Overcoming : Dualisms
Introduction [1]
If you have ever questioned the nature of your own existence you are a philosopher. “Philosophy” literally translates as “love of learning”. This love often feels like hate or pain. Radical self-dissection is the most painful thing you can undertake. When we are not being philosophers we distract ourselves constantly; we consume food, products and each other: we exist on the level of fulfilling our baser urges.[2] In general, attaching value judgements to things is unhelpful, unless we are careful to consider carefully the value itself. If the highest value is contentment, balance of the mind/body dualism, inner peace, the “good life”[3] then we cannot fail to judge correctly. It is important to remember that we are animals and therefore that existing on the animal level is not a less valid mode of being; the key is to recognise that it is not the only mode of being. This is what is meant by transcendence[4]. We exist on the animal level of existence from the moment we are born and some people remain on it until their death. However, as soon as you look outwards and that thought is reflected back to you, your consciousness not your exterior, you become self-reflexive[5]. This is the portal to philosophy. It is not like a light switching illuminating your interior self and making it all at once transparent. It is like the spark of a match in a cave, a match that builds over time to become a fire that casts shadows around the rocky crags of your own psyche and exposes all the facets the knowledge of which are necessary for your happiness[6]. You realise that your brain is an organ and is fed by your body; nurturing your body nurtures your brain. You choose methods to improve the state of your physical being. These methods have to be learned and in order to learn we must quiet our voice, or ego, and become receptive to the passive assimilation of knowledge. When we become receptive to the silent voice that speaks from within us, knowledge becomes belief. We realise that we are born alone and die alone and rejoice in the belief that we can choose to perfect our existence during this window of time[7]; life is a gift. We realise the futility and transience of every endeavour that concerns the animal level and strive to make a lasting and significant change. The only thing that we have sufficient control over to achieve such a change is ourselves. Once we realise that, although neuroscience has taught us that we inherit certain potentialities, we are born a blank canvas – we are free.[8] We realise that we can achieve harmony between mind and body, between ourselves and others, between our perception and our experience, between our emotions and our thoughts[9]. At this moment a state of equilibrium is reached that is the end of our philosophical journey[10]. Except of course that if we are true philosophers we are in awe of the magnitude of the task in hand and marvel at the splendour, beauty and terror of existence itself.[11]
[2] See Hegel “Desire” in Phenomenology of Spirit (trans. Miller; Oxford UP 1977) § 166-177
[3] or “eudaemonia” (see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)
[4] Levinas, ‘Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity’ in Collected Philosophical Papers (trans. Lingis; Dusquesne UP, 1998)
[5] See Sartre, Being and Nothingness (trans. Barnes; Routledge, 2003) pg 276-326
[6] See Plato’s analogy of the cave in the theory of Forms
[7] See Heidegger on the “call of conscience”, “authenticity” and “Being-towards-Death” in Being and Time
[8] See Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pg
[9] On dualisms, see Nietzsche ‘Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense’
[10] See Hegel on “Absolute Spirit (or Knowledge)”, PS § 347-359, Chapter (DD.), Section VIII
[11] “All I know is that I know nothing” – Socrates (paraphrase)
Desire
When we are not being philosophers we distract ourselves constantly; we consume food, products and each other: we exist on the level of fulfilling our baser urges. Levinas believes that “desire” is just another word for “consumption,” it is appetitive; it is a hunger than can be satisfied. Hegel calls this power and force: we do not eat because we want to nourish our bodies but because we want to overcome the “otherness” of the object. While Levinas and Hegel both agree that the Other is the stumbling block in this process, they differ in their conclusions. Hegel asserts that we can overcome the “otherness” that confronts us when we are faced with another person; Levinas does not.
Levinas believes that the Continental, Western philosophic tradition (which he calls “ontology”) is violent and imperialistic. This is because it seeks to dominate otherness by destroying it. The alterity of the Other is negated and reabsorbed into my own identity as a cogito or as a possessor. He calls his philosophy (and it would be wrong to say system as it is not an evolution it is a doctrine) “metaphysics”. Metaphysical desire cannot be satisfied because it is desired something that you cannot assimilate, that cannot complete you. In Hegel the two people are like fire and water and they therefore cancel each other out. In Levinas they are like fire and earth, so they are close but the latter cannot “extinguish” the former. This closeness is what deepens the desire to be close to others; the Desired does not fulfil the desire but fuels it.
The other is remote, they are higher: our relationship is asymmetrical. This is what is meant by transcendence. When we desire the Other we go towards something remote, wholly other. This is what is meant by “absolute alterity”. This is a similar journey to that of the journey of our lives, the journey towards death: this is what Levinas learned from Heidegger (which will be discussed in a following section).
There are two conditions for metaphysical Desire. They are both related to finitude and morality. The first is that the desiring being is mortal. The second is that they are invisible (i.e. I can have no preconceived ideas about their consciousness, I do not “know” them; they are removed from the scope of my ontologising). Metaphysical desire is ‘a desire without satisfaction, which precisely understands the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other.’
The dimension of height is opened up by Desire: the Other is Invisible and Most-High (they take the place of the heavens, which is why a lot of what Levinas says about the “Other” can be said about “God”). Desire does not dispense with acts. However, these Desiring acts are not consumption (as with appetite), caress (as with sexual desire) or liturgy (as with Love of God). The prevailing pretention of Western ontology is that the ‘thoughts of man are borne by needs which explain society and history.’ This manifests as a wickedness: ‘that hunger and fear can prevail over every human resistance and every freedom.’ Non-metaphysical desire abuses the freedom of the desired. Levinas expresses this belief in human goodness (which is borne of maintaining the absolute alterity of the Other as the “dimension” of metaphysics: ‘to be a man is to know that that is so. Freedom consists in knowing that freedom is in peril.’ Furthermore, we must ‘forestall the instant of inhumanity,’ i.e. we must maintain the freedom of the desiring being and the Desired.
