This book serves as an introduction to the work of Emmanuel Levinas, a thinker the author clearly regards as one of the most important of our time, even while acknowledging difficulties and expressing critical stances on some ideas. The goal is to show why Levinas's writings are essential reading. The title itself, "The Genealogy of Ethics," signals a multi-layered approach to understanding Levinas's philosophy. ### Understanding "Genealogy" in This Context The word "genealogy" here doesn't have just one meaning; it operates in several senses throughout the book. 1. It can refer specifically to a stage of Levinas's thought where he uses terminology like a family tree to explain concepts. 2. More generally, it points to the _logical order_ in which different phases of his thinking develop. Think of it as the inherent structure or sequence of his ideas, even if the historical publication order differs slightly. 3. It also tracks the _historical development_ of his philosophy, following its progression from one published work to the next. 4. Most broadly, it explores the _relationship_ of Levinas's philosophy to the entire history of philosophical thinking. This includes its engagement with influential figures and doctrines, such as Nietzsche's own concept of the genealogy of morals, and how Levinas challenges fundamental ideas like the very notion of generality that has often defined philosophical history. Exploring this genealogy provides a preliminary map of the conceptual terrain Levinas occupies. It highlights where his thinking begins, where it departs from tradition, and how radical it is. Understanding this context can illuminate why reading Levinas might require approaching classical philosophical texts in a new way. ### Key Interactions with the History of Philosophy Levinas engages deeply with a wide range of philosophers, often taking their ideas as starting points only to radically re-interpret or depart from them. Here are a few notable examples: - **Plato:** Levinas finds a path opened by Plato's idea of a good "beyond being" in the _Republic_, interpreting Plato's ideas on speech and teaching in a way that goes beyond recollection and questions the priority of the State. - **Aristotle:** Despite Aristotle's focus on the general, Levinas champions a unique ethical singularity, reinterpreting concepts like "category" and the idea of the active intellect coming from "outside". - **Hobbes:** Levinas contrasts the Hobbesian idea that the State arises from a "war of all against all" with his own notion that the just State might stem from individual responsibility for everyone, framing this responsibility as the true rationality of peace. - **Descartes:** Levinas sees significance in Descartes's idea of the positive infinity of God, suggesting it's not just religious homage but an expression of the idea of infinity transforming into the "Majesty approached as face". This hints at metaphysics becoming ethics. However, Levinas also challenges Descartes's idea that nature teaches us self-preservation, proposing instead a sensibility to the Other's demand that their safety comes first. - **Spinoza:** Levinas questions Spinoza's assertion that everything strives to persevere in its being, asking what happens if the ethical person is not fundamentally "in itself" or "for itself". He suggests that ethics based solely on this principle, or viewed "under the lens of eternity," could be a form of violence. - **Kant:** Levinas critiques equating ethical regard for a person with adherence to a universal moral law, seeing it as potentially violent. While Kant has ideas of reason, Levinas, in a more Cartesian move, sees infinity as exceeding our powers not by being too large, but by challenging the very idea of power and free will itself, making it the "experience par excellence". Levinas also reinterprets Kantian notions like the 'schematism' to describe the emergence of the existent from anonymous existence. - **Hegel:** Levinas opposes Hegel's view of the infinite absorbing all multiplicity and the Hegelian idea that the "other" is merely a negation of the "same". He contrasts Hegel's figure of Ulysses (returning home to the same) with Abraham (remaining in exile, representing alterity). While acknowledging the drama of education, Levinas's vision ends not in anonymous self-thinking but in a responsibility that traumatizes thought while preserving the singularity of individuals. Levinas also critiques Hegel's philosophy of the State and totality, seeing his own work _Totality and Infinity_ as a critique of the idea of infinite totality. - **Kierkegaard:** Levinas sees Kierkegaard's focus on inwardness and subjective salvation as potentially repeating Spinoza's principle of perseverance. He suggests ethics needs redefinition to elicit an "outwardness" rooted not in fear or the ego, but in an "absolute outside". - **Nietzsche:** The book explicitly aims to show how Levinas's genealogy _crosses_ Nietzsche's. While Nietzsche's critique of traditional ideas of a being "behind the scenes" and his move "beyond the good" share kinship with Levinas's questioning "beyond essence," Levinas ultimately seeks to go beyond Nietzschean nihilism, not by refusing language but by going beyond Nietzsche's distinctions of good/evil and good/bad, toward a "passivity beyond passivity" and a "call to peace before war". - **Bergson:** Levinas finds points of connection in Bergson's critique of standard time, but argues that absolute novelty requires interruption, which he calls "dead