Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea

and Nietzsche

      Of course, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche together with Dostoyevsky and

      Hopkins are the founders of the postmodern ethics as first philosophy.

      But Levinas never does come to appreciate Kierkegaard or Nietzsche

      even though Heidegger was so positive in many ways to both of them.

      Levinas did not seem to know of Kierkegaard’s Works of Love

      and his philosophy of loving others as more important than self.

      Levinas always seemed to think of Nietzsche as violently

      philosophizing with a hammer and only announcing the death of God.

      On pages 110 and 111 of his essay on Levinas Derrida defends

      Kierkegaard against Levinas and shows that Kierkegaard is not an

      egoist thinking only about his own salvation and on page 93 he writes:

      Despite his anti-Kierkegaardian protests,

      Levinas here returns to the themes of Fear and Trembling,

      the movement of desire can be what it is

      only paradoxically, as the renunciation of desire.

      These two kinds of desire are central to Totality and Infinity and

      as Derrida is deconstructing what Levinas says about Kierkegaard

      he shows that Levinas is contradictory in critiquing Kierkegaard.

      Derrida is very favorable toward both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

      and does speak positively of Nietzsche in Writing and Difference.

      Jack Caputo pictures Derrida as a Dionysian Rabbi or a

      Nietzschean Levinasian and Derrida is very much a Nietzschean.

      As Derrida helped Levinas move from Totality and Infinity

      to Otherwise Than Being perhaps Derrida’s Nietzsche had more

      of a role to ply than Derrida’s Kierkegaard because already

      on page 8 of Otherwise Than Being Levinas refers to Nietzsche’s

      poetic writing and the reversal of time in a laughter refusing language.

      We must now examine the love ethic of Otherwise Than Being

      and see if Levinas is being more true to Jewish Ahava and

      Hesed here than he was in Totality and Infinity and again

      we can continue to think of this Levinas in comparison with Buber.

      II,3 The Wisdom of Love in Otherwise Than Being

      II,3.1 How the Notion of the Third Opens Levinas

      Levinas took Derrida’s deconstruction of Totality and Infinity to heart

      and wrote Otherwise Than Being to more consistently state his Jewish ethics.

      Corey Beals’s book Levinas and the Wisdom of Love is wonderful in clearly

      explaining all that is new in the Later Levinas and he concentrates

      on the notion of the third in order to answer many of Levinas’

      critics by showing how justice and philosophy are grounded in it.

      However, Beals discusses the ambiguity of Levinasian love

      in terms of agape and eros and does not make a distinction

      between the Ahava and hesed of the Hebrew Bible and Christian agape.

      On page 254 of Totality and Infinity on “The Ambiguity of Love”

      Levinas does distinguish between a desire that can be the most

      egoistic and cruelest of needs and a desire which is ever open

      to the infinity of the other in a responsible love for the other.

      Throughout his book Beals develops this distinction, which he

      calls the two types of love, on page 2:

      desire (as a satiable desire, or neighbor love)

      and need (as satiable desire, or self-love).

      The commandment in the Hebrew Bible is “Love your neighbor as yourself”

      and this love of neighbor did become part of Christian agape.

      But Levinas does not write about loving oneself; rather, I am

      to be responsible to widows, orphans, and aliens even at

      my own expense and this is the difference between Buber and Levinas.

      In Levinas with the widows, orphans and aliens of Totality

      and Infinity and the suffering servant of Otherwise Than Being

      there is only an asymmetrical relation that invited much criticism

      as we shall see but with The Third Levinas got symmetry.

      Beals’s explanation of how The Third opens the way for

      justice and philosophy is excellent and he does answer the critics.

      But does he not equate wrongly this symmetry with agape?

      II,3.2 To the Double Responsibility of Love and Justice

      Beals refers often to the book Entre Nous: On Thinking of the Other

      in which Levinas in interviewed by a Christian interlocutor.

      Especially in chapter 9, “Philosophy, Justice and love,”

      Levinas is asked about his views on love:

      “So, love is originary?” and on page 108 Levinas answers:

      Love is originary. I’m not speaking theologically at all;

      I myself don’t use it much, the word love,

      it is a worn-out and ambiguous word.

      And then, too, there is something severe

      in this love; this love is commanded.

      Then on page 113 the interviewer asks:

      In this perspective, what, according to you

      would be the difference between eros and agape?

      Levinas responds:

      I am definitely not a Freudian; consequently

      I don’t think that agape comes from eros . . .

      I can say no more about it now; I think

      in any case that eros is definitely not Agape

      that agape is neither a derivative

      nor the extinction of love-eros.

      To be faithful to Levinas we have to be clear that agape is not

      part of his technical vocabulary and that is why he resists

      getting serious with the interviewer about both love and agape.

      Beals like the interviewer calls the two loves of Levinas agape

      or responsible love of neighbor and then a selfish need love.

      But in spite of that his book on Levinas and the Wisdom of Love

      is excellent in showing how Levinas develops the idea of the third.

      When the face of the other looks at me with a request ethics as

      first philosophy is born but for there to be philosophy proper

      following upon that first ethical responsibility the look of

      a third at us is necessary for us to start thinking philosophically.

      II,3.3