The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22 (Studies in Judaism) 9781433111600, 9781453908495, 1433111608

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Notes
Index

Citation preview

The Unbinding OF Isaac

Studies in Judaism

Yudit Kornberg Greenberg

General Editor Vol. 5

PETER LANG

New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford

STEPHEN J. STERN

The Unbinding OF Isaac A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22

PETER LANG

New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stern, Stephen J. The unbinding of Isaac: a phenomenological midrash of Genesis 22 / Stephen Stern. p. cm. — (Studies in Judaism; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Jewish philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Modern. 3. Isaac (Biblical patriarch)— Sacrifice. 4. Bible. O.T. Genesis XXII, 1–19—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. B5800.S74 181’.06—dc22 2010043807 ISBN 978-1-4331-1160-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4539-0849-5 (e-book) ISSN 1086-5403

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

Chapter four, “The Unbinding of Isaac,” first appeared as an essay in

Sacrifice, Scripture and Substitution: Readings in Ancient Judaism and Christianity, edited by Ann Astell and Sandor Goodhart, University of Notre Dame Press, June 2011. Chapter five, “Rebecca,” first appeared as “Rebecca: The First Dialogic Philosopher,” an article in Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, volume six, June 2009. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2012 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in Germany

In Memory of Beth Deborah Stern

Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................ ix Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................xix Chapter I: A Historical and Philosophical Sketch: Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas ...................................................................................................... 1 Franz Rosenzweig .................................................................................................. 3 Martin Buber.......................................................................................................... 9 Emmanuel Levinas ...............................................................................................15 The Binding of Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas ...............................................19 A Collagical Approach ........................................................................................22 Concluding Remarks ...........................................................................................23

Chapter II: Terah’s Shop of Idols And Ethics as First Philosophy ........................ 26 Terah’s Shop of Idols ...........................................................................................29 Idolatry .................................................................................................................34 Ethics as First Philosophy ....................................................................................38 Concluding Remarks ...........................................................................................41

Chapter III: Gesticulative Mischaracertizations: When Fiction is a Bodily Fact ......................................................................................................... 44 Abram and Sarai ..................................................................................................46 Egypt .....................................................................................................................46 Inside Egypt ..........................................................................................................52 Witnessing............................................................................................................55

Chapter IV: The Unbinding of Isaac ...................................................................... 59 Kierkegaard’s Notion of Faith .............................................................................60 Critique of Kierkegaard’s Notion of Faith..........................................................62 God, Abraham, and The Purpose of the Test .....................................................64 Taking the Test: When Peace is Announced .....................................................65 Isaac’s Lesson .......................................................................................................69 Isaac’s Liberation .................................................................................................71 Sarah’s Light .........................................................................................................72 Concluding Remarks ...........................................................................................75

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Chapter V: Rebecca ................................................................................................. 78 Rebecca .................................................................................................................78

Chapter VI: Conclusion .......................................................................................... 94 A Collagical Method and Teleodogma ...............................................................95

Notes ....................................................................................................................... 101 Index....................................................................................................................... 113

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he dynamics of life is a hinge on which truths revolve, yet this hinge is more foundational than any truth produced by relations. For example, my love for my parents is a dynamic relation that is more than any truth about love or any explanation of love. In other words, loving my parents cannot be nicely packaged in a truth container; loving my parents is more than any truth or explanation of love. In fact, the dynamic continually upends “truths” in the philosophical sense; meanings derived from relations with my parents are more than any truth can capture. It is here where one begins to wonder about the philosophical consequences for ethics. If meaning overflows truth or truths, what becomes of a tradition of ethics that searches for truth or foundations that inform our behavior? In response to that question, this book explains and uniquely demonstrates the Jewish dialogic concerns of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber and, most notably, Emmanuel Levinas, contrasting their ideas with traditional, Western philosophical approaches to ethics. These three Jewish philosophers explain that traditional Western philosophers discussing ethics have concerned themselves with answering the question “what is ethics?” The question presupposes there is an essential answer, which is the truth that can be found. More often than not, this question sets off a search for an answer unconditioned by human encounters and is then adopted at the expense of normative ethical approaches, something seen as a fundamental error according to Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas. These thinkers argue that in asking the question-“What is ethics?”-and pursuing an answer, one is not strictly talking about ethics, for the question is not situated in human encounters. Ethics happen between people. Therefore, if one does not philosophically situate one’s discussion of ethics in the encounters and relations between people, such as the example given on my love for my parents, one is not discussing-what one might call-living ethics.

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Dialogically, and Judaically, ethics are for the other. Thus, a discussion of ethics begins with the other, not with an abstract question (“What is ethics?”) from which one pursues an abstract answer that justifies or validates an abstract theory. This resistance to abstraction both challenges and offers an alternative to the Hellenic philosophical tradition’s attempts at providing a foundation for ethics. Immanuel Kant, arguably the most important ethical thinker in modern philosophy, for example, inquires into practical reason with the hope of providing a foundation for ethical law. In contrast to a thinker like Kant, Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas provide us with a phenomenology of the ethical, that is, an account of the lived ethical experience. In doing so, these thinkers, most notably Levinas, provide postmodern philosophy with postmodern ethics. Post-modernisms’ economies of meaning have at their heart the term “difference,” or for Jacques Derrida (who made Levinas famous in his 1964 essay “Violence & Metaphysics”), we could use his term, “Differance.” Both of these terms mean relations. This certainly is at the heart of dialogic philosophy, but it also leads to misunderstandings, most notably in regards to Levinas. It is easy to confuse his discussion of the “Other” in relation to oneself with post-modern discourses on difference. Whereas postmodern discourses on difference presume a network of differing power relations, Levinas’ notion of “Otherness”-the relation of the “self” to the “other”-transcends or is outside of the very power networks spoken of by post-modern theorists. Levinas, in the tradition of Buber, Rosenzweig and the rabbis before him, upends this dynamic of understanding difference through power relations. It is not that power relations are irrelevant, but obligation and responsibility for the other precedes and also upends power dynamics, not to mention that obligation toward another assumes an ethical intimacy that one does not find in most post-modern writers. In fact, one might say that post-modern thinkers have no explanation for intimacy outside of power dynamics, or put more generously, it is not of concern to them. Post-modern philosophy is not easy to explain. It is made up of a very heterogeneous group of thinkers. And when generalizing any diverse tradition, one could easily oversimplify it into what is not. However, in order to

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understand how Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas step outside of postmodern philosophy’s stance on ethics, a few points need to be made about this tradition. Most post-modern thinkers considering ethics were concerned with power and violence. Foucault is a prime example. But Rosenzweig, Buber and most notably Levinas move beyond these concerns of power and violence. Unfortunately, they are most often discussed in the fields traversed by those interested in the likes of Derrida for it was he who brought Levinas’ work to light. Like many scholars categorized as postmodern, Derrida is interested in power and violence. For Derrida, meaning is constituted by relations that are quite tense, maybe war like. The tension from relations, or “Differance,” as he calls it, has become a critical part of French feminist studies, discussions of multi-culturalism, cosmopolitanism and place. Yet, this “differance” showcases a dynamic relation that is beyond representation. The reactive nature of post-modernism is at odds with the liberation (from power & violence)-minded spirit exercised by many practitioners, post Marxists and post-modern religious thinkers. But how does a postmodern thinker discuss liberation or ethics when the field generally sees and always risks succumbing to the power and violence thought to exist everywhere? Post-Modern discourses possess wonderful obsessions with unmasking regimes of power and techniques of violence at work in places one would not expect, such as in philosophical systems like that of Kant. Such moves show the Nietzscheian investment in the post structural thought of the postmodern super-hero Michel Foucault, whose work explains the insight that all knowledge is both infused and informed by power. This opens the door into Jacques Derrida’s view that differance constitutes an economy of relations that at times seems “war like.” In other words, one finds traces of power even in notions of difference(s). In this Derridian frame-at least in regards to ethics-one must come up with an ethic that continually goes beyond itself, beyond frozen concepts, so to speak, an understanding that continually upends definitions of it, just like the love between children and parents. With this understanding of some of the central themes in post-modern philosophy, it may seem strange to place, Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas, Jewish, dialogic thinkers, into this post-modern climate, especially when

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they find Nietzsche to be morally bankrupt, and do not infuse dialogic ethics with power and/or violence. Dialogic ethics- from their Jewish orientations - stands outside and is opposed to regimes of power and violence. Yet these thinkers seemingly intersect with post-modern philosophy through the language of “difference,” or perhaps it’s that post-modern philosophers unknowingly intersect with these three dialogic philosophers. Rabbinic discourses of ethics presume an intimacy (an other centered worry/immanent concern for the well being of the other) that most Western philosophers lack when discussing ethics. Thus, when highlighting the confusions around Levinas, for example, it’s clear that much uncertainty arises from the fact that he partly philosophizes out of Judaism, a tradition to which both Western philosophy generally and post-modernism particularly seemingly have a strange, even problematic relationship. Simply, Judaism or Judaisms is not trusted. As long as most philosophers thoughtlessly relegate it to the support structures of Christian power & violence, they will miss that these thinkers come from Judaisms that are beyond, yet reacting to and standing witness to Western or Hellenic/Christian philosophy. This helps explain why, when Levinas is traditionally discussed by non-Jewish philosophers, he is not normally discussed in the context of rabbinic thought, but as in relation to Derrida & Heidegger. (This also explains why Rosennzweig and in part Buber are largely disregarded by most Western philosophers.) And in this relation, Levinas is often the foil for Derridianloving Heideggerians or Heideggarian-loving Derridians. In fact, throughout the works of those who love Levinas but are unfamiliar with Judaism, one sees very little discussion of Judaism and the profound impact Rosenzweig had on his thought. Adrian Pepperzak’s wonderfully pioneering and explanatory works on Levinas fall short of unmasking the Judaism that stands fast in Levinas’s work. Robert Bernasconi casually mentions it, but quickly exiles it, perhaps because Levinas said his philosophical and Jewish works are not to be confused. Feminist philosophers Luce Irigaray and Tina Chanter use Levinas to help generate important insights, but they too leave Rosenzweig, Buber and rabbinic influences out of their analysis of his work. They-and many more-analyze his notion of “Otherness,” but miss its Hebraic roots.

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Levinas’ notion of “Otherness” is central to his work, both to his Jewish and philosophical writings. His notion of “Otherness” is easily traced to a Hebraic epistemic orientation, which not only makes it distinctive, but different from the very “differences” privileged by post-modern thought, which, like the philosophical tradition from which it emerges, has no real interest in the alternative epistemology of Hebraic thinking. Perhaps because Derrida seemingly deconstructs the problem of Athens vs. Jerusalem in questioning and accusing Levinas of logo-centrism in his seminal essay “Violence & Metaphysics,” post-modern theorists overlook that for Levinas (as with Rosenzweig and Buber) the tension between Athens vs. Jerusalem is not resolved, but is used to offer their Jewish orientation as an alternative way to think about the philosophical self, the other and ethics. Unfortunately, it was Derrida’s reading of Levinas that became popular in postmodern thought, which is of course more about Derrida than the insights from Levinas and, thereby, Rosenzweig and Buber. This neglect of the Jewish traces in his thought, lead many to miss an important insight in dialogic philosophy and most notably, Levinas. Whereas traditional philosophers such as Kant & Hegel move from the particular to the universal, dialogic philosophy universally commands one to remain in the particular and resist the urge to totalize the specific into a universal. I use the word command to illustrate a difference between command and law. A command speaks to a particular obligation in a particular context. Commands are specifically performed. A law may be made from a context, but it stands apart from the context. Laws are about rights, but not necessarily about performative obligation or responsibility for the other. The engine of this use of command is responsibility for the other. “How am I responsible for the other? What are my obligations to others? How do I perform them? Rights are legally grounded in governmental institutions, and they are (ideally) guaranteed, distributed, and protected by one's government. Rights may exercise obligations, but they are institutionally bound up. One's responsibility for the other precedes the institutions of legal rights and exists when those institutions are eclipsed by or disappear because of sociopolitical forces. Responsibility, unlike a rigid system of rights, or a philosophical system of rights, is dynamic, interpersonal, situational, and always vulnerable to the distractions of self-interest.” Dialogic philosophers

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do not suggest that laws aren’t any good. A society without laws is problematic, to say the least. Nevertheless, these thinkers, like many rabbis before them, understand that a command is not only more intimate than a law, but also that laws are not the source of ethics; the source is the commanded responsibility by and for the “Other.” Yet many non-Jewish philosophers miss connections such as these in Jewish scholars’ work because of their lack of familiarity with this tradition. In contrast, most Jewish philosophers in the field seek to correct such oversights; Richard Cohen, Robert Gibbs, Susan Handleman, Jill Robbins, Claire Katz and others not only correct non-Jewish analyses that eclipse Judaism from discussions of Levinas, but their work also exposes the reflexive distrust non-Jewish thinkers in this field have towards Judaism. When Judaism is included in explaining Levinas, one sees the glaring oversight in the works of those unfamiliar with Judaism. When I first read Gibbs work I was relieved to find someone saying what I suspected when reading nonJewish explanations of Levinas that were not working with his Jewish roots. From there I found Richard Cohen’s work, which was music to my ears, for he truly locates Levinas in a philosophical world that includes Levinas’ Judaism. Soon I devoured Handleman, Robbins and others. I was so pleased to find Claire Katz’s work; it is refreshing, almost midrashic and has a playfulness lacking in so many philosophical works. I am forever in these thinkers’ debt. But the problem with most of their work (Claire Katz is often an exception to this) is the same problem I have with the works of Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas; abstraction. In fairness, abstraction is necessary in philosophy, and although they are often less abstract than Rosenzweig, Buber & Levinas, their approach does not support my method of a “Phenomenological midrash”; I describe Rosenzweig, Buber and (most notably) Levinas’ thought through the narrative of Genesis 22, in turn making Genesis 22 the essence of their thought and their thought the essence of Genesis 22. Simply, this midrashic phenomenology helps us understand these dialogic thinkers in a biblical, ethical context, which has yet to be done. My impulse is to make these thinkers more accessible through their Jewish standpoints. Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas have an intimate relationship to catastrophe. It informs their every sentence and shadows their every letter. And

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yet-perhaps ironically-their work is too abstract, especially when considering that catastrophe is not (philosophically) abstract nor is ethics for the “Other” abstract. Simply, murder, killing and rape are not abstract, especially for the victim. In my midrashic discussion, I avoid abstraction by situating, explaining and demonstrating the Jewish, dialogic approach to ethics in the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, which climaxes with God commanding Abraham to bind Isaac for ritual sacrifice. In examining this narrative dialogically and from a Jewish orientation, I show what Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas mean by their ethics, while illustrating the Midrashic approach exercised in rabbinic discourse instead of adopting the framework of most, if not all, scholars in the tradition that fall into abstract theory when demonstrating dialogic ethics. This book avoids such a fate. I am not aware of any scholars in the field who situate their dialogic discussion of ethics in a biblical narrative from a Jewish, midrashic orientation. In making this claim, it would be remiss for me to leave out Avivah Zornberg. I am deeply influenced by Zornberg’s work. Her literary and midrashic analyses of biblical texts are so breathtaking that I find myself trying to imitate it at times. However, our goals are quite different. Zornberg uses literary figures and philosophers’ insights to help unfold or illustrate meanings of biblical passages and texts; whereas, I use a biblical narrative (as explained below) to explicate the dialogic philosophy of these thinkers. Furthermore, the way she uses non-Jewish scholars in her work takes them from their intellectual context and does not shed light on the discourses from which their insights emerged. Additionally, I introduce a “collagic” method, a Talmudic/Aggadic /Midrashic approach in which one does not merely argue with logical propositions, but from circumstances with stories, examples and illustrations which correlate or associate with one another in the same way that pictures or illustrations on a collage are associated. This approach uniquely illustrates the immanent co-logical epistemology of dialogic philosophy, which does not lend itself to traditional symbolic linear argument formats, but is best understood through stories and/or illustrations, which is how normative ethics are explained in rabbinic traditions. Collagically, one is receptive to open-ended discussion where conclusions are also suggestions that invite alternative ways of understanding through associating with new

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pictures/orientations. It is like looking at a collage that enables one to associate the collagical images in novel ways every time one looks at it. In other words, collages are interpretively open; they never seem to be closed off to new associations or even that which is outside the collage. The collagical/midrashic method also exposes the dialogic concern with many traditional philosophers’ search for essence and/or the truth of ethics. I call the traditional philosophical search for (ethical) truth or essence “teleodogma.” Teleodogma is a search for an alleged essence that directs one’s search. According to Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, such a search often has nothing to do with living circumstances, but only with the abstract. It is as if the search is directed from and for an abstraction. In response to the aforementioned concerns, this manuscript is intended to educate others about the unique challenge for traditional, HellenicChristian Western philosophical discussions of ethics offered by Levinas as influenced by Rosenzweig and Buber. In addition, this book makes their philosophies, most notably that of Levinas, more accessible than other works in this field. By presenting their way of philosophizing ethics through the biblical narrative of the Unbinding of Isaac, this work provides those outside the field with an explanation of the most important themes in Jewish, dialogic philosophy, which many find impenetrable. Perhaps most importantly, this work provides a model of how to resist traditional philosophical discussions of ethics by demonstrating how to discuss ethics where conduct-as opposed to abstract questions, answers, and theory-is primary. I also weave the meaning of the biblical narrative with the thread of the philosophies of Rosenzweig, Buber and, most notably, Levinas, which circumscribes their work to a narrative or example that- at times - leads to unorthodox conclusions and associations regarding both their philosophies and traditional understandings of the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca. In other words, the collage associating their philosophies, biblical meanings, and my standpoint both unbinds that which is familiar and entwines new meanings that sometimes go beyond both the authors’ and the readers’( traditional) understanding of this biblical narrative. Finally, philosophically, as phenomenology prescribes, I'm circumscribing Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas’ philosophies to experience, living ex-

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amples of behavior, so to speak. In other words, instead of using the biblical example to give birth to their philosophies, I am really using their philosophy to phenomenologically describe biblical experiences in such a way that the essence of this experience is ethically creative/dynamic/playful and always responsive. This achieves two purposes. First, it grounds or locates their philosophy, most notably that of Levinas, in biblical and rabbinic narratives, for I sometimes turn to the rabbis to frame the biblical account. Second, it illustrates ethical experience. If their philosophy helps make sense of the biblical story, then it is in this respect that we find them to be of utmost importance to Jewish thought, for they show that Jewish thought does not live in a vacuum, but is open to and has always lived in discussions with the Bible, and other traditions, such as Western philosophy. Simply, Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas’s thoughts serve as bridges between these worlds.

Acknowledgments

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would not have written this without the support and friendship of Laura Stahman. I am forever in the debt of Cheyney Ryan for introducing me to Levinas and Derrida, not to mention for his friendship. Without the editorial help and friendship of Cyndi Phillips, I would not have completed a sentence. Charles "Buz" Myers has been a source of strength in writing this, not to mention he gave me all the room and departmental support needed to complete this work. I also give thanks to Carol Priest. Sandor Goodhart and Claire Katz's influence on my style/method is throughout this book. Their approach and style-along with Avivah Zornberg's work - showed me that philosophical midrashing is not only doable, but important. Temma Berg is always on my list of those for whom I'm grateful. As is Don Levi. And Daniel DeNicola. I am more than grateful to Yudit Greenberg for her work, editorial guidance and friendship. Most importantly, I owe more than gratitude to Rachel Kirtner. But for now, I say, "Thank you!" Most importantly, I am grateful to my three older sisters and parents: Beth, Lora and Ellen; my mother Carol; and my father Alvin. The women of my family truly exposed me to the spirit of Sarah and the wisdom and hospitality of Rebecca. My father taught me to listen to them.

Chapter I A Historical and Philosophical Sketch: Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas The [Greek concept Sophia] specifies a closed realm of thought, knowledge for its own sake. This is totally alien to [the Biblical word] hokmah, which regards such a delimination of an independent spiritual sphere, governed by its own laws, as the misconstruction of meaning… the severance of thought from reality. —Martin Buber1 The terms of life are not “essential” but “real;” they concern not “essence” but “fact.” —Franz Rosenzweig2 The presence of being in truth is grasp and appropriation, and knowledge is a teleological activity. —Emmanuel Levinas3

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artin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas are part of a tradition in philosophy called dialogic. From a distance, they appear to be saying similar, if not the same, things. This is incorrect. They have notable differences with one another. However, this book is not exploring their differences. This chapter focuses on their shared concern with Hellenic philosophy. Their concerns often appear general and reductive. However, the importance of their shared insights outweighs their reductive generalizations about the Hellenic-Philosophical tradition.

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Philosophically, Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas are generally concerned with two related issues. First, they believe that most traditional Hellenic-Christian-Philosophers act as if they are thinking alone in isolation, philosophizing alone in their quest for knowledge.4 This presupposes that the philosopher does not need the other, that is, anyone but him or herself; the philosopher is supposed to be able to find problems on his or her own, anticipating and responding to the other’s concern without actually having to talk to the other. Second, they believe that in philosophical solitude the philosopher has developed the bad habit of thinking abstractly. They charge most philosophers with thinking of people, other animals, and things as abstract objects. According to Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, this problem arises from philosophically reducing everything back to the self, making most philosophical issues a problem of knowledge for the self. Generally, the self seeks to know the essence of the thing under a philosophical microscope, and this search for essence arises from not trusting what appears to the self. Nevertheless, what appears allegedly gives the philosopher some idea or representation of the essence or reality of which the appearance partakes. Thus, the philosopher is searching for the essence or reality of the object that appears to the self. The consequence of this is that the philosopher has designed a reality in which people, animals, and things are abstract ideas, objects, or representations to be placed and categorized into an emerging system of knowledge. In response to these two problems, the three thinkers do not give an epistemic critique of the traditional dichotomy between appearance and reality; instead, they offer an alternative approach to philosophy that does not reduce everything to a representation and back to the self. Their alternative is often called dialogic philosophy, which is so influenced by traditions of Judaism that it is also Jewish philosophy. Dialogic philosophy implicitly exposes how many of the traditional problems of knowledge keep a philosopher from the ethical issues of everyday life. It is very positive. The focus in this work is on what their philosophy does, not merely what it implicitly critiques. Together, their issues of concern or cluster of concerns are labeled ‘teleodogma,’ the meaning of which is explained at the end of the chapter.

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Franz Rosenzweig In 1913, Franz Rosenzweig was on the precipice of converting to Christianity with the persuasion of his friend, Eugene Rosenstock-Huesey. Rosenzweig would not come to Christianity from paganism, but from Judaism. However, he decided before converting that he would celebrate the cycle of Jewish holidays throughout the year.5 On Yom Kippur, the second holiday of the Jewish year, Rosenzweig walked into an old orthodox Synagogue in Berlin.6 No one really knows what happened in that Synagogue. What we do know is that he changed his mind. He decided to remain a Jew and not become a Christian.7 After this episode, he studied Judaism with the famous Kantian Philosopher Herman Cohen.8 After war broke out, Rosenzweig eventually found himself serving on the Balkan front. In the spring of 1916, he and Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, who was serving on the Western front, began a correspondence, which discussed Jesus as the Christ from both a Christian and Jewish perspective. At first, the correspondence was tame. They were polite to one another. Finding this boring, they decided to write their honest opinions about the matter. At times the correspondence became quite nasty. Nevertheless, they quickly realized that one learns a lot more from the other when one speaks from one’s own standpoint, never pretending to speak objectively, but “prejudicially.” This theme is found throughout the work of Rosenzweig. He wrote: I really believe that a Philosophy, to be adequate, must rise out of thinking that is done from the personal standpoint of the thinker. To achieve being objective, the thinker must proceed boldly from his own subjective situation. The single condition imposed upon us by objectivity is that we survey the entire horizon; but we are not obliged to make this survey from any position other than the one in which we are, nor are we obliged to make it from no position at all. Our eyes are, indeed, only our own eyes; yet it would be folly to imagine we must pluck them out in order to see straight.9

In the trenches, Rosenzweig became increasingly disdainful of his field of philosophy. One reason for this was that he realized as a Jew, he was an outsider in philosophy. It is easy to see why Rosenzweig found that he did not fit into the Academy, where the philosophical tradition demanded that he give up his standpoint and neuter his Jewish voice, so to speak. Never-

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theless, he both addressed and challenged Greek and Hellenic philosophy from his Jewish standpoint. An example of this is found in one of his letters from the front. He wrote: “The conceptualizing human being, that great and most enduring achievement of the Greeks, enduring because it remained without antithesis in itself (even the “ideas” themselves already found their negation in antiquity itself)–this “theoretic man” has now at last cesse de regner. The poetical mind now has to do everything¸ even think; the conceptualizing mind is no longer part of the human soul.”10 By poetical mind, Rosenzweig is not just talking about poets like Yeats; he is talking about the poetic creativity and socio-ethical activism of biblical prophets. In speaking of the poet, Rosenzweig is moving beyond the philosophical impulse to conceptualize humans, the impulse to reduce humans into studied objects in which one seeks the essence of the human/object. The poet exposes that the self-conceptualizing man–“the theoretic man” (one who lives in theory)–now no longer reigns over us. Unlike the “theoretic man,” the poetic prophet does not reign over people but takes responsibility for others, reminding people of their responsibility for one another. In a sense, Rosenzweig’s call for the poet exposes that his call for the philosopher was not answered. Fearing for his life in the trenches of World War I, it is as if he called the philosopher for help, but the philosopher did not respond, at least not to his fears. In the trenches, Rosenzweig feared death, and wanted nothing more than to remain alive. There he found that philosophy did not address his biggest fear, namely, dying. If philosophy did not address his fear of death, it followed that philosophy did not address his most primal desire, to live. In regards to life, philosophy was irresponsible in its abstractness. He writes: Why should Philosophy be concerned if the fear of death knows nothing of such a dichotomy between body and soul, if it roars ME! ME! ME! if it wants nothing to do with relegating fear onto a mere ‘body’? Let man creep like a worm into the folds of the naked earth before the fast–approaching volleys of a blind death from which there is no appeal, let him sense there, forcibly, inexorably, what he otherwise never senses: that his I would be but an it if it died, let him therefore cry his very I out with every cry that is still in his throat against Him from who there is no appeal, from whom such unthinkable annihilation threatens–for all this dire necessity Philosophy has only its vacuous smile. With index finger outstretched, it di-

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rects the creature, whose limbs are quivering with terror for its this-worldly existence, to a Beyond of which it doesn’t care to know anything at all. For man does not really want to escape any kind of fetter, he wants to remain, he wants to live. 11

