No More Learning

Notes
1 I use spirit and Geist interchangeably in this chapter.
2 I should add here that in this chapter I am not concerned with Derrida's critique
of the Hegelian Aufhebung, except as it pertains to the form and content of Glas. Indeed, I am trying to draw out from Derrida the presuppositions that ground his idea of transformative aporetic philosophy as he practises it in Glas, Of Spirit and Rogues. It could be said, however, that Derrida retrieves from the Aufhebung all that he takes to be transformative from all that is dogmatic, and that diffe? rance is there- fore his own version of the Aufhebung. While I think this is true, it would need a different chapter to make this case, one that did attend to Derrida's comments, beyond Glas, on Hegel.
3 This is taken from an as yet unpublished essay by Richard entitled 'Responding to a Post-Script: Philosophy and its Futures' (2007). It replies to a reply I had made to his slightly earlier essay 'A Note to a Political Understanding of Love in our Global Age' (2006) which published by the E-Journal Contretemps. The whole exchange was to be published by Contretemps but sadly the Journal ceased publish- ing before this was possible.
4 Derrida's italics.
5 Derrida's italics.
6 'To relieve' is how Derrida's term relever in Glas - itself Derrida's translation of Auf-
heben - is translated in the English version of Glas. As I noted above in footnote 2 I have not extended this chapter to include Derrida's comments on the Aufhebung except as they constitute Glas.
7 This turn to the event in Glas is unjustified within or without the totality of differ- ence-opposition. This Heideggerian move is an example of the presuppositions of the absolute that ground Derrida's critique of absolute knowing. This will become clearer in what follows.
8 From Hegel, (1988: 327).
9 Note here I am juxtaposing the end of Glas and the beginning.
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10 But not, as noted above, with the turn to the event.
11 This is expressed by Lo? with to Jaspers who, after hearing Heidegger's lecture on
Ho? lderlin, 2 April 1936, sees this as the reason for Heidegger linking poetry to
the swastika (Ott, 1994: 133).
12 The context of this omission in Introduction to Metaphysics is important here.
Heidegger is arguing that spirit has degenerated into mere cleverness, which itself becomes a tool, a value, and a political propaganda. Against this Heidegger commends 'a spiritual power which originally unites and engages, assigns, obliges' (Of Spirit: 65, Introduction to Metaphysics: 48; the translation of Derrida's translation is used here) and it is here that he chooses to illustrate this spiritual power by quoting from his own Rectoral Address but dropping the inverted commas around the first spirit. Thus we get 'spirit ['spirit' in the original] is neither empty sagacity, nor the gratuitous game of joking, nor the unlimited work of analysis of the understanding, nor even the reason of the world, but spirit [without inverted commas in the original] is the being-resolved [Entschlossenheit] to the essence of Being, of a resolution which accords with the tone of the origin and which is knowledge' (Derrida, 1987: 67). In addition, the chapter in Introduction to Meta- physics then proceeds to assign the originarity of this spiritual Dasein as within 'the absolute privilege of the German language' (1987: 68).
13 Simon Critchley, for example, argues that it does. By granting the priority of the originary pledge or the promise that is affirmed, then, in the question and in opposition, this opens 'the ultimately ethical orientation of Of Spirit' (Wood, 1993: 95). If Hegel's anti-erection seeds virility against pressure, then Derrida's 'inver- sion or reversal' (1993: 96) of the question in effect puts the lead in Hegel's pencil (as it were). This new priority for Critchley is the Levinasian Other, a dimension of alterity and transcendence. Here, for holocaust we can read 'ethics of deconstruction'. Further, for Critchley, the footnote signals Derrida's 'depar- ture' (1993: 95) from what he calls 'the repetitive order of commentary' (1993: 95) in Of Spirit. This departure needs to be understood as affirming the 'uncondi- tioned duty' (1993: 94) that underpins deconstruction, that is, its 'ethical and political responsibility' (1993: 94). At root here, for Critchley, Derrida practises in deconstruction an 'undecideability' (1993: 94), a 'suspension of choice or decision between two alternatives, a suspension provoked in, as and through a practice of double reading' (1993: 94). See also Wood, 1993: 1.
