Reading Violence, Violent Reading

Abstract

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas is usually associated with ethics rather than hermeneutics. However, a large part of his published work consists in commentaries on the Talmud. This chapter draws on his commentary practice to sketch what a Levinasian hermeneutics might look like. In one of his commentaries, Talmudic study is explicitly associated with violence done to both the text and the commentator. From this starting point, the chapter looks at one of the commentaries, “The Damage Caused by Fire.” The Talmudic passage under discussion does not explicitly refer to war, but it was delivered in the aftermath and memory of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and Levinas creates links between the passage, Auschwitz and the defense of Israel. After analyzing some of the general principles underpinning Levinas’ commentaries, the chapter suggests similarities and differences between Levinas’ reading practice and the thought of the major hermeneutic thinkers of the twentieth century: Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. If we are locked within the hermeneutic circle, the key issue for hermeneutics is how to guard against the unbounded proliferation of interpretations. For Levinas, although the Talmud is subject to infinite readings and rereadings, its truth is ultimately guaranteed by its sacred status. For secular texts, Paul Ricoeur provides a particularly helpful point of reference for a possible Levinasian hermeneutics through the combination of faith and rigor that are combined in what he calls a “second naivety.” The chapter concludes by stressing that interpretation may be, in some circumstances, a matter of life and death.