other, let alone ethics? Can the self, expulsed as it is from its
own dwelling place, even welcome an other? While it is true that a dwelling place
is the prerequisite of any form of hospitality, it is also true that as long as this
dwelling remains closed to otherness, there can be no form of welcome possible.
Without a rupture in the self ’s hereto central identity, there can be no sense of
the other. In other words, only when the central position of the self in the world
is problematized, only when its dwelling and at-home-ness in the world is put
into question, is a glimpse of the other possible. Only when the self realizes the
arbitrary violence of its central and solitary position within the world, is the
exiled other manifest. Namely that for the self to awaken to the dimension of
the other, it must be jolted out of its self-complacency. The other’s manifestation
in the world of the self thus necessarily passes through a rupture in the hereto
complacent and solipsistic stance of the self in the world.
The structure of manifestation of the other within the world of the self passes
by a necessary de-centering of the self. Yet, while the other is glimpsed through
the disturbance of the self ’s central stance in the world, she is not yet fully
encountered. The self is only at this point aware of its arbitrary violence. The
other is merely appealing to the self for a place in the world. But the other has not
yet such a home. The encounter of the other passes through a necessary response
to this appeal on the part of the self to the appeal of the exiled other. Such a
response, Levinas terms generosity: “Positively produced as the possession of
the world I can bestow as a gift on the Other—that is, as a presence before a

face. . . . my orientation toward the Other, can lose the avidity proper to the
gaze only by turning into generosity, incapable of approaching the other with
empty hands” (TI 50). The act of generosity is thus the only way through which,
in a world hereto entirely centered on the self, a space is opened for another. In
Husserlian terms, we can come to understand generosity as an intentionality
whereby the other appears, is manifest, finds a place within the world of the
self. Without the intentionality of generosity, the other remains on the margins
of the world and does not access the presence in the world necessary for an
encounter to take place. The manifestation of the other within the world of the
self is then relative to the response of the self. Without this generous response on
the part of the self, whereby it welcomes the other within its world, the other is
condemned to remain exiled, on the margins of the world, and hopelessly absent
and withdrawn from the realm of the self. It is in this sense that the other is
relative to the self. Its manifestation, its place in the world, depends profoundly
on the response of the self.
Such a response, while solicited by the other, however, is in no way compelled
by the other. Indeed, throughout his descriptions, we do not get a sense of an
other which compels or terrorizes the self as Haar infers in his interpretation
of generosity. Commenting on the gift of generosity Haar objects: “It is even
more difficult to understand and imagine the meaning of a gift which would
not be thematically thought as a gift, and moreover which would not be given
but painfully torn out of us. Giving would not be free but absolutely forced
on us . . . but is a compelled gift still a gift? Is every act of giving forced on
us?”23 In his critique of Levinas, however, Haar seems to mix up two moments
of responsibility: The moment of the plea, wherein the self is called to an
unavoidable responsibility, and the moment of the response of generosity which
is entirely free. For Haar, the response itself is understood as not being free and
thus as not being genuinely responsible inasmuch as responsibility implies free
will. While it is true that responsibility is not chosen for Levinas, that is, that the
other’s claim and plea on the self cannot be evaded, the self ’s response is chosen
and is free. Indeed, the self is free to choose from two options: It can refuse
or ignore the claim of the other, thus relegating the other into the realm of its
absolute exile, or it can acknowledge this claim and welcome the exiled other
into its world.
Likewise, the welcoming of the other by the self does not emerge, as was
maintained by Haar, from a position or stance of at-home-ness in the world, but,
paradoxically, from the stripping of the self of its central position in the world.
Indeed, to hear the plea of the destitute other thus amounts to recognizing

34 Emmanuel Levinas
that the world is not my sole possession, that the other also has a claim on it
too; it is to acknowledge my own exile in the world, my own home-less-ness
within a world which is no more unquestionably mine, which does not revolve
around me anymore. Far from signifying my ownership of the world, generosity
emerges from a sense of my own homelessness in the world, my own exile
within the world, in a sense that the world is not my sole possession but also
belongs to another. Accordingly, it is paradoxically only when the self realizes,
acknowledges its own exile within the world, its own destitution, that it becomes
capable of generosity and of hospitality. Contrary to Haar who maintains that a
welcoming of the other necessitates a grounded self in a space of its own, a “topos”
or “lieu,” for Levinas, “ethics exist . . . in exile, given the absence of topos.”24
It is then not “dwelling” which, as Bernasconi maintained, is “the condition of
hospitality”25 but exile. Inasmuch as dwelling describes the central position of
a self at-home in the world, it implies the negation of any genuine otherness.
Dwelling as such holds no ethical possibilities. Only when dwelling is inverted
in generosity and becomes a lieu of hospitality does it acquire an ethical dignity.
Thus, according to Levinas, “the chosen home is the very opposite of a root. It
indicates a disengagement, a wandering which has made it possible, which is
not a less with respect to installation, but the surplus of a relationship with the
Other” (TI, p. 172).
This exile of the self is, in this sense, at the antipodes of the Sartrean
descriptions of the self ’s expulsion from its world upon the intrusion of the other.
The exile which the movement of generosity assumes does not signify, as it does
for Sartre, the usurpation of the self ’s possession by the other, but the welcoming
by the self of that dimension of otherness. The other never poses a threat to the
self and partakes of the world of the self only upon an act of generosity by the
self. Moreover, the act of generosity does not, as insinuated by Sartre, constitute
a loss for the self—the self losing its world to the other—but, on the contrary,
a gain. Indeed, while the exile assumed by generosity dispossesses the self of
its at-home-ness in the world, it does so by opening up, within that world, the
transcendent dimension of otherness. The dimension of the other is opened
within my “at home” through the movement of generosity. One can further
describe this exile of the self in generosity as a contraction of the self permitting
the opening, within the world of the self, of a space for the other26—that is, a
hospitality of the other. The other could not coexist with a consciousness defined
as the center of the universe; there is no place for the other in a world where
everything pertains to consciousness, where consciousness is at the center. It is
necessary for the self to be de-centered, to find itself exiled and to accept this

exile for the other to find a home in the world, for the other to find a place within
the world. Through the gift of the world to the other, consciousness deposes
itself of the prerogative of center of the universe, but, in doing so, it opens up a
space for the other within the world. The dimension of the face can only enter
the world of consciousness—that is, appear, be manifested in that world—if
that consciousness opens up a space for it through the act of generosity which
interrupts its own possessive grasp of the world.27
Through the moment of generosity, the world of the self, once entirely
organized around the self, widens to welcome—without ever possessing
him or her—the dimension of the other. The homeland of the self has now
become a haven for the other. The world is no longer the place where the self
accumulates its possessions, but the place of the welcoming of the other: “This
book will present subjectivity as welcoming the Other, as hospitality” (TI 27).
The exile of the self furthermore allows for a hospitality of the other without
ever reducing that other’s intrinsic exile. The other remains outside the grasp
of consciousness, outside its mastery and control, yet lets itself be approached
by consciousness through the act of generosity. The other escapes the self-
contained movement of theory, but allows herself to be approached through
the ethical movement of generosity. It is therefore on the level of ethics that
the other can be approached and not on the level of epistemology. The other
always remains exiled with regard to the world of theory, yet, she lets herself
be approached through the welcoming stance of generosity. Thus the ethical
moment of encounter of otherness passes through a double-exile: The exile of
the other with regard to the intentional grasp of consciousness, and the exile
of the self—through generosity—which permits an approach of the other as
exiled, yet as capable of receiving the hospitality of the self. Exile finds itself at
the very core of the ethical moment in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.
One cannot understand the structure of the ethical encounter without first
understanding these two moments of exile. For without the first exile, whereby
the other remains out of my grasp, there would be no otherness as such to serve
as my interlocutor. And without my generous exile toward him or her, there
would be no encounter with that ever-escaping and exiled other. Exile finds
itself not only at the origin of the subjective awakening of consciousness to the
dimension of the other, but also constitutes the very structure of the approach
of that other, of an ethical relationship between the self and the other.

3
Exile and the Political
Introduction
From a conception of exile as an awakening to the ethical dimension of the

other, we shall now address the broader problem of society and of its emergence.
However, the connection between society and the dimension of exile is also
difficult to grasp. Liberal political theories situate the moment of emergence
of a given society as involving a necessary rejection of the dimension of exile.
The birth of society coincides, according to political theorists like Hobbes with
the neutralization of the threat posed by the exiled other and her integration
in the uniform and stable form of the state.1 For Hobbes, the exiled lifestyle is
in many ways antithetic to the project of the state inasmuch as it disturbs the
categories of uniformity and of harmony necessary to its emergence. And indeed,
inasmuch as we define a given society as based on commonalities,2 whether in
kin or in ideology, the presence of an exiled, of someone who is not of kin nor
like-minded, can be seen as a threat to the society’s cohesion. In this context,
the exiled can only be perceived as disturbing a given society’s bond of kinship
or like-mindedness, thus dissolving the harmony and cohesion necessary for
this society’s survival. Far from contributing to the makeup of society, exile is
perceived by the above as contributing to the very dissolution of society.3 How
then can a connection be made between exile and society?
It is, nevertheless, such a connection between exile and society that this
chapter will attempt to show as constituting a central moment of Levinassian
political thought. For Levinas, the origin of the social bond does not reside, as
is thought by liberal theorists, in the necessity to protect the self from the threat
of the other, but in a higher necessity: that of the protection of the stranger.
Insodoing, we shall show that Levinas’ thought not only achieves the very
inversion of liberal political theory, but constitutes the only possible response to
the problems faced by liberal states today in the face of increasing immigration

Exile and the Political 37
both legal and illegal. Levinas’ thought of the stranger as the basis of society
speaks, in this sense, to an increasingly urgent problem. In fact, it can be shown
that Levinassian politics constitute a response to the very concrete problem of the
stranger.4 Thus, the dimension of the stranger upon which Levinas will found his
political thought should not be thought, as it is by Bernasconi, as an abstraction
or as a concept.5 The stranger in Levinas is always the concrete stranger, the one
who hungers, thirsts, and shivers in the world of the self. And it is precisely in the
solicitation of the stranger and in the response to this stranger that Levinas will
situate the origin of the social bond. Thus, far from emerging from the necessities
of being and survival of the self, it can be argued that society emerges from the
“extra-territorial” dimension of the stranger and from the ethical response it
solicits from the self. Politics, in Levinas, is founded and answers to a higher
authority: that of the extra-territorial moment of the ethical encounter.
This idea of an extra-territoriality of ethics to politics has raised, however,
a number of critiques. To Dussel, for example, Levinas’ use of the stranger as
a crucial point of reference for the political sphere is problematic on a number
of levels. First, the central role given by Levinas to the stranger qua stranger in
his politics, seems, according to Dussel, to crystallize the stranger in its needy
status, thereby never offering a way out for that stranger to perhaps forge herself
a place in the world and achieve economic and social integration.6 The stranger
is condemned in Levinas to remain as such, if the political sphere is to preserve
its ethical orientation. But what then of the stranger herself? Of her needs,
desires, of her place in the world? The problem of the stranger’s exilic status in
Levinassian politics is further problematized by Dussel inasmuch as he finds in
Levinas only what he terms a “negative politics.”7 Although Levinas makes an
important contribution to political theory in his highlighting of the centrality
of the dimension of the stranger, there is nothing in Levinassian politics, which,
according to Dussel, makes way for concrete political action in favor of that
stranger, that is to say, there is no room in Levinas for the emergence of a
“positive politics.”8
It is this problem which the last part of our chapter will address in its
thematization of the concept of hospitality in Levinas. In this section, we shall
show that, although the foundation of politics for Levinas is an-archical, the
passage to the political realm necessitates an act of hospitality on the part of
the self whereby the hereto exiled other finds herself welcomed within the
ontological space of the political sphere. Such a politics would then enact what
Dussel terms a “liberating praxis”9 whereby the an-archical stance of the stranger
finds a response in the practice of hospitality by a given society. And it is this act

38 Emmanuel Levinas
of hospitality which, as we shall show, constitutes for Levinas the transition from
the ethical to the political. Thus, for Levinas, it is not, as is thought by most
commentators, the Third which constitutes the pivotal point between ethics
and politics, but the stranger. The dimension of the Third remains in fact, in
Levinas’ own avowal, a problematic notion inasmuch as the generous stance of
the for-the-other sees itself in Levinas’ terms “corrected” or “contradicted” by the
emergence of the Third (OB 157–8), that is, of the other of the other, thus setting
a limit to the event of proximity for the sake of the other others out there. As
such, however, the Third jeopardizes the very foundations of society and poses a
continual threat that politics will reabsorb into ontology and forget its originary
an-archical source.
The Third seems, then, a rather problematic foundation for the political in
the Levinassian sense. Rather than focusing on the dimension of the Third, our
argument will thus propose—and this in response to Dussel’s critique—to sketch
out what Levinas himself hints to as “new politics” (BV 180): One wherein the
passage from ethics to politics does not interrupt the event of proximity, but, on
the contrary, is experienced as the very continuation of the ethical encounter
with the face. Such a politics will have to be contrasted with the present liberal
model which remains, according to Levinas, a deficient model of the political.
Indeed, the liberal model fails in its very foundations, in the self ’s need to
protect its own possessions and place in the world and, as such, constitutes only
a fragile model of society. Levinas’ “new politics” presents, arguably, a way out
of this failure while evading the problem posed by the Third in its interruption
of the ethical. Thus, in Levinas’ “new politics,” the moment of justice, law, and
institutions is not understood as an interruption of ethics, but on the contrary
as the continuation of ethics, that is to say, as the trace of the anarchical moment
of ethics. Such a society would then no more be premised on the need to limit
ethics, but on the contrary, would be built in the very trace of ethics.
I Exile and the dawning of society
Far from emerging from exile, society has been described by liberal political
theorists like Hobbes as precisely the overcoming of exile. According to Hobbes,
the dawning of the social bond emerges from the need to protect the self from
the threat of an other exterior to its world and posing a threat to its dwelling or
possessions. It is thus the perceived threat of the exiled other which constitutes
the beginning of a reflection on the necessity of the social bond.10 The role of

society would consequently be to neutralize the threat posed by this exiled other
either by protecting itself against it or by integrating this threat within its walls
as an orderly and cooperative citizen.11 For Hobbes, then, society plunges its
roots and impulse not from a natural desire of the self to cohabit with the other,
but, paradoxically, on an original enmity between the self and the exiled other.
We remember here Hobbes’ observation that “man is a wolf for man.”12 In this
context, political institutions will be geared to protect the self and the interests
of the self against the threat of the exiled other. It is then the self that is at the
locus of the political endeavor, over and against the other. Thus, the origin of
the social bond lies in the need for the self to protect itself against the other and
to preserve its original stance and place in the world over and against the threat
posed by that other.
One wonders, however, as to how a society can possibly be founded, as
Hobbes maintains, on an original and natural enmity between its members,
where every man is “against every man.”13 Where an original enmity exists
between the self and the other, and the primordial concern remains that of
the preservation of the interests of the self, as is more evident in Locke for
example, then any bond between them is bound to be artificial and precarious.
The peace between the self and the other will only be forced and, at the first
opportunity will dissolve. In the words of Levinas, “transcendence is factitious
and peace unstable. It does not resist interest” (OB 5). To found society on
enmity feels contradictory. How can society—characterized by human
solidarity and peaceful cohabitation—ever emerge from an original enmity
between its members? This is also Simmons’ observation. Commenting on
Levinas’ critique of the Hobbesian model he says: “Although he embraces the
liberal state, Levinas distances himself from the classical liberal state of Hobbes
and Locke” wherein “politics is based on egoist intentions and these drives are
not transformed by the founding of the state. The potential for violence to the
other always remains.”14 Quoting Pascal, he adds, “men have contrived and
extracted from concupiscence excellent rules of administration, morality and
justice. But in reality this vile bedrock of man, this figmentum laum, is only
covered not removed.”15
Thus, the Hobbesian attempt to found society on the exiled other perceived
as a threat poses a number of problems. Moreover, we shall see that it does
not do justice to the complexity of the original human rapport. While Hobbes
is right to say that enmity is present, that is not all there is. Yet, like Hobbes,
Levinas recognizes that the other poses a threat to the self. Levinas goes even
so far as to compare the encounter with the other with the experience of death:

40 Emmanuel Levinas
“In the being for death of fear, I am not faced with nothingness, but faced with
what is against me . . . as though the approach of death remained one of the
modalities of the relation with the Other” (TI 234). Like death, the other is
then, according to Levinas, against me. He or she is a mortal threat not only to
me, but to every spontaneous claim I have on the world. Levinas speaks to that
effect of “a calling into question of the same—which cannot occur within the
egoist spontaneity of the same” and which is “brought about by the other” (TI
43). We are not far here from the Hobbesian paradigm of the other as a threat
to my possessions and to my finding a place in the world.
But this threat posed by the other will take on a whole new signification for
Levinas than for Hobbes. Far from signifying the annihilation of the self, this
threat will constitute, in Levinas the beginning of ethics. Indeed, in his analyses
on dwelling, Levinas argues that before the other’s intrusion on the world of the
self, the self had no conception of the other as such but behaves like a “hungry
stomach” as though it were “egoist, without reference to the Other . . . alone
without solitude, innocently egoist and alone” (TI 134). The self exclusively
preoccupied, as in the Hobbesian model, with dwelling, with finding a place in
the world is a being for whom the concept of the other has no reality. Such a being
can only become aware of the dimension of the other through a destabilization
of dwelling, of its feeling at-home-in-the-world, and of its comfort zone. The
intrusive threat of the other which lays an equal claim on the world of the self is
thus, to be sure, a threat as Hobbes describes it, but it is a threat which contains
ethical possibilities: That of the self ’s becoming aware for the first time, albeit
painfully, of the dimension of the other. This is why, for Levinas, the entry of the
other into the world of the same hangs upon a “calling into question of the same”
(TI 43). Only when the self realizes that it is not the center of the universe, that
it is not the sole being in the world, can a space be opened for the other. It is in
this sense that, in the words of Abensour, the resistance of the other in Levinas
“belongs to a wholly different order”16 than in Hobbes, inasmuch as it opens up
not upon the annihilation of the self, but upon the dimension of ethics.
As such, then, it is possible to understand the threatening intrusion of the
other in the world of the self not as an obstacle to the social bond, but precisely,
as its prerequisite. Without the intrusion of the exiled other into the hereto
solitary and self-centered world of the self, there would be no awakening of
the self to another, and, consequently, no possibility of a social bond. Far
from constituting a threat to the social bond, the threatening or exiled other
is the very condition of that social bond. Likewise, it is not the self ’s desire
for a place in the world, or dwelling, that marks the beginning of the social
endeavor, as Hobbes thought, but, on the contrary, its exile by the other from

its centrality in the world. It is only inasmuch as the self acquiesces to the
legitimacy of another’s claim on its world, thus relinquishing its central stance
in the world for one of de-centeredness, that a possibility is opened for a social
bond. According to Levinas, it is precisely “this condition—or uncondition—
of stranger and slave in the land of Egypt [which] draws man together with
his neighbor. Men seek themselves out in their uncondition of strangers. The
latter unites humanity” (HO 184).
It is then not the quest for dwelling but rather the condition of stranger, both
of the self and of the other, which constitutes, for Levinas, the dawn of society.
Far from constituting a threat to society, “the inevitable human alienation, the
common experience or pathos of homelessness brings us together.”17 Far from
being founded on finding one’s place in the sun or on the perseverance in being
intrinsic to all beings, the political plunges its roots in exile, or an-archy. The
principle of society is then not to be found within the economy of being, as was
inferred by Hobbes, but rather outside of it. Society is not grounded, as in the
liberal model, in preserving the self ’s “place in the sun,” but, far to the contrary,
in a shared condition of exile whereby both acknowledge that the world is not
their own. There is an an-archical foundation of the political. The stranger or the
exiled other constitutes not a threat to society, but its very foundation.
The originary moment of the social bond is then not, as is often inferred
by commentators, the Third, but the stranger. Most commentators situate
the beginning of the political in Levinas with the interruption of the ethical
encounter by the Third. Thus Drabinski argues that “the presence of the
third signifies the point of passage from ethics to politics.”18 Levinas himself
seems to infer this: “The third party introduces a contradiction in the saying
whose signification before the other until then went in one direction. It is of
itself the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have
to do with justice? . . . Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, coexistence,
contemporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of face
. . . essence as synchrony is togetherness in a place” (OB 157). In other words,
far from implying exile, the dawning of the political necessitates a sense of
“togetherness in a place” where both the self and the other, no more strangers
to each other, coexist. In the context of this definition, the “Third” in Levinas
comes to signify this visible other contemporary to and coexisting with the self.
Such an other is no more a stranger but a friend, no more in exile but has found
a place in the world besides the self.
This founding of the political on the Third brings forth, however, a number
of problems and contradictions. The first being that the emergence of the Third,
inasmuch as it signifies an integrated other within the realm of the self, also

42 Emmanuel Levinas
means that the exilic and disturbing character of that other has been neutralized.
Our analyses have shown, however, that it is precisely this disturbing character
which constitutes the ethical awakening of subjectivity to the dimension of
otherness necessary for the social bond to be possible. Inasmuch as the Third
signifies the end of the exilic other, it signifies by the same token, the end of the
possibility of ethics. Far from bringing forth the social bond, the Third, in that it
signifies the neutralization of the other as exiled into the other as contemporary,
would then constitute the beginning of its demise. Ethics is here dissolved
into politics. But can the political subsist without the ethical? Levinas himself
acknowledges the problem contained within the emergence of the Third and
speaks in terms of a “betrayal of my anarchic relationship with illeity” (OB 158).
The Third then constitutes, in Levinas’ terms a betrayal of the ethical encounter
and of the very foundations of the political. As such, the moment of the Third
constitutes a threat to the political in that it rests precisely on the encounter with
an exiled and disturbing other susceptible of awakening the self to the dimension
of otherness. It is then difficult to assume, as most commentators do, that the
Third constitutes the basis of society. On the contrary, we have argued that the
moment of the Third in fact constitutes the beginning of society’s demise.
We would venture to argue then that the political rests, not on an ontological
basis opened up by the Third, but, on the contrary, on a dimension of “extra-
territoriality.” Levinas explains: “The capacity to guarantee that extra-
territoriality and that independence defines the liberal state and describes
the modality according to which the conjunction of politics and ethics is
intrinsically possible” (OS 122). It is thus the extra-territorial dimension of the
stranger which ensures the passage from ethics to a society attuned to its ethical
origins and not the dimension of the Third. This is incidentally also Bernasconi’s
intuition when he says that “just as justice needs to be always put in question
from elsewhere so that conformity to its abstract rule does not become a new
tyranny, so one cannot rely on the politicians for protection and implementation
of the rights of man. Hence the need of voices from outside, like those of the
Old Testament prophets.”19 According to Bernasconi, the “extra-territorial”
dimension of the stranger is essential to the makeup of society and must be
honored if society is to maintain its original signification.
The question of extra-territoriality and of the transcendental function
of the stranger with regard to the political brings up, however, a number of
problems the most important of which have been expounded by Dussel. In a
critical article on Levinas’ politics, Dussel takes issue with Levinas’ outlining
of the transcendental character of the stranger in his politics. While Levinas’

conception of the stranger as constituting an essential component of the

political event is a laudable one, it does not, according to Dussel, culminate in a
politics susceptible of genuinely and concretely protecting and preserving that
other. Thus, Levinassian politics are at their best a “negative politics,”20 meaning
that the importance is put on the negation of the political and on the bringing
to accountability of justice, but nothing is said as to how the political could,
rather must, positively contribute to the protection of the stranger. In other
words, while the dimension of the stranger is said to safeguard the political,
nothing is said in Levinas of the political’s responsibility to protect the stranger.
Thus, according to Dussel, while “the great philosopher of Nanterre brilliantly
describes . . . the face to face position . . . he does not culminate his discourse.
The other calls into question, provokes, claims . . . but nothing is said, not only
about the knowing how to listen to the voice of the other, but above all about the
knowing how to respond through a liberating praxis.”21 According to Dussel,
“the poor provokes, but in the end, he stays poor and miserable forever.”22
This critique is echoed and further made explicit by Gauthier and Eubanks in
their own analysis of the Levinassian concept of homelessness or exile. Gauthier
and Eubanks situate Levinas’ failure to genuinely account for a politics genuinely
concerned with the other’s welfare and integration, precisely in the philosopher’s
primordial concern with exile. According to Gauthier and Eubanks, Levinas’
allegiance to the nomadic—and this perhaps as a result of his attunement with
Jewish thought’s emphasis on exile—sidetracks him from showing a genuine
interest in the other’s finding herself a place in the world: “Although Levinas does
discuss the nature of the dwelling in Totality and Infinity, for the most part, his
focus on the self-other relationship renders him largely indifferent to the question
of context. This is borne out by Levinas’ celebration of the nomadic relationship
to place.”23 Thus, according to Gauthier and Eubanks, Levinas’ philosophy does
not do justice to the other’s “ontological need for rootedness.”24 What the other
needs is not a description of the transcendental value of her exile but rather a
“politics of place” that recognizes her need to find a home and a place in the sun.
It is these two points that the next section of our chapter will need to address.
II Hospitality and the accomplishment of society
Indeed, the first point to be made in response to Dussel’s and Gauthier/Eubank’s

critiques is that, although Levinas emphasizes the transcendental condition of
exile for the political, he does not stop there. There is a second step needed for

44 Emmanuel Levinas
the building of a politics. Commentators again tend to situate this second step
in the moment of the Third whereby the ethical moment sees itself interrupted,
or rather, in Levinas’ terms, “corrected” (OB 158) by the latter in order to ensure
justice for all. Again, our question to this perspective is concerned with how an
interruption of ethics can possibly bring about a politics attuned to the ethical.
How can an interruption of the ethical, brought about by the other’s loss of her
exilic and disruptive character and dissolution into the social realm, possibly
bring about an ethical politics? The contradiction that the Third introduces in
the Levinassian political discourse seems to us not only problematic, as argued
before, but forced—almost as though Levinas were artificially trying to justify
the institutions of the already existing liberal state when what he should be doing
is, as Dussel intuited, come up with a “new politics.”25 We would like to opt,
in this section, for the explication of this “new politics” in Levinas’ philosophy
as constituting more than a mere “correction” of totalitarian or liberal political
models, but rather as foreshadowing what Levinas will describe as an altogether
different political model. Only upon formulating this “new politics” will it be
possible, arguably, to reconcile the ethical and political moments of Levinas’
philosophy as well as offer a proper response to the critiques of Dussel and
Gauthier/Eubank.
This new politics would no longer be founded, as is indicated by the
problem of the Third, on the neutralization of the exilic character of the other
and the consequential interruption of ethics, but rather would be structured
as the welcoming of precisely this exiled other in an act of generosity attuned
to the original event of ethics. But this welcoming act of generosity must be
still made explicit. How does such an act constitute the passage from the
ethical to the political? How is a shared space created through this act? And,
more importantly, how does this shared space differ from the one opened up
by the Third? Indeed, the space opened up by the Third is one of coexistence,
whereby the other finds her disturbing character and exile neutralized in
her integration into the world of the self. Levinas, however, will distinguish
between “coexistence” and “welcoming” of the other. But what is, one might
ask, the difference between the coexistence and the welcoming of the other?
Indeed, both seem to open up a shared space between the self and the other.
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the shared space opened
up by generosity and the one opened up by the interruption of generosity. It
is this difference that we would like to analyze at this time. First, however, we
must come to understand how generosity constitutes in Levinas the key to the
passage from the ethical to the political.

Levinas describes the movement of generosity as putting “an end to power

and emprise. This is positively produced as the possession of a world I can
bestow as a gift on the Other—that is, as a presence before a face” (TI 50). In
other words, the presence of the other within the world of the self is possible
only through the act of generosity. What the concept of the Third achieved—
the co-presence of the other with the self within the political space—is here
achieved by the act of generosity. It is the latter which constitutes the end of
the exiled and destitute other and her welcoming into the realm of the self thus
allowing for an objective rapport to take place. Thus, the other is not left to her
exile, but rather, is welcomed, cared for, responded to through the concrete
action of generosity. The “liberating praxis” yearned for by Dussel is in fact
already present within Levinas’ political thought through the act of generosity.
The other is not left to her exile, but calls for a response on the part of the self,
calls for an end to that exile and a welcoming into the realm of the self.
This action of hospitality is what, in turn, allows for the opening up of a
“shared space” prerequisite to the political. Indeed, the welcoming movement
of generosity is not a movement whereby the other is integrated into the world
of the self. Rather, it operates a transformative effect on the world of the self,
opening it into a shared space thus paving the way to the political realm. The act
of generosity in Levinas consists then in much more than the mere encounter
with the other. Such an act has an effect on space, transforms space as it hereto
was structured. Levinas describes this transformation as follows: “Things acquire
a rational signification, and not only one of simple usage, because an other is
associated with my relations with them. In designating a thing I designate it to the
Other. The act of designating modifies my relation of enjoyment and possession
with things, places the things in the perspective of the other” (TI 209). In other
words, through the act of generosity, the world which hereto entirely revolved
around the self, is opened up as a shared space thereby inaugurating the very
reality of public space necessary to the political.
The transition to the ethical non-lieu to the public space of the political
is, however, ensured without sacrificing the exilic character of the other. The
welcomed other is not the integrated other. She is not integrated into the world
of the self, thereby losing her exilic character, but rather, the world of the self
is opened up unto the other. The other remains other. She is welcomed, cared
for, loved, but not assimilated or integrated within the realm of the self thereby
losing her disruptive and transcendent character. The hospitality of the other is
thus, as Derrida would put it, “unconditional”26 inasmuch as it does not entail
that the other sacrifice her otherness to be welcomed within the realm of the

46 Emmanuel Levinas
same. And as such, the presence of the other within the shared space retains an
element of risk. Her otherness, inasmuch as it is never assimilated, retains its full
potential for disruption and of putting into question of the self.27 But as such,
the shared space is never allowed to close itself back onto the self and as such, it
remains an open space, it retains its full character as a shared space. The exilic
character of the other can therefore be welcomed but never integrated. Were it
to lose its exilic character, the shared space would be ever under the threat of
closing back onto the self ’s interests and comfort zones. It is thus the presence
of the unassimilated, albeit welcomed, other, which ensures the preservation of
the shared space as such.
A genuine society is then not, for Levinas, one in which the other and the
self coexist in peaceful harmony but rather where their differences remain and
with them the possibility of disturbance and threat to the political order. It is
in this sense that, for Levinas, genuine society is pluralistic—made up of the
self and an other who refuses totalization, who disturbs and remains resolutely
exiled from the scope of totality.28 Only then does one escape the regression
to the preethical egoistic reign of the self. Society is thus not structured as
totality, as is implied in the event of the Third, but as “non-coincidence” (TI
214). It is only inasmuch as there is a noncoincidence, a nonintegration to the
whole on the part of the other that there can be account of a genuine society.
In that sense, the dimension of the exiled and disturbing other must ever be
preserved if society is to maintain its original meaning and not be integrated
into coexistence with the self as is implied by the moment of the Third. Indeed,
only by preserving and protecting the dimension of otherness in a given society,
will that society continue to survive qua society, that is as a shared world, and
not contract back into the world of a single ego or self. Therein lies the essence
of the social bond.
The political is here ensured not as the interruption of ethics and of the
disruption of the other, but as a response to that very disturbance through the
act of generosity. The exile of the other is neither assimilated nor neutralized
as in the thematic of the Third but welcomed and protected within the political
realm. From there it is easy to imagine the kind of institutions which could
emerge from this conception of the political: Institutions which would no longer
solely protect individual rights, but the rights of the other. Levinas speaks to
this effect when he situates the concern for human rights as “a vocation outside
the state, disposing in a political society of a kind of extraterritoriality, like that
of prophecy in the face of the political powers of the Old Testament, a vigilance
totally different from political intelligence, a lucidity not limited to yielding

before the formalism of universality” (OS 122). Only when the institutions
see themselves founded on a concern for the other and remain attuned to the
voice of that other, will the political realm retain its openness and its essential
character as a shared space. Only as the political realm retains this “vigilance”
and “lucidity” to the voice and face of the other will it escape the crystallization
upon an unhealthy “formalism” detrimental to both the self and the other.
We can now see how Levinas’ “new politics” would profoundly differ from
the liberal model. In his essay on the philosophy of Hitlerism, Levinas mentions
the problems inherent within the liberal political model and wonders whether
we must not “ask ourselves if liberalism is all we need to achieve authentic
dignity for the human subject” (PH, prefatory note). And indeed, as observed
by Bernasconi, while “classical liberal social contract theory highlights the
rights or property thereby securing the home or domicile which guarantees the
independence of the private realm” it at the “same time ignores those who do
not have a home: The homeless and of course the refugees.”29 We have seen,
however, the problem that is posed by the liberal model’s founding itself on the
need to protect the rights of the self. Such a model, according to Levinas, does
not forge an authentic social bond inasmuch as the latter necessitates a rupture
of the self ’s emprise on the world and an opening of its world to the other. The
liberal model bypasses this moment altogether and as such, can only constitute
the appearance of a social bond. A genuine social bond, according to Levinas,
can only be founded on an awakening on the part of the self to an other and on
a sensitivity to that other. As such, a genuine form of the political is founded not
on the need to protect the self, as in the liberal model, but on the contrary, on
the need to protect the other.
We can now come to a clear picture of Levinas’ “new politics” as solicited by
Dussel. Such a politics, while founded on exile, does not exclude the notion
of space or property as thought by Gauthier/Eubanks. However, this space is
transfigured in the Levinassian model as a “shared space.” Space and property
have meaning only inasmuch as they are shared, as they become the lieu of
hospitality. Levinas states the following in his analysis of the dwelling: “The
chosen home is the very opposite of a root. It indicates a disengagement,
a wandering which has made it possible, which is not a less with respect to
installation, but the surplus of the relationship with the Other, metaphysics”
(TI 172). Levinas does then articulate a “politics of place.”30 But space has a
wholly new signification for Levinas than for the liberal model. While in the
liberal model, space was understood as that which belongs to the self, as the lieu
of the self ’s possessions and dwelling, in Levinas, space is transfigured into the

48 Emmanuel Levinas
“shared space” of hospitality. Space has meaning only inasmuch as it is shared.

Indeed, for Levinas, there is in fact no concept of objective space before the
moment of generosity whereby the world emerges as an objective, shared space.
Thus, space is necessary, but it is sanctified as a space of welcome and not as a
territorial or tribal possession. Indeed, only such a view of space as the site of
hospitality can ensure the coexistence of a society upon it. The welcoming of the
stranger is for that matter the very foundation of the social bond. It is essential
to it and not accidental. Society rests on this act of generosity and hospitality
whereby the shared space essential to the political is opened up.
In this particular understanding of the social bond, Levinas reconnects with
the ancient Hebrew commemoration of exile as an act serving to safeguard
society. We remember the Biblical injunction given just before the Hebrews were
to settle down as a society in the Promised Land: “You shall love the stranger for
you yourselves were strangers in Egypt” (Deut. 10.19 NIV). The obscurity of this
command is illuminated in the light of Levinassian analyses: We love the exiled
for she is the guardian of otherness, and therefore the guardian of humanity
within a particular society. It is this other who reminds us that society is much
more than the protection of common possessions, as in the liberal model. Rather,
society is what emerges out of an original act of hospitality. It is this gesture
of hospitality whereby the exiled other is welcomed into a shared space which
constitutes the origin of society and thus its very life force. The influx of exiled
among us makes possible the constant repetition of this original gesture of
hospitality, thereby constantly preserving the openness of society and preventing
its contraction upon closed egoisms. It is these daily acts of generosity toward the
exiled among us which ultimately constitute the glue of the social bond. In other
words, a society is only as strong as its respect of the stranger dwelling within its
walls; to forget the sacred duty to the stranger is to consequently endanger the
very vitality of a given society.31