14 It is interesting here to note that this could well be a description of recollection, of the grey in grey. It is important then to bear in mind that there is no loss here for Derrida, no negation, and therefore nothing to be recalled from loss. The return is diffe? rance, not recollection; it is remarkable, but not self-(re-)formative.
15 Derrida has always been mindful to remind his readers that he has never eschewed reason in his philosophy.
16 It is interesting to note the mutuality of fear and risk achieved here in the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD), but this mutuality still represents only a mutual export of fear. It is not the way that fear and vulnerability in the double negation of self and of self as other speaks its educational truth. MAD, because it is mutual, is not open to learning of fear as the self who is other and the other who is not this self. Learning is in the lack of mutuality; this is the real double neg- ative of education in Hegel, a learning that MAD closes off from itself. MAD is
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fear is stasis; this is its madness. But from Derrida's point of view it was perhaps
safer for the world than less explicit autoimmunity.
17 I have said more on the speculative and educative significance of this 'and' in an
earlier work, Philosophy's Higher Education, (2004) chapter 6.
18 I note here that Gillian Rose has stated that diffe? rance, comprehended specula-
tively, could have been the unity and difference of identity and difference (Rose,
1984: 139).
19 see above, Chapter 1.
20 See Gillian Rose's Dialectic of Nihilism (1984).
21 At times in writing this chapter I have been struck by the thought that it might
appear somewhat decadent to be arguing over whose version of vulnerable non- sovereignty is the right one. But, this too must be risked.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Chapter 5
Education in Hegel in Levinas
Introduction
Howard Caygill has recently said of Levinas that his 'anti-Hegelian opera- tion is less the overcoming of Hegelian dialectic than its deflation' (Caygill, 2002: 53). In this chapter I want to reflate the Hegelian in Levinas or, more accurately, to show how education in Hegel in Levinas in fact reflates itself through the eternal return of presuppositions as oppositions. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section looks at how Levinas deflates the Hegelian dialectic in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, with particular attention paid to three forms of education found there, namely teaching, philosophy and study. The second section watches the reflation of Levinas's anti-Hegelian operation in some of the poignant and telling criticisms offered by Caygill. This reflation comes about by way of the aporias that mediate Levinas's ethics, and for Caygill this is most apparent in the oppositions of war and peace, and state and religion. The final section reads this reflation as education in Hegel. It concentrates on how the relation of state and religion, the notion of alterity, and the posit- ing of error in philosophy are re-formed in such learning.
PART A
Deflating Hegel
Following Caygill's line of argument, Levinas's deflation of the Hegelian dialectic amounts to emptying the system of the movement associated with negation, mediation, contradiction and Aufhebung. Within such movement Levinas finds only a repetition of the same from which no new result emerges. As such, the Hegelian dialectic is emptied of the form and content that represent its presupposition that nothingness can be determinate, can be known. Against this, Levinas argues for a fundamental non-grounding of
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the I in the isolation of anonymous being, in the insomnia of the il y a that is the 'horror, trembling, and vertigo, perturbation of the I that does not coincide with itself' (1969: 143). Within this trembling a revelation regard- ing alterity is possible for Levinas in the isolation of the existence of the I in the form of the immediate caress. This consolation, lacking any finite agenda, transports the I 'elsewhere' (2001: 93). It is the nature of this else- where and its presence in the totality of the same that comes to define Levinas's philosophical and ethical project, described in Totality and Infinity as instituting 'a relation with the infinity of being that exceeds the totality' (1969: 23). Where the Hegelian dialectic can sublate such nothingness into meaning, Levinas insists that this only posits endless representation of the same: a totality in which nothing is ever allowed to remain as an un-sublated or an un-sublatable other. Hegel's infinite, says Levinas, operates by 'exclud- ing all multiplicity from it; he posits the infinite as the exclusion of every "other" that might maintain a relation with the infinite and thereby limit it' (1969: 196). This operation has meaning as time displayed in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history; as subjectivity in substance; and as objective freedom in the rational political state. Each 'meaning' only repeats the totality of the same, and each is the paganism that sees God or ethics reduced to ontology.