Leaping out of the trenches of World War I and into life, Rosenzweig emerged callous to philosophy; disallowing anyone to call him a philosopher, Rosenzweig made an exodus from the academy. It was if he was throwing away his Ph.D. He was disillusioned with philosophy for not addressing him, his fear of death, and the nationalism that fed the slaughter in the war. Even Rosenzweig was not beyond this. He was a philosopher who did not resist the war; after all, he served Germany in it. However, his newfound disillusionment with philosophy was real. It became all too clear in his response when offered a University position after the War. In 1920, he explained his rejection in a letter to Friedrich Meinecke: The one thing I wish to make clear is that scholarship no longer holds the center of my attention, and that my life has fallen under the rule of a “dark drive” which I’m aware that I merely name by calling it “my Judaism” …The man who wrote The Star of Redemption…is of a very different caliber from the author of Hegel and the State. Yet when all is said and done, the new book is only–a book. I don’t attach any undue importance to it. The small–at times exceedingly small–thing called [by Goethe] “demand of the day” which is made upon me in my position at Frankfurt, I mean…the struggles with people and conditions, have now become the core of my existence…Now I only inquire when I find myself inquired of. Inquired of, that is, by men rather than by scholars…[T]he questions asked by human beings have become increasingly important to me.12

Rosenzweig went on to start the Lehrhaus, a free Jewish school in Frankfurt, Germany. It is not a coincidence that years later the Frankfurt school of critical theory began to grow. The young Theodore Adorno (who was instrumental in the Frankfurt School of critical theory and later emigrated to the U.S.) attended lectures at Rosenzweig’s school where he had the opportunity to hear literary theorist Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, the philosopher Leo Strauss (who later found his way to the University of Chicago), Eric Fromm, novelist S.Y. Agnon, Gershom Scholem, A.J. Heschel (Jewish philosopher who also found his way to the U.S. where he became an activist and influential friend of Martin Luther King) and other leading Jewish intellectuals. What was most striking about this school was that it was filled with philosophers who were starting philosophies that resisted

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the totalizing nature of nationalism and what they perceived to be the totalizing nature of philosophy. Philosophy stood accused of being like a void pulling everything into its black hole of knowledge. Tragically, after starting the Lehraus, Rosenzweig was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).13 Although he became paralyzed, he kept writing. With his wife’s help, he used a special machine on which he would indicate what he wanted to write.14 He lived with the disease for nine years. His friend Martin Buber would bring a quorum (a minion) of Jews to Rosenzweig’s house, ensuring that he could pray and say Kaddish with others.15 Even while suffering from ALS, Rosenzweig collaborated with Buber in translating the Bible into German. Their translation is still used today and is considered one of the best translations of the Bible into German. However, what’s most striking is the warmth and jubilance in his words that were written from total paralysis. The poet, Karl Wolfshehl, wrote one of the best descriptions of him after visiting Rosenzweig during his illness. “Near Franz Rosenzweig one came to oneself, was relieved of one’s burdens, heaviness, constriction. Whoever came to him, he drew into a dialogue, his very listening was eloquent in itself, replied, summoned, confirmed and guided, even if it were not for the unforgettable deep and warm look of the eyes…”16 Franz Rosenzweig died in 1929 at the age of 42. A more detailed account of Rosenzweig’s philosophical concerns follows. Rosenzweig’s critique of traditional philosophy emerged on the Balkan front, where he found himself fearing of his life. From his fear of death and his desire to live, Rosenzweig exposed the limitations of philosophical “language-games,” arguing that the telos of Hellenic-philosophy was the philosophical search for essence(s). He says: The true concern of the philosopher is with the “essence,” the “essential” being of his[or her] subjects. The philosopher is caught up in the tension between appearance and reality, never trusting what reality appears to be; the philosopher asks: what then actually is? He welcomes any answer that does not destroy the value and meaning of this single question. The answer to the question “what actually is” is the essence, which is–most of the time–a lifeless, abstract idea. Remove this immovable question and the lifeless subject, artificially detached, must inevitably disappear.17

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In their search for essence, traditional philosophers are more often than not moving from one abstract world of philosophy into another abstract world of philosophy, making everything into an abstract idea. These abstract worlds of ideas are worlds that do not address differences or the unique individual. In Rosenzweig’s horizon, most philosophers are suffocating or selficating (self-absorbed) in the market place of ideas, an abstract world making life into mere thoughts without gestures. Rosenzweig transcends this world for the unique lives of others. The other is not paralyzed by the pursuit for essence. In The Star of Redemption, he writes: That which has a name of its own can no longer be a thing [essence], no longer everyman’s affair. It is incapable of utter absorption into the category for their can be no category for it to belong to; it is its own category. Nor does it still have its place in the world, its moment in occurrence. Rather it carries its here and now with it. Wherever it is, there is a midpoint and wherever it opens its mouth, there is a beginning.18

Rosenzweig does not say that we begin with a thing or an essence, but with an open mouth. An open mouth is a response, often a creative response. It is also an address. Here one finds a de-centered subject, and inter-subjective subject. Now, if the philosopher is not with others, the philosopher is beyond response or address with other human beings. In other words, the philosopher lives outside of discussion, and thus, outside of life. If one is not living, one is incapable of doing something new for another person, not to mention doing something at all. In other words, one cannot do a lot for others if one lives in solitude. Rosenzweig writes: …thinking is always a solitary business, even when it is done in common by several who philosophize together. For even then, the other is only raising the objections I should raise myself, and this is the reason why the great majority of philosophic dialogues–including most of Plato’s–are so tedious. In actual conversation something happens.19

What he is saying is that the philosopher is philosophizing for him or herself, and therefore, nothing happens. If nothing happens, what is the philosopher doing? The first thing many philosophers need to do is to stop philosophizing about philosophers for philosophers. Rosenzweig demands scholars leave their desks occasionally to see beyond their philosophical horizon, so that they can philosophize about

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things beyond the scope of philosophy. In going beyond philosophy, the philosopher will find opportunities to begin something that has never begun. In other words, if opening one’s mouth in true conversation shows a beginning, beginnings are created, and therefore, it follows that dialogue with non-philosophers offers the opportunity for new philosophical beginnings. This beginning is discussion. For Rosenzweig then, discussion or conversation is creative, no less creative than when the biblical God speaks the world into creation. His focus on speech is not a coincidence. The Rabbis of the Talmud and beyond often focus on both the creative and destructive elements of speech; for the Rabbis hospitable words create new worlds and slanderous speech is akin to murder. When something is created, something happens. Thus, he urges philosophers to stop thinking in abstractions and return to life, not merely philosophical life, but to disclosures that manifest concrete deeds. In other words, getting out of the search for essence means the philosopher has to begin by leaping into life, into that which is real, where one’s actions exceed one’s ideas–insofar as the philosopher must verify his or her theories in everyday life. Rosenzweig writes: Everyone should philosophize at some time in his [or her] life, and look around from his own vantage point. But such a survey is not an end in itself. The book is no goal, even a provisional one. Rather than sustaining itself, or being sustained by others of its kind, it must itself be “verified.” This verification takes place in the course of everyday life. [In everyday life, and everyday discussion, the philosopher will find that life or reality, writes Rosenzweig, “is” unessential.]20

In everyday life and everyday discussions, Rosenzweig listened, and taught others how to listen. He sometimes scolded other philosophers and/or intellectuals for listening only to themselves. For example, Rosenzweig wrote Buber a letter in which he accused Buber of not listening to his students. Buber had claimed he was clarifying some lectures or points for his students, but Rosenzweig was concerned that Buber’s words were not being heard in the way that Buber intended. Rosenzweig wrote: …a word does not remain its speaker’s possession; he to whom it is addressed, he who hears it, or acquires it by chance–they all get a share of it; the word’s fate, while in their possession, is more fateful than what its original speaker experienced when first uttering it.21

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His message was: you were not talking to yourself, you were speaking to your students, and your words were for them, and you needed to listen to what your students were hearing you say. Buber believed he had said one thing, but Rosenzweig revealed they had heard something else. In other words, Buber stood–perhaps ironically when one considers Buber’s dialogic approach–accused of not having a dialogue with his students. Nevertheless, Rosenzweig’s letter was not concerned with who was right or wrong. He was sharing a concern for how one ‘pedagogically’ approaches one’s students.

Martin Buber Martin Buber had a profound influence on Rosenzweig’s thoughts, though he is generally seen as one who follows Rosenzweig. Until Buber, the Hellenic philosophical world had not really studied a Jewish philosopher since the medieval Jewish thinker, Moses Maimonides. Jews who philosophized had been studied, such as Moses Mendehlson, but not Jews who philosophized out of Judaism while standing in the Hellenic-Christian world. Buber is often thought of as a mystic, but this is not entirely true. Early on, he was enamored by mysticism. But in 1913 he published a work titled, Daniel, where one sees a clear break with his mystical leanings. In Daniel, Buber’s work begins to focus on the everyday human encounter. To understand why he broke with mysticism, we need to return to Buber’s early years as a scholar. In this fateful time, Buber was at home editing a manuscript when the doorbell rang. The visitor that greeted him was out of sorts, somewhat anxious and desperate. But Buber hurried the visitor along so that he could get back to his manuscript. Buber was polite in answering the visitor’s questions, but he later said, “I did not answer the questions, which were not asked.”22 A few days later he found out that after the encounter, the visitor had seemingly committed suicide. “From then on, Buber concluded that encounters with people must take precedence over scholarship and mystical speculation.”23 In addition to that episode, the First World War propelled Buber into a new line of thinking. He humbly admits:

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Since my own thoughts over the last things reached, in the First World War, a decisive turning point, I have occasionally described my standpoint to my friends as the “narrow ridge.” I wanted by this to express that I did not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolute, but on a narrow rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge, but the certainty of meeting with the One who remains undisclosed.24

By the end of World War I, Martin Buber was one of Germany’s most famous Jewish intellectuals. He had written a great deal, and in 1916 started publishing and editing Der Jude, a Jewish publication focusing on cultural and political Zionism. Because of Buber’s notoriety, when the Lehrhaus School was started for Jewish adults, Rosenzweig understood that getting Buber to lecture there would help the Lehrhaus succeed. In assuming teaching duties at the Lehrhaus (and in accepting a Professorship in Jewish Studies at Frankfurt in 1923) Buber “entered into the role of great Jewish teacher, the role for which he is best known today.”25 With the writing of his monumental work I and Thou in 1923, and taking a Professorship at Frankfurt in Jewish religious studies and ethics, Buber’s notoriety continued to grow both within and beyond the German Jewish community. But after the Nazis came to power, Buber resigned his Professorship and ran the “Central Office for Jewish Adult Education,” whose importance grew as it became increasingly difficult for Jews to Study in Germany. By 1938, the Nazi strangulation of German Jewry so thoroughly denied oxygen to Buber’s leadership that at the age of sixty, Buber left for Palestine, where he taught social philosophy at the Hebrew University. His life in Palestine and then Israel is notable. Although a Zionist, Buber was ethically distressed with both the way the state of Israel was set up and with the subsequent violence against the Palestinians. He called Ben Gurion the Bismarck of the Jewish people. Buber was at odds with the political leadership of the new state. But unlike many of his friends, who left Israel in disgust, he stayed, remaining a critical, ethical thorn in the side of leaders like Ben Gurion. Buber argued that Jews and Palestinians should live together. We find a clear example of his particular kind of Zionism and responsive philosophy in a critical letter he wrote to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi had said the land belongs to the Arabs. Buber wrote back:

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…now you come and settle the whole existential dilemma with the simple formula: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs.” What do you mean by saying that a land belongs to a population? Evidently you do not intend only to describe a state of afaffairs by your formula, but to declare a certain right. You obviously mean to say that a people, being settled on the land, has so absolute a claim to that land that whoever settles on it without permission of this people has committed a robbery. But by what means did the Arabs attain to the right of ownership in Palestine? Surely by conquest, and in fact a conquest with intent to settle. You therefore insist that as a result their settlement gives them exclusive right of possession, whereas the subsequent conquests of the Mamelukes and the Turks, which were conquests with a view to domination, not to settlement, do not constitute such a right in your opinion, but leave earlier conquerors in rightful ownership. Thus, settlement by conquest justifies for you a right of ownership of Palestine, whereas a settlement such as the Jewish–the methods of which, it is true, though not always doing full justice to Arab ways of life, were even in the most objectionable cases far removed from those of conquest–do not justify in your opinion any participation in this right of possession… It seems to me that God does not give any one portion of the earth away, so that the owner may say as God says in the Bible. “For all the earth is mine.” …Together with them [the Arabs], we want to cultivate land to “serve” it, as the Hebrew has it…We have no desire to dispossess them; we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them, we want to serve with them…26

Martin Buber died in 1966. He was ninety years old. In the early 1920’s, Buber wrote I and Thou, perhaps the most famous dialogic work. In it one finds that for Buber, like Rosenzweig, speaking intimates the other, even though Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption “did not influence I and Thou.”27 But the publication of the Star “was partly responsible for Buber’s decision not to write sequels to that work. Rosenzweig’s book had exhausted the possibilities of an existential collaboration between philosophy and theology in a particular direction; it had rediscovered the philosophizing theologian who takes the Jewish Bible as his starting point…. Buber had intended to discuss [the] connection between religion and linguistic philosophy in a preface that he omitted on Rosenzweig’s advice.”28 “For Buber, ‘language’ was the ‘primal act of the human mind.’ On the one hand, there is the divine mind, which speaks to man by means of the world, as Creation, and by means of the biblical revelation. On the other hand, there is the human mind, for which the world becomes real when it establishes its relation through language. This human mind may turn to

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God in prayer. In other words, the essence of creation is interrelationship.”29 And, thus, dialogue is central for Buber. In fact, there is no monologue before being addressed. Speaking presupposes that there is another beside oneself. Dialogue exemplifies this meeting, which sets up a running theme in Buber’s thought, response; in responding to being addressed, one establishes or creates one’s subjectivity. In this theme, we find Buber fixated on the everyday encounter between one and the other, which is the major concern of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud and post Talmudic Rabbinics. Philosophizing from here Hebraically challenges the traditional epistemology of philosophy looking to justify or build a bridge between the subject and the object. For Buber’s thought, there is no gulf to bridge. The question isn’t whether one is in relation to the object, but how one is relating to the object, or the other. In human ethical, spiritual or revelatory encounters the goal, if there is a goal, is not looking for essential definitions that stand apart from the encounter.30 Like Rosenzweig, Buber was also concerned with the philosopher’s search for essence. For Buber, writes Levinas, this search is found in the “primacy of intellectual objectivism, which is affirmed in science, taken as the model of all intelligibility, but also in Western philosophy, from which that science emerged.”31 In other words, Buber does not only concern himself with the technology of science. He concerns himself with the technological impulse in philosophy from which science emerged. This is the impulse to think of knowledge and truth as sought after objects. He explains that the philosophical impulse of seeking what is knowable and true is problematized by the meeting between people. This meeting between people, between one and the other, is implicitly social and dynamic and cannot be reduced to an intellectualized object of knowledge and truth. The dynamic between people is like that of fire. He writes: “Leaping fire is indeed the right image for the dynamic between persons…”32 Dialogue exemplifies this dynamic. Dialogue is indeterminate, often proceeding without a goal of reaching or discovering the essence of a thing. Dialogically, the traditional philosophers’ search for the truth does not account for or is not able to contain relations between humans, which are as unpredictable as the flames of a roaring fire. Buber was very prophetic in his Jewish orientation. The Prophetic concern for the social problems at hand pulsate

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throughout Buber’s critique of both European philosophical and social values. Similar to Rosenzweig, Buber assumes a response–based Hebraic epistemology–in contrast to the solitary philosophical subject almost blindly and deafly figuring out what the world is around him–that assumes one becomes self-conscious in one’s response for the other. But unlike Rosenzweig, Buber did not find universal value in the perceived Divine commands of the Torah. He did not believe the commands always spoke to him, which may partly explains why Buber has been accused of compromising Judaism in his work. In 1924, Buber wrote Rosenzweig that “I believe, that it is the fact of man that brings about transformation from revelation to what you call commandment [Gebot].” Weeks later Buber explained in another letter that “though man is a law receiver, God is not a law-giver, and therefore the Law has no universal validity for me, but only a personal one. I accept, therefore, only what I think is being spoken to me.”33 Nevertheless, the existential concerns of responsibility manifest in many biblical commands, proclaimed in biblical prophecy and traced throughout the ethical discussions of the Rabbinic tradition are echoed throughout Buber’s work. Like Rosenzweig, Buber does not betray the Jewish understanding of responsibility with God and others in partnering (as exemplified in dialogue) with God on Earth to create a just world. It is in this dialogic partnership where Buber’s resistance to the philosophical search for essence is found. Unlike Hegel and later Hegelians, where the dialectic functions as an idea or synthesis of the meeting between two differences, dialogue for Buber, writes Levinas, “functions not as a synthesis of the Relation, but as its very unfolding.”34 Whereas everything is grabbed or assimilated by Hegel’s dialectic, there is no assimilation in Buber’s account of dialogue. In hearing the voice or call of the other, one is unfolded out of oneself to face the other, such as when one dances with the other. Like dancing with another, Buber finds the heights of dialogue when one is at once with the other. Buber does not believe that one becomes one with something else, but that one is able to be at once with the other, which we sometimes find when dancing, making love, in conversation, or even sitting in silence with the other. Unfortunately, as Rosenzweig noted, many philosophers think alone and rarely, if at all, come out of themselves.

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Like Rosenzweig, in privileging dialogue, Buber is showing that in thinking about truth in solitude, the philosopher is stuck in him or herself. In this solitude, the philosopher proceeds as if having a monologue. In other words, the solitude of a philosopher searching for truth keeps the philosopher from hearing anything but his or her own thoughts and ideas. These thoughts and ideas do not capture the other; they eclipse the other. In only thinking of the other in solitude, the other becomes an object, an ‘it’ devoid of personhood. This ‘it’ is closed, and the philosopher explores it or looks for it like one on a scavenger hunt. If philosophers hope to open what appears unopened, the philosopher must not philosophize alone. Buber writes, “The interhuman opens out what otherwise remains unopened.”35 It is only in partnership that one is able to understand more than oneself. Dialogue with the other liberates the philosopher from the shadowy darkness of Plato’s cave by leading one back into the flames of life. The solitary philosopher leads a secondary life, for as Buber explains, one’s relations with others are primary, and solitude is secondary. Solitude follows one’s primary relations. And yet, most philosophers begin with a solitary subject; therefore, many philosophers have exiled themselves into what is secondary by nature. Nevertheless, such an exile exposes the certainty of Buber’s claim about the primacy of inter-human relations. “Even when in a solitude beyond the range of call the hearerless word pressed against his [or her] throat, this word is connected with the primal possibility, that of being heard.”36 Buber explains that if philosophy hopes to expose that which is disclosed to human beings, the philosopher must enter into a partnership with others. Philosophy can no longer be done in solitude. Through partnership, the philosopher’s search for essence becomes secondary for philosophy, and ethics becomes primary. In discussing the primacy of ethics in Buber’s thought, Levinas writes: The “responses” constituting the dialogue signify–without this being a simple pun–“responsibility”.… Buber’s entire oeuvre is a renewal of ethics, which begins neither in a mystical valuation of a few values having the status of Platonic ideas, nor on the basis of a prior thematization, knowledge and theory of being, culminating in a self-knowledge of which ethics would constitute a consequence or appendix, nor in the universal law of Reason. Ethics begins before the exteriority of the other, before other people, and, as I like to put it, before the face of the other,

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which engages my responsibility by its human expression, which cannot–without being changed, immobilized–be held objectively at a distance.37

Buber gives “An ethics of heteronomy that is not a servitude, but the…responsibility for the neighbor, in which I am irreplaceable.”38 Both Rosenzweig and Buber Hebraically challenge the HellenicChristian philosophical tradition’s focus on a subject or self in need of salvation, countering a tradition that casts the subject or self as a solitary creature. Where the Hellenic-Christian tradition begins and ends with the subject/self, Rosenzweig and Buber begin in response for the other– perhaps in the way that Adam & Eve began in response for God, for one another and for the world around them. In one’s response for the other, in dialogue, life–and thus philosophy–creates and finds meaning and/or ethical living.

Emmanuel Levinas In 1906 Emmanuel Levinas was born in Lithuania, and was raised in an observant Jewish home. Upon reaching adulthood, Levinas’ love for philosophy took him first to France then to Germany where he studied with Edmund Husserl. Husserl inspired Levinas, but it was actually Martin Heidegger who gripped him. Both deeply influenced his philosophical direction, and upon returning to France, Levinas translated their work. (JeanPaul Sartre discovered these translations and soon after found his own philosophical trajectory.) One can only imagine the sense of betrayal Levinas felt when Heidegger joined the Nazi Party. Betrayal aside, Levinas fought with the French against the Nazis, was soon captured and interned in a POW camp, where slave labor became his way of life. He was a prisoner for five years. Perhaps one of the brightest lights for Levinas during this time was that, aided by Maurice Blanchot, Levinas’ wife and daughter were hidden by nuns in a convent. They were reunited after the war. Levinas emerged from the Second World War scarred by philosophy. However, unlike Rosenzweig, when Levinas surfaced from the terrors of catastrophe, he remained in philosophy. He pointed his finger at it, sometimes angrily, sometimes playfully, and sometimes lovingly. But he stayed with it even while blaming it for contributing to the Judeocide. For Levinas,

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philosophy stood accused of being irresponsible, too self-absorbed to take responsibility for its hegemonic denial of the specific individuals who exceed philosophical category. Although Levinas’ Judaism shadows his accusation, it is like a ghost in his Hellenic-philosophical work. However, its ghost-like appearance does not mean that Judaism is non-existent; it may mean that his Judaism is not owned. It slips through the clasping hands of most Hellenic-Christians’ knowledge, and perhaps spooks it, like a ghost. Levinas’ philosophy is spooky. When reading his works, one might be shocked enough to even drop what one is holding. At times, suggests Jacques Derrida, Levinas makes one tremble.39 Levinas’ work is a non-stop critique of ontology. He resists claims that thematize people at the expense of the unique individual or person. For example, many of us say that we are “socially constructed,” but Levinas argues that a person exceeds one’s social construction. Ontological claims– about being this or being that in the world–concern Levinas not merely at the philosophical level but also socially. For him, the philosopher’s impulse to explain a human being into abstraction is not an abstract issue. This impulse is at the root of social mischaracterization. In other words, Levinas sees ontological claims as giving totalizing explanations describing the nature of human beings, not merely in and for philosophy but also for society. An example of such a society is Nazi Germany. The Nazis were ontological masters at packing humans into totalizing abstract mischaracterizations and then presenting them as reality. As a Jew, Levinas was merely vermin or an illegal alien from which Germans– totalized into the master race–needed protection. That Heidegger joined this ontological madness was not only beyond explanation. For Levinas, it was a direct attack on him as an individual. It is, thus, no wonder that Levinas’ philosophy often reads as a relentless retaliatory critique of Heidegger’s ontology. However, one should not limit Levinas’ work to a critique of Heidegger but rather understand his work as a challenge to all those who abstracted the individuals from their claims (i.e., the historical Western tradition of philosophy).40 Levinas’ posture towards the Hellenic-philosophical tradition reads like the obsession an abused child has for his or her parent, always bound by

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the insecurity of never being safe from parental violence. Levinas is the child who returns as an adult, angry, betrayed, unable to escape the philosophical violence inscribed on his body. And that violence is the mischaracterization of him as a Jew. As said, Levinas sees this problem of mischaracterization not as a mere philosophical issue but as a philosophically social one. His critiques of Heidegger—whose influence shaped the infancy of Levinas’ career—are then just the outward ripples of the anger and betrayal Levinas felt from his abusive father of abstractions, traditional Western philosophy.41 Levinas stands as a Jew in a Greek house. Although he claimed that his philosophy was separate from his Jewish thought, his philosophy is betrayed by the shadows of that very Judaism. Lurking behind Levinas’ obsession with responsibility is an appropriation of one of the most important themes of the Prophetic and rabbinical movements in Judaism: social responsibility. Levinas demands that the reader understand that we are responsible for one another, that we are relying on one another. It is as if he is asking, are you reliable for those who are miserable, hungry, cold, and homeless? How so? Levinas’ philosophy focuses on the primacy of our ethical relations. Like Rosenzweig and Buber, he is concerned with the philosopher’s search for essence and believes that this concern keeps the philosopher from ethics.42 This concern manifests itself in Levinas’ critique of the Hellenicphilosophical tradition, which tries to fit everything into representations and categories of knowledge. In this tradition, it is as if the logical forms of knowledge, where we find these representations, are the source of all that is philosophically meaningful. Levinas argues that the philosophical impulse to explain everything into logical structures of knowledge is dangerous. “Dangerous when we think that the logical forms of knowledge–in which all Philosophy is indeed expressed–are the ultimate expression of the meaningful.”43 This is the danger: if the logical forms of knowledge are the ultimate expressions of what is meaningful, and knowledge is (grammatically) polarized against doubt, it follows that ethics need to be proven or justified in order to be meaningful or known. I say polarized against doubt to highlight that one normally asserts and justifies a claim of philosophical knowledge when there is a doubting skeptic. For example, if one philo-

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sophically asserts that rape is wrong, which is to say that he or she knows that rape is wrong, it follows that he or she can present an argument that shows rape to be wrong, whether circumstantially or universally. This antirape argument will ideally refute the skeptic’s doubt that rape may be okay. But what if the logical argument that rape is wrong fails to persuade the skeptic? Does it mean that rape is okay until one comes up with the perfect logical argument that shows beyond a doubt that rape is wrong? Here we see the danger more clearly. If the logical forms of knowledge are the ultimate expression of what is meaningful–and the immorality of rape cannot be put into a logical form of knowledge—how does one assert that rape is wrong? In other words, in order to philosophically know that rape is wrong, one would have to prove or justify that it is wrong. If one does not prove or justify it beyond doubt, one does not know with certainty that rape is always wrong. However, the immorality of rape need not, indeed cannot, rest upon a logical proof. It would be a disturbing world if the violence of rape needed to be logically certain. Imagine a philosopher saying to a rape victim, “I’m sorry, we can’t determine with certainty that rape is wrong and, thus, that something violent and immoral has necessarily happened to you. But if and when we get the certainty from a logical proof, we’ll let you know.” Wanting to move ethics beyond the limitations of traditional philosophical structures of knowledge, Levinas is devoted to showing that ethical responsibility (e.g., the responsibility to not rape) exceeds knowledge, all the while showing the limitations of knowledge. For Levinas then, the question becomes how it is possible for philosophers to think of ethics as an issue of knowledge. It becomes possible, he maintains, when we speak of people as objects, ideas or representations. He explains that in philosophy the ‘idea’ or representation of the person is privileged over that person. In making the person secondary to the idea, the philosopher often forgets that one is philosophizing about a person, not an idea. It is as if the philosopher is making a person into an idea–a caricature–which enables philosophers to debate, for example, about the possibility that rape is not always wrong. (And thank goodness I have not heard such a debate.)