4
The Exile of Love
Introduction
We now leave the wider issues of society and approach the intimate realm of love.
In our preceding chapter, we saw that the social bond rests on the dimension of
exile. Likewise, for Levinas, the intimate bond of love shall have to do with exile.
And yet, love has been on the contrary, understood in the history of philosophy
as the soul’s quest for a home. For Plato, the movement of love describes precisely
this quest and signifies, consequently, the end of the soul’s exile in the world. In
Symposium, Plato describes Eros as the quest for a soul mate and a return to an
original state of wholeness wherein the fragmented, lost, and exiled soul finds a
home.1 Levinas himself recognizes this dimension of Eros when he describes the
lover and, more precisely, the woman, as a fundamental act of hospitality and as
an opening up, within the realm of being, of a home for the self.2 The Platonic
influence is here obvious with love being defined in this context as a return to
oneself and to an origin or a home forgotten by the soul’s wanderings in the
world. In such a context, exile is perceived as a negative state of being, a loveless
state. Exile signifies solitude and is overcome by the finding of one’s soul mate and
forgotten other half. Love therefore neutralizes the exile, overcomes the exile and
gives the soul a home. Our thesis which seeks to establish a connection between
love and exile in Levinas can thus seem uncharacteristic of his philosophy.
Yet, while Levinas acknowledges the Platonic thesis of love as the finding of
a home, he does not remain there. For Levinas, exile is a central characteristic
of love and cannot be done away with. If the partner—more specifically the
woman—can be experienced as one’s soul mate, she is much more than that.
Woman is also, according to Levinas, an other; she also presents herself as
exiled from the world of man. But this otherness of woman will, to the reader’s
surprise, be described in terms radically and intentionally different from that of
the destitute Other at the origin of the ethical encounter. The encounter with

50 Emmanuel Levinas
woman does not occur, according to Levinas on the ethical level. On several
occasions, Levinas mentions the woman as not appearing to the self as a “face”
(TI 258) or as a “person” (TI 263). Her otherness is explicitly distinguished from
the otherness of the disruptive other as not carrying its connotation of “height”
(TI 155) or “transcendence” (TI 254). What are we to make of this? Levinas’
views on the status of woman seems to betray his central preoccupation with
otherness and respect. How are we then to understand this preethical status of
woman?
This description of woman as unable to rise to the status of the Absolute
Other in Levinas thus raises a number of questions. And indeed, the dichotomy
between Eros and ethics in Levinas’ descriptions of the rapport with the woman
has been the object of a number of critiques on the part of commentators.
Catherine Chalier will interrogate this dichotomy and ask why woman is not
relegated to the same height as the Absolute Other in Levinas. Is there not a
possibility for the erotic encounter to take on an ethical structure?3 While Levinas
admits that woman may be encountered ethically as a person, the question
arises as to why woman qua woman may not be encountered on an ethical level?
Perpich makes the same critique of Levinas’ relegating of woman to the “silent
language” (TI 155) of enigma. When one knows the importance that discourse
takes in Levinas’ ethics, one cannot help but be disturbed with this exclusion of
woman from language. Inasmuch as discourse constitutes, in Levinas, the very
structure of the ethical encounter, woman’s exclusion from discourse amounts to
her exclusion from ethics or from an ethical mode of encounter. What is then to
prevent her sinking back into the status of mere object of enjoyment? According
to Perpich, Levinas’ account of the otherness of woman fails inasmuch as this
otherness never reaches its full accomplishment in ethics.4
But we need to further understand what Levinas means by the specific
otherness of woman before we can judge them to be derogatory. This chapter
will attempt to understand in what way the exile of woman from the self ’s world
is different from the exile of the disruptive other. Our analyses will then have to
understand whether or not the encounter with woman necessarily takes place
outside of the ethical realm. While the erotic encounter clearly does not leave
much room for an ethical encounter, we shall see that its structure nevertheless
contains “all the possibilities of the transcendent relationship with the Other”
(TI 155). This is incidentally Tina Chanter’s concession to Levinas’ descriptions of
woman. According to Chanter, although Levinas seems to exclude the possibility
of an ethical encounter with woman qua woman, his analyses nevertheless open
up the possibility of such an encounter.5 We shall see that both Catherine Chalier

The Exile of Love 51
and Claire Katz intuit the ethical possibilities inherent in Levinas’ description of
the erotic encounter and go even so far as to show the woman in Levinas to have
a transcendental function with regards to the ethical dimension.6
Our work will attempt to show these ethical possibilities inherent to the
erotic encounter with woman. First, however, we will attempt to describe how
Levinassian descriptions follow the Platonic line of woman as soul mate and
hospitality to the self. We shall see that already at this level of Levinas’ analyses,
there are indications of woman opening up ethical possibilities for the self. This
will be the view of both Tina Chanter and Catherine Chalier. We shall then
explore the exilic structure of the erotic relationship as well as try to understand
the nature of the passage from Eros to ethics. For this, however, it will be
necessary to go beyond the Levinassian corpus to the interpretative work of
Luce Irigaray. It is her work on the Levinassian caress which will inspire our
descriptions of the possibility of such a passage from Eros to ethics in Levinas.
We shall see that this passage from Eros to responsibility will be facilitated by
an exile, this time on the part of the self toward the woman it loves.
I Love as nostalgia
Levinas’ analyses on love start by acknowledging the Platonic line of thought on

love as a return to self, as a quest for a soul mate. In a direct reference to Plato’s
Symposium,7 Levinas observes: “Love as a relation with the Other can be reduced
to this fundamental immanence, be divested of all transcendence, seek but a
connatural being, a sister soul, present itself as incest. The myth Aristophanes
tells in Plato’s Symposium, in which love reunites the two halves of one sole
being, interprets the adventure as a return to self ” (TI 254). For Plato, love is
understood as a quest for one’s other half, as a quest for a home. Love helps the
self to find itself, to discover itself through contact with the other. Without the
other, the self remains exiled in the world, thirsting for a part of itself which it
feels is missing and hungering for an origin which remains resolutely elusive.
Thus, in Plato, one loves the other because the other is similar to us, because
she reflects who we are. But this view holds a number of problems. In the Platonic
context, love is nothing more than a return to the self. Love is nothing more to
finding one’s soul mate, one’s alter ego. The emphasis is placed on the self. It is a
quest for the one who is like us, for the one who completes us, that is sought in
the Platonic view of love. Thus, according to Levinas, the Platonic description
of the erotic intention does not perform a transcendent movement, but remains

52 Emmanuel Levinas
a “fundamental immanence” (TI 254). The self never genuinely comes out of
itself toward an other, but returns, rather, to its own self through the movement
of love. The other is nothing more than a being who completes the self and
who fulfills the self. Love is nothing more than a homecoming, nothing more
than recovering one’s lost identity. Love in the Platonic philosophy does not
constitutes a genuine journey of transcendence, but like the Greek hero Ulysses,
only seeks to return back to its own origin and self.
Levinas himself acknowledges this structure of return in the erotic
movement. For Levinas, the erotic intention is essentially a movement of
appropriation and of assimilation whereby the other is enjoyed. There is thus an
intimate connection between the movement of Eros and the general movement
of “enjoyment” described at length in Levinas’ philosophy. For Levinas, the
structure of enjoyment consists precisely in this thirst for otherness as that
which is capable of fulfilling the self ’s deepest emotional and physical needs.
Consequently, enjoyment constitutes an ambiguous movement which aims for
otherness only to ultimately assimilate and neutralize it: “The enjoyment justifies
this interpretation. It brings into relief the ambiguity of an event situated at the
limit of immanence and transcendence. This desire—a movement ceaselessly
cast forth, an interminable movement toward a future never future enough—is
broken and satisfied as the most egoist and crudest of needs” (TI 254). Enjoyment
constitutes a movement whereby the otherness of the other is assimilated into
the self, fulfills a need or desire. Levinas speaks to that effect of the need for a
woman’s love as a “sublime hunger”: “For we speak lightly of desires satisfied, or
of sexual needs, or even of moral and religious needs. Love itself is thus taken
to be the satisfaction of a sublime hunger” (TI 34). The hunger is sublime, but it
remains a hunger, a need to be satisfied. When one loves in that way, when the
other is someone who satisfies a need or a hunger, we are, according to Levinas,
in the context of enjoyment.
These descriptions, however, reduce the other to nothing more than an object
of enjoyment, an object that we seek to possess, to conquer. This is incidentally
Irigaray’s critique of the reduction of Eros to the enjoyment of the self: “In such
a phenomenology . . . the function of sexuality as a relationship-to . . . and the
role of perception as a means to acceding to the other as other” is overlooked.8
The transcendence of the other is reduced to the immanence of the self. There
is no sense, in the context of enjoyment, of an exteriority or objectivity distinct
from the self: Nourishment, as a means of invigoration, is the transmutation
of the other into the same (TI 111). In the context of enjoyment, therefore,
there is no genuine otherness. Everything is reduced to “me,” to my needs, to

my desires. Everything revolves around the self. The other, be it the bread I eat,
the air I breathe, the person I love, is transmuted “into the same” (TI 111). The
self remains at the center of the relationship. The other is only important and
recognized inasmuch as she brings satisfaction of the self ’s needs and desires.
While there is an obvious part of enjoyment in the erotic relationship, it cannot
account for the totality of the structure of Eros.
Yet, Levinas himself distinguishes Eros from enjoyment in that, in Eros, the
transcendence of the other, unlike that of other objects, is maintained: “Love
remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, and this need still
presupposes the total, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved.
An enjoyment of the transcendent almost contradictory in terms” (TI 254–5).
While the erotic relationship is made up, largely, of enjoyment, its structure
cannot be reduced to that of enjoyment. The otherness of the woman, unlike the
bread I eat, or the air I breathe, can never be fully assimilated or ingurgitated.
Levinas speaks of this specific unassimilated otherness of woman in terms of
“extraterritoriality”: “But the interiority of the home is made of extraterritoriality
in the midst of the elements of enjoyment with which life is nourished” (TI 150).
There is thus an essential difference between woman and other objects of
enjoyment. While woman does satisfy the self ’s sexual needs to a certain degree,
she does not compare with the other objects of enjoyment. She remains “extra-
territorial” to the elemental world—to the world of objects of enjoyment. But
what kind of “extra-territoriality” is Levinas referring to here? If woman does
not belong to the world of enjoyment, to what dimension does she belong to?
What distinguishes woman from the other objects of enjoyment and what gives
her this specific character of extra-territoriality?
The extra-territoriality of woman reminds one of the exiled character of the
other described in our first chapter. As Levinas’ choice of language suggests,
the woman, like the destitute other does not belong to the world of the self. For
Levinas, the destitute other is described in terms of an exile with regard to the
world of the self. She is never “wholly in my site” (TI 39). She escapes the grasp
of the self, its understanding, and constitution of a world. The other, in his or her
mystery always escapes the self ’s conceptualizations and categories. She remains
exiled from the world of the self. To describe the woman as extra-territorial is
to echo these descriptions of the destitute other. Like the destitute other, the
woman is, according to Levinas, “extra-territorial.” She is therefore, like the
destitute other, never reduced to the territory or the world of the self. The extra-
territoriality of the woman must, however, be distinguished from the exile of the
destitute other. There are several important differences between the two.

54 Emmanuel Levinas
Contrarily to the destitute other’s exile, the exilic character of woman is not
one which is experienced by the self as coming from a transcendent dimension,
an otherwise than being. Rather, the exile, or extra-territoriality of woman is
manifest and is part of this very being. It is not u-topian like the otherness of
the destitute other who always remains “not wholly in my site” (TI 39), but
rather is experienced within the immanence of the world of enjoyment of the
self. According to Levinas, this extra-territoriality is experienced “in the midst
of the elements of enjoyment from which life is nourished” (TI 150). Woman is
thus encountered as part of the world of the self and not as transcendent. She is
manifest from within the very immanence of the world as extra-territorial.
The otherness of woman is also wholly different from that of the destitute
other in that it is familiar. Whereas the otherness of the destitute other is
experienced by the self as “infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign” (TI 194),
that of the woman is experienced by the self as familiar: “The Other who
welcomes in intimacy is not the you of the face that reveals itself in a dimension
of height, but precisely the thou of familiarity” (TI 155). Levinas is here referring
to the Buberian distinction between the “you” and the “thou.”9 “You” translates
a formal understanding of the other, whereas “thou” is the familiar form of
addressing the other. Woman is here addressed in this familiar form. She is not
the outsider, the distant one, the stranger whom one addresses formally. She is
the close one, the kin, the familiar one. Her otherness must be distinguished
from the destitute other in that, unlike the destitute other, she is not experienced
as a “stranger” or a “foreigner,” but as someone familiar to the self, as someone
like the self.
Furthermore, unlike the destitute other who intrudes violently on the world
of the self, the familiarity of woman is, in turn, not experienced as disruptive.
Her otherness does not negate the self, does not call it into question. It is, on
the contrary, experienced by the self as gentleness: “This extraterritoriality has a
positive side. It is produced in the gentleness or the warmth of intimacy, which is
not a subjective state of mind, but an event in the oecumenia of being a delightful
‘lapse’ of the ontological order. By virtue of its intentional structure gentleness
comes to the separated being from the Other. The Other precisely reveals himself
in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon
of gentleness” (TI 150). Like the destitute other, the feminine otherness affects
the world of the self, but not in a disruptive way. It affects it as gentleness. But
what does Levinas mean by gentleness? How does gentleness affect the world
of the self? According to Levinas, this gentleness is experienced by the self as
a “lapse of the ontological order.” In other words, the feminine other creates a

niche within the ontological order, within the external world of possessions and
of conquest. She opens up a human space for man within the elemental world,
within the precarious world of enjoyment and of conquest. In other words: she
welcomes man unto herself: “This peaceable welcome is produced primordially
in the gentleness of the feminine face, in which the separated being can recollect
itself, because of which it inhabits, and in its dwelling accomplishes separation”
(TI 150–1). Unlike the destitute other, the feminine other does not alienate the
self from its world, does not expulse it from its world. There is no calling into
question of the self ’s centrality in a world available for possession and mastery.
Rather, the woman opens, from within that world, a dimension of humanity, of
familiarity where the self can feel at home.
Man thus experiences this event of hospitality as a coming home—as a
coming back to his own self, to his own forgotten humanity—and not as an
expulsion as when faced with the destitute other: “To dwell is not the simple
fact of the anonymous reality of a being cast into existence as a stone one casts
behind oneself; it is a recollection, a coming to oneself, a retreat home with
oneself as in a land of refuge, which answers to a hospitality, an expectancy, a
human welcome” (TI 156). This coming home of man to woman is, in turn, very
different from the “at home” of man’s possession of the world. In speaking of the
home opened up by the woman, Levinas distinguishes it from the “at home” of
possession; it “is not a simple echo of possession” (TI 170). While the “at home”
of possession does permit the self to find some rest within the elemental world,
the home opened up by woman is not structured in the same way. The “at home”
of man is the universe created by the sweat of his brow, in an act of possession of
the world. Here the home offered by the woman constitutes the reversal of this
act of possession into the unexpected event of hospitality. She is not captured or
possessed by him but welcomes him unto her. According to Levinas, the external
world of enjoyment, possession, and conquest is inverted by the presence of the
woman into the internal world of habitation and welcome thereby awakening
man to his own humanity, to the dimension of interiority.10
In this sense, the welcoming by the woman is already, according to Tina
Chanter, a lesson in ethics. Here lies, according to Chanter, “the radical
potentiality of the feminine to break up the categories of being and to create
the possibility of ethics.”11 In other words, it is woman who first awakens man
to the possibility of an otherwise than being, of a destiny beyond that of the
struggle for existence. This is incidentally also Chalier’s interpretation: “Without
woman, without her weakness and the intimacy of her home, man would know
‘nothing of what transforms his natural life into ethics.’ The reception given by

56 Emmanuel Levinas
woman in the home suggests a halt of the masculine spirit assaulted by history
and to his self-dispossession in his works. Woman would therefore represent in
her gentleness, the beginning of ethics.”12 According to Chalier, woman is the
one who shows man that there is more to life than the mere perseverance in
being, more to life than the conquest of matter. In opening up the dimension of
interiority and of relationality through her welcoming of man unto herself, she
reveals to him a realm other than being—the dimension of the inter-human. It
is in this sense that we can understand the welcoming of woman as being proto-
ethical. For the first time, the self realizes that there is more to life than possession
and conquest. And, more importantly, for the first time, the self realizes that it is
not alone in the world.
Yet, the self ’s place as center of the world is never fully called into question
by the woman. Not only so, but the event of hospitality by woman remains
an event centered on the self. The self is thus not only “at home” in the world
of enjoyment, but “at home” in the realm opened up by the woman. As for
woman, she remains there for man.13 This the essence of Sikka’s critique of the
Levinassian descriptions of Eros: “Far from maintaining her in her alterity in
the sense of granting her the right to define herself, these portraits of woman
define her as the other who is needed for oneself. She is needed for both the
reproduction of oneself, as in Levinas’ description of the erotic, and for the
spiritual progress of man.”14 Her definition is, in these passages, completely
centered on her role for the self. She is there for the self, in order to enable its
own “recollection,” in order to open up a home for it, to help it rediscover its
own humanity. There is no sense, in the passages studied above, of an identity of
the woman apart from this role of hospitality. But is woman not more than the
revelation of man to its own self? Is she not more than a home for man? Where,
in the Levinassian analyses, is there an account of the otherness of woman as
distinct from her role toward man? Whether she functions as an object of desire
or as the primordial act of hospitality, woman is always there for man.15 Woman
is either assimilated by man or envelops man. In both cases, the self is the center,
either as conqueror, or as guest! He is in both cases “at home.”
Levinas himself acknowledges this: “The metaphysical event of
transcendence—the welcome of the Other, hospitality—Desire and language—
is not accomplished as love” (TI 254). But this absence of ethics in the Levinassian
descriptions of the encounter with woman poses problem. Why is woman not
encountered as an other apart from man? Is she not more than man’s soul mate?
Is she not also a stranger to man, an other for man? Thus according to Chalier,
“her intimacy and gentleness do not open up the dimension of the height where
the ethical unsituatable lives. . . . The feminine welcome cannot lay claim to

being anything but a condition of ethics. . . . Is it an outrage to the thinking of

the philosopher to expound, in the feminine, an ethical act?”16 The Levinassian
analyses of the encounter with woman seem here to lack a fundamental element.
But we must further deepen the Levinassian descriptions. While woman does
open up a home for man and is encountered as a kindred spirit, there is also, in
the Levinassian analyses, a description of woman as fundamentally other and
inaccessible to man.
II Love as an exile
This description of woman as fulfilling a hunger in man while at the same time
escaping his grasp reveals, according to Levinas, a profound ambiguity of love:
“The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining
his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other, of placing oneself
at the same time beneath and beyond discourse—this position with regard to
the interlocutor which at the same time reaches him and goes beyond him, this
simultaneity of need and desire, of concupiscence and transcendence, tangency
of the avowable and the unavowable, constitutes the originality of the erotic
which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence” (TI 254–5). The woman
simultaneously appears as an “object of a need,” as a source of enjoyment, and as
belonging to a dimension transcending the self. She is between the “avowable”
and the “unavowable,” what can be revealed or given and what cannot be revealed,
what remains a mystery, a secret.
This mystery of woman is, in turn, described in Levinas as an “absence” from
the world of the self in terms not alien to the description of the destitute other as
not “wholly in my site”: “And the other whose presence is discreetly an absence,
with which is accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the
field of intimacy, is the Woman” (TI 155). The woman is thus more than a familiar
presence which opens up a home for man. She is also “discreetly an absence.” But
again, this absence is not experienced by the self as a traumatic event, as an event
of alienation which transforms the face of his world into an inhospitable place.
The absence of woman is different from that of the destitute other’s in that it is
“discrete”; it is imperceptible, and often goes unnoticed. More importantly, it does
not disturb the self ’s at-home-ness. It is a gentle, nonthreatening, non-traumatic
absence lived within her very presence to man and her very welcome of him.
Yet, it is precisely in this absence, that she reveals herself to man as woman.
Were she only presence, she would be nothing more than an object of desire,
an object among objects in the world of man. As an absence, she reveals herself

58 Emmanuel Levinas
as more than an object of desire, as containing a dimension of transcendence

within her, as mystery and enigma, that is as other! Interestingly, it is precisely
this absence which is expressed in what constitutes for Levinas the specifically
feminine quality of “discretion”: “For the intimacy of recollection to be able to be
produced . . . the presence of the Other must not only be revealed in a face which
breaks through its own plastic image, but must be revealed, simultaneously with
this presence, in its withdrawal and in its absence. This simultaneity is not an
abstract construction of dialectics, but the very essence of discretion” (TI 155).
Discretion is the manifestation, within the very presence of woman in the world
of man, of an absence. It is this discretion which elevates woman above being
a mere object of desire and reveals, within this very availability of woman to
man’s desire, a dimension of otherness, of mystery, of transcendence, beyond
the grasp of man.17 Discretion constitutes, according to Levinas, the very mode
of manifestation of woman qua woman, as an absence, a mystery, within the
immanence of the world.
Thus, what distinguishes woman from the objects in the world of man, what
gives her the status of being a human other and distinct from the material world,
is precisely this mystery that woman carries within herself and which is manifest
in discretion. Woman is thus other in that she deploys within the dimension of
the externality of objects, a dimension of mystery and darkness: a dimension
of exile. She is other, she is exiled with regard to the world of light. She belongs
to darkness. She is mystery, she is enigma yet not in a disturbing way as the
destitute other, but in a discrete, nonthreatening, non-alienating way. There is,
as a consequence, always a part of her which remains hidden from man’s gaze
and grasp. To seek to grasp18 or disclose19 a woman’s essence will never work, for
she belongs to the enigma, she is ever exiled from the gaze and grasp of the self.
But if what characterizes woman as a woman is this absence, this way of escaping
the grasp of man, how is man to relate to her? If the essence of woman escapes
man, how is he ever to connect, to encounter woman? How is he ever to reach
her essentially?
According to Levinas, there is one way to connect with woman on an essential
level, to encounter her as absence: through the intentionality of the caress: “The
movement of the lover before this frailty to femininity, neither pure compassion
nor impassiveness, indulges in compassion, is absorbed in the complacence of
the caress” (TI 257). The movement capable of encountering the woman’s frailty,
that is, her withdrawal, her absence, is, according to Levinas a movement of
touch which Levinas defines as “caress.” Levinas’ recourse to touch to describe
the mode of encounter with an absence, or a withdrawal, is, however, unusual

in a phenomenological context, where touch, is on the contrary regarded as the

primordial moment of the constitution of objects in a world of light.20 It is touch
which makes possible, through its exploration of the world, the constitution and
the phenomenalization of objects by the self.
The touch that Levinas is mentioning here is, however, structured differently
than the tactile and kinesthetic movement involved in the constitution of
objects. In fact, the caress constitutes, in its structure, the very inversion of the
movement of cognition and possession involved in the constitution of objects:
“The voluptuous in voluptuousity is not the freedom of the other tamed,
objectified, reified, but his freedom untamed, which I nowise desire objectified.
But it is freedom desired and voluptuous not in the clarity of the face, but in
the obscurity and as though in the vice of the clandestine, or in the future that
remains clandestine within discovery, and which precisely for this reason, is
unfailingly profanation. Nothing is further from Eros than possession” (TI 265).
Thus, the intentionality of the caress does not consist in objectifying or in
revealing the other. It is not an intentionality of disclosure and discovery as the
kinesthetic intentionality. On the contrary, the intentionality of the caress is a
touch which finds itself ever thirsting for more, never satisfied, never fulfilled,
never possessing: “The caress consists in seizing upon nothing, in soliciting what
ceaselessly escapes its form toward a future never future enough, in soliciting
what slips away as though it were not yet. It searches, it forages. It is not an
intentionality of disclosure but of search” (TI 257–8). The caress is structured as
the yearning to possess and as the incapacity, the failure to possess, to grasp. The
caress, by definition, never closes upon the other, never closes its grasp, is ever
seeking, ever searching the other. The caress is an intentionality which does not
find what it is looking for and which lives, which gains its impulse, its movement
from this very failure.
Levinas understands this failure, however, in a positive sense as a “movement
unto the invisible” (TI 258). The caress, in failing to grasp and to hold, initiates
the self to that which is above it, to that which transcends it. The caress thus, in
its very failure to fulfill the self leads it out of itself to hereto unexplored horizons,
constitutes a journey of the self unto the unknown, to a dimension outside of its
world, to an exilic dimension. While touch was once understood as the origin of
the constitution of material objects, it now leads to the threshold of the invisible.
Yet, in doing so, it never leaves the sensible dimension to which it pertains: “The
caress, like contact, is sensibility. But the caress transcends the sensible” (TI 257).
The caress does not constitute a metaphysical movement which escapes the
world, but which finds, discovers, within the sensible world, the metaphysical

60 Emmanuel Levinas
dimension: “It is not that it would feel beyond the felt, further than the senses,
that it would seize upon a sublime food” (TI 257). The caress remains in touch
with the sensible world, does not seek to elevate man above it, to transcend it.
Yet, this kind of touch, while remaining sensible, brings the self to the frontiers
of the invisible. It is in this sense that woman, in her very immanence within
the world of the self, can be understood as initiating man to the metaphysical
dimension, to the invisible. Woman is the being who, from within the world
possessed and mastered by the self, points to another dimension, a dimension of
transcendence, of otherness, over and beyond the self.
It is in this sense that one can understand the erotic movement of the caress
to contain a reference to ethics. Interestingly, Levinas will himself further
develop such a connection between Eros and ethics in a later work entitled
“Language and Proximity.” In this article, Eros comes to be experienced as
an ethical event of proximity whereby the other is encountered as a face: “In
reality, the caress of the sensible awakens in a contact and tenderness, that is,
proximity, awakens in the touched only starting with the human skin, a face,
only with the approach of a neighbor” (LP 118). This is one of the first instances
where Levinas will come to acknowledge a connection between Eros and ethics
reinterpreting the hereto problematic notion of a “language without words”
in an ethical sense: “This relationship of proximity, this contact unconvertible
into a noetico-noematic structure, in which every transmission of messages,
whatever be those messages, is already established, is the original language, a
language without words or propositions, pure communication . . . proximity,
beyond intentionality, is the relationship with the neighbor in the moral sense of
the term” (LP 119). Although Levinas does not develop further this connection
between the ethical event of proximity of the face with the “language without
words” which had hereto characterized the erotic relation, the possibility is
opened for such a connection.
The possibility exists then in potentia to understand the erotic relationship as
one of the modes of encounter of the other qua other. Such is, according to Ewa
Ziarek, “the most original contribution of Levinas’ work to the contemporary
debates on the body in the fact that it enables the elaboration of the ethical
significance of flesh and by extension opens a possibility of an ethics of Eros.
Even though this possibility is never realized in Levinas’ own work, and even
though his own conception of Eros and femininity remains entangles in
both patriarchal and metaphysical traditions, the necessary interdependence
of responsibility and incarnation paves the way . . . to the feminist ethics of
sexual difference.”21 In other words, according to Ziarek, Levinas appears as

one of the pioneers of an ethics of the body or of the erotic relation which no
longer subsumes it to abstract ethical categories, but describes it as containing
intrinsical ethical possibilities. It is in this sense that the relationship with the
woman takes on, according to Katz, a “transcendental” character with regard to
ethics. Woman, according to Katz, “is the condition of the possibility of ethics.”22
And as such, the encounter with the woman can be understood as containing a
reference to ethics. For the first time, man experiences a being that escapes his
grasp, a mystery, an enigma fringing on the Invisible, a dimension of exile.
Yet, while the woman does contain within her essence a dimension of enigma
and of mystery, her otherness is nevertheless not commensurate with the
dimension of “height” and “transcendence” reserved to the destitute other: “But
habitation is not yet the transcendence of language. The Other who welcomes
in intimacy is not the you of the face that reveals itself in a dimension of height,
but precisely the thou of familiarity: a language without teaching, a silent
language, an understanding without words, an expression in secret” (TI 155).
This relegation of woman to the sphere of silence raises, however, a number
of questions. For example, according to Diane Perpich, the retrenchment of
woman in silence constitutes a highly problematic move on the part of our
philosopher: “The feminine other says nothing; she does not speak during
the erotic encounter. And although this is consistent with the descriptions of
the feminine as withdrawal, mystery and absence, this silence is nonetheless
eerie, even as it begins to seem all too familiar.”23 This silence is all the more
problematic that it testifies, in Levinas, to a certain facelessness of woman in
the erotic context. She is, according to Levinas, “beyond object and face” (TI
258). While one understands perfectly how woman is “beyond object,” we do
not follow Levinas anymore when he says that she is also “beyond face.” Does
this mean that woman is no more than a body, lacking the individuality and
faculty of expression belonging to a face? Levinas seems to infer this inasmuch
as, for him, “The caress aims at neither a person nor a thing” (TI 259). But what
then does Levinas mean when he says that woman is “beyond face,” and worse
yet, that she loses her status as a person!
It seems that, although the woman can well be encountered as a transcendent
other in nonerotic contexts, this mode of encounter is, according to Levinas,
“reserved,” set aside, during the erotic encounter for this “delightful lapse in
being, and the source of gentleness” (TI 155) to occur. But in its bypassing
of the dimension of the face, the erotic intention never genuinely encounters
woman. Levinas himself admits this incapacity of Eros to ever reach the
woman’s transcendence. The woman remains “absence” (TI 155), the erotic

62 Emmanuel Levinas
intention “seizes upon nothing” (TI 257), it reveals a “less than nothing”
(TI 258). In other words, although the Levinassian description of the caress
accounts for the transcendence of woman, for her infinite capacity to escape
possession, it speaks also of a deep incapacity to connect with her, to genuinely
relate to her. The erotic relation remains, in Levinas’ own terms “negative” (TI
262). It only accounts negatively for the incapacity to possess the woman; it
never describes the possibility of positively connecting or relating with woman.
This is the essence of Irigaray’s critique of Levinas: “The beloved woman falls
back into infancy or beyond, while the male lover rises up to the greatest
heights. Impossible match. Chain of links connecting from one end to the
other, a movement of ascent in which neither is wed, except in the inversion
of their reflections . . . No ‘human’ flesh is celebrated in that eros. . . . He ‘takes
communion’ without benefit of rites or words.”24 Thus, although Levinas
does mention that it is possible to encounter woman as a face, that the erotic
relationship contains the possibility of an ethical relationship with woman as
a person, this possibility is never actualized within the erotic relationship. As
a woman, susceptible to be encountered erotically, she does not gain the status
of personhood.
This is one of the fundamental problems in Levinas’ descriptions of the erotic
relationship. While it accounts for a certain mode of transcendence of woman
within the erotic relation, it never accounts for her as an ethical subject or person.
This is in part due to limitations in the way that Levinas thinks the “caress.”
While the caress in Levinas’ philosophy is structured as the very incapacity to
possess (TI 265), it remains thought from the perspective of possession. The
caress remains thought in the categories of possession and grasp. And as such,
the caress is articulated to a centralized self. Therefore, according to Diane
Perpich, “the caress is a relationship to the other in which the relationship does
not diminish the distance between the terms and the distance does not prevent
the possibility of a relationship. As such, it seems to offer a perfect model of
transcendence. And yet, we can question whether the transcendence of the
caress is, as it were, transcendent enough. Doesn’t the caress inevitably include
the possibility of the self ’s return to itself in sensuous enjoyment?”25 While the
caress constitutes a movement unto transcendence and mystery, it remains a
movement initiated on the part of the self and, as such, does not constitute a
genuine movement of transcendence.
There is, however, a wholly different way to think of the caress, not as an
attempt (failed or not) to possess, but as a gift of the self to the other. Such is
Irigaray’s reworking of the caress. For Irigaray, the caress is much more than a

failed attempt to possess the other, it can become an “offering of consciousness”:

“Thus, the gesture of the one who caresses has nothing to do with ensnarement,
possession or submission of the freedom of the other who fascinates me in his
body. Instead, it becomes an offering of consciousness, a gift of intention and of
word addressed to the concrete presence of the other, to his natural and historical
particularities.”26 Irigaray agrees with Levinas that the caress is not an act of
possession or of grasp. The caress, far to the contrary, testifies to the ungraspable
character of the other. Like Levinas, Irigaray situates the caress as a movement of
nonpossession and of exploration. However, unlike Levinas, Irigaray sees in the
caress a positivity hereto unforeseen by our philosopher: The caress can become
“a gift.”27 In other words, for Irigaray, far from emerging from a desire to possess,
the caress can become offering of the self to the other. But what is this offering to
consist in? What gift is given through the caress?
According to Irigaray, the caress becomes a gift when its intention is reversed
from one seeking pleasure for oneself to one that seeks to give pleasure to the
other: “The caress is an awakening to intersubjectivity, to a touching between us
which is neither passive nor active; it is an awakening of gestures, of perceptions
which are at the same time acts, intentions, emotions. This does not mean that
they are ambiguous, but rather, that they are attentive to the person who touches
and the one who is touched, to the two subjects who touch each other.”28 It is this
attentiveness to the other, to her feelings, to her sensations which constitutes,
according to Irigaray, the caress as gift. Such an intention stems no more from
a self-centered desire to possess, or even a desire to explore, but from a self
willing to give to the other. Irigaray speaks of this gift of the caress as that which
“gives the other to himself, to herself ”: “Rather than violating or penetrating the
mystery of the other, rather than reducing his or her consciousness or freedom
to passivity, objectuality, animality or infancy, the caress makes a gesture which
gives the other to himself, to herself, thanks to an attentive witness, thanks to a
guardian of incarnate subjectivity.”29 The caress is here no more concerned with
either possession or exploration but with a gift which, in its attentiveness to the
other, gives the other back to herself, awakens her all over again to her essential
humanity, to her you-ness in the Buberian sense, beneath the everyday persona
and role that society necessitate she plays.
The caress becomes in this sense the very expression of an attention given to
the other, to her feelings, her sensations, her humanity. Far from constituting
a “silent language” (TI 155) the caress is here understood as a “word”: “The
caress is a gesture-word which goes beyond the horizon or the distance of
intimacy with the self. This is true for the one who is caressed and touched,

