Phenomenology, Dialectic, and Time in Levinas's Time and the Other

Abstract

In his introduction to 1979 re-publication of his 1948 lecture series Time and Other, Emmanuel Levinas expressed some misgivings about shortcomings of that text. It was written, he claimed, in haste; its style (or non-style) was maladroit and abrupt; theses were baldly stated (improvised) without their justifications being worked out or their conclusions fully or systematically developed. Nevertheless, he said, he still adhered to the main project, of which it is . . . birth and first formulation: project to determine, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, surplus of sociality (TO 8 (30)).1 Relatively little attention has been paid in Levinas literature to this text and to related analyses ofthe instant and hypostasis in an earlier book, Existence and Existents. While it is true that these treatments of figures of temporality lack depth and sophistication of his ones of diachrony and they still merit close attention. In first place, they are among Levinas's earliest original efforts in philosophy, after his translation, with Gabrielle Peiffer, of Husserl's Cartesian Meditations and his 1932 dissertation on what he called Husserl's theory of intuition. As such, they show strong influence upon his thought of Husserl's phenomenology after latter's so-called transcendental turn, especially in emphasis on time as form of all egological genesis, whether active or passive. Crucial influences upon his thinking also included Bergson (whose Essay on Immediate Data of Consciousness Levinas considered among five greatest works in history of Western philosophy); Vladimir Jankelevitch's analyses of time, boredom, and other psychological phenomena; existentialisms of Sartre and especially of Merleau-Ponty; and, of course, extended treatment of ecstatic temporality given by Heidegger in Being and Time. Secondly, a significant methodological difference is apparent between Time and Other and Totality and Infinity. As will be shown below, earlier text makes use of a dialectical method of exposition or development along with its self-professed one. By time of latter text, this dialectical element has been dropped, and phenomenological character of exposition brought to fore. Why does Levinas adopt this methodology for Time and Other, and abandon it so completely in Totality and Infinity? Finally, Time and Other highlights a significant difference in treatment of temporality of exteriority and alterity between Levinas (up to and including Totality and Infinity) and later Levinas (from publication of Totality and Infinity to present). To put it briefly, temporal emphasis in early writings is upon future; that of upon past. The language of works of Levinas is language, not offuture never future enough but of never past enough; of and glory, not of peace. This shift marks an abandonment of a line of thinking begun in Existence and Existents and Time and Other and continued in Totality and Infinity, perhaps insistently. The open question of messianic eschatology is replaced with exploration of enigma of deep past. It is not to a future given in extreme vigilance of a messianic consciousness, but to a diachronic past and trace out of which face of other person arises that thought, and service, turns. It will be argued in this essay that temporal emphasis on futurity in Totality and Infinity is a consequence of Levinas's commitment to, and extension of, his treatments of time in Time and Other, which text predates Levinas's full appropriation of Franz Rosenzweig's thought. A larger task, one beyond scope of this essay, would be to trace connection between gradual abandonment of absolute futurity and its associated themes of separation, distance, and height in Totality and Infinity and adoption of passe immemorial, proximity, trace, illeity, and glory in works. …