Transcendence
Transcendence is the absolute exteriority of the metaphysical term. It is the irreducibility of movement to an “inward play”, a simple presence of self-to-self. It is the self-reflexive cogito (this is what existentialism has learned from Levinas). “Transcendent” defines the Other: ‘its formal characteristic, to be other, makes up its content.’ The metaphysician and the Other cannot be totalised. They do not “complete” each other within a system; theirs is a unilateral relationship. If they did exist within a totality, the transcendence of the Other would be re-absorbed into ‘the unity of the system,’ destroying their radical alterity. Because the Other and I do not belong to a shared, totalising system, I can never remove myself from the relationship to observe it from the outside: we cannot be “arm chair philosophers.” This is another belief that Levinas inherited from Heidegger. Although Heidegger totalised the Other under the umbrella term of “Being”, he always maintained that the psyche of the Other was a looked cabinet, the key to which “I” do not possess.
The “I”dentity
We must deal with the question of others by first dealing with the question of ourselves. This is why we must start with Hegel (who perfected Absolute Spirit), then move on to Sartre (who explained the ego, but was too pessimistic about human relationships) before returning to the “root” of the phenomenological “problem”: Socrates/Plato.
The Other in Sartre and Hegel
Introduction
Sartre’s aim in Being and Nothingess is to give an existential account of man’s existence. I will examine his account of the Other and how this fits in with his wider project to explain man’s freedom. Throughout the work, Sartre offers various readings of other philosophers. By investigating the primary sources I will argue that these are in fact misreading. I will then go on to attempt to elucidate the agenda behind them, i.e. what problems Sartre is aiming to solve. The central misreading to be examined is that of Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic, the purpose of which is to pave the way for the exposition of the Look as a “solution” to Hegel’s mistakes. I will also touch upon the misinterpretation of Heidegger’s account of Mitsein, the purpose of which is to offer bad faith as a more viable alternative. I will conclude the investigation by ascertaining whether Sartre has succeeded in providing a convincing account of our relationship with the Other, and the impact this has on our freedom, before offering a defence of the Hegelian system. Although it is clear that Sartre’s interpretation of Hegel is inaccurate it remains to be seen whether his existential project improves upon the account of Absolute Sprit in the Phenomenology of Spirit, or whether in fact we can find fault and merit in each.
Before embarking on this task it is necessary to give an overview of Sartre’s project, in order to put the following discussion into context. To this end, we will summarise the Sartrean conception of the self, or the ego, before moving on to investigate the question concerning the Other and freedom. At the heart of Sartrean existentialism is the belief that existence precedes essence. We are not born with a certain essence and any facet of our character is developed from an absolutely bare existence. Consciousness is distinguished from the ego. While consciousness is transcendental, the ego (the “I”) is transcendent, the former is aligned with existence the latter with essence: ‘rather than innate, the self is an imaginary construct, outside consciousness, object not subject of consciousness, a continuous creation held in belief by itself.’[1] By rejecting the transcendental I Sartre asserts that the transcendental field is ‘“pre-personal,” without an I.’[2] The way we feel, act or respond to situations does not relate to any innate character but is the result of our transcendent ego:
[The ego] always appears at the horizon of states. Each state, each action is given as incapable of being separated from the ego without abstraction. And if judgement separates the I from its state (as in the phrase: “I am in love”), this can only be in order to bind them at once.[3]
This not only implies you can never be defined by your life project or your chosen role, but furthermore the ego ‘is external to consciousness, an ideal totality of states, qualities and actions, a construct which I tend to imagine as a source of my feelings and behaviour but which is in fact rather a synthesis.’[4] The ego can reflect upon itself but it cannot reflect on consciousness. This means that we can only “know” ourselves as our ego, which we have created ourselves. To re-iterate, our self, or ego, is not actually in consciousness, and therefore we can never know ourselves in any fundamental sense:
This transcendent totality [the ego] participates in the questionable character of all transcendence. This is to say that everything given to us by our intuitions of the ego is always given as capable of being contradicted by subsequent intuitions. For example, I can see clearly that I am ill-tempered, jealous, etc., and nevertheless I may be mistaken. In other words, I may deceive myself in thinking that I have such a me.[5]
The fact that we can have no knowledge of our own consciousness is not a negative assertion, for if we were able to have objective knowledge of ourselves this would negate the freedom of our consciousness (because...); ‘The transcendental I is the death of consciousness.’[6] Already we understand that Sartre is taking a radical stand against the collectivist epistemology of Hegel; the subject cannot know its own consciousness, let alone share in a universal self-consciousness with Others.
Sartre on Hegel
Having established ‘that human reality is-for-itself’[7], Sartre goes on to talk conclude that this cannot be the end-point of the investigation because ‘we can encounter modes of consciousness which seem, even while themselves remaining strictly in for-itself, to point to a radically different type of ontological structure.’[8] This radically different ontological structure is the being of the Other. Before attempting to expand on this further, Sartre gives a critique of various theories of the Other offered by other philosophers. In this section we will focus on his critique of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in order to discover how Sartre attempts to correct Hegel’s mistakes.