64 Emmanuel Levinas
for the one who is approached within the sphere of his or her incarnation,
but it is also true for the one who caresses, for the one who touches and
accepts distancing the self from the self through this gesture.”30 The structure
of discourse and language which for Levinas was hereto reserved to the
ethical encounter with the face, is now given to the caress. The caress, as a
distanciation of the self from the self, as a gift of the self to the other, rises here
to the status of language. We saw in our first chapter that for Levinas the act of
generosity was language in that it created a distance between the self and its
world, and offered the world to the other; it designated the world to the other,
and, insodoing opened an ethical space for the other within my own world.
Language, for Levinas is therefore primordially an ethical act which signifies
toward the welcoming of otherness. Irigaray is here transposing the Levinassian
conception of language to the erotic encounter and to the movement of the
caress. Likewise, inasmuch as it is experienced as a distanciation of the self
with itself, as a gift of the self to the other, as an expression of the self ’s love
and respect, the caress can be understood as language, as an expression, a
“word” of love and respect. And as such, the caress takes on a whole new
meaning. It is no more the “silent language” of exploration which inevitably
fails to connect with the woman, but an expression of love which, as such,
encounters her on a deep personal level.
But this brings us to a veritable inversion of the Levinassian definition of
the caress. Far from emerging from a centralized self, the caress can testify to a
decentralization of a self willing to give of itself to the other rather than seeking
to possess that other. Far from negating discourse and dialogue, the caress can
thus initiate it, can enable a deep connection to form between the self and
the woman. For, as we have seen, only when the self has been de-centered, is
a place possible for the other to exist qua other; and only then is a genuine
dialogue and relationship possible. Irigaray’s contribution is to have shown
that such a de-centering of the self is possible even within the erotic encounter,
even within enjoyment otherwise structured as completely centered on the
self. Thus, the erotic relationship does not exclude the possibility to connect
with the woman on an ethical level. The caress takes on, in this context, a
whole new structure: That of an encounter which, within the primordially self-
centered realm of enjoyment and Eros, redeems her as a person and as a face.
To the “inversion of the face” (TI 262) described by Levinas corresponds an
inversion of the caress whereby the face can be again apprehended as such, the
personhood of woman can once more be recovered. But only at the price of
an inversion of the caress, stemming no longer from a desire (failed or not) to

possess, but as a gift, a generosity of the self to the other, whereby the structure
of enjoyment is inverted from a self-centered endeavor to a self-less gift of
pleasure to the other.
To become dialogue, the caress must hence emerge from a de-centered
self, which puts the other before itself and the pleasure of that other before
its own. It is not enough for the caress to constitute a journey of the self into
voluptuousness. The caress at that level still remains articulated to a centralized
self. Only when it has inverted its intention, seeking no longer to draw pleasure
from the other, but to give pleasure to the other, does the caress recover its genuine
exilic intention and initiate a genuine encounter with woman qua woman. And
only as such does the caress enable, according to Irigaray, an “alliance” between
the self and the woman: “I seek an alliance between who you are and who I am,
in myself and in yourself. I seek a complex marriage between my interiority and
that of a you which cannot be replaced by me, which is always outside of me,
but thanks to which my interiority exists.”31 The exile of the caress, whereby the
self relinquishes all selfish attempts at enjoyment and proceeds rather to give
pleasure to another, thus makes possible a genuine alliance between the self
and the other. And as such, the exile of the caress makes possible a hospitality
within the realm of the self for woman qua woman.
Consequently, it is only through such an exile of the self, by which it gives of
itself to the woman, that she can be manifest as an other and as a face, that she
can be welcomed unto the self as a woman. The only way the woman takes on
the traits of the face is for the self to welcome her, to relinquish its freedom, its
independence, its possessions, its time, its spontaneity. The only way the woman
can be encountered as a person is for the self to give her not only its home but
its very self. Only when the self is capable of exiling itself toward the woman,
of giving itself to her, will her essence as a face and as a person be disclosed.
Exile is thus the mode by which the self discloses woman to herself as a person
and as a face. Just as the hospitality on the part of woman disclosed to man his
essence as an interiority and as belonging to the dimension of humanity, the
exile on the part of the self now discloses to woman her essence as a face and as
a person. It is thus the caress inverted into gift, into generosity and exile on the
part of the self which marks the passage from erotic to ethical, which marks the
passage of woman from faceless to having a Face: “No human or inter-human
relationship can be enacted outside of economy; no face can be approached with
empty hands and closed home” (TI 172). Thus, according to Irigaray, “a new
birth comes about, a new dawn for the beloved. And the lover. The openness of
a face which has not yet been sculpted.”32

66 Emmanuel Levinas
This in turn leads to a wholly new conception of the home. The home is no
longer, in this context, the place where the self is “at home,” center of the world,
master and possessor of the universe. On the contrary, the home is now connected
to hospitality, to a receiving of otherness and to a contraction of the self in a
welcoming stance: “Recollection in a home open to the Other—hospitality—is
the concrete and initial fact of human recollection and separation; it coincides with
the Desire for the Other absolutely transcendent” (TI 172). This transformation
of the self ’s egoistic at-home-ness in the world into its capacity to welcome
otherness within itself is brought about by an inversion of the erotic intention
from possession to gift. It is only when this inversion has taken place, when the
self has experienced this exile from within the very context of enjoyment and
Eros which otherwise constitute primordial modes of at-home-ness of the self,
will the self be ready to found a genuine home. Only when the self shows itself
capable of giving of itself, of putting another first, will it be capable of perceiving
the woman who shares its home as a face in herself and not only as one who
serves the desires and needs of the self. The home thus is no longer a mere space
for the self to accumulate its possessions, but an oasis of humanity, of welcome,
and of hospitality. The hospitality offered by woman by which man recovers his
lost humanity can thus be completed by a hospitality offered by man by which
woman recovers her status as a person and as an other. A genuine home as an
oasis of humanity emerges from this double act of welcome, of dispossession, of
disengagement on the part of woman, but also on the part of man: “The chosen
home is the opposite of a root. It indicates a disengagement, a wandering which
has made it possible, which is not a less with respect to installation, but the
surplus of a relationship with the Other, metaphysics” (TI 172).

5
Truth in Exile
Introduction
From the love of a person, we now proceed to the love of truth. In Platonic
philosophy, this was considered the highest form of love. The love of another
served only in Plato as an intermediary stage to the love of truth.1 Interestingly,
the journey to truth again takes, in Platonic philosophy, the structure of an
exile from the material world to the spiritual realm.2 Levinas follows this line
of interpretation and also speaks of the quest for truth in terms of a journey
beyond the world of the self: “But the critical essence of knowing also leads us
beyond the knowledge of the cogito” (TI 85). Truth is here described as that
which awaits the self when it has resolved itself to journey beyond itself, in order
to encounter something totally new. The exile of the self—its departure from
its world, from its comfort zone—is thus the prerequisite, in this passage, of a
genuine access to the exteriority of a given being, to an authentic knowledge
of that being. There is therefore, according to Levinas, an intrinsic connection
between exile and truth. But in what consists this connection? Levinas’ thought
needs to be further clarified; the connection between the two concepts is not
immediately obvious.
It is all the less obvious that the concept of truth has become in Western
thought less a journey unto the Other than a conquest by the Same. Indeed, too
often, truth has been brandished as an instrument of oppression and conquest
rather than sought out as an end in itself, to the point that philosophers like
Foucault will come to identify truth with power and with the negation of
otherness rather than the quest for the latter.3 Thus, in the name of truth it is
precisely this otherness which is jeopardized and annihilated. We shall see that
Levinas himself comes to this conclusion with regard to the Western conception
of truth when, identifying it to ontology, he says: “Ontology which reduces the
Other to the Same, promotes freedom—the freedom that is the identification

68 Emmanuel Levinas
of the same, not allowing itself to be alienated by the other. Here theory enters
upon a course that renounces metaphysical Desire, renounces the marvel of
exteriority from which the Desire lives” (TI 42). The quest for truth, in the
Western sense, has altogether renounced its exilic character, its course of desire
in order to crystallize into an “identification with the same” (TI 42).
And it is precisely this violent character of the quest for truth which has
brought it under fire by commentators of the like of Caputo. According to
Caputo, and in line with Foucault’s thought, the quest for truth has systematically
led to the domination and imposition of a given worldview onto all others and
thus, to the annihilation of other or alternative perspectives. As such, the quest
for truth coincides, according to Caputo, with the destruction of otherness
perceived as a “disturbance to be quelled, and abnormality to be normalized,
a cry to be silenced.”4 This intrinsic violence of truth is what has led Caputo
and others to do away with the very concept of truth in an attempt to recover
the silent cry of hereto repressed and forgotten worldviews. Hence, according
to Caputo, there should be no more absolute, no more exterior criterion of
judgment of the world around us; rather, the diversity inhabiting our world
must be recovered by giving free reign to the play of different worldviews
and perspectives. But this absence of criterion and this neutralization of any
possible absolute brings about a number of problems, the first of which being,
in Levinas’ terms, an “essential disorientation” (MS 86) making it impossible
to judge between true and false statements.
Indeed, there is an inherent danger to this free “play”5 of different perspectives
without an absolute criterion by which to judge them. In the absence of any
absolute criterion or of truth, what is to distinguish truth from error? This is
Wendy Farley’s objection to Caputo’s obliteration of truth. While Caputo’s
condemnation of the absolute character of truth makes way for diversity, it
also neutralizes the very possibility of making value judgments. And although
diversity is good, not all voices which arise from this diversity are. What of the
voices of racism, or of hatred?6 Should these be given free reign in the name of
diversity? Is not then the way opened up for unchecked injustice? Is there then
not a direct correlation between the obliteration of truth and injustice? We will
see that Levinas himself will question this sacrificing of truth to diversity as an
essentially “absurd” stance leading ultimately to moral indifference: “Absurdity
consists not in non-sense, but in the isolation of innumerable meanings, in the
absence of a sense that orients them” (MS 89). But as such, this absurdity coincides
with “indifference” (MS 89), that is to say, with the impossibility of judging
between good and evil. There are then moral implications to the abandonment

Truth in Exile 69
of truth. And while Caputo does recover the importance of diversity, his claims
also make it impossible to make moral judgments.
One might wonder, furthermore, whether Caputo’s defense of diversity
over and against domination and homogeneity is not itself a value judgment?
Indeed, is not Caputo somehow making the point that diversity is better than
homogeneity? And if so, what criteria serve at the basis of this judgment? Is
there not then an implicit reference to an absolute in Caputo—unbeknownst
to himself of course—which brings him to these conclusions? This is where
Levinas’ conception of truth becomes interesting inasmuch as it outlines precisely
the structure of such an absolute which, over and against its use by Western
philosophy, will constitute precisely the guardian of otherness. The question
remains of course as to what this redefinition of truth will look like in Levinas.
We will see that, contrarily to the Western definition of truth which situates its
origin in a grounded and masterful self, Levinas will describe the quest for truth
as resting on a necessary uprooting of the self from its previous epistemological
stance and opening up onto an other which puts it into question. Thus, far from
coinciding with an ontological agenda of power, the quest for truth necessitates
a self having undergone an ethical transformation and having awakened to a
dimension over and beyond its interests and agendas. It will hence be argued
that exile constitutes the very structure of the epistemological quest for truth,
consequently salvaging the authentic quest for truth from its Western association
with power.
It is here that Levinas is closest to Plato’s definition of the Good beyond
being which, in Plato, serves to orient the quest for truth.7 Indeed, we shall see
that for Plato, the journey to truth is possible only in reference to a dimension
which is otherwise than being, which remains resolutely exiled from being: the
dimension of the Good. The Good in Plato will however find itself completely
deformalized in Levinas as the face of the other, which, like the Good retains an
absolute character with regard the realm of ontology, and as such, constitutes
the only entity capable of orienting the self ’s exilic journey to truth. There is
thus, in Levinas, an implicit connection between the face of the other and the
exile of the self toward truth. But we do not yet see at this point the connection
between the other and the self ’s epistemological awakening to truth. How is
the other an absolute? And what does the other have to do with the quest for
truth? We are here reminded of the Levinassian connection between “justice
and truth” (TI 82). But we do not yet understand the connection posited here
between justice and truth. How is the absolute other a key player in the self ’s
exilic journey toward truth?

70 Emmanuel Levinas
I The conquest of truth
Our introductory words have alluded to the crisis surrounding the concept of
truth in the contemporary epistemological discussion. Indeed, as shown by
Foucault, truth has too often been the handmaiden of power and imperialism to
not come under suspicion. Levinas is not ignorant of the problem posed by the
Western conception of truth and traces it back to the Platonic understanding
of truth as outlined in the Republic: “For Plato, the world of meanings precedes
language and culture, which express it; it is indifferent to the system of signs that
one can invent to make this world present. . . . It thus dominates the historical
cultures . . . as the Platonic Republic which sweeps away the allusions in the
alluvium of history, that Republic from which the poets of the mimesis are driven”
(MS 84). Thus, according to Levinas, truth in Plato is an absolute which not
only encompasses the diversity of perspectives, but “dominates” them (MS 84).
It is in the name of truth that the “poets,” symbols of dissent and opposition, are
driven out. Therefore, according to Plato, the “particularities, peculiarities, and
oddities” (MS 84) represented by the poets are to be obliterated in the name of
the unicity of truth: In the name of truth, diversity is sacrificed and with it all
conception and respect of otherness.
But Levinas goes even further as to situate the instinct of domination in the
very structure of the quest for truth. The epistemological quest for truth is not
only used as an instrument of domination, as Foucault accurately observed,
but is itself structured as domination. As Merold Westphal observes: “Whereas
Foucault says that knowledge always functions as social power, Levinas argues
that even if the purely epistemological domain is an abstraction from more
concrete social scenes, knowledge is already power in its abstract purity simply as
knowledge.”8 And indeed, inasmuch as in Western thought the criteria for truth
remain relative to a given subjectivity, they are indissociable from the threat that
truth will come to coincide with subjective agendas and will to power. Truth as
grounded in subjectivity, as a subjective endeavor or activity, was incidentally
the essence of Descartes’ teaching. Contrarily to a conception of truth as existing
outside of subjectivity, waiting to be discovered, Descartes shows in his Discourse
on Method that truth, that is the revelation, the disclosure of being, cannot be
thought distinctly from an activity on the part of subjectivity, from an act of
judgment on its part.9 This is the first principle of the Cartesian method: “To accept
nothing as true which I did not clearly recognize to be so.”10 It is the subjective I,
the ego, which is the voucher for truth. Knowledge thus stems from an activity of
the I of recognition and of acceptance of a given content as being true.

Truth in Exile 71
As such, knowledge becomes relative to subjectivity, as Levinas comments:

“The knowledge of objects does not secure a relation whose terms would absolve
themselves from the relation. Though objective knowledge remains disinterested,
it is nevertheless marked by the way the knowing being has approached the
Real. To recognize truth to be disclosure is to refer it to the horizon of him who
discloses. Plato, who identifies knowledge with vision, stresses, in the myth of
the chariot of the Phaedrus, the movement of the soul that contemplates truth
and the relativeness of truth to that course. The disclosed being is relative to
us and not kat auto” (TI 64). The objectivity of a given knowledge does not
annul its intrinsic connection with subjectivity. Indeed, it is subjectivity which
remains the final authority as to the objective quality of a given knowledge. It is
subjectivity which decides, which determines what is real and what is not.
In this sense, while subjectivity does not constitute the origin of truth—
truth remains to be found within being—it certainly constitutes its ground, or
foundation. It is from subjectivity that an act of genuine knowing emerges, from
its activity and judgment. There can be no genuine apprehension of being apart
from this subjective activity intent on detecting the truth hidden within being.
Levinas thus sees the quest for knowledge as a “work eminently individual,
which always, as Descartes saw, comes back to the freedom of the individual,
atheism affirms itself as atheism” (TI 89). Such a subjectivity freely disposes of
its powers, it is in charge, it is masterful in the face of being working as an artisan
of truth, wrenching it from the muteness of being.11 It answers only to itself; it is
“atheist,”12 that is, it answers to no one else, it is alone in the world, answering to
no authority than its own preoccupation and quest for truth.
Intelligibility of a given being thus emerges from an act of violence on
the part of the self. It must be wrenched from being, it must be upheld against
competing paradigms. Levinas speaks of an act of “mastery” on the part of
subjectivity:13 “This mastery is total and as though creative; it is accomplished
as a giving of meaning: the object of representation is reducible to noemata. The
intelligible is precisely what is entirely reducible to noemata and all of whose
relations with the understanding reducible to those established by the light.
. . . Descartes’s clear and distinct idea manifests itself as true and as entirely
immanent to thought: entirely present, without anything clandestine; its very
novelty is without mystery” (TI 124). Intelligibility is therefore the product of
an act of mastery on the part of the self, an act of creation which, out of the
indistinctiveness of being, speaks to the meaning of a truth. Knowledge constitutes
in this passage a triumph of light over darkness, of word over matter. It allows
for no part of “mystery” or of “clandestinity.” Light must triumph, meaning

72 Emmanuel Levinas
must be established over the darkness and muteness of being. Subjectivity thus
“holds its ground” in the face of external opposition. It is in this sense that one
must understand Descartes’ understanding of truth as emerging from a solitary
subject and all philosophy as “egology” (TI 44), in the Levinassian sense of the
term.
This egology, however, poses a number of problems. One may wonder how
a genuine discovery of alterity is possible from an egological stance, from a
subjectivity defined by its centrality and which sees itself as “master and possessor”
of the world.14 This is precisely the Levinassian critique of a knowledge emerging
from a grounded self: “Absolute experience is not disclosure; to disclose on the
basis of a subjective horizon is already to miss the noumenon” (TI 67). Such
a self will never genuinely approach exteriority, according to Levinas, but has
renounced “metaphysical Desire,” that is the genuine and disinterested thirst for
truth which alone allows the “marvel of exteriority” (TI 42) to be revealed. Thus,
the quest for truth as a way of seeking the affirmation of the self, never truly
engages in the journey toward otherness, but, like Ulysses, ultimately always
comes back home to the self ’s interests and agendas: “For the transcendence
of thought remains closed in itself despite all its adventures—which in the last
analysis are purely imaginary, or are adventures traversed as by Ulysses: on
the way home” (TI 27). The self which practices ontology ultimately remains
with itself, with its own constructions and productions. Such a self has firmly
established itself in the face of overwhelming odds, has “stood its ground,” but
insodoing, has distanced itself from the truth, inasmuch as for Levinas “truth is
neither in seeing nor in grasping” (TI 172). On the contrary, alterity is neutralized
by such an act of mastery; it dissolves at the contact of a dominating self.
But this egological quest for truth has deeper implications than the mere
cognitive neutralization of otherness: It has political implications. Commenting
on Levinas’ critique of the Western conception of truth, Farley explains:
“Totality subsumes the other into itself, stripping it of its infinity and making
it into something different from itself. When this subsumption is seen in its
ethical dimension, it becomes real, physical, historical power that strips away
the humanity of persons. . . . Levinas reminds us of what is at stake in criticism
of philosophical or political absolutisms: The complete degradation of human
persons.”15 In other words, it is possible to trace the Western tendency for
domination in its very epistemological structures.16 The necessity then arises
for a reevaluation of the West’s epistemological discourse. It follows then, as
Peperzak observes, that a “proposed redress of the faults committed by our
culture could not be brought about by a refinement of the sciences or an extension

Truth in Exile 73
of emancipation but only by a radical reversal that changes our civilizations’

fundamental intention.”17 And it is precisely such a reversal that Levinas opts
for when he speaks of a “radical reversal, from cognition to solidarity” (OB
119). That is to say, according to Levinas, the epistemological discourse has
been too often complicit with the domination of the other and as such, its very
foundations must be again scrutinized in the name of ethics and of the otherness
of the Other.
This scrutiny of the Western epistemological discourse in the light of ethical
concerns has been, incidentally, inaugurated by a number of our contemporaries
of which Caputo represents one of its most radical attempts. Following up on
Levinas’ analysis of the Platonic expulsion of the poets from the Republic,
Caputo will decide to restore the poets by doing away with the absolute that
kept them at bay. Thus, according to Caputo, “there is no royal road that some
philosopher’s method or divine revelation will open to us . . . the absolute secret
means that we all pull on our pants one leg at a time, doing the best we can to
make it through the day, without any divine or metaphysical hooks to hoist us
over the abyss.”18 The “royal road” of truth must be done away with if a space is
to be opened for the diversity of ways and of perspectives as observed by Farley:
“The ambiguity of truth condemns any form of absolutism, thereby creating an
ethical sensibility more inclusive of differences.”19 This inclusion of difference
comes at a price however: That of the obliteration of truth, or, in Foucault’s
terms, the “night of truth”20 whereby, for the sake of diversity, there is no more
unique and universal truth susceptible of judging one worldview from the
other. All share an equal status in being; there is none that may be proclaimed
as somehow “superior” or “better” in the name of a given truth.
With thinkers like Caputo, the epistemological climate moves then from
one of foundations to one of “abyss,” to recover a Caputean term, whereby one
realizes that there is no foundation to truth, no solid basis on which to base our
judgments. The opening up of the epistemological space to diversity thus comes
at the price of an essential “disorientation” as observed by Levinas: “The saraband
of innumerable and equivalent cultures, each justifying itself in its own context,
creates a world which is, to be sure, deoccidentalized, but also disoriented” (MS
101). Hence, in place of the Cartesian solid grounding of truth in subjectivity’s
experience of “clarity and distinction,” we find ourselves condemned to wander
in an epistemological context where all sense of clear direction or clear criteria
has been obliterated. This wandering is, however, a source of delight for thinkers
like Caputo who see there the condition of a genuine apprehension of otherness
and diversity. Indeed, according to Caputo, otherness does not lend itself to

74 Emmanuel Levinas
a subjectivity having opted for a solid position or stance. What characterizes

the apprehension of otherness is, on the contrary, its capacity to surprise and/
or disturb the hereto unquestioned stance of a given subjectivity.21 Levinas
himself recognizes the necessity for a subjectivity desiring truth to surrender its
desire for stability and control: “Being is not in such a way as to congeal into a
Parmenidean sphere, identical to itself, nor into a completed and fixed creation.
The totality of being envisioned from cultures could nowise be a panoramic
view. There could not be a totality in being, but only totalities. There is nothing
that could encompass all of them. They would not be open to any judgment that
would claim to be the final judgment” (MS 88).
This view, however, opens up a number of problems as observed by Farley:
While Caputo’s discourse “condemns any form of absolutism, thereby creating
an ethical sensibility more inclusive of differences . . . it leaves the status of
ethical claims unclear. Is for example the condemnation of racism a moment
in the game or is it a serious and enduring claim about human dignity and
obligations to respond to the social, interpersonal and political realities that
threaten human beings?”22 In other words, the abandonment of an absolute
criteria serving to distinguish between truth and error has not only an
epistemological impact, it also has a moral impact inasmuch as it makes moral
judgments impossible and as such, gives free reign to injustice. In a world where
truth cannot be distinguished from falsehood and where there is no value
judgment hierarchizing them, there can be no constraint put onto falsehood,
and as such, no limits to possible distortions and false assumptions about the
world and people around us. This, however, marks, according to Farley, the
beginning of the reign of terror whereby people find themselves falsely depicted
and as such, unduly discriminated against.23 Thus, while Caputo’s claim aims at
preserving diversity, in fact, there is also a danger that this very claim work
against diversity and otherness. If there is no more absolute against which we
can judge the different perspectives and worldviews, the danger arises that in the
free “play”24 proposed by Caputo, racism and the obliteration of the other are
not only not opposed, but condoned as moments in being. To lose the category
of truth would then amount, not in the emergence of diversity, as proposed by
Caputo, but in its very obliteration.
We now understand how truth might be, in Farley’s words, necessary to
justice: “The struggle for truth is a part and parcel of the struggle for justice.”25
This is incidentally also Levinas’ view. For Levinas, the category of truth is
essential to the resistance of tyranny or of injustice. In his critique of Plato,
Levinas nevertheless concedes that “philosophy [was] born on Greek soil,

Truth in Exile 75
to dethrone opinion in which all tyrannies lurk and threaten” (PI 48). Thus
philosophy in the Platonic sense, that is to say, in the sense of a quest for an
absolute orienting all truth, is necessary to fight against tyranny. And indeed, in
the absence of such an absolute, there can be no criterion against which to judge
for or against tyranny, for or against diversity: “It is most important to insist on
the antecedence of sense to cultural signs. To attach every meaning to culture,
to not distinguish between meaning and cultural expression, between meaning
and the art that prolongs cultural expression, is to recognize that all cultural
personalities equally realize the spirit. Then no meaning can be detached from
these innumerable cultures, to allow one to bear a judgment on these cultures”
(MS 100). Without such an absolute, or “sense” as Levinas puts it, there is no
more criterion for the judgment of morally right or wrong cultural expressions
hence clearing the way for tyranny and injustice. For Levinas, the absolute
character of truth must be regained if Caputo’s dream of a diverse world is to be
preserved and protected.
II The exile toward truth
Indeed, it can be argued that the Caputean critique of foundationalism for

the sake of diversity rests on the false assumption that diversity left to itself,
untouched by truth, promotes itself. Levinas observes: “One reasons as though
the equivalence of cultures, the discovery of their profusion and the recognition
of their richness were not themselves the effects of an orientation and of an
equivocal sense in which humanity stands. One reasons as though the multiplicity
of cultures from the beginning sunk its roots in the era of decolonization, as
though incomprehension, war and conquest did not derive just as naturally
from the contiguity of multiple expressions of being” (MS 88). Indeed—and
Levinas makes this interesting point—the going back to being in all its diversity
as it stands before its ordering by truth does not necessarily coincide with an
Edenic coexistence and cohabitation between diverse beings. The world before
its ordering by truth may, on the contrary, come closer to the Hobbesian context
of war and of the annihilation of the other by the strongest. What emerges from
diversity is not necessarily diversity, but rather precisely its annihilation. Left to
itself, without the intervention of truth, diversity self-destructs.
But there is more. The Caputean call for diversity over and against the
tyranny of a monologic truth stems itself from a certain value judgment: That
diversity is better than tyranny. What orients the Caputean judgment of value

76 Emmanuel Levinas
here if not a sense for the importance of diversity over and against tyranny? As
we have seen, a diverse state of being does not naturally give rise to a sense of
its value. On the contrary, war is much more often the result of such a state of
being. There must then be a sense over and beyond the state of being which
gives rise to the Caputean preference for diversity. It is to such a “sense” that
Levinas alludes to when he asks: “Must we not then distinguish the meanings
in their cultural pluralism, from the sense, orientation and unity of being—a
primordial event in which all the other steps of thought and the whole historical
life of being is situated?” (MS 88). According to Levinas, diversity itself is
possible only because of a “sense” which gives it value and which ordains its
protection. But for such a sense to be in a position to ordain being, it must
situate itself, according to Levinas, in the absolute, over and beyond being
if it is to judge between diversity and tyranny. The quest for truth becomes
then a crucial moment in the protection of diversity over and against tyranny.
The question of course remains as to how the quest for truth, which hereto
Levinas himself described as complicit with tyranny, can possibly function as
the guardian of diversity. Indeed, the Levinassian description of truth will have
to avoid the pitfalls of foundationalism and of the resulting egology if it is to
avoid the temptation of complicity with tyranny. We shall see that for Levinas,
this pitfall can be avoided only in resituating the quest for truth to its original
Platonic character, that of stemming from an orientation toward an absolute,
exiled from being.
Which is where Levinas will return to Plato, albeit in a totally different way
than was seen in the West’s appropriation of the Platonic discourse on truth.26
For this, Levinas goes back to the Platonic description of the Good beyond
being as the criterion for all truth within the realm of being. We remember that
for Plato, the criterion of truth within the realm of being hanged upon one’s
intuition of the Good beyond being. It was this intuition—beyond the discursive
attempts of the lover of truth—which served to orient his quest for truth within
the realm of being. Levinas will situate his discourse on truth along the same
lines of the Platonic Good beyond being as the absolute sense serving to orient
the quest for truth. But, insodoing, Levinas will deformalize this notion into the
face of the other: “The goodness of the Good—the Good which never sleeps or
nods—inclines the movement it calls forth to turn it from the Good and orient
it toward the other, and only thus toward the Good” (NI 165). According to
Levinas, the “sense” serving to orient the quest for truth and the ensuing moral
judgments is therefore the face of the other. It is this face which becomes, in
Levinas, the absolute criterion for truth. It is here that we come to the famous

Truth in Exile 77
Levinassian conjunction of “justice and truth” (TI 82). But one does not right
away understand this connection between justice and truth, between the face
of the other and the orientation toward truth. Indeed, if the Good is beyond
being, how may the other—who dwells among us—coincide with this absolute
Good? Moreover, one may wonder as to how the other—who has more affinities
at times, it seems, with evil—can come to be identified here with the Good?
Levinas describes this coincidence between the other and the Good in terms
of responsibility, that is to say, of an awakening of the self to the dimension
beyond its own sphere of interests: “Responsibility that is undeclinable, yet never
assumed in full freedom is good. . . . Starting with this anarchical situation of
responsibility, our analysis has, no doubt by an abuse of language, named the
Good . . . Passivity is the locus, or more exactly the non locus of the Good, its
exception to the rule of being, always disclosed in logos, its exception to the
present” (HA 135). In other words, the other orients the self toward the Good
in her capacity to interrupt the self ’s hereto self-focused stance and awaken it
to a dimension outside of itself. The other is the only being which does not let
itself be absorbed by the interests of the self and which is capable of interrupting
this self-absorption on the part of the self and, as such, the only being capable
of turning the self toward the Good, that is, toward a preoccupation beyond its
own agendas and interests. As such, however, the other ever remains “absolute”
with regard to the realm of the self. But it is precisely as absolute, that is to say, as
over and beyond the scope and interests of the self, that the other is susceptible
of orienting the self toward exteriority, toward a dimension which it does not
encompass and, insodoing, awaken the self to the Good. The irruption of the
exiled other into the realm of the self is thus a central moment in the awakening
of the self to a dimension beyond its own self-interest, and as such, to the Good.
But we do not yet see at this point the connection between this awakening of the
self by the other to the Good and the quest for truth. Which brings us now to the
Levinassian definition of truth.
According to Levinas, truth is the capacity to see a being for what it is and,
as such, implies a certain respect for exteriority. Far from defining the quest for
knowledge as an activity derived from the spontaneity of a subjectivity, Levinas
describes the encounter with exteriority as a stance on the part of subjectivity
which allows for the alterity of the known to remain, which “lets the known
being manifest itself ” (TI 42). A genuine approach of the exteriority of a being
hence protects the otherness of the known being and does not taint it with
preconceptions or a priori conceptualizations on the part of subjectivity.27 Such
a stance, which protects the alterity of the known being, is described by Levinas

78 Emmanuel Levinas
as “respectful”: “Knowledge or theory designates first a relation with being such

that the knowing being lets the known being manifest itself while respecting its
alterity and without marking it in any way whatever by this cognitive relation. In
this sense metaphysical desire would be the essence of theory” (TI 42).
The stance of respect consequently implies a limitation on the natural
freedom and spontaneity of subjectivity: “The famous suspension of action
that is said to make theory possible depends on a reserve of freedom, which
does not abandon itself to its drives, to its impulsive movements, and keeps its
distances. Theory, in which truth arises, is the attitude of a being that distrusts
itself. Knowledge becomes knowing of a fact only if it is at the same time critical,
if it puts itself into question, goes back beyond its origin—in an unnatural
movement to seek higher than one’s own origin, a movement which evinces or
describes a created freedom” (TI 82–3). Genuine objectivity, which allows for
the known being to exist independently of subjective whims and desires, is born,
according to Levinas, from this “reserve of freedom” on the part of subjectivity.
Such a reserve is fundamental if the known being is to be known as such and not
merely as a construction of subjectivity. Levinas thus speaks of a “conversion”
of subjectivity to exteriority: “The conversion of the soul to exteriority, to the
absolutely other, to Infinity, is not deducible from the very identity of the soul,
for it is not commensurate with the soul” (TI 61). Indeed, natural subjectivity
is not intent on respecting otherness or letting it be. It is intent in affirming
itself and its worldview in the face of that otherness.28 As such, it is not naturally
disposed to encountering genuine otherness. A “conversion of the soul” is thus,
according to Levinas, necessary.
The question remains, however, as to what event is to bring about such a
conversion. If subjectivity is not naturally bent on letting otherness reveal
itself, what brings about such a change of heart? What makes this conversion
possible? According to Levinas, such an awakening cannot come from within
the act of knowledge for the latter depends itself on such an awakening, on
such a conversion. Indeed, this conversion, this calling into question of the
self ’s freedom and spontaneity, which allows for the very concept of exteriority
to emerge, is necessary for the encounter with truth to be even conceivable:
“Knowledge as a critique, as a tracing back to what precedes freedom, can
arise only in a being that has an origin prior to its origin—that is created”
(TI 85). According to Levinas, the quest for knowledge can only emerge from
a subjectivity which already has a sense of exteriority, of otherness. Such a
subjectivity, according to Levinas, is “created”: It has a sense of an exteriority
outside of its world, of a transcendent being. Only such a sense of otherness can

Truth in Exile 79
give to subjectivity its thirst for knowledge, can kindle in it the desire to know
and to encounter something other than itself. The question remains, however,
as to how this sense of otherness can emerge in a subjectivity hereto entirely
self-absorbed.
According to Levinas, there is only one being susceptible of interrupting the
world of the self and opening it up onto otherness, it is the human face. Only the
latter is capable of marking the original interruption of the self ’s spontaneity:
“It is the welcoming of the Other, the commencement of moral consciousness,
which calls into question my freedom” (TI 84). For the first time, the self finds
itself in the presence of the genuine exteriority of a being which refuses to be
encompassed or subjected to the self. For the first time, the self learns the limits
of its spontaneity and apprehends a being exterior to itself. When faced with the
other, the self realizes the limits of its spontaneity; it realizes that it is not alone
in the world and that the other has an equal claim on that world. This awakening
to exteriority can, in turn, inform the way that the self had hereto apprehended
the world and give it a renewed sensitivity to the otherness of that world. Instead
of situating itself as master and possessor of the world, the self now hesitates.
Thus, as De Boer points out, “according to Levinas there would be no objectivity
if it were not for the other watching me, for he troubles my naïve spontaneity
and awakens critical attitude. This breach with natural dogmatism would not
be possible without his presence. . . . You may think for example, of love for the
truth in daily life, or for the ideal of objectivity in science and critical reflection
in philosophy. It is because of an attitude of mind that is ethical in nature that all
of this is possible.”29
And it is precisely in this hesitation whereby the “breach with natural
dogmatism” is performed that Levinas situates the genuine access to exteriority.
For it is this hesitation which, according to Levinas, allows for an apprehension
of being as such and not merely as the product of its own spontaneity: “But
theory understood as a respect for exteriority delineates another structure
essential for metaphysics. In its comprehension of being (or ontology) it is
concerned with critique. It discovers the dogmatism and naive arbitrariness of
its spontaneity, and calls into question the freedom in such a way as to turn
back at every moment to the origin of the arbitrary dogmatism of this free
exercise. . . . Its critical intention then leads it beyond theory and ontology:
critique does not reduce the other to the same as does ontology, but calls into
question the exercise of the same” (TI 43). Genuine knowledge—understood as
“respect for exteriority”—can only come about when subjectivity has learned to
hesitate before the world, that is, to be critical of itself and distrustful of itself.30

80 Emmanuel Levinas
Truth hence comes, in the words of Peperzak, only at the price of a subjectivity
losing its own solid stance in the world, of an “uprooting,” or “exodus”31 of the
self: “The search for truth is an uprooting brought about by the experience of
absolute otherness which will not allow itself to be reduced—neither by a simple
empiricist or rationalist logic nor by dialectic—to the world that is familiar to
us.”32 But this self-criticism and mistrust, this self-induced interruption of its
spontaneity is not innate to the self. It has to be taught by an other.
We now better understand how the journey toward truth is structured as
an exile.33 Over and against the Western conception of truth as grounded in a
masterful self, we realize now that the quest for truth stems rather from a self
open to being put into question by another, uprooted, even exiled by the face
of the other. For only at such a price will the self, hereto entirely preoccupied
with itself, come to a stance respectful of exteriority. Only as such is the object
susceptible to being disclosed in its alterity and not simply as the result of the
self ’s constructs and interests. In this sense, the other precedes the self in its
epistemological quest and teaches it something it did not know before: the
limitation of its spontaneity which is the beginning of respect. Exteriority reveals
itself only at the price of such a contraction or exile on the part of the self, whereby
the self experiences its limitations in the face of exteriority. But this contraction
on the part of the self cannot emerge from the self ’s own innate capacities. It is
brought about by the other. This is why for Levinas the beginning of justice lies
in “recognizing in the Other my master” (TI 72). The initiation to exteriority
is possible only at the price of a de-centering and exile of the self, whereby the
other is recognized as “master” (TI 72) as the one who chastises the self, who
interrupts its spontaneity, who teaches it the narrow way of justice. Only such
a self is capable of respect, of apprehending being as such. Thus, according to
Farley, “the foundation of knowledge is therefore ethics. It is ethics that permits
the other to emerge out of the thickets of my concepts, desires, assumptions; it is
ethics that jars the thinker out of herself or himself and allows the mystery and
transcendence of the other person to be recognized . . . it is on the basis of this
welcoming of otherness and of others that truth is founded and its relationship
to practice maintained.”34
Thus, far from obliterating diversity, the exilic journey toward truth as
described by Levinas, serves in fact to protect it inasmuch as falsehood
constitutes the very ground from which racism and discrimination are fostered.
It is falsehood which gives rise to false or distorted perceptions of individuals
or groups thereby giving rise to their discrimination or marginalization. This is
why, according to Farley, “far from being other worldly forgetfulness or Gnostic

Truth in Exile 81
hatred of the world, the exteriority of truth—its non-identity with power—is

necessary to ethical resistance.”35 The absolute serving to orient truth must be
protected and not obliterated for therein lies its ethical impact. Thus, the fight
for truth, inasmuch as it does not lose its ethical sense and reference to the face
of the other, coincides with the fight for justice. Likewise, the “night of truth,”
as articulated by Caputo, lies ever in danger of giving rise to a deeper night,
the night of justice where falsehood overcomes truth, and injustice justice. We
now better understand the Hebrew prophetic connection between truth and
justice as expressed in Isaiah: “Justice is driven back and righteousness stands
at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter” (Isa. 59.14
NIV). The stumbling of truth can only give rise to the driving back of justice.
To lose the desire for truth ultimately amounts to losing the desire for justice.
This is why for Levinas the connection between justice and truth must ever
be preserved, the journey toward truth ever maintain its exilic structure as an
awakening to the face of an other.

