Arthur Cools University of Antwerp, Belgium

Transcription

1 The Tragic Sense of Levinas Ethics Arthur Cools University of Antwerp, Belgium ABSTRACT. This article examines the dimension of the tragic experience in Levinas ethics, a dimension that seems at odds with his claim to define justice in a new way: no longer as a relation of reciprocity between members of a community, but according to the individual and asymmetrical relation to the other. On several occasions, Levinas expresses the intention to overcome the fatality of being and to break with the totalitarian effects of the State logic by revealing the ethical meaning beyond being. His philosophy has therefore been interpreted as an ethics of transcendence, based on the reference to the idea of the Good, but which is unable to account for the tragic dimension of conflicting values and for the finitude of the subjectivity s capabilities for doing good. In the present contribution, however, I argue that Levinas does not ignore a dimension of the tragic in the ethical relation to the other. Reconsidering the notion of the there is (the il y a) within the relation to the other, I demonstrate how Levinas ethics of transcendence enables us to consider a new sense of the tragic experience, given with the responsibility for the other. I go on to examine how this sense of the tragic experience relates to Levinas understanding of justice. Confronting Levinas with Ricoeur s approach to tragic action in Oneself as Another, I point to a gap between Levinas ethical concept of justice and the political realisation of justice, the articulation of which also reveals several major problems in Levinas understanding of justice. KEYWORDS. Levinas, ethics, justice, the tragic, action, Ricoeur I. INTRODUCTION Levinas ethics is generally accepted as an original contribution to contemporary philosophy for having provided a new foundation for the condition of justice. In opposition to a long tradition, Levinas does not define the just society in terms of equality and reciprocity in social relations, but according to the unique and asymmetrical relation of responsibility ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 21, no. 3(2014): by Centre for Ethics, KU Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: /EP

2 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 towards the neighbour. Based on this relation, Levinas launches severe critique against any kind of rationality that subordinates the ethical meaning of subjectivity to the universality of the State. He also invites us to reverse the relations between subjectivity and universality, presenting the former as a condition for the appearance of the latter. According to Levinas, justice can make sense only within the nonreciprocal relation of responsibility to the other. Justice consists in again making possible expression, in which in non-reciprocity the person presents himself as unique. Justice is a right to speak. It is perhaps here that the perspective of a religion opens. It diverges from political life, to which philosophy does not lead necessarily (1969, 274). Within the limits of the State, justice [...] resigned to tradition, continuity, institutions, despite their very infidelity (2003a, 76), runs the risk of losing its ethical meaning, being reduced to relations of reciprocity in which the partners are interchangeable, and in which the asymmetrical relation of my responsibility to the other is enclosed and taken over by an abstract and impersonal logic of a well-organised totality. It is the infinite beyond totality that reveals the ethical meaning, [...] necessary to (the) justice and therefore the task of philosophy consists in [...] manifesting to thought albeit in deforming it the beyond of being itself (2003a, 76). The relation between ethics and politics has been the subject of extensive debate among Levinas scholars. 1 Whether considered as an essential separation (Critchley 2004) or as a necessary inclusion (Fagan 2007), the ethico-political relation is problematic. According to Simon Critchley, the question of politics entails a critical point and a disquietude that invites him to articulate five main problems with regard to Levinas passage from ethics to politics (2004, 173). Madeleine Fagan speaks in terms of [...] the aporia within the concept of the ethico-political (2007, 21). In my view, the problem originates in a preliminary displacement of the concept of justice in Levinas philosophy, which begins by ceasing to define its meaning in political terms, defining it instead in an ethical way, based on the non-reciprocal relation between the self and the other. 346

3 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS As indicated in the previous quotation, this displacement implies that the concept of justice diverges from (s éloigne de) political life and that philosophy, according to Levinas, does not necessarily culminate in political theory. In my contribution, I question this conceptual displacement and evaluate its consequences by focusing on yet another issue in Levinas philosophy: the relation between the ethical and the tragic. The primary and essential contribution of an ethics of responsibility to a theory of justice is supported by an argument that plays a central role in Levinas entire philosophy: only ethics is capable of interrupting the tragic dimension of existence. The experience of the tragic whether it concerns the irresolvable conflict between the universal and the individual, the existential opposition between destiny and liberty, or the political tension between the law and ancestral traditions has traditionally been interpreted as a suspension of justice or as the impossibility of justice. On several occasions throughout his work, Levinas defines the project of his philosophy as an escape from the tragic experience of existence, made possible by the ethical relation to the neighbour. Even in one of his earliest works, On Escape, he considers that [i]t is a matter of getting out of being by a new path for [e]very civilization that accepts being with the tragic despair it contains and the crimes it justifies merits the name barbarian (2003b, 73). At the end of his analyses of the temporal dimension of fecundity in Totality and Infinity, he states that [...] it [fecundity] lifts from the subject the last trace of fatality, by enabling him to be an other (1969, 301). A similar rejection is repeated in the main argument of Otherwise than Being: To conceive the otherwise than being we must try to articulate the break-up of a fate that reigns in essence [ ] (1998, 8). From the start, Levinas understands the tragic dimension as the fatality of being riveted to oneself. The ethical meaning of transcendence beyond being opens the possibility to break-up this fatality. However, one may doubt whether this opposition is a sufficient condition to define justice in an ethical way. Is it possible to overcome the tragic experience 347