time," contrasting with Bergson's idea of continuous duration. Both Heidegger and Levinas seek "concreteness" following Bergson's example, but Heidegger critiques Bergson's view of objective time. - **Husserl:** Levinas builds on Husserl's phenomenology but argues it needs supplementation. He modifies Husserl's concepts like "proto-impression" and "intentionality," suggesting a "super-impression" and a "reversed intentionality" that moves beyond Husserl's noetic-noematic structure, which Levinas believes confines Husserlian ethics to mere namesake. Levinas's concepts like 'accomplishment' and 'production' adapt Husserlian terms. He engages with Husserl's analyses of concrete life but argues that a truly ethical dimension, which challenges the primacy of theory, requires language related to "waking" and "calling" rather than just "seeing". He distinguishes his "absolute empiricism" from Husserl's eidetic phenomenology by emphasizing the non-phenomenological presentation of the Face. - **Heidegger:** Levinas frequently engages with Heidegger, sometimes adopting his terminology only to "explode it at its seams". Levinas uses the term "ethics" in an "emphasized" sense, suggesting it's proto-ethical and makes traditional ethics possible by disrupting the notion of "what it is". While Heidegger focuses on fundamental ontology and Dasein's relation to Being, Levinas argues this ontology is not fundamental _enough_ for ethics in his sense. Concepts like 'il y a' are introduced as a redescription of Heidegger's 'es gibt', but stripped of associations of generosity or grace, characterized instead by gravity. Levinas's concept of 'hypostasis' or positing can be seen as working within/against Heidegger's framework. Levinas questions whether Heidegger's analysis of Dasein's relationship to others as "alter egos" within a monistic world does justice to the face-to-face encounter. He also departs from Heidegger's view of death as the possibility of possibility, proposing it as the impossibility of possibility, and later seeing it as interpersonal rather than isolating. Levinas sees his concept of "production" as productively parodying Heidegger's fundamental analysis of "being" and the "as" structure. This selective list shows how Levinas positions his thought in dialogue with, and often in radical departure from, the philosophical canon. ### Structure of the Book: Three Parts The book is structured in three main parts, following a roughly chronological development of Levinas's thought. It suggests a plot unfolding from his earliest writings to his later masterpieces. - **Part I: Early Works:** This part focuses on Levinas's early essays, which the author finds lay the groundwork and provide a framework for understanding the later works, even though they keep much "in reserve". They are challenging in their brevity. Key texts discussed include _Of Evasion_ and _Existence and Existents_, which introduce concepts like the "il y a" (there-is), hypostasis (the positing of the existent subject), time, and the Other. Concepts like "lassitude," "dilatoriness," and "fatigue" are presented as "schemata," or concrete forms of the existent's adherence to existence. This part explores the idea of beginning, accomplishment, and the dialectic of the instant. - **Part II: Totality and Infinity:** This part primarily addresses Levinas's major work _Totality and Infinity_. A central theme here is the affirmation of the philosophical primacy of the idea of _infinity_ over the idea of _totality_. It recounts how the infinite is "produced" in the relationship between the Same (the self) and the Other, and how the unique individual resists being absorbed into a totality. This part delves deeply into the concept of the _Face_ as the primary site of ethical encounter and the source of command ("Thou shalt not kill"). It explores themes like mastery (both ego's self-mastery and the radically different mastery exerted by the Other), responsibility, violence, peace, and the "judgement of God". It also discusses the role of literary and mythological references in illustrating ontological significance and introduces the idea of generations, paternity, and juvenescence as ways infinity is constituted. - **Part III: Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence:** This part focuses on Levinas's later major work, _Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence_. It continues themes like paternity and fraternity, but also introduces new or re-emphasized concepts like _substitution_, _proximity_, and _maternity_ as paradigms for responsibility and sensibility. This work delves further into the idea of ethics as prior to ontology ("otherwise than being"). It explores the asymmetrical nature of ethical relations (e.g., brotherhood is not symmetrical responsibility). It also engages with the concept of "absolute violence" (treating a faced being as faceless) and contrasts Levinas's "humanism of the other man" with logical rationalism and liberal humanism. Concepts like "sensibility," "vulnerability," "insomnia," and "carrying" are central to describing the ethical subject. The book's structure and language in this part become more repetitive and enigmatic, reflecting the challenge of describing a realm prior to language and conscious thought. It discusses prophecy, obedience, and the difficult notion of being accused or responsible _for_ the suffering of others, linking it to ideas of holiness and the "psychosis" of proto-ethical responsibility. ### Core Concepts and Themes Throughout these