Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea

on Levinas is Violence and Metaphysics

      and already at the beginning on pages 85 and 86 Derrida says a great

      deal about how Levinas gets beyond Heidegger with Platonic eros

      and then Levinas must still get beyond the violence of that metaphysics.

      Levinas’ philosophy of love and his loving ethics has to do with

      two kinds of desire: that which desires to possess and for the infinite

      which does not satisfy desire but which opens it to transcendence.

      Plato’s metaphysics has to do with the Good beyond Being or the

      epekeina tes ousias and as Derrida says on page 85:

      In Totality and Infinity the “Phenomenology of Eros”

      describes the movement of the epekeina tes ousias

      in the very experience of the caress.

      Levinas entitles the last section of Totality and Infinity

      Beyond the Face and section a of that is The Ambiguity of Love

      and then B is The Phenomenology of Eros which Derrida considers.

      As Derrida explains on page 93 the affectivity of need and desire

      as love are very different for need is self-centered but

      Desire, on the contrary, permits itself

      to be appealed to by the absolutely irreducible

      exteriority of the other to which

      it must remain infinitely inadequate.

      Platonic eros in its Divine Madness in The Phaedrus is open

      to this kind of infinite for it is not an intentionality of

      disclosure but of search: a movement into the invisible.

      In a certain sense it expresses love, but suffers from an inability

      to tell it as Levinas explains on page 258 of Totality and Infinity.

      However, while Greek love can go this far and prepare the way

      for Jewish ethics it does not reach the alterity of the other in the face

      of the poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan and thus

      Levinas must with Heidegger destroy the history of Platonic

      metaphysics, which Derrida prefers to less violently deconstruct.

      II,2.7 And Levinas’ Destruction of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

      Having learned philosophy as a Catholic Heidegger knew Aristotle

      very well as he was developed in different ways by Aquinas and Scotus.

      When Heidegger destroyed the history of metaphysics by showing

      all of its ideas that should not be used by the phenomenologist

      he dealt with the notion of substance which is a thing in itself

      that forms the core of the Aristotelian tradition; but Levinas does

      not even bother with Aristotle because his ethics is so different.

      Levinas sees the ethical relation as totally asymmetrical so that

      there is no mutuality or reciprocity between humans and thus

      Aristotelians would think that Levinas’ ethics is impossible.

      Aristotle does not get rid of the I and develops a self

      realization ethics in which by being virtuous I can be happy.

      Love for him is friendship and the friend is the other half of my soul.

      Derrida stands in between Aristotle and Levinas and sees the

      subject as decentered and never at home so I am not a Levinasian

      accused me and I am not an Aristotelian substantial thing in itself.

      So Derrida deconstructs what would be both the Aristotelian destruction

      of Levinas and the Levinasian destruction of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

      Levinas can identify with Platonic eros and take it in

      the direction of his infinitizing desire but Aristotelian friendship

      has nothing to offer him and though his philosophy of an ethical

      asymmetry would be critical of Aristotle and Aristotelians argue

      to a first cause which is pure act and the Supreme Being

      but Levinas is interested in the Infinity beyond any such Being.

      As Derrida think of the Jewish reciprocal ethics of Buber

      and the asymmetrical ethics of Levinas he chooses the ethics

      of asymmetry and what he comes to call the ethics of pure giving.

      Already in Violence and Metaphysics Derrida is thinking

      of the notion of the pure and on pages 146–47 he begins

      to think of pure violence and pure non-violence together.

      II,2.8 And Levinas’ Destruction of Descartes’ Infinite

      At the beginning of his essay on page 82 Derrida writes:

      The consciousness of crisis is for Husserl

      but the provisional, almost necessary covering up

      of a transcendental motif which in

      Descartes and in Kant was already beginning

      to accomplish the Greek end;

      philosophy as science.

      Aristotle defined science as a certain knowledge of things through

      causes and Descartes begins with the quest for that certainty.

      His tree of philosophy has the three metaphysical roots the

      second of which is the God of Infinite perfection or infinity

      which idea enables him to doubt any idea that is imperfect.

      Then growing out of the roots is the trunk of physics and

      then there are the branches of medicine, mechanics and morals.

      Levinas shows how this Cartesian idea of the infinite does

      not have the transcending value of Platonic metaphysics but

      belongs to the Aristotelian criticism of Platonism and thus on page 83

      Derrida writes:

      Levinas seeks to raise up metaphysics

      and to restore its metaphysics of the Infinite

      in opposition to the entire tradition

      derived from Aristotle.

      The Platonic Infinity, which has to do with the Good beyond Being,

      is central in Totality and Infinity as Levinas uses it in going

      beyond the Being of Heidegger to his ethics of the Infinity of the other.

      The desire for that Infinity that is an ever increasing desire is

      central to the love in Totality and Infinity and remains so in Otherwise

      than Being for it makes up the very core of the wisdom of Love.

      Descartes as the father of modern philosophy has none of this and puts

      all his emphasis on the ego that is not essentially related to others.

      The scientific method seeking certainty fits with this individualism.

      II,2.9 And