4 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 by referring to the ethical meaning beyond being? The answer to this question obviously depends upon how the tragic is already understood. Can the tragic have a meaning outside the poetic dimension of Greek tragedy? Is it possible to define a common trait of the tragic experience without referring to this art form? Alternatively, is this experience contingent and dependent upon a context and a history that are inevitably singular and personal, that cannot be shared and that cannot be universalised? These questions are relevant to Levinas philosophy, even when he was neither writing nor intending to write a philosophy of the tragic. In order to articulate the relation between ethics and the tragic in Levinas philosophy, I draw upon Ricoeur s reflection on this relation in the short note Tragic Action introduced into his hermeneutics of selfhood at the beginning of the second last chapter of Oneself as Another, The Self and Practical Wisdom (1992, 241). In a few pages (which he dedicated to his son Olivier, who had committed suicide), he presents an interpretation of the tragic experience within the framework of Greek tragedy (with particular reference to Antigone), and he explains the role of this reference within his own ethics. 2 The reference to the tragic does indeed constitute a true case of a differend between Ricoeur and Levinas. While the latter relates the primacy of the ethical significance to an irreducible transcendence, the former refers to the tragic in order to highlight a finitude of the ethical meaning that appeals for a practical wisdom. According to Ricoeur, this wisdom, which is never given at once and which must be invented anew in different contexts, is required in order to prevent political commitment to a just society from becoming stranded in the paralysing blindness that results from a one-sided focus on moral principles and abstract ideals. Moreover, Ricoeur relates the tragic exclusively to the problems raised when action is required. In contrast, Levinas denounces the tragic in the fatality of being riveted to oneself. The aim of this article is not to bring Levinas and Ricoeur into debate with each other on the basis of their differend. My intention is more limited: I will point to a problem in Levinas ethical understanding of justice 348

5 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS by showing that the ethical meaning of the transcendence beyond being cannot undo the persistence of the tragic dimension in relation to the other, even though this relation reveals the tragic experience in a new way. In my argument, I take two different, but complementary approaches. In the first part, I examine Levinas understanding and rejection of the tragic, demonstrating that his analysis of the ethical relation to the other does not avoid all references thereto, but implies a new interpretation of the experience of the tragic. To this end, I recall the importance of the notion of the there is in Levinas description of subjectivity, and I argue that this notion also remains present in Levinas account of the relation to the other. It confronts my being-for-the-other with the finitude of the other and challenges in this respect my capability to act otherwise than by self-interest. In the second part, I turn to Ricoeur, examining how and to what extent Levinas ethics is concerned with (and called into question by) Ricoeur s reflection on tragic action. My main point here is that Levinas agrees with Ricoeur s main assumption that justice requires action: it is not possible to respond to the other empty-handed. But Levinas lacks a pluralistic view on action, which he considers as an expression of the virility of the self, being unable to derive the ethical meaning of acting from subjectivity s condition of passivity. Combining these two approaches, I am able to show that Levinas ethical understanding of justice is not without ambiguity, entailing a new experience of the tragic which it is unable to overcome. II. THE TRAGIC DIMENSION IN LEVINAS PHILOSOPHY The experience of the tragic is far from absent in Levinas thought. He tends to identify it with being as such. Especially in Otherwise than Being, Levinas unambiguously defines the essence of being as a fate, as a destiny or as a dramatisation of the otherwise than being: [...] the inescapable fate in which being immediately includes the statement of being s other (1998, 5; italics original). Throughout his work, he quotes Cain, 349