In the Phenomenology of Spirit[9] Hegel gives a phenomenological-historical account of the stages of Spirit. He shows how consciousness becomes self-consciousness and eventually culminates the Absolute Spirit. The Master/Slave dialectic is an account of when two conscious subjects meet and the resulting self-consciousness that is gained by each. [...]
Evans provides an exposition of the critique of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit given by Sartre in Being and Nothingness. She claims that ‘in contradistinction to Hegel’s description of a human consciousness, which has to fight to establish its autonomy and the truth of its existence, for Sartre, the essential freedom of consciousness is already a given.’[10] Sartre argues against Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic and its eventual resolution, in which the Other plays a crucial role in the formation of the Subject’s own self-consciousness. He believes that Hegel gives the Other too much power over the Subject. Many critics have argued that Sartre’s formulation of the “Look” is his solution to this “problem” he sees in Hegel’s philosophy. We will examine Sartre’s criticisms of Hegel’s account of the Master-Slave dialectic and assess their validity before moving on to ascertain whether his “Look” manages to correct Hegel’s mistakes.
Sartre misunderstands the resolution of the dialectic. He claims that in order for the Master to be certain of the truth of his being for himself ‘there is necessary “a moment in which the master does for himself what he does as regards to the Other and when the slave does as regards the Other what he does for himself.” At this moment there will appear a self-consciousness in general which is recognized in other self-consciousnesses and which is identical with them and with itself.’[11] The section of Hegel Sartre quotes if the following section from chapter 4: ‘But for recognition proper the moment is lacking, that what the lord does to the other he also does to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself he should also do to the other. The outcome is a recognition that is one-sided and unequal.’[12] So, Sartre is correct in claiming that mutual recognition relies on each individual recognising that they share in a universal self-consciousness with the Other. However, this mutual recognition leads to the knowledge of Spirit but does not amount to Absolute Knowledge (or Spirit). The problem of mutual recognition is solved when we reach the community of Ancient Ethical Life (Ancient Greece): ‘For this [mutual recognition] is nothing else than the absolute spiritual unity of the essence of individuals in their independent actual existence; it is an intrinsically universal self-consciousness that takes itself to be actual in another consciousness.’[13] Although Sartre is correct in claiming that the mutual recognition in Ancient Ethical Life is a form of ‘Spirit’, and has solved the problem of the unequal recognition that resulted from the Master-Slave struggle, he is mistaken in assuming that this is the end point of the whole dialectic:
By ignoring the distinction between the ontological (eidetic) and ontic (empirical) levels, Sartre fails to see that, for Hegel, recognition has an ontological structure capable of supporting a wider greater range of instantiations than master/slave, conflict and domination. Thus, he fails to grasp master/slave as a deficient mode of recognition.[14]
The mutual recognition that is borne as a direct result of the Master/Slave dialectic is horizontal (inter-personal) rather than the Absolute Spirit at the end of the Phenomenology which is both horizontal and vertical (between the community and Spirit itself). In this way, mutual recognition between individuals pre-figures Absolute Spirit but does not constitute it.
Moreover, Sartre has misunderstood the nature of mutual recognition. His central attack on Hegel is that ‘it would be ill conceived to think that the ardent and perilous conflict between master and slave had for its sole stake the recognition of a formula as barren and abstract as the “I am I.”’[15] However, at the beginning of chapter 4, Hegel states that true self-consciousness (as is attainted in the mutual recognition of Ancient Ethical Life) can not be stated as “I am I”:
self-consciousness is the reflection out of the being of the world of sense and perception, and is essentially the return from otherness. As self-consciousness, it is movement; but since what it distinguishes from itself is only itself as itself, the difference, as an otherness, is immediately superseded for it; the difference is not, and it [self-consciousness] is only the motionless tautology of: “I am I”; but since for it the difference does not have the form of being, it is not self-consciousness.[16]
In order to realise itself as self-conscious the Subject must recognise that it and the Other are both instantiations of the same universal self-consciousness. It does not recognise the Other as an alter-ego, as merely an extension of itself. Hegel defines the ultimate outcome of the Master-Slave dialectic, i.e. Spirit as follows:
What still lies ahead for consciousness if the experience of what Spirit is – this absolute substance which is the unity of the different self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: “I” that is “We” and “We” that is “I”.[17]
On this count, it is clear that Sartre has misunderstood Hegel’s Absolute Spirit. So, Sartre has misunderstood the structure of the Phenomenology and so his criticisms based on this misunderstanding do nothing to debase Hegel’s philosophy. However, Sartre makes several criticisms of Hegel’s project that do hold true.
Sartre is correct to argue that for Hegel the problem of consciousness ‘remains everywhere formulated in terms of knowledge.’[18] Hegel states that the ‘goal’ of the dialectic of the Phenomenology is ‘Absolute Knowing.’[19] Sartre claims that Hegel reduces being-for-others to ‘a “being-as-object”’[20]. We take this to mean that in order for a community to realise itself as a community of Spirit each individual must know the truth of the self-consciousness of the Other, i.e. must have the Other for the object of this knowledge. ‘Hegel, claims Sartre, has reduced my being to the Other’s knowledge of me. But in order for the Other to know me, I must become an object for the Other and therefore an “inessential” or slave-like consciousness – a position that is unacceptable to him.’[21] While Hegel neutralises the conflict with the Other that arises when a Subject attempts to know the truth of its self-consciousness, Sartre maintains a distance between the cogito of the Subject and the Other. He goes so far as to claim that the Subject is responsible for the Other’s existence as a Self:
[The Other] does not have the power to fix me as an object who lives permanently in the mode of my “being-for-others.” I can regain my “being-for-itself” when I transcend the objective presence of others (through an act of internal negation) and realize that I am responsible for their existence ... my “being-for-others” is entirely derivative of my “being-for-itself.”[22]
It remains to be seen whether Sartre manages to “solve” any of the “problems” he finds in Hegel’s phenomenology.