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Here we find the problem of appearance and reality. Levinas exposes that for many philosophers the appearance is the person, and the reality is the idea. But here the philosopher is misguided. The problem is this: an idea of a person misrepresents the actual person, and thus, is a mischaracterization. Many philosophers often confuse their mischaracterization of a person for a truth about a specific person. Levinas says this is dangerous. “Dangerous when we forget, in speaking, that we are speaking to [or about] the other…”4445 The other who is not an idea but flesh and blood. It is easy for a philosopher to forget this. In fact, Levinas defines the scope or concern of Hellenic-philosophy’s universality as void of concern for the individual. He writes: Greek is the term I use to designate, above and beyond the vocabulary grammar and wisdom with which it originated in Hellas, the manner in which the universality of the West is expressed, or tries to express itself–rising above the local particularism of the quaint, traditional, poetic or religious. It is a language without prejudice, a way of speaking that bites reality without leaving any marks–capable, in attempting to articulate the truth, of obliterating any traces left by it–capable of unsaying, or resaying. It is a language that is at once a metalanguage, careful and able to protect what is said from the structures of the language itself, which might lay claim to being the very categories of meaning.46

The Binding of Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas In explaining his concerns, Franz Rosenzweig fixates on the philosopher’s concern with essence, that is, the search for the essence of the perceived subject or object being philosophized. He explains that this obsession has paralyzed the philosopher into abstraction, not to mention turning the subject into an artificially detached object. Like Rosenzweig, Buber is concerned with the philosopher who turns everything into an “it,” a mere object for philosophical inspection. This objectification excludes humans. Objects are cold and impersonal; they are inhuman. But humans are not objects. If humans are not objects, but the philosopher treats a person as an object, it follows that this objectification eclipses the philosopher from participating in the interhuman. Buber writes, “The interhuman opens out what otherwise remains unopened.”47 In other words, by studying objects that allegedly signify a person or people, the philosopher is not philosophizing about a person. The

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philosopher is closed off from others, philosophizing in a solitude that leads him or her to most likely reveal that everything he/she studies is also closed. In finding the object closed, the philosopher falls into the trap articulated by Rosenzweig, searching for the essence of the closed object. What shuts the philosopher off from others, Levinas explains, is that the philosopher is overly concerned with trying to totalize the world into knowledge or a theme, such as an ontological claim about being or Being. In trying to know everything, the philosopher assumes there is something to be known, such as the essence of what the philosopher is exploring.48 Again, we find the re-articulation of the problem exposed by Rosenzweig. Levinas shows that the philosopher’s inability to give totalizing explanations is not because the philosopher does not know. It is because our systems of knowledge are limited, and thus, unable to explain everything. Not everything is knowable, and yet, what is beyond knowledge is not necessarily beyond understanding. Synthetically, in the traditional philosopher’s search for essence, dialogic philosophy exposes that the traditional philosopher turns things into an object, a representation, or a theme to be studied in the pursuit of knowledge. As said, this is limited. A person is not an object of knowledge, nor a theme, since a person is beyond or exceeds the scope of a philosopher’s search for essence or knowledge. This cluster of ideas (searching for an assumed essence, allowing that there is an essential truth that directs the philosopher’s philosophical pursuit, turning others into representations to be placed on the categorical shelves of knowledge, and so on) will be labeled teleodogma in the present work. To exemplify the problem of teleodogma, Rosenzweig turns to Plato’s Socrates, writing: Usually, it is Socrates who sets the conversation going–going in the direction of philosophical discussion. For the thinker knows his thoughts in advance, and his expounding them is merely a concession to what he regards as the defectiveness of our means of communication. This defectiveness is not due to our need of speech but to our need of time. To require time means that we… must wait for everything, that what is ours depends on what is another’s. All this is quite beyond the comprehension of the [philosopher].49

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We see this problem throughout Plato’s dialogues. For example, one must know what virtue is–if one is to be virtuous, or one must know what good is–if one is to be good, or one must know ethics–if one is to be ethical. The knowledge of virtue, good and ethics directs ones’ activities when one is virtuous, good, and ethical. Knowledge of these pure forms (such as virtue) directs one’s activities in the world. If one does not have knowledge or has forgotten one’s knowledge of a particular form, such as virtue, one would most likely be unable to partake of the form virtue. If one is unable to partake of the form virtue, one does not know what is to be virtuous. This inability to know, or perhaps I should say what one knew, but forgot– shows that one is not virtuous. More specifically, this is exemplified in Plato’s dialogue, Meno. In Meno, Socrates claims that one knows what is true before one learns it. Not knowing that something is true is really an inability to recollect what one already knows. Thus, the teleodogmatic end is known before the beginning. According to this line of thinking, learning is no more than recollecting what one already knows. Thus, one’s knowledge of an alleged truth precedes the beginning of learning or recollecting that. In order to recollect what one already knows to be true, one must have a teacher who asks the right questions. The questions are catalysts that help the person remember what is true. Socrates demonstrates this for Meno. One of Meno’s retainers or slaves, a boy, is used to demonstrate the validity of Socrates’ claim about knowledge. If the slave is unable to answer Socrates’ questions about geometric truths, it does not show that Socrates’ claim is false. It shows that Socrates is not asking the right questions. The slave is used by Socrates to demonstrate truth, not to determine whether this claim of Socrates is true or false. Socrates does not depend on the slave to get to the truth; he merely uses the slave to show what is already known to be true. This is teleodogma in action: Socrates knows that his truth is true before the circumstance from which the truth emerges. In other words, he knows the end before it happens. Socrates’ truth is uncircumstantial and, therefore, timeless. This timeless nature of knowledge or truth highlights that Socrates does not have to wait for truth to circumstantially emerge. He believes that his claim is true in and of itself, and therefore, that the truth is timeless. If truth is timeless, then truth exists before

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one is born and after one is born. This example shows why Rosenzweig writes that Plato’s Socrates knows his thoughts in advance and why he is teleodogmatic. On a general level, Plato’s forms are true in and of themselves. The truth of the forms does not depend on human life, but nonetheless, Plato uses humans to demonstrate that there are forms. It is as if he is more concerned about the forms than the person who stands before him. In other words, Socrates is teleodogmatically eclipsed from the other. This example shows that teleodogma is abstract dogma that gives purpose to many philosophical activities, directing it from what is an inactive, non-phenomenal world. The truths of Plato are timeless; they do not emerge from individual circumstances. Nevertheless, these timeless, inactive dogmas allegedly give purpose, direction and meaning to our lives. It is this abstraction of life–this teleodogma–which Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas are engaged in the deconstructing from a Hebraic orientation.

A Collagical Approach In moving beyond teleodogma, Rosenzweig, Buber, and most notably Levinas argue that ethics is primary. The consequence of this is that they shift the philosophical focus from teleodogma to human action and ethical conduct. The following chapters show what literary ethical theory and philosophy can look like when ethics is primary. Before proceeding allow me to state that I implicitly accept and present their claim that ethics is not abstract but concrete. Their claim that ethics is not about oneself, but for the other, is also accepted. By focusing on the human examples in the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca, theoretical abstraction is somewhat eclipsed by the narrative. In thinking from this narrative, a parable or Midrashic approach is substituted for the traditional theoretical approach. But through this substitution, theory is not thrown out. The substitution shows how one can theorize out of a circumstance. By developing this method, we go beyond teleodogma. This is manifest by exercising a midrashic like collogical or correlative approach. A collogical approach highlights that the insights emerging from the narrative are philosophical illustrations converging on one another in the same way that

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stories of a midrash or pictures in a collage correlate or associate with one another. In other words, when a theorist or philosopher is guided by circumstances, as opposed to teleodogma, the philosophy becomes about insights, examples, or conduct that emerge into a collage in ways that parallel Rabbinic midrashic ethical discussions. Thus, the circumstance directs the philosopher as opposed to teleodogma directing the circumstance. A collage implicitly resists teleodogma and a totalizing, synthetic philosophic approach. This method is gleaned from the work of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Their method is not systematic but collagical. They do not reduce their explanations and arguments to a linear, logical method, or totalizing synthesis. They explain and argue from examples and illustrations based upon the individual, or more specifically, they try to philosophize from actual human circumstance. Therefore, their philosophy is not reducible to a linear theme. On the contrary, their themes emerge from the correlation of various circumstantial pictures. Because of this, these three thinkers are often impenetrable to those philosophers who read them for a specific linear argument, theme or a totalizing synthesis, just as Jewish Aggadic midrashic discourse or collage becomes difficult to follow if one is looking for a totalizing synthesis or a specific theme laid out in linear fashion. This may be one reason why these three philosophers use speech or conversation to exemplify their philosophy. In conversion, one’s dialogue or circumstance is often collagical.

Concluding Remarks In conclusion, it is obvious why Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas share a great deal. They are all concerned with Hellenic traditions’ fixation with the abstract and with structures of knowledge. All three men stand behind the philosophical impulse to move from life to ideas or representations that are categorized into emerging systems of knowledge, as opposed to traditional philosophers who obsess over finding truth, which these dialogic philosophers expose as a search for essences that exist only as abstract possibilities.

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Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas are extremely reductive when describing the Hellenic tradition. But this is not unjustified. They show that the Hellenic tradition does not have the perspective of the other that they bring to light from their Jewish standpoint. However, it is important to note that these three men are not reducible to their Jewish standpoint. Philosophically, they are not exclusively Hebraic. In fact, they are cagey, hard to pigeon hole. On the one hand, they have the luxury of standing beyond the Hellenic philosophical tradition, and on the other, they are also part of that tradition. Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas are philosophers of Hellenic thought. None of them holds a rabbinical degree, yet they are still experts of the Jewish, rabbinical tradition. In other words, they are two traditions at once. Undoubtedly what they have to say about Hellenic philosophy is worth hearing because they say it from another tradition that is also historically Western. Judaism is the only Western tradition that precedes both HellenicChristian thought and that has lived side by side without being colonized or completely assimilated. Simply, these thinkers are able to witness the Hellenic-Christian tradition from the perspective of both an insider and outsider. What they attest to is that the gestures of most Hellenic thinkers are historically inhumane, inhumane in that many traditional philosophers mischaracterize a person into an object that is clear, distinct and inhuman. As dialogic philosophers, they thus also see Hellenic tradition as philosophically self-indulgent. Stylistically, they also share a great deal. Reading their work is often like trying to find something in turbulent water. They don’t give logical arguments. As said, they explain and/or argue with incomplete examples, pictures or illustrations. Reading them requires an ability to allow oneself to philosophically swim into the murky water of their collages. But the good thing is that they are all extremely repetitious. So, if we don’t get it the first time, we’ll have many other chances. Rosenzweig is the best at following through with examples, yet his examples could stand more development while Buber’s work is an illustration of one example, a meeting between people. The problem is that he often forgets to animate or color in his example, so we are left to give life to his examples. Levinas notably is the worst at taking us full circle. He rarely

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completes his examples, which seem more like illustrative indicators. It is as if Levinas demands that we become part of the dialogue by filling in the blanks he has left for us. With this said, it is important to note that there are times when they also theoretically react to philosophy. They do not always practice what they teach. By explaining and arguing with examples or illustrations, a clear picture begins to emerge from the collage in the upcoming chapters. By doing this, I follow Rosenzweig’s, Buber’s and Levinas’ advice of engaging in philosophy from life. I will be using their language in discussing the example to animate or illustrate what they mean when they use words like ‘transcend’ or ‘passivity,’ which is unlike how we normally use these words. Also, for the most part, I work out of Levinas, and my reading of Rosenzweig and Buber is more often than not from Levinas. Levinas’ call for Ethics as First Philosophy provokes me. I believe this call is a response to the Holocaust. To understand the depths of this call, we will be taken to a time before genocide.

Chapter II Terah’s Shop of Idols And Ethics as First Philosophy The sole object of all the trials mentioned in Scripture is to teach [one] what [one] ought to do…so that the event which forms the actual trial is not the end desired; it is but an example for our instruction and guidance. —Moses Maimonides1 To conceive the otherwise than being we must try to articulate the breakup of a fate that reigns in essence… —Emmanuel Levinas2

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he previous chapter focused on the dialogic charge that the Hellenic philosophical tradition is oriented around a teleodogmatic search, which is then substituted for conduct and life. Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas assert that in this substitution, the individual is treated as an object, but because individuals are not objects, it is as if teleodogmatic representation and theories erase the individual. This chapter follows the dialogic prescription of substituting life for teleodogma by using the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca and God.3 This narrative illuminates how Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas transcend teleodogma by substituting “life or conduct” for “representations or theory.” As said, Levinas refines this substitution in his call for “ethics as first Philosophy.”4

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In explaining Ethics as First Philosophy, two primary dialogic themes are privileged. First, why Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas often privilege dialogue or conversation to exemplify ethics. As explained in Chapter One, dialogue or conversation is responsive. One’s words are for the other. Being responsive, conversation is never fixed; it is excessive. It exceeds the self by the very fact that the other is involved. Second, Ethics as First Philosophy begins with substitution. Just like in true dialogue or conversation, where one’s words are for the other, ethics is also responsive. Since one’s ethical conduct is often a response for the other–the other who has directed one into an ethical response–ethics as first Philosophy begins with the substitution of the ‘other’ for the traditional philosophical ‘subject’ or ‘self.’ Throughout the following chapters’ dialogic, midrashic reading God, we find God teaching the biblical characters how to substitute the other for the traditional philosophical subject or self. In addition to using the narrative as a substitution for teleodogma, this example also highlights the connection between Judaism, dialogic thought, and theorizing from circumstance. Throughout the philosophies of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, one find traces of Jewish themes. And as noted, instead of presenting a number of Jewish examples–stretching over five thousand years–to illustrate these themes, we return to the beginning of Judaism, namely, God’s call for Abram to make an exodus from his idolatrous home. Here, there is a parallel between the beginning of Judaism and dialogic philosophy. Just as God calls for Abram to make an exodus from idolatry,5 one hears dialogic philosophers calling for an exodus from the traditional Western philosopher’s fixation on teleodogma. Through this dialogic call, Hellenic philosophers are challenged to move beyond teleodogma, just as Abram moves beyond idolatry. Just as the idol rules Abram’s homeland, many philosophers are ruled by teleodogma. Like an idol, when teleodogma or the mischaracterizations of teleodogma (e.g., representations of people) directs a philosopher’s pursuit–the philosopher is practicing idolatry. This is where Abram and dialogic thought dovetail. Through the example of Abram’s exodus from

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idolatry or mischaracterization, the dialogic call for a philosophical exodus from the idolatry of teleodogma is articulated. In moving beyond idolatry, his community and its history, Abram will not forget his memories or his past, but neither will he be left with only his memories, since he will come to live beyond them. In other words, Abram is not to return to his past or to himself. His exodus brings him to the Other,6 the Other who is beyond his past. In this way, Abram is opened to being responsive to the Other. To return to his past or himself would be unresponsive to the Other. The same can be said for the teleodogmatic philosopher. In making an exodus from teleodogma, many philosophers will be without the compass of tradition to guide their way back to teleodogma. Here, the philosopher’s old system is not the guide, and for that matter, the philosopher is not the guide. The other–who is beyond teleodogmatic mischaracterization–is the guide, directing the philosopher out of teleodogma. Here, the philosopher philosophizes for the other, not for him or herself or for some self-indulgent, abstract truth. In Abram’s move beyond idolatry, and in many philosophers’ move beyond teleodogma, we find an alternative to the Hellenic myth of Ulysses’ return to himself. Whereas Ulysses finds himself alone at the end of his odyssey, Abram finds the other at the end of his exodus, just as the philosopher finds the other at the end of his or her exodus from teleodogma. In comparison, Abram is not to return to his past self or regress to his old ways; the traditional Hellenic philosopher also ought to resist returning to teleodogma. Abram has God’s help in resisting a return to his idolatrous home. But if a philosopher is Godless, how does the philosopher exercise resistance to teleodogma? Through the biblical narrative, the dialogic call (to make an exodus from teleodogma) shows or illustrates one way of moving beyond and resisting teleodogma, circumscribing one’s philosophical movement to a particular circumstance. The biblical narrative then becomes a circumstantial substitute for the traditional Hellenic approach of circumscribing oneself to a teleodogmatic charged abstract example. Finally, let me emphasize that this book is the first extended reading of this biblical narrative from a Levinasian point of view. In addition, it is the

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first discussion of dialogic philosophy in which a single extensive biblical narrative is used to illustrate the insights of Levinas and the other dialogic thinkers. This approach highlights a major difference between this work and other commentators in the field. Most commentators exile themselves to theoretical discussions of what Levinas is saying by showing how other theoretical understandings of Levinas are misguided. The approach exercised here moves beyond the theoretical terrain in which Levinas (and his commentators generally) philosophized, further circumscribing itself to how Levinas felt one ought to philosophize. In this regard, an untraditional, strong, positive illustration of Levinas’–and in part Rosenzweig’s and Buber’s–philosophical concerns and motives is given. Let’s now turn to the biblical narrative.

Terah’s Shop of Idols Abram is assisting in his father’s shop of idols. When his father, Terah, goes to lunch, he tells Abram to watch the shop. Abram watches for a while, and then he destroys all the idols but one. He doesn’t destroy the biggest idol. Upon returning, Terah is more than upset. He screams, “Who smashed the gods?” Abram responds, “The chief of God there.” Terah tells him, “You know perfectly well that clay idols don’t move.” Abram retaliates, “Why then do you adore them?”7 Sometime after, Abram hears a piercing sound that stops him in his tracks, snapping him out of himself. He is disrupted into a nightmare, a life without the safety nets of tradition. In the middle of living the traditions of his ancestors, Abram is interrupted by God. He hears God saying that which had never been said, “I’m changing the significance of your life.” God tells Abram to leave his home, to wander into an indeterminate future without the rudder of tradition to guide his way. Before Abram departs or leaves his home without a set course, he had first been called to converse with God without a fixed course, just as we do not begin most conversations with a fixed course (or an ending that fixes the course). Franz Rosenzweig wrote:

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I do not know in advance what the other person will say to me, because I do not even know what I myself am going to say. I do not even know whether I am going to say anything at all. Perhaps the other person will say the first word, for in a true conversation this is usually the case; a glance at the Gospel’s and the Socratic dialogues will show the contrast. Usually it is Socrates who sets the conversation going–going in the direction of philosophical discussion. For the thinker knows his thoughts in advance, and his expounding them is merely a concession to what he regards as the defectiveness of our means of communication. 8

Rosenzweig is saying that the end of a conversation is not known when one is conversing. In traditional philosophy, he is saying that, more often than not, one normally begins with the end. However, if the end is known, then it is not a conversation. “… [T]his is the reason why the great majority of philosophic dialogues–including most of Plato’s–are so tedious. In actual conversation, something happens.”9 When something happens–such as God conversing with Abram–it exceeds all that has happened, which means that something novel is happening. God and Abram were having a conversation, a very exciting conversation, one in which everything in Abram’s life became unfixed. In hearing and saying new things, Abram felt as if he were doing something new. What God had to say exceeded everything that had ever been said to Abram. Abram’s feeling was one of excess–as if more was going on than just a conversation. It is as if he has just been awakened, interrupted out of the dream, which he had seen and acted in for a lifetime. Levinas calls this excess saying.10 The saying exceeds what has been said. For example, God spoke to be heard by Abram, and thus, God’s words were for Abram. In other words, what God had to say moved Abram beyond what his traditions said, bringing about his departure or exodus from his home. But none of this would have happened if Abram had not accepted God’s invitation to converse. He didn’t have to respond by accepting God’s invitation. Abram could have responded by ignoring or saying ‘no’ to God. One thing was certain though: when Abram heard God, he found himself already responding to God as a willing partner in conversation. Conversations do not happen without a partner or partners. In fact, when it comes to conversation, one’s identity lives in virtue of another. For example, it would not make sense to think of a partnerless dialogue. Martin Buber showed what this means when he wrote:

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A precommunicative stage of language is unthinkable. Man did not exist before having a fellow being, before he lived over against him, toward him, and that means before he had dealings with him. Language never existed before address; it could become monologue only after dialogue broke off or broke down. The early speaker was not surrounded by objects on which he imposed names, nor did adventures befall him that he caught with names: the world and destiny became language for him only in partnership. Even when in a solitude beyond the range of call the hearerless word pressed against his throat, this word was connected with the primal possibility, that of being heard.11

To speak with the expectation of being heard reveals the partnership of dialogue or conversation, where one’s posture defers to others. In this insight, one finds the dialogic transition from traditional epistemology to grammar. Perhaps more than anyone, Rosenzweig developed and identified this transition as a move from the “logical” thinking of philosophy to thinking “grammatically.”12 He explains that the method of grammar or speech proceeds very differently from the methods of epistemology, which he calls logical thinking. The difference between the old and the new, the “logical” and the “grammatical” thinking, does not lie in the fact that one is silent while the other is audible, but in the fact that the latter needs another person…In the old Philosophy, “thinking” means thinking for no one else and speaking to no one else…But “speaking” means speaking to some one and thinking for some one. And this some one is always a quite definite some one, and he has not merely ears, like “all the world,” but also a mouth.13

This grammatical orientation de-centers the traditional subject or self of philosophy. The traditional subject I am talking about is the same subject Rosenzweig is talking about, the subject who thinks by oneself, for oneself, with oneself. One analyzes the world and at best concludes that one has some idea of it, but one can’t be certain of what one sees around oneself. Eventually, philosophers like Husserl conclude that this subject is intending towards something in the world. Perhaps this is why so many philosophers obsess about intentionality.14 To explain the meaning of this, let us return to the example of Abram. When Abram heard that which exceeded his traditions, he was decentered, unfixed, out of being what his history commanded him to be. When he goes beyond his traditions, it becomes difficult to determine if he

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is intending towards anything. It is as if his loss of tradition is a loss of intentionality. One might say that he is intending towards God, but God exposes Abram prior to anything that he might intend. Exposure and responding for that which one is exposed, writes Levinas, goes “against intentionality.”15 Abram did not intend to give up anything before being exposed. His response to God is to give up the intent of his traditions by going off to an indeterminate future, an exodus that dissolves his previous intents. This is not to say that Abram lacks intent but that he does not begin with it when exposed. The difference is that by responding to God, Abram is no longer the same16 as his tradition, history, of previous intents. And thus trying to describe his intent becomes difficult. If one were to say that Abram is intending towards God, then that happens after being exposed to God, which means one is saying that intent is not self-generated but responsive. This is one of the points of this tradition. The dialogic insight shows that Abram is not alone, speaking and thinking for only himself, but that he is responsive, and thus his words and actions are not merely for himself but for others. It is for this reason that one finds a de-centered subject in dialogic philosophy. In Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas, Robert Gibbs claims that Rosenzweig is the first thinker in the history of philosophy to de-center the self or subject.17 The philosophical subject or self is de-centered by the fact that in speaking one “lives by virtue of another’s life.”18 From this posture, as said, one’s conversational or ethical identity or posture is responsive. Rosenzweig is not throwing out intentionality. Intentionality is a response towards the other and for the other. “Only in the discovery of a Thou is it possible to hear an actual I, an I that is not self-evident but emphatic and underlined.”19 This ‘I’ of speech is underlined by someone other than the speaker. When God speaks to Abram, perhaps Abram’s first word was, “Me?” Simply, Abram found himself underlined by God. God’s voice is that which underlines Abram and brings about the exodus that unsaid Abram’s traditions. God’s voice changes Abram’s intentions. Levinas also takes up this critique of intentionality. He writes “that the very relationship of the saying is irreducible to intentionality, or that it rests, properly speaking, upon an

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intentionality that fails.”20 In other words, when one is conversing with another, one usually finds that one has been called away from one’s previous thoughts or intentions. One is called to the other, not because one is intending towards the other but because the other has called. From here, it is easy to understand why may feel that Levinas often reduces one to a response for the other. To review, in this dialogic orientation one finds oneself identified or “underlined” as a conversational participant by someone other than oneself. The identifier reveals that one is responding to the identifier, just as the respondent reveals to the identifier the proximity21 of the identified to the identifier. What we have here is mutual identification. By mutual it does not mean that they–the conversants–are the same, or even united in conversation, nor does it mean that they constitute one another’s identity while conversing. It merely means one is calling and anticipating or hoping for a response. For example, if another calls you for help, the other is underlining or identifying you as one who can hear and thus respond to the call. Identifying you as the one who can help does not mean that the other is making up your identity, nor does it mean that the two of you necessarily share anything, except the words being spoken. It means that when the other calls you, the call is given for you to hear the other. The other’s expectation of being heard arises from your proximity to her or him. Such proximity shows that, grammatically speaking, dialogic individuality does not make sense outside of the dialogue, the grammar of response.22 Although dialogic individuality does not make sense outside the grammar of response, there is no response without an autonomous ‘I’. Being called forth by the other (or caller) asserts the autonomy of both the caller and the one called. When God calls Abram, God is not calling God, God is calling the other, Abram. The other is independent or autonomous from the caller. “This not only shows the autonomy of the caller and the called, it shows ‘the non-indifference of the you to the I…’”23 Non-indifference means that one hears and speaks from a standpoint. Dialogically, one is never beyond a standpoint. Even when surveying the horizon around oneself, one’s posture has a standpoint. In searching for essence, the philoso-

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pher often forgets that one philosophizes from where one stands, and this is a problem. As quoted previously, Rosenzweig writes: I really believe that a Philosophy, to be adequate, must rise out of thinking that is done from the personal standpoint of the thinker. To achieve being objective, the thinker must proceed boldly from his own subjective situation. The single condition imposed up us by objectivity is that we survey the entire horizon, but we are not obliged to make a survey from any position other than one in which we are, nor are we obliged to make it from no position at all. Our eyes are, indeed, only our own eyes, yet it would be folly to imagine we must pluck them out in order to see straight.24

This non-indifference is also implicit in Levinas’ work, which furthers Rosenzweig’s insight by highlighting the role of interruption. When one is underlined by the other who calls out for one, another has interrupted one out of oneself. Interruption means that time when one is unexpectedly called away from what one has been doing, e.g., when one hears an unexpected call for help or when God calls for Abram. Without anticipating this interruption, one finds that this interruption demands that one leave what one was doing and/or thinking for the caller or the other. Perhaps I should even say that that when one is called, one has already departed from oneself. This departure does not mean the abandonment of oneself. It just means going to the other. In the following chapter, we will be taken to Abram’s other, his wife, Sarai.