6 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 Oedipus, Hamlet, Macbeth and other tragic figures in order to evoke the vicissitudes of being and to reject from the outset the dominant alternative in western philosophy: to be or not to be. According to Levinas, the priority assigned to the question of being in Heidegger s philosophy actually enables us to measure the extent to which the tragic is intrinsically related to the experience of existence. In Heidegger s existential analysis, the tragic of existence appears as a way of being in a drama in which the dice have already been thrown and in which the destiny of being has already tied the human characters to a strange intrigue that they could not choose themselves, although it tells the story of the victories and defeats of their will, as submitted to an impersonal force. While it is impossible to step out of this being in a drama and to escape its fatal concatenation of events, it remains possible to assume it and to confirm it as its own being. At the end of his contribution Ontology in the Temporal in which he discusses the renewal of ontological thinking in Heidegger s philosophy, Levinas states: In this regard, the ontology of Heidegger has reached its most extreme tragic accents (1967, 89). 3 Levinas sees two reasons for this interpretation. First, Heidegger subordinates all relations with the other to the examination of the understanding of being, which remains within the limits of a reductive logic of the Same (i.e. within the limits of [...] this selfhood which is, by the fact of existence, related to being that is its own being [1967, 89]). Moreover, he defines all relations with being in terms of a temporality of beingtowards-death (Sein zum Tode), transcending the relation to my own being towards a nothingness that withdraws from being. The temporality of being-towards-death is thus explicitly interpreted as a destiny (Geschick) of my being in relation to that which withdraws from being. I can assume and even claim this destiny as my own, or I can try to escape it and to refuse it. All of these possibilities express my relation to being. Paradoxically, therefore, Levinas explains the equivalence between being and the tragic by referring to the choice to be or not to be in Heidegger s philosophy, and by referring to death as a possibility that limits my rela- 350

7 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS tion to being a finitude of my being that resolves into nothingness. Levinas thus remarks, [m]y death is insignificant unless I drag into my death the totality of being, as Macbeth wished, at the hour of his last combat (1998, 3). It is evident that his interpretation of the tragic was largely influenced by existentialist philosophy, according to which absolute freedom is the principle of the adventure of destiny. According to Levinas, this understanding of being ignores the transcendence of an otherwise than being. To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of beings other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence (1998, 3; italics original). This opposition between being and transcendence has given rise to the interpretation that the ethics of Levinas, by connecting the condition of subjectivity to a beyond being, liberates us from the burden of existence and jumps by a curious leap beyond its own tragic dimension. In the Dutch translation of Levinas work, for example, the face of the other is called the face of liberation (Burggraeve 1986). Because of this interpretation, Levinas was accused of neglecting the finitude of transcendence. In the view of Rudi Visker, this is precisely the problem of Levinas ethics, which overestimates the ethical dimension of subjectivity and which is unable to account for the inhuman condition (Visker 2005). The incapability of conceiving of the tragic dimension is an essential trait of Levinas thought, given its central reference to the idea of the Good, which is confirmed as a goodness that has chosen me before I was in a position of being able to chose and without submitting me to its power. Face-to-face with the other person, I cannot not hear the injunction of the Good. It is only for this reason that Levinas can state that the face liberates me because it elevates and humanises me. The face breaks open my egocentric self-relatedness and redefines my subjectivity as responsibility for the other. 351

8 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 This interpretation nevertheless implies the assumption of that to which Paul Davies (1990) refers as a linear narrative in Levinas philosophy, which describes and analyses subjectivity as a progressive overcoming of (and liberation from) the experience of the there is, the [...] impersonal, anonymous, yet inextinguishable consummation of being, which murmurs in the depths of nothingness itself (Levinas 2001, 52). This assumption, however, is based on several unexamined presuppositions. First, it assumes that the there is defines the meaning of the tragic experience in Levinas philosophy. Second, it assumes that the return of the there is, which Levinas repeats time and again, is insignificant with regard to the ethical meaning of subjectivity. Finally, it assumes the possibility of delineating, surmounting and eliminating the there is in the relation to the other person. Only by accepting these presuppositions is it possible to describe the presence of the other as a miraculous instance that liberates me from the burden of being by inviting me to do good. Only by accepting these presuppositions is it possible to ascribe to Levinas for whom, however, the presence of the other is related to the experience of being threatened with death the conviction that the other person is good, and that he or she intervenes in such a way that the idea of the Good chooses me. Such ascription is not possible unless we fail to consider different concrete analyses of sensibility, corporeity, suffering and experiences of otherness in Levinas account of the relation with the other, thereby reducing Levinas argument to an abstract and ultimately very classical metaphysics of the idea of the Good, which can do none other than communicate itself. It is therefore important to try another approach and to examine how the tragic is related to a condition that reveals the priority of ethics. In this approach, the there is is not a kind of rest for an impersonal presence that is being overcome by subjectivity and that is progressively being replaced by the meaning of the Good. On the contrary, it exists as an insurmountable presence that continually recurs in Levinas analyses of the other and of subjectivity, and even in his references to God and the 352