The Other in Being and Nothingness
After having critiqued the philosophical systems of Husserl, Hegel and Heidegger, Sartre lists his findings, ‘the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a theory of the existence of others can be valid.’[23] While he finds much to criticise in Heidegger’s Dasein analytic he merits the study of it with some valuable insights. Firstly, he learns from Heidegger what he learnt from Hegel’s “failure”, that the only point of departure possible is the Cartesian cogito[24]’ i.e. we are certain of our own self-consciousness prior to any interhuman encounter; just as ‘we do not constitute [the Other]’[25], he does not constitute us. That the Other exists as a fully-realised self-consciousness is a necessary fact, not an ontological necessity but a factual necessity:
If the Other is to be capable of being given to us, it is by means of a direct apprehension which leaves to the encounter its character as facticity, just as the cogito itself leaves all its facticity to my own thought, a facticity which nevertheless shares in the apodicticity of the cogito itself – i.e. in its indubitability.[26]
Here, Sartre reaffirms his position that my relationship with the Other is ontical, one of being, not epistemological. In the same way that the cogito is pre-ontological, so too is my certainty of the existence of the Other, as Other: ‘I have always had a total though implicit comprehension of [the Other’s] existence … this “pre-ontological” comprehension comprises a surer and deeper understanding of the nature of the Other and the relation of his being to my being than all the theories which have been built outside my comprehension.’[27] The Other does not facilitate either our knowledge of the world or our knowledge of our own self so he is not “for us” only in the sense that he ‘“interests” our being … in the empirical circumstances of our facticity.’[28] Sartre believes that his exposition of the cogito has ‘revealed to me my own incomparable, contingent but necessary, and concrete existence.’[29] He will go on to attempt to show how it can do the same for revealing not the existence of the Other (which, as we have seen, he takes to be an a priori necessity) but the fact that the Other is not me.
The way we perceive another human is fundamentally different from how we perceive objects. Sartre uses the example of the park to illustrate this: Imagine I am sitting in a park and looking out on the view. Every object is measured in angle and distance from me. Then I see a man walk into my line of vision. Now, I do not simply fit him into my grid of objects; instead, I see every object as it is in relation to him: ‘instead of a grouping toward me of the objects, there is now an orientation which flees from me.’[30] Now, this is not the fundamental original relation with Other that Sartre wishes to get to the root of. However, it tells us something important about the subject’s relation to the Other qua being-as-object. When the spatial relationships between objects re-orient themselves to put the man in their centre they escape me; these new distances with the man as their apex negate, or ‘disintegrate’, my original relations to the objects I perceive: ‘Thus, the appearance, among the objects of my universe, of an element of disintegration in that universe is what I mean by the appearance of a man in my universe.’[31] This exposition of our relation to the Other as being-as-object recalls Kant’s “Copernican revolution” because the pre-established modes of perception are reversed; instead of our cogito being the spatial, temporal and cognitive centre of the world, the Other’s cogito becomes the centre: ‘The appearance of the Other in the world corresponds therefore to a fixed sliding of the whole universe, to a decentralisation of the world which undermines the centralisation which I am simultaneously effecting.’[32] However, Sartre is quick to establish that my perception is not de-centralised into a void of nothingness, beyond the universe, but this disintegration remains in the same universe. Rather, it is as if a ‘drain hole’ has appeared at the site of the man and the world is ‘perpetually flowing off through this hole.’[33] However, although we realise that the Other is not merely another object among the other objects around us (the lawn, the trees) we are still seeing him in his objective presence, he is still the Other-as-object. This situation is phenomenologically unproblematic. When I perceive the Other as part of the world there is a perfect symmetry in our relation: the Other can be an object for me and I can be an object for him. However, neither one of us realises that we are an object for our Other because we have not yet established the Other as a subject; our consciousness is still at the stage of the pre-reflexive cogito. Here we have a motif that seems very similar to the situation of the two (not yet self-)consciousnesses at the beginning of the Master-Slave dialectic: ‘just as the Other is a probable object for me-as-subject, so I can discover myself in the process becoming a probable object for only a certain subject.’[34] Just as the Hegelian conscious subjects need each other in order to prove their self-consciousness, so too does the Sartrean cogito need the Other in order to break out of pre-reflexivity and realise itself in its true being, ‘that it must necessarily be what it is not and not be what it is.’[35] Therefore, the Other cannot remain on the level of Other-as-object and a ‘radical conversion’ from objectivity to subjectivity is needed. Sartre relates this move to the example of the park thus: the objectivity of the Other is a ‘particular type of objectivity’ that is defined ‘by the absence of the world which I perceive, an absence discovered at the very heart of my perception of this world’ (this absence is the aforementioned ‘drain hole’). We realise that ‘this relation of flight and of absence on the part of the world in relation to me is only probable’ because I must be the object of this effect and ‘I cannot be an object for an object.’ Therefore, there must be ‘an original presence of the Other’[36] that this being-as-object refers to, i.e. his being-as-subject. In order for me to understand the Other-as-subject I must put myself in the position of his object:
if the Other-as-object is defined in connection with the world as the object which sees what I see, then my fundamental connection with the Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back to my permanent possibility of being seen by the Other. It is in and through the revelation of my being-as-object for the Other that I must be able to apprehend the presence of his being-as-subject. [37]
Sartre describes the significance of this ‘being seen’ by the Other in his exposition of the ‘Look’. He makes the strong claim that ‘“Being-seen-by-the-Other” is the truth of “seeing-the-Other.”’[38] However, the Look of the Other does not necessarily have to physically enacted. Even the suspicion that one is being watched (for example, hearing the snapping of twigs behind you or seeing the twitch of a curtain) is enough to experience the effects of the Look. When I experience the Look I am no longer a pre-reflexive cogito, I am forced to reflect on myself and my situation:
The look which the eyes manifest ... is a pure reference to myself ... Thus the look is first an intermediary which refers me to myself. What I apprehend immediately when I hear the branches crackling behind me is not that there is someone there; it is that I am vulnerable, that I have a body which can be hurt ... in short, that I am seen. Thus the look is first an intermediary which refers from me to myself.[39]
