“Before The Face of God One Must Not Go With Empty Hands”

Abstract

While structure and bare content of prophetic consciousness may be made accessible by an attitude of pure reflection, in which concern for their truth and validity is suspended, sheer force of what is disclosed in such reflection quietly corrodes hardness of self-detachment. magic of process seems to be stronger than an asceticism of intellect.... In course of listening to their words one cannot long retain security of a prudent, impartial observer. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Prophets (xvii) Let justice well up like water, Righteousness like an unfailing stream. (Amos 5:24)1 And they shall beat their swords into plow-shares And their spears into pruning hooks Nation shall not take up Sword against nation; They shall never again know war. (Isaiah 2:4) Here I am; send me (Isaiah 6:8) Emmanuel Levinas' 1934 essay on Philosophy of warned us of precisely what others were unable to see, much less admit: Hitlerism was not simply an accident of evil, acts of a sick man.2 Rather, its underlying logic permeates a type of thinking that puts into jeopardy, the very humanity of (Levinas, 199Ob, 71). In this essay, Levinas reveals two poles of thinking that provide context for tension between immanence and transcendence both as traditionally understood. In 1990, fifty-six years after essay first appeared in French, an English translation of essay was published in Critical Inquiry. In a prefatory note, written expressly for translation and republication of essay, Levinas asks: Does subject arrive at human condition prior to assuming for other man in act of that raises him up to this height? prefatory note appears anachronistic because of his references to election and responsibility to other man, themes that emerge only later in his writings.3 This early essay tackles dual problems of classical transcendence and immanence.4 How then could this essay be about ethics, a term not only absent in this early work, but also not mentioned until 1961 in Totality and Infinity?5 claim that this prefatory note is anachronistic assumes that Levinas' interest in transcendence and immanence is simply philosophical-the result of a conceptual problem or puzzle in history of philosophy that he needed to address. Further, this concern with transcendence might also suggest that Levinas' interest in ethics was not a primary concern; rather, it was a secondary concern, result of seeing ethical relation as solution to problem of immanence and transcendence. Is relationship between Levinas' early work and his later work simply relationship between posing of a philosophical question and finding its answer? In contrast to view sketched above, this essay argues that Levinas' philosophical work follows a continuity of thought from his early concerns in 1930s expressed in his essay on Hitlerism to his final works in 1970s and 80s. My claim is that although we can mark changes in his use of vocabulary and emphasis he places on different themes, his concern for and interest in ethics, religion, and social justice not only underlie all of his work, but motivate it. This paper proceeds as follows. I first examine Levinas' essay, Philosophical Reflections on Hitlerism, in order to track initial framing of philosophical concern regarding problematic relationship between immanence and transcendence. I then turn briefly to Levinas' 1946/47 lecture course, published as Time and and his essay The Trace of Other in order to suggest that Levinas' conception of time as relationship to is his solution to problem of finding a middle way between immanence and transcendence. Finally, I turn to notion of prophetic in Judaism and Levinas' employment of prophetic, especially in his later work, in order to suggest that his concern for ethics and social justice permeates his work from its beginning in 1930s until his death in 1995. …