9 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS idea of the Good, thus undermining the objectivity of this idea and the possibility of a non-ambiguous intellectualism of reason. In God and Philosophy, Levinas explicitly mentions this ambiguity: the possible confusion between the otherness of God and the there is (1992, 115). This raises the question of how the persistence of this notion changes the understanding of the tragic. The notion of the there is is a crucial starting point in a philosophical discourse that aims to reject the primacy of ontological thinking (Heidegger) as well as the primacy of the principle of absolute freedom (Sartre). First of all, it enables Levinas to disentangle the temporality of destiny and to disorder the logic of being and nothingness. This is already at stake in the analyses of the there is presented in Existence and Existents. If nothingness is not an option, the possibility of a choice between being and not being reveals itself as dependant, secondary or even non-existent. Neither being nor nothingness, Levinas refers to the there is as a tiers exclu (1982, 38). It breaks open the illusion that death (or suicide) signifies an end or a solution. 4 In this respect, Levinas changes the rules of the drama: intrigue is no longer a given. The character is no longer able to affirm its own being with regard to the presence of the impersonal, and its will no longer possesses the evident power of deliberating its chances by assuming its destiny. In other words, the there is already creates a relation of otherness before the question of my relation to being is at stake (i.e. the experience of an estrangement that unsettles the understanding of being). One may wonder whether the notion of the there is might therefore exacerbate the experience of the tragic in existence, albeit in a completely different sense, as found in existentialist philosophy. The fact of being tied to it, without having the possibility of either assuming it or being liberated from it, implies the irresolvable permanence of a suffering at the core of existence. In this way, Levinas is perhaps returning to an ancient concept of the tragic, which does not result from the liberty of the hero, but from the [...] archaic and mythical energies that are also, from time 353

10 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 immemorial, sources of misfortune (Ricoeur 1992, 241). Levinas is aware of this connection with the ancient concept of tragedy, as evidenced in his remark in Existence and Existents: The fatality of the tragedy of antiquity becomes the fatality of irremissible being. Spectres, ghosts, sorceresses are not only a tribute Shakespeare pays to his time, or vestiges of the original material he composed with; they allow him to move constantly toward this limit between being and nothingness where being insinuates itself even in nothingness, like bubbles of the earth [ ]. Hamlet recoils before the not to be because he has a foreboding of the return of being [ ]. In Macbeth, the apparition of Banquo s ghost is also a decisive experience of the no exit from existence, its phantom returns through the fissures through which one has driven it (2001, 57). The notion of the there is also introduces an ambiguity into Levinas philosophy. On the one hand, it reduces any sense into insignificance; it depersonalises all my relations to being; it implies [...] the disintegration of the hypostasis (2001, 68). On the other hand, its presence continues to return in corporeity: in sensibility, joy, fatigue and boredom, as well as in such affects as anxiety, horror, nausea and shame. The detailed analyses of these different phenomena share the fact that they reveal the indigence and dependency of the body in a particular way, as it is riveted to being. In other words, the there is simultaneously conditions and ruins the possibility of giving sense. This ambiguity, however, implies that the there is is neither a power nor a sense that refers to archaic or mythical energies. The impersonal presence of the there is even neutralizes these references, which still occupy a central place in the tragedy of antiquity. Because of this ambiguity, the there is cannot be a sufficient condition for highlighting a tragic dimension in Levinas philosophy. Although there is certainly no suffering without the invading and threatening insistence of the there is in the body, the mere experience of pain or joy is not necessarily tragic as such. Nevertheless, the references to a tragic dimension of existence reappear in Levinas description of the encounter 354

11 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS with the other person. Between the experience of the estrangement, which is characteristic of the there is and the experience of the otherness of the other, Levinas primarily refers to a close proximity. Both establish a relation to a strangeness that has the power to unsettle the pre-given comprehension of being. Time after time, therefore, Levinas describes the encounter with the other in terms of an act of violence, an imminent threat or the approach of death. In the analyses of Otherwise than Being, Levinas is perhaps more explicit with regard to this threatening violence, using such terms as wounds and outrages, persecution, haemorrhage and penetration. Nevertheless, the sense of this analysis has already been given in Totality and Infinity, with the statement: The Other, inseparable from the very event of transcendence, is situated in the region from which death, possibly murder, comes (1969, 233). It is precisely this approach that receives a tragic meaning in Levinas description: The unwonted hour of its coming approaches as the hour of fate fixed by someone. Levinas explains this reappearance of the tragic dimension by referring to [...] the alienation of my will by the Other. It is only in (and because of) the relation to the other, that I run the risk of figuring in a drama in which my will is exposed to impersonal, archaic forces: Hostile and malevolent powers, more wily, more clever than I, absolutely other and only thereby hostile, retain its secret. Levinas continues: This unknown that frightens, the silence of the infinite spaces that terrify, comes from the other, and this alterity, precisely as absolute, strikes me in an evil design or in a judgment of justice (1969, 233). In other words, the encounter of the other is a necessary condition for the experience of the tragic in existence. This seems to be Levinas point, a view that differs from the existential understanding of the tragic because it does not define the tragic by referring to the possibility of a choice between being and not being. It also does not imply the idea that I can assume my destiny by accepting my death as my own possibility. On the contrary, face to face with the other, my will is exposed to a strangeness that it cannot assume and from which it cannot be released, 355