Sartre uses the example of looking through a keyhole to describe the phenomenon of the Look. This unfolds as follows: Imagine that I have crept up to a keyhole and am listening at it and looking through it. There is nobody to judge my acts and so nothing to refer me back to myself; I am ‘caught up in the circuit of my selfness’ and cannot become an object for myself. Because I have not seen myself as the Other sees me I do not know myself, I am ‘absolutely nothing.’ But then, I hear footsteps behind me and realise that I am being watched. With this, my situation is essentially altered. I imagine how I look to the Other, I realise my action and I am ashamed. The foundation of my self does not come from within me but from the Other, who is outside me. ‘It is shame or pride which makes me live, not know the situation of being looked at.’[40]
Freedom
However, man does not realise this and tries to flee from his freedom, into a more comforting illusion of determinism: ‘total freedom is disquieting, awareness of spontaneous ex-nihilo existence causes anguish and is perpetually refused in the name of permanent (imaginary) structures of personality.’[41]
How does this account of freedom relate to the Other? To assuage the anguish he feels when he realises he is free, man is constantly trying to convince himself that he has an intrinsic essence, that he is a being-in-itself, determined by his situation in life:
I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. This means that no limits to my freedom can be found except freedom itself or, if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free. To the extent that the for-itself wishes to hide its own nothingness from itself and to incorporate the in-itself as its true mode of being, it is trying also to hide its freedom from itself.[42]
The only way that we can achieve this feeling of being-in-itself is when we are under the Look of the Other. When we feel shame it is as a result of our act (and therefore ego) becoming an object for us as a result of being objectified by the Other. In the example of the park the world of my spatialising flowed towards the Other and was de-centred. Now that I have been objectified I too, as my ego, am caught up in the world which flows towards the Other. ‘when the other looks at me he changes my relations to the world, I become self-conscious rather than conscious of the world outside ... I become a [transcendence transcended]. On the other hand, in alienating my subjectivity, the other simultaneously guarantees my objectivity.’[43] Because my ego is transcendent the way I come to have knowledge of it is through observing the reactions of others to it. It is others that make me aware of my specific character traits. This gives me the false sense of an innate personality and identity, the being-in-itself that I long for. As we have seen, the existentialist manifesto (that existence precedes essence) is anathema to any such belief in a pre-existing essence. Sartre’s account of bad faith elucidates his specific objections to such a belief.
As we have seen, the truth of being is nothingness. In the introduction to Being and Nothingness Sartre defines consciousness as “a being such that in its being, its being is in question in so far as this being implies a being other than itself.”[44] By the time we reach the beginning of the section on bad faith, Sartre has examined the meaning of “the question,” and found this meaning to be nothingness. Catalano provides a useful explanation of this:
[The] ability to question myself is a sign of a basic lack of identity with myself. It is a sign of a constant sliding from perfect identity, a sliding that, for Sartre, is the nothingness within me. Concrete nothingness is the constant “elsewhere” of consciousness.[45]
The disparity between consciousness and the ego renders my identity unstable and founded on nothingness. In light of this knowledge, Sartre is able to re-define consciousness thus: “Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being,”[46] because we can prove this nothingness by the fact that we can question ourselves. However, in bad faith ‘consciousness instead of directing its negation outwards turns it toward itself.’[47] Instead of realising that the ego is merely a transcendent essence, consciousness negates itself and synthesises itself with the ego, giving the illusion of a transcendental ego. In this way, consciousness “lies” to itself, but in a very specific sense.
Once again, Sartre had misinterpreted the theory of another philosopher in order to hold up his own theory as an improvement. He claims that ‘the lie is ... a normal phenomenon of what Heidegger calls the “Mitsein.”’[48] He is referring to inauthentic Mitsein, or existence within the influence of das Man (“the they”, or society at large). Firstly, Heidegger identifies another type of Mitsein in which Dasein can be the ‘call of conscience’ for each other and live together in an authentic community[49]. Secondly, Heidegger does not argue that inauthentic Mitsein is a negative state, as Sartre is claiming, but that is an inevitable part of Being-in-the-world and can never be overcome completely; authenticity is a modification of, not a negation of, inauthenticity. The most significant criticism for his current discussion on bad faith is that Heidegger’s account of Mitsein involves a situation in which “the liar” (i.e. inauthentic Dasein) ‘must make the project of the lie in entire clarity and that he possess a complete comprehension of the lie and of the truth which he is altering. It is sufficient that an all-over opacity hide his intentions from the Other; it is sufficient that the Other can take the lie for truth.’[50] In other words, Dasein knows that it is not being authentic and grasping its ownmost possibilities and furthermore it is deceiving the Other and not itself. This is not accurate. In Being and Time Heidegger clearly states that falling into the world of the they-self is ‘a definite existential characteristic of Dasein itself.’[51] Unlike bad faith, inauthentic Mitsein is not ‘a bad and deplorable ontical property.’[52] Dasein does not know the truth of its inauthentic Being and then seek to alienate this truth from itself or the Other. Rather, when Dasein is lost in the world of the they-self it has not yet ‘understood that understanding itself is a potentiality-for-Being which must be made free in one’s ownmost Dasein alone.’[53] In other words, Dasein begins (and for the most part remains) in the world of the inauthentic they-self and it is only through the experience of Angst and hearing the call of conscience that it can modify this inauthentic Being into authentic Being; it is not possible for Dasein to possess the knowledge of its ownmost potentiality for Being from the start, the struggle for authenticity is one that must necessarily begin with the tranquillisation of inauthentic Mitsein. So, Sartre’s claim that Heidegger’s theory of Mitsein maintains ‘the duality of the deceiver and the decieved’ is incorrect. Firstly, because the “deception” that fallenness in das Man is the truth of Being is not really a deception, it is an essential mode of Dasein’s Being. Secondly, because although this fallenness is influenced by the effect of Being-with-Others, at its root is Dasein’s own refusal to listen to the call of conscience and grasp its ownmost potentiality for Being.