Idolatry Being interrupted by God is probably a difficult surprise for Abram. The order of his life is thrown into chaos. He is told to leave the world from and for which he emerged. Let me say a few things about his world. Abram’s world is organized around idolatry. It is not that the idol belongs to Abram’s society. It is that his society belongs to the idol. In other words, it is not that the idol has enslaved the members of Abram’s society. It is that they have enslaved themselves to the idol and allowed themselves to be directed by a false object. For Abram, hearing God is like being torn away from idolatry. Abram is ripped out of his social order. I say ripped to emphasize that one does not leave idolatry easily. The idol is seductive, so spellbinding that it is difficult to break away. Idolatry directs the social or-

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der, fending off chaos, giving meaningful and totalizing explanations of why and how one is to live. Serving the idol is alleged to bring rain for crops, aide in smiting one’s enemy, ensure wealth, provide security, and so on. States of confusion, loss, famine, plagues, and destruction were traditionally interpreted as the idol taking vengeance on society for not serving it properly. It may be difficult to understand why Abram would give up the order of idolatry if it means disorder, confusion, potential poverty, and so forth. But God still wants him to give it up. Why? There are numerous explanations. Hassidism often teaches that God is telling Abram to ‘“Go to yourself,’ i.e., go to your roots to find your potential.”25 Nachamanides, the thirteenth century biblical commentator, interprets it as “Get on with you.”26 What these commentaries share is the view that he must live his life. However, if he remains an idolater, he will continue to be deluded. Idolatry is about living in a delusion. The problem is this: if the significance of Abram’s life is dependent upon his relationship with a false object, he is living out a delusion. In this regard he is like the teleodogmatic philosopher who focuses on an abstract or false object. When a teleodogmatic philosopher’s claim is dependent upon an abstract object, it is as if the philosopher repudiates life, or at a minimum–as Wittgenstein might say–is on holiday. Being a biblical idolater is like living in the shadow reality of Plato’s cave, where the cave dwellers are organized around their shadows. If Abram is unable to make an exodus out of the cave of idolatry, his life is in the shadows of the idols as those in Plato’s cave are in the shadows of life. Like the light at the opening of the cave, God reveals or gives Abram the opportunity to break out of the shadows, to live. By hearing God, the breakout is conceived. By responding to the call, Abram is no longer shadowed in a life dependent upon the delusions of idols. He makes an exodus from the shadows of idolatry into the sunlight of life. In this exodus, Abram’s new life and its ways will substitute for the idol and idolatry. Contemporary traces of God’s substitution are found in Rosenzweig’s call to substitute life itself for the dubious philosophical search for essence. His treatment of the philosopher’s search is similar to the biblical treatment of the idolater. Whereas for the idolater, reality is realized by serving a false

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object, Rosenzweig argues that for traditional philosophers reality is realized or aspires to realization by serving the possible fruits of the search for essence. Each is thus bound to the fate–darkened cave–of a false object. In other words, as idolaters serve the idol, philosophers serve the possible fruits from the search for essence. In this respect, the search for essence is a false object that substitutes the projected essence of an object, such as the essence of a person, for the object itself. Rosenzweig suggests that the question fueling this search for essence–such as what does it mean to be a human being? or what actually is a human being?–can only result in the disappearance of the human being. He writes: No matter whether the answer [to the question, What is the essence?] is “the peak of creation” or “an insect crawling in the dust,” the concrete individual is replaced by a ghost. The ghost may be of heaven or hell; it may be devil or angel–but a man cannot live with these rarefied essences; and the question concerning the “essence” of man cannot yield more substantial results. 27

Rosenzweig shows that this is an illness of delusion, writing: The real cause of the illness is [the philosophers’]…assumption that it is possible for something to exist beyond reality.28 This something substitutes ‘the possible essence’ for ‘life.’ Answers emerging from the search for essence claim to “be” either reality itself or the “essence” of reality.29

In this way, Rosenzweig shows that many traditional philosophers replace life with false objects. As with Abram’s society, there are inherent traditions, which compel Hellenic-philosophes to do so. Like idolatry, the search for essence is seductively spellbinding. The philosopher’s idolatry of the search for essence allegedly expels disorder (or at a minimum carries the promise of expelling it on behalf of a clear essence and/or representation. Life is often too murky for such philosophical clarity). Discovering the essence or truth is believed to bring knowledge and therefore clarity, order and mastery to an unmastered disorder. Levinas finds that the philosophical search for essence is presently most acute in the philosophical desires to ontologize human existence, exposing the reality, nature or essence of being human. For Levinas, one finds that most–if not all–ontological claims are offered as totalizing explanations for the meaning of being human. In other words, these claims emerge from a

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world that is organized around the search for essence, very much in the way that Abram’s world is organized around idolatry. These long soughtafter ontological claims are presented as exposing the essence of being human, just as the Priest would emerge with the idol’s exposed truths explaining the meaning of life. As the idolater’s idol is so significant that it appears to have annexed or taken over one’s life, the search for essence and its fruits has annexed or taken over our philosophical examination of life, reigning over us and deluding us like an idol. As the idol reflects one’s fate or signifies one’s life, Levinas echoes Rosenzweig when he charges that the philosopher’s fate is reflected or signified in his or her search for essence. As the idol is biblically seen as a substitute for life and God, traditional philosophers have substituted the essence that is sought for the life that generated the search. Just as an idol is biblically exposed for being other than God, a person shows that one’s life is other than an essence or essential definition. (One way to understand this is to try and define or categorize yourself. It is really hard. I find it is much easier to define others, although they normally contradict my definitions or categorizations of them.) Following the path of Abram’s story, Levinas calls those in philosophy to break free from this search for essence and walk away from our philosophical fate. He calls for genesis, a new beginning, a new conception from which philosophy can emerge all the while breaking up the philosopher’s fate. He writes: To conceive the otherwise than being we must try to articulate the breakup of a fate that reigns in essence… The task is to conceive of the possibility of a break out of essence… The essence claims to recover and cover over every exception– negativity, nihilation, and, already since Plato, non-being of the, which “in a certain sense is.” It will then be necessary to show that the exception “other than being,” beyond not being, signifies subjectivity or humanity, the oneself which repels the annexations by essence.30

Levinas’ call for Ethics as First Philosophy is the breakout of essence, disabling the substitution of ‘the sought after essence’ for life. He refines Rosenzweig’s substitution by substituting the other for the traditional subject, the teleodogma of philosophy, just as life is substituted for the idol in Abram’s horizon. In beginning philosophically with the substitution of the other, the philosopher is performing Ethics as First Philosophy. By privileging the other, the philosopher is no longer facing him or herself or teleod-

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ogma, but the other standing before him or herself, beyond teleodogma. Here, the other, not a (teleodogmatic) theory, signifies one’s ethical conduct, subordinating teleodogma to one’s encounter with the other. Suddenly, one’s relation with the other, not the essence or knowledge of oneself or the other, is primary. Levinas uses the example of dialogue to explain this. He writes: When I speak of [ethics as] first Philosophy, I am referring to a Philosophy of dialogue that cannot not be an ethics. Even the Philosophy that questions the meaning of being does so on the basis of the encounter with the other. This would be a way of subordinating [teleodogmatic] knowledge, objectification, to the encounter with the other that is presupposed in all language. 31

By subordinating teleodogma to one’s initial encounter with the other, one’s conduct towards the other becomes the first concern for (ethical) philosophy. With this substitution, philosophical studies of ethics begin with Ethics as First Philosophy.

Ethics as First Philosophy Levinas shows that in being subjected to the other, the other signifies one’s subjectivity or ethical conduct. Abram’s encounter with God exemplifies this. A false object no longer signifies Abram’s ethical conduct, being subjected to God signifies it. Abram’s ethical conduct now emerges from his encounter with God. Dialogically speaking, if one philosophically situates ethics outside of an encounter with another, then one is not discussing ethics, just as one who situates conversation outside of human encounters is not discussing conversation. More specifically, it would be odd to situate Abram’s ethics for God outside of his encounter with God, just as it would be odd to situate God’s call for Abram outside of God’s encounter with Abram. Ethics or ethical conduct is not independent from encountering the other, just as conversation is not independent of an encounter with the other. This is why ethical relations for Levinas are performative; ethical conduct emerges out of an encounter with the other, not out of teleodogma, which is abstract and independent from the other. Levinas writes that in ethics the “proximity of the other” [or one’s encounter with the other]… overturns the logical

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play” [of philosophy], “transforming it into an ethics.”32 Simply, if philosophy does not discuss ethics from human encounters and, therefore, conduct, philosophy is merely playing outside the scope of ethics or ethical conduct in its meta-ethical pursuits. But how can this be feasible when one dialogically considers that ethics are about conduct? The encounter with the other ought to be the philosopher’s priority in any philosophizing about ethics. As said previously, Levinas explains that when the encounter is privileged in a discussion of ethics all “thought is subordinated to the ethical relation...”33 He says this, because many forget or ignore or do not realize that the other or “alterity’s plot is born before knowledge;”34 one is already ethically encountering the other before the birth of philosophical knowledge or teleodogma. In privileging the other, Levinas is no longer circumscribed to theory but to conduct. When practicing Ethics as First Philosophy, one’s conduct for the other is primary. As implied above, conduct does not rest upon knowing an ethical theory or the essence of ethics. Abram’s ethical behavior is not a philosophical essence or theory nor is the other an essence or ethical theory; in fact, Abram’s behavior precedes theorizing about it. Abram ethically performs on behalf of the other who, as Rosenzweig writes, is un-theoretical and unessential, at least philosophically speaking. He writes: “The terms of life are not ‘essential’ but ‘real’; they concern not ‘essence’ but ‘fact.’…And reality, is, so to speak, ‘unessential.’”35 In the tradition of Buber and Rosenzweig, Levinas demands philosophy open itself up to performance, to playfulness, and therefore, to ethics. However, it is not so easy. There are phantom philosophical obstacles. By beginning with conduct, dialogic philosophy exposes three false objects or obstacles that emerge from teleodogma and stand in the way of philosophizing from conduct. The first is philosophizing as if the subject is an object. The second is privileging theory above actual practice. The third is that the philosopher seems to know that there is a nature or essence in advance of finding the nature or essence of the object, proceeding as if the answer to a question is known in advance of the search. Through the example of dialogue, as explained, these obstacles are broken through or sidestepped.

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The “breakout” of teleodogma is substituting ‘conduct’ for the search for essence; this is furthered by moving beyond the narcissism of the subject centered world of philosophy by substituting the other for the self, where the other, life and activity are privileged over the philosopher’s concern for knowledge and theory. Judaically and dialogically, a person is not a thing to essentialize, define, and contain in a theory. Rosenzweig writes that “a theory of knowledge that precedes knowledge has no meaning… If something is to come out of knowledge, it means that–exactly as in the case of a cake–something has to be put into it.”36 In other words, the living of our lives precedes knowledge; activity precedes that which follows it. Therefore, knowledge and theory ought to follow from the activity, or life. The philosopher’s obsession with knowing what something is misses the mark. Again, we find ourselves at Rosenzweig’s concern; philosophy’s search for essence. The theoretical essence beyond life eclipses and thus does not accept or receive the activities of people’s lives. This happens when the philosopher thinks the essence of life is something other than life. Rosenzweig writes: Philosophy has always inquired into the “essence” of things. This is the concern that marks it off from the unphilosophical thinking of sound common sense, which never bothers to ask what a thing “actually” is. Common sense is content to know that a chair is a chair, and is unconcerned with the possibility that it may, actually, be something quite different. It is just this possibility that Philosophy pursues in its inquiry into the essence of things.37

Judaically and dialogically, any essence or theory cannot contain one’s life; one’s life exceeds essence or theory. Therefore, if philosophical ethics is about helping those who live, ethics is not about freezing life into an idea, essence or theory, even if it is an ethical theory. Ethical activity is not about fixed ideological forces shaping humanity while erasing lives into a truth theorized through ideological epiphenomenona. Levinas writes that it is necessary that philosophical themes, truths, or ideas not “be set up as an idol.”38 Levinas wants us to circumscribe ourselves to circumstance, not theory, pushing philosophers to resist the philosophical impulse to turn the life of one into an abstract or theorized subject that concretizes one’s identity. This cemented subject is substituted as a theorized subject for an actual person, substituting theory for the dynamics of conduct. Levinas challenges

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traditional philosophy to respond to the activities at hand, not just the theories we read. He wants us to circumscribe ourselves to circumstance, not systems of knowledge.39 Finally, Ethics as First Philosophy asserts a Judaic epistemology by retreating from solipsistic epistemic orientations through returning to the other who first calls one into ethical response, just as Abram is called out by God. The other, such as Abram, is always particular and always has a face. It is from here that Levinas explains that we must philosophically return “to particular cases, to the concreteness of reality, to analyses that never lose themselves in generalities but return to the examples–resisting invariable conceptual entities–an analysis whose free discussion is ever current.”40 In other words, philosophy must begin as a response to and for the other. It is as if Emmanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative is the face of the other.41 Thus, philosophically speaking, discussions of ethics must now take cues from the other, not theory, or only a self/subject eternally turning back upon oneself. Faces will never be fully grasped by any theory or subject, and yet, faces ought to direct or give purpose to the philosopher who theorizes. This theme was articulated by Buber when he wrote: There is a purpose to creation, there is a purpose to the human race, one we have not made up ourselves, or agreed to among ourselves, we have not decided that henceforward this, that, or the other shall serve as the purpose of our existence. No. The purpose itself revealed its face to us and we have gazed upon it.42

From Levinas we learn that a face is not a mischaracterization. Mischaracterizations are cognitive creations. Faces are not. One’s face is not reducible to a cognitive creation; in fact, a face disrupts the mischaracterizing norms of teleodogma. Nevertheless, with this said, we are still skating the surface of this problem.

Concluding Remarks In conclusion, Ethics as First Philosophy returns us to the time before ideas begin to erase the other’s face. When faces start being erased, it is time to interrupt the discourse, snapping it beyond the confines of abstraction. How does one snap a discourse? One must necessarily interrupt it, not

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necessarily re-construct it. For example, God both interrupts and snaps Abram out of the face-erasing idolatry of his community, thus decreeing that he go beyond the mischaracterizations signified by idolatry. But God does not re-construct or construct Abram a community. After all, who knows who Abram will face after the interruption? But this does not mean that Abram will be without community. Abram will find himself communing when he is directed by the other’s face as opposed to responding to the other as a mischaracterization, which is an abstraction, an idol, of the other. The same can be said for many idolatrous philosophers or theorists. Theorists must allow themselves to be interrupted by the face of the other, not for the pursuit of a teleodogmatic end that implicitly treats the other as a mischaracterized means to end but in such a way that one is interrupted from pursuing a teleodogmatic end. In other words, theorists must allow themselves to be interrupted or snapped out of idolatry. This interruption is not about constructing something beyond teleodogma; the reason being is that who knows whom one will face after the interruption? Who knows what will be necessary for the new construction? Thus, from Ethics as First Philosophy, construction is not the immediate issue. The issue is one of the learning how to be ready to interrupt construction when it becomes violent, a primary concern for these Jewish, dialogic philosophers. Judaically and dialogically, this violence begins when one, or a few or even many, take over the conversation. For example, when a theorist or philosopher treats the other as a mischaracterized end in his or her pursuit of teleodogma, it is as if the philosopher owns the conversation; in such a world the other does not count. Here one finds that these (dialogic) philosophers use of teleodogma does not merely showcase the de-centered subject of ethical conduct; it also violently silences the other. Dialogue presupposes or means that no one owns the conversation; when someone speaks as an owner that is the time to interrupt the discourse. When a mischaracterization is not interrupted, when one allows the face of the other to be erased, violence emerges. This is the place where a person is treated like an object, where violence is practiced or spoken into one’s gestures. This violence at the human (and philosophical) level of mischaracterization spills forth into society, as if society is a receptacle for phantoms (concretized mischaracterizations, such as the role of an idol)

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from which many gestures, individual and social reflexes, so to speak, are constructed. To understand this, think back to the idolatry of Abram’s time and how they manufactured truth through idolatry, or think about a philosopher’s erasing a person’s face, turning the person into a mischaracterized means in pursuit of a teleodogmatic end or truth. Or think of a more visible, social example: the Nazis, whose mischaracterization of the Jews became a gesticulative truth. The Nazis didn’t merely believe that the Jews were vermin. Their gestures enacted that belief. Ethics as first Philosophy is the (epistemological) time before violence and genocide, when the gestures of mischaracterization have yet to become the foundations of one’s constructed space. At this time, one can interrupt the expanding space of mischaracterization with general ease, for one is still participating at the level of discussion. But after this time, after gesticulative foundations are built upon and discussions cease, it is more difficult to interrupt violence. Philosophically, one must ask then, what is the criterion for understanding that a mischaracterization is a mischaracterization? For Levinas, it is the face or the other directing one into a response. One’s proximity to the other–the other who has a face–precedes teleodogmatic philosophy, and, thus, we find ourselves in Ethics as First Philosophy.

Chapter III Gesticulative Mischaracterizations: When Fiction is a Bodily Fact A thing can never be presented personally and ultimately has no identity. Violence is applied to the thing; it seizes and disposes of the thing. Things give, they do not offer a face. They are beings without a face. —Emmanuel Levinas1

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thics as first Philosophy” is not just a philosophical challenge but also a bodily challenge. When Levinas calls for Ethics as First Philosophy, in which one resists privileging representations over specifics, he is not merely saying that one can go from the representation to the specific or from the specific to the representation. The privileging of teleodogma is more insidious and complicated than this. He is also talking about the danger of the moment when one’s gestures to or with the other enact that the other is no more than a representation or idea, where the other as an object can be grasped and tinkered with as one might grasp and tinker with an idea. This is exemplified in Pharaoh’s relationship with Sarai. In this chapter, we find Pharaoh wanting to rape Sarai. Seeing her as an object for himself, Pharaoh does not see Sarai as an other to him. She–as other–doesn’t count for him. What counts is what Pharaoh believes Sarai to be an object for his pleasure. From where Sarai stands, she is not what

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Pharaoh thinks her to be. She is not an object for his pleasure, but a person who transcends his idea of her. Unfortunately, Pharaoh has the power to do what he wants to Sarai, such as rape her. But Pharaoh’s idea is not merely an idea for Sarai; it is the bodily act of rape. The rapist’s idea of the victim is not an idea as far as the victim is concerned. Here, Ethics as First Philosophy exposes that mischaracterizations are often embodied. Three mischaracterizations reveal this insight in Abram and Sarai’s Egyptian odyssey. First, Sarai will pretend to be Abram’s sister. In Egypt, Sarai is going to be taken–under any circumstances–by Pharaoh. If she claims to be Abram’s husband, Pharaoh will murder Abram so that he can legally marry Sarai. If she claims to be Abram’s sister, Pharaoh will not murder Abram, but he will still take Sarai. As a brother, Abram does not maritally stand in the way of Pharaoh taking Sarai. Second, Abram will pretend to be Sarai’s brother. Third, Pharaoh sees them both as objects that he owns, objects for his own consumption. It’s as if they’re imprisoned in his mischaracterization; they have no control over this than a hostage being held for a crime she or he did not commit. But biblically, they are not objects to be owned or consumed. In addition, Pharaoh’s mischaracterization of Sarai is a form of idolatry. Here, mischaracterization and idolatry come together. Idolatry highlights that a false object–in this case, Pharaoh’s mischaracterization of Sarai– signifies one’s identity in relation to the object (Sarai), just as the idol or idols often signify the identities and relations of the people in Abram’s homeland, or teleodogma signifies the identity of many philosophers. Pharaoh’s mischaracterization is a substitute for Sarai, just as the idol is a substitute for the Other in Abram and Sarai’s homeland, just as teleodogma substitutes for life in many philosophical language-games. In what follows, Pharaoh is identified with the substitution of ideas for persons, just as “[p]hilosophy itself,” writes Levinas, “is identified with the substitution of ideas for persons.”2 We now turn to where we last left the biblical narrative, after God commands Abram to make an exodus out of idolatry. We begin with Abram and Sarai’s departure from their home, exposing the importance of why she is mentioned in his departure.

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Abram and Sarai Abram “took his wife Sarai…and they set out for the land of Canaan.”3 Put differently Sarai leaves her home with Abram, making her own exodus to Canaan. In order to understand Sarai’s actions for Abram, one must first understand Sarai’s independence. When Sarai does something for Abram, it is not because he commands her to do it, but because she independently wants to do something for him. Her independence is immanent throughout the narrative. Sarai is a sovereign princess. She is royalty in a society that celebrates women.4 This is largely gleaned from Genesis 11:29-30. “The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai. The name of Nachor’s wife was Milkah, the daughter of Harah, who was the father of Milkah and the father of Yiskah…”5 Judith S. Antonelli writes that “Sarai and Yiskah are one and the same woman. She is called Yiskah because [Rashi writes] “she could see…the future by ruach hakodesh (divine inspiration).” Yiskah also refers to “royalty,” and Sarai means “my princess.” As Terah’s granddaughter and daughter-in-law, Sarai was part of Babylonian royalty. Since Sarai was a princess, and Babylonian royalty was inextricably linked to the priesthood, it is highly likely that she was also a priestess.6 This being the case, we are often told that Sarai’s prophetic abilities were much greater than Abram’s.7 From here, one not only sees Sarai’s independence, but one may plausibly glean from her independence that Sarai’s departure or exodus from home was also her rebellion against idolatry, as opposed to leaving because Abram commanded her. Thus, when Genesis says, “Abram took his wife Sarai…” this does not necessarily mean that he literally “took” her. As said, her independence suggests that she went on her own accord, rebelling against idolatry.

Egypt After their exodus from home, Abram and Sarai find themselves in the midst of famine in Canaan and they leave for Egypt. Upon entering Egypt, Abram anticipates that the Egyptians–most notably Pharaoh–will mischaracterize them as objects to be owned. Abram says to Sarai: “I know what a beautiful woman you are. If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his

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wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.”8 In making such a request, I imagine Abram’s face in despair, showing what Levinas calls the “straightforwardness of the exposure to death.”9 His face, not merely his words, demands Sarai’s responsibility for his life. Abram’s human frailty as manifest in his face is an “order issued [for Sarai] to not abandon [him].”10 His fate is in her hands. However, although Abram’s face demands Sarai’s responsibility for his life, on Levinas’ terms, Abram is immoral; Abram’s verbal request exposes that Sarai will be raped when taken by the Egyptians for her beauty. It is as if Abram is saying, “Look, you’re going to be raped. If you’re raped as my sister, I get to live. If you’re raped as my wife, I’ll be murdered.” However, it is not the demand of Abram’s despairing face that is immoral. Nor is it that he must offer something back to Sarai if she performs his request to mischaracterize her. It is his verbal request that is immoral. Abram’s verbal request irresponsibly pushes Sarai away, not in the sense that she is inferior, but in the sense that he should fear putting her in harm’s way, but does not. In his request, Abram shows no fear for her, just for himself. He doesn’t even appear tortured by it. Again, this understanding of fear for the other’s safety is central to understanding Levinas’ call for Ethics as First Philosophy. This fear locates Ethics as First Philosophy in the other’s body. One fears for the other’s physical safety. The fear is not fright, but the fear, Levinas writes, that comes “to me from the face of the other…Fear for the other… is my fear, but in no way similar to being frightened.”11 It is the fear one partner ought to have about hurting the other partner or allowing the other partner to be hurt. One ought to fear harming the other or allowing harm to the other whom one loves, just as the biblical Israelite fears harming God’s world or perhaps harming God. (One might question whether or not a human can hurt God. Such a concept is addressed in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s discussion of ‘divine Pathos,’ which he draws out of the rabbinic concept: “zoreh gavoha,” which is a divine need. Susannah Heschel, when articulating her father’s thoughts, shows what Heschel means by this when he explains how connected God is to one’s actions towards the other: “Di-

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vine Pathos indicates a constant involvement of God in human history but insists that the involvement is an emotional engagement: God suffers when human beings are hurt so that when I hurt another person, I injure God.” 12 This fear of harming God is found in the Sefer Hasidim of Judah ben Samuel he-Hasid, where it is explained that “yirah [fear or reverence] of God is characterized as the fear of not being able to withstand God’s trials; it is fear of not loving God adequately.”13) Abram seems to have no fear for Sarai while despairing for his life.14 Thus, if Levinas is right in saying that fear “comes to me from the face of the other,” it is plausible to assume that Abram does not see Sarai’s face.15 How is it that we hear and see Abram’s despair, but hear nothing of Sarai’s feelings about being raped? Can you imagine Sarai’s face looking pleased with the prospect of being grasped, grabbed, clutched, and raped, as if she were a piece of knowledge to process? Her world is being usurped from under her, and all Abram can say is, “lie, so I can live.”16 When Abram’s fear eclipses him from seeing Sarai’s face, she is defaced, made inhumanly faceless. On these terms, Abram’s verbal request exposes his inhumanity towards Sarai. It is to treat her as a means for his ends–as if Sarai is a thing, an extension of and for Abram–as she is to be for Pharaoh. Abram is ethically unavailable for Sarai. In asking her to put herself at risk, he is thinking of himself before her. Ethically speaking, although I can’t say under the circumstances I wouldn’t make the same request, he ought not ask her to put herself at risk to serve his end, regardless of the violent consequences for him. Dialogically, Abram’s concern for Sarai’s safety ought to override his concern for himself. His concern for her ought to be asymmetrical, having nothing to do with her doing anything for him. This understanding of asymmetry is from Levinas. This dialogic, asymmetrical interpretation of Abram’s request is in line with the great thirteenth century Jewish biblical scholar and commentator, Nachmanides, who says that in making this request, Abram sins.17 On the other hand, this is not the only way to understand the passage. After all, there is not a lot Abram can do for Sarai. Since the text does not provide us with an alternative to going to Egypt, we must assume they had no choice. Thus, it is striking that in facing the possibility of being murdered, Abram asks for Sarai’s help. He does not order or tell her that