6
A Metaphysics of Exile
Introduction
A connection between spirituality and exile is not alien to the Western tradition.
Already in the Greek gnostic spiritualities, of which Plotinus is the central
intellectual figure, exile is understood as the soul’s plight in this world, exiled
from its origin, the One.1 This exile is to be overcome through spiritual means
and diverse spiritual techniques are developed to help the soul’s migration back
to its origin. In the Greek context, exile thus is seen as a negative concept, as
a lesser stage needed to be overcome by a return to the origin. Although exile
constitutes a central moment of the spiritual journey in Greek spirituality, it is in
a purely negative sense, as an obstacle to spirituality, as a separation from God,2
rather than as a way or orientation to Him. Thus, far from advocating exile as a
means of approaching God, the Greeks advocate the return, the migration back
to the soul’s origin.
Levinas comments on this negative view of exile in Greek metaphysics:
“Metaphysics would endeavor to suppress separation, to unite; the metaphysical
being should absorb the being of the metaphysician. The de facto separation with
which metaphysics beings would result from an illusion or a fault. As a stage the
separated being traverses on the way of its return to its metaphysical source, a
moment of history, that will be concluded by union, metaphysics would be an
Odyssey, and its disquietude nostalgia. But the philosophy of unity has never
been able to say whence came this accidental illusion and fall” (TI 102). The
spiritual journey according to Greek metaphysics is structured as an Odyssey,
within which the exile is a transitory and lesser stage that must be overcome by
a return and union back with the metaphysical source or the One. For Greek
metaphysics, exile is nothing but an “accidental illusion and fall.”
It is this description of exile as an “accidental illusion and fall,” that Levinas
will critically engage and interrogate. Must exile be understood in the solely

A Metaphysics of Exile 83
pejorative terms of “illusion” and “fall,” as a lesser state and separation from God?
Is not an alternative understanding of exile, a positive understanding, possible?
One that sees in exile not a fallen act of separation, but, far to the contrary,
precisely an orientation toward God, toward what Levinas terms the Infinite?
This positive understanding of exile is not alien to the Hebrew mindset which
perceived, behind the shame and suffering of exile, a redemptive orientation.3 It
is against such a background that Levinas’ positive understanding of exile must
be understood.
This chapter will endeavor to understand Levinas’ concept of exile as it
applies to spirituality. Far from obstructing spirituality, we shall attempt to show
that, for Levinas, exile constitutes the way to God, to the Infinite. According to
Levinas, “it is necessary to cease interpreting separation as pure and simply
diminution of the Infinite, a degradation. Separation with regard to the Infinite,
compatible with the Infinite, is not a simple ‘fall’ of the Infinite” (TI 103).
Separation, or exile, is not necessarily, according to Levinas, a “diminution” or
a “degradation.” It is not necessarily incompatible with the Infinite, but can be,
suprisingly “compatible” with a spiritual journey. We shall see that, according
to Levinas, spirituality entails two moments of separation, or of exile: The exile
of God and the entailing exile of the believer.
From the start, however, a number of questions arise. For Levinas, the exile
of God is a central component of the believer’s spiritual journey. This raises
a number of questions and problems: if God is in exile, how then are we to
access him? If God is absent, hidden, exiled from our world, what hope is there
of a relationship with Him? This we shall see will be the essence of Derrida’s
objections to Levinas. And indeed, what kind of connection is possible with a
God who chooses to remain in exile from the world? According to Levinas, the
exiled God will be accessible in a very peculiar way: in the face of the exiled
other. But this encounter with God through the face of the other raises a number
of questions. How can the face of the exiled other, in its destitution and misery,
possibly constitute the lieu of encounter with God? We shall see that for Levinas,
God is present within the face of the exiled other not as a vision of power, but as
a command to responsibility toward that other.
But this also raises a number of problems. Inasmuch as the locus of
metaphysics seems to be, for Levinas, ethics, one might however wonder as to
why it is so in Levinas. Can not the other by himself or herself awaken the self
to responsibility? Why is the concept of God needed? Is this concept not, as
Caputo would put it, “too much, too big and bombastic for ethics”?4 Is it not

84 Emmanuel Levinas
superfluous? The answer to this question will necessitate that we rethink the
nature of the height commanding me to the other. Is this command inherent to
the other? Or is this command, as Caputo would have it, authored by the self?5
The purpose of this chapter will be to show the problems associated with both
possibilities outlined above and to argue for a necessary exile of the command
from both the self and the other. Indeed, we shall argue that only as far as the
height commanding me to the other is exiled from both the self and the other, can
an ethics be possible and not a relationship structured as coercion or violence.
I The exile of God
The exile of God from the world is a painful reality that any genuine seeker of
truth must face. The fact that God is absent, that he is not there, eclipsed from
perception and understanding is a fact that anyone wanting to authentically
engage with the spiritual realm must come to terms with. Levinas formulates this
painful realization as follows: “Is it not folly to ascribe plenitude of being to God,
who, always absent from perception, is no longer manifest in the moral conduct
of the world, subject to violence, where peace is established only provisionally
and at the price of blood tribute paid to some Minotaur, the price of compromises
and politics—where, consequently, the divine ‘presence’ remains an uncertain
memory or an indeterminate expectation? To endure the contradiction between
the existence included in the essence of God and the scandalous absence of this
God is to suffer an initiation trial into religious life which separates philosophers
from believers. That is, unless the obstinate absence of God were one of those
paradoxes that call to the highways” (EP 66–7). This “obstinate absence” is the
fact that the believer must, at some point of his or her spiritual journey, come to
terms with. God is not here. Not only does he remain inaccessible to perception,
but he remains exiled from the grasp of cognition. According to Levinas, the
relationship with God “is as distinct from objectification as from participation.
To hear the divine word does not amount to knowing an object; it is to be in
relation with a substance overflowing its own idea in me, overflowing what
Descartes calls its ‘objective existence’” (TI 77).
But we must further understand what Levinas means by this reference to
Descartes’ concept of a “substance overflowing its own idea.” As his predecessors,
Descartes believed in a possible intellectual access to God. But unlike his
predecessors, who receded in various forms of negative theology—where the
knowledge of God could only be an empty or negative knowledge—Descartes

attempted a veritable phenomenology of God, or of the idea of the Infinite, as

it revealed itself to the human mind. The Cartesian analyses go in much greater
detail as to how the Infinite reveals itself while eclipsing itself from human
cognition. It is these analyses—the pertinence and rigor of which were observed
by Levinas6—which will constitute the starting point of Levinas’ understanding
of the structure of a relationship with God.
The Cartesian project constitutes, we must remember, an attempt to find
proper evidence to all belief or truth. Having established the existence of a
thinking subjectivity, Descartes then proceeds to establish our belief in God.7
He does so by analyzing the content of subjective experience and finding there
an idea exceeding all mental capacity and categories of subjectivity: the idea of
Infinity. Levinas explains: “The relation with infinity cannot, to be sure, be stated
in terms of experience, for infinity overflows the thought that thinks it. Its very
infinition is produced precisely in this overflowing” (TI 25). This idea is striking
to Descartes in that its content transcends, or overflows, the very nature of the
subjectivity that thinks it. How indeed, could a finite being like myself come up
with the extraordinary notion of infinity? According to Descartes, this idea can
therefore not originate within subjectivity itself but must have been put there
by an exterior being, it must originate from a being, or ideatum, which is itself
infinite.8 Thus, according to Descartes, is revealed the existence of God. God, or
the Infinite, does not posit itself per se in front of subjectivity, but is signified
to, alluded to, by this extraordinary idea which finds itself within the subjective
experience, while overflowing it.
It is this capacity for the Infinite to manifest itself while remaining inaccessible
to the intellectual grasp which fascinates Levinas in the Cartesian analyses. For
the first time an attempt has been made to describe the mode of manifestation of
the Infinite without simply finding a refuge in negative theology. Thus, according
to Bernier, the Levinassian reflection has from its very first attempts attached
itself to the project of thematizing that which cannot be spoken of, and as such,
constitutes an indiscretion with regard to the unsayable which characterizes the
very essence of philosophical thinking.9 There is a possible phenomenology of
the Infinite, or, as Bergo will put it, an inquiry as to whether the “God of the Bible
[can] be discussed philosophically.”10 But this phenomenology is not structured
as that of an object. Rather, it is a phenomenology of an entity which presents
itself while remaining absent, which reveals itself while remaining inaccessible.
The Infinite manifests itself within subjectivity as exiled—as uncontainable by
subjectivity, as overflowing it: “The Cartesian notion of the idea of the Infinite
designates a relation with a being that maintains its total exteriority with respect

86 Emmanuel Levinas
to him who thinks it. It designates the contact with the intangible, a contact that
does not compromise the integrity of what is touched. To affirm the presence in us
of the idea of infinity is to deem purely abstract and formal the contradiction the
idea of metaphysics is said to harbor, which Plato brings up in the Parmenides—
that the relation with the Absolute would render the Absolute relative. The
absolute exteriority of the exterior being is not purely and simply lost as a result
of its manifestation; it ‘absolves’ itself from the relation in which it presents itself ”
(TI 50). Therefore, according to Descartes, the Infinite presents itself as absent,
occurs within subjective experience as exiled, as not containable within the scope
of subjectivity. An encounter is possible with the Infinite only inasmuch as that
Infinite is recognized as ungraspable, as absolute and absolving itself from the
relationship.
But can such an experience be counted as a relationship? Indeed what kind
of relationship is possible with a being that remains resolutely absent from the
relationship? This might be Derrida’s central objection to Levinas’ thematization
of otherness. According to Derrida, it is impossible to speak of a relationship with
alterity without such an original moment of “violence” by which this alterity lets
itself be encompassed within my world, “shows itself ” to the self: “If light is the
element of violence, one must combat light with a certain other light, in order to
avoid the worst violence, the violence of the night which precedes or represses
discourse. . . . The philosopher . . . must speak and write within this war of light,
a war in which he always already knows himself to be engaged; a war which he
knows is inescapable, except by denying discourse, that is by risking the worst
violence.”11 There must be a presentation, a phenomenalization of the other in
my world for a relationship to be possible. Indeed, what kind of proximity can
one have with an Infinite which remains exterior and remote from all attempt
at understanding and holding? Moreover, it is possible to cast doubt on the very
exteriority of the idea of the Infinite.
Such objections were already made during Descartes’ lifetime. It is possible
to think of the idea of the Infinite as an idea constructed by subjectivity itself by
means of magnification of its present condition.12 Or even, it is possible to think
of the idea of Infinity as simply the negation of the idea of the finite.13 Faced
with these objections, the limitations and fragility of the Cartesian argument are
revealed. What was thought to have been established firmly now reveals itself
to have but a fragile, precarious basis. A posteriori, the Cartesian edifice seems
fragile, even artificial, and we remain uncertain that anything has been solidly
demonstrated. In other words, it is impossible to eliminate doubt from the
Cartesian system. Within the very attempt to do away with doubt14—by proving

the existence of God—doubt reappears in force. The exiled and hidden God
remains dissimulated behind a cloud of doubt that proofs and demonstrations
cannot dissipate. There can be no evidence of the existence or of the nature of
this hidden God. The “triumphant question” (EP 75) remains.
Faith in an exiled God, a hidden, exiled God can thus never escape the reality
of doubt. For Bernier, this pertains to the essential discretion of the manifestation
of God which, as such, may never be encapsulated in a proof or in a reasoning.15
The believer must come to terms at some point of his or her spiritual journey,
that his or her faith finds a solid foundation or basis neither in cognition nor
in perception. Doubt is, as a result, ever present on the believer’s journey. The
question always lingers: Was this a dream? Is this an illusion? “A God was revealed
on a mountain or in a burning bush, or was attested to in Scriptures. And what
if it were a storm! And what if the Scriptures came to us from dreamers! Dismiss
the illusory call from our minds! The insinuation itself invites us to do so” (EP
70). The believer can never be sure, can never be certain of his or her beliefs.
Doubt can never be done away with. The believer can never escape this question,
this lingering doubt that perhaps his or her beliefs are founded on nothing more
than the product of human imagination and endeavor. The believer in an exiled
God has nothing solid to base his or her belief on, nothing to stand on. He or
she cannot share the reasons of his or her belief with others and finds himself or
herself irrevocably thrown back into his or her solitude.
The believer in the exiled God is thus himself or herself in exile in the
phenomenal world—the world accessible to perception and cognition. He or
she has no certainties, no guarantees that what he or she has perceived to be
true, it indeed true. He or she has no grounds for his or her belief. The believer
becomes a stranger in the world,16 hanging on to a truth, an experience which
has no presence in the world. The believer has no stand in the world. Always
plagued by doubt, never able to show with certainty why he or she believes in this
exiled God. Such is the painful initiation to faith that the believer faced with the
“obstinate absence of God” both from cognition and perception, must endure:
“To endure the contradiction between the existence included in the essence of
God and the scandalous absence of this God is to suffer an initiation trial into
religious life which separates philosophers from believers” (EP 66–7). The true
believer’s stance in the world is hence not a comfortable, secure one as was often
thought by the enemies of religion. The condition of the believer is not one of
at-home-ness in the world, resting in a comfortable assumption and belief. It is a
condition lived in the pain of a tension between one’s spiritual experience and a
constant negation of this experience in the phenomenal world of rationality and

88 Emmanuel Levinas
perception. Such is indeed the condition of the believer after the “death of God,”
or as Hans Jonas would put it, the death of the concept of God, brought about
by the events of the twentieth century. Thus, according to Kosky, “we are led to
conclude that after the death of God, God is given to us only in confusion or
ambiguity.”17 But while Kosky sees this “confusion and ambiguity” as a problem,
Levinas will come to see this “confusion and ambiguity” surrounding the concept
of God as positive moments of his manifestation.
Indeed, while the believer’s experiences along his or her spiritual journey are
ever in danger of being assimilated to mirages or illusions, does the fact that this
experience, this encounter with transcendence refute all attempts by rationality
to grasp it mean that it is a delusion, or the product of a wild imagination? This
is precisely Levinas’ question: “Is a truly diachronic transcendence nothing
more than something to delude gratuitous imagination, opinion, and positive
religions?” (EP 67). The fact that the encounter with transcendence is diachronic—
that is, refuses to be encapsulated in the presence of a given subjectivity’s
understanding—does not mean that this experience must be relegated to the
dimension of the irrational. It does not mean, moreover, that there is no possible
description of the encounter with transcendence. Indeed, it is possible, according
to Levinas, to describe such an encounter, to do a phenomenology of such an
experience.18 There is something to be said about this twilight experience of
transcendence, ever oscillating between the light of revelation and the darkness of
doubt and questions. And as such, both the elements of light and of darkness are
revelatory. The element of doubt is, according to Levinas, part of the experience
of transcendence and must also be described. In the shadow that it casts on the
believer’s experience, it reveals, according to Levinas, an aspect of transcendence
hereto ignored. There is a revelatory moment in doubt.
In fact, doubt is, according to Levinas, a fundamental moment of the
encounter with transcendence. For Levinas, the doubting subjectivity, or atheist
subjectivity, is closer to encountering the true God than a subjectivity that
does not question or doubt. Levinas explains: “Atheism conditions a veritable
relationship with a true God kat auto. But this relationship is as distinct from
objectification as from participation. To hear the divine word does not amount
to knowing an object; it is to be in relation with a substance overflowing its
own idea in me, overflowing what Descartes calls its ‘objective existence.’ When
simply known, thematized, the substance no longer is ‘according to itself ’” (TI
77). But one may wonder at how atheism, which constitutes the negation of God,
could possibly allow for the emergence of the true God? What is the connection
between this atheism and revelation? Is not atheism on the contrary the refusal
to hear or see God, the negation of the very possibility of revelation?

For Levinas, atheism must be understood differently, not as a subjectivity

which has chosen to dogmatically assert the nonexistence of God, but as a
subjectivity for whom the question and the doubt as to the existence of God
refuses to disappear. It is to such a subjectivity—ever resonating with questions
and interrogations—that the true God will, according to Levinas, reveal himself.
But why? Why is the element of doubt and of question so essential to the
revelation of the true God? According to Levinas, doubt is a fundamental moment
of the revelatory process because doubt is what constantly frees God from the
representations that human subjectivity cannot help but make. The activities
of conceptualization and categorization are natural to human subjectivity and
pertain to its intrinsic function. When in contact with such a subjectivity, the
transcendent dimension of God is ever in danger of being crystallized in the
categories of subjectivity. This is why the moment of doubt is so essential to the
preservation of the transcendent character of God: doubt constantly breaks these
categories, disturbs, questions them, and in so doing retrieves, as from husks, the
“overflowing” essence of God. This is why atheism—which for Levinas names
the ever-questioning mind—is a necessary stage to encountering a God who is
kat auto, absolute and not relative to a subjectivity’s constructions.
Far from obstructing the revelation of the true God, the lingering questions
and doubts allow then for his continual manifestation as the true God, kat auto,
and absolute from a given subjectivity’s constitutive activity. And as such, doubt
constitutes, in its very interruption of subjectivity’s intellectual grasp, a mode of
manifestation of God, reveals God as transcendent, as that which continually
escapes all attempts to grasp and categorize. Levinas speaks of this mode of
manifestation as “enigma”: “This way the Other has of seeking my recognition
while preserving his incognito, disdaining recourse to a wink-of-the-eye of
understanding or complicity, this way of manifesting himself without manifesting
himself, we call enigma—going back to the etymology of this Greek term, and
contrasting it with the indiscreet and victorious appearing of a phenomenon”
(EP 70). Contrary to the phenomenal object—which lends itself clearly to
human perception and cognition, the enigma retains its hiddenness, its intrinsic
mystery, ever escaping the grasp of subjectivity while nevertheless engaging it in
an encounter. Far from obstructing the manifestation of God, doubt becomes the
very protector of its intrinsic nature as transcendent to subjectivity and prevents
its reduction to the ontological categories of the human world. Thus, according
to Kosky, “the assumption that God must be in order to be witnessed treats God
as if God were a being like other beings in the totality of the world.”19 The exile of
subjectivity away from the certainties and comforts of organized religion opens
up the narrow way toward the true God.20

90 Emmanuel Levinas
The exiled subjectivity is hence the guardian of the true, transcendent, exiled
God. Only a subjectivity which is exiled, which has no ground for belief, which
has no cognitive or perceptive basis to its belief, which comes across as a fool,21
is capable of testifying to the true God. A subjectivity which has sunk into the
comforts and consolations of organized religion, sure of its beliefs and certain of
the way to go, will never encounter more than a God made to its measure. Only
a subjectivity which has known hunger and thirst, which has acknowledged its
intrinsic exile, its condition as a “stranger on the earth,” its poverty, its destitution
within the world of cognition and perception can come close to the true God.22
For only such a subjectivity, because of its intrinsic poverty, is capable of
receiving a revelation which “overflows” its boundaries and comfort zone.
The problem remains, however, as to whether a genuine relationship can take
place between the believer and a God who offers no comfort and who escapes
all attempts at understanding. While doubt and desire reveal a God beyond
perception and beyond utility—thus revealing a God whose transcendence
remains untainted by self-interest—the question remains as to whether a
relationship, an encounter is possible with such a God. Indeed, doubt leaves
us with an empty concept of God, while the thirst and hunger of metaphysical
desire never interrupts the solitude and destitution of the believer leaving him
or her empty-handed. What sort of encounter then is this? Behind the exile
and hiddenness of God lurks a terrible emptiness. The connection between the
believer and God remains here entirely negative. Subjectivity is left entirely alone,
“despairing in the solitude in which this absolute humility leaves it” (EP 71). And
yet, according to Levinas, “invisibility does not denote an absence of relation”
(TI 34). The question is how? How does such an invisible God, inaccessible to
the believer’s thoughts and needs, not denote an absence of relation?
II The God of the exiled
Levinas himself acknowledges the abstract character of this exiled God: “We
have spoken of a desire for the Good beyond being, a transcendence, without
giving our attention to the way interestedness is excluded from the desire for
the Infinite, and without showing how the transcendent Infinite deserves the
name Good, when its very transcendence can, it seems, only mean indifference”
(GP 139). Levinas is here interrogating his own descriptions of the “Good” and
of the “Infinite,” or God. Up to now, these concepts have been highly abstract
and described in the solely negative terms of “beyond being,” or “transcendent.”

But how then can this transcendence have anything to do with a subjectivity
enrooted in being? How can this transcendence not mean “indifference”? What
does subjectivity have to do with this Infinite? What kind of relationship is
possible with such an exiled God? Where can he be found and encountered if he
obstinately remains absent from the realm of being, of subjectivity?
According to Levinas, there is a place within the world where this exiled
God can be encountered and where a relationship with him can be initiated.
But this place is a most unusual one, it is not where one would expect to find
God. According to Levinas, “The dimension of the divine opens forth from the
human face . . . His very epiphany consists in soliciting us by his destitution in
the face of the Stranger, the widow, and the orphan” (TI 78). The Infinite remains
exiled from cognition and perception, yet is manifest within the human face of
the destitute other.23 The abstract concept of Infinity is here deformalized by
Levinas in the concrete face of another human being in need! While the exiled
God can never be reached directly, he can, according to Levinas, be approached
indirectly through an encounter with the destitute other, himself exiled from the
world.
The connection between the Infinite and the destitute, exiled other must,
however, be further explored. Although it is possible to understand how the
Infinite other could lodge himself within the face of a human other—inasmuch
as that human other contains a dimension which remains, like the Infinite, exiled
and inaccessible to the subjective grasp—we do not yet fully understand the
connection between the manifestation of the Infinite and the face of a destitute
other. The destitute other seems to testify much more to the negation of the
Infinite, to the absence of God than to his presence. Indeed, the destitute other
seems the very antithesis of the Good, the very figure of one abandoned by God.
Why then choose the destitute other as the very locus of metaphysics? How is
this destitute other the “original form of transcendence?” (EP 71).
We need to better understand the mode of manifestation of the Infinite from
within the face of the destitute other. Levinas describes this manifestation not
as a vision of the Infinite, but as a solicitation or command from the Infinite: “A
relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is
a social relation. It is here that the Transcendent, infinitely other, solicits us and
appeals to us” (TI 78). But what of this solicitation? To what are we solicited?
What is it within the destitute other that solicits us? Levinas describes the
nature of this solicitation as that which “arrests the ‘negativity’ of the I”: “But
Desire and goodness concretely presuppose a relationship in which the Desirable
arrests the ‘negativity’ of the I that holds sway in the Same—puts an end to

92 Emmanuel Levinas
power and emprise. This is positively produced as the possession of a world I can
bestow as a gift on the Other—that is, as a presence before a face” (TI 50). The
“Desirable,” that is, the other, brings about an interruption of the “negativity”
of the I and “puts an end to power and emprise” of subjectivity. In other words,
the destitute other solicits subjectivity in that it calls for the interruption of
its power and emprise of the world. The destitute other solicits subjectivity by
casting a shadow on its innocent possession of the world and calling it to a
responsible sharing of the world. Such is the nature of the solicitation by the
destitute other. But we still do not understand the connection between the
interruption of subjectivity’s emprise on the world and the manifestation of the
Infinite? What is it in this interruption that allows for Infinity to be manifest
within the world of being?
According to Levinas, the Infinite is manifest in this interruption of
subjectivity because, for the first time, subjectivity finds its centrality in the
world put into question and itself called to a destiny beyond its preoccupation
with its own being and survival. It is this disturbance on the part of the destitute
other that constitutes the first manifestation of transcendence within the world
of subjectivity. Only the other is capable of operating this “conversion” of
subjectivity to transcendence: “The conversion of the soul to exteriority, to the
absolutely other, to Infinity, is not deducible from the very identity of the soul,
for it is not commensurate with the soul. . . . The idea of Infinity is revealed in the
strong sense of the term. There is no natural religion” (TI 61–2). Transcendence is
thus “revealed” to subjectivity by the human other. For the first time, subjectivity
is confronted with a concern beyond its own being and perseverance within
being. For the first time, subjectivity is in touch with a being that is outside of
its self-centered world: the destitute other, exiled from a world entirely revolving
around the self. The encounter with the destitute other constitutes the first
genuine experience of transcendence for a subjectivity hereto locked within its
own pursuits and interests, and in so doing paves the way for an encounter with
transcendence, or God.
Thus, we find, in the terms of Westphal that “God is defined not in
cosmological terms but in ethical terms.”24 In other words, God is not defined
according to Levinas as a substance, that is to say, as a Being or Cause at the
origin of the world to which all beings are related in a causal relationship or,
in Aristotelian terms, in a relationship of desire. Rather, the Levinassian God
is a Verb, a command which, while remaining hidden and dissimulated within
the face of the exiled other, nevertheless commands the self, solicits it to care
for that other. According to Westphal, “Levinas promised to oppose the God

of the Bible to the God of the philosophers and of rational theology, in this
case, the beautiful itself of erotic Platonism. He has done so by contrasting the
transcendence of the God who commands neighbor love to the immanence
of the god who is the obscure object of indigent needy desire . . . God is ‘high
and lofty’ not by being outside the world but by resisting my project of making
the whole of being, including god into satisfaction of my needs, means to my
ends.”25 Thus, the Levinassian God is not a Being to which the self turns to
in dire need, but on the contrary, the Verb which turns the self to the other,
interrupts it for the other and as such, opens up for the self the dimension of
the Infinite, or God.
The question arises, however, as to whether this command necessarily comes
from God. Indeed, one might wonder as to why this command to care for the
other could not be inherent to that other herself. Does not the other contain
enough transcendence and height to command the self? Why then bring in the
concept of God? Westphal himself recognizes this problem: “If God is only ‘the
He in the depths of the you’ does this mean that God is not a distinct personal
being but rather the depth dimension of the human person?”26 John Caputo
reiterates this problem in his interrogation as to whether the concept of God is
not altogether superfluous in the Levinassian case for ethics, and present only
as a vestige of the philosopher’s deep-rootedness in the Jewish tradition. Could
ethics not function without God? “There is no need to say or think God who
orders me to the stranger . . . The word God is too much, too big and bombastic
for ethics; it crowds ethics out, draws too much attention to itself, interrupting
and suffocating ethics.”27 Caputo goes so far as to situate the command to the
other within the very self who hears that command, in a way reminiscent of the
Heideggerian call to care, thereby doing away altogether with the heterogeneity
of the command, whether it comes from God or from the other.28
And yet, one might respond back that if Levinas chooses to nevertheless
use the concept of God in his description of ethics, there must be a reason—
and a reason which goes beyond an unconscious allegiance on the part of our
philosopher to the Jewish tradition. We would like to propose that Levinas
uses the concept of God in order to signify the radical heteronomy of the
command with regard to both the other and the self. There are deep ethical
reasons for this. First, were the command situated in the self, as Caputo
seems to imply, we would find ourselves again in the Husserlian context of
a subjectivity at the origin of all meaning, including ethical meaning. This,
however, would constitute a regression from the pioneering work of Levinas
toward a genuine transcendence beyond the scope of the self. If we are to

94 Emmanuel Levinas
escape the inherent problem of solipsism of Husserlian philosophy—and which

Husserl himself conceded about his own philosophy—we need to reclaim the
concept of heterogeneity and, as Levinas is doing, come up with a convincing
phenomenological description of this dimension. Second, were the command
to be situated in the other, that is to say, were the other to exert an authority
upon the self, ordering it to itself, would we not find ourselves in a context of
coercion and violence of the self by the other? In both cases, it would seem
that doing away with the radical heterogeneity of the command, that is to say,
its exiled character from both the self and the other, leads one to a nonethical
context of ontological violence and coercion.
For the above reasons it can be argued that the heterogeneity of the command,
that is to say, its transcendent character, is the necessary condition for its ethical
character. To lose the heterogeneity of the command amounts then to losing the
ethical significance of that command and falling back into the ontological context
of power games between the self and the other. We now better understand the
significance of the concept of God in Levinas, inasmuch as the latter signifies
precisely the necessary heterogeneous horizon from which the command is
elicited. Only as such, as exiled from the ontological realm of the self and the
other, does the command have any ethical value. Thus, we might agree here with
Kosky that “ethics is not entirely an interpersonal affair.”29 A “Third” is necessary,
in the Kierkegaardian sense, which makes possible a solicitation of the self by the
other which does not stem from either dimensions, thereby preserving its ethical
character.30 Yet, there is no direct apprehension of this God who commands
us to the other, no clear and distinct idea of the divine height from which the
command originates.
And indeed, the height of the Infinite does not appear as a vision of light, but
in the humble garb of a discrete solicitation, as a “trace.” It is not seen but heard.
It does not present itself to a consciousness but nudges it, disturbs it, profoundly
disrupting its internal structure of self-interest.31 And yet, this voice is no more
than a “voice of the subtle silence,” (EP 75) ready to depart like an “undesirable
stranger” (EP 74) if not heeded. The disruption operated by the destitute, exiled
other, is not a violent one, making claims on the world and forcing itself upon
subjectivity. The solicitation of the destitute other is as fleeting as a whisper. I
hear it in the “wink-of-an-eye,” (EP 70) but then this voice, this solicitation,
withdraws back into its silence, its eclipse, its exile as soon as uttered to the point
where one wonders whether we even heard anything at all. And indeed, it is
easy to disclaim the presence of such a solicitation and claim that one has never
heard such a command, such a solicitation on the part of the other, that one’s
grasp on the world has never felt threatened by the presence of this destitute

other. This is precisely Sonia Sikka’s critique: “If they [Levinas’ assertions] are
phenomenological claims, do they mean to locate structures of experience which
everyone, upon reflection, could recognize as their own? But this is simply not
so . . . many will also claim that the height of God is not revealed to them only in
the human face, or that it is not revealed to them anywhere at all.”32 And indeed,
we more often than not pass by the exiled, estranged other without as much as a
glance. Where then is the solicitation, the command? Where is the Infinite in this
miserable face?
According to Levinas, this solicitation is never directly heard. It is structured
as a trace which withdraws as quickly as it has entered the realm of subjective
consciousness: “It enters in so subtle a way that unless we retain it, it has already
withdrawn. It insinuates itself, withdraws before entering. It remains only for
him who would like to take it up” (EP 70). How then does the trace of the
Infinite come to signify as such from within the destitute other’s face? What
event holds back this “undesirable stranger?” (EP 74). What event allows for this
“insinuation” of the Infinite to remain and not withdraw as quickly as it entered?
According to Levinas, the Infinite comes to the fore as Infinite not directly, as a
vision of light, but indirectly, through the response given by subjectivity: “It is
up to us, or, more exactly, it is up to me to retain or to repel this God without
boldness, exiled because allied with the conquered, hunted down and hence
ab-solute, thus disarticulating the very moment in which he is presented and
proclaimed, unrepresentable” (EP 70). The Infinite hidden within the destitute
other’s face can only be revealed through the manner that subjectivity chooses to
respond to the disruption brought about by the destitute other.
It is as such that subjectivity rises to its destiny as “partner to the
enigma”: “Enigma concerns so particularly subjectivity, which alone can
retain its insinuation, this insinuation is so quickly belied when one seeks
to communicate it, that this exclusivity takes on the sense of an assignation
first raising up such a being as a subjectivity. Summoned to appear, called to
an inalienable responsibility—whereas the disclosure of Being occurs in the
knowledge and sight of universality—subjectivity is enigma’s partner, partner
of the transcendence that disturbs being” (EP 74). The Infinite hidden and
dissimulated within the face of the exiled, destitute other, can only be retained
through a certain response on the part of subjectivity. The revelation of the
exiled and hidden God thus rests on the response of subjectivity to this higher
calling.33 But what is to be the nature of this response?
According to Levinas, the self retains the Infinite paradoxically through an
act of dispossession whereby it strips itself of its prerogative as sole possessor of
the world and offers it to the destitute other. In other words, one approaches the