Levinas's anti-Hegelian project is grounded then in the impossibility of knowing the other within the totality of the same. It will be an important part of the reflation of Hegel in Levinas to show how he judges the incom- mensurability of the same and the absolutely other. For example, in Totality and Infinity he says,
the radical separation between the same and the other means precisely that it is impossible to place oneself outside of the correlation between the same and the other so as to record the correspondence or the non- correspondence of this going with this return. Otherwise the same and the other would be reunited under one gaze, and the absolute distance that separates them filled in. (1969: 36)
However, in judging that the same and the other are known as incom- mensurable Levinas posits for himself the very position that he deems impossible and illegitimate. 1 As we will see, mediation is already present in the assertions that Levinas makes for the difference between the same and the other, and as we will also see, the ground of this positing is of philoso- phy as error. Reflating positing retrieves the negative from within Levinas and returns him to education in Hegel. But this is not the Hegel found in
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Levinas who 'posits the infinite as the exclusion of every "other" that might maintain a relation with the infinite and thereby limit it' (1969: 196). That Hegel, the one Levinas opposes, does not take account of education in Hegel as we are presenting it. This will become clear later, but preceding this we need to spend a little time exploring some of the key terms that con- stitute Levinasian ethics in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.
Totality and Infinity
In Totality and Infinity (1969) Levinas argues for three modes of non-Hegelian subjectivity that are interrupted by the absolutely Other. 2 Each is a form of desire, and each exposes the human subject to a fundamental vulnerability that exceeds the totality of the same. The interior life is both a happiness at having needs that can be satisfied - where, through taking in content it becomes content-ed - and a fragility at the uncertainty of attaining this content(ment) in the future. Time, however, expresses the vulnerability that needs cannot be certain to be satisfied in the future, and exposes the plenitude of enjoyment to 'the unknown that lurks in the very element it enjoys' (1969: 144). In doing so, time breaks up the totality of subjectivity and forces it beyond itself into relation with an alterity that cannot be assim- ilated. This vulnerability is consoled by the welcome that is 'in the gentleness of the feminine face' (1969: 150), a welcome that speaks to and of some- thing other than the I. 3 The hospitality offered to vulnerability is the possibility of 'the transcendent relationship with the Other' (1996: 155).
The second mode of this vulnerability is expressed in property. In the interiority hollowed out by enjoyment there is formed a heteronomy 'that incites to another destiny' (1969: 149). The paganism of enjoyment is pos- session which, compared and quantified, is property. But the approach of the stranger calls into question 'my joyous possession of the world' (1969: 76) and this disquietude again breaches the totality of the ego. Here the relation to the Other is in the need to give or refuse to give what I have to the stranger. Thus, as the feminine graces the welcome that is the home, so generosity graces private property with the Other, and is therein the aboli- tion of inalienable property rights.
The final example of the ambivalence of totality is expressed in Levinas's conception of metaphysical desire that 'tends towards something else entirely, toward the absolutely other' (1969: 33). '"The true life is absent. " But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi' (1969: 33). Metaphysics breaches the satisfaction of man with himself with a desire that cannot be satisfied. This vulnerability, this il y a, draws beyond the I to 'the
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alterity of the Other and of the Most-High' (1969: 34), and it is present in the metaphysical import of the face-to-face.
These three breaches of totality by the welcome, by generosity and by the face-to-face speak against Hegelian negation and mediation. These latter oppose and sublate what is Other, whereas the former remain vulnerable in 'a non-allergic relation with alterity' (1969: 47).