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she has to help him even though his fear filled face is demanding her responsibility for his life. She does not have to respond as he desires. Abram’s request is not forcing her but appealing to her, not as an extension of him, but as independently other. “From this perspective,” writes Levinas, “my Philosophy would consist in seeing that the identity of the me [in this case Abram]…is not equal to the task of encompassing the other [Sarai], precisely because of the alterity and irreducible transcendence of [Sarai, or] the other.” Simply put, Abram does not encompass Sarai. She transcends him. Abram’s request for Sarai’s helps shows that he understands this, that she is independent from him. Sarai does not turn away from Abram’s request. She will mischaracterize herself, parading fiction as fact for both Abram and the Egyptians, in turn giving Abram his life. His request shows that she is being taken from her life, which suggests the Levinasian reason for helping him. Sarai is afraid for Abram. Fearing putting him in harm’s way, Sarai responds for Abram, and only for him, not for her. She does not ask that Abram give to her what she gives to him. She does not ask him for anything. Perhaps this is because he has nothing to give her in this circumstance, especially if her fear for his life does not allow him to give up his life. Abram is unique for Sarai “in the sense of the loved one being unique for the one who loves. A uniqueness that, to the one who loves, immediately means fear for the death of the loved one.”18 Sarai’s fear for Abram’s life reveals the unlimited love and responsibility she has for Abram. Levinas writes that “…there emerges, from that [or Sarai’s] fear for the other man [or Abram], an unlimited responsibility, one that we are never discharged of, one that does not end in the last extremity of the neighbor, even if the responsibility then only amounts to responding, in the powerless confrontation with the death of the other, ‘Here I am.’”19 Facing Abram’s despair, Sarai’s response can be understood as, ‘Here I am.’ She is responsible for him. “Responsibility derived from no guilt; a gratuitous responsibility responding to a commandment not to leave the other alone in his or her last extremity, as if the death of the other, before being my death, concerned me; as if in that death–invisible to the other who is exposed to it–I became by indifference the accomplice while I could

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do something about it.”20 In Sarai’s fear for Abram’s safety, we find her refusing to be an accomplice in his death. She will not allow him to be killed, and, thus, she gives him his life.21 Sarai’s fear exposes that she feels responsible for Abram’s safety while showing that her responsibility for him is asymmetrical. It’s not an issue of reciprocity. Abram’s irresponsibility for Sarai has nothing to do with her responsibility for him. Thus, when she responds, she is not responding as an extension of Abram, but as one who has asymmetrically come for him, to help him without expectation of anything in return, such as a future favor. It’s not like she’s saying, “Okay, I’ll help you if you promise to help me later.” For example, if your partner is in the middle of the road and does not see the oncoming car, and the only hope is for you to push your partner out of the way, even though it may cost you your own life, you might do it, not to be good, not to be ethical, not to get something back, but because you fear for your partner’s safety. What is important is that Sarai helps Abram, not because he orders her, not because he is her husband, or the boss, or because she is subordinate. (Princess Sarai is not his subordinate.) She helps him because she is responsible for him, responsible for his life. In addition, Sarai’s response for Abram is not out of guilt. Her responsibility is not about guilt. Levinas writes: “The other involves us in a situation in which we are obligated without guilt, but our obligation is no less for that. At the same time, it is a burden. It is heavy…”22 Furthermore, Sarai does not choose to be responsible for Abram’s safety. She finds herself responsible. She does not choose any of this, and she is unable to choose against feeling this way and, for that matter, walking away from all this. Sarai has no more choice to walk away than that of a hostage. Like a hostage who does not designate him/herself a hostage, Sarai does not designate herself as responsible for Abram. Again, I say hostage to emphasize Sarai’s lack of choice in being responsible for Abram’s safety. It is as if Sarai is involuntarily elected into being responsible, just as a hostage is involuntarily elected into being a hostage–an election, writes Levinas, “not assumed by the elected one.”23 In other words, just as a hostage is involuntarily chosen or elected to pay for an act that she or he is not responsible for, Sarai (in her responsibility for Abram) finds herself paying for

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circumstances that she is not responsible for making, not to mention that she is paying for Abram’s safety with her life, or at minimum, her bodily independence and safety. This is why Levinas equates such responsibility with being a hostage. He writes: “The hostage is the one who is found responsible for what [s] he has not done.”24 Sarai is a hostage with “the responsibility of one who is not guilty, who is innocent. The innocent, what a paradox! That one does no harm. It is the one who pays for the other.”25 Sarai’s asymmetrical fear signifies that she is a hostage for Abram. Perhaps going beyond Levinas, saying that Sarai is a hostage for Abram is not to say that she is a hostage of Abram; to be a hostage for Abram is about Sarai’s responsibility for him. If she were a hostage of Abram, it would mean that he is holding her against her will. But Abram is not holding her against her will. Nevertheless, she has not chosen her obligation for him, she has found herself obliged for him in the same way one finds oneself obliged to the other calling for help. It’s not that the other holds one against one’s will; it’s that one finds oneself willing for the other. Simply, Sarai’s fear for Abram makes her a hostage for his safety, a hostage of responsibility for him. What Levinas’s explanation of both asymmetry and hostage reveal (about which more will be said in the next section) is that the ethic of fearing for the other’s safety–which is displaced by Abram’s request for Sarai–is not displaced in Sarai’s response for Abram. For Abram, Sarai is responding to the fear in his face, to his exposure to death, which begs–perhaps even demands–Sarai to help him. Nonetheless, his fear may make his verbal request understandable but not morally right. Therefore, in conceiving of Sarai’s response for Abram as ethical, his verbal request for her is unethical. His request for her help reveals the usurpation of Sarai’s world. She is most likely going to be raped, but Abram responds only for himself. The fact that Sarai may be raped expands a philosophical issue. Here, the insights, ethics, and problems discussed above will not result in disembodied intellectual and emotional consequences. These insights and problems are manifest in bodily suffering.

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Inside Egypt In escaping from the famine in Canaan into Egypt, Sarai and Abram knowingly enter a place where she will most likely be raped by Pharaoh. In Abram’s request, we find the knowledge that the mischaracterization of Sarai is one that may literally scar her body; here gestures reveal that mischaracterization has become a fact of Sarai’s life. The use of the word gesture highlights that the distortions of Sarai and Abram are not merely ideas about them, they are actions played out in their lives. I am not only talking about Abram and Sarai’s disguise of Sarai by claiming to be Abram’s sister. I am also talking about the misrepresentation that Abram’s request responds to, namely, that Pharaoh will see Sarai as an object or thing to be grasped, grabbed, and owned. “When Abram [and Sarai] entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was [arrested and] taken into Pharaoh’s palace.”26 This is the place where mischaracterization is a bodily fact of life.27 Pharaoh owns her body, taking her from her world, condemning or enslaving her to a representation that on the one hand has nothing to do with whom Sarai is, whereas, on the other, it has everything to do with who she is. The problem is not that Pharaoh gets it wrong by misperceiving them as his beliefs or thoughts. The ethical problem is that getting it wrong is not merely about Pharaoh’s beliefs or thoughts for Abram and Sarai. It is about their lives. Pharaoh’s getting it wrong is scarring Sarai’s body, making it a fact of her life. In addition, Abram’s request exposes that Abram and Sarai understand that they are subject to his identification of them. Any way you look at it, Pharaoh is stripping Abram and Sarai of their independence. He has the (alleged Pharonic) divine right to touch, to take, and to scar, even to murder both of them. Yet, Abram and Sarai do not have a right to Pharaoh’s body. They are housed in a mischaracterization of a mischaracterizer who cannot see that he is distorting them. It is as if Pharaoh is an egotistical black hole, absorbing and penetrating everyone in his horizon. Everything is turned into the same thing, an objective toy for Pharaoh. Sarai’s relation with Pharaoh is asymmetrical. When Pharaoh mischaracterizes Sarai, he is not mischaracterizing himself nor is she necessarily mischaracterizing him. It is something Pharaoh is doing to her, not some-

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thing she is doing to him. His mischaracterization has violent consequences just for Sarai, and thus, the suffering is hers alone. Pharaoh’s rapacious gestures may have been given to all women of that time, but the woman who receives the gestures, receives it asymmetrically, that is, just for her. Pharaoh’s violence for Sarai and her consequential suffering are that specific. Philosophically, Pharaoh symbolizes totality. His totalizing ego is about to strip Sarai of her unique life, her autonomy. Pharaoh is making her the same as most of his subjects, a piece in the totality of his world. Nevertheless, Pharaoh does not succeed in absorbing her into his totality. God interrupts this totalizing Pharonic theme, showing that Sarai is not to be categorized and shelved like Pharaoh’s other subjects, or a piece of knowledge, for that matter. Pharaoh’s totalizing impulse towards Sarai is idolatrous. His identity is signified by false objects, ideas, or phantoms, which strip the other of personhood. It is as an idolater that Pharaoh enacts his totalizing impulse, for if he saw the other as other, he would understand that the other exceeds his world. Of course, treating Sarai as an object or thing may not feel quite like an idea for Pharaoh, but Sarai may feel that is how he understands her; that she is no more than an idea or representation for him. However, before Pharaoh can rape Sarai, God interrupts his world, afflicting “Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram.”28 In betraying Pharaoh’s totalizing impulse, God shows that Sarai is not an idea in Pharaoh’s head but more than Pharaoh can think or conceive. In other words, God disables Pharaoh’s domination by revealing that Sarai exceeds Pharaoh’s totality; God thus saves Sarai from Pharaoh’s rapacious nature. The narrative concludes with Pharaoh telling Abram and Sarai to leave his horizon. “Pharaoh sends for Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me! Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so I took her as my wife? Now, here is your wife; take her and begone!”29 In conclusion, Pharaoh brought disease to Sarai and Abram’s flesh. Disease attacks one’s body, bringing about despair and a loss of control or independence. It is the despair one feels when one is physically unsafe,

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such as when one is waiting for the diagnosis of cancer or when one knows that one may be murdered or raped or that one will have to watch one’s partner be murdered or raped. Levinas writes that “[d]espair despairs like a disease of the flesh. Physical pain or evil is the very depth of anguish and consequently…anguish, in its carnal acuteness, is the root of all social misery, of all human dereliction; of humiliation, solitude, persecution.”30 From this fear and despair, one further sees that Levinas’ call for Ethics as First Philosophy is both an intellectual and a bodily challenge. Thus, the charge that we dangerously substitute teleodogmatic truth for the other is not merely a problem for the classrooms of philosophy. For example, Pharaoh’s ideas or representations of Abram and Sarai are not mere intellectual issues. They are idolatrous mischaracterizations that are facts of their lives, stripping Sarai and Abram of their skin and independence. Just as the idol signifies one’s identity, Pharaoh’s mischaracterization of Sarai signifies his relationship with her. Here idolatry is not a mere problem of belief. It is as real as being physically violated. Yet, on the other hand, Abram and Sarai do not mischaracterize Pharaoh; they see who he is and how to conduct themselves as mischaracterizations in his horizon. In both hearing and seeing that a mischaracterization can be a fact of their lives, one finds that Levinas’ call for Ethics as First Philosophy is not easy to practice. As said previously, when Levinas calls for resistance to privileging teleodogma over specifics, he is not merely saying that one can go from the ‘ideas of the sought after essence’ to the specific, or from the specific to ‘ideas of the sought after essence’ as if they were reciprocal. His reasoning side steps the grammatical polarization implicit in just seeing a reciprocal relation between teleodogma and the specific circumstance. The privileging of teleodogma or ‘ideas of the sought after essence’ is more insidious than this. I am talking about the moment when one’s gestures for the other enact that the other is no more than a phantom in the hands of oneself, as if the other were an object to be tinkered with as one might play with an idea. For example, just as many philosophical ideas often strip life of any substance, Pharaoh’s gestures strip Sarai of her “human skin.”31 When Sarai is in Pharaoh’s hands, she is no more than an object or a thing for Pharaoh. Fortunately, Sarai is saved from rape when God reveals her face to

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Pharaoh. Treating Sarai as an object or thing may not feel quite like an idea for Pharaoh, but Sarai may feel that is how he understands her; that she is no more than an idea for him, or, perhaps one might say, a representation. This way of saying it shows that there is not a difference between Pharaoh’s idea, his mischaracterization and his treatment of Sarai. The mischaracterization is that she is no more than an object or thing for him. In other words, Pharaoh’s gestures reveals that he owns Sarai. His mischaracterization is a fact of Sarai’s life. It is as real as if Pharaoh did not mischaracterize her.

Witnessing It is one thing to see the other’s suffering, to watch, to stand by. It is quite another to actually witness suffering. A witness is involved. A bystander is just that, a bystander. In this chapter, we found Abram standing by, desperation eclipsing his eyes and deafening his ears from Sarai. Remember, in his verbal request to Sarai, Abram does not say, “Here I am.” It is more like, “Here you are for me.” Abram does not witness Sarai’s bodily ordeal–God does. Lifting Pharaoh’s veil from Sarai’s face, God exposes her to Pharaoh. For an instant, Pharaoh sees that Sarai is not his mischaracterization of her, but other to him. She is other to all his thoughts of her. Sarai is witnessed. Unfortunately, Abram is not the witness. Later in the narrative, he again brings Sarai to rape. The rapist is Abimelech. Again, God witnesses Sarai, rescuing her from the clutches of Abimelech. Where is Abram’s anguish? Again, fearing for his own life, he shows no anguish that Sarai may be torn apart. Abram is not saying, “Here I am for you.” “Here I am” is an ethical response. It is about one’s ethical proximity for the other, not merely one’s spatial proximity to the other. The bystander has spatial proximity to the other. The witness has more than spatial proximity to the other. Witnessing is ethical proximity for the other. Unlike a bystander, the witness ethically responds responsibly for the one who calls. The witness’ posture says, “Here I am,” that is, “Here I am for you.” For example, when God calls out for the biblical person, such as Abram, God is not merely asking, “Where are you physically standing, Abram?” God is asking, “Where are you ethically, Abram?” For Abram to say, “Here I am”

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is for Abram to understand that he is responsible to and for the Other, such as God. Being responsible for God requires that he witness God and that he, therefore, answers to and for God. Levinas writes: “The word I means here I am, answering for everything and for everyone.”32 “Here I am” is witnessing the other. When Abram says to and for God, “here I am” – he is witnessing the God, the Other, who has called for him. The problem is that Abram does not say, “Here I am” to and for Sarai. Levinas writes: “Why does the other concern me?… Am I [Sarai’s] keeper? These questions have meaning only if one has already supposed that the ego is concerned only with it, is only a concern for it. In this hypothesis it indeed remains incomprehensible that the absolute outside-of-me, the other, would concern me.”33 But in the language of witnessing, the other is the concern for oneself. Thus, one finds that when God calls out for Abram and Abram says, “Here I am,” that Abram is “reduced to [him]self in responsibility.”34 He is reduced to responsibility for the other. The witness is responsible. For example, when a child calls a witnessing parent for help and the parent responds, “Here I am,” the parent is reduced to her or himself in responsibility for the child. And perhaps this why parenting sometimes feels like being a hostage; parents are often reduced to responsibility for their children. In other words, children demand responsibility from parents, subjecting parents to this role. Here one finds that the witness is a hostage for the other, whereas the bystander is not a hostage. The bystander is neglectful, indifferent to the other. To be a hostage for the other is also to be a host. The bystander is not a host, shutting the door in the other’s face. The witness is a host for the other. For example, when God calls for Abram, and Abram says, “Here I am,” Abram as the witness is both a hostage and a host for God. When God subjects Abram to God, Abram finds that he is hosting God, coming to and for God in the way a host comes to and for the guest. Derrida brings these Levinasian themes together when he writes: “…substitution announces the destiny of subjectivity, the subjection of the subject, as host or hostage: ‘The subject is a host; the subject is hostage.’”35 The host, or witness for that matter, fears hurting the other or the guest, the guest who subjects one to being a host. The host witnesses the guest or the other, taking responsibility

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for the other’s wellbeing, asymmetrically responding for the other, and asking for nothing in return. As Abram becomes more of a witness–more of a host–God changes his and Sarai’s names. Abram is now Abraham. Sarai is now Sarah. But this responsibility is much more than one might expect. The name change signifies that Abraham and Sarah are the father and mother of the whole world. For example, where Abram “became the father of Aram; he became in the end the father of the whole world. Sarai – the same is Sarah. She was first a princess among her people; she finally became the [mother] of the whole world.”36 The metaphor of being parents for a world that outlives them means they must “open themselves to a future” that is beyond their history, “a history beyond the one that is compounded of memories and could be contained therein–a history overflowing memory, and in this sense, unimaginable; a history, as yet entirely novel, that has not yet happened to any particular nation.”37 As parents of the world, Abraham and Sarah are not only responsible for one another, they are now responsible for that which has not happened, just as a parent is responsible for a child who is about to call for help, but has yet to call. In other words, they are responsible for a world that is always in the process of becoming more than its history. But even here, where the names are changed, Abraham is not fully present for the other person. He has not learned what it means to be a witness– all the time–for the other’s suffering. It is not until the binding of Isaac that we find Abraham completing himself as a witness for the other, understanding what it means to say, “Here I am” for the other, not for himself, not just for God, but for the other person, his son Isaac. “Here I am” signifies the face-to-face relation. The face of the other elects and reveals to Abraham that he has an irreducible responsibility for the other, to not murder, kill, or sacrifice the other. The other I speak of is Isaac. The binding of Isaac is where Abraham is shown that the other, Isaac, is not for him (Abraham), but that he (Abraham) is for Isaac, responsible for him, for his life, and therefore, responsible for Isaac’s independence and freedom. It is as if God has elected38 Abraham to protect Isaac’s freedom or autonomy. He is to safeguard Isaac’s freedom from one of its greatest

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threats: Abraham’s fatherly ego, not to mention Isaac worshipping his father. Isaac is not to live in the shadows of Abraham.

Chapter IV The Unbinding of Isaac Face as mortality, mortality of the other beyond his appearing; nakedness more naked, so to speak, than that which unveiling of truth exposes; beyond the visibility of the phenomenon, a victims abandonment. But in that very precariousness, the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ that is also the meaning of the face; in that directness of exposure, the proclamation–before any verbal sign of a right that peremptorily calls upon my responsibility for the other… —Emmanuel Levinas

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magine a father taking his son’s life for his own ends. The blade is raised. The son silently calls for help. The mother cannot be found. There is no human witness to his misery or his life. How does one show the father how to bear witness to his son when he cannot even see or hear his son? This is the problem for God with Abraham. God is trying to teach Abraham to take responsibility for his son, Isaac. Abraham is not the only student, however. God is also teaching Isaac that he is not only responsible for Abraham but additionally for building something new out of Abraham’s traditions. This is the purpose of God’s test. “God put Abraham to the test. [God] said to him, Abraham, and he answered, ‘Here I am.’ [God] said, ‘Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights which I will point out to you.’”1 Without protest, Abraham leaves with Isaac the next morning. On their way up

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to Mount Moriah, Isaac asks his father, ‘“Where’s the sheep for the burnt offering?’ Abraham says, ‘God will see to the sheep for [God’s] burnt offering, my son.’”2 Christian tradition calls this episode “The Sacrifice.” Jewish tradition calls it “The Binding of Isaac.” In a way, it is both. There is a sacrifice of a ram and of Abraham’s fatherly control of Isaac, both of which are preceded by Abraham binding Isaac. However, this is all precipitated by God’s test for Abraham. This test is obviously significant for Abraham and for biblical teaching in general, yet the purpose of this test has been debated for centuries. The debate not only emerges from the facts in the biblical text, but from in between the facts, where one finds gaps or a lack of explanation in the bible. For example, the text does not tell us why God tests Abraham. This lack of explanation leaves an interpretive space for the reader or biblical commentator. In the rabbinic tradition, such spaces are often filled with a Midrash that brings out meanings of the narrative. In the following, at times, a Midrashic orientation is exercised to develop new meanings of Genesis 22. However, Midrashic accounts are not limited to the rabbinic tradition or the Jewish people. Perhaps the most famous non-Jewish account of this test is found in Soren Kierkegaard’s Fear And Trembling, where Kierkegaard witnesses the test as an issue of faith. If we examine the nature of the test partly from the philosophy of Emmanual Levinas, however, Kierkegaard’s conclusion does not necessarily follow. Before I disclose why I think the test is not an issue of faith, I will present Kierkegaard’s notion of faith as offered in his work Fear And Trembling. Then I will show how the test is not about Kierkegaard’s notion of faith. From there, I will examine the nature of the test through an analysis of the three people directly affected by the test, Abraham, Isaac and Sarah. Through this analysis, we will find that the test is about Abraham’s learning to take responsibility for the Other.

Kierkegaard’s Notion of Faith In a critique of Hegel in Fear And Trembling, Kierkegaard explains that faith does not emerge from an inability to prove the existence of God. It is

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not about skepticism or knowledge, by which Kierkegaard generally means Hegel’s dialectic or system, wherein everyone is involved in the realization of the universal. According to Hegel, this universally true dialectic accounts for all subjects. Kierkegaard writes that–for Hegel–the subject has its telos in the universal, and the individual’s ethical task is always to express himself in this, to abrogate his particularity so as to become the universal. As soon as the single individual wants to assert himself in his particularity, in direct opposition to the universal, he sins, and only by recognizing this can he again reconcile himself with the universal.3

On Kierkegaard’s terms, Hegel’s dialectic is unable to account for the faithful subject. This inability is not because the subject is sinning by asserting itself. It is because the universal cannot account for the subject’s individual, particular, non-universal relationship with God. For Kierkegaard, one’s relationship with God exposes the limits of Hegel’s universal, not the other way around. Thus, he explains that one’s faith is not less than this universal-dialectic. It is more than the dialectic can hold. Kierkegaard writes: “Faith begins precisely where thinking” (or the universal-dialectic) “leaves off.”4 Where thinking leaves off is where one finds oneself relating to God. Since ethics is realized in Hegel’s general or universal dialectic, Kierkegaard’s notion of faith suspends the Hegelian ethical. Levinas writes: “The ethical means the general, for Kierkegaard. The singularity of the I would be lost, in his view, under a rule valid for all.”5 Thus, where thinking leaves off, where the I is not lost under a rule valid for all, the ethical is suspended by one’s relationship with God. Kierkegaard justifies his reading of the sacrifice by noting that upon following God’s command, where Abraham has a particular, non-universal relationship with God, Abraham is no longer bound by ethics. Ethics are suspended. In other words, the ethic of not murdering is suspended in Abraham’s sacrificial gesture toward Isaac on behalf of God. Finally, Kierkegaard’s faith reveals the limits of this universal or that which is knowable. The universal (as articulated by Hegel) is unable to account for the privacy of Kierkegaard’s faith-based relationship. The faithful subject’s private relation with God is beyond the scope of knowledge.

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Critique of Kierkegaard’s Notion of Faith If the test is strictly about the faith presented by Kierkegaard, two general problems arise. First, Kierkegaard treats Sarah and Isaac as secondary to Abraham. Second, Kierkegaard colors Abraham with the self-indulgent dye God wants Abraham to wash off. If the test is just between Abraham and God (as Kierkegaard implies), then why does the test involve more than Abraham and God? What about Isaac? What about Sarah? In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard treats Isaac as a means to an end. Is his relationship with God secondary to that of his father? Kierkegaard does not address this matter. In addition, he does not consider that Isaac is a thirty-seven year old adult at the time of the binding. He pictures him as a boy. Yet, if the text is read chronologically, Isaac is thirty-seven, because in Genesis Sarah gives birth to Isaac at the age of ninety, and she dies right after the test, when she is 127 years old. Thus, at the time of the binding, Isaac is thirty-seven. Given Isaac’s adulthood, the test is not merely showing Abraham something; it is also showing Isaac something. And what about Sarah? The test affects her. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard treats Sarah as a subordinate to Abraham, saying little about her relationship to the test or with God. In fact, Kierkegaard’s commentary reads as if only Abraham is having a relationship with God. Yet in writing solely about Abraham, Kierkegaard writes at the expense of the others. Beyond Kierkegaard’s secondary treatment of Isaac and Sarah, his account presents faith exclusively through Abraham; Kierkegaard’s account of subjectivity is about Abraham and for Abraham. It is self-indulgent. If everything is about Abraham’s faith, then Abraham is the subject for himself. In Levinasian terms, Abraham (the subject) is “tensing” upon himself.6 One might say, God is the subject for Abraham, or he sees himself as the subject for God. Either way, he is idolizing God for himself. (What I mean by idolatry is a type of selfishness, when one egotistically eclipses one’s responsibility for the Other. Here, idolatry is to selficate in one’s own indulgences. Ethical responsibility for the other is eclipsed by one’s selfcenteredness. This is a biblical sin, for the biblical God commands that one is responsible for the Other.) I say idolizing God for himself, because on Kierkegaard’s terms, Abraham’s faith or relationship with God is at the expense of his responsibility for the other. His relationship with God serves

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himself. For example, if he murders Isaac because God says, “Do it,” that murder reveals that he is idolizing his relations with God–and thus idolizing God–at the expense of Isaac. It is as if Isaac is to receive any action Abraham gives him on behalf of Abraham’s faith, an objectification that creates the illusion that Isaac does not count. Therefore, if Abraham’s relationship with God excludes Isaac, it follows that his relationship with God is about himself, not Isaac. There are traces in the narrative, however, that show Abraham is not completely this type of person and that God does not want Abraham to be this type of person. Abraham’s relationship with God is often about the Other, not at the expense of the Other. We know this from his protest on behalf of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Levinas writes: “Kierkegaard never speaks of the situation in which Abraham enters into dialogue with God to intercede in favor of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the name of the just who may be present there.”7 The dialogue between Abraham and God shows that in this particular narrative, God is not a God who commands doing something at the expense of an innocent human being, such as Isaac. If that were the case, God would be indistinguishable from the idols from which Abraham and Sarah made their exodus; Abraham would be murdering his most beloved son on behalf of a god. However, the test is not about idolizing God. It is about Abraham listening to God who commands responsibility for the Other, the God who has promised Isaac as the heir of Sarah and Abraham, the first of many descendants. Where Kierkegaard has Abraham transcending the ethical or suspending it, Levinas has God returning Abraham to the ethical, which is to say that Abraham is returned to the Other for whom he is responsible. As Levinas observes, Kierkegaard “describes the encounter with God as subjectivity rising to the religious level: God above the ethical order! His interpretation of this story can doubtless be given a different orientation. Perhaps Abraham’s ear for hearing the [heavenly] voice that brought him back to the ethical order was the highest moment in this drama.”8 In other words, the test is not about Abraham’s “existence as a care that a being takes for its own existence…”9 The test is about learning to witness the Other for whom one is responsible.

