Violence and Metaphysics, pp. 125-153
In this reading, Derrida finishes his deconstruction of Levinas from Husserl’s
phenomenological perspective (this being that Levinas presupposes the very
phenomenological concepts that he argues against). He then goes on to deconstruct
Levinas from a Heideggerian perspective. Here is argument will be that Levinas
presupposes Heidegger’s thought of being in arguing for the infinite (and against
Heidegger).
Let me first turn to the Husserlian type of deconstruction.
Derrida’s point of attack is Levinas assertion: "The other, as other, is not only an alter
ego. It is what I myself am not" (125).
Derrida asserts that one must first of all recognize the other as an alter ego
If the other were not recognized as a transcendental alter ego, it would be entirely
in the world and not, as ego, the origin of the world. To refuse to see in it an ego
in this sense is, within the ethical order, the very gesture of all violence. If the
other was not recognized as ego, its entire alterity would collapse. (ibid.).
His point is that the other that is not an ego is just a mere thing, something in the world.
As a subject, it is 1) an origin of the world, a place where the world is brought to
presence and 2) an end in herself, someone having her own point of view, interpretation,
etc. and therefore someone I have to approach from an ethical standpoint.
Thus, we must assume the horizon of the same (both of us being egos) to talk about the
other. In Derrida’s words,
“The egoity of the other permits him to say "ego" as I do; and this is why he is Other,
and not a stone, or a being without speech-in my real economy. This is why, if you will,
he is face, can speak to me, understand me, and eventually command me. Dissymmetry
itself would be impossible without this symmetry” (of two ego’s facing each other. (125-
126)
If I abandon this viewpoint, then “The violence of which Levinas speaks would be a
violence without victim. But since … all egos are others for others, the violence without
victim would be also a violence without author. (126)
How does this deconstruction work: by reducing Levinas’s assertion “The other, as other,
is not only an alter ego. It is what I myself am not" to “The other, as other, is what I
myself am not"—that is, he is not an ego. But Levinas does not say this.
It also works by taking the notion of infinitely other to signify totally other. At this point
there is no horizon in which I could recognize the other as an ego or a face.
The point of all this is to assert that Levinas in presupposing that the other is an ego like
me and hence exists in a symmetrical relation with me presupposes the category of the
same as embracing both myself and the other. But the same is the category of violence.
Hence he presupposes such violence is talking about the relation to the other as one of
“peace.”
In his words, “There is a transcendental and preethical violence, a (general) dissymmetry
whose archia is the same, and which eventually permits the inverse dissymmetry, that is,
the ethical nonviolence of which Levinas speaks.” (128)
The profound nature of this level of the same is what Husserl called “irreducibly egoic
essence of experience” (131). All experience starts off with a first person perspective.
In particular, it starts off with my living present. Out of this, my past as future are
constituted as mine. In fact, out of this my egoity is constituted as a present for a past
and future, a 0-point in space and time. (Explain this).
Every ego has this structure. All are the same in this. But this makes them all other than
each other. Each is his own 0-point.
But this means that otherness presupposes the same—that is, violence.
This means:
if one wishes to determine violence as the necessity that the other not appear as
what it is, that it not be respected except in, for, and by the same, that it be
dissimulated by the same in the very freeing of its phenomenon, then time is
violence.
It is because only through the same (violence) can one talk about alterity in the
egological sphere.
Thus, as Derrida continues
This movement of freeing absolute alterity in the absolute same is the movement
of temporalization in its most absolutely unconditioned universal form: the living
present. If the living present, the absolute form of the opening of time to the other
in itself, is the absolute form of egological life, and if egoity is the absolute form
of experience, then the present, the presence of the present, and the present of
presence, are all originally and forever violent. (133)
With this we have the deconstruction: As Derrida states the conclusion: “Levinas's
metaphysics in a sense presupposes—at least we have attempted to show this—the
transcendental phenomenology that it seeks to put into question” (ibid.).
Derrida now turns to Levinas’s treatment of Heidegger with the same intention.
Heidegger call his philosophy “fundamental ontology.” It is the thought of being qua
being. Levinas’s metaphysics of the infinitely other will be seen to presuppose this as
well.
As Derrida states the point he wants to prove: “Not only is the thought of being not
ethical violence, but it seems that no ethics—in Levinas’s sense—can be opened up
without it. (137)
Why not? What is the thought of being?
It is the thought of what makes a being be, the thought of the sense of being. This is the
thought of standard of disclosure. To let a being be is to disclose it according to some
standard. All disclosure involves a “precomprehension of being.”
Derrida thus asserts: “Just as he implicitly had to appeal to phenomenological self-
evidences against phenomenology, Levinas must ceaselessly suppose and practice the
thought of precomprehension of Being in his discourse, even when he directs it against
"ontology." Otherwise, what would "exteriority as the essence of Being" mean “(TI)?
(141)
As he also puts this, each of us, as Dasein, let things be. Thus, if we think of the other as
like our selves, we have think of them as disclosing being.” In his words,
“would the experience of the face be possible, could it be stated, if the thought of Being
were not already implied in it? In effect, the face is the inaugural unity of a naked glance
and of a right to speech. But eyes and mouth make a face only if, beyond need, they can
"let be," if they see and they say what is such as it is, if they reach the Being of what is.”
(143).
The claim here is that “There is no speech without the thought and statement of Being.”
(143)
This is because such speech involves disclosure involves this thought that guides
disclosure.
The violence involved in the thought of being is that the standard both lets be and hides,
reveals and conceals.
The point put in terms of Derrida’s assertion that for Heidegger, “Being is history” (148).
Each of the epoch’s of history is set by a standard for disclosure that obscures other
standards. The result is that
Being is not just the firs thing we know (as Aquinas says). It is also the first thing that is
concealed. We conceal being itself in insisting on the standard. In Derrida’s words:
Being is necessarily dissimulated. The first violence is this dissimulation, but it is also the
first defeat of nihilistic violence, and the first epiphany of Being. Being, thus, is less the
primum cognition, as was said, than the first dissimulated, and these two propositions are
not contradictory. (149).
In fact, from Derrida’s perspective, Heidegger’s thought of being is yet an other example
of the all pervasive principle of difference prior to identity. As he puts this, “Since
Being is nothing (determined), it is necessarily produced in difference (as difference).”
(150).
The profound thought here is that Being is an impossible presence and hence only
appears through its traces (the different standards of disclosure). It is nothing
determined since as such, it is only a standard.
The same thing holds with regard to the other as a face. The other is nothing determined
but only appears through traces. Thus, the thought of difference controls Levinas’s
speech as well.