The purpose of Sartre’s misreading is clear: to highlight the veracity of his exposition of bad faith, which “improves” upon Heidegger’s account of Mitsein by claiming that it is myself from whom I am hiding the truth of my being, not the Other. In light of the present discussion, our intention in drawing attention to this misreading is to re-iterate the general point that much of the rhetoric of Sartre’s opus relies heavily on his belief that his existentialism is “improving” upon the phenomenology of his predecessors; in fact, he is again basing his objections on misinterpretations. One begins to feel that Being and Nothingness would be much more cohesive and cogent if Sartre had simply documented his own original thoughts without recourse to these misguided attacks. Although Sartre has rejected Hegel’s claim that recognition is the central feature of a fully realised relationship between two self-conscious subjects, he seems to rely heavily on the notion of recognition in explaining the Look. He claims that we can only feel shame by recognising that I have become an object for the Other and they are judging me. Further on in Being and Nothingness, when Sartre talks about freedom, he claims that recognition is vital:
When I look at the Other’s Look it dissolves, and all I see are his eyes. It may seem that I have succeeded in asserting my freedom over the Other, but in fact I have reduced him to the Other-as-object. The consequence of this is that when he sees me he does so as an object, and not as another self-consciousness. Therefore, he no longer has the power to recognise my freedom and subsequently cannot feel the affect of my Look. I therefore have no power over his freedom.[54]
Williams claims that ‘[Sartre’s account of] shame clearly involves recognition in Hegel’s sense, a self-recognition in other’ and is ‘a clear and vivid phenomenological presentation of intersubjective self-recognition in other.’[55] This is a misreading of Sartre. Sartre is arguing that we extrapolate an image of ourselves from inferring how the Other sees us; by seeing myself as the Other sees me I recognise myself as I truly am. I do not recognise myself in the Other, he is merely a vehicle for my self-discovery.
The “Gift”
Now we have learned that Hegel realised the Eastern Spirit (while remaining geographically in the West) and Sartre realised the Western ego. However, as we have seen, this synthesis is too unstable to maintain itself. The final stage, the final dualism to be overcome is enacted by Levinas and Derrida, who were great friends and had therefore perfected the Platonic ideal within their own Selves.
The Non-Space of Philosophy
Examining Ethics and Writing from Without
For the majority of Western philosophy since Aristotle the question of logic and reason has overshadowed all others; ontology has taken precedent. That is why Emmanuel Levinas stands out as such a revolutionary thinker. He articulated the domination of ontology when most scholars had been unaware of it. He argued that ethics must be instated as first philosophy and that the ‘imperialism of the same’[56] that characterised Western thought was not only misguided but immoral. As a student of Heidegger, much of his philosophy is in the form of an attack (either veiled or explicit) on Heideggerian ontology. In Violence and Metaphysics, Derrida seeks to unpack this tension between ontology and metaphysics, concentrating on Levinas’ central claim that:
Metaphysics begins when theory criticises itself as ontology, as the dogmatism and spontaneity of the same, and when metaphysics, in departing from itself, lets itself be put into question by the other in the movement of ethics.[57]
Levinas calls the primary encounter with the Other the ‘face to face.’ The face of the Other is both literal and metaphorical: ‘the face, still a thing among things, breaks through the form that nevertheless delimits it.’[58] The face presents itself to me as an appeal for non-violence. At the same instant that we realise how easily we could physically overpower the face we realise that its ethical resistance forbids us from doing so: ‘The infinite paralyses power by its infinite resistance to murder, which, firm and insurmountable, gleams in the face of the Other, in the total nudity of his defenceless eyes.’[59] In this way, the ethical resistance of the face is ‘the resistance of what has no resistance.’[60]
The significance of this encounter is that by resisting our grasp the face puts a limit on our freedom. Unlike the Other in the Hegelian dialectic, whose eventual assimilation into the collective consciousness of Absolute Spirit founds the freedom of the community, the Levinasian Other limits such an ‘exercise of the same.’[61] Rather than make us powerless and strip us of our freedom, the face to face grounds our freedom: ‘the Other does not limit the freedom of the same; calling it to responsibility it founds it and justifies it.’[62] This limitation on our spontaneity is nothing other than ethics: ‘We name this calling into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other, ethics.’[63] For Levinas, Hegelian “desire” never goes beyond need, because this desire is eventually fulfilled. However, at the root of the ethical relation is ‘a desire that cannot be satisfied.’[64] It is by the fact that we can never satisfy our desire for the Other that we realise that they limit our freedom.