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If the test is about Abraham’s faith, as defined by Kierkegaard, then Abraham is not returned by it to the Other for whom he is responsible. In Fear And Trembling, Kierkegaard’s account of faith turns Abraham back towards himself, not towards the Other, exposing the irresponsibility of understanding this test as an issue of faith. Kierkegaard’s explanation of faith has the subject (Abraham) tensing upon himself.10 By suspending the ethical, Kierkegaard is able to justify Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Simply, Abraham’s relationship with God is all about Abraham. It is all about Abraham relating to God, as if Abraham is opting for a mystical union with God at the expense of the other, e.g. Isaac and Sarah. However, this might not make sense. The test is not about Abraham’s faith, for the test does not return Abraham to Abraham or to a relationship with God at the expense of Isaac. As Levinas explains, the test returns Abraham to the other person, where one finds God’s command for ethics.11

God, Abraham, and The Purpose of the Test Jewish tradition often teaches that one purpose of the test is for God to show Abraham that human sacrifice on behalf of a god is no longer to be practiced. It is not enough for God to tell this to Abraham. Something this important cannot merely be spoken and heard; it must be learned through experience by Abraham acting out what he is not supposed to do and what he is supposed to do.12 The test is an opportunity for Abraham’s instructor, God, to show Abraham what he (Abraham) has learned and has not learned.13 For Abraham, the test is an opportunity to show understanding of what he has learned. Throughout the biblical narrative, Abraham is being taught to witness to the other. The question is whether Abraham understands this. If he does not, then Abraham is not beyond the self-indulgent violence of idolatry,14 where one is out for oneself and treats the world as a receptacle for one’s own activities. Concerning this, Levinas writes: “Violence is to be found in any action in which one acts as if one were alone to act: as if the rest of the universe were there only to receive the action…”15 Thus, the test is to see whether Abraham is beyond violence and whether he can offer peace. More specifi-

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cally, the test shows him how to witness to the Other and, thus, make an exodus out of human sacrifice. If Abraham murders Isaac, Abraham is not a witness to Isaac’s humanity. Murdering Isaac is to treat him as a thing. “A thing,” Levinas states, “can never be presented personally and ultimately has no identity. Violence is applied to the thing, it seizes and disposes of the thing. Things give, they do not offer a face.”16 God is not instructing Abraham to treat Isaac as a thing or to present him as a thing. God is returning Abraham to ethics. It would be non-sense–not to mention barbaric–if murdering Isaac were the road to the ethical.

Taking the Test: When Peace is Announced Abraham and Isaac arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from me.17

This passage raises three significant points that aid in further understanding the test. First, the angel of the Lord tells Abraham to do no harm to the boy. In other words, let the boy go. The key to why Abraham lets the boy go is not that the angel commands it. Midrashically speaking, the key is that as Abraham raises the blade to sacrifice Isaac, he takes notice of what he sees, the vulnerability of Isaac. This is inferred from the belief that when one is about to be stabbed or killed, one is vulnerable. When raising the blade, it’s plausible to assume that Abraham, who is looking down, is looking down at Isaac’s face. When looking into Isaac’s face, we may infer that Abraham sees that Isaac, in the words of Derrida, “is not reducible to actual predicates, to what” (Abraham) “might define or thematize about” (Isaac,) “anymore than the I” (of Abraham) “is.” (Isaac) “is naked, bared of every property, and this nudity is also” (Isaac’s) “infinitely exposed vulnerability:” (his) “skin.”18 Faced by his son’s vulnerability, Abraham resists his violent memory, which manufactures Isaac into predicates, themes, or mischaracterizations. Isaac’s face commands Abraham’s resistance, that is

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by showing–teaching–Abraham to come out of his violent impulse. Isaac’s face is this significant! Levinas emphasizes: “The signifying of” (Isaac’s) “face, defenseless nakedness, the very uprightness of exposure to death. Mortality, and at the same time the signifying of an order” (to Abraham,) “a commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” 19 In other words, from Isaac’s face, Abraham finds the divine command, “Thou shalt not kill’–that means then ‘Thou shalt cause” (Isaac) “to live.’”20 This ethic commanded by God discloses that Abraham approaches God through Abraham’s relationship with Isaac. Levinas continues: “This original ethical signifying of” (Isaac’s) “face would thus signify–without any metaphor or figure of speech, in its rigorously proper meaning–the transcendence of a God not objectified in the face in which he speaks; a God who does not “take on body,” but who approaches precisely through this relay…”21 (between Abraham and Isaac). At this time, Abraham finds that his love and devotion to and for God is in his love for Isaac.22 He realizes that killing Isaac on behalf of God is to violate God. This means that Abraham’s relation to God is “inseparable from the recognition of the other person” (Isaac). “The relation to God is already ethics, or as Isaiah 58 would have it, the proximity to God, devotion itself, is devotion to the other...”23 Thus, as said, when Isaac’s face carries Abraham out of a violent, idolatrous past, Abraham finds that he approaches God and that God approaches him. Isaac’s face both assigns Abraham responsibility for his son and signifies that Abraham is in proximity to God. Abraham is then chosen and elected through this proximity;24 he is returned to the ethical, where he finds himself devoted to Isaac’s life and to God. Abraham’s devotion to God is devotion to Isaac. In other words, here we find that Isaac’s face signifies Abraham’s infinite responsibility for his son. The Infinite is signified in Isaac’s face. (The meaning of Infinite is Ein Sof, God. Ein Sof–the Infinite–is the name for God in Jewish mysticism.) Levinas highlights this idea, declaring, “the Infinite then has glory only through subjectivity.”25 He continues: The Infinite then has glory only through subjectivity, in the human adventure of the approach of the other, through the substitution for the other, by the expiation for the other. The subject is inspired by the Infinite, which, as illeity, does not appear, is not present, has always already past, is neither theme, telos nor interlocutor. It is glorified in the glory that manifests a subject, is glorified already in the

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glorification of its glory by the subject, thus undoing all the structures of correlation. Glorification is saying, that is, a sign given to the other, peace announced to the other, responsibility for the other, to the extent of substitution. 26

To picture what Levinas means by this, we briefly turn back to the test. As the blade is raised, one may infer, midrashically speaking, that Abraham witnesses Isaac’s face, for it seems that Abraham would be looking into Isaac’s face at this time. Here, perhaps for the first time, Abraham witnesses Isaac and is inspired to substitute the other for himself, possibly finding himself substituting his concern for himself with his concern for Isaac. At this climatic moment, we can infer that the Infinite is signified in Abraham’s approach towards Isaac. In his approach, Abraham witnesses the vastness of his infinite responsibility for Isaac; in so doing, he approaches the Infinite. Through his unbinding, Isaac’s vulnerability brings strength into the weaknesses of Abraham’s memory, strength that partly unbinds Abraham from his past. The power of Isaac’s face unsays Abraham’s memory, saying what has not been said. The Infinite is signified in Isaac’s facial saying or in the relay between Isaac and Abraham where one finds “a sign given to the other, peace announced to the other, responsibility for the other, to the extent of substitution.”27 Now, Abraham no longer objectifies Isaac as an object to be possessed or owned. He sees Isaac as independent or autonomous. This moment for Abraham–in which he recognizes that Isaac is a single person, other and, thus, autonomous–is the moment in which peace is announced in the Infinite approach. As Levinas writes, “Peace [i]s the incessant awakening to that alterity and to that uniqueness.”28 This moment of peace is addressed in the Talmud’s Mishnah Sanhedrin 4,5: Only a single person was created in the beginning, to teach if any individual causes a single person to perish, Scripture considers as though an entire world has been destroyed, and if any one saves a single person, Scripture considers as if a whole world had been saved. Again, just a single person was created, for the sake of peace.

The second helpful point of the original passage comes when the Angel of the Lord says to Abraham, “I know that you fear God….” Here, fearing God means fear of hurting, or perhaps one should say fear of violating or

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injuring God, not just fearing God’s retribution. In her introduction to Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Prophets, Susannah Heschel explains, “Divine Pathos indicates a constant involvement of God in human history but insists that the involvement is an emotional engagement: God suffers when human beings are hurt, so that when I hurt another person, I injure God.”29 Thus, by Abraham showing that he fears harming Isaac, he shows that he fears violating or injuring God. To be with God, Abraham must witness Isaac as independent of himself. Abraham must protect his son’s independence; to do otherwise is to violate God. It is as if the unbinding of Isaac is the unbinding of the violent binds between father and son. This unbinding separates Isaac from Abraham, allowing for a social bond between father and son. They are able to welcome one another as other, signifying they are for one another. It is radical alterity. About this, Jacques Derrida writes: “There would be neither welcome nor hospitality without this radical alterity, which itself presupposes separation. The social bond is a certain experience of the unbinding without which no respiration, no spiritual inspiration, would be possible.”30 Here, we find Levinas’ understanding of peace: “Peace [i]s the incessant awakening to that alterity and to that uniqueness”31 of the other. Finally, the third clarifying point is made with God’s comment, “…you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from me.” In witnessing Isaac, Abraham has given Isaac to God, the God who creates life. Thus, Isaac is given his life. The sacrifice is Abraham first giving up ownership of Isaac, and ownership of Abraham’s memories enveloping Isaac, and then freeing him. This gesture is realized in not withholding Isaac from God; which is to say, this is realized in giving Isaac over to God. The biblical commentator, Rashi, explains that God may appear to have changed God’s mind at the binding. First God wants Isaac sacrificed; then God does not want him sacrificed. However, God’s “apparent ‘Change of mind’ about the sacrifice...”32 is not necessarily supported by the narrative. Rashi explains: “(God) did not say to him, ‘Slaughter him’; because the Holy One Blessed be He did not desire to slaughter him, but only to bring him up to the mountain in order to prepare him as a burnt offering. But after Abraham had brought him up, He said to him, “Take him down.”33 In other words, as Zornberg writes, Rashi interprets God to say: ‘“Take your son,’ I will not

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change what I have uttered. For I did not tell you, ‘Slaughter him,’ but ‘Take him up.’ Now you have taken him up–take him down.”34 Pushing beyond Rashi, let us look at the Hebrew word God uses when he commands Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering and to take him up. The Hebrew word used for burnt offering (in the biblical passage) is l’olah; the root of which is la’alot, which also means to go up. Biblically, it is often used for a burnt offering, which is why it is regularly translated that way. Nevertheless, there are biblical passages when conjugations of the verb are literally used for ‘going up.’ For example, in Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:12, when the angels are going up and down the stairway, the word used for ‘going up’ is derived from the root la’alot. We also see la’alot used in Exodus 19:20, when God calls Moses to the top of Mount Sinai. With this said, perhaps, God’s intended command is not as a burnt offering but as an ascension. Regardless of which way we look at it, Abraham lets go of Isaac, and God blesses that release. In Abraham’s approach towards the Infinite, in Isaac, peace is announced. The world now unfolds for Isaac. biblical scholar W. Gunther Plaut remarks, The story may thus be read as a paradigm of a father-and-son relationship. In a way every parent seeks to dominate his child and is in danger of seeking to sacrifice him to his parental plans or hopes. In the Biblical story, God is present and can therefore stay the father’s hand. In all too many repetitions of the scene God is absent and the knife falls. Thus is the Akedah” (the binding of Isaac) “repeated forever, with its test and terror.35

Isaac’s Lesson We conventionally spend so much time trying to understand what the test means for Abraham that the oddity of Isaac’s compliance to be bound often goes without notice. Although thirty-seven, by Rabbinic count, Isaac is a child when faced with the traditions or memories of his father. By commanding the performance of the test, God is showing Isaac that he is to build tomorrow out of today. As Franz Rosenzweig writes: “...we are, as Scripture puts it, ‘children’; we are as tradition reads it, “Builders.”36 For Isaac to become a builder, he must witness Abraham, and unlike a child, he must move out of the shadow of Abraham to become independent. Isaac is the builder who approaches Abraham (the tradition), to begin the act of

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building beyond tradition. What this language of approach shows is that Isaac is not completely located in tradition–he is too novel for it, yet he cannot live without it either. He is both constructed by tradition and approaches it. In other words, he simultaneously emerges from tradition and transcends it. By unbinding Abraham’s traditional binds upon Isaac, God is teaching Isaac that he stands apart from his father, witnessing Abraham from beyond Abraham’s grasp. Isaac has something to say or live that Abraham has not said or lived. Levinas explains that memory and history are often lived as a “totality determined like matter, a present without fissures or surprises, from which becoming is expelled, a present largely made up of representations, due to memory and history.”37 Isaac is otherwise to Abraham’s memory and history. His life is a surprise to memory and history, a saying to what has been said, a becoming that is not fixed by tradition, neither is it expelled by tradition, but instead approaches tradition. In becoming Isaac, Isaac finds himself approaching Abraham. In their approach towards each other, Isaac finds that he is not to be used as a piece of evidence disclosing Abraham’s faith. Ein Sof,38 the Infinite, is disclosing for Isaac that “the witness belongs to the glory of the Infinite. It is by the voice of the witness that the glory of the Infinite is glorified.”39 By bringing Abraham to ethics, and introducing Isaac to ethics, the Infinite, God, is glorified. As said, Isaac is now independent, and in turn, he is able to approach Abraham as other, and vice versa. In other words, when the knots are untied, Abraham and Isaac are able to have an ethical relationship. With this, more sense emerges from Levinas’ explanation when pitted against Kierkegaard’s. Thus, the test is not about faith in God. The test signifies God returning Abraham and bringing Isaac to ethics, where one understands that one is responsible for the other. It is this responsibility for the other that glorifies God, not a relationship in which ethics is suspended by one’s faithful relationship with God. Here Isaac finds that “the order is” (his response) “itself, which, as a sign given to the neighbor, as a ‘here I am,’ brings” (Isaac) “out of invisibility, out of” (Abraham’s) “shadow in which” (Isaac’s) “responsibility could have been evaded. This saying” (Isaac) “belongs to the very glory of which it bears

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witness.”40 Now that the inferred lesson God is teaching Isaac is clear, we turn to Isaac’s response to the test.

Isaac’s Liberation In Genesis 22:19, it is written that Abraham returns from Moriah. The text does not say that Isaac returned with him. However, in this space where Isaac is not mentioned, one may see that Isaac let his father go, no longer hanging on to Abraham’s robes. In other words, “Isaac now became a man who for the first time could let his father go and who would return later, at his own choosing...”41 Isaac now begins to understand that, for his sake, the world was created. This does not mean treating the world as a receptacle for any action. It means that Isaac is responsible for the world, for the peace of the world. He is to realize, like his father, the Mishnaic teaching (as noted earlier) that pervades Levinas, that a single person is created for the sake of peace. Finally, through having once been bound both by and to his father’s memory, Isaac witnesses his father and the violence of his father’s idolatrous memory. The binding shows Isaac that he is ethically separate from his father. Isaac and Abraham are most loved when asserting separateness, by saying to one another what their history does not or perhaps could not hold. Here we find humans making their ethical world. Where Abraham as a predecessor threatened the world with strangulation of the new,42 Isaac’s liberation signifies a time from which a new world can be created. In other words, the son is no longer condemned to live the same life of his father. Isaac now has the opportunity to build a new community, to create a house beyond the violence of memory, a house that is not merely for oneself but for the other also. As more than memory, the house, as Levinas might say, will not be constituted from only traces of memory.43 However, this is not to suggest that the house will be memory free. Isaac will build from tradition that which tradition does not anticipate. As he begins his journey as a builder, Sarah also begins a new, yet different journey.

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Sarah’s Light Sarah’s lifetime–the span of Sarah’s life–came to one hundred and twenty-seven years. Sarah dies in Kiriath-Arba–now Hebron–in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.44

Sarah’s departure from life exposes the problem of her life.45 Rashi explains that the “death of Sarah is narrated directly after the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, because, as a result of the tidings of the Akedah–that her son had been fated for slaughter, and had been all-but-slaughtered–she gave up the ghost [lit., her soul flew away] and died.”46 Avivah Zornberg writes in The Beginning of Desire, “Here, Rashi is succinctly summarizing a complex Midrashic tradition, which holds at its core a poignant thesis: Sarah is the true victim of the Akedah, her death is its unexplicated, inexplicable cost.”47 With this said, there is a hold on the amount of joy one feels for Isaac, Abraham, and perhaps God. Joy is “undercut by Sarah’s death.”48 This reasoning shows that Sarah may have known of the test. Since Sarah is not present at the test, it is more correct to say that she is a witness to Abraham’s agreement to take the test and his intended response to the test. Thus, she is not directly subjected to God’s test, just to Abraham’s response to the test. Her subjection to his response suggests that Abraham’s response or answer on the test is not only for God and Isaac, but for Sarah also, whether Abraham understands this or not. As a witness, Sarah understands that God would not command the literal, murderous sacrifice of Isaac–an understanding that finds support in the conclusive moments of the test. From Sarah’s response, we learn that Abraham could have questioned taking the test. It is somewhat bewildering that he does not protest, regardless of what God commanded. Even if Abraham misunderstands the command as prescribing the killing of Isaac (as suggested by the understanding that the Hebrew word used for burnt offering, ‘l’olah,’ also means ‘to go up’) he should question God’s command. A protest on behalf of God’s promise for an open future in time would not be difficult for a man who listens and at first questions God’s decision to wipe out Sodom and Gommorah. Moreover, Abraham understands that God has promised Isaac’s life as an heir, not as a dead man. If God commands the killing of Isaac, then Abraham might at least ask God, “why are you going

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back on your promise?” Whatever he is being shown by God, the fact that he has to be shown–in the manner in which he is shown–is reason enough (in review of the Rabbis) for Sarah’s anguish to suffocate her, enveloping her in death.49 It is her anguish that exposes the depth of Abraham’s egoism in agreeing to take the test. By this agreement, Abraham kills the community of Sarah, Abraham, and Isaac with one another. This is the community that Abraham and Sarah are commanded to build for Isaac, not only because of God, but because Isaac’s face commands them to provide him with this. Moreover, their journey seems to be moving towards this community; making an exodus from their homeland is the simultaneous construction of a community built not for oneself but for one another and their creation, Isaac. Isaac is born out of their love for God and, therefore, for one another, not out of the self-indulgent idolatry from which they made an exodus. Abraham and Sarah’s love creates that which is not remembered or confined to idolatry: a beginning. Thus, when Abraham goes up to Moriah, he violates Sarah by killing their community. The very peace for which Abraham and Isaac were created seems to violate Sarah. One might say that if Sarah does not resist Abraham’s agreement, there is no way for him to know he is violating Sarah. And although we have no direct evidence that Sarah resists Abraham’s agreement to take the test, we do have evidence that she does not stand by. Midrashically speaking, Sarah may have left Abraham over the event.50 The evidence for this is that Abraham appears to be in Beer Sheba while she dies in Kiriath-Arba; this reveals that she may not have died as a result of the binding of her son. Sarah possibly leaves Abraham for agreeing to take the test, whether he understands or misunderstands the nature of the test. As said, he should protest, regardless of how he understands the test. Whether or not Sarah dies over the binding, Jewish tradition does not exclude the possibility that she leaves Abraham before her death. Sarah’s assumed departure disables Abraham from owning the characterization, just as a woman who escapes domestic violence stands beyond the husband’s characterization of their problems. In examining this narrative from Sarah’s possible exodus from Abraham, we find that she is not someone’s

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possession. Sarah stands as a sovereign response or testimony to Abraham’s breaking up the community. Not only is Abraham shown that his memories do not own Isaac and do not account for Isaac, but upon his return, he is shown by Sarah that he also does not own her or their community. When he returns, his life is not how he remembers it. Sarah is not there. With the taking of the test, Abraham finds that the conditions for their community slip away. Sarah’s assumed exodus exposes that before she dies; she lives as a historical refugee, in exile or asylum. Evidence for this is found in Genesis. She dies in the land of the Hittites, a foreign land that is not home for her, Abraham and Isaac. Sarah’s possible exile exposes that the test is a negation of her life with husband and son. Here, Zornberg writes, there “has to be a suspension of belief and affirmation, a kind of philosophical schizophrenia, in which the theoretical optimistic conclusions of faith are ignored, and only the cries and wails of nothingness are heard.”51 Finally, by rising above the local setting, Sarah regains her fullness through exile. Moreover, it is only when Abraham is hospitable to her (in the way he provides for her burial and mourns her death) that we find the conditions of the community for Isaac. And what about Isaac? In her parting, Sarah does not leave Isaac; she has left her space for him. Isaac will find refuge in his mother’s exile, inheriting Sarah’s space. Indeed, later in the biblical narrative, Isaac moves into Sarah’s house.52 Her exile is thus a separation that welcomes Isaac to a world beyond Abraham. Sarah’s parting gesture also shows us that we, like Isaac, do not have to live in the cave of the remembrance of Abraham’s traditions, memories, and characterizations. When remembering Sarah, we might look to Levinas when he writes about God commanding Abraham to obey whatever Sarah says, “in prophecy itself, a possible subordination of the male inspiration to the female”53 occurs. From the present account of Sarah, we find Abraham’s inspiration to take the test subordinated to Sarah’s response. One can hear, witness, and testify that Sarah’s inferred departure is forever a sovereign response or testimony to Abraham’s violent betrayal, showing that neither Abraham nor the biblical commentators own her. As an exile or refugee, Sarah stops one from slipping into the idolatry of patriarchy,54 disrupting Kierkegaard’s

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reading of the narrative in which the female is subordinated to the male, or perhaps I should say forgotten. Through highlighting Sarah, one might conclude that Abraham fails the test. Peace may be announced, but it is not manifest. Sarah stops us from “…neutralizing the terror…”55 she sees when Abraham leaves with Isaac for Mount Moriah. Yet, through Sarah’s departing gesture from Abraham’s violence, justice is shown to us, witnessed, so to speak. Thus, Sarah’s disruptive light still shines from beyond Abraham’s shadowy, smothering ego. When all work is brought to a standstill, the candles are lit. Just as creation began with words “Let there be light!” so does the celebration of creation begin with the kindling of lights. It is the woman who ushers in the joy and sets up the most exquisite symbol, light, to dominate the atmosphere...56

Concluding Remarks In this narrative, there is a problem in Abraham’s relationships with Isaac and Sarah that becomes clear when God commands him to take the test. If Abraham is readying Isaac to be sacrificed for God, to serve God, then we are seeing Abraham idolizing his relations with God–and thus idolizing God–at the expense of Isaac. For example, let us say Abraham’s answer for the test is to give Isaac as a burnt offering. The answer is given because Abraham wants to give the right answer; he wants to please God. However, if that is his answer, he is mistaken in giving this answer to God. Offering Isaac as a burnt offering is for Abraham, not for God. It is as if Isaac is to welcome any action Abraham gives him, as if Isaac does not count, as if he is not there. All that counts is Abraham’s relationship with God. If this is the case, Abraham is an idolater. Everything is about him and his relationship with God, showing that Abraham is self or subject centered. (As implied above, one of the many problems with biblical idolatry is that it is subject or self-centered.) Thus, if Abraham presents a murdered Isaac, it is clear Abraham is not a witness. Offering Isaac as a burnt offering is to treat him as a means to an end; it is to treat him as a thing. As quoted earlier, “A thing can never be presented personally and ultimately has no identity. Violence is applied to the

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thing, it seizes and disposes of the thing. Things give, they do not offer a face.”57 Is Abraham defacing Isaac? Yes, if he offers him as a burnt offering (which seems like a form of murder), he is misunderstanding what God wants from him. God does not want Isaac treated as a thing to be killed. Nowhere in the narrative are we given reason to think that God finds Isaac (the child God chose for Abraham) a faceless thing. Therefore, if Abraham murders Isaac, he fails the test. This failure would expose and re-emphasize that if Abraham’s ego silences Isaac (treating Isaac as an object for himself or a receptacle for his actions), he is being idolatrous and barbarically violent towards Isaac. “Violence is to be found in any action in which one acts as if one were alone to act: as if the rest of the universe were there only to receive the action…”58 From here, we can see that the test is a test of whether Abraham is beyond violence. In other words, the test is about Abraham’s ethics. In fact, this is first indicated right before God commands the test, when God asks, “Abraham?” and Abraham answers, “Here I am.” God’s question is not merely about Abraham’s physical proximity, finding out where Abraham is physically standing. God is asking where Abraham is ethically standing, as Abraham’s ethical motivations are not clear. Perhaps they are clear for God, but they are not necessarily for Abraham or for those of us who read this narrative. What is clear is that Abraham does not lower the blade into Isaac. While holding the blade above Isaac, looking into Isaac’s defenseless, naked face, Abraham suddenly ascends beyond his past, recognizing and witnessing that Isaac is independent: a single person for whom the world is created, for whom Abraham is infinitely responsible. Levinas captures this moment when he writes: Before all particular expression and beneath every particular expression… there is a stripping bare and a nakedness of expression as such, defenseless nakedness, extradition to death, precariousness more precarious than any precariousness in that directness of exposure. Face as mortality, mortality of the other beyond his appearing; nakedness more naked, so to speak, than that which unveiling of truth exposes; beyond the visibility of the phenomenon, a victims abandonment. But in that very precariousness, the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ that is also the meaning of the face; in that directness of exposure, the proclamation–before any verbal sign of a right that peremptorily calls upon my responsibility for the other man. It assigns me and demands me, as if the invisible death which the face of the other faces–uniqueness

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separated from any whole were my business… as if the death of the other, before being my death, concerned me; as if in that death–invisible to the other who is exposed to it–I became by my indifference the accomplice while I could do something about it.59

Upon Abraham’s hearing the heavenly voice, we find that Abraham is not indifferent; he puts down the blade and unbinds his son. Instead of violence, Abraham gives Isaac peace. Abraham receives his son. Here we find the Mishnaic teaching that pervades Levinas; a single person is created for the sake of peace. Because of Isaac, Abraham learns peace; because of Abraham, Isaac is given peace. In this infinite approach, we find that God has returned Abraham to ethics, to the Other, Isaac.60 Conversely, by agreeing to take the test, Abraham betrays Sarah, giving her violence, not peace. For Sarah to remain her own person, she leaves Abraham, vanishing from his world. When he returns from the unbinding, he does not find what he remembers. The love of his life is gone. In the wake of Sarah’s exodus, Abraham learns that the future will not be constituted by what he remembers. There will be no future with Sarah. He now finds ambiguity or perhaps darkness stretching out before him. Abraham feels sorrow, sorrow that we witness when he mourns Sarah’s death. In conclusion, the very peace Abraham learns violates the peace he has with Sarah. Where Abraham learns peace, learns not to constitute the future from traces of a violent memory, Sarah’s light shows us to mistrust the miracle required for the realization of this peace. In her light, there is no peace (or essence) to the unbinding of Isaac, no fixed truth and, thus, no fixed characterization. No one gets to own the characterization of this narrative by hedging it into a single theme. The highlight from this biblical passage is best put by Levinas when he paradoxically writes: “Do not constitute the future from traces of memory, mistrusting new things and even the miracle required for universal peace.”61 Mistrust the miracle required for universal peace, it might violently erect itself.