96 Emmanuel Levinas
Infinite God not by cleaving to it, or by fusing with its essence, but by releasing
one’s grasp on the world and offering it to another. This action Levinas calls
generosity: “The response to the Enigma’s summons is the generosity of sacrifice
outside the known and the unknown, without calculation, for going on to
infinity. . . . I approach the infinite insofar as I forget myself for my neighbor
who looks at me; I forget myself only in breaking the undephasable simultaneity
of representation, in existing beyond my death. I approach the infinite by
sacrificing myself. Sacrifice is the norm and the criterion of the approach. And
the truth of transcendence consists in concording of speech with acts” (EP 76).
Thus, according to Claire Katz, “acting morally is not the result of the moral
rules given from God. To act ethically is not the result of acting in response to
a command from God. Rather to act ethically is already to be in contact with
God.”34 According to Katz, God is not to be encountered outside of the ethical
command. Rather, God is manifest precisely at the moment of ethics and not over
and beyond ethics. Commenting on the Akedah, Katz shows that the moment of
the religious occurs not, as Kierkegaard thought, in the divine injunction to go
beyond ethics but, precisely “when Abraham sees in the face of his son the true
meaning of the religious, puts down the knife and hears the angel.”35
But ethics as the lieu of the encounter with the Infinite strikes us as difficult to
understand. One would think that the essence of the religious consists precisely
in offering oneself or one’s best directly to the Infinite. Why deviate the self ’s
generosity back onto the world, back onto another human being, back onto
Isaac’s face? This way of approaching the Infinite is radically opposed to the
Greek understanding of transcendence. For the Greeks, the self must lose all
attachments to the world, including the deepest attachments to other human
beings, if it is to approach the Infinite.36 Thus the Greek view of transcendence
is, according to Katz, radically opposed to the Levinassian orientation inasmuch
as it “promotes detachment from this world.”37 How does an act of generosity
toward another human being possibly help the self approach the Infinite Other?
Does such an act not deviate the self ’s love and resources from this Infinite Other?
And, more importantly, why does Levinas connect generosity with sacrifice?38
Why this aura of death around the whole concept of generosity?
According to Levinas, the generosity of subjectivity is to be understood in
a much deeper sense than mere charity, where the self gives a part of itself to
relieve the suffering of others. What Levinas means by generosity is something
much more austere. What is asked of subjectivity is not that it shares part of a
world of which it remains the centerpiece, but an expulsion of the self out of its
central position in the world, a tearing of the world from the self ’s omnipotent

grasp. The gift of generosity, in the Levinassian sense, necessarily goes against
the self, against its survival, against its very perseverance in being. The gift of
generosity is one that must be ready to risk the life of the self to be given to the
other. As such, the gift of generosity culminates in sacrifice. But we still do not
understand the connection between this quasi annihilation of the self before the
destitute other and the approach of the Infinite? Why must the self give itself to
an other before it can approach God?
Generosity toward a human other is the only way of approaching
transcendence because it is the only action radical enough to destroy the self ’s
immanent prison of selfishness. The self must die, literally or figuratively, before
it can have any encounter with a realm beyond the scope of its self-interest. The
self ’s immanent bubble must be burst for the self to encounter genuine otherness;
the self must come undone before it can stand before the Infinite God.39 Levinas
speaks of this trauma in terms of a breakdown of the subjective structure: “The
noncontained, which breaks the container or the forms of consciousness, thus
transcends the essence or the ‘move’ of knowable being which carries on its being
in presence; it transcends the interestedness and simultaneity of a representable
or historically reconstitutable temporality; it transcends immanence” (GP
142). Only at the price of a rupture of the “forms of consciousness” and of
“interestedness” will the self ever come into proximity of the dimension of the
Infinite. This is the meaning of the Cartesian “thought that understands more
than it understands, more than its capacity” (EP 76). Only a subjectivity open
to a complete rupture of its categories and structure is capable of receiving the
Infinite. Only a subjectivity capable of undergoing exile is capable of receiving
the exiled God.
The analyses of Descartes take, in the light of these descriptions, a whole new
meaning. The abstract concept of “infinity overflowing the idea of infinity” takes
on the concrete meaning of an overflow of subjectivity beyond its own selfish
concerns toward the need of another: “Infinity overflowing the idea of infinity,
puts the spontaneous freedom within us into question. It commands and judges
it and brings it to its truth. The analyses of the idea of Infinity, to which we gain
access only starting from an I, will be terminated with the surpassing of the
subjective” (TI 51). The “surpassing of the subjective” is no longer conceptual,
as in Cartesian philosophy, but ethical—subjectivity does not awaken to a
formal idea which transcends subjective categories, but to the concrete need of
an other which transcends and goes against all self-interest. Such is the nature,
according to Levinas of a “thought thinking more than it thinks”: “This trauma
which cannot be assumed, inflicted by the Infinite on presence, or this affecting

98 Emmanuel Levinas
of presence by the Infinite—this affectivity—takes shape as a subjection to the

neighbor. It is thought thinking more than it thinks, desire, the reference to the
neighbor, the responsibility for another” (GP 142). Such a thought does not think
more than it thinks on virtue of its transcending itself cognitively, but because
it breaks the barriers of thought, breaks through the conceptual immanence of
subjectivity and solicits an action on the part of subjectivity. The transcending
does not occur conceptually, but ethically, not through the possession of an idea
exceeding its ideatum, but through an embodied, concrete response to the need
and cry on the part of an exiled other transcending all self-interest and subjective
preoccupations. As such, “for Levinas, God is not a moral a priori, but is always
encountered a posteriori and always at the juncture of our dealings with other
people.”40
The Infinite is thus revealed within being not through an extraordinary idea,
as Descartes thought, but through an extraordinary action: “Disinterestedness
in the radical sense of the term, ethics designates the improbable field where
the Infinite is in relationship with the finite without contradicting itself by
this relationship, where on the contrary it alone comes to pass as Infinity and
as awakening. The Infinite transcends itself in the finite, it passes the finite,
in that it directs the neighbor to me without exposing itself to me” (GP 146).
Generosity toward a human other thus makes possible the phenomenalization
of the Infinite within the realm of being. It is these actions of disinterestedness,
by which subjectivity testifies to an order other than that of the perseverance
in being, which reveal the Infinite within being. It is through the self-less act
of generosity that the Infinite comes to pass, presents itself, is to be found, is
welcomed within the realm of being. The glory of the Infinite thus does not shine
in the light of an epiphany but in this generous gift to the destitute other: “The
work of justice—the uprightness of the face to face—is necessary in order that the
breach that leads to God be produced—and ‘vision’ here coincides with this work
of justice. Hence metaphysics is enacted where the social relation is enacted—in
our relations with men. There can be no ‘knowledge’ of God separated from the
relationship with men. The Other is the very locus of metaphysical truth, and
is indispensable for my relation with God” (TI 78). Thus, according to Kosky,
“responsibility itself . . . is the revelation of God.”41 Justice testifies to the presence
of God in the world, bears witness to his presence within the world. Without this
justice, the Infinite recedes into darkness, into hiddenness and absence.
It is in this sense that the exiled subjectivity—the subjectivity that has been
dispossessed of all its world—is partner to the Infinite. Far from being an outcast
from the gods—as the Greeks thought—the exiled subjectivity is partner to the

enigma: “Summoned to appear, called to an inalienable responsibility—whereas

the disclosure of Being occurs in the knowledge and sight of universality—
subjectivity is enigma’s partner, partner of the transcendence that disturbs being”
(EP 74). The exiled self, the self which has given up its perseverance in being for
the sake of the other, is the only testimony of God’s presence in the world. The
exile of the self thus gives way to a hospitality of God within the world, “such that
subjectivity, despairing in the solitude in which this absolute humility leaves it,
becomes the very locus of truth” (EP 71). The exiled God can only find a haven
in the humbled, exiled self—the self that has given up all quest for survival and
which has given up all hope of finding a home in this world. Levinas reverses
here the Greek signification of exile. Exile is not here seen in a negative light as
the sign of a separation from God, but becomes the very locus of his presence.
Exile does not imply a homecoming away from the world, as for the Greeks, but
becomes an act of hospitality of God within the world! Exile is not, for Levinas,
the sign of a remoteness from God, but the very condition of his welcoming
within the world.
The spiritual journey toward the hidden and exiled God passes through the
painful experience of exile. Thus was the spiritual journey of Abraham, the father
of the three monotheistic religions.42 His destiny and that of his descendants
was to be one of exile. We now understand better, however, the spiritual wealth
contained in the experience of exile. Far from constituting, as the Greeks thought,
a spiritual impoverishment, a lesser state, exile constitutes the very structure of
an approach to the Infinite God. Only a subjectivity capable of exile, of losing
its grounds, its comfort zone, is capable of encountering a being beyond its own
categorizations and conceptualizations. And only a subjectivity capable of losing
its hold on the world, is capable of opening up to a need outside of itself, to a cry
outside of its own preoccupations, thus hearing the solicitation of the Infinite.
Finally, only such an exiled subjectivity is capable of welcoming the exiled God
within the world. We now fully understand the Psalmist’s plea: “I am a stranger
in the world, do not hide from me my your commandments” (Ps. 119.19 NIV).
There, in the humbled and exiled subjectivity, the hiddenness and silence of
God become the light of a revelation, of a solicitation toward an otherwise than
being.

7
An Aesthetics of Exile
Introduction
In one of his lesser known works, Plato describes art as a way for human
beings to lift themselves above the trivialities of everyday life and have a part
in the divine. In the Ion, Plato speaks of the poet as an intermediary between
humankind and the gods.1 The poet is a “light thing, and winged and sacred”2
who has a part in the divine; he is not of this world and lives within it as an eternal
exiled whose role is to elevate human beings to the spiritual realm. Art for Plato
can thus be understood as a journey to transcendence, allowing for humans to
elevate themselves from the material realm of daily trivialities and concerns to the
spiritual realm of the gods. Western thought has followed in Plato’s footsteps in
its views on art and Levinas’ contemporary, Heidegger, will carry on the Platonic
tradition of understanding art as a quasi spiritual, even prophetic calling.3 We
will see that for Heidegger, the poet is understood in terms very similar to Plato’s
as the “wine-bearer of the gods,”4 as a bridge between humanity and the spiritual
realm which often goes forgotten in the trivialities of daily existence.
Such a view of art came, however, under heavy critique in the aftermath of
the two world wars. In the shadow of the Holocaust, the figure of the artist as
the “wine-bearer of the gods” became intolerable. That the gods could allow
for beauty to flourish and inspiration to flow among the millions of dead and
dying seemed a cruel joke. Any attempt to elevate mankind above the harsh
reality came to be seen as a form of escapism, of inauthenticity, as a way to shield
oneself from the cruel reality of the war.5 Levinas himself was a part of this
critical movement of art and explains his reticence toward this exilic character of
the poet and of his art in the following terms: “This is not the disinterestedness
of contemplation but of irresponsibility. The poet exiles himself from the city
. . . there is something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment.
There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during a plague”

An Aesthetics of Exile 101
(RS 142). In a way, the twentieth century marks the end of art, the end of beauty,
and of the aesthetic categories of Western thought, as is observed by Françoise
Armengaud in her essay on Levinassian aesthetics.6
But must we do away with art altogether? Must we not reiterate Heidegger’s
question: “What are poets for in destitute times?”7 Is not art possible, even
necessary in times of need and must all art fall into the pitfall of escapism? Is
Adorno’s statement that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric,”8 to be
taken as the final judgment on art as an unwelcome and inappropriate form
of divertissement oblivious to the tragedy of the human condition? And yet,
this character of disengagement is intrinsic to the artistic endeavor as Levinas
himself observes: “The completion, the indelible seal of artistic production by
which the artwork remains essentially disengaged, is underestimated” (RS 131).
The destiny of the artwork is precisely to elevate, to transcend the ordinary
realm: “It bears witness to an accord with some destiny extrinsic to the course of
things, which situates it outside the world, like the forever bygone past of ruins,
like the elusive strangeness of the exotic” (RS 131). Art is necessarily “ex-otic,” it
is intrinsically alien and foreign to daily experiences. The question is, can art still
retain its essential character of exoticism, of exile, without falling into deception
and inauthenticity?
Responding to this question will necessitate a profound rethinking of
Western aesthetic categories as to redefine, not the intrinsic exoticism of art,
but the orientation that this exoticism is to take if art is to maintain its truth-
content. In other words, can art still open up a transcendent dimension without
being deceptive, evasive, or irresponsible? This is precisely Silva Benso’s
question. Commenting on Levinas’ aesthetics she asks whether a possible
ethical orientation of art is completely out of the question for the philosopher.9
Have we not been too quick to condemn art to the realm of the unethical and
inhuman?10 Can art maintain its exilic, exotic character without becoming a form
of escapism and inauthenticity? Such are the questions that Levinas will address
regarding art and which will lead him to an in-depth study of modern art in
contrast with classical art. We shall see that for Levinas, art must maintain its
exilic character as a journey to transcendence but this transcendence will be no
more, as in classical art, the realm of the gods, but the realm of the human other.
Modern art, according to Levinas, takes its spectator on a whole new journey to
transcendence, a journey which we will see, has an ethical orientation.
But we do not yet understand clearly the connection between modern art
and ethics. Anyone familiar with modern aesthetic investigations will, far to the
contrary, see a refutation of ethics, of Western morality, and of any meaning

102 Emmanuel Levinas
beyond the chaos of existence. How then can Levinas perceive in this art
an ethical orientation? According to Chalier, the possibility of art opening
up an ethical orientation is difficult to establish from the Levinassian canon.
While Levinas concedes here and there to this possibility, his stance remains
overwhelmingly suspicious of art.11 And indeed, far from giving us an ethical
orientation, this art is fragmentary, chaotic, and lacerates, as Levinas observes,
“deep ‘fissures’ in being.”12 Such an art is the very expression of a general loss
of orientation, of a deep rupture in the fiber of society. How can such an art
give way to any type of ethics? Again, according to Chalier, this destruction of
representation by art, although it constitutes a legitimate act of iconoclasm and a
rupture of the fiber of being, does not necessarily open up to the ethical question
of justice.13
Yet, it is possible to argue that, in the Levinassian corpus, it is precisely
in this fragmentary and exilic character of modern art that an orientation to
ethics can be apprehended. In line with David Gritz’s interpretation, one can
discern an evolution in Levinas’ understanding of art from a rigid concept of
art as representation and idolatry, to an understanding of the more fluid and
iconoclastic forms of art as expressed through poetry. Such an art is anything but
grounded in being but rather seeks a departure out of the ontological categories
of being. And as such, according to Silva Benso, it opens up the possibility of
“an ethical significance that enables to discover, within art itself, the presence of
the transcendent, the trace of the other in her absolute alterity.”14 But this exilic
character of art must be understood in a whole different way than an exile to the
realm of the gods as it was in classical art. It is here that we depart from Benso
whose interpretation remains, in our view, too close to the Heideggerian view
of the poet’s exile as testifying to a divine calling versus a genuine concern for
the human face. And yet the two exiles are connected; one cannot understand
the latter without a proper understanding of the former. We must therefore
backtrack to the Western conception of art as exemplified by Heidegger’s
aesthetic philosophy, if we are to understand Levinas’ ethical turn.
I The abode of the gods
Following in Plato’s footsteps, Heidegger ascribes to art a quasi-divine quality

when he writes in his commentary on Hölderlin’s poetry: “The writing of poetry
is the fundamental naming of the gods.”15 According to Heidegger, poetry is
that which reveals the dimension of the gods within being. To name is to make

appear, is to express. The naming of the gods by the poets amounts to a bringing
to the fore, a making manifest of the gods within the realm of beings. Thus
the divine dimension, still dormant within the realm of beings, is explicitly
named, is rendered manifest, through art. This naming of the gods hence serves
to awaken humankind to the divine dimension which is always present and
implicit in the realm of beings but becomes explicit through the poetic naming.
The role of art, according to Heidegger, is to elevate man to the hidden order of
things, the noesis hidden behind the chaos of reality. In Heideggerian terms, the
human endeavor of art elevates above the chaotic world of beings and brings out
the metaphysical dimension of the gods. Art reminds human beings that they
are called to much more than to care for the world around them; they are also
to protect the metaphysical realm of the gods. Human beings, for Heidegger,
have a metaphysical vocation: To be the guardians of the sacred dimension of
the gods.
The poet, thus, has a metaphysical function; he or she elevates us above the
realm of beings in which we live, and gives us a taste for that which is above and
beyond.16 Quoting Hölderlin, Heidegger writes: “Yet it behoves us, under the
storms of God, yet poets! With uncovered head to stand, with your own hand to
grasp the very lightning-flash paternal, and to pass, wrapped in song the divine
gift to the people.”17 The role of the poet, according to Heidegger, is, thus, to pass
on a “divine gift” to the people. This divine gift cannot be directly passed to the
people because of its exceeding light and brilliance. It is a “lightning-flash” far
too dangerous to be handled by the common mortal. Only the poet can perceive
it as such and then, “wrapped in song,” pass it over to the people. The divine gift
or presence is inaccessible to the human eye, but it lets itself be wrapped and
transmitted in the artist’s work. Within the artwork hides the divine presence.
The artwork allows for the incarnation of the divine, for the proximity of the
divine to be made possible.
The poet, therefore, serves as an intermediary between the people and the
gods. Quoting Hölderlin once more, Heidegger compares the poet to a priest:
“I know not, and what use are poets in a time of need? But thou sayest, they are
like the wine-god’s holy priests, who go from land to land in the holy night.”18
The divine vocation of the poet is thus a very special one. Not everyone can be a
poet. Not everyone can apprehend the divine lightning and transmit it. It is also
a very hard vocation, for the one who accepts it, accepts, by the same token, an
eternal exile in the world. The poet, according to Hölderlin, goes “from land to
land.” He is never able to settle complacently in the realm of beings. His mind
is always elsewhere, his preoccupations are always beyond the daily toil of his

contemporaries. Heidegger hence speaks of the poet as one who has been “cast-
out”: “The poet himself stands between the former—the gods, and the latter—
the people. He is one who has been cast out—out into that Between, between
gods and man.”19 The poet, because of his stance as “go-between” mankind and
the gods, cannot belong to the realm of beings, is already, by his vocation, an
outcast, for “how could this most dangerous work be carried on and preserved,
if the poet were not ‘cast out’ from everyday life and protected against it by
the apparent harmlessness of his occupation?”20 The poet is thus, according to
Heidegger, by essence and by vocation, an exiled in the world. Forever alienated
and estranged from the realm of beings, he is so in virtue of a higher calling: That
of being the guardian of the metaphysical realm of Being.
And yet, there is something disturbing in this lofty calling of the poet. Could
the estrangement of the poet not become a perverse form of escapism? Does
not the loftiness of the poet’s calling deter him or her from the complexities and
difficulties encountered in the realm of beings? The passage quoted above seems
to hint already at this in speaking of the occupation of the poet as a protection
“against” everyday life. The poet seems, in this passage, to have taken flight from
the overwhelming difficulties of daily life and found a refuge in his or her poetry.
Art would then seem to shield one against the realities and complexities of daily
life. Is then the lofty calling of the poet nothing else but an unrecognized form
of escapism on his or her part? Nothing else but veiled cowardice? Heidegger
himself recognizes these objections to his analyses: “But when Hölderlin ventures
to say that the dwelling of mortals is poetic, this statement, as soon as it is made,
gives the impression that, on the contrary, ‘poetic’ dwelling snatches man away
from the earth. For the ‘poetic,’ when it is taken as poetry, is supposed to belong
to the realm of fantasy. Poetic dwelling flies fantastically above reality.”21
Immediately after this quote he adds, however: “The poet counters this
misgiving by saying expressly that poetic dwelling is a dwelling ‘on this earth.’
Hölderlin thus not only protects the poetic from a likely misinterpretation,
but by adding the words ‘on this earth’ expressly points to the nature of poetry.
Poetry does not fly above and surmount the earth in order to escape it and hover
over it. Poetry is what first brings man onto the earth, making him belong to it,
and thus brings him into dwelling.”22 Quoting Hölderlin again, Heidegger adds:
“Full of merit, yet poetically man dwells upon this earth.”23 The exile of the poet
is then no true exile. It is an exile, which paradoxically brings him to dwell upon
the earth. Poetry is what reveals to humankind its true place in the world. Not
only is man or woman to inhabit the earth, to toil, work and acquire within the
world, but also is he or she to dwell upon it, that is to safeguard, from within that

world, the metaphysical dimension of the gods. Only when the realm of the gods
has again become the sacred trust of mankind, will human beings again find
their proper place, or dwelling, within the realm of beings. Quoting Hölderlin,
Heidegger writes: “May, if life is sheer toil, a man lift his eyes and say: so I too
wish to be? Yes.”24
Heidegger explains: “Only in the realm of sheer toil does man toil for ‘merits.’
There he obtains them for himself in abundance. But at the same time, in this
realm, man is allowed to look up, out of it, through it, toward the divinities.
The upward glance passes aloft toward the sky, and yet it remains below on the
earth. The upward glance spans the between of sky and earth. This between is
measured out for the dwelling of man.”25 The exile of the poet is thus transitory
and ultimately aims at recovering humankind’s authentic place in the world: its
place “between” the sky and earth. Art or poetry is what allows this “upward
glance” which spans the between of sky and earth wherein man and woman’s
authentic dwelling lies. Art, for Heidegger, serves to orient mankind toward an
authentic dwelling within the world by unveiling to it its dual citizenship to both
the earth and sky. Far from advocating escapism, the poet brings humankind
back to its earthly dwellings, to its earthliness. Yet, at the same time, through
art, this dwelling is transfigured as the very abode of the gods. Far from “flying
fantastically above reality,” art calls mankind back to its forgotten responsibility,
to a deep and sacred trust: that of protecting, within the realm of beings, the
spiritual dimension of the gods.
This role of art as the guardian of a transcendent dimension will be, however,
heavily criticized by Levinas. While Levinas himself acknowledges with
Heidegger that authentic humanity is found in connection with transcendence,
Levinas is clearly bothered with the Heideggerian definition of transcendence.
The Heideggerian transcendence remains, according to Levinas, dangerously
abstract and as such, occults a much more important transcendence: that of
other human beings. In one of his essays on art, Levinas observes: “The orthodox
Heideggerians admit of no other discrimination features between two thoughts
than those involving the truth of being that governs them. But that modus
operandi presupposes the primacy of the truth of being, which is still in question
here. They have nothing but disdain for any reference to ethical certainties,
which would indicate an inferior thinking, an insufficient thinking—opinion.
The appeal to ethics runs contrary to the fundamental dogma of Heideggerian
orthodoxy: priority of being in relation to beings. Yet ethics does not replace
truth with falsehood, but situates man’s first breath not in the light of being but
in the relation to a being, prior to the thematization of that being” (MB 136–7).

The Heideggerian preoccupation with the ancient realm of the gods which
he elsewhere terms the realm of Being26 is problematic for Levinas because it
brings about a “disdain” for the realm of beings27 of which human beings are a
central part. Such a preoccupation with Being, with the realm of the gods, has
no use or interest in the realm of beings, in ethics and in social relations. These
are relegated to inferior, domestic, and mundane preoccupations, too trivial for
the philosopher to regard as a priority. For Heidegger, the priority is always that
of Being over beings and this is what constitutes for Levinas the central problem
in the Heideggerian worldview and gives rise to the Levinassian “invitation to
leave the Heideggerian world” (MB 135). Such a view cannot evade, according
to Levinas, the pitfall of escapism. The Heideggerian view of art constitutes an
escape from the responsibilities associated with the realm of beings, associated
with the world of human beings, and this in spite of its careful attention to the
earthliness of the human dwelling. Such a dwelling for Levinas might encompass
heaven and earth but it forgets a central feature of dwelling: that of sheltering
other human beings, of welcoming them and giving them hospitality.28
As a consequence, the Heideggerian conception of art does not escape the
temptation of what Levinas will come to describe as the “essentially disengaged”
character of artwork in general, and more specifically, of classical art: “The
completion, the indelible seal of artistic production by which the artwork remains
essentially disengaged, is underestimated—that supreme moment when the last
brush stroke is done, when there is not another word to add to or to strike from
the text, by virtue of which every artwork is classical . . . we might wonder if
we should not recognize an element of art in the work of the craftsmen, in all
human work, commercial and diplomatic, in the measure that, in addition to its
perfect adaptation to its ends, it bears witness to an accord with some destiny
extrinsic to the course of things, which situates it outside the world, like the
forever bygone past of ruins, like the elusive strangeness of the exotic” (RS 131).
The essential character of classical art lies, thus, according to Levinas, in this
disengagement, this exile of art with regard to the daily lives and concerns of
human beings. Such an exile of art is, for Levinas, profoundly problematic in
that, far from being revelatory and opening up a dimension of transcendence, it
diverts one’s attention away from genuine transcendence: that of other human
beings and their needs and concerns.
Levinas describes this lack of transcendence in classical art in terms of its
incapacity for “dialogue”: “The work is completed in spite of the social or material
causes that interrupt it. It does not give itself out as the beginning of a dialogue”
(RS 131). What Levinas means here by dialogue is the degree to which a work

of art is inhabited or not by the concerns and problems of the world at large.
A work of art which shows no concern whatsoever for the human issues
surrounding it shows, according to Levinas, an incapacity for dialogue. It is a
work completely locked within its own truth, it is a world completely isolated
from the external world. The depiction of beauty when everything around
it speaks of destruction and despair, is a work oblivious to its surroundings. Such
an artwork is not impacted by the outside world, nor is it capable of reaching
out or impacting that world. This art is encapsulated within itself, incapable
of genuine transcendence. This character of self-enclosure of classical art
within itself—without any reference to the outside world—is named by
Levinas “idolatry.” Just as the idol has no ears and no mouth,29 classical art
is not affected by reality and does not speak to reality. Levinas observes:
“The insurmountable caricature in the most perfect image manifests itself
in its stupidness as an idol. The image qua idol leads us to the ontological
significance of its unreality” (RS 137).
As such, art constitutes for Levinas, a dimension of “evasion”: “Art,
essentially disengaged, constitutes, in a world of initiative and responsibility,
a dimension of evasion” (RS 141). And it is this “dimension of evasion,” of
exile from the concerns and problems of daily existence, which constitutes,
according to Levinas, the profoundly problematic character of classical art:
“The world to be built is replaced by the essential completion of its shadow.
This is not the disinterestedness of contemplation but of irresponsibility.
The poet exiles himself from the city. For this point of view, the value of the
beautiful is relative. There is something wicked and egoist and cowardly in
artistic enjoyment. There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of
feasting during a plague” (RS 142). Such an art is problematic because it diverts
one from one’s responsibilities in the world. Such an exile is not aesthetic
for Levinas, but irresponsible. And the art it gives rise to is not beautiful but
shameful as “feasting during a plague.”
The Heideggerian poet is, hence, one who, in his attraction to the light of
Being, of the gods, has remained deaf and blind to the human reality and to
his responsibilities toward this reality. Such is the danger of any art seeking to
reach the domain of the gods: an indifference to the destitution and neediness
crying out in the human condition, an indifference to ethical concerns. The lofty
spirituality of classical art hides a perverse indifference to the human plight.
Such was, incidentally, the state of the arts in Nazi Germany where the highest
forms of art coexisted with the deepest forms of cruelty and barbarism. This is
why, for Levinas, there is a danger in situating our highest calling in the arts,

in the revealing of the gods and of the metaphysical dimension of Being. For
such a calling can come hand in hand with a callousness toward one’s fellow
human beings. It is “for this reason art is not the supreme value of civilization,
and it is not forbidden to conceive a stage in which it will be reduced to a source
of pleasure—which one cannot contest without being ridiculous—having its
place, but only a place, in man’s happiness. Is it presumptuous to denounce the
hypertrophy of art in our times, when, for almost everyone, it is identified with
spiritual life” (RS 142). To identify art—that is, the metaphysical quest for the
abode of the gods—with the highest calling of humanity is, according to Levinas,
dangerous. For Levinas, the “spiritual life” of the human condition lies altogether
elsewhere and it will take a completely new artistic endeavor to reveal this other
metaphysical dimension. Such will be the new aesthetic orientation adopted by
what Levinas calls “modern art.”30
II The exile of humanity
Up until now, transcendence had been defined in Platonic terms as a realm over
and above reality. Transcendence corresponded from Plato to Heidegger to an
abstract realm of ideas or of Being. The role of art, in this context, could only
be understood as pertaining to an abstract realm of metaphysics. We have seen
however that such an art poses the problem of a callous indifference to human
reality. Such an art is, according to Levinas, “wicked,” “egoistic,” and “cowardly”
(RS 142). Must then art abandon its quest for transcendence, its exilic character,
if it is to avoid the pitfall of escapism? But is art still art if it does not take us
elsewhere, beyond our daily preoccupations? Is this testimony to transcendence
not the very essence of the artwork? Indeed, Levinas realizes this and it is why
he does not speak of abandoning the transcending intention of art, but rather,
of redefining transcendence. But what kind of transcendence exists outside of
the spiritual and metaphysical realm of the gods? What kind of transcendence is
Levinas attempting to describe?
In one of his earliest essays on modern art,31 Levinas highlights the fact that
the transcendence sought after by modern art is radically different from that
sought after by classical art: “The painting then does not lead us beyond the
given reality but somehow to the hither side of it. It is a symbol in reverse” (RS
136). Classical art has always aimed at a realm “beyond” daily reality; it has
always sought after a more elevated, more idealistic, more divine realm. Art from
Plato on to Heidegger reflects this preoccupation. For Plato, art constituted a
window on the realm of the gods, whereas for Heidegger, art constitutes the

guardian of the metaphysical realm of Being. Modern art, on the other hand,
seems to have abandoned this quest for the “reverse” (RS 136). Modern art does
not seek a “beyond” anymore, but a “hither” side of reality.32 But are we at a loss
to understand what Levinas means here by “hither” and, especially, how this
“hither” can still count as a transcending realm? Is an art of the “hither” still
art? Indeed, according to Petitdemange, the concept of the “hither” in Levinas
has no ethical resonance, does not signify a transcendent realm but, far to the
contrary, signifies a regression to the prison of the sensible.33 Chalier will go so
far as to interpret the orientation of the “hither” as a return to the undefined
and undifferentiated dimension of the “il y a” constituting the very inversion of
ethics.34 Levinas does not expound in the essay cited above, but the concept of
the “hither” comes back in a later essay found in Existence and Existents.
In this particular essay, Levinas does not speak explicitly of a “beyond”
versus a “hither,” but of an abandonment of perception over sensation. In
speaking of the movement of modern art, Levinas observes that “the movement
of art consists in leaving the level of perception so as to reinstate sensation,
in detaching the quality from this object reference. Instead of arriving at the
object, the intention gets lost in the sensation itself, and it is this wandering
about in sensation, in aisthesis, that produces the aesthetic effect. Sensation is
not the way that leads to an object but the obstacle that keeps one from it, but it
is not of the subjective order either: it is not the material of perception. In art,
sensation figures as a new element. Or better, it returns to the impersonality of
elements” (EE 47). The movement is no more a classical one seeking to create
beautiful forms, thus opening a window on the elevated realm of ideas, to an
aesthetic “beyond,” but a return to that which precedes the forging of forms, the
“hither” of sensation.
In this way, Levinas comments on modern art’s privileging of raw texture,
color, matter over form. He speaks of contemporary painting as “a struggle with
sight” (EE 50). In other words, the contemporary painting no longer seeks to
represent an object or a form, but rather is interested in the material which
preceded this form: The “naked elements” (EE 51), the “color” indifferent to
its object (EE 47), “the materiality of the sound” (EE 47), the detachment of a
“word” from within a poem (EE 48). This search for the “hither” of sensation
behind the “beyond” of the form thus constitutes the main intention of modern
art. There is no longer a concern in modern art for form, but rather a break with
form in order to recover the lost and forgotten dimension of the sensible: “In
contemporary painting, things no longer count as elements of a universal order
which the look would give itself, as a perspective. On all sides fissures appear
in the continuity of the universe. The particular stands out in the nakedness of

its being. In the representation of matter by modern painting this deformation,

that is, this laying bare, of the world is brought about in a particularly striking
way” (EE 50–1).
Levinas speaks of a “revolt” (EE 51) of contemporary painting, of a rupture
with the “beyond” of light, form, and beauty, with an ordered and harmonious
world. Modern art has abandoned its Apollonian calling to express the realm
of ideas and the hidden order of the cosmos.35 Rather, modern art testifies to
a “shattered world” (EE 49), to an “end of the world” (EE 50): “Such are them
undifferential blocks from which Rodin’s statues emerge. Reality is posited in
them in its exotic nakedness as a worldless reality, arising from a shattered world.
. . . The investigations of modern painting in their protest against realism come
from this feeling of the end of the world and of the destruction of representation
which it makes possible” (EE 49–50). Modern art constitutes itself as a revolt
against the well-ordered and harmonious world depicted by classical art. It
shatters all attempts at representation, at form, at “worldliness” and is left only
with fragments of that world, the building blocks, the elements having constituted
that world. Modern art can hence be understood as a departure, an exile, from
the luminous and well-ordered world of classical art. Modern art shatters the
world of classical art, expulses itself violently out of it.
Consequently, contrarily to the Heideggerian poet, the modern artist is no
longer concerned with the realm of the “beyond” of a hidden meaning behind
the chaos of reality. On the contrary, the modern artist capitalizes on this chaos,
reveals it as that forgotten “hither” hereto occulted by the deceptions of classical
art. The “hither” depicted by modern art thus defines an original chaos preceding
and continually jeopardizing human attempts at meaning, form, mastery, and
ordering. Levinas describes this original chaos as an “unnameable”: “Despite the
rationality and luminosity of these forms when taken in themselves, a painting
makes them exist in themselves, brings about an absolute existence in the very
fact there is something which is not in its turn an object or a name, which is
unnameable and can only appear in poetry” (EE 51). The modern artist is intent
on revealing the darkness ever present in all attempts at light and meaning: “The
sensible is being insofar as it resembles itself, insofar, as outside of its triumphal
work of being, it casts a shadow, emits that obscure and elusive essence, that
phantom essence which cannot be identified with the essence revealed in truth”
(RS 137). Behind all attempts at form, meaning, and light, there remains the
“obscure and elusive essence” of a sensible reality which defies all attempts at
meaning and form. And it is precisely this essence that modern art is seeking to
express.

