Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea
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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