12 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 whereas the possibility of resolving the intrigue is not given, and it is not in my own hands. As such, the other is far from a miraculous instance that liberates me from the burden of existence. On the contrary, it confronts me with a tragic condition from which I am unable to escape. It is hardly convincing, however, to state that the mere encounter with the other has a tragic dimension. Some interpersonal relations certainly do have a tragic aspect, but such a statement implies that one is already involved in a relationship. Let us thus try to develop and sharpen the connection that Levinas establishes between the other and the tragic. As is well known, Levinas describes the relation with the other in terms of an irreducible asymmetry: the other escapes all initiatives that have their point of departure in my own self-relatedness. It makes no sense to define this asymmetry as tragic. Levinas is not the first to state that the other is inaccessible in a principle way. Husserl did this in the fifth Cartesian meditation, without introducing a notion of the tragic in his description of inter-subjectivity. If the relation with the other becomes tragic, it is necessary to say that the presence of the there is returns in this relation in an insurmountable way, regardless of whether it reveals destructive violence (exposure to wounds and outrages) or dependence on an impersonal, destructive presence (suffering). It is important to notice that both have a bodily meaning in Levinas analyses: it is the dependency of the body on that which remains indifferent towards its own sensibility (the elemental, the skin, the blood, exposure to violence). In short, it is the body s essential vulnerability. This dependency creates another asymmetry in the relation with the other, which differs from the first. The distinction between the two asymmetries becomes obvious when we consider the case that the other has been exposed to a serious disease (e.g. life-threatening cancer). The gap between me and the other that has been created by this disease is as irreducible as is the asymmetry given with the relation to the other. Nevertheless, the meaning of the first is not the same. Threatened by cancer (or facing a pain that he or she can barely endure), the other is separated from me in a way that makes it 356

13 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS impossible to narrow the gap by a word or an injunction. We could say that the other is beyond any relation of friendship or of responsibility that he or she is at a distance that refuses proximity. That which introduces a tragic sense is the fact that the disease belongs to the other, thus isolating him or her in a radical way, eliminating the possibility of giving and receiving. At the same time, that which belongs to the other in this non-reciprocal way dispossesses him or her from within, but nevertheless as something that remains exterior. Cancer is not just a momentary illness. It is even possible to say that different types of cancer do not have a similar meaning for the patient. Philosophically speaking, however, all cancers can be considered as a presence of the there is, an anonymous, increasing presence in the flesh of the body, which disseminates by annihilating living flesh. It blocks the process of transformation that Levinas describes in Totality and Infinity, in which he analyses the dependency of the body in terms of joy and corporeity: the transformation of the anonymous and the elemental being into food and energy from which the body lives. Cancer blocks this transformation and turns it against the living body. Beneath the limit of the sensible, it disseminates in the body, reducing the tissue of the living body to an undefined and threatening increase of globules and cells. With regard to this process, it is not possible to speak of substitution, as Levinas does, in order to define subjectivity. It is not possible to substitute oneself for the other who is suffering from cancer without misunderstanding the meaning of this suffering. In its radical singularity, this suffering cannot be attained by a responsibility defined as a responsive account of and to the suffering of the other. In this case, assuming responsibility within the face-to-face is at risk of becoming a non-intended act of aggression against the patient. The other is separated by the fact of his or her illness: nobody can touch it, nobody can have a claim on it, nobody can put him or herself in the relation that the other has to his or her cancer. Nevertheless, the response given to the other already touches this relation without the possibility of assuming it. As a third party without a face, taking away the human time the time 357

14 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 to deliberate the serious illness or suffering of the other can disturb the straightforwardness of the exchange at any time, physically manifesting the nakedness and vulnerability of the body. It is not possible to make an abstraction of this dependency on the there is in the relation with the other. On the contrary, it conditions the sense of nakedness and indigence as revealed in the face of the other who is exposed to indifferent, destructive forces. It is not possible to undo this dependency or to resolve the process of annihilation that is inherent in it. Levinas detailed analyses of corporeity are not at odds with the ethical injunction of the face, but they are the main access to it: the asymmetry given within the bodily indigence complements and ethically transforms the asymmetrical relation between me and the other. From the outset, substitution is confronted with a finitude that the ill or suffering body reveals. This finitude is given with the dependency of the body, with the difference between the sensible and the insensible within the indigent body. In other words, it would be a misunderstanding of Levinas concept of subjectivity to attribute the finitude of my responsibility for the other to a certain shortcoming that is due to the egoism of my self-relatedness. It would also be wrong to state the reverse, arguing that only the presence of the suffering other is able to break open the finitude of my self-relatedness. On the contrary, it is necessary to articulate the asymmetrical relation with the other differently, as an awareness of a tragic condition with which the other confronts me. The response given to the other, facing that which remains indifferent to this response, reveals the finitude of the response. The sense of charity takes it power from this finitude: the care given to the other can neither undo nor take away the presence of a threat that destroys the other from within. The response given to the other, however well intended, can be powerless with regard to this kind of otherness. It follows from the preceding reflections that Levinas ethics actually introduces a new sense of the tragic experience, which is no longer correlated to the awareness of a destiny of my own being, that I can assume 358