Levinas believes that this non-allergic relation remains open to God while the Hegelian operation closes it down. It is part of Levinas's argument here that desire is totality and infinity in a way that mediation cannot sustain. As such, the epiphany of the face-to-face relation is wholly Other and unassimilable, and contests its ability to be murdered by the same. This contestation and this epiphany are the stranger, the destitute, the widow and the orphan. This epiphany cannot be represented, for the same cannot think it. Its impossibility exhausts all the resources that the same can call upon to represent the Other, and exceeds them. It is the language of God, and on earth this lan- guage speaks as ethics and justice. It precedes thought and consciousness and breaches their totality by this precedence. 'A God invisible means not only a God unimaginable, but a God accessible in justice. Ethics is the spiri- tual optics' (1969: 78).
One can understand why Levinasian ethics has proved so attractive to a form of Western thinking that is trying to mediate its power in and over the world. For the view that the philosophical tradition of self-conscious reason has failed to protect the world from the horrors of war and from the Holo- caust in particular, Levinas offers something absolutely beyond rational self-consciousness. In the loneliness and isolation of bare existence he finds God as the absolutely Other who is present in our vulnerability. Not in thought but in the physicality of the face, this truth is communicated to us as gentleness, as generosity and as the welcome. Levinas offers here an ethics that transcends the sovereignty of the rational I that is allergic to oth- erness, and an ethics that protects all that is best in human existence, that is, the truth that exists in our caring for others. He reconciles the transcen- dent with the deconstruction of absolutist philosophy and offers truth that is other than dogma, than imperialism, and than totality. In sum, he offers goodness without mediation, a face-to-face ethical relation 'maintained without violence [and] in peace' (1969: 197), maintained, that is, not in negation and return but in revelation. Negation 'remains within the total- ity' (1969: 209) whereas God exceeds this totality. As such, 'war presupposes peace' (1969: 199) because peace is the presence of God in the nakedness of the face before its being clothed in social relations. We will return to the theme of war and peace in Levinas below.
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Already here there are themes that characterize education in Hegel, most importantly perhaps, that of vulnerability. In Totality and Infinity the I is vulnerable to himself as desire; he is vulnerable to the gaze of the other who breaches the I; he is vulnerable to the sovereignty in his property; and he is vulnerable to the truth of this vulnerability as metaphysics. In educa- tion in Hegel, however, the I is vulnerable to himself as his own other; he is vulnerable to the other who, even as other, is not the same other as he is to himself; and he is vulnerable to the truth of the relation of the two vulnera- bilities, a truth he knows in education. But from our account of Totality and Infinity it is clear that Levinas sees himself addressing these themes in ways very different from Hegel.
Otherwise than Being
We turn now to some of the ways in which Levinas develops these themes in Otherwise than Being. This text continues Levinas's anti-Hegelian operation but there is an enforced change of emphasis due to the introduction of the third party to the relation of self and other. This complicates significantly the metaphysics of the social relation described in Totality and Infinity. Levi- nas employs terms in Otherwise than Being that move his thought on from that in the earlier text. Prior to the war of allergic egoisms there is now a relation of proximity, an originary ethical disinterestedness where responsi- bility of one for the other inverts the ego by substituting itself for the other who approaches. For Levinas, this is a different kind of subjectivity alto- gether from essence for it is where the 'Here I am' is hostage to and for the care of the other. It is found in the relation between 'saying' and the 'said'. Proximity, as originary ethics, is a saying that is beyond essence, beyond the dialogue that occurs between two people. The saying is therefore above the said in which the former is thematized, conceptualized and cognized. How- ever, the latter is absolutely necessary as the 'lived time' (1998: 37) in which phenomena appear. While saying lies beyond essence as proximity and responsibility, the said exposes entities as phenomena and exhibits them around the subject-object relation. Synchronization is this assembling of entities in the totality of the present by the same, synchronized, that is, 'into a time that is recallable, and becomes a theme' (1998: 37). As such, says Levinas, 'the subordination of the saying to the said, to the linguistic system and to ontology, is the price that manifestation demands' (1998: 6). Saying, in being said, is 'a betrayal' (1998: 6), and further, it makes the otherwise than being, in this case saying, appear to be 'an event of being' (1998: 6).