Modern art thus testifies to a dimension of chaos and of primordial darkness

which precedes and resists all attempts at form and meaning. As such, according
to Levinas, modern art is a “space, that is, absolute exteriority: the exteriority
of absolute exile. This is what Blanchot calls the ‘second night,’ that which in
the first night, which is the normal ending and annihilation of day, becomes . . .
presence of absence, fullness of emptiness” (MB 133). The sensible dimension
that modern art seeks to reveal constitutes precisely such an exteriority. It is an
absolute exteriority first of all in the sense that it is not an exteriority relative to
the technical and formal ability of the artist. But it is an absolute exteriority also
in the sense that it constitutes an exteriority which precedes the artist himself or
herself. The artist is preceded by the sensible, he or she is affected by the sensible
before any attempt at creation. To rediscover the forgotten realm of the sensible
thus amounts to rediscovering a new form of exteriority: not the exteriority
fabricated by the artist as in classical art, but an exteriority which remains ever
outside of the formal and masterful gesture of the artist!
It is in this sense that modern art takes us on a journey of absolute exile.
Exile of the artist but also exile of the spectator from the world of forms, of
harmony, of order into the chaos which refuses all world, which remains
resolutely “worldless” (EE 49). The exile here is no more the inauthentic exile
tainted with escapism of classical art. The exile sought after by the modern artist
is an exile seeking to recover the true reality behind the masks of beauty. It is
an exile which takes one not to a fictional “beyond,” but to the very heart of
reality—to its intrinsic chaos, its fragmentation, disorder and in Blanchot’s terms
“madness” (MB 132). Thus, there is another transcendence possible other than
that of the realm of the gods. There is another way for art to transcend. But the
transcending intention of modern art does not take one to an abstract “beyond”
distinct from everyday life, but rather to the core of life itself—to that which in
life forever escapes human grasp and mastery, to the very temporality of life. The
expulsion from the world of forms, the “shattering” (EE 49) of that world by the
modern artist serves to bring the spectator to a renewed sense of transcendence:
that of this “unnameable” chaos and disorder, this “obscure and elusive essence”
(RS 137) which underlies all human endeavor.
There remains, however, a problem with this redefinition of transcendence.
Indeed, one might wonder what kind of transcendence chaos and darkness can
constitute? Can the dimension of chaos indeed count as a form of transcendence?
For Chalier, although modern art’s iconoclasm constitutes a gesture susceptible
to paving the way to transcendence, it does not per se raise the question of
ethics or of justice.36 And indeed, is not the chaos of our existence precisely

what constitutes the tragic immanence of our human condition, that in which
we are already situated, that within which, as Heidegger puts it, we are always
in effect “thrown?”37 One wonders with Chalier how this return to immanence
can possibly pave the way to an ethics of the transcendent other.38 And what of
darkness? Is not darkness that in which we always already find ourselves; is it
not our natural state of being, as Plato so acutely intuited in his allegory of the
cave? How can these two dimensions then constitute realms of transcendence?
And what of art? What does a return to the sensible, to the “hither,” to the chaos
of the elemental, to this original disorder, or tohu bohu39 have to do with art? Is
not art precisely the refusal of chaos, of disorder, and of the elemental? Must not
art, inasmuch as it is intrinsically creative, erect itself as the very antithesis of
this tohu bohu?
We must, however, deepen our understanding of the sensible. For Levinas, the
dimension of the sensible has a deeper significance that must be recovered if we
are to understand the full significance of modern art. And indeed, commentators
such as David Gritz have argued that inasmuch as modern art uncovers the
dimension of the sensible—which in Levinas has clear ethical implications—it
contains, arguably, an orientation toward the ethical. In his commentary on
Levinassian aesthetics Gritz explains that the introduction of the thematic of the
sensible in Levinas’ commentaries on art constitutes a shift in the Levinassian
understanding of art and opens up ethical possibilities for the aesthetic realm.40
Art, inasmuch as it partakes in the sensible dimension, contains the possibility
of an ethical orientation.41 Indeed, the exile brought about by modern art, the
shattering of the world, amounts to an act of iconoclasm through which the lifeless
face of the idol is abandoned for an encounter with genuine transcendence.42
We must now try to perceive beyond the shattering of the world, beyond the
darkness, the original chaos that results from this act of iconoclasm, a “presence
of absence” and a “fullness of emptiness” (MB 133).
According to Levinas, the dimension of the sensible which is rediscovered
by modern art is an important dimension because it is precisely the dimension
wherein the face of the other qua other will be encountered. In our first chapter
we argued that, while the face of the other cannot be encountered as an other
cognitively—through acts of representation or constitution on the part of
subjectivity—he or she can be encountered on the sensible level: “The sensible
is superficial only in its role being cognition. In the ethical relationship with the
real, that is, in the relationship of proximity which the sensible establishes, the
essential is committed” (RR 118). In other words, it is at the level of the sensible
that the “relationship of proximity,” that a genuine encounter is possible between

the self and the other. But this can strike one as strange. Sensibility remains, as
we have seen, the dimension of the “unnameable” (EE 51), the dimension of
the elemental before all perception and form. How then can the dimension of
the face, which is always bearer of a name and of an individuality, be found in the
indeterminacy of the sensible realm? If the sensible constitutes the darkness and
formless void preceding all cognition and artistry, how can the light of another
human being’s countenance be found at that level? It is difficult to understand
why Levinas situates the encounter with the face at the sensible level.
In Totality and Infinity, Levinas elaborates extensively on the reasons why
the sensible constitutes the lieu of encounter with the face. Levinas situates
the encounter with the face on the sensible level because it is at that level that
subjectivity defines itself as a sentient and physical being capable of pleasure
and of pain, of hunger and of thirst. And it is on this very concrete physical
level that, according to Levinas, the human encounter takes place at its deepest
level. The true and genuine human encounter occurs, according to Levinas,
not within a stabilized world where the self and the other happen upon each
other at work or at play, but when subjectivity and the other find each other in
a situation of profound insecurity and estrangement in the world. Only then,
according to Levinas, will a genuine encounter take place, for only then, do
the self and the other realize how profoundly they need each other in order
to survive. It is in the midst of insecurity, in moments of crisis, where a world
has been shattered, that the deep connection between the self and the other
is revealed, where their deep inter-relatedness is made manifest. “The relation
with the face is not an object-cognition. The transcendence of the face is at the
same time its absence from this world into which it enters, the exiling of a being,
his condition of being stranger, destitute, or proletarian. . . . The nakedness of
the face is destituteness. To recognize the other is to recognize a hunger. To
recognize the other is to give” (TI 75).
Thus the sensible, in its naked vulnerability and exposition to hunger, thirst,
hot and cold, constitutes the very lieu of an authentic encounter with the human
other. Indeed, the dimension of the sensible constitutes the very dimension of our
essential humanity, of our essential inter-connectedness. Beneath all the masks
we wear, beneath all the figures of mastery and beauty, lies our vulnerable and
destitute flesh, which, in spite of our proper appearance, hungers and thirsts for
food, for companionship and love. We now see the significance of the quest for
the sensible led by modern art: It is a desire to recover our forgotten humanity,
that sensible part of us which is vulnerable, fragile, and exposed, but also that
part of us which cries out for humanity, for the help or companionship of another

human being. Art thus functions here as the disclosure of what Levinas calls in
an interview with Françoise Armengaud, an original “wound” which, inasmuch
as it calls for a human response, opens up the possibility of ethics.43 As such, the
sensible as exposed by modern art is far from mere brute matter but signifies
beyond matter toward the secret of the face. This is incidentally also Chalier’s
interpretation and her only concession to a possible ethical orientation of art.44
Such is precisely the role of art according to Blanchot whom Levinas cites
in his essay on modern art: “One might say: the more the world is affirmed as
the future and the broad daylight of truth, where everything will have value,
bear meaning, where the whole will be achieved under the mastery of man and
for his use, the more it seems that art must descend toward that point where
nothing has meaning yet, the more it matters that art maintain the movement,
the insecurity and the grief of that which escapes every grasp and all ends. The
artist and the poet seem to have received this mission: to call us obstinately back
to error, to turn toward that space where everything we propose, everything we
have acquired, everything we are, all that is disclosed on earth (and in heaven),
returns to insignificance, and where what approaches is the nonserious and the
nontrue, as if perhaps thence sprang the source of all authenticity” (PN 135). In
other words, according to Blanchot, the role of art is to recover that dimension
beneath all the masks we have forged ourselves in the world of forms, beneath
“everything we have acquired,” and “everything we are,” and find there our true
sensible, vulnerable, precarious, and destitute human condition! This call “back
to error” is a deeper truth than the truth of the appearances we project all day
long in the world of forms, for it reveals the intrinsic “insecurity” and “grief ” of
our human condition beneath all of our attempts at acquiring a stable place in
the world.
The quest of modern art is thus to recover our essential condition of exile
and nomadism beneath our attempts at finding a place in the world: “Art,
according to Blanchot, far from elucidating the world, exposes the desolate,
lightless substratum underlying it, restores to our sojourn its exotic essence—
and, to the wonders of our architecture, their function of makeshift desert
shelters” (PN 137). Modern art constitutes a recovery, beneath the stable world
of forms within which we project our individual and independent selves, of the
underlying “substratum” of our intrinsic estrangement and vulnerability in the
world. Modern art thus unmasks our essential exile in the world, which we strive
all our lives to dissimulate through the fashioning of a given persona and status
within the world. We are all in a way classical artists, seeking to overcome the
intrinsic precariousness of our human condition with the forging for ourselves

of beautiful forms—be they the forms of status, or of class, or of wealth. But

underneath this “truth” we seek to make ourselves into, lies the “nontrue” of our
exposed and destitute human condition.
The quest of modern art for this “nontrue” beneath the world of forms
constitutes a rediscovery of our essential humanity and, as such, reveals our
intrinsic dependence on each other as human beings. In the world of forms,
there can be no such inter-dependence, for each form finds itself juxtaposed to
the other in a preordained space. But the entities in the deeper, nomadic world of
the sensible, intermingle, blend, affect each other. The other is no more the one
who keeps a designated place in the world next to me, but the one who, estranged
and exiled, needs me, whom I bear, and to whom I give the bread that I myself
hunger for. Thus, it is only in recovering our nomadic essence that a genuine
human encounter is possible. Therein lies the deeper significance of modern
art as Levinas observes: “For Blanchot, literature recalls the human essence of
nomadism. Is nomadism not the source of a meaning appearing in a light cast
by no marble, but by the face of man? If the authenticity Blanchot speaks of
is to mean anything other than a consciousness of the lack of seriousness of
edification, anything other than derision—the authenticity of art must herald
an order of justice” (PN 137). In other words, modern art’s rediscovery of our
intrinsic nomadic condition heralds “an order of justice,” an encounter with
the other where the self is defined as intimately connected to the other and
responsible for him or her. The significance of modern art hence lies in its ethical
orientation. In its rediscovery of the exilic character of the human condition,
modern art recovers the deep interdependence of the self and the other that lies
at the heart of such an exile.
As a result, the sensible “hither” of modern art opens up upon the “beyond” of
the human other, of the face. We are no longer in the classical context of idolatry
where transcendence was congealed in form, where temporality was stopped into
a fictional eternity. Instead of the “marble” form, modern art gives us the “face of
man” (PN 137). It is in this sense that modern art offers a form of transcendence
that is more authentic than that of classical art. Classical art offers an abstract,
illusory transcendence which never reaches the status of genuine exteriority in
that it always still emerges from the hand of the artist. Modern art, on the other
hand, in its investigation of our nomadic and exilic condition, reveals a genuine
transcendence: that of a human other. Contrarily to the idolatry of classical art,
which remains blind and mute to reality, modern art emerges from a renewed
sensibility to the “insecurity” and “grief ” of the human condition. And it is
as such that the work of art orients the self to the other qua other as Levinas

observes in a commentary on Paul Celan’s work: “The poem goes toward the
other. It hopes to find him freed and vacant. The poet’s solitary work of chiseling
the precious matter of words is the act of ‘driving a vis-à-vis out from behind
his cover.’ The poem ‘becomes dialogue, is often an impassioned dialogue, . . .
meetings, paths of a voice toward a vigilant Thou’—Buber’s categories! Would
they, then, be preferred to so much brilliant exegesis majestically descending
from the mysterious Schwarzwald upon Hölderlin, Trakel and Rilke, portraying
poetry as opening the world, the place between earth and sky?” (PN 41–2).
According to Levinas, the contribution of modern art is, contrarily to classical
art, which remains closed upon itself, to orient toward a dialogue, toward an
encounter with another human being. The disclosure of our nomadic essence
reveals to us our vulnerability and therein, our inter-connectedness, our deep
dependence on each other. Modern art, in its rediscovery of our nomadic,
exilic essence, thus, paradoxically opens up the possibility of a hospitality of
the other. This is Ciaramelli’s view according to which the uprooting from the
world brought about by a certain kind of poetry plunges us into a dimension of
strangeness and alienation which accomplishes a movement of transcendence
toward an other.45 As such, for Ciaramelli, the uprooting brought about by
modern art opens to the possibility of a human plurality irreducible to the
immanence of totality.46 Such is the significance of modern art according to
Levinas. Far from the Heideggerian view of art as that which establishes a
dwelling for humankind where the gods can find an abode, the Levinassian
view sees art as that which expulses us back into our pre-dwelling nomadic
state. For Levinas, art does not carve out a dwelling, but expulses us out of
all attempt at dwelling and at finding a place in the world, reminding us of
our essential exilic condition: “The literary space into which Blanchot . . .
leads us has nothing in common with the Heideggerian world that art renders
inhabitable. Art, according to Blanchot, far from elucidating the world, exposes
the desolate, lightness substratum underlying it, and restores to our sojourn
its exotic essence—and, to the wonders of our architecture, their function of
makeshift desert shelters” (PN 137).
In this, the modern artist departs from the Heideggerian poet who glosses
over the precariousness of our human condition, of the realm of beings, for
the luminous and eternal realm of the gods or of Being: “Heidegger’s world
is a world of lords who have transcended the condition of needy, wretched
human beings, or a world of servants whose only concern is for these lords.
Action, there is heroism; dwelling, the prince’s palace and the temple of the
gods, which are seen as part of the landscape before being places of shelter”

(PN 138). And it is precisely in this transcending of the “condition of needy,

wretched human beings” that the Heideggerian poet falls into the pitfall of
inauthenticity. His world is a “world of lords,” oblivious to the deep truth of the
human condition as precarious, vulnerable, and destitute. And in making us
insensible to our essential destitution, the classical figure of the Heideggerian
poet, closes our eyes and ears to the wretchedness of our peers: “Does a man
as a being, as this man standing before me, exposed to hunger, thirst, and cold,
truly accomplish, in his needs, the disclosure of being? Has he, already, as such,
been the vigilant guardian of the light?” (PN 137–8). In his obsession with
light, the Heideggerian poet turns away from the darkness and wretchedness
that surrounds him. Such an art is profoundly deceptive, according to Levinas,
in that it blinds one to the neediness of others around us, because it obliterates
the essential dimension of being, of human reality, it “implies asserting the
impossibility of human wretchedness” (PN 138). Classical art is deceptive in
that, blinded by the forms of beauty, we do not have ears and eyes for the
silent plea of the other which modern art uncovers. The artist as wine-bearer
of the gods has been unmasked as fundamentally blind and mute. His higher
lucidity hides a profound blindness and the light of his art hides a calloused
insensitivity to the plight of others.
The exile of classical art which sought to elevate humankind to the domain
of the gods must be replaced, according to Levinas, by a more authentic exile:
The exile of the iconoclast who, like the Biblical figure of Abraham, refuses to
be drawn into the luminous sphere of the idol and begins his or her journey to
transcendence by a fundamental act of “shattering” of that world.47 Such an exile
refuses the plasticity of the image and of the forms of beauty which coincides
with a “disdain” for the wretchedness and destitution of the human condition but
rather seeks to recover the deep sensible texture of the human condition. From
an orientation to the vertical and abstract transcendence of the gods, art can
come to sensitize one to the essential nomadism of the human condition. Such
is the endeavor of modern art which seeks no more the abode of the gods, but a
return to that forgotten dimension of human precariousness and vulnerability.
This new orientation brings us back to our essential human wretchedness. This
is no longer the Heideggerian “world of lords,” but the wilderness landscape
where we find ourselves vulnerable and exposed, hungering and thirsting for
love and companionship. In this wilderness, the artist is no longer the wine-
bearer of the gods but the voice of the oppressed. The artist is no longer a forger
of idols, but a witness to the Infinite hidden within the fragile and vulnerable
face of the destitute other.

Conclusion: The Wisdom of Exile
Upon arriving to the Promised Land, the Hebrews received a very strange
commandment indeed. Of the twelve tribes of Israel, one of them, the tribe
of Levi was not to receive an inheritance in the land. They were not to receive
property but were commanded to dwell as exiles among their brothers. Upon
their arrival at the gates of the Promised Land, the tribe of Levi is reminded that
it would have no share in the inheritance of Israel: “You will have no inheritance
in their land, nor will you have any share among them” (Num. 18.20 NIV). And
so, the Levites were to remain perpetually in exile within the land of Israel. Born
in exile, the Levites were to carry the memory of this exile within the land of
Israel. They were to testify to the perdurance of the dimension of exile within the
very process of sedentarization. The question of course, is why? Why must the
memory of exile be protected? And why this particular tribe, the tribe of Levi?
To understand this strange commandment, one must go back to the ancient
times when it was uttered. Originally, this commandment was enunciated as
a curse upon Levi (and his brother Simon) for killing Shechem and all of his
household for the violation of their sister Dinah. This was an honor-killing, in
retaliation for the disgrace that Shechem brought upon Dinah. When asked why
he did it, Levi answers: “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”
(Gen. 34. 31 NIV). Thus, it was in the name of tribal honor that this killing took
place, in order to atone for the disgrace that the violation of Dinah brought upon
the whole tribe. At the time, no curse is emitted. It is only upon his deathbed that
Jacob remembers this vengeful act on the part of his son Levi and curses him:
“Simon and Levi are brothers, their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not
enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in
their anger, and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce,
and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel”
(Gen. 49.5–7 NIV). Thus because of their tribal pride, because they privileged
tribal honor over human life, they are now cursed to remaining “scattered” and
“dispersed” among their brothers as eternal exiles.
However, the story doesn’t end there. This curse was later changed into
a blessing! Many centuries later, when the people of Israel were delivered
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Conclusion 119
from their bondage in Egypt and brought to the desert to be severely tested,
the children of Levi distinguished themselves, not this time through acts of
violence, as their father Levi had, but through their steadfast faithfulness to
God. As the people ceded to idolatry during their trial in the desert, Levi was
the only tribe that stood fast on the side of God and refused to bow before the
idol of the golden calf. At that time, the Levites were blessed and “set apart”
for God (Exod. 32.29 NIV). It is only later that this “setting apart” came to
be understood as a calling to a life of exile. Alluding to the episode of the
golden calf, the Scriptures explain: “This is why the Levites have no share or
inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance” (Deut. 10.9
NIV). Consequently, the exile and dispersion of the Levites is no longer seen as
a curse, but as a blessing, as a sign of election, as a sign of their special affiliation
with God.
And indeed, this exilic destiny of the Levite was associated with a spiritual
calling. In the midst of the land of Israel, the Levites were to testify to an order
beyond the national borders of Israel, to a kingdom which was not of this world.
Through his exile, the Levite was to guard the memory of a dimension which
could never be reduced to national identity, to a spiritual dimension beyond
the material and territorial realities. The role of the Levite was thus to teach
that there exist values higher than those of national honor, national solidarity,
or patriotism: spiritual values which are universal and exhort to love not only
one’s own brother but the “alien” and the “stranger,” to not only respect the one
who belongs to one’s nation, but also the outcast and the marginalized. Himself
an “alien” in the land of Israel, the Levite was the best spokesperson for those
values. Marked in his very flesh by the curse of exile, the Levite serves as a living
memory of the necessity to remember the outcast and the stranger. For only
then would the newly formed nation of Israel remember that beyond its calling
to cultivate the land and strengthen its borders, there existed a more lofty and
spiritual calling: That of welcoming within that very materiality, the spiritual
dimension of otherness—be it that of the stranger or of God himself—within
that land.
As a result, one can observe a complete reversal in the destiny of the tribe
of Levi. Once the ones to kill the other in the name of national solidarity and
honor, they become the ones who teach the nation of Israel the precedence of
the stranger’s life over national honor and identity. Once the proponents of
national solidarity, they become, through their exile, the witnesses to a higher
and more universal human solidarity. And it is precisely through the curse,
or blessing, of exile that the Levite finds this new orientation. It is as though

his exile has broadened his horizon to include not only fraternal and patriotic
values, but a higher more universal human solidarity. It is the experience of exile
which brings the Levite to the heightened awareness of the spiritual dimension
of the other over and against the strictly material preoccupation with the
same—with nationalistic or tribal concerns. We learn from this story that the
condition of exile is what orients an otherwise strictly immanent subjectivity,
locked in nationalistic concerns, to the transcendent values of universal love
and respect. Such is the calling of the exiled: the awakening to values beyond
that of fraternity and patriotism. Thus the curse of exiled hides a blessing: That
of a priestly calling to stand in connection with a higher order and to represent
this higher order. The exiled finds herself brutally torn out of her land, only to
realize that what constitutes our humanity is not our dwelling on a plot of land,
but the capacity for human solidarity. That one’s true homeland is found not in
a piece of earth, but in human connection. Thus the exiled finds herself torn
from the earth, from immanence, in order that spirit, transcendence, humanity
might blow through her.
The curse of exile hides then an ethical treasure: An openness to people
beyond borders, beyond nationalities, beyond a given plot of land. Hence exile
is the beginning of the discipline of ethics. Beyond the narrow etymological
meaning of ethics as ethos, that is, as a set of customs binding to a given
community, the discipline of ethics must come to signify those principles
binding to all people, to the human community at large. And this is precisely
the lesson of exile. Before the awakening brought about by the exilic condition,
there is only tribal solidarity, only fraternity and patriotism. Only the experience
of exile can broaden the scope of this solidarity to include the greater humanity,
thereby paving the way to an ethics. And it is incidentally precisely in the wake
of this renewed sensitivity to the plight of the exiled in the aftermath of World
War II, that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was transcribed as a
template for an ethics no more reduced to a given ethos, but universally binding,
ascribing rights to not only the next of kin, but to the stranger as well. Thus, the
universality of ethics is borne out of the experience of exile. There can be no
universal ethics before one has had a taste of exile. It is the trauma of exile which
develops in one a sensitivity to humanity at large, beyond mere fraternity, in so
doing, awakens us to the realm of ethics.
And as such, exile constitutes, contrarily to the Western negative
connotations of exile, the binding force of society and not, as was thought
by liberal political theory, the interests of the self. Indeed, against the liberal
model founded on the protection of the rights of the self, Levinas proposes an

Conclusion 121
alternative political model founded on the self ’s responsibility for the exiled
other. It is thus not the self that constitutes the locus of society, but precisely the
other. Society is no longer born of the need to protect the self ’s place in the sun
as in the Hobbesian model, but rather rises out of the self ’s capacity to welcome
an other into its space thereby ushering in the “shared space” necessary for the
opening of the political. A given society’s strength lies then not in its catering
to the self ’s rights, but rather in its capacity for hospitality. In a political climate
increasingly wary of the stranger and of the exiled, Levinas reminds us that
the very strength and essence of the social bond is structured as hospitality.
To lose the sense of hospitality thus constitutes a much greater danger than
any threat posed by illegal immigrants as this unravels the very locus of the
social bond. To lose the respect of the stranger is to go against the very essence
of society. Indeed, the presence of the exiled and vulnerable stranger among
us ever reminds one of the origins of society as hospitality. The welcoming of
that stranger within the realm of the self hence constitutes an almost liturgical
gesture whereby the self reenacts the original moment of hospitality constitutive
of the shared space ushering in the political.
It is the vulnerability of the exiled other which we find again in Levinas’
descriptions of the erotic encounter. The woman is described by Levinas first
and foremost as gentleness, opening up an exilic dimension of vulnerability
in the otherwise harsh and hardened ontological realm of conquest. And it
is as such that she constitutes the very embodiment of hospitality thereby
opening up the possibility of ethics. This exile of woman from within the
realm of being is, however, not overcome even in the self ’s attempt at
exploration and encounter through the intentionality of the caress. And yet,
woman may still be encountered, but only at the price of an inversion of the
Levinassian conception of the caress as exploration stemming from the self ’s
desire into a gift of the self unto the other. Only when the caress inverts itself
into Irigaray’s “gesture-word,” whereby discourse is introduced in the erotic
encounter, is the exiled essence of the woman genuinely encountered and
welcomed by the self. Again, the structure of relationship takes the form of an
act of hospitality toward an exiled and vulnerable other as though everything
began in this presence, within ontology, of a fragility. As though without this
vulnerability which is fundamental to our human condition—and of which
we are reminded through the experience of exile—we would never relate to
each other in a deep and loving way. For to love truly, one must recognize one’s
estrangement, lack, need in the world. This is not unlike Plato’s definition of
love as emerging from a sense of incompleteness, from a sense of lack. To love

genuinely, one must realize that we are never truly home until we have found
each other.
And it is also this very vulnerability intrinsic to our exilic condition in the
world which fuels a deeper love still: the love of truth. It is only when one feels
a lack, when one feels a thirst for truth that truth will reveal itself. Indeed, truth
does not manifest itself to a self at home in the world, well grounded in their
own certainties and preconceptions, as was worked out by Cartesian philosophy.
Truth appears only to the self who is not at home in the worldview in which
it finds itself. Only a self which has gone through a “conversion to exteriority”
can genuinely engage in an epistemological endeavor which does not construct
the other but rather apprehends it in a stance respectful of its exteriority. Thus,
only an exiled mindset can access something beyond itself, and beyond the
worldview from which it has emerged. Only a self capable of receiving the
stranger, capable of receiving that which does not fit a certain paradigm or a
certain agenda, will be able to apprehend truth. In this sense, there can be no
rational discourse, no epistemological discourse without a sense of connection
between the self and the other, without a proximity between the self and the
other wherein the self allows itself to be jolted by another and of welcoming
that other, in the uniqueness of her perspective and worldview. As such, one
may argue that truth will only give itself to an inclusive discourse, to a discourse
which gives voice to alternative approaches and perspectives. Justice must be
done to these voices too often and too long ignored if exteriority is ever to be
approached. It is in this sense also that, in the words of Elizabeth Minnich,1 one
must work for justice if one is to encounter truth.
It is again through the thematic of exile that one can understand the essence
of Levinassian metaphysics, that is to say, his discourse on God. But this God is,
like the face of the other, exiled from human perception and conceptualizations.
Such a God can never be apprehended on the mode of certainty and from
the foundationalist stance of a self seeking to grasp or understand the divine
essence. When faced with the latter, doubt is inescapable. And yet, Levinas
makes this stance of uncertainty and doubt the very path to God for only a self
which has come “undone” in the words of the prophet Isaiah, can apprehend
the transcendent God. Thus it is only an exiled and de-centered self, unsure of
itself, forever plagued by doubt who can apprehend the exiled God. But while
God can only be encountered negatively through doubt, He is manifest directly
through the face of the vulnerable and exiled other. It is there, in the margins of
history and of ontology, that the trace of the divine essence can be found. The
way to the exiled and absent God is hence only possible through ethics, through

Conclusion 123
the approach of the exiled and destitute face of the other. And indeed, it is only
there that it can be found while still maintaining its exile. For the ways of God
are the ways of hiddenness. Were the divine essence to be manifest in all that is
desirable in the world, it would lose thereby its transcendent character. The lieu
of transcendence can then only be found in the undesirable, in the fragile and
precarious dimension of the destitute other, ever on the margins of the world,
ever exiled. And as such, it is only upon welcoming this vulnerable other that the
divine essence will find a welcome in the realm of ontology, that the presence of
God can be acknowledged and experienced.
Finally, the Levinassian aesthetics testify to the centrality of exile. Over and
against the attempts of classical art to create a well-ordered and harmonious
reality, Levinas privileges the experimentation of modern art with chaos
and exile from order and form. Taking the counterpart of the Heideggerian
discussion of art as the abode of the gods, Levinas will come to describe art as
that which undoes all attempts at dwelling and stability. This undoing of form by
modern art is seen as pertinent inasmuch as it points us to an exilic dimension
before order and harmony: the dimension of sensibility. Such a dimension
is privileged by modern art inasmuch as it resists form and fragments it into
its original chaos and tohu bohu. But the sensible dimension has yet another
signification for Levinas: That of signifying the very fiber of our humanity,
and this in all of its precariousness, messiness, and vulnerability. As such, the
dimension of the sensible constitutes the very locus of the encounter with the
human face of exiled and destitute other. The attempts of modern art must then
be understood as much more than an undoing of form and a search for chaos,
but as uncovering the very dimension and essence of our humanity too often
dissimulated under the masks of power and self-sufficiency. In the modern
context, the artist no longer comes to represent the voice of the gods as in
Heideggerian aesthetics, but the voice of our original vulnerable and destitute
condition as humans, thus paving the way, perhaps, to a beyond aesthetics, to
an ethics.
We can now discern beyond the curse of exile, a wealth of hidden
potentialities. There is indeed a wisdom of exile which understands the trauma
of exile as a journey to our very humanity. Indeed, exile reminds us of our
intrinsic fragility and precariousness in this world; it reminds us that we are
but clay in this world of steel. But this fragility borne out of our experience
of exile is a blessing in disguise: for it is this very fragility which propels us
to love and care for one another. It is this fragility which fuels all forms of
love, be it of human beings, of truth, and ultimately of God. Exile thus has a

truly levitical function—that of reminding us that we are more than matter,

we are also spirit. We are more than our possessions and acquisitions, we are
also defined by our spiritual and human connections. Interestingly, in the
Hebrew Scriptures, clay, the symbol of our fragility, is also the symbol of our
spirituality. Clay in the Hebrew Scriptures indicates our intrinsic spirituality
in that it associated with the ancient act of creation whereby God breathed
his spirit into a form of clay thus giving birth to the first human being. Clay
is thus indicative, in the Hebrew Scriptures, of the creature’s dependence on
God, of its intrinsic connection with the spiritual realm. The fragility of our
humanity, to which the condition of exile continually bears witness, is hence
intrinsically connected to our destiny as spiritual and relational beings. We
are very far from the Heideggerian view of the poet as the wine-bearer of the
gods—noble, solitary, and lofty calling. The exile that is described by Levinas
discloses, on the contrary, our fragility, vulnerability, and exposition to outrage
and humiliation. And yet, it is within this very fragility, in the clay, that one
can find the spiritual wealth of a humanity no longer defined by its solitary
song to the divinities, but by its capacity to hear the voice and plea of another
in need.

Notes
Introduction
1 In an issue dedicated to the problem of exile and immigration in Europe, Ignacio

Ramonet describes the contemporary exilic scene as unique in Western European
history. The sheer scale of the problem of exile in Europe today is, according to
Ramonet’s editorial, unprecedented. See Ramonet, “Voyages sans retour,” 6–7.
2 In the same editorial, Ramonet describes a rising phenomenon of xenophobia
not only in Europe but in other non-European regions such as Africa and Latin
America. This xenophobia is coupled, according to Ramonet, with a disturbing
resurgence in Europe of xenophobic political parties, which constitute their political
agendas around the blaming of immigrants for all the nation’s woes (see note 1
above). The United States is slowly following the European trend of distrust of the
exiled, as has become evident in the increasing discomfort with Latin American
immigration as well as with a visible Muslim presence within the American
landscape (cf. recent Time Magazine articles: Thornburgh, “Border Crackdowns
and the Battle for Arizona” or Ghosh, “Islamophobia: Does America Have a Muslim
Problem?”
3 Historically, exile is associated in Europe with criminality as the work of Paul Tabori
indicates. According to Tabori, exile was a common punishment for criminals both
in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. In Greece, ostracism was practiced in order
to pacify tribal wars: one of the tribes was exiled in order to avoid further shedding
of blood. In Rome, interdictio was practiced against criminals who found themselves
exiled to distant Roman islands. See Tabori, The Anatomy of Exile, 45–53.
4 This problem has been observed by Finlayson in his reader and guide of
contemporary political thought. In the general introduction to this reader, Finlayson
observes the problem that contemporary societies, hereto accustomed to defining
themselves as a homogenous entity—whether in tradition or spirit—have with the
increasing diversity within their midst: “Political thought needs to be aware that
its own traditions of thinking, from the Ancient Greeks to the Romantics of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the nationalists of the twentieth, have
caused us to think of citizenship in terms of stable communities united around a
unique tradition or spirit. . . . The movement of many peoples in and out of these
communities makes such notions problematic. . . . Is it good that our societies
are now so diverse? Should politics be concerned with shoring up and defending
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126 Notes
traditional ways of being and doing, or does this amount to advocating a kind of
communal purity that can only be achieved at the expense of hard-won rights and
that might, as it has done in the past, end in terror? The end of the Cold War has
led to conflicts that have displaced many millions of people, and the globe is full of
refugees seeking a place to settle or at least to be safe until they can return to their
homes. Such massive population-movement has become a political problem across
Europe and in Australasia because people appear to experience such immigration as
some sort of threat. In the USA too (a nation founded by migrants), immigration,
particularly from Latin America, has became a fraught and contentious issue.
. . . Should governments accept that their populations just don’t like new ethnic
minorities coming to live with them, or is it their role to encourage and foster more
tolerance?” See Finlayson, Contemporary Political Thought, A Reader and Guide,
15–16.
5 The Biblical conception of exile has a primordially negative view of exile as the
result of a punishment by God: “To the Biblical prophets, exile was a symbol of
divine retribution. As Isaiah makes clear (Isa. 49:9–20 New International Version)
in worshiping other deities, the people of Israel revealed a lack of fidelity to their
God and the covenant that God had established with them. Their punishment then
was the destruction of their spiritual center, Jerusalem. . . . And the forced removal
of many from the land that had been promised to them.” See Jones, Encyclopedia of
Religion, 2922.
6 Such was the view that was developed predominantly in the Middle Ages by Jewish
thinkers such as Saadia Gaon: “The tenth century philosopher Saadia Gaon in his
Book of Beliefs and Opinions, emphasized the importance of exile as a trial and as
a means of purification, while according to an anonymous contemporary, exile,
as a divine gift and a ‘blessing of Abraham,’ served as a mark of Israel’s election.
According to this view, exile was not a punishment from sin but an opportunity
given by God to bring God’s teaching to all humans,” see Jones, Encyclopedia of
Religion, 2922. Incidentally, this understanding of exile as an opportunity for
proselytism was already found in the Talmud: “God scattered Israel among the
nations in order that proselytes should be numerous among them” (T.B. Pesahim,
87b). Thus from the Talmudic era to the Middle Ages, exile could be seen as
containing both a redemptive signification—as a means of purification—and an
ethical implication—as that which facilitates an encounter with the other.
7 We remember here the famous commandment given at the eve of the conquest of
Canaan: “You are to love those who are aliens for you for you yourselves were aliens
in Egypt” (Deut. 10.19 NIV).
8 As pointed out in note 7 above, the Scriptures explicitly connect the Hebrew
condition of exile to an ethical stance of welcoming the stranger: “And you are to
love those who are aliens for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt” (Deut. 10.19
NIV). But the passage never explicitly states the nature of that connection. Exile is

Notes 127
here explicitly related to a stance of hospitality and welcoming, but the paradoxical
nature of this connection is never explained or developed in the text.
9 Levinas’ experience of exile is perceived by Srajek as playing a central role in his
subsequent thinking and writing. Indeed, it is impossible, according to Srajek, to
understand the thought of Levinas without referring back to his experiences of
exile and persecution: “Their biographies [Levinas and Derrida] are marked by
the fact of their Jewishness and the fear, persecution, hatred, and exile which they
had to confront because of that heritage. In reading their texts we have to remind
ourselves continually of the perennial societal ostracism to which the two thinkers
were exposed in order to understand the connections with the philosophy they
write which centers around absence, the no-place (‘non-lieu’), exile, etc.” See Srajek,
In the Margins of Deconstruction, 16.
10 According to Chardel, the writing of Levinas is in itself an experience of exile
serving to awaken the reader to a dimension of exteriority beyond the sphere of his
or her own cognition. According to Chardel, the ethical dimension of exteriority
and of encounter with transcendence can already be experienced on the level of
Levinas’ writing style. Instead of writing in a way that the reader can come to grasp
the meaning of his words, Levinas intentionally writes in a way that necessitates a
hermeneutical effort on the part of the reader, thus signifying to a depth of meaning
always remaining beyond him or her. The writing of Levinas is hence, according to
Chardel, experienced by the reader as an exile or in nomadism outside of his or her
categories of thought. See Chardel, “Du Primat du visage aux richesses inattendues
de l’écriture. Remarques sur l’herméneutique d’Emmanuel Levinas,” 187.
11 The Levinas Concordance recounts 67 explicit mentions of the word “exile” and 46
mentions of the word “to exile” in the totality of the Levinassian corpus. See Cioran
and Hansel, Levinas Concordance, 284–5. Other commentators have also conducted
studies of concepts pertaining to the semantic field of exile in the philosophy of
Levinas. We think here of Jean-Luc Thayse who studied the concept of “escape”
in Levinas as to how it illuminates the themes of fecundity and otherwise than
being in his philosophy. See Thayse, “Fécondité et Evasion chez Levinas,” 624–59.
Also significant is Ciaramelli’s study of the concept of “exodus” in Levinas, which
describes the ethical event of the expulsion of subjectivity outside of being in its
encounter with the other. See Ciaramelli, “De l’évasion à l’exode. Subjectivité et
existence chez le jeune Lévinas,” 553–78. Also see Duval, “Exode et Altérité,” 217–41.
Chapter 1
1 See Srajek, In the Margins of Deconstruction, 18.