15 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS or reject. Instead, it finds its expression in the awareness that my beingfor-the-other is not sufficient to do justice to the other. The ethical injunction to do justice has its origin in the relation with the other, but the possibility to realise this injunction is not guaranteed by this relation. In the second part of this discussion, therefore, we must examine the extent to which a reflection on action is able to complement the ethical injunction of justice and to overcome the persistence of the tragic experience in the relation to the other. III. THE TRAGIC ACTION That to which Ricoeur refers as the tragic action primarily requires a completely different kind of analysis. It clearly belongs to existence also, but the experience of existence the relation to my being is not considered tragic as such in this context. Ricoeur thematizes the tragic dimension within a reflection on moral judgment. The decisions taken in an institutional and inter-personal context can create conflicts between different values, which are at risk of becoming insoluble and unmanageable. According to Ricoeur, the tragic thus reveals a true finitude of ethics, insofar as morality, understood in the Kantian sense of practical reason, engenders conflicts because of its rigorous universality when confronted with the complexity of life. For this reason, Ricoeur refers to the experience of Greek tragedy, which he does not take as a philosophical source, but which can be instructive: the tragic experience indirectly reveals the importance of practical wisdom. Following Hegel, Ricoeur considers action the central theme of the tragedy. He refers to Antigone as the prototype of all tragedies. The tragedy of Antigone touches what [...] we can call the agonistic ground of human experience, where we witness the interminable confrontation of man and woman, old age and youth, society and the individual, the living and the death, humans and gods (1992, 243). This case is exemplary because it reveals the reasons why the tragic experience [...] has maintained an 359

16 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 ineffaceable permanence in the human condition. Antigone s decisions are determined by family obligations, as well as by the insistence of archaic forces: The bond between sister and brother, which knows nothing of the political distinction between friend and enemy, is inseparable from the service of divinities of the underworld and transforms the family bond into a sinister pact with death (1992, 242). The passion of her behaviour cannot be fully understood in terms of a deliberate choice and of the responsibility that she claims with regard to her own deeds. It also implies obscure motivations, which are intrinsically interwoven with fatal constraints from the past. Neither the affirmation of liberty nor the affirmation of nothingness is able to shed light on the tragic development. The interpersonal relations are able to illuminate it, however, and within these relations, the recurrence of an archaic past and the inevitable resurgence of an antagonistic conflict in practical life. Meanwhile, Antigone indicates the limits of political power as a vulnerable woman without a political mandate in the Greek polis. She is an isolated individual whose only source of authority is unwritten laws, to which she refers in order to establish a relation between death and living people: [...] she posited the limit that points up the human, all too human, character of every institution (1992, 245). Why is it important to recall this heritage of Antigone, which was extensively commented on in the wake of a philosophical examination of modern culture, in a reflection concerning the relation between ethics and the tragic in the philosophy of Levinas? Levinas never mentions Antigone. Does the finitude of ethics that Ricoeur thematizes when he recalls the legacy of the Greek tragedy also apply to Levinas ethics? Ricoeur does not specify when and under what conditions conflicts can be considered tragic. He appears to refer to them as tragic because they are already ethical, in that values are in contradiction with each other in such a way that justice given to one creates a fault and damages with regard to another. Ricoeur refers to medical decisions at the end of life, to the application of the law (which is general) to a case that is unique and exceptional, to the resistance of the oppressed individual against the totalitarian regime, 360

