Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea
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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