2 Ibid.

128 Notes
3 This is also the diagnostic of Horkheimer and Adorno. In their work, the Dialectic
of the Enlightenment, the authors show that the Holocaust arose out of a mode of
thinking reminiscent of the Enlightenment whereby unity must be striven for at all
cost, even to the cost of the other: “For enlightenment, anything which does not
conform to the standard of calculability and utility must be viewed with suspicion
. . . For the enlightenment, only what can be encompassed by unity has the status of
an existent or an event; its ideal is the system from which everything and anything
follows . . . For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers,
and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry. Unity
remains the watchword from Parmenides to Russell. All gods and qualities must be
destroyed.” See Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of the Enlightenment, 3–5.
4 This is precisely the question that Fasching situates at the center of the ethical
challenge posed by Auschwitz and Hiroshima to our contemporaries. Commenting
on the ancient tale of Babel, Fasching observes that “the story of Babel is a tale for
our times. It is a parable through which we might come to understand our situation.
The citizens of Babel . . . we are told, sought to seize control of transcendence
through the ideology of a single language and the common technological project
of building a tower to heaven. God, however, upset their efforts by confusing their
tongues . . . the popular interpretation of this story is that the confusion of tongues
was a curse and a punishment for the human sin and pride. But I am convinced
that this is a serious misunderstanding of its meaning. For this story must be
interpreted within the tradition of stories that make up the canon of the Tanakh
(Old Testament), where the command to welcome the stranger appears more
often than any other commandment . . . The moral of the story as I read it is that
utopian transcendence is to be found not in a ‘finished world’ of technological and
ideological conformity but in an ‘unfinished world’ of diversity, a world that offers
us the opportunity to welcome the stranger.” See Fasching, The Ethical Challenge of
Auschwitz and Hiroshima, 1–2.
5 This was also Bonhoeffer’s struggle during times and circumstances very similar to
Levinas’. In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer comes to a very similar conclusion as Levinas in
language strikingly similar to the latter: “The man with a conscience fights a lonely
battle against the overwhelming forces of inescapable situations which demand
decisions. But he is torn apart by the extent of the conflicts in which he has to
make his choice with no other aid or counsel than that which his own innermost
conscience can furnish. Evil comes upon him in countless respectable and seductive
disguises so that his conscience becomes timid and unsure of itself, till in the end
he is satisfied if instead of a clear conscience he has a salved one, and lies to his own
conscience in order to avoid despair. A man whose only support is his conscience
can never understand that a bad conscience may be healthier and stronger than a
conscience which is deceived.” See Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 68.

Notes 129
6 This is also Bauman’s conclusion in his diagnostic of modern ethics and his
working out of a postmodern ethics. Distinguishing between a rule-based behavior
and a genuine ethical stance, Bauman muses that “only rules can be universal.
One may legislate universal rule-dictated duties, but moral responsibility exists
solely in interpellating the individual and being carried individually. Duties
tend to make humans like; responsibility is what makes them into individuals.
Humanity is not capture in common denominators—it sinks and vanishes there.
The morality of the moral subject does not, therefore have the character of a rule.
One may say that the moral is what resists codification, formalization, socialization,
universalization. The moral is what remains when the job of ethics, the job of
Gleichstaltung has been done.” See Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 54.
7 This was already Kierkegaard’s intuition when he set the individual’s faith as higher
than the universal: “For faith is just this paradox, that the single individual is
higher than the universal, though in such a way, be it noted, that the movement
is repeated, that is, that, having been in the universal, the single individual now
sets himself apart as the particular above the universal. If that is not faith, then
Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world, just because it has
always existed. For if the ethical life is the highest and nothing incommensurable
is left over in man, except in the sense of what is evil, i.e. the single individual who
is to be expressed in the universal, then one needs no other categories than those
of the Greek philosophers, or whatever can be logically deduced from them.” See
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 84.
8 Peperzak, To the Other, 305.
9 Ibid.
10 This was the conclusion of Medieval masters such as Maimonides who,
while maintaining the central role of reason in the approach of the Creator,
acknowledged that there were things that were beyond reason’s reach: “Know that
for the human mind there are certain objects of perception which are within the
scope of its nature and capacity; on the other hand, there are, amongst things which
actually exist, certain objects which the mind can in no way and by no means
grasp: the gates of perception are closed against it. Further, there are things of
which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when
man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to
comprehend everything.” See Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, 40.
11 Ephraim Meier incidentally comes up with the same definition of Judaism as a
“non-affiliation,” highlighting the ethical connotation of such a non-affiliation.
Speaking of Levinas’ Jewish writings, Meier observes that “in the entire corpus
of Levinas’ Jewish writings, Judaism appears as an exemplary non-belonging to
any totality. It is a non-affiliation, because it is a belonging to every human being
and to the entire world. This non-affiliation does not stem from a remoteness, it

130 Notes
flows from a closeness to the concrete Other. In the twentieth century that saw
totalitarianisms and the Holocaust, Levinas reinterprets Judaism as a rupture
of totality, a profound solidarity with the excluded, an engagement to feed
the hungry. In Jewish life, attested to in the Bible and the literature of the Sages,
the psyche of the I is defined as ‘the other in the same.’ Judaism is suspicious of the
ideological, nationalist and imperialist totalities that endanger the human being. It
is togetherness with the innocent victim, proximity, to be ‘persecuted’ by the Other.
Judaism in Levinas’ eyes is far from exclusivism, fanaticism, authoritarianism or
sectarianism. It is care for the life of the other.” See Meier, Levinas’ Jewish Thought.
Between Jerusalem and Athens, 8–10.
12 Chalier, L’inspiration du philosophe, 10 (my translation).
13 Ibid., 12–13.
14 Lorenc, “Philosophical Premises of Levinas’ Conception of Judaism,” 157.
15 Bernasconi, “The Ethics of Suspicion,” 9.
16 Chalier, Sagesse des Sens, 12 (my translation).
17 Srajek, In the Margins of Deconstruction, 1.
18 Heschel, The Prophets, An Introduction, 3.
Chapter 2

2 Haar, “The Obsession of the Other: Ethics as Traumatization,” 96.
3 Therein lies, according to Bauman, the problem of modern ethics: “Ethics—a moral
code, wishing to be the moral code, the one and only set of mutually coherent
precepts that ought to be obeyed by any moral person—views the plurality of
human ways and ideals as a challenge and the ambivalence of moral judgments
as a morbid state of affairs yearning to be rectified. Throughout the modern era
the efforts of moral philosophers were targeted on the reduction of pluralism and
chasing away moral ambivalence. Like most men and women living under the
conditions of modernity, modern ethics sought an exit from the predicament in
which modern morality has been cast in the practice of everyday life.” See Bauman,
Postmodern Ethics, 21.
5 Ibid., 8.
6 And as such, Levinas situates himself along the lines of the postmodern critique of
modern ethics: “It is the disbelief in such a possibility that is postmodern—‘post’
not in the ‘chronological’ sense (not in the sense of displacing and replacing
modernity, of being born only at the moment where modernity ends or fades away,
of rendering the modern view impossible once it comes into its own), but in the

Notes 131
sense of implying (in the form of conclusion, or mere premonition) that the long
and earnest efforts of modernity have been misguided, undertaken under false
pretences and bound to—sooner or later—run their course, that in other words,
it is modernity itself that will demonstrate (if it has not demonstrated yet)—and
demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt, its impossibility, the vanity of its hopes
and the wastefulness of its works. The foolproof—universal and unshakably
founded—ethical code will never be found; having singed our fingers once too
often, we know now what we did not know then, when we embarked on this
journey of exploration: that a non-aporetic, non-ambivalent morality, an ethics that
is universal and objectively founded, is a practical impossibility; perhaps also an
oxymoron, a contradiction in terms” (Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, 10).
7 It is interesting to note how Levinas’ concept of nudity as a symbol for exclusion
from the world is similar to the Hebrew conception of nakedness as representing
those people excluded from society, that is prisoners, slaves, prostitutes, madmen,
and the cursed. See Haulotte, Symbolique du vêtement, 79.
8 This is precisely Drabinski’s question: “The question of how to articulate
transcendence outside the boundaries of the transcendental ego must first ask the
question: How can alterity signify without the constitutional apparatus? How can
appearance be thought without the structures of the subject to whom something
appears?” See Drabinski, Sensibility and Singularity, 100.
9 Derrida, Writing and Difference, 131.
10 See also Bernasconi according to whom the Levinassian description of an
“absolute” alterity makes no sense in the phenomenological context where alterity
necessarily depends on the constitutive activity of a consciousness: “But can one
make sense of an alterity that is not relative? This is one of the most powerful
questions that Derrida poses to Levinas in ‘Violence and Metaphysics.’ He appeals
to the full force of the Western tradition to say that the Other is other only as other
than myself. The Other cannot be absolved of a relation to an ego from which it is
other; it cannot be absolutely Other.” Bernasconi, “The Alterity of the Stranger and
the Experience of the Alien,” 63.
12 The sensible as the context of the encounter with the face has also been observed
by Lingis: “There would then be two kinds of sensibility: A sensibility for the
elements and the things of the world, a sensuality, which is appropriation and self-
appropriation, and a sensibility for the face of another, which is expropriation and
responsibility.” Lingis, “The Sensuality and the Sensitivity,” 227.
13 Ibid.
14 Levinas is here very close to Heidegger’s understanding of a precognitive
experience of the world as observed by Ziarek: “Levinas makes it perfectly clear
that the way he understands enjoyment is akin to the Heideggerian analysis

132 Notes
of the modes of Being of Dasein. Enjoyment is the primary mode of the ego’s
relating to the world. In this relation, the ego constitutes itself as ego through
the fulfillment of its needs. This mode of annulling the alterity of the world
however, is pre-reflexive and pre-representational. As Levinas repeatedly remarks,
enjoyment and sensibility nourish representation. Representation does thematize
what nourishes it, yet the very moment of nourishing is lost in it. In this sense,
enjoyment precedes representation, in a manner somewhat similar to that in which
Dasein’s Existenzialen precede reflexive thinking.” Ziarek, “Semantics of Proximity.
Language and the Other in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas,” 234.
15 This proto-ethical function of sensibility has also been observed by Drabinski:
“Though Levinas has articulated the structure of manifestation adequate (in its
radical non-adequation) to the transcendence of alterity, a question still remains:
How may the subject be in relation with transcendence, without the analysis falling
back into the logic of positionality? This is a signification issue, for the positionality
of the subject anchors the logic that underpins thematization, the logic that is the
very point of departure for idealism. The relationality of affective life is the clue to
this nonpositional mode of relation. Specifically, the relations of enjoyment and
desire provide Levinas with descriptive occasions to articulate the modality of
relation proper to transcendence.” Drabinski, Sensibility and Singularity, 107.
16 Levinas is very close here to the Sartrean analysis of the other as a “hole in the
world,” as observed by Strasser. According to Strasser, the face as nudity is an
absence and Levinas is here echoing the Sartrean analyses of the alter ego as a “hole
in the world.” Indeed, the face as such has no place in the world, has no function in
the horizon of the self ’s world; on the contrary, it disturbs the egocentric order of
the world. See Strasser, “Le concept de ‘phénomène’ chez Lévinas et son importance
pour la philosophie religieuse,” 338.
17 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 341–2.
18 Ibid., 343.
19 This is precisely Jean-Louis Chrétien’s observation. According to Chrétien, the
very fact of my existence compromises peace inasmuch as the space taken by my
existence necessarily takes over a space susceptible of being inhabited by another.
Thus, my very existence expulses the other and takes his or her place. To live then
is, according to Chrétien, to usurp. See Chrétien, “La dette et l’élection,” 267.
20 Heidegger, Being and Time, 233.
21 This is precisely Haar’s objection to Levinas’ understanding of the exile of
subjectivity as having ethical implications. According to Haar, ethics necessitates
by definition a common space in which both parties can dwell and encounter
each other. Moreover, according to Haar, there can be no response, let alone an
ethical response, on the part of a subjectivity that has experienced the trauma of
exile, inasmuch as such a subjectivity finds itself without the necessary ground or
stability to be able to respond. A subjectivity that is in the process of being expulsed

Notes 133
and exiled cannot function as an ethical subject capable of responding to the needs
of an other. It is itself in need of help, of an ethical response on the part of an other.
Thus, according to Haar, a subjectivity entirely inhabited in spite of itself by an
other, a subjectivity expulsed, does not have the means to genuinely encounter
an other outside of itself inasmuch as it is already overwhelmed by otherness. See
Haar, “L’obsession de l’autre,” 451.
22 Haar, “The Obsession of the Other: Ethics as Traumatization,” 105.
23 Ibid., 102.
24 Ibid., 96.
25 Bernasconi, “Justice without Ethics: Neither the Condition nor the Outcome of
Ethics,” 321.
26 This contraction of itself in favor of the other is very similar to the kabbalistic
concept of tsimtsoum as observed by Catherine Chalier. According to Chalier, the
notion of tsimtsoum describes the originary contraction of the divine to make room
for another reality, a human reality. Levinas implicitly refers to such a contraction
when he speaks of the necessity of an eclipse of God in order to make room for
an ethical responsibility on the part of mankind. Furthermore, responsibility is
itself structured, according to Chalier, as a tsimtsoum, inasmuch as only such a
movement is capable of opening a space for the other in the hereto entirely self-
centered world of the self. To the divine tsimtsoum which opens up a space for a
responsible human being, there must respond a human tsimtsoum, itself capable of
opening up a space for another than itself. See Chalier, “L’âme de la vie,” 397.
27 In this we oppose Rudolf Bernet, for whom the gift to the other presupposes the
presence of the other in an already constituted common world; the other thus
cannot be approached as exiled from my world as he must necessarily belong to
that world if a gift of that world to him is to be possible: “As to the ontological side,
it must be stressed once more that the life I am giving away is and remains my life.
It is not the life of a complete stranger, and it is not necessarily a gift addressed
to a complete stranger. Turning all Others (including myself) into strangers is
ontologically unacceptable and ethically unnecessary. I must have something in
common with the life I am giving away, and I must have something in common
with the Other to whom I offer the gift of my life.” Bernet, “The Encounter with the
Stranger: Two Interpretations of the Vulnerability of the Skin,” 61.
Chapter 3
1 This is evident in Hobbes’ Leviathan where the emphasis is heavily placed on

reducing individual wills into the unity of a single will: “The only way to erect such a
common power as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners and
the injuries of one another . . . is to confer all their power and strength upon one man,

134 Notes
or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices
into one will . . . this is more than consent or concord; it is a real unity of them all, in
one and the same person, made by covenant of every man with every man in such
manner as if every man should say to every man, I authorize and give up my right of
governing myself, to this man or to this assembly of men on this condition that thou
give up thy right to whom and authorize all his actions in like manner. This done, the
multitude so united in one person is called commonwealth, in latin civitas. This is the
generation of that great leviathan, or rather of that mortal god to which we owe under
the immortal do our peace and defense” (Hobbes, Leviathan, 114).
2 This has been the classical definition of community as observed by Young: “The
ideal of community submits to the logic of identity. It expresses an urge to unity.”
See Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 229. For Young, and, as we shall
see, for Levinas, this classical definition is no more to date with the current change
in the makeup of a social fiber that is increasingly diversified. Therefore, for
Young, “the ideal of community . . . denies and represses social differences, the
fact that the polity cannot be thought of as a unity in which all participants share
a common experience and common values” (ibid., 226). This in turn gives way
to the dangerous consequence that “it often operates to exclude or oppress those
experienced as different. Commitment to an ideal of community tends to value and
enforce homogeneity” (ibid., 234).
3 This is the view of many of our contemporaries as noted by Ignacio Ramonet, French
editor of the journal Manières de Voir. Thus, Ramonet observes, in his editorial of
a special issue consecrated to the problem of immigration, an exacerbation of the
demonization of the stranger in contemporary societies, which is not limited to
Western societies, but can also be found in non-Western societies such as Africa and
Latin America. As a result, one can observe a mounting interest for nationalist and
right-wing parties and in their agenda to blame the stranger or the immigrant for
most of a given society’s ills. See Ramonet, “Voyages sans retour,” 6–7.
4 This was incidentally also Hannah Arendt’s concern in her Origins of Totalitarianism
as observed by Bernasconi: “Arendt, in the Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951
complained that the existence of stateless refugees had shown that the idea of the
rights of man was worthless: The refugee was by definition stateless and, as such,
without protection. Civil rights, the rights that belonged to citizens as such, proved
to be the only rights worth having. As a mere human being who lacked citizenship
there was nobody to turn to on whom one could rely” (Bernasconi, “Extra-
Territoriality: Outside the Subject, Outside the State,” 170). In other words, both
Arendt’s and Levinas’ political writings are geared to address the problem of the
stranger. In a society where rights are defined in connection to a given community,
what of the stranger? It is this question of the stranger’s rights that constitute the
locus of both Arendt’s and Levinas’ political thought.

Notes 135
5 For Bernasconi, the stranger in Levinas is more of a concept than a concrete

reality the reason being that, were it to be a mere reality, Levinas’ thought would
be no more than a “rhetorical device to appeal to our sympathies beyond any
philosophical argument” (Bernasconi, “Strangers and Slaves in the Land of Egypt:
Levinas and the Politics of Otherness,” 249). For Bernasconi, Levinas’ mention
of the orphan, widow, and stranger are rather metaphors accounting for alterity
in general: “It is in the first instance the abstractness, not the concreteness of
the widow, the orphan and the stranger that leads him to name them in his
philosophical discourse. The widow, the poor and the stranger are involved by
Levinas primarily not because these terms define the needy, but because they are
terms used to designate in a general way those who have within a given society no
recognized status” (ibid., 251).
6 Thus, according to Dussel, “the critical question comes up when we ask Levinas:
‘How to feed the hungry, how to do justice to the widow, how to build an economic
order for the poor, how to reconstruct the structure of the law in a political
order that functions as a closed totality, so inhospitable to the stranger. Levinas’
criticism of politics as the strategy of the state of war is accurate, courageous,
and clairvoyant. However his critique does not avoid the difficulties involved in
reconstructing the positive and critical emancipatory sense of the new politics”
(Dussel, “The Politics by Levinas: Towards a Critical Political Philosophy,” 80).
7 See note 6 above about Dussel, 78.
8 Ibid., 80.
9 Ibid.
10 Thus, according to Hobbes, “it is manifest that during the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called
war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in
battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend
by battle is sufficiently known . . . Therefore notwithstanding the laws of nature
. . . if there be no power erected, or not great enough for our security; every man
will and may lawfully rely on his own strength and art, for caution against all other
man” (Hobbes, Leviathan, 85; 111).
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 114.
13 Ibid.
14 Simmons, Anarchy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’ Political
Thought, 80.
15 Ibid.
16 Abensour, “Le contre-Hobbes d’Emmanuel Lévinas,” 259.
17 Simmons, Anarchy and Justice: An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’ Political
Thought, 105.

136 Notes
18 Drabinski, “The Possibility of an Ethical Politics: From Peace to Liturgy,” 57.

19 Bernasconi, “Extra-Territoriality: Outside the Subject, Outside the State,” 175.
20 Dussel, “The Politics by Levinas,” 79.
21 Ibid., 80.
22 Ibid.
23 Gauthier and Eubanks, “The Politics of the Homeless Spirit: Heidegger and Levinas
on Dwelling and Hospitality,” 138.
24 Ibid., 140.
25 Dussel, “The Politics by Levinas,” 79.
26 Such must be, for Derrida, the basis of a conditional hospitality implying
integration and assimilation of the other in the political realm. Only then
will conditional hospitality implemented by the political maintain its ethical
orientation: “Conditional laws would cease to be laws of hospitality if they were
not guided, given inspiration, given aspiration, required, even by the law of
unconditional hospitality. These two regimes of law, of the law and the laws are thus
both contradictory, antinomic, and inseparable. They both imply and exclude each
other simultaneously.” See Derrida, Of Hospitality, 45.
27 The risk taken by the welcoming of the other as a potential threat can be traced
back to the very etymology of the word “hospitality” as alluded to by Derrida: “the
foreigner (hostis) welcomed as guest or as enemy. Hospitality, hostility, hospitality.”
See Derrida, Of Hospitality, 45.
28 The idea that genuine society rests on the preservation of plurality is also present
in Mouffe’s work. Distinguishing between antagonism (the struggle between
enemies) and agonism (the struggle between adversaries), Mouffe situates the
origin of society in a conflict between adversaries: “Antagonism is a struggle
between enemies, while agonism is a struggle between adversaries . . . One key
thesis of agonistic pluralism is that, far from jeopardizing democracy, agonistic
confrontation is in fact its very condition of existence. Modern democracy’s
specificity lies in the recognition and legitimation of conflict and the refusal
to suppress it by imposing an authoritarian order.” See Mouffe, “Deliberative
Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,” 16.
29 Bernasconi, “Extra-Territoriality: Outside the Subject, Outside the State,” 177.
30 Gauthier/Eubanks, “The Politics of the Homeless Spirit: Heidegger and Levinas on
Dwelling and Hospitality,” 14.
31 Hospitality as the criteria for judging a given society is present in both the Greek
and Hebrew traditions as noted by Simmons: “both the Hebrew and the Greek
traditions use hospitality as a gauge for judging societies. For example, Odysseus
often asks ‘what are the people whose land I have come to this time, and are
they violent and savage, and without justice or inhospitable to strangers, with a
godly mind’ (Odyssey 6:119)” (Simmons, Anarchy and Justice: An Introduction to
Emmanuel Levinas’ Political Thought, 108).

Notes 137
Chapter 4
1 See Plato, Symposium, 22–7.

2 The self must be here understood as a male self. The Levinassian philosophical
stance being descriptive and phenomenological, his analyses on the question of
love are necessarily situated in his own self and his own perspective as a male. This
particular attempt by Levinas to give a description of woman from his own particular
standpoint will give rise to a number of criticisms. For example, Sikka sees the effort
on the part of Levinas to thematize woman as an act of violence whereby “far from
leaving blank the space titled woman and inviting her to fill it in herself, Levinas
writes all over this space, inscribing it with his desires, his needs, his mission.” See
Sikka, “The Delightful Other,” 103. This attempt by Levinas remains nevertheless
phenomenologically legitimate, and will come to constitute, as we shall see, an
excellent starting point for later feminist attempts to articulate a description of
woman.
3 Chalier, “The Exteriority of the Feminine,” 174.
4 Perpich, “From Caress to the Word,” 42–3.
5 Chanter, Introduction to Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, 16.
6 Katz, Levinas, Judaism and the Feminine, 63.
7 See Plato, Symposium, 22–7.
8 Irigaray, To be Two, 22.
9 See Buber, I and Thou.
10 The Talmud thus refers to woman as the “home” of the man (T.B. Tractate Joma, I,
1). In the Jewish tradition, the woman is seen as the guardian of this dimension of
interiority all too often forgotten by man in his struggle against the elements of the
external world. A Midrash comments on the story that Eve was taken from Adam’s
rib to mean that, like the rib, the woman is the guardian of man’s inner organs, that
is, of his heart and soul, too often neglected and forgotten by him in his struggle to
survive in the world.
11 Chanter, Introduction to Feminist Interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, 16.
13 And as such, woman is never apprehended as an end, but always as a means to an
end. She is never given her own essence, but only an essence relative to man and to
his needs as observed by Sonia Sikka: “Far from maintaining her in her alterity in
the sense of granting her the right to define herself, these portraits of woman define
her as the other who is needed for oneself. She is needed for both the reproduction
of oneself, as in Levinas’ description of the erotic, and for the spiritual progress of
man.” See Sikka, “The Delightful Other,” 103.
14 Ibid.
15 But does not this character of being for-the-other of woman constitute an
ethical possibility for woman? Taking a view counter to Sikka’s, Chalier sees in

138 Notes
this being-for-the-other of woman precisely her ethical destiny. Commenting

on Rebekkah, Chalier observes: “She does not hesitate to go and meet the man
who will free her from the weight of an identity that was but a heritage and who
will show her the way to a new identity: The identity of utopia, the identity for-
the-other. But an identity without security and without guarantees. Such is the
feminine as the disruption of being by goodness beyond maternity. . . . If we have
to shake the easy conscience of the beings who persevere in their being, in order
to see peace occur, a peace that will be a life for the others, a peace that will be as
concernful as love, then we have to understand the meaning of this disruption of
being by goodness. Is this not the meaning of the feminine in the human being?”
See Chalier, “Ethics and the Feminine,” 128.
17 The Jewish tradition sees in discretion the highest quality of woman and exhorts
her to “be a woman who defines herself internally” (T.B. Bereshit Rabbah, 18.2).
Woman even more than man is taught in the Jewish tradition to define herself
internally, that is, to realize that her essence lies not merely in her physical beauty
or charm, but rather in her soul. The practice of discretion thus has the first effect
to remind woman of her specific role as the guardian of interiority (see note
10 above), but also to protect woman from being reduced to her mere physical
attributes. Discretion is the practice that allows for woman to be perceived not just
as a body but also as a soul and as such it protects the woman from being seen as a
mere means for pleasure. Finally, discretion has the metaphysical role of protecting
within woman a dimension of sacredness or enigma that mirrors God’s own
sacredness and enigma. As such, woman can also be seen as the guardian of the
very dimension of sacredness too often ignored or violated in a civilization defined
almost entirely by conquest and control. See Manolson, Outside, Inside: A Fresh
Look at Tzniut.
18 As in rape where the rapist seeks to master, to control and possess the woman. To
approach a woman in such a way misses her essential elusiveness and enigma and
thus fails to encounter her as woman.
19 As in pornography where an attempt is made to disclose in woman what precisely
is not meant to be disclosed but rather belongs to the realm of intimacy and
interiority. To disclose in such a way amounts to missing the very essence of
woman which pertains to the dimensions of interiority and discretion.
20 See Levinas, “Intentionality and Sensation,” in Discovering Existence with Husserl,
145–9.
21 Ziarek, “The Ethical Passions of Emmanuel Levinas,” 85.
22 Katz, Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine, 63.
23 Perpich, “From the Caress to the Word,” 43.
24 Irigaray, “The Fecundity of the Caress,” 126, 138–9.
25 Perpich, “From the Caress to the Word,” 42.

Notes 139
26 Irigaray, To be Two, 26.

27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 25.
29 Ibid., 27.
30 Ibid., 26.
31 Ibid., 28.
32 Irigaray, “The Fecundity of the Caress,” 122.
Chapter 5
1 See Diotema’s speech in the Symposium where she evokes the love of human
beings as a mere first stage which must be overcome for the love of wisdom. Plato,
Symposium, 37–50.
2 See Plato’s description of the divided line which illustrates the intellectual journey
from mere suppositions and beliefs tied to the material world to the more abstract
activities of understanding and pure reason. Plato, The Republic, 229–32.
3 See Westphal, “Levinas and the Logic of Solidarity,” 299–300.
4 Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics, On Not Knowing Who We Are, 24.
5 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, 226.
6 See Farley, “Ethics and Reality: Dialogue between Caputo and Levinas,” 210.
7 For more on the connections between Levinas and Platonic philosophy as they
apply to epistemology see Blum, “Overcoming Relativism: Levinas’ Return to
Platonism,” 91–117.
8 Westphal, “Levinas and the Logic of Solidarity,” 300.
9 In his Discourse on Method, Descartes explicitly situates the ego as the foundation
of truth. The first principle which was to guide the quest for truth was indeed to
“to accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recognize to do so: that is to say,
carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudice in judgments and to accept in them
nothing more than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly that
I could have no occasion to doubt it.” See Descartes, Discourse on Method and
Meditations on First Philosophy, 13.
10 Ibid.
11 Heidegger mentions this difficult, even violent, wrenching of truth from being in
his commentary on Antigone: “It is this breaking out and breaking up, capturing
and subjugating that opens up the essent as sea, as earth, as animal. It happens
only insofar as the powers of language, of understanding, of temperament, and
of building are themselves mastered in violence. The violence of poetic speech, of
thinking projection, of building configuration, of the action that creates states is not
a function of faculties that man has, but a taming and ordering of powers by virtue

140 Notes
of which the essent opens up as such when man moves into it.” See Heidegger,
Introduction to Metaphysics, 157.
12 Levinas understands “atheism” as the capacity of subjectivity to take a solitary
stance against any heterogenous influence: “One can call atheism this separation so
complete that the separated being maintains itself in existence all by itself, without
participating in the Being from which it is separated. . . . The soul, the dimension of
the psychic, being an accomplishment of separation, is naturally atheist. By atheism
we thus understand a position prior to both the negation and the affirmation of the
divine, the breaking with participation by which the I posits itself as the same and
as I.” See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 58.
13 Jaggar identifies this tendency for mastery as constitutive of Western male-
dominated scientific investigation: “It is claimed with increasing frequency that the
modern Western conception of science, which identifies knowledge with power and
views it as a weapon for dominating nature, reflects the imperialism, racism, and
misogyny of the societies that created it. Several feminist theorists have argued that
modern epistemology itself may be viewed as an expression of certain emotions
alleged to be especially characteristic of males in certain periods, such as separation
anxiety and paranoia or an obsession with control and fear of contamination.” See
Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology,” 163.
14 Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 38.
15 Farley, “Ethics and Reality: Dialogue between Caputo and Levinas,” 217.
16 This was the essence of Horkheimer and Adorno’s argument in their Dialectic of the
Enlightenment.
21 Such is the approach that Feyerabend proposes to the scientific method: “This
book proposes a thesis and draws consequences from it. The thesis is: the events,
procedures and results that constitute the sciences have no common structure. . . .
Successful research does not obey general standards; it relies on one trick, now on
another. . . . It also follows that ‘non scientific procedures’ cannot be pushed aside
by argument. . . . A consequence which I did not develop in my book but which
is closely connected with its basic thesis is that there can be many different kinds
of science. People starting from different social backgrounds will approach the
world in different ways and learn different things about it. . . . First world science is
one science among many: by claiming to be more it ceases to be an instrument of
research and turns into a political pressure group.” See Feyerabend, Introduction to
Against Method, 1–4.

Notes 141
23 Farley quotes to this effect Arendt who in her work, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
shows that cynicism toward the truth is essential to totalitarian success: “Without
the elite and its artificially induced inability to understand facts as facts, to
distinguish between truth and falsehood, the movement could never move in the
direction of realizing its fiction. The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian
elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares
it with reality. Its most cherished virtue . . . is the leader, who, like a talisman,
assures the ultimate victory of lies and fiction over truth and reality” (quoted in
Farley, Eros for the Other: Retaining Truth in a Pluralistic World, 62).
24 Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, 226.
25 Farley, Eros for the Other, Retaining Truth in a Pluralistic World, 63.
26 Cf. Blum, “Overcoming Relativism: Levinas’s Return to Platonism,” 91–117.
27 Bacon speaks of four such preconceptions susceptible of tainting human knowledge
which he terms idols: “There are four kinds of illusions which block men’s minds.
For instruction’s sake we have given them the following names: The first kind
are called idols of the tribe; the second, idols of the cave; the third, idols of the
marketplace; the fourth, idols of the theater. . . . Idols of the tribe are founded in
human nature itself and in the very tribe or race of mankind. . . . Idols of the cave
are the illusions of the individual man. . . . There are also illusions which seem to
arise by agreement and from men’s association with one another, which we call
idols of the marketplace. . . . Finally, there are the illusions which have made their
homes in men’s minds from the various dogmas of different philosophies, and even
from mistaken rules of demonstration. These I call idols of the theater.” See Bacon,
Novum Organum, 40–2.
28 Levinas is here very close to Kuhn’s descriptions of normal science as incapable of
acknowledging anomalies which could, in fact, point to yet unknown truths about
the world: “Normal science . . . is predicated on the assumption that the scientific
community knows what the world is like . . . normal science for example often
suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its
basic commitments . . . sometimes a normal problem, one that ought to be solvable
by known rules and procedures, resists the reiterated onslaught of the ablest
members of the group within whose competence it falls . . . revealing an anomaly
that cannot despite repeated effort, be aligned with professional expectation. In
these and other ways besides, normal science repeatedly goes astray. And when it
does—when, that is, the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the
existing tradition of scientific practice—then begin the extraordinary investigations
that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for
the practice of science. They are the tradition-shattering complements to the
tradition-bound activity of normal science.” See Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions,” 162–3.

142 Notes
29 De Boer, “An Ethical Transcendental Philosophy,” 96.

30 This attitude of distrust was already acknowledged by Popper as essential to the
scientific attitude in contrast with what he terms a mistaken attitude seeking to
justify or prove a hypothesis: “The Greek’s discovery of the critical method gave rise
at first to the mistaken hope that it would lead to the solution of all the great old
problems; that it would establish certainty; that it would help to prove our theories,
to justify them. But this hope was a residue of the dogmatic way of thinking; in
fact nothing can be justified or proved (outside of mathematics or logics). . . .
Nevertheless the role of logical argument, or deductive logical reasoning, remains
all important for the critical approach; not because it allows us to prove our
theories, or to hinder them from observation statements, but because only by
purely deductive reasoning is it possible for us to discover what our theories imply
and thus to criticize them effectively. . . . there is no more rational procedure than
the method of trial and error, of conjecture and refutation; of boldly proposing
theories, of trying our best to show that these are erroneous, and of accepting them
tentatively if our critical efforts are unsuccessful.” See Popper, Conjectures and
Refutations, 51.
32 Ibid.
33 Veblen also describes the alienated standpoint of the exiled self as an
epistemological plus, in that it gives rise to what he calls “skeptical animus”
invaluable in paving new ways in science: “The first requisite for constructive
work in modern science and indeed for any work of inquiry that shall bring
enduring results is a skeptical frame of mind. The enterprising skeptic alone
can be counted on to further the increase of knowledge in any substantial
fashion. This will be found true both in the modern sciences and in the field of
scholarship at large. . . . This intellectual enterprise that goes forward presupposes
a degree of exemption from hard and fast preconceptions, a skeptical animus,
Unbefangenheit, release from the dead hand of conventional finality. [Such a
man] is in a peculiarly fortunate position in respect of this requisite immunity
from the inhibitions of intellectual quietism. . . . for him as for other men in the
like case, the skepticism that goes to make him an effectual factor in the increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men involves a loss of that peace of mind
that is the birthright of the safe and sane quietist. He becomes a disturber of the
intellectual peace, but only at the cost of becoming an intellectual wayfaring man,
a wanderer in the intellectual no man’s and, seeking another place to rest, farther
along the road, somewhere over the horizon.” See Veblen, Essays in our Changing
Order, 226.
34 Farley, Eros for the Other, Retaining Truth in a Pluralistic World, 65.
35 Ibid., 64.