17 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS among other comparisons. From this perspective, and in contrast to what the interpretation of Antigone has suggested, the meaning of the tragic is delineated in terms of a deliberated choice or an insurmountable opposition between convictions. It reveals a kind of blindness at the core of this choice or this opposition. Levinas philosophy, however, precedes this kind of reflection on the conflicting implications of morality in life, as reflected in the first sentence of Totality and Infinity: [...] it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality (1979, 21). As I have already observed, Levinas intends to re-define the sense of justice starting from the subjectivity responsible for the other, and no longer according to the norms that have already been given. What then is the connection with Ricoeur s examination? This issue raises questions regarding the role of the act in a reflection upon the ethical condition. Is it necessary to develop this notion in order to elucidate this condition? Levinas does not think so. He relates the ethical condition to [...] a passivity still more passive than any passivity, thus accepting the consequence that the meaning of responsibility is given with the mere exposure to wounds and outrages, with vulnerability, with suffering by and for the other. To tend the cheek to the smiter and to be filled with shame, to demand suffering in the suffering undergone (without producing the act that would be the exposing of the other cheek) (1998, 111) this quotation from Lamentations at the core of the analysis of substitution in Otherwise than Being summarizes the meaning of subjectivity, otherwise than essence. In these formulas, which are repeated time and again, Levinas explicitly rejects the ethical relevance of the act, as is reflected on the final page of this same book: This weakness is needed. This relaxation of virility without cowardice is needed for the little cruelty our hands repudiate. That is the meaning that should be suggested by the formulas repeated in this book concerning the passivity more passive still than any passivity, the fission of the ego unto me, its consummation for the other such that from the ashes of this consummation no act could be reborn (1998, 185). 361

18 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 From Levinas perspective, action inevitably turns into the tragic dimension of being. At this point, we are confronted with what I consider the critical problem of his entire philosophy. What Levinas fails to consider is that the plurality of acting also belongs to the pluralism of being (to which he was the first to contribute by assessing sexual difference as irreducible in Time and the Other). The meaning of being is revealed anew in different relations of practical interactions that are irreducible to each other. Levinas is unable to approach plurality in this regard, even though he had the means to do so. He is unable to do so because he still has a monolithic notion of action. Action originates in the self-relatedness of the self, and it is therefore reductive with regard to the other. The results of the action contribute to an interpersonal order in which the original intention of the will loses its meaning and in which the will is exposed to an interpretation that does not account for it. This order is already impersonal. At this point, it is interesting to note that the dimension of fatality immediately and inevitably returns in Levinas analysis of the will: The absurdity of the fatum foils the sovereign will (1969, ). Levinas, nevertheless, also gives the correct starting point for another approach to action, because he does not consider the will as an abstract idea, but as a bodily finitude. The will contains this duality of betrayal and fidelity in its mortality, which is produced or holds sway in its corporeity (1969, 232). He even mentions the pluralism of wills (1969, 222) in order to avoid considering the multiplicity of the social relations as fixed parts of a totality. In his analysis of the will, he refers to its different activities: its positing with and against the other, its creation of works, its erotic relations and even, with regard to the requirement of justice, its possibility of getting up to speak. None of these activities, however, is able to reveal the ethical meaning of goodness within the plurality of being because goodness is beyond the powers of a will (1969, 236). The smile of a child, however, can have the meaning of a goodness that extends beyond the being of my self-relatedness, as well as beyond the meaning of suffering for the other. 362

19 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS Levinas fails to analyse modalities of acting in bodily gestures. He also fails to articulate how the meanings of these gestures are expressing commitments to passivity. As long as it is not clear how the activity of doing justice is conditioned by (and originates from) the passivity of vulnerability, action can be considered only as a betrayal of the ethical meaning of responsibility. At this point, Levinas is confronted with an insurmountable paradox in his philosophy, because he also needs to appeal to the act: it is not possible to respond to the other empty-handed (les mains vides). Justice also requires the possibility of deliberating and comparing. Institutions are necessary in order to realise justice. From this limited perspective, one may wonder whether what Ricoeur refers as the tragic action, and what he analyses under this title before a political philosophy is at stake, does not point towards an essential finitude in Levinas ethics, but in yet another way as the reference to Antigone in his reflections reveals. The problem with Levinas philosophy is not only that the moral norms within society and the ethical meaning of the responsibility for this singular other are opposed to each other, such that it is not possible to be faithful to both at the same time. More importantly, it is not clear how the exceptional condition of passivity in the nonreciprocal relation with the other can be translated in a commitment to a just society without losing its exceptional meaning. Levinas mentions the inevitability of a betrayal (e.g. 2003, 76) and of a limit of responsibility (e.g. 1998, 157) when deliberation and comparison are required. In this respect, Ricoeur s reflection may be helpful in order to elucidate the difficulties that appear when justice is required according to a condition defined as [...] a passivity still more passive than any passivity (1998, 185). We retain three difficulties. First, considered from the position of a responsible subjectivity, justice can receive a social meaning only if the passive condition of my being for the other keeps its meaning and can be expressed within my intentions to do good for the other. The intention to do good, however, 363