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Equally, proximity for Levinas is the primary form of sensibility, and cog- nition is only secondary to this. Proximity disturbs cognition and therefore essence in a way similar to the unrest seen above in Totality and Infinity. This disturbance is a 'coring out' (1998: 64), a murmur that is 'the non- coinciding of the ego with itself, restlessness, insomnia, beyond what is found again in the present' (1998: 64). This break up of the totality of essence is variously described by Levinas as the signifyingness of significa- tion, illeity, and diachrony, in addition to proximity and substitution. They are, in sum, 'a tearing away of bread from the mouth that tastes it, to give it to the other' (1998: 64) and they are registered as physical sensations prior to their synchronization. Also similar to the relation of enjoyment and trauma in Totality and Infinity is the idea in Otherwise than Being that sensibil- ity and suffering have no sense unless they are relative to the enjoyment which they tear apart. Sensibility is the pain of giving, for giving has a mean- ing 'only as a being torn from the complacency in oneself characteristic of enjoyment' (1998: 74). Proximity has meaning, says Levinas, 'only among beings of flesh and blood' (1998: 74). Substitution is material and real; it is not ideal.
How, then, within this totality, does Levinas conceive of the possibility of 'a break out of essence? '(1998: 8). This question focuses on the conditions of possibility for temporalization. Beyond temporalization with its return of the same, 'there must be signalled a lapse of time that does not return, a diachrony refractory to all synchronization, a transcending diachrony' (1998: 9). The lapse of time that transcends synchronization is the significa- tion that is carried in saying, that is, the signification not of what is said but by the responsibility embodied in the approach of the neighbour. Here subjectivity becomes the signifyingness of signification; not a negation of subjectivity but more an overpowering of essence by the prior obligation of proximity to the other. This disinterestedness Levinas calls 'passivity' (1998: 49). Illeity is the term used for the ambiguity of the infinite that transcends synchronization yet requires that synchronization in order to exceed it. Ille- ity here is substitution of one for another: it is giving. It is, again, the 'tearing away of bread from the mouth that tastes it, to give it to the other' (1998: 64). This substitution of essence for illeity is the ambiguity beyond I or Thou. It is where 'I am inspired' (1998: 114).
If substitution is the signifyingness of the signification that bears respon- sibility for the other, and exceeds the limits of essence, diachrony is the anachronism of that excess. It is where saying is anachronism. As the-one- for-the-other is the signifyingness of the signification of the break-up of
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essence, so, diachrony is now revealed as immemorial time within tempor- alization, or within the present. Diachrony is the signifyingness of the signification of the lapse of time wherein the sovereignty of the totality of memory is exceeded. 'I am ordered toward the face of the other' (1998: 11) in the transcendence of time immemorial.
As with Totality and Infinity there are themes here that resonate with edu- cation in Hegel. Proximity is the vulnerability of an ego or a subject to the other who approaches, and illeity retains the ambiguity of vulnerability in looking to totality (as synchronization) and infinity (its excess, its otherwise than being) at the 'same' (divine and earthly) time. We will return to Other- wise than Being and to some of these themes below.
It is often not commented upon that education stands at the centre of Levinasian ethics. Education is explicit in Totality and Infinity but rather more implicit in Otherwise than Being. We will now explore three ways in which education is presented by Levinas: as teaching, as philosophy and as study.
Teaching
If the relation of totality and infinity is neither concept nor representation nor any act of assimilation by knowledge in the totality, how is this epiphany structured? Levinas's answer to this is teaching which he affirms in Totality and Infinity as the relation that binds the vulnerability of totality to the vul- nerability that is infinity.