parts, several key concepts are explored: - **Ethics as First Philosophy:** Levinas often argues that ethics is more fundamental than ontology (the study of being). The encounter with the Other, the ethical relationship, is presented as prior to our understanding of being or existence itself. - **The Other (Autrui) and the Face (Visage):** The Other is not just another person like me, but a radical alterity, someone unique who faces me and resists being reduced to a concept or integrated into my totality. The Face is the primary manifestation of the Other, demanding a response and issuing the fundamental command "Thou shalt not kill". - **Totality vs. Infinity:** Levinas contrasts philosophical systems that aim for totality (comprehending everything within a whole, like Hegel's system) with the idea of infinity, which points to something that always exceeds comprehension and totality, found primarily in the encounter with the Other. - **Existence and the Existent:** The book explores the distinction between impersonal, anonymous existence ("il y a," the "there is") and the existent being or subject (the "who") that stands out from this anonymity through hypostasis or positing itself. - **Time and Diachrony:** Levinas challenges standard conceptions of time (chronological, historical, Heideggerian temporality). He introduces the idea of _diachrony_ as an "absolute diachrony," a fundamental temporal distance or delay that cannot be fully grasped or synchronized. This diachrony is crucial for the ethical relationship and is linked to concepts like patience, postponement, and perhaps even the infinite future of generations. - **Responsibility:** Responsibility is a central concept, often presented as anterior to freedom and conscious will. It is an inescapable, infinite obligation to the Other, which increases rather than decreases as one tries to fulfill it. Levinas links responsibility to concepts like burden, weight, and even a kind of "psychosis" or holiness. - **Judgment of God:** This somewhat enigmatic phrase refers not to a traditional theological judgment but to the ultimate ethical criterion, akin to absolute goodness, which is incomparable and precedes systems of law or custom. It is linked to the veracity found in the face-to-face encounter. - **Absolute Empiricism:** Levinas describes his approach as "absolute empiricism," which differs from classical empiricism and even Husserlian phenomenology. It is "absolved" from both confessional faith and naturalistic fact, positioning itself in a space where it attends to "The Facts Themselves" in a unique way, particularly facing the non-phenomenological presentation of the Face. - **Family Relations (Paternity, Maternity, Fraternity):** These are used not merely biologically but as ethical categories or models for understanding relations beyond the self-contained ego. Fraternity derives from a shared ethical kinship (not biological fatherhood), demanding asymmetrical responsibility. Paternity represents the breaking of identity and the transmission into the future. Maternity is presented as a paradigm of sensibility, carrying, responsibility, and vulnerability, philosophically prior to nature. - **Enigma:** Levinas employs an "enigmatic saying" or a kind of "feminine logic" that resists clear, distinct propositions and conventional philosophical argument (ratiocination). This reflects the nature of the ethical dimension, which surpasses comprehension and defies capture by the logic of identity. ### Philosophy and Other Forms of Expression The book notes that Levinas makes a clear distinction between his philosophical writings and his confessional or Talmudic texts, insisting he does not use the latter to prove his philosophical arguments. However, he frequently introduces mythological, literary, and biblical references, often in footnotes or parentheses. These are used to "make vivid, illustrate, symbolizing and so on," aiming to make concrete the psychological and empirical facts whose _ontological significance_ he is exploring. These references increase the "probative force" of his argument by widening the scope of illustration and increasing the risk of disconfirmation. This highlights how Levinas draws inspiration from diverse sources to illuminate his philosophical themes. ### In Summary "Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics" traces the development of Levinas's thought, focusing on his central argument for the primacy of ethics, understood as the infinite responsibility elicited by the face-to-face encounter with the radically Other. It examines how Levinas engages with and departs from key figures and concepts in the history of philosophy, building his ideas through early works like _Existence and Existents_, elaborating them in _Totality and Infinity_, and deepening them in _Otherwise than Being_. The book invites readers to explore core Levinasian concepts such as the il y a, hypostasis, diachronic time, the Face, responsibility, and the ethical significance of family relations, presenting these not just as abstract ideas but as fundamental aspects of the human condition that precede and ground our understanding of being and knowledge. By exploring the various senses of "genealogy," the book provides a framework for appreciating the radicalness and importance of Levinas's contribution to contemporary thought. It encourages readers to look closely at how Levinas uses language, anecdote, and engagement with tradition to articulate a philosophy centered on the irreducible call of the Other.