Chapter V Rebecca I am reduced to myself in responsibility, outside of the fundamental historicity Merleau-Ponty speaks of. —Emmanuel Levinas1

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fter Sarah’s death and burial, Abraham instructs a servant to go find Isaac a wife. Upon hearing Abraham’s command, the servant asks if she does not consent to come, should he take Isaac back to the land from which Abraham has come. Abraham responds: On no account must you take my son back there! The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house, who promised me an oath, saying, “I will give this land to your offspring”–He will send His angel before you, and you will get a wife for my son from there. And if the woman does not consent to follow you, you shall then be clear of this oath to me but do not take my son back there. 2

Isaac is not allowed to return to Abraham’s ancestral land. If he does, Isaac no longer offers something new, a saying that has not been said. And Abraham is condemned to being no more than his past; that which has been said. Simply, God’s promise to Sarah and Abraham that many nations will descend from them goes unfulfilled.

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Here, perhaps, Isaac is emptied of Abraham’s former history that sacrificed life to idolatrous traditions. Without the safe haven of his father’s traditions, Isaac stands exposed or vulnerably open to the unknown, unable to move back, unable to move forward. Yet in his vulnerability, Isaac is open to that which has no historical precedent (in the biblical narrative). In desiring and awaiting the arrival of a stranger whom he does not know and yet will build a new world, Isaac is not present in a way that he can historically locate himself; he is beyond the traditions of his father and mother. He and Rebecca will give birth to Jacob/Israel (Jacob’s name is changed to Israel in the Bible. Israel means one that wrestles or strives with God) whose descendants (the children of Israel, the Israelites) will be chosen by God to usher in God’s moral order. It is in this succession that breathes historical life into Isaac. And although God has promised that many nations will emerge from Abraham’s children, how is it possible for Abraham and Isaac to comprehend what this means any more than one comprehends what it means to promise to live with someone (such as in marriage) through that which is unknown (when making the commitment)? In his openness that resists tradition, Isaac is agreeing to that which he does not yet know and/or understand, just as the Israelites will later agree to a covenant with God that they do not completely understand upon receiving it, but ideally come to understand it through performing it. Isaac’s exposure, openness or historical emptiness is not a-historical, nor is it indifferent. Isaac’s return from Mount Moriah emptied him of tradition or history. The bible does not say that Isaac comes down from Mount Moriah with Abraham. In Genesis 22:19, it is written that Abraham returns from Moriah. The text does not say that Isaac returned with him. In this space where Isaac is not mentioned, we may say that Isaac let his father go, no longer hanging on to Abraham’s robes. In other words, “Isaac now became a man who for the first time could let his father go and who would return later, at his own choosing...”3 In separating from his father, Isaac begins to understand that, for his sake, the world was created. He is responsible for it, not via his father, but independently of his father. This does not mean he may treat the world as a receptacle for all his actions. It means that Isaac is responsible for the

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world, for the peace of the world. He is to exercise the Mishnaic teaching that pervades Levinas; a single person is created for the sake of peace.4 After Moriah and Sarah’s deaths, Isaac is in a liminal space–in between past and future, just as one waiting for a beloved’s answer to a marriage proposal is suspended between past and future. It’s as if Isaac is empty and waiting to be filled with or identified by that which he does not know, Rebecca’s response. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s important not to confuse historical emptiness with a lack of will or indifference. Isaac’s historical emptiness is no more indifferent than his need to breathe air; it is no more indifferent than the unfulfillable, obsessive, desire of God and Israel’s love for one another. Continually calling out for one another, God and Israel both inspire and are inspired by one another as we find when God’s call for a biblical character is answered with “Here I am,” as if saying, “Here I am for you,” or when the call is heard, but rejected, and one runs away from the call as one finds the Israelites often doing when God calls, and as God does in Isaiah 54:8 when God turns away from Israel: “In slight anger, for a moment, I hid My face from you…”5 When called upon, one is awakened out of oneself and finds oneself responding for the other. And from here we may surmise that whoever calls Isaac out or identifies him is the one who inspires or awakens Isaac into subjectivity in the way that God’s breath breathes life into Adam and Eve. The call from God, and the call he will soon hear from Rebecca (manifest in her arrival with the messenger), breathes self-consciousness into Isaac. Simply, the other, such as Rebecca, signifies Isaac’s subjectivity. But before hearing her call, Isaac is empty. His emptiness reveals a passivity that is receptive to the other. (This use of passivity highlights that he does not choose to hear the call of the other. He hears without choice; one does not choose to hear the call of the other, but one may choose how to respond. “That which must be received in order to make freedom of choice possible cannot have chosen, unless after the fact.”6) In philosophically illustrating the emptiness of passivity that signifies one’s subjectivity, Levinas writes: …the emptiness of space would be filled with invisible air, hidden from perception, save in the caress of the wind or the threat of storms, non-perceived but penetrating me even in the retreats of my inwardness, that this invisibility or this emptiness would be breathable or horrible, that this invisibility is non-indifferent and obsesses me before all thematization, that the simple ambiance is imposed as

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an atmosphere to which the subject gives himself in his lungs, without intentions and aims, that the subject could be a lung at the bottom of its substance–all this signifies a subjectivity that suffers and offers itself before taking a foothold in being. It is a passivity, wholly supporting.7

As Isaac remains open, the messenger goes to find him a wife. He is looking for someone who is open to the other, who is concerned for the other, cued by the other. To be cued by the other is to be directed, implicated, demanded, obligated by the other, etc. In other words, the servant is looking for a woman like Isaac: a woman who is open or passive and who is responsible. Upon finding Rebecca, “The servant runs toward her and says, ‘Please, let me sip a little water from your jar.’ Rebecca replies, ‘Drink, my lord’…and she quickly lowered her jar upon her hand and let him drink. When she had let him drink his fill, she said, ‘I will also draw for your camels, until they finish drinking’…. The man meanwhile stood gazing at her, silently wondering whether the Lord had made his errand successful or not.”8 In Rebecca’s offering, she does not ask for anything in return. Her desire is to quench the thirst of the messenger. She receives him; she hosts him. His thirsty face elects her or assigns her responsibility for his thirst. This responsibility is assigned to her without choice; she passively absorbs it as a sponge absorbs water. “To hear a voice speaking to you” (or to see one approaching you for something) “is ipso facto to accept obligation toward the one speaking.”9 Her responsibility here is not because she is a woman and, therefore, biblically subordinate to men. Rebecca’s responsibility arises from the fact that she has water, and the messenger has no water. She responds in compassionate obligation. But there is something else that Rebecca does that has not been discussed, and yet, it is as or even more important than her response to the messenger. Rebecca not only offers the messenger water, she offers and gives water to his camels. This is striking, for the messenger does not ask her to water his camels. Levinas also identifies the importance of her response for the camels. He writes that “She waters the camels who cannot ask to drink.”10 In her gesture we find God-like openness. The love of God manifest in creation is gestured by the hands of Rebecca. Just as God created the water that

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rose for the world, Rebecca lifts the water not merely for a human face but for non-human faces as well. Levinas further expands upon the significance of the water being brought up when he writes: According to the rabbis who wrote commentary on this passage, as soon as Rebecca came out to meet him, the waters in the deep rose above their natural level. Is this a miracle, or a parable? The waters, which were there on the morning of the first day of creation, before the first light shone, and were still a purely physical element, still part of the first desolate tohu vavohu, finally rose. They rose in the service of mercy…. It is a prefiguration or an enactment of the revelation in the responsibility for the first person to come our way–even if it is a beastly creature, so to speak…11

In her gesture towards both the messenger and camels, Rebecca takes responsibility for the other she has passively received. (As said above, this use of ‘passively’ highlights that she does not choose to find the messenger in her horizon; he just comes to her without her choosing.) In discussing this passivity in Levinas’ terms, it is important to note that passivity does not mean one who does not act. Passivity is not helplessness. For example, Rebecca passively receives the messenger in the sense that she sees or hears the messenger without choice. Here I am reminded of John Locke’s epistemology–where secondary qualities enable one’s perception of the primary qualities that one does not choose to perceive, but where perception manifests that one is bound to the world of which one is perceptually conscious. But Locke and Levinas part ways quite quickly, for in Locke’s world one is not sure of what one perceives, one is only sure of one’s perception, representation, or idea of what one perceives; one is not sure that one’s perception matches the perceived object. Locke’s Cartesian-like doubt does not make sense in this biblical framing from Levinas. For example, just as if Rebecca chooses to turn away from the messenger (while seeing that he is a messenger), it follows that she would not have this choice if seeing, hearing and understanding were not happening simultaneously, (or perhaps they are the same in this context,) in her reception of him. In her reception we find that receptive passivity does not exclude activity. It is crucial to understand that for Levinas, human action does not make sense without this notion of passivity.12

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Rebecca doesn’t doubt the messenger’s existence or his thirst. Here we turn away from the skepticism of both Cartesian rationalism and empiricism.13 Rebecca’s interrogation is not driven by doubt or skepticism in which one is trying to know if one knows the object of one’s perception. Before she would or even could doubt, Rebecca first sees that which a modern philosopher later doubts from his or her office; a thirsty man is approaching her. If Rebecca began with this type of philosophical doubt, e.g. doubting that he is a man and that he is thirsty (or her perception of it), what would the proof that he is a man who is thirsty look like? What criterion would she use? Would such proof assure her? When would it assure her? How could she be even sure that he’s a person, let alone a thirsty one? In such a possibility, Rebecca needing proof would most likely lead her to conclude that she is beyond assurance. The narrative provides no room for this type of doubt any more than it would make sense to truly doubt that you’re reading this. Thus, Rebecca doesn’t ask for a proof, as if it would make sense for her to ask; “What is that or this? Prove it!” Rebecca’s interrogation is not driven by modern philosophical skepticism or doubt in need of a proof providing certainty that what she perceives is there or real. It is driven by wonder. Abraham Joshua Heschel writes that, “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.”14 Rebecca’s wonder is interrogating the messenger by asking, “Who are you? Why are you here?” Her wondrous question isn’t necessarily said; it may be postured or gestured towards the messenger who she has already found, seen or heard in her horizon. Perhaps the messenger sees her hospitable wonder and answers with a request for water. Rebecca’s wonder shows that she cannot deny whom she has received. She is not asking, “What is it?”15 And she cannot ask, “Who are you?” to the messenger if the messenger has not appeared in her horizon and is, thus, passively received without her choosing. Asking “who” is a social question implying a dynamic relationship, whereas asking “what” in the philosophical sense of a traditional skeptic is a question that removes one from the social, divorcing one from the other, whom one perceives. The question of “what is it” takes one into abstraction by asking for a fixed or essential definition that is beyond the fluidity of human dynamics.

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Imagine walking into a room, or approaching a stranger in need of water and being asked: “What are you?” How would you answer that question? It would be odd to say the least. For example, would it suffice to respond with, “I’m a person, not a phantom, in need of water?” Rebecca reflexively sees who the messenger is, and therefore, understands how to act towards him. In seeing who the messenger is Rebecca sees that he is thirsty. There is no room for doubt to mediate between her perception of the messenger and the messenger. Simply, this dynamic is not an issue of knowing that he is a human being in need of water, but one of knowing how to address one who is thirsty. Rebecca lifts the water to his lips. In bringing the messenger water, Rebecca shows that she is hospitable and kind. In Rebecca’s response for the messenger, she draws herself into the biblical world. Levinas, in discussing this biblical passage highlighting Rebecca, writes that, “One must bring oneself into the world.”16 If Rebecca turns away from those whose thirst she is able to quench, she has turned away from the (biblical) world. But by going towards those who thirst and receiving them, Rebecca brings herself into the biblical world. The biblical world calls out for Rebecca’s help, a call from which she does not turn away. Good thing. Without her, this world is a world without kindness and, therefore, a world without community. Rebecca’s biblical arrival or introduction creates a new community. In her hospitality, we find the passivity of resistance to a traditional philosophical subject centered selfishness. In other words, the resistance I ascribe to her passivity is not for her, but for us in the subject centered tradition of philosophy. Hospitality appears to be irrelevant for traditional, skeptical philosophy. Hospitality is specific, always given to and for someone. Philosophy is too abstract to be specifically for someone. On this matter, Levinas writes that Hellenic-philosophy “designates the manner in which the universality of the West is expressed, or tries to express itself– rising above the local particularism of the quaint, traditional, poetic or religious.”17 Rebecca does not rise to heights above the particulars of the moment. Instead, she lifts water to the mouth of the one in front of her, right now, who thirsts. In her light, we see that a philosophy solely concerning itself with teleodogma, like Hegel’s Spirit directed dialectic, systematically

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drowns the particular person, the other, and is unable to quench the messenger’s and camels’ thirst. In other words, philosophy (whether it is the flood like systems of thinkers like Hegel or the skeptic exiling the other from philosophical thought ) is inspired by ideas and teleodogma (the dogma of philosophical teleology), whereas Rebecca is inspired by the other. After the messenger converses with Rebecca and her family, the family decides that Rebecca will go to Isaac, but that is only after her family asks her of her desire. “They [her family] called Rebecca and said to her, ‘Will you go with this man?’ And she said, ‘I will.’”18 Rebecca independently goes to Isaac in the same way she independently decides when to go to him. Her family wants her to stay with them for ten more days. Yet, Rebecca decides to go to Isaac now. Rebecca’s decision to go to Isaac comes down to her desire, which is independent from her family. Since Sarah’s death, the house of Abraham is dark and depressing. It is without kindness and, therefore, responsibility. Saying it was without responsibility highlights that Abraham behaved irresponsibly towards Isaac and, therefore, Sarah. Sarah’s witnessing signifies that–for her–the binding was irresponsible. Rebecca’s kindness re-ignites the biblical narrative. Without her presence, the narrative comes to an end. Biblically speaking, without kindness, creation is stunted. There is no creation without it. In Hebrew kindness is hesed. Avivah Zornberg writes that hesed “is gratuitous, free of necessity. It is given at God’s will, so that even Abraham cannot demand it as a right. But without it, everything fails.”19 In this narrative, to be irresponsible towards another is to be unkind. For example, it would have been unkind for Rebecca to deny the messenger and camels the water that she lifted and gave to them. This Atlas-like ability illustrates that Rebecca’s hands create the biblical responsibility that was lost for Abraham and Isaac when Sarah died. Her death brings about biblical incoherence. As Sarah’s departure and death witnesses and creates the possibility of a return to a male dominated household, Rebecca’s arrival disrupts this. In this new community, Rebecca finds herself creating or building. This creativity resists isolation. To create means she already has something to

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work with; this something to work with is received passively, such as the message that Isaac waits for her. The cornerstone of Rebecca’s (and for that matter Isaac’s) individuality or subjectivity is not what each intends, but whom each receives; the cornerstone of their subjectivity is their passivity. To focus on their intent would continually take us away from whom they are intending towards. And before we can focus on what they intend, we must first recognize what they receive: one another. Through this focus, we find that when we focus on the intent of Rebecca or Isaac, their intent not only shows their reception of the other, but their intent is also a response for the other. It is for one another. In other words, their intent is in virtue of the other. This disclosure shows that Rebecca’s intent for Isaac is a response for him and vice versa. Until Rebecca returns with the messenger, Isaac and his father’s world is a world without kindness. Her interruption of their world is unhistorical; she has never happened in that world. Rebecca is the binding that weaves the narrative together. She is the creative catalyst for building a new community and a new history. Hesed is an act of God, a gift from God. Thus, as Rebecca showed kindness to the messenger and the camels, we find her gesture revealing God-like kindness. Whereas the binding of Isaac may be understood as the unbinding of Abraham’s community, Rebecca’s kindness is the binding consummating the binding of Isaac. As Isaac was taken from the violence of his father’s memory20 so that Isaac may live his own life, we find in the above that Rebecca leaves her family freely. In her departure from her family, she takes Isaac beyond the violence of his father’s binding. Her touch is liberating, just as the comforting touch from another liberates one from isolation. Rebecca not only liberates Isaac; her touch gives him a sense of belonging that ushers in the commencement of (God’s desired) community. Taking Isaac beyond the binding is highlighted by the fact that when she and Isaac marry, she does not move into Abraham’s house but into Sarah’s.21 It is important to note that Sarah is a witness to what went wrong with Abraham. What went wrong is historical; the history of sacrificing one’s child for one’s God. Thus, the consequence of moving into Sarah’s tent is that Rebecca does not subordinate herself to Abraham’s (sacrificial tradition or violent) history. Rebecca moves into the house or tent without such violent history, Sarah’s

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house, where Sarah’s ghost like presence haunts the history from which Rebecca helps Isaac transcend, freeing them–as Levinas might say–“from traditionalisms. Let us no longer attempt to save it [tradition] through patriarchal virtues of the group.”22 Both women are absent from the world inhabited by Abraham and up until now by Isaac. In fact, Sarah’s absence contributes to Rebecca and Isaac’s intimacy. Sarah has left her home, which now welcomes a new beginning. Her home is both familiar and other to familiarity. The home is filled with memories for Isaac that would naturally be recollected upon moving in, but the emptiness of the home creates a space in which Rebecca is not lost to such recollections, but is able to introduce Isaac to new possibilities. Here, it “is not long historical tradition that counts. It is the personal nature of persons that count.”23 Both women are absent, albeit differently. Sarah is literally absent and Rebecca is absent from Isaac’s past. But each of their respective absences brings about hospitality, a necessary condition for intimacy. We find a frame for this in Levinas: And the other whose presence is discreetly an absence, with which is Accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the field of Intimacy, is the Woman. The woman is the condition for recollection, the Interiority of the Home, and inhabitation. 24 25

There is a void in the history in Sarah’s tent, for she not only made an exodus from her idolatrous ancestry, she also made an exodus from the alleged historical violence manifest in Abraham’s gestures towards their son and, therefore, towards Sarah. Sarah’s tent thus offers a beginning, which has not begun. Since both Rebecca and Isaac are beyond the other’s history, their meeting is unhistorical; thus upon moving into Sarah’s tent, Rebecca and Isaac can begin. In their beginning, we find that they will not be harmed by the violent past (of idolatry). Their history is not the issue. This insight can be gleaned from the narrative which does not focus on what they bring to the marriage, but what they create out of the marriage. The issue here is twofold; first, we have the notion of reception, which we’ve already discussed. Second, we have the production of community;

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that which reception discloses. Levinas writes: “With the dwelling the latent birth of the world is produced.”26 The community begins with Rebecca’s arrival. After moving into Sarah’s tent, the biblical narrative jumps twenty years. Isaac marries Rebecca at forty. The next thing we know is that Rebecca is pregnant, and she gives birth when Isaac is sixty years old. Here we find that their community or house is not merely for themselves but for others. Their house is not the house for Abraham or Sarah or Isaac or Rebecca. Their house, as we later find out in the biblical narrative, is for their children, Esau and Jacob or Israel.27 It is the house for and of Israel. But creating Esau and Jacob was difficult. Rebecca had a difficult pregnancy, full of great pain. From her pain emerges a philosophical question. “Why do I exist?”28 Rebecca then goes “to inquire of the Lord.29 It is here that Rebecca’s role as a philosopher30 is spotlighted. She asks “Why Life? Why am I in the world?”31 Instead of sitting passively with the pain she finds in her horizon, Rebecca interrogates life. The sixteenth and early seventeenth century Jewish commentator, Rabbi Judah Loew, The Maharal of Prague, writes that Rebecca asks herself before going to God for an answer, “‘Why then am I sitting passively, why do I not investigate? It is my task to seek out explanations.’–And she went to seek God.”32 In explaining this passage, Avivah Zornberg writes: In Maharal’s reading, Rebecca confronts the despair of the self, and discovers that the question of meaning has a dynamic force. Her despair is not to circle hollowly upon itself, but to launch searchings and researchings, inquiries for God…. For Maharal, the questioning itself is a mode of quest. The self–the sense of “I am”–is threatened by lassitude, by vacancy, by the dearth of given meanings.33

Rebecca’s search is unaccepting of historically given meanings. She is not subordinated to history. Her posture passively resists that history by seeking out the unhistorical she finds in her horizon: God. And in her passivity that both resists and rejects historically given meanings, we find an interrogating posture. Zornberg sums up her stature by commenting, “Rebecca is a philosopher who interrogates life, harshly, skeptically–puts life to the question.”34 Her philosophical question is not abstract. She is not asking, what is life. Her question of why is really a question of how, how to live, or how to

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justify such pain or life filled with pain. Her interrogating posture emerges from the loss of history and tradition, the emptiness of no history. She longs for meaning. Thus, she is not asking “what is life?” That question would be too abstract, and Rebecca is not abstract. She is asking, “Why are you doing this to me?” She feels persecuted35 by God; perhaps because she is persecuted by God. We can see this in her asking for an answer from God. She does not try to answer the question alone. If she were asking, “What is life,” she could have answered the question by herself, just as most philosophers try to anticipate and answer the other’s question before speaking to the other. This is why Franz Rosenzweig writes that traditional philosophers really do not need the other, that traditional philosophy is a “solitary business, even when it is done in common by several who philosophize together. For even then, the other is only raising the objections I should raise myself, and this is the reason why the great majority of philosophic dialogues–including most of Plato’s–are so tedious. In actual conversation, something happens.”36 Rebecca’s question is not for her but for the other she finds imposing this life upon her. Another way of phrasing her question is, “Why me?” or “How can you do this to me?” Her asking how presupposes that she stands before who she is not. She does not ask how to live in a vacuum. Her asking “How” presupposes a response to whom she stands before. The question of how arises in response to hearing a call that comes to her. Simply, “Who are you?” “How come you’re here?” “What do you want from me?” The question arises from the dynamics of response to and for the other. Her question presupposes that she has received the other, or in this case, she is asking God. In other words, Rebecca’s philosophical posture is not abstract. She begins with the other, or God in this case, who inspires life. Her question shows that she has received more than herself. If not, then who is she responding to? I say it this way to show that her question is a response not merely to herself but for other than herself. Rebecca’s question manifests the themes discussed above. In brief review, her question arises from being inspired by the other. Such inspiration precedes choice, showing that one receives the other before one chooses to face the other or turn away from the other. Here we find the passivity of

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response that Levinas describes. To receive the other without choice is to be identified by the other before one identifies oneself. To be identified and, thus, to receive the other before one chooses, shows one is vulnerable to the other. For example, let’s say when walking to your office you suddenly hear your name called from afar. You don’t choose to be called out, but still you find yourself called out or identified. The question isn’t whether you’re going to respond, but how you’re going to respond. What response are you going to give? To be awakened out of yourself by such a call is often a place of vulnerability, where one is exposed to the other. This vulnerability is passive. Sustaining such vulnerability is to resist egology. Thus, it is in passivity that we find the resistance to the selficating, egological self of philosophy, the self that asks, “What am I?” Rebecca does not ask what am I here for in a self-enclosed world of self. She asks this in response to and for the other. Again, this is not abstract. Rebecca is not questioning life. She is interrogating the other who stands before her in a posture that reveals that her passivity is not indifferent, but obsessive or prejudicial. It is as obsessive as her breath for air. Philosophizing from her response shows that Rebecca is not philosophically marveling at being but is wondering about what the other is doing to her and why she should accept the other’s persecuting posture. Here we philosophically find, as Levinas writes, “being divesting itself, emptying itself of its being, turning itself inside out, and if it can be put thus, the fact of “otherwise than being.”37 To wonder about being is abstract, taking one away from the life one is abstracting from. Such abstraction follows life and is self-centered from the perspective of the other who is not abstract. Rebecca’s philosophy is otherwise than being. Her philosophical response is not a wondering about being, but doing. To wonder about doing is other centered. By taking her question to God, the other, she is asking, “Why am I here?” or “Why are you doing this to me?” or “Who am I for you?” or “What am I to you?” or “Why should I be doing this for you?” She is not asking this in solitude but in relation to whom she finds herself living. Abraham Joshua Heschel writes that “the wonder of doing, is no less amazing than the marvel of being.”38 He proclaims, “IT IS NOT ENOUGH for me to be able to say “I am;” I want to know who I am, and in relation to whom

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do I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: what [who] am I here for?”39 In addition to doing something about her pain– going to God–remember that when we first met Rebecca, we do not find her thinking, but doing. We first meet Rebecca offering the thirsty messenger water. And philosophizing about this follows her activity. Here, her act precedes our philosophical ideas about her act. In Rebecca, we find the philosopher who philosophizes in deed, but not doing or acting, as Levinas notes, “as if the rest of the universe were there only to receive the action…”40 Throughout her biblical life, Rebecca resists the violence of acting as if the universe is there to only receive her actions. We find this in her interrogating posture. If the universe is there merely for her, she would not interrogate the other. She could ask herself her question as if there is no other. However, she is too receptive to fall into her own ego. In Rebecca, we find a person whose way of life shows us resistance to the philosophical conduct of thinking only in teleodogmatic abstractions and speaking to only ears, all the while narcissistically forgetting that the ears the traditional philosopher speaks for has a mouth and a tongue. Rebecca hears; she does not only speak. To speak as if the world is there only for her thoughts is violent. Rebecca’s life resists such violence. Her resistance to violence is also a resistance to histories of violent idolatry, just as Moses’ mother and sister resist the violent idolatry of Pharaoh, the epitome of a biblical character who conducts himself as if the world is there merely for him to do as he pleases. The idolatry of that time is biblically characterized as narcissistic. Rebecca’s resistance is found in her “other” centered gestures. To philosophize merely for thought is problematic in dialogic philosophy. Martin Buber writes, “He who studies with an intent other than to act, says the Talmud, it would have been more fitting for him never to have been created.”41 Buber goes on to say that “It is bad to have teaching without the deed… the simple man who acts is given preference over the scholar whose knowledge is not expressed in deeds.”42 Rebecca is certainly not simple, but her philosophizing is about doing. The answer God gives to her

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question of, “What am I here for?” is not to think in the abstract but to be responsible to and for others. In her womb are two lives that will create the world that follows her. She is responsible for those lives. As a philosopher, her behavior instructs us; in her deed we do not find her asking “to be or not to be?” Rather Rebecca is asking how to be. Buber writes, “He whose deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; but he whose wisdom exceeds his deed, his wisdom shall not endure.”43 In contrast to the scholar whose knowledge exceeds his deeds, Rebecca’s philosophy translates into how to live. In Rebecca’s horizon, to let the other philosophize without her–or for her to philosophize without the other–is destructive. It lends itself to thinking in unreal possibilities, which are no more than mischaracterizations. One can think of all types of possibilities that the other may be doing to oneself, but Rebecca does not fall into that trap. She interrogates the other. This shows that she does not trust herself to think alone and also that she does not trust the other to think without her. Rebecca’s orientation resists the Hobbesian (Thomas Hobbes) state of nature and the epistemic distrust found in both Cartesian rationalism and the empiricism of John Locke. Rebecca is an example of a philosopher who is not thinking by herself but with the other. She shows us in philosophy how to resist the selficating nature of what Levinas calls egology, and, thus, how to epistemically disrupt the selficating roots of doubt underwriting the traditional Western philosophical journey. From her, we have an opportunity to philosophically learn how to interrogate others, not just those in philosophy, but outside philosophy. Only then will we in philosophy be in a position to expose, flush out, and therefore, resist mischaracterization: the idolatry of ideas and teleodogma. In saying this, I am not saying we need to completely throw out our obsession with the appearance and reality of ideas that privileges representations or ideas of the other over the actual other. I am saying that in the spirit of Rebecca, we need to resist it so that this form of philosophy does not own the philosophical conversation. Until such resistance is the norm, Rebecca remains other to traditional, Western philosophy. Her (un)philosophical kindness may be heard as both a call and a response for philosophy, the other. And as other to traditional philosophy, Rebecca is a woman of hospitable action, whose action calls

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upon philosophy to stop its theoretical exile from life, and to stop running away from the approach of the stranger. Simply, Rebecca lifts a cup filled with ethical living to our lips.