The breaches of totality are found within time, property and desire. These breaches form a relation with the Infinite that is, as Levinas says, 'non-aller- gic' (1969: 51). The special quality of this relation is that it is expressed in the face and commands a response of welcome, generosity and metaphys- ics. This command, which is not experienced as object or subject, is what Levinas refers to as 'a teaching' (1969: 51). From the other is received more than the I. To receive is both a breach of totality and a teaching therein about infinity. The primacy of teaching is the 'primacy of an irreducible structure upon which all other structures rest' (1969: 79). It is, in this sense, part of 'the marvel of creation' (1969: 89) which creates 'a being capable of receiving a revelation, learning that it is created, and putting itself in ques- tion' (1969: 89). As such, says Levinas, 'the miracle of creation lies in creating a moral being' (1969: 89) or a being who from his isolation is open to being taught about his creation through the absolutely Other. It is in this teachability, characteristic of the created moral being, that justice comes to be known.
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Levinas also argues that teaching is contained in the transitivity of the face and the feminine. They are capable of the transitivity from having to giving, a transitivity that knows itself as education. The face and the feminine signify the signifyingness of this educational movement. As such, they are not just teaching; they are also learning, and part of their teaching is that one learns to be teachable. Becoming teachable, in Levinas, is becoming responsible. Levinas is clear, however, that teaching must not be seen as a middle term. 'Western philosophy,' he says, 'has most often been an ontol- ogy: a reduction of the other to the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of being' (1969: 43). Teach- ing in Levinas avoids this reduction to the same by arguing that teaching is not a neutral conjoining of subject and object in (free) cognition. Rather, teach- ing is the break up of all such reconciliations and all such illusions of freedom and knowledge. Teaching is in the trauma of the loss of the latter and teaches that alterity cannot be reduced to such freedom and knowledge.
Teaching in Totality and Infinity is thus required to carry the weight of infinity exceeding totality. As we saw above, Levinas introduces the idea around the non-allergic relation to the Other, that is, the ethical relation. It is the calling of the I beyond itself and its view of itself as an essence, to the relation with the Other who 'approaches me not from the outside but from above' (1969: 171). Thought can thematize everything that is exterior to it and assimilate it into the same; but it cannot assimilate the teacher who makes thematization possible. This transcendence is in the unassimilable face of the Other. Teaching is what is received from this height; it is the face of the Master. Levinas continues here,
this voice coming from another shore teaches transcendence itself. Teach- ing signifies the whole infinity of exteriority. And the whole infinity of exteriority is not first produced, to then teach: teaching is its very produc- tion. The first teaching teaches this very height, tantamount to its exteriority, the ethical . . . The Other is not another freedom as arbitrary as my own, in which case it would traverse the infinity that separates me from him and enter under the same concept. His alterity is manifested in a mastery that does not conquer but teaches. Teaching is not a species of a genus called domination, a hegemony at work within a totality, but is the presence of infinity breaking the closed circle of totality. (1969: 171)
Teaching, then, is not just about God; it is the truth of God expressed in the face. It is not merely a conceptual knowledge; it is the breach of the totality of concepts. Its education is radical; its expression teaches that the
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infinite requires the separated and isolated being in order that the infinite can breach the totality in its teaching. Without the atheism of the ego, there would be no teaching of the absolutely Other. The miracle of creation is that it creates in such a way that it can be revealed, present but absent. Teaching is this revelation. 'The contradiction between the free interiority and the exteriority that should limit it is reconciled in the man open to teaching' (1969: 180).
Additionally, Levinas holds that because teaching comes from beyond totality it is a 'non-violent transitivity' (1969: 51). The importance here of the notion of transitivity cannot be underestimated in Levinas's anti-Hegelian operation. Signification, expression, infinity, transcendence, the ethical, the face in Levinas all claim some kind of transitive quality in which what they do is also what they are. In transitivity, then, Levinas seeks to evade the dualism of theory and practice at the level of the transcendent. If the dual- ism did persist, then the 'epiphany of the face' (1969: 51), for example, would split into the totality of immediacy and its representation. Thus, teaching in Levinas is 'the coinciding of the revealer and the revealed in the face' (1969: 67). It is not, as it were, under a category, and first of all it teaches this teaching itself, by virtue of which alone it can teach.