Levinas believes that, rather than ethics being a subdivision of philosophy, it is the ground of philosophy. However, both Levinas and Derrida find themselves bound up in a tradition that has separated off ethics and grouped it in with other disciplines under the totality of logocentrism. Therefore, they must both try and abstract from this totality in order to deconstruct it. Deconstruction aims to investigate a concept from its exterior, without being bound up in its own internal schema: ‘We wanted to attain the point of a certain exteriority with respect to the totality of the logocentric epoch. From this point of exteriority a certain deconstruction of this totality ... could be broached.’[65] Levinas’ ethics seeks to do the same, in as much as it maintains the exteriority of the Other.
However, in the same way that Levinas’ philosophy is not a theory but rather an ‘Ethics of Ethics’ and therefore may not be able to produce anything codifiable without betraying itself, deconstruction may prove too much a ‘Theory of Theory’ to provide any sort of pragmatism. Howells questions whether deconstruction can ‘do any more than question ethical systems and beliefs?’[66] So, deconstruction is faced with an unavoidable paradox because ‘to take up a position exterior to logocentrism, is such a thing were possible, would be to risk starving oneself of the very linguistic resources with which one must deconstruct logocentrism.’[67] While this may well be true of deconstruction, Derrida is mistaken in accusing Levinasian ethics of being bound up in the paradox. He claims that He the problem faced by any philosophical system that attempts to free itself from the Greek tradition (as Levinas’ philosophy undoubtedly does) is that it cannot do so without adopting its language and structures: ‘No philosophy could possibly dislodge [the totality of the Greek logos] without finally destroying itself as a philosophical language.’
However, I would argue that Derrida has misinterpreted Levinas’ intention. Levinas is not attempting to create an entirely new philosophy ex nihilo but is aiming to resurrect pre-Aristotelian traditions, the Platonic and the Talmudic. Interestingly, Levinas levels this same criticism back at Derrida in Proper Names: ‘One might be tempted to draw an argument from this recourse to logocentric language in opposing that very logic, in order to question the validity of the deconstruction thus produced.’[68] Again, it seems that Levinas has misread Derrida. Rather than a method that can be applied to a text from an entirely exterior standpoint, deconstruction is always already at work within the work itself. This means that it is inevitably parasitic upon logocentric structures.
Derrida’s views on the Other are explicitly stated in Psyche: Inventions of the Other. We quickly realise that Derrida has given his book a somewhat ironic title, since the idea of “inventing” the other is anathema to his ethical standpoint. He implicitly criticises other philosophies that claim the Other as being somehow constituted or given their status by the subject. Against the Hegelian theory that subjects validate their status as self-conscious beings for each other he writes: ‘what does invention signify when it must be of the other? The invention of the other would imply that the other remains still me, in me, of me, at best, for me.’[69] He then appears to criticise the Sartrean formulation of “the gaze”: ‘Or else that my invention of the other remains the invention of me by the other who finds me, discovers me, institutes or constitutes me.’[70]
With such an introduction we would expect Derrida to align himself with Levinas and claim a radically exterior Other. However, he does not go as far as Levinas and abstract the Other into a realm of infinity, beyond the totality of the same. He claims that the Other can only be other if it is the other of a subject. In Violence and Metaphysics Derrida argues that ‘the expression “infinitely other” or “absolutely other” cannot be stated and simultaneously; ... the other cannot be absolutely exterior to the same without ceasing to be other; ... the same is not a totality closed in upon itself.’[71] In other words, the Other is always the other of the Same; the Other is an ‘alter ego.’ Derrida asks ‘how could there by [sic] a “play of the same” if alterity itself was not already in the same?’[72] Here I think we have reached the crux of Derrida’s argument: Levinas’ formulation of an asymmetrical relationship between the Self and the Other is not feasible: ‘That I am also essentially the other’s other, and that I know I am, is the evidence of a strange symmetry whose trace appears nowhere in Levinas’ descriptions.’[73] In my opinion, Derrida has pinpointed the weakness in Levinas’ philosophy.
It is impossible to think of a relationship in which I am grounding your freedom and you are grounding mine but somehow we are not on a level. The horizon of the infinite is not the horizon of the Other but rather the horizon of a violence in with the difference between same and Other is effaced. In this way he stays rooted in the subjectivism that Levinas opposes.
Having said that, there is still much convergence between the two thinkers. Indeed, Derrida’s key theme of hospitality is inspired by Levinas. In Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas he claims that Levinasian philosophy is based on hospitality: ‘Because it opens itself up to – so as to welcome – the irruption of the idea of infinity in the finite [Levinas’] metaphysics is an excellence of hospitality. Levinas thereby justifies the arrival of the word hospitality.’[74] Without hospitality ethics would not be possible, because hospitality is ‘at the opening of ethics.’[75] He claims that hospitality hinges on the idea of intentionality, the intentionality to assume responsibility for the Other: ‘intentionality opens, from its own threshold, in its most general structure, as hospitality, as welcoming of the face, as an ethics of hospitality, and, thus, as ethics in general.’[76]
This is an echo of Levinas’ argument in Totality and Infinity that ‘No human or interhuman 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.’[77]
Both philosophers link the idea of hospitality with language so it may be useful to explore this connection. Levinas claims that ‘the essence of language is goodness ... the essence of language is friendship and hospitality.’[78] The face to face is the grounding of all language: Language as an exchange of idea about the world ... presupposes the originality of the face without which, reduced to an action among actions whose meaning would require an infinity psychoanalysis or sociology, it could not commence.[79]
If ethics is first philosophy then it must ground ontology and therefore language. The first word from the Other is the word that opens us up to language in general: ‘it is not the mediation of the sign that forms signification, but signification (whose primordial event is the face to face) that makes the sign function possible.’[80] There is not a pre-existing well of language that we simply tap into but the face brings to us the first signification.