Chapter VI Conclusion The “responses” constituting the dialogue signify–without this being a simple pun–“responsibility.… Neither [begins] in a mystical valuation of a few values having the status of Platonic ideas, nor on the basis of a prior thematization, knowledge and theory of being, culminating in a self-knowledge of which ethics would constitute a consequence or appendix, nor in the universal law of Reason. Ethics begins before the Exteriority of the other, before other people, and, as I like to put, before the face of the other, which engages my responsibility by its human expression, which cannot–without being change, immobilized–be held objectively at a distance. —Emmanuel Levinas1

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hrough the biblical narrative of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebecca, I methodologically exercised a collagical method. The goal of this method was to illustrate Ethics as First Philosophy while showing how to resist teleodogma. In doing this, I philosophized from a variety of circumstances. When one philosophizes from circumstances, one finds that Ethics as First Philosophy is about one’s conduct, not a theory about ethics. In addition, when one philosophizes out of circumstances one is shown how to resist teleodogma. In bringing these two themes together, one finds that circumstances demand that one philosophize about conduct, at least ethically speaking, whereas teleodogmatic discussions of ethics takes one away from ethical conduct.

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A Collagical Method and Teleodogma Levinas’s approach, like that of Rosenzweig and Buber, is not systematic, but collagical. As explained in chapter one, these thinkers do not reduce their arguments or explanations to a linear, logical method, or totalizing synthesis. They explain and argue from circumstantial pictures or illustrations. They (more often than not) try to philosophize from circumstances. Their philosophical insights regularly emerge from a collage or the convergence of various circumstantial pictures, just as the insights in this book emerged from the biblical narrative. This makes their philosophies impenetrable to philosophers who read them for a specific linear theme and totalizing synthesis. In other words, a collage is difficult to follow if one is looking for a totalizing synthesis or a specific theme laid out in linear fashion. This is one reason they use conversation to exemplify their philosophies. In conversation, one’s dialogue or circumstance is often collagical, moving in a variety of directions without an end in sight, but not necessarily losing the threads between these directions and connections. This collagical approach resists the idolatry of teleodogma. When a philosopher limits her or himself to teleodogma, the philosopher is practicing idolatry. I say idolatry to emphasize and remind you that in a teleodogmatic orientation a false object directs a philosopher’s subjectivity, eclipsing the philosopher from the other. Here we find a field for mischaracterization. The mischaracterizations that concern this work are those of turning people or a person into a representation. When one does not resist a philosophical mischaracterization, when it goes unchallenged, the other– mischaracterized into a representation–becomes a philosophical object to play with as one might play with a toy. Since a person is not a representation, a person is indiscernible in a system of knowledge built upon representations. Thus, many philosophers (in their teleodogmatic search) often miss the mark in analyzing a representation of a person instead of being directed by the person, the other who is not a representation. Characterizing someone as a representation is a mischaracterization. It treats the other as a piece of plastic, and a person is not a piece of plastic. This is a central concern for Levinas. He writes:

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I have thought the uniqueness and the alterity of the unique Is concretely the face of the other [hu]man, the original Epiphany of which is not in its visibility a plastic form, but in ‘appresentation.’ The thought awakened to the face of the other [hu]man is not thought of …a representation, but from the start a thought for…, a non-indifference for the other, breaking the equilibrium of the even and impassive soul of pure knowledge, an awakening to the other [hu]man in [her or] his uniqueness.2

This awakening to the other is indiscernible for knowledge, because it also precedes knowledge. For example, when God calls Abraham away from himself, Abraham does not discern that he is hearing God. What would discernment look like here? He has no knowledge of God, thus–what criterion would help him discern that God is talking to him? None, he just hears God. However, if one is invested in saying that he does discern that this is God–in that it is no one else–it still follows that he hears God before he discerns or comes to know that this is God. In other words, he hears God before he knows–if he ever comes to know–that this is God. Hearing God before discerning that it is God shows that he receives God before knowing that this is God. Hearing is a form of reception. This reception is not a choice. Abraham has no choice in hearing God. He just finds Gods’ words in his ears. As said, when God calls Abraham away from himself, Abraham is not free to hear or not to hear God. However, he does have the freedom to choose his response for God. He could ignore God and walk away, or he could follow God’s request. Either way, his freedom to do what he wants follows his reception of God. This issue of freedom becomes more pronounced in the following discussion of responsibility. Through the example of hearing, one finds the Levinasian insight that Abraham’s initial interaction with God is one of reception or hospitality. Equating reception with hospitality brings in the dialogic notion of responsibility. As a host, Abraham is responsible for whom he has received. Thus, like the initial reception of hearing, hospitality and responsibility precede Abraham’s freedom to choose to hear or receive God. Abraham’s freedom from God would be his choice to stay and listen or to break away from his initial responsibility for God. In other words, Abraham is free to break away from God. However, Abraham has no initial choice in being responsible for God, just as he has no choice in initially hearing God. In addition, we not only find this responsibility in that Abraham hears, but also in his

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response to what he hears. This is why Levinas writes that “The “responses” constituting the dialogue signify–without this being a simple pun– “responsibility”…”3 If this initial responsibility precedes freedom from the other, it follows that the responsibility Levinas speaks of is not submission, but emerges from passivity or the vulnerability of the self to the other, kind of like the passivity or vulnerability of breathing in the air that one does not choose to breathe. In other words, responsibility is no more submissive than the breath one takes,4 just as responsibility is no more submissive than hearing what one does not choose to hear. It would be odd to say, “I have submitted to breathing.” Emerging from these insights is Levinas’s notion of substitution, which is at the heart of Ethics as First Philosophy. Ethics as first Philosophy is where the alterity of the other substitutes for the traditional philosophical subject or self. When Levinas calls for substituting the other for the self, he is phenomenologically describing the sources that assign responsibility. The source does not merely originate in the responsible subject, Abraham, but in the Other, God, who identifies the subject as responsible. It is as if God assigns Abraham’s responsibility. As with hearing, this calling for Abraham’s responsibility precedes the (traditional notion of free) choice to take on or not take on the assigned responsibility. Choice follows God’s assignation of responsibility. In addition, Levinas explains that freedom of choice is not the only way to understand freedom, such as the choice to follow through or not follow through on one’s responsibility for the other, can also feel like enchainment to oneself. He writes: “Substitution frees the subject from ennui, that is, from enchainment to itself, where the ego suffocates in itself….”5 As a final point, one’s ethical identity (often) begins with the other, not with oneself. If one begins philosophizing responsibility from a self, who precedes the other’s assignation, one has missed the dialogic meaning of responsibility. With this said, I have a problem with this work. I am speaking to the already converted. I suspect outside of those who intuitively agree with me, my suggestions are another theory, perhaps a teleodogmatic theory. I say teleodogmatic to show that this book had a directive goal, to resist teleod-

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ogma by privileging a philosophical method that privileges circumstances. In other words, this was my telos and directed the book. However, even if this is the case, it does not throw out the consequential insights from philosophizing from circumstances. From here, the question becomes how do I persuade the unconverted. First, my goal is not to persuade teleodogmatic thinkers, although deep down I would like to. Nevertheless, my hope is not that they give up teleodogma, but recognize the problems with fixating on it. I do not want to philosophically own the conversation(s) as many teleodogmatists do. The question is how does one resist teleodogma without working to own the conversation. There is a variety of ways, but I am going to focus on one, exercising resistance at the pedagogical level. Those of us persuaded by these dialogic insights ought to stop teaching our students in terms of representations or at minimum bring up the problems with teaching in terms of representations by teaching a circumstantial philosophical approach alongside a teleodogmatic approach. One consequence of this pedagogy is that some of the students, hopefully, will take the insights into their other classes and resist other philosophers’ limiting philosophical practices or discussions to teleodogmatic enterprises. Pragmatically, it would be important that these students do not try to throw out teleodogma, but instead expose its limitations. I say pragmatic to protect students from resisting to the point of failing the class. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, it is pragmatic and important for them to exercise a form of resistance that does not try to own the conversation, but instead demands dialogue or discussion about the necessities for different philosophical approaches or methods when practicing philosophy. It is my opinion that such resistance to teleodogma is not just about having harmonic discussions, but also an anarchical, disruptive or interruptive discussions. Disruptive or interruptive discussions–more often than not–implicitly disallow one or others from owning the conversation; the discussion will not develop into the same opinion for everyone. Anarchical dialogue may be uncomfortable, but sustaining philosophical plurality demands it. In one respect, this is nothing new for philosophy. Disagreement has moved the tradition forward. However, this disagreement, more often than not, is at the teleodogmatic level. In addition, I have

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met very few professors who teach from circumstances and, thus, teach resistance to teleodogma. By circumstances, I am not speaking on a general level, but as exercised in this book; I am speaking about specific circumstances from which philosophical insights emerge. Finally, through this pedagogy, I hope students learn not only to resist mischaracterization at the philosophical level, but the social as well. If my classes are any indication, students will learn this. In other words, the importance of teaching this approach is one way of showing how to resist a mischaracterization, resisting it before it becomes a social gesture, before such a mischaracterization or representation like ‘illegal alien’ takes root in our society.

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Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 81. Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 42. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 135. When the label “the philosopher” is used, it is used to describe many traditional Hellenic-Philosophers, not all philosophers philosophizing in the Hellenic-tradition. Franz Rosenzweig, Letter to Rudolph Ehrenberg , presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), pp. 24-25. Ibid. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Franz Rosenzweig, The Personal Standpoint, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 179. Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 71. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985), p. 3. Franz Rosenzweig, Letter to Frederick Meinke, presented in Hilary Putnam’s introduction to Franz Rosenzweig’s, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 13. Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 110. Ibid., p.140. Ibid. Ibid., p. xiv. Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 41. Franz Rosenzweig The Star of Redemption (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press,1985), p. 187. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 199.

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Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. x. Franz Rosenzweig, The Builders, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1955), p. 73. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy (New York: William Morrow And Company, 1991), p. 240. Ibid. Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 110. Martin Buber, The Letters of Martin Buber, Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer and Paul Mendes-Flohr, (Shocken Books, Inc. New York, NY. 1991), p. 29. Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber (Cleveland: Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 285-286. Martin Buber, The Letters of Martin Buber, Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer and Paul Mendes-Flohr, (New York: Shocken Books, Inc. 1991), p. 30. Ibid. Ibid. It would be misleading to solely ground Buber in Jewish Thought, just as it would be for Rosenzweig. Buber is influenced by both Nietzsche and Kant. Kant’s argument that the Other is an end in itself resonated with Buber as did Kant’s explanation regarding the Noumena and the Phenomena. For Kant, the Phenomenal world is the gateway to the Noumenal world, which is beyond experience, just as for Buber one’s encounter with the phenomenal world or the Other may reveal God. Emmanuel Levinas, Outside The Subject (Stanford: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 22. Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 114. On Jewish Learning Franz Rosenzweig, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), pages 114-115. Emmanuel Levinas, Outside The Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 25. Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 106. Ibid., p. 103 Emmanuel Levinas, Outside The Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 35. Ibid. Jacques Derrida, "Violence and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," in Writing and Difference (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978) By the history of Western philosophy, I mean the standard canon as presented by people like Frederick Copplestone. I emphasize tradition, for Levinas often reads traditional philosophers untraditionally. His readings of Hellenic philosophers, such as Descartes, often say that which the tradition has not said of the philosopher. In other words, Levinas’ reading of noteworthy Hellenic philosophers sometimes critiques the traditional readings of the said philosopher.

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Note: as noted above, when I say “the philosopher” I am not talking about all Western philosophers but rather most traditional philosophers. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 175-176. Ibid., p.175. When translating Levinas, notable Levinas scholars such as Richard Cohen and Alphonso Lingis, capitalize the O of Other (autrui) when Levinas is referring to the personal other, and use a lower case o when Levinas is referring to otherness in general. Cohen notes this in Ethics and Infinity. My use differs from their use and deviates from Levinas. In serving the agenda of this book, I use a lower case o (other) when I am referring to a specific person or otherness in general. The context makes my use of (o)ther clear as to whether or not I am speaking about a specific person. When the ‘o’ of other is capitalized (Other), I am referring to God. Ibid., pp. 134-135. Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), p. 106. When the philosopher stands accused of trying to know everything, the discussion of knowledge is limited to ‘knowing that something is something’ as opposed to ‘knowing how to do something.’ For example, knowing what love is quite different from knowing how to love someone, such as one’s partner. One does not need to philosophically know what love is (as if the definition is a necessary condition for loving another) in order to know how to love others. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 199.

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Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 212. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 8. In the following pages, I use the name Abram for Abraham and Sarai for Sarah. I will use these names until God changes them to Abraham and Sarah. In discussing what Levinas means by Ethics as First Philosophy, I use a great deal of Rosenzweig and Buber, but my turn to them is from Levinas. I am exercising somewhat of a creative license in fixating on idolatry. Genesis does not directly confront idolatry. It is not until Moses that we see the direct fight against it. When Levinas capitalizes the O of Other, he is referring to the personal other, and when he uses a lower case o, he is referring to otherness in general. In this book, when I use a capital O (Other), I am referring to God. When I use a lower case o (other), I am referring to a specific person or otherness in general. The context makes my use of (o)ther clear as to whether or not I am speaking about a specific person. When the ‘o’ of other is capitalized (Other), I am referring to God.

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The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 94. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 199. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 74. Ibid. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 200. Ibid. It is my opinion that this obsession goes all the way back to Plato’s discussion of one’s wax like brain in the Theatetus. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 141. This use of same is from Levinas. The meaning of this unfolds as the book progresses. Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 10. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 199. Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. William W. Hallo (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985) p. 175. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 106. Proximity is a term often used by Levinas. In his use, proximity often seems to be the alterity of the other. In the Time of the Nations Levinas writes on page 110 that “Alterity becomes proximity.” Italics are mine. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 147. Franz Rosenzweig, The Personal Standpoint, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 179. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 95. Ibid. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 52. Ibid. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 8. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 97. Ibid., p. 76. Ibid., p. 97.

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Ibid, p.101. Franz Rosenzweig, Understanding the Sick and the Healthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 42. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 205. Ibid., pp. 190-191. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 44. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 58. Ibid. Ibid., p. 174. Martin Buber, The Way of Response (New York: Schocken Books,1966), p. 130.

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Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 8. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 125. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p.91. Judith S. Antonelli, In the Image of God–A Feminist Commentary on the Torah (Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc.,1995), p. 28. Ibid., pp. 27-29. Ibid. Ibid. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 97. Ibid. Emmanual Levinas, Outside The Subject, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 44. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 23-25. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, (Perennial Classics, 2001), p. xviii. Byron L. Sherwin, Fear of God, an essay in Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, ed. By Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, (The Free Press, 1988), p. 249-250. It would be a wrong to not point out that religiously speaking, it is possible Abram trusted that God would not allow Sarai to be harmed. The problem with this reasoning is if Abram trusts that God will protect Sarai, why does he not trust that God will not allow him to be killed. One could argue that Abram sees Sarai, but does not care about her. However, I shy away from this. Such an argument is contrary to how Abram lives towards others. He often shows great concern for other peoples’ well-being or safety. For example, when

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Abram argues with God, trying to persuade God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abram is concerned for the citizen’s safety. Not seeing Sarai is a thematic problem for Abram, or perhaps I should say for Sarai. In the next chapter, you will find that God scolds Abram for not seeing and hearing Sarai. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 100. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 122. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 127. Note: When one inverts ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ one finds that it means ‘Thou Shalt Cause Life.’ Ibid., p. 106. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 105. Ibid. p. 106 The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 97. When I say bodily fact of life, I am presupposing a type of dualism. It is not Cartesian. The dualism I speak of is between epiphenomenal fantasy and activity. Activity, so to speak, is to be touched. One is not touched by epiphenomena. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 97. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 74. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 153. This quote is out of the context in which Levinas was writing. He is not talking about Sarai when he says this. He is talking about being a prisoner of the Nazis. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., p. 167. Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 110. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 77. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 127.

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The Torah, A Modern Commentary, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 146. Ibid. Soren Kierkegaard, Fear And Trembling (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 83. Ibid., p. 82. Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 76. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 74. Ibid. Ibid., p.76. Ibid., p.74. For example, this way of learning is present when one learns to drive. One does not merely learn to drive from reading the driver’s manual or from merely being told how to drive. One learns to drive by getting behind the wheel of a car. Like driving, God is teaching Abraham through experience or performance. Another possible reason for God needing to show this to Abraham is that God does not want Abraham imitating or performing God’s destructive gestures towards others, e.g., wiping away Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis does not directly speak about the issue of idolatry. It is not until the Book of Exodus that the problem is directly addressed. But analyses of Genesis often assume idolatry as an implicit issue. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 6. Ibid. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 147. Jacques Derrida, Adieu To Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 111. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 171. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 127. Emmanuel Levinas, , In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 171. Ibid. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 145 Ibid, p. 148. Ibid. Ibid.

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Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 138. Susannah Heschel, Introduction to Abraham Joshua Heschel’s, The Prophets (Perennial Classics, 2001), p. xviii Jacques Derrida, Adieu To Levinas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 92. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 138. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire, (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 131. The Pentateuch and Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn, N.Y.: S. S. & R Publishing Company, Inc., 1976), p. 200. Ibid. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 151. Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, (New York: Schocken Books, 1955), p. 91. Ibid. Ein Sof is a Kabalistic name for God. It means The Infinite. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 146. Ibid., p. 150. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 152. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 123143. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 86. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 156. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 123. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991), p. 38. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 129. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 166. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 86. What I mean by “the idolatry of patriarchy” is twofold and stretches what one may normally mean by it.

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One, women are generally subordinated to the men in the biblical narrative and in traditional interpretations of the narrative, which I find to be the case in Kierkegaard’s lack of reflection on Sarah. Two, I am suggesting that one traditional Christian reading, which sees Genesis 22 as foreshadowing God’s (the Father) sacrifice of his son on behalf of humanity, also suffers from the Patriarchal standpoint often read into the bible. In this paper’s account, in which Sarah is not forgotten, Abraham’s faith in God is not the sole focus. Further, Sarah’s standpoint ruptures reading Genesis 22 as foreshadowing God’s sacrifice of his son. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 132 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Wisdom of Heschel (Toronto: Collins Publisher, 1986), p. 313. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 6. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 126-127. Emmanuel Levinas, Proper Names (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p. 74. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 86.

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Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 167. Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 161. The Torah, Edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 152. The Talmud’s Mishnah Sanhedrin 4,5 states: “Only a single person was created in the beginning, to teach if any individual causes a single person to perish, Scripture considers as though an entire world has been destroyed, and if any one saves a single person, Scripture considers as if a whole world had been saved. Again, just a single person was created, for the sake of peace.” The Jewish Study Bible, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 893. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, Tr. by Annette Aronowicz, (Indiana University Press, 1990), page 37. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 180. The Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p.162-163. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, Tr. by Annette Aronowicz, (Indiana University Press, 1990), page 48.

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Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 134. Ibid. Ibid., p. 96. Most, if not all, encounters in literature can be interpreted to make this claim against Rene Descartes, which may mean he is wrong to exercise such doubt when it comes to other minds or persons. Note: Descartes’ logic may be sound, but how we live shows that he would be wrong to truly exercise such doubt outside the language-game of logical skepticism. The point here is that Levinas does not exercise or suffer from the epistemic skepticism or doubt of other minds or persons endemic to both modern and analytic philosophy. In addition, Jewish intellectual traditions do not suffer from this type of epistemic skepticism or doubt. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), p 11. My use of “what is it” is in a strict modern and analytic philosophical sense, not in the ordinary sense of everyday life in which one can easily imagine a circumstance in which such a question is asked responsively in the sense of my discussion of “who are you?” The problem is that many philosophers apply the question (“what is it?”) to ordinary life in the hopes that it will be answered with an essential definition. Ibid., p. 134. Emmanuel Levinas, In the Time of the Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 134-135. Torah (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), p. 16 . Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire (New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 141. This is shown after The Binding of Isaac when Isaac does not seemingly come down from Moriah with his father. Here, I am suggesting that Rebecca initiates the move into Sarah’s tent. Since she is the family decision maker, and Isaac is presented as passive, I suggest that it was Rebecca’s idea to move into Sarah’s tent. In addition, the text allows for this move, in so far as the text does not tell us how the decision was made to move into Sarah’s tent. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, Tr. by Annette Aronowicz, (Indiana University Press, 1990), page 105. Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, Tr. by Annette Aronowicz, (Indiana University Press, 1990), page 107. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, (Duquesne University Press, 1969), p, 155. In using Levinas to frame this passage, I am not suggesting that this is a truth about women, nor is it true for every circumstance. But my use of Levinas gives new possibilities for interpreting Isaac and Rebecca while also breathing circumstantial understanding of Levinas’s explanation. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, (Duquesne University Press, 1969), p, 157. God changes Jacob’s name to Israel. Israel means one who wrestles or strives with God. Avivah Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire,(New York: Doubleday, 1996), p. 159. Ibid.

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36

37

38

39 40

41

42 43

Notes

B

111

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), pp. 111-112. Franz Rosenzweig, The New Thinking, presented by Nahum N. Glatzer in Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought(New York: Schocken Books, 1953), p. 199. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), p. 117. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Wisdom of Heschel (Toronto: Collins Publisher, 1986), p. 27. Ibid., p. 4. Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 6. Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber(Cleveland: The World Publishing Company:1956), p. 321. Ibid. Martin Buber, The Writings of Martin Buber (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1956), p. 321.

Chapter VI 1 2

3

4

5

Levinas, Outside The Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 35. Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 139. Emmanuel Levinas, Outside The Subject (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), p. 142. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), pp. 114-115. Ibid., p. 124.

Index Abraham, vii, 22, 26, 47, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 94, 96, 97 Abram, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Adorno, Theodore, 5 Akedah, 69, 72 Antonelli, Judith, 46 Binding of Isaac, 86 Buber, Martin, vii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvi, 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 39, 41, 91, 92, 95, 103 Chanter, Tina, xii Cohen, Herman, 3 Collagic, xv Collagical, 23, 94, 95 Daniel, 9 Derrida, x, xi, xii, xiii, ix, 56 Derrida, Jacques, 16, 65, 68 Dialogic Philosophy, 27, 32, 91 Egypt, 45, 46, 48, 52 Ein Sof, 66, 70 Esau, 88 Genesis, 46, 60, 62, 69, 71, 74, 79 Gibbs, Robert, 32 Glatzer, Nahum, 103

God, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 45, 47, 53, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 97 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 5 Harah, 46 Hassidism, 35 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 5, 13, 60, 61, 84, 85 Heidegger, Martin, 15, 16, 17 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 5, 47, 68, 83, 90 Heschel, Susannah, 47, 68 Hesed, 85 Hobbes, Thomas, 92 Husserl, Edmund, 15, 31 Irigaray, Luce, xii Isaac, 22, 26, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94 Isaiah, 66, 80 Israel, 10, 79, 80, 88 Jesus, 3 Judah ben Samuel he-Hasid, 48 Kant, Emmanuel, x, xi, xiii, 41 Kierkegaard, Soren, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 70, 74 King, Martin Luther, 5 Kiriath-Arba, 72, 73 Lehrhaus, 5, 10

114

A

The Unbinding of Isaac

Levinas, Emmanuel, vii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvi, ix, 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 103 Lingis, Alphonso, 103 Locke, John, 82, 92 Loew, Rabbi Judah. See Maharal Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew), 88 Maimonides, Moses, 9, 26 Mendehlson, Moses, 9 Meno, 21 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 78 Milkah, 46 Mishnah, 67 Moses, 9, 26, 69, 91 Mount Moriah, 60, 75, 79 Nachmanides (Rabbi Moses Ben Nachman), 48 Nachor, 46 Nazi, 10, 15, 16 Pepperzak, Adrian, xii Pharaoh, 44, 45, 46, 48, 52, 53, 54, 91 Plato, 7, 14, 20, 21, 22, 30, 35, 89 Plaut, W. Gunther, 69 Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki), 46, 68, 69, 72

B

Rebecca, 22, 26, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94 Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugene, 3 Rosenzweig, Franz, vii, ix, x, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, xvi, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 69, 89, 95, 103 Sacrifice, 60, 61, 68 Sarah, 22, 26, 60, 62, 63, 64, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 94 Sarai, 34, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Sefer Hasidim, 48 Socrates, 20, 21, 22, 30 Sodom and Gommorah, 63, 72 Talmud, 8, 12, 67, 91 Teleodogma, 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 54, 84, 92, 94, 95, 98, 99 Terah, 26, 29, 46 Torah, 13 Ulysses, 28 Unbinding of Isaac, 59, 68, 77 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 35 Wolfshehl, Karl, 6 Yiskah, 46 Zionism, 10 Zornberg, Avivah, xv, ix, 68, 72, 74, 85, 88

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