20 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 is not possible without being supported by what Ricoeur refers to as conviction. In addition to implying a cognitive aspect of the intention, conviction expresses a practically orientated self-confidence. Ricoeur uses this notion to designate a practical wisdom that is able to recognise the universal each time in different particular contexts. It presupposes an inter-personal order, and it starts to develop itself in the art of conversation (1992, 290). Conviction thus refers to the responsibility for the other, but it also requires an entire learning process in order to affirm itself. Levinas does not mention conviction as a necessary condition for doing justice. In light of the ethical meaning of responsibility, conviction already appears to be on this side of selfhood, always related to a selfcomplaisance, already betraying the condition of passivity by taking for granted the symmetry and reciprocity of the inter-personal relations. Following Ricoeur s reflection, we could ask, however, whether conviction might also be a possibility of encountering the other and, even more, whether it might be necessary in order to prevent the passivity of the exposure of subjectivity to the other from paralysing all confidence because of its disquietude. Even when limited and blind in its finitude, practical wisdom, as implied in conviction, does not necessarily lead to the objectification or injury of the other. On the contrary, it might provoke a way of deliberating and interacting that creates possibilities for doing justice to the uniqueness of the other, while avoiding the vicissitudes of the tragic action. Second, from the position of a responsible subjectivity, justice can have a social meaning only if the ethical meaning of the passivity can be heard in particular social contexts. Justice is a right to speak (1969, 274) with this statement, Levinas seems to assert the possibility of a social and even juridical ( the right ) meaning for justice, which retains the relation to the singular, irreplaceable subjectivity. This possibility nevertheless implies that the individual, responsible subjectivity is able to express and articulate the demand of justice each time, both before and in discussion with others. Ricoeur refers to this articulation as a 364

21 ARTHUR COOLS THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LEVINAS ETHICS deliberation, because it requires both a comparison between contradicting demands and a confrontation with the public discussion (1992, 258). Deliberation is an activity that does not depend on myself, but that necessarily takes place within a particular community: it requires different social skills and debate with others, as well as a certain degree of indebtedness to the past. For this reason, the definition of justice as a right to speak cannot make an abstraction of the distinction between the private and the public, or between the response given to the other and the speech given before the others. Levinas fails to consider this distinction. In what he refers to as apology (1969, 240), in the act of speech in the first person, the uniqueness of the subjectivity s relation to the other is maintained. He defines justice precisely from this position: Justice would not be possible without the singularity, the unicity of subjectivity (1969, 246). I am therefore necessary for justice, as responsible beyond every limit fixed by an objective law (1969, 245). Without any limitation of an objective law, the judgment to which I am submitted and to which my apology responds requires an infinite increase of responsibilities, which interminably purges me of myself. Following Ricoeur s reflections, however, we may wonder how Levinas can assert in the same sentence that the I [...] is confirmed precisely in this incessant effort to purge itself (1969, ) if not because the meaning of the responsible self has already been expressed and confirmed by a public field. More generally, we may question the very possibility of bearing witness to the suffering for the other as long as it does not find an expression before the others. The public field is not only the space in which the other is objectified and in which the meaning of my responsibility can be lost, it is also the space in which justice can be required and confirmed. Even the meaning of those who have given their lives for the other depends upon a public space that memorialises their names. But as such, the ethical meaning of the right to speak always runs the risk of being exposed to a conflicting opposition with regard to others and of being confused with an indebtedness to the past. 365

22 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES SEPTEMBER 2014 Third, and finally, justice can have a social meaning only if there is a commitment of the subjectivity responsible for the other, which can be translated into an institutional field. This requires mediation between the ethical sense of responsibility and the social sense of commitment. The reference to the third party in Levinas philosophy does not explain how this commitment is possible. For Levinas, the third party can be nothing more than a betrayal of the ethical significance of subjectivity. Nevertheless, the presence of political institutions remains inevitably neutral with regard to the signification of responsibility. Only subjectivity can make a difference, in relating its commitment in the institutional field to the ethical significance of its responsibility for the other. Conviction, practical wisdom, conversation, deliberation, promise, debate, conflict, testimony, commitment and mediation, as well as respect, love and care all of these notions refer to a differentiated view on the sources and activities of subjectivity in which the relation to the other and to the otherness of the other is articulated differently. They delineate a field of interactions that is already ethical, but not yet political. Ricoeur s reflections on these sources of subjectivity thus show that an ethics of passivity should not make abstraction from a philosophy of action. Action confronts this ethics with an intrinsic finitude in a dual sense: (i) in that the passivity of the subjectivity responsible for the other is not a sufficient condition for doing justice and (ii) in that the exceptional meaning of this subjectivity is at risk of being compromised and even lost if it attempts to realise justice by acting in a social context. While looking for an ethics beyond being, Levinas excludes all reflection on action from the ethical meaning of my being for the other. While defining pluralism merely in terms of the two positions of the relation between me and the other, he is unable to see the pluralism that is given with the bodily ways of interacting. He therefore ends up with a monolithic notion of action, which is thus intrinsically connected to the tragic dimension of being. Precisely for this reason, his 366