Levinas, Rosenzweig and the Deformalization of Time: Toward an Ethical Destruction of the Schematism

Abstract

This essay reveals the destructive possibility inherent in the deformalization of the Kantian notion of time governing Levinas' engagement with Rosenzweig. It demonstrates that this programme of deformalization not only retains Rosenzweig's idea that the abstract aspects of time can be deformalized, and thus grounded concretely, in the biblical events of temporality, but also moves toward an ethical destruction of the schematism understood as an exposition of the temporality of the Other which can be distinguished essentially as a threefold grounding of time in the Kantian sense. This unique connection between the temporality of the Other and this ethical destruction of the schematism is then developed according to the ontological destruction of the schematism in Heidegger's exposition of the problematic of temporality on the one hand, and to the repetition or renewal of this temporal problematic of the schematism in Levinas' deformalization of the Kantian notion of time on the other. The essay concludes that this deformalization does indeed reopen the same temporal problematic, the destruction of the transcendental schematism in and through the exposition of ecstatic-horizonal temporality. It therefore repeats the threefold grounding of time in the Kantian sense. The conclusion ends with an invitation to consider Levinas' reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the possible terrain upon which this renewed temporal problematic unfolds in its entirety, and thus consequently, as rendering possible an ethical interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason which surpasses the ontological limits of Heidegger's own interpretation.