This seems like too idealist a notion to comprehend. Surely language is a product of cultural and intellectual heritage, started by our ancestors and passed down from generation to generation. How can it be that with each face to face encounter language is somehow generated anew? Derrida does not believe that language is absolutely Other: ‘If one thinks, as Levinas does, that positive infinity tolerates, or even requires, infinite alterity, then one must renounce all language and first of all the words infinite and other.’[81] He believes that language is outside of us, but outside only in relation to our inside and so not inaccessible, as Levinas would have it:
To say that the infinite exteriority of the other is not spatial ... to be unable to designate it otherwise than negatively – is this not to acknowledge the infinite (also designated negatively in its current positivity: in-finite) cannot be stated? Does this not amount to acknowledging that the structure “inside-outside”, which is language itself, marks the original finitude of speech and whatever befalls it?[82]
The problem here is that Levinas is stating that both the Other and language are infinite alterities. While we can accept (if not agree with) the notion that the Other is infinitely beyond our grasp we cannot accept that the same is true of language. How can language, which found communication as such, which is the basis of so much human interaction, be radically exterior to us? Derrida claims that the infinitely other can only be understood ‘by first permitting the same and Being to circulate within it.’[83] It seems that Levinas cannot claim that language is founded by the face to face encounter with the Other in light of this objection.
Although Levinas inspired Derrida and awakened the academic world to the fact that ontology had overshadowed all else, his ethics fails to wholly convince. The main problem is that the Levinasian ethical system can never move beyond dogma. Because Levinas refuses to use deductive reasoning we are faced with a set of facts that “just are”. How can the Other be infinite? How can we have an asymmetric relationship with the Other? How can the face to face take place beyond the empirical world? For all the poetic brilliance of his texts, Levinas cannot provide answers to any of these questions. This is true philosophy, because is asks questions to begin with and by the end we are left with no doubt (which is now the same as having ontologico-empirical knowledge).
* * *
Conclusion
Love, generosity and ethicality require reciprocity, recognition and balance. Balance is not symmetry. That is why when Western philosophy tried to align itself with itself and become all-powerful is created a circle, not a ∞ : this is infinity, this is East (holistic) nudging up against West (unifying, egoistic). This is Hegel’s absolute spirit: this is stars aligning. Levinas is the philosopher that had sufficient understanding of both ideologies. This is the reason for the poetic brilliance of his writing and the end-point of this desideratum.
[1] Howells pg 2
[2] TE pg 36
[3] TE pg 75
[4] Howells pg 2
[5] TE pg 75
[6] TE pg 40
[7] BN pg 245
[8] ibid
[9] Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit trans. Miller, A.V. (Oxford University Press, 1977)
[10] Evans pg 99
[11] BN pg 261
[12] PS pg 116
[13] PS pg 212
[14] Williams pg 291 [emphasis added]. It is useful to note that Sartre attended Kojève’s lectures, from which he most likely inherited this misapprehension. Williams notes that Kojève’s reading ‘collapses recognition into master and slave’ (pg 170)
[15] BN pg 263
[16] PS pg 105
[17] PS pg 110
[18] BN pg 262
[19] PS pg 493
[20] BN pg 262
[21] Evans pg 100
[22] Evans pg 102
[23] BN pg 274
[24] BN pg 275
[25] BN pg 274
[26] ibid
[27] BN pg 275
[28] BN pg 276
[29] BN pg 275
[30] BN pg 278
[31] BN pg 279
[32] ibid
[33] ibid
[34] BN 280, my emphasis
[35] BN pg 98.
[36] BN pg 280
[37] BN pg 280
[38] BN pg 281
[39] BN pg 282
[40] BN pg 284
[41] Howells pg 4. The theory thus outlined in The Transcendence oft he Ego is a precursor of the exposition of Bad Faith in Being and Nothingness, which we do not have the scope to investigate in the present discussion.
[42] BN pg 462
[43] Howells pg 20
[44] BN pg 70
[45] Catalano pg 64
[46] BN pg 70
[47] BN pg 71
[48] BN pg 72
[49] ‘Dasein’s resoluteness towards itself is what first makes it possible to let the Others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost potentiality-for-Being’ [i.e. realise their authenticity]. In this way, there is a ripple effect as one authentic Dasein allows another Dasein to realise its own authenticity. (BT pg 344)
[50] BN pg 72
[51] BT pg 220
[52] ibid
[53] BT pg 222
[54] BN pg 402
[55] Williams pg 294
[56] FIND QUOTE
[57] VM pg 96
[58] TI pg 198
[59] Ti pg 199
[60] ibid
[61] TI pg 43
[62] TI pg 197
[63] ibid, punctuation added.
[64] TI pg 34
[65] Of Grammatology
[66] Howells pg 126
[67] Critchley pg 29
[68] PN pg 58
[69] PIO pg xiii
[70] ibid
[71] VM pg 126
[72] ibid
[73] VM 128
[74] AEL pg 46
[75] AEL pg 48
[76] ibid
[77] TI pg 172
[78] TI pg 305
[79] TI pg 202
[80] TI pg 206
[81] VM pg 114
[82] VM pg 113
[83] VM pg 151
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