Notes 143
Chapter 6
1 Plotinus speaks of this exile in terms of a “desertion” of totality on the part of the
soul: “The souls indeed are thus far in one place; but there comes a stage at which
they descend from the universal to become partial and self-centered; in a weary
desire of standing apart they find their way, each to a place of its very own. This
state long maintained, the Soul is a deserter from the totality; its differentiation has
severed it; its vision is no longer set on the intellectual . . . thus it has drifted away
from the universal and, by an actual presence, it administers the particular; it is
caught into contact now, and tends to the outer to which it has become present and
into whose inner depths it henceforth sinks far.” See Plotinus, Enneads, IV, tractate 8,
no. 4, 360–1.
2 The exiled soul thus becomes for Plotinus “a partial thing, isolated, weakened, full
of care, intent upon the fragment . . . with this comes what is known as the casting
of the wings, the enchaining in body: the Soul has lost that innocency of conducting
the higher which it knew when it stood with the All-Soul, that earlier state to which
all its interest would bid it hasten back. It has fallen: it is at the chain: debarred from
expressing itself now through its intellectual phase, it operates through sense; it is a
captive; this is the burial, the encavernment, of the Soul.” See Plotinus, Enneads, 360–1.
3 Although the Biblical perspective on exile is primordially a negative one pointing to
divine retribution, Medieval Jewish philosophy introduced a novel way of thinking
of exile not only as the symbol of divine discontent, but also as an opportunity
for redemption. Saadia Gaon, for example, emphasizes in his Book of Beliefs and
Opinions the importance of exile as a trial and as a means of purification: “What
we believe, on the other hand, may God have mercy on thee, is that God has set
two different limits to our state of subjection. One is the limitation produced by
repentance whereas the other is that occasioned by the end.” See Gaon, The Book
of Beliefs and Opinions, 294. The Talmud goes even further and sees exile as an
opportunity for proselytism: “God scattered Israel among the nations in order that
proselytes should be numerous among them” (T.B. Pesahim, 87b).
4 Caputo, “Adieu—Sans Dieu: Derrida and Levinas,” 303.
5 Ibid.
6 Levinas mentions this in an article entitled “God and Philosophy”: “In his
meditation on the idea of God, Descartes, with an unequaled rigor, has sketched
out the extraordinary course of a thought that proceeds on to the breakup of the I
think. Although he conceives of God as a being, he conceives of him as an eminent
being or being that is eminently. Before this rapprochement between the idea of God
and the idea of being, we do indeed have to ask whether the adjective eminent and
the adverb eminently do not refer to the elevation of the sky above our heads, and
whether they do not go beyond ontology.” See Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” 135.

144 Notes
7 See Descartes, “Third Meditation,” in Meditations on First Philosophy (Veitch),

86–97.
8 The Cartesian argument is as follows: “There only remains, therefore, the idea of
God, in which I must consider whether there is anything that cannot be supposed
to originate with myself. By the name God, I understand a substance infinite,
independent, all-knowing, all-powerful, and by which I myself, and every other
thing that exists, if any such there be, were created. But these properties are so great
and excellent, that the more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded
that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone. And thus it is absolutely
necessary to conclude, from all that I have before said, that God exists: for though
the idea of substance be in my mind owing to this, that I myself am a substance
I should not, however, have the idea of an infinite substance, seeing I am a finite
being, unless it were given me by some substance in reality infinite.” See Descartes,
“Third Meditation,” In Meditations on First Philosophy (Veitch), 93.
9 Bernier, “Transcendence et manifestation. La place de Dieu dans la philosophie
d’Emmanuel Levinas,” 599.
10 Bergo, “The God of Abraham and the God of the Philosophers: A Reading of
Emmanuel Levinas’ ‘Dieu et la Philosophie,’” 115.
12 The line of argument of this objection is as follows: “However, we can find simply
within ourselves a sufficient basis for our ability to form the said idea, even
supposing that the supreme being did not exist, or that we did not know that he
exists and never thought about his existing. For surely I can see that, in so far as
I think, I have some degree of perfection, and hence that others besides myself
have a similar degree of perfection. And this gives me the basis for thinking of
an indefinite number of degrees and thus positing higher and higher degrees
of perfection up to infinity. Even if there were just one degree of heat or light, I
could always imagine further degrees and continue the process of addition up to
infinity. In the same way, I can surely take a given degree of being, which I perceive
within myself, and add on a further degree, and thus construct the idea of a perfect
being from all the degrees which are capable of being added on.” See Descartes,
“Objections and Replies,” Meditations on First Philosophy, 82.
13 Descartes himself alludes to this possible objection in his third meditation: “and I
must not think that, just as my conceptions of rest and darkness are arrived at by
negating movement and light, so my perception of the infinite is arrived at not by
means of a true idea but merely by negating the infinite.” See Descartes, “Objections
and Replies,” Meditations on First Philosophy, 31.
14 Thus, the proof for the existence of God was supposed to dispel all doubt that
reality was not the product of an illusion or fantasy. “How do I know that I am
not also deceived each time I add together two and three, or number the sides of
a square, or form some judgment still more simple, if more simple can indeed be

Notes 145
imagined? But perhaps Deity has not been willing that I should be thus deceived,
for He is said to be supremely good.” See Descartes, “First Meditation,” in
Meditations on First Philosophy (Veitch), 75–6.
15 Bernier, “Transcendence et manifestation. La place de Dieu dans la philosophie
d’Emmanuel Levinas,” 601.
16 We are reminded here of the Psalmist’s complaint: “I am a stranger on earth; do not
hide your commands from me” (Ps. 119.19 NIV).
17 Kosky, “After the Death of God: Emmanuel Levinas and the Ethical Possibility of
God,” 258.
18 Levinas is here objecting to philosophers like Wittgenstein who, in the line of
Kantian philosophy, carefully circumscribed philosophy to what has a denotation
in the world, thereby delegitimizing any attempt at describing or philosophizing
about the Invisible. Wittgenstein thus observes at the end of his Tractatus that
“what we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.” See Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 151.
God,” 76.
20 Levinas’ thought is here similar to Kierkegaard’s for whom faith traces the solitary
path of the individual out of the universal: “But faith is just this paradox, that the
single individual is higher than the universal, though in such a way, be it noted,
that the movement is repeated, that is, that, having been in the universal, the single
individual now sets himself apart as the particular above the universal. If that is
not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world, just
because it has always existed.” See Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 84.
21 This “foolishness” of the believer has already been intuited by Paul in his Epistle
to the Corinthians: “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the
Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1.22 NIV).
22 This “poverty” of the believer is praised in the Beatitudes of Jesus as the only way
to God: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5.3
NIV).
23 We are here reminded of a tale recounted in the Talmud which places the Messiah
among the lepers of the city—a way of saying that God is to be found among the
poor, the destitute and the oppressed: “Rabbi Joshua ben Levi met Elijah standing
at the entrance of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s tomb. . . . He then said to him, ‘When
will the Messiah come?’ ‘Go and ask him’ was the reply. ‘Where is he sitting?’—‘At
the entrance of the city.’ And how shall I recognize him?—‘He is sitting among the
poor lepers, untying and rebandaging their wounds, while thinking, ‘Should I be
needed, I must not delay’” (B.T. Sanhedrin 98a).
24 Westhpal, “Commanded Love and Divine Transcendence in Levinas and
Kierkegaard,” 208.

146 Notes
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., 216.
27 Caputo, “Adieu—Sans Dieu: Derrida and Levinas,” 303.
28 Ibid.
God,” 254.
30 Ibid., 252.
31 It is interesting that this is precisely the mode of manifestation of the God of the
Hebrew Bible: The God of Sinai chose not to manifest himself in a visible figure, but
as a command aimed at interrupting the essentially selfish demeanor of subjectivity
(see Exod. 20 NIV).
32 Sikka, “Questioning the Sacred: Heidegger and Levinas on the Locus of Divinity,” 313.
33 Levinas is here borrowing from Rosenzweig. In his Star of Redemption, Rosenzweig
makes precisely this point that the revelation of God depends essentially on the
response on the part of subjectivity. Unlike Levinas, however, the response of
subjectivity to God lies not, for Rosenzweig, in ethical action, but in an act of faith:
“By its trust, the faith of the soul attests the love of God and endows it with enduring
being. If you testify to me, then I am God, and not otherwise—thus the master of the
Kabbalah lets the God of love declare . . . Just so God now also attains reality on his
part only here, in the testimony of the believing soul, a reality that is palatable and
visible, that is on this side of his concealment, a reality which, on the other side of
his concealment, he previously possessed in paganism in another fashion. The soul
makes acknowledgment before God’s countenance and thereby acknowledges and
attests God’s being; therewith God too, the manifest God, first attains being: ‘If ye
acknowledge me, then I am.’” See Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 171, 182.
34 Katz, “The Voice of God and the Face of the Other,” 21.
35 Ibid., 20.
36 Such was the essence of Diotema’s speech in the Symposium, later criticized by
Alcibiades who reproaches Socrates precisely this detachment and abstraction of
the quest for love from concern for human beings. See Gill’s introductory remarks
to Plato, Symposium, xxxv–xxxix.
37 Katz, “Before the Face of God One Must not Go with Empty Hands: Transcendence
and Levinas’ Prophetic Consciousness,” 59.
38 Interestingly this explicit connection between generosity and sacrifice is also found
in the Hebrew Bible: “For I desire mercy not sacrifice” (Hos. 6.6 NIV). See also
“Even though you bring me choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for
them . . . but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream”
(Amos 5.24 NIV).
39 Such was the experience of the ancient prophets when solicited by God. For
example Isaiah: “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips,

Notes 147
and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord
Almighty’” (Isa. 6.5 NIV).
40 Purcell, Levinas and Theology, 52.
41 Kosky, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, 189.
42 See Genesis 12 NIV.
Chapter 7
1 Plato speaks in the Ion of the poet as the “interpreters of the gods”: “We ought to
have no doubt about these beautiful poems, that they are not human nor made by
man, but divine and proceeding from gods. Poets are nothing but the interpreters
of the gods, possessed for the time by some deity or other.” See Plato, Ion, 8.
2 Ibid., 7.
3 See Heidegger’s work on the poetry of Hölderlin, “Hölderlin and the Essence of the
Poet,” in Heidegger, Existence and Being, 291–317.
4 Heidegger, “Hölderlin and the Essence of the Poet,” 315.
5 We think here of Adorno’s well-known statement that “to write poetry after
Auschwitz is barbaric.” See Adorno, Prisms, 34. Adorno himself comments on
this inescapable barbarism of art after Auschitz in his Aesthetic Theory: “In its
disproportion to the horror that has transpired and threatens, it is condemned to
cynicism; even where it directly faces the horror, it diverts attention from it. Its
objectivation implies insensitivity to reality. This degrades art to an accomplice of
the barbarism to which it succumbs no less when it renounces objectivation and
directly plays along, even when this takes the form of polemical commitment.” See
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 234.
6 Armengaud, “Ethique et Esthétique: De l’ombre à l’oblitération,” 499. “Que l’art
constitue l’un des meilleurs témoins des valeurs spirituelles de civilisations . . .
qu’après la faillite des clergés, des dogmes, et des systèmes, les artistes soient les
véritables inspirés, les authentiques prophètes, derniers gardiens de l’espoir, ces
truismes de la modernité qui vont de soi pour un lecteur de Nietzsche . . . c’est
contre eux qu’Emmanuel Lévinas s’inscrit en faux dans un article rude et sévère
paru dans les Temps Modernes et intitulé La réalité et son ombre” (Armengaud,
“Ethique et Esthétique: De l’ombre à l’oblitération,” 499–507).
7 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 87–141.
8 Adorno, Prisms, 34.
9 Benso, “Aesth-ethics: Levinas, Plato and Art,” 163.
10 Ibid., 172.
11 Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 16.
12 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, 50.

148 Notes
13 Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 16.

14 Benso, “Aesth-ethics: Levinas, Plato and Art,” 163.
15 Heidegger, “Hölderlin and the Essence of the Poet,” 311.
16 Heidegger’s thoughts echo here Hegel’s views on art as the manifestation of the
Spirit: “Fine art is not real art until it is in this sense free, and only achieves its
highest task when it has taken its place in the same sphere with religion and
philosophy and has become simply a mode of revealing to consciousness and
bringing to utterance the divine nature, the deepest interests of humanity and the
most comprehensive truths of the mind. . . . This is an attribute which art shares
with religion and philosophy only in this peculiar mode, that it represents even
the highest ideas in sensuous forms.” See Hegel, On Art, Religion and Philosophy:
Introductory Lectures to the Realm of the Absolute Spirit, 29.
17 Heidegger, “Hölderlin and the Essence of the Poet,” 308–9.
18 Ibid., 325.
19 Ibid., 312.
20 Ibid., 309.
21 Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 215.
22 Ibid., 215–16.
23 Ibid., 216.
24 Ibid., 218.
25 Ibid.
26 Heidegger identifies the two concepts in a short essay called “The Turning”:
“Whether the god lives or remains dead is not decided by the religiosity of men
and even less by the theological aspirations of philosophy and natural science.
Whether or not God is God comes disclosingly to pass from out of and within the
constellation of Being.” Heidegger, “The Turning,” 49.
27 On the Heideggerian distinction between the ontological realm of Being and the
ontical realm of beings see Heidegger, Being and Time, 21–32.
28 In Totality and Infinity, Levinas makes an explicit connection between the dwelling
and hospitality toward a human other: “No human or inter-human relationship
can be enacted outside of economy; no face can be approached with empty hands
and closed home. Recollection in a home open to the Other—hospitality—is the
concrete and initial fact of human recollection and separation; it coincides with the
Desire for the Other absolutely transcendent.” See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 172.
29 Such is the Biblical definition of the idol: “They know nothing, they understand
nothing, their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so
they cannot understand” (Isa. 44.18 NIV).
30 See Levinas, Existence and Existents, 47–51.
31 Ibid.
32 Levinas speaks here of a necessary reversal of art which is reminiscent of Adorno’s
own observations: “In the face of the abnormality into which reality is developing,

Notes 149
art’s inescapable affirmative essence has become insufferable. Art must turn against
itself, in opposition to its own concept and thus become uncertain of itself right
into its innermost fiber” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 2).
33 “L’art est regression, il ne mène pas au delà mais enlise dans l’en deçà”
(Petitdemange, “L’art ombre de l’être ou voix vers l’autre,” 82).
34 “Les artistes modernes sous l’emprise du sentiment de la fin du monde s’acharnent
ainsi contre le realisme et désirent détruire la representation, ce qui accentue
évidemment l’impression de dépossession et de malaise. Lévinas ne célèbre pas
cette venue à soi, par l’art moderne d’un sentiment d’étrangeté face aux objets et
au monde comme s’il s’agissait d’un premier pas vers la reconnaissance de leur
irréductible altérité . . . un pas qui, somme toute, malgré le malaise ou l’effroi,
s’avèrerrait bienvenu puisqu’il serait susceptible de mettre sur la voie de la
rencontre de l’altérité . . . l’art ne proposerait pas tant un movement délibéré qu’un
avant-gout angoissant ou—de façon plus pernicieuse—subtilement séduisant de l’il
y a” (Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 14).
35 See Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 33–6.
36 Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 16. “Dans la beauté triste qui selon Levinas
caractérise l’art contemporain, des ‘fissures lézardent de tous cotés la continuité de
l’univers’ et elles font donc ressortir de particulier ‘dans sa nudité d’être’ par delà les
formes. La rencontre de l’étrangeté qui s’impose ici ne constitue pas toutefois un
movement d’élévation qui parlerait àl’homme et qui l’obligerait à la bonté ou à la
justice par exemple” (Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 16).
37 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 78–86.
38 Chalier, “Brêve estime du beau,” 14. See note 35 above.
39 We are borrowing this expression from the book of Genesis (Gen. 1.1 NIV) where
it describes the original void and chaos preceding the Creation of the world.
40 “Avec l’extension du thème de la sensibilité, il deviant possible de ne plus considerer
l’image comme le point de depart de la réflexion sur l’art. Lévinas pense, en
effet, l’art de plus en plus à partir du sensible, sur son registre . . . Pensé sous le
registre du sensible, l’art se ferait parfois l’inspirateur du langage—il induirait une
déstabilization constante de la fixation inévitable du langage—et par là, il atteindrait
presque la proximité éthique, le Dire, qui s’insinuerait dans les failles sensibles de
l’œuvre” (Gritz, Lévinas face au Beau, 87–91).
41 See note 40 above (Gritz, Lévinas face au Beau, 91).
42 Adorno comments on this quest for the original chaos in modern art as the only
means for modern art to reclaim authenticity and approach again transcendence:
“Scars of damage and disruption are the modern’s seal of authenticity; by their
means, art desperately negates the closed confines of the ever same” (Adorno,
Aesthetic Theory, 23).
43 In an interview on Sosno’s art, Levinas comments on obliteration as the expression
of a wound in the human condition, and as such as calling forth an ethical

150 Notes
response: “S’il y a obliteration—par ouverture our par fermeture, c’est la même

chose—il y a blessure. Or sa signification pour nous ne commence pas à cause
du principe qu’elle déchire, mais dans l’homme ou elle est souffrance, et dans le
pâtire ou elle suscite notre responsabilité” (Levinas, De l’oblitération: entretien avec
Françoise Armengaud à propos de l’œuvre de Sosno, 26).
44 “La sensibilité n’est pas la matière brute, en effet, et l’insistance de Lévinas sur
sa place éminement signifiante dans l’éthique doit inciter à se demander s’il est
vraiment possible de dissocier sensibilité au beau . . . et sensibilité à l’appel issu du
plus secret des visages soumis quant à eux à un secret de finitude” (Chalier, “Brêve
estime du beau,” 27).
45 “C’est précisément ce movement vers l’autre, par lequel la totalisation de l’être
dans le discours s’avère impossible, qui est à la base de l’interprétation que le Dit
poétique apelle à l’infini . . . en allant vers l’autre, le poème nous arrache à notre
enracinement au monde, nous plonge dans une dimension d’étrangeté ou de
dépaysement qui, à l’opposé de l’angoisse heideggerienne—ou le Dasein retrouve
son être propre ou authentique dans la résolution solitaire d’exister à dessein de soi
seul—accomplit la transcendence vers l’autre homme . . . Ce déracinement est une
ouverture radicale à la pluralité humaine, irréductible à l’immanence de la totalité”
(Ciaramelli, “L’appel infini à l’interprétation: remarques sur Lévinas et l’art,” 50).
46 See note 40 above.
47 Such is the story related by a Midrash about the youth Abraham shattering all of his
father’s idols and then, in an ironic gesture, putting the ax on the biggest idol there
in order to escape blame.
Conclusion
1 Elizabeth Minnich, “If you want truth, work for justice” (presentation, Elon
University, NC, Fall 2008).

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Index
Abensour, Miguel 11, 40, 135n. 16 Blum, Peter 139n. 7, 141n. 26

absoluteness 12, 22, 27, 28, 50, 66, 68–70, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich,
72–7, 80–1, 86, 89, 90, 92, 99, 102, 110, Ethics 128n. 5
111, 131n. 10 Buber, Martin 137n. 9
absurdity 68
Adorno, Theodor W. 140n. 16, 147n. 8, Caputo, John 68–9, 73, 81, 83, 93,
148n. 32, 149n. 42 139nn. 4–5, 140nn. 18, 20, 141n. 24,
Aesthetic Theory 147n. 5 143nn. 4–5, 146nn. 27–8
Dialectic of the Enlightenment 128n. 3 caress 51, 58–65, 121
aesthetics 6, 100–2, 148n. 16 inversion of 64–5
abode of Gods and 102–8 Cartesian thought 70, 86, 97, 144n. 8
exile of humanity and 108–17 Celan, Paul 116
agonism 136n. 28 Chalier, Catherine 16, 50, 51, 55–6, 102,
aisthesis 109 109, 111, 112, 114, 130nn. 12–13, 16,
alterity 15, 22, 24, 27, 30, 54, 56, 57, 72, 133n. 26, 137nn. 3, 12, 138nn. 15–16,
77–8, 80, 86, 102, 131n. 10, 132nn. 147n. 11, 148n. 13, 149nn. 34, 36, 38,
14–15, 135n. 5, 137n. 13 150n. 44
antagonism 21, 136n. 28 L’inspiration du philosophe 14
Arendt, Hannah, Chanter, Tina 50–1, 55, 137nn. 5, 11
Origins of Totalitarianism 134n. 4, Chardel, Pierre-Antoine 127n. 10
141n. 23 Chrétien, Jean-Louis 132n. 19
Aristotle 20 Ciaramelli, Fabio 116, 127n. 11, 150n. 45
Armengaud, Françoise 101, 114, 147n. 6 Cioran, Cristian 127n. 11
art see aesthetics classical art 106–7, 115, 117
atheism 71, 88–9, 140n. 12 community 2, 4, 8–10, 16, 20–1, 23, 120,
“at home” of man 55 125n. 4, 134n. 2
Bacon, Francis 141n. 27 Dasein 30–1, 132n. 14

Bauman, Zygmunt 129n. 6, 130n. 3 De Boer, Theodore 79, 142n. 29
Being 106, 109, 116 Derrida, Jacques 7, 22, 24, 45, 83, 86, 127n.
Being-in-the-world 31 9, 131nn. 9–11, 136n. 26, 144n. 11
Benso, Silva 101, 102, 147nn. 9–10, 148n. 14 Descartes, René 71, 72, 84–5, 86, 88, 97, 98,
Bergo, Bettina 85n. 10, 144n. 10 140n. 14, 143n. 6, 144nn. 7–8, 12–13,
Bernasconi, Robert 16, 21, 34, 37, 42, 47, 145n. 14
130n. 15, 130nn. 1, 4–5 (Chapter 2), Discourse on Method 70, 139nn. 9–10
131n. 10, 133n. 25, 134n. 4, 135n. 5, destitution 4, 23, 27, 28–34, 45, 49, 53–4,
136nn. 19, 29 57, 61, 91–2, 94, 95, 113
Bernet, Rudolf 133n. 27 Deuteronomy (Bible) 12, 48, 126n. 7
Bernier, Jean-Francois 85, 87, 144n. 9, discretion 57–8, 87, 94, 138nn. 17, 19
145n. 15 disinterestedness 71, 72, 98
Biblical conception, of exile 126n. 5 diversity 68–70, 73–6, 80, 125n. 4, 128n. 4
Blanchot, Maurice 111, 114, 115, 116 Drabinski, John 131n. 8, 132n. 15, 136n. 18
9781441195760_Index_Final_txt_print.indd 159 7/18/2012 3:45:47 PM

160 Index
Dussel, Enrique 37, 42, 43, 44, 45, Genesis (Bible) 147n. 42, 149n. 39
135nn. 6–9, 136nn. 20–2, 25 Good, according to Plato 69
Duval, Raymond 127n. 11 Greek metaphysics 82
Gritz, David 102, 112, 149nn. 40–1
egology 72, 76
enigma 50, 58, 61, 89, 95–6, 99, Haar, Michel 20–1, 22, 32, 33, 130n. 2,
138nn. 17–18 132n. 21, 133nn. 22–4
enjoyment 25, 28, 64–6, 131–2nn. 14–15 Hansel, Georges 127n. 11
artistic 100, 107 Haulotte, Edgar 131n. 7
and otherness 26–7, 52–3, 57 Hebrew Bible 146n. 38
self and 30–1, 53, 54–5 Hebrew conception, of exile 11
Enlightenment 128n. 3 Hegel 148n. 16
Eros 49, 50–3, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66 Heidegger, Martin 30, 31, 100, 101,
erotic movement 5, 19, 50, 51–3, 56, 57, 60, 102–6, 108–9, 112, 131n. 14, 132n. 20,
61–2, 64, 66 139n. 11, 147nn. 3–4, 7, 148nn. 15–16,
ethics 2–3, 4, 10, 12, 16–19, 20, 37–8, 40–2, 17–27, 149n. 37
44–5, 49–51, 55–7, 60–2, 73–4, 80–1, Heschel, Abraham 18, 130n. 18
83–4, 93–4, 96, 98, 101–2, 105–6, heterogeneity, of command 94
111–12, 120–3, 126nn. 6, 8, 127nn. Hobbes, Thomas 4, 36, 38–9
10–11, 128n. 4, 129nn. 6–7, 11, Leviathan 133–4n. 1, 135nn. 10–13
130nn. 3, 6, 132–3n. 21, 133n. 27, Hölderlin 102, 103, 104, 116
136n. 26, 137–8n. 15, 146n. 33, 149n. 43 Holocaust 100, 128n. 3
ethos 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 20–3, 120 home, conception of 66
Eubanks, Cecil 43, 44, 47, 136nn. 23–4, 30 Horkheimer, Max 140n. 16
evasion and art 107 Dialectic of the Enlightenment 128n. 3
Exodus (Bible) 146n. 31 hospitality 5, 13, 32, 34, 35, 37–8, 51, 55, 56,
exteriority 13, 17, 19, 24, 26–7, 38, 52, 53, 66, 99, 116, 127n. 8, 136nn. 27, 31
67, 68, 72, 77–81, 85–6, 92, 115, 122, and accomplishment of society and 43–8
127n. 10 conditional 136n. 26
absolute 86, 111 Husserl, Edmund 94
extra-territoriality 46
of ethics, to politics 37 immanence 51, 52, 54, 60, 93, 98, 112
of stranger 42 Infinity 24, 54, 62, 72, 78, 83, 85–6, 90,
of woman 53 94–9, 117, 144nn. 8, 12–13
and destitute 91–2
face, exile of 23 intelligibility 15, 71
Farley, Wendy 68, 72, 73, 74, 80, 139n. 6, interdictio 125n. 3
140nn. 15, 19, 22, 141nn. 23, 25, Irigaray, Luce 51, 52, 62, 63, 65, 137n. 8,
142nn. 34–5 138n. 24, 139nn. 26–32
Fasching, Darrell 128n. 4 Isaiah (Bible) 81, 146–7n. 39, 148n. 29
Feyerabend, Paul 140n. 21
Finlayson, Alan 125n. 4, 126n. 4 Jaggar, Alison 140n. 13
Foucault, Michael 67, 70, 73 Jewish thought and exile 2, 3, 11–12
Jonas, Hans 88
Gaon, Saadia, Jones, Lindsay 126n. 5
Book of Beliefs and Opinions 126n. 6, Encyclopedia of Religion 126n. 6
143n. 3 Judaism 129–30n. 11
Gauthier, David 43, 44, 47, 136nn. 23–4, 30
generosity 32–5, 44–5, 48, 64, 65, 96–8, Katz, Claire 51, 61, 96, 137n. 6, 138n. 22,
146n. 38 146nn. 34–5, 37

Index 161
Kierkegaard, Søren 96, 129n. 7, 145n. 20 ontology 67, 69, 72

Kosky, Jeffrey 88, 89, 94, 98, 145nn. 17, 19, ostracism 125n. 3, 127n. 9
146nn. 29–30, 147n. 41 otherness 4, 12–13, 15, 17, 23–5, 27–9,
Kuhn, Thomas 141n. 28 33, 40, 45–6, 48, 52, 57, 66, 73–4, 98,
131n. 10, 132n. 16, 148n. 28
Levinas, Emmanuel, destitute 28, 29–33, 45, 49, 53–4, 57, 61,
Difficult Freedom 8 91–2
ethics and exile in 16–19 ethical moment of encounter of 35
Existence and Existents 109 and Good 77
and Hebrew thought 11–15 intrusion of 29, 30, 31–2, 34, 40
“Language and Proximity” 60 self and 28–30, 39, 40, 41–4, 46, 52, 53
and life of exile 8–11 sensibility and 25–6
Totality and Infinity 23, 113, 148n. 28 of woman 49–50, 54–5, 61
see also individual entries
Levinas Concordance 127n. 11 Pascal, Blaise 39
liberating praxis 37, 43, 45 Peperzak, Adriaan 13, 72, 80, 129nn. 8–9,
Lingis, Alphonso 25, 131nn. 12–13 140n. 17, 142nn. 31–2
Locke, John 39 Perpich, Diane 50, 61, 62, 137n. 4,
Lorenc, Iwona 130n. 14 138nn. 23, 25
love 5, 28, 45, 48, 49–51, 67, 93, 113, 117, phenomenology 17, 18, 19, 52, 59, 85, 88,
119–23, 126nn. 7–8, 137n. 2, 139n. 1, 94, 95, 131n. 10, 137n. 2
146nn. 33, 36 of otherness 24
as exile 57–66 Plato 5, 20, 69, 71, 108, 112, 137nn. 1, 7,
as nostalgia 51–7 139n. 2
Ion 100, 147nn. 1–2
Maimonides 129n. 10 Parmenides 86
Manolson, Gila 138n. 17 Republic 70
Matthew (Bible) 145n. 21 Symposium 49, 51, 139n. 1, 146n. 36
Meier, Ephraim 129–30n. 11 Plotinus 143nn. 1–2
metaphysics 82–4 plurality 46, 76, 116, 130n. 3, 134n. 1,
exile of God and 84–90 136n. 28
God of exiled 90–9 political and exile 36–8
Minnich, Elizabeth 150n. 1 dawning of society and 38–43
modern art 101, 108–16, 149n. 42 hospitality and society and 43–8
modern ethics 129n. 6, 130nn. 3, 6 Popper, Karl 142n. 30
modernity 9, 130nn. 3, 6 Psalms (Bible) 14, 99, 145n. 16
moral consciousness 79 Purcell, Michael 147n. 40
Mouffe, Chantel 136n. 28
Ramonet, Ignacio 125nn. 1–2, 134n. 3
nakedness 23–4, 28, 109–10, 113, refugees 134n. 4
131n. 7 Rilke, Rainer Maria 116
negative politics 37, 43 Rosenzweig, Franz,
new politics 38, 44, 47 Star of Redemption 146n. 33
Nietzsche, Friedrich 149n. 35
non-affiliation, Judaism as 129n. 11 Sartre, Jean-Paul 29, 34, 132nn. 17–18
normal science 141n. 28 self 24, 27, 39, 72, 96, 97, 99, 132n. 16,
137n. 2
objectivity 14, 26, 27, 45, 48, 52, 59, 71, 78, caress and 64, 65
79, 84, 88, 131n. 6, 147n. 5 exile of 30–5, 142n. 33
ontological inversion 15, 16 generosity and 45

162 Index
and otherness 28–30, 39, 40, 41–4, 46, 105, 108, 113, 127n. 10, 128n. 4, 131n.
52, 53 8, 132n. 15, 148n. 28, 149n. 42
spontaneity of 79 art and 100
sensible, dimension of 109–13, 131n. 12, enjoyment as signifying 26–7, 53
132n. 15 of face 23
and otherness 25–6 generosity and 96–7
Sikka, Sonia 95, 137nn. 2, 13–14, 146n. 32 lack, in classical art 106
Simmons, William 39, 135nn. 14–15, 17, by modern art 108–11
136n. 31 of other 24, 52, 60, 66
skeptical animus 142n. 33 and stranger 42–3
social bond 2, 4, 19, 21, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, of thought 72
41, 42, 47, 48 truth 15, 27, 67–9, 84, 85, 87–90,
spirituality 6, 12, 83 96–9, 105, 113, 114, 121–4, 139n. 9,
see also individual entries 141n. 23
Srajek, Martin 7, 127n. 9, 127nn. 1–2 conquest of 70–5
(Chapter 1), 130n. 17 exile toward 75–81
stranger, as basis of society 37, 38, 41, quest and exile 5–6
42–3, 48, 126n. 8, 128n. 4, 134n. 4, tsimtsoum 133n. 26
135n. 5 tyranny 75–6
Strasser, Stephan 132n. 16
subjectivity 11, 12–13, 17, 35, 42, 70–2, Veblen, Thorstein 142n. 33
77–8, 79, 85, 88–99, 113, 132–3n. 21,
146nn. 31, 33 Westphal, Merold 70, 92, 139nn. 3, 8,
de-centred 15 145n. 24, 146nn. 25–6
expulsion of 127n. 11 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 145n. 18
generosity of 96
xenophobia 125n. 2
Tabori, Paul 125n. 3
Talmud 137n. 10, 143n. 3, 145n. 23 you and thou, distinction between 54
Thayse, Jean-Luc 127n. 11 Young, Iris Marion 134n. 1
Third, dimension of 38, 41–5, 46, 94
transcendence 11, 12, 22, 39, 43, 45, 50, Ziarek, Ewa 60, 138n. 21
51, 58, 61, 62, 88, 89, 90–3, 98, 99, Ziarek, Krzysztof 131–2n. 14


Abi Doukhan Lévinas, Emmanuel Lévinas A Philosophy of Exile

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Emmanuel Levinas

9781441195760_FM_Final_txt_print.indd i 7/20/2012 3:40:09 PM

Bloomsbury Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from

Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

9781441195760_FM_Final_txt_print.indd ii 7/20/2012 3:40:10 PM

9781441195760_FM_Final_txt_print.indd iii 7/20/2012 3:40:10 PM

9781441195760_FM_Final_txt_print.indd v 7/20/2012 3:40:10 PM

50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue

First published 2012

© Abi Doukhan, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

Abi Doukhan has asserted his/her right under the Copyright,

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

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Introduction: The Problem of Exile 1

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This book had its beginnings in my dissertation, which I defended in 2008 at

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classes of Catherine Chalier and Didier Frank whose unassuming scholarship

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Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my parents for giving me a safe haven

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BV Beyond the Verse

EE Existence and Existents

EP “Enigma and Phenomena,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 65–79.

GP “God and Philosophy,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, pp. 129–49.

HA “Humanism and Anarchy,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 127–41.

HO Humanism of the Other

LP “Language and Proximity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 109–27.

MB “On Maurice Blanchot,” in Proper Names, pp. 127–56.

MS “Meaning and Sense,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 75–109.

NI “No Identity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers, pp. 141–53.

OB Otherwise than Being and Beyond Essence

OS Outside the Subject

PH Reﬂections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism

PI “Philosophy and the Idea of Inﬁnity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers,

RR “The Ruin of Representation,” in Discovering Existence with Husserl, pp. 111–22.

RS “Reality and its Shadow,” in The Levinas Reader, pp. 129–44.

TI Totality and Inﬁnity

TN In the Time of the Nations

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9781441195760_Intro_Final_txt_print.indd 1 7/19/2001 8:05:51 AM

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a comprehensive philosophy of exile. This study of the dimensions of exile in the

9781441195760_Intro_Final_txt_print.indd 3 7/19/2001 8:05:51 AM

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however, possible only upon encountering a human being capable of putting my

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A Life and Thought in Exile

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I Emmanuel Levinas: A life of exile

Emmanuel Levinas was born on January 12, 1906, in Kaunas, Lithuania, in a

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human, but “subhuman,” belonging to a “gang of apes.” It is such an experience

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in the context of radical evil, an awareness of ethics, a sense of the humanity

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II Levinas and Hebrew thought

The Hebrew conception of exile