Infinity as Second Person: The Transcendental Possibility of Experience

In the previous section, we partly clarified Levinass thinking from Rosenzweigs criticism of totalitarian thinking. The concept of the Nought and the there is were here central. This first criticism of totality however demands a deeper and a more problematic concept as well. 1. The concept of subjectivity of Rosenzweig and Levinas can be viewed as a reaction to the totalization which goes along with idealism and phenomenology, but also as taking seriously the death experiences. 2. But neither thought is a nihilism. The critique is the impulse for a new start in thinking: The Adabsurdumfhrung is at the same time a Rettung. 3. However, eithers concept of subjectivity must also be apprehended from above, from what transcends humanity or from the in -human, i.e. the trans-human. Their criticism of totality is borne by the relationship with infinity and is of greater importance than a revolutionary critique that derives its strength from negativity only. If we regard the self-enclosed shape in Rosenzweig as nodes of a network of relations, we also have to consider their relationality. Here, the question which forces itself upon us is how it is possible to think relationality starting from solipsism. This is the question of the relation between experience and the transcendental. The experience of God- world man seems to be the transcendental possibility of relationality while the relation with the alterity (revelation) as absolute experience is at the same time the possibility of a well-circumscribed type of identity. Totality and Infinity fulfills ethics as the critical essence of knowledge. (TI, 43) Levinas wants to bring out the fundamental experience of the relation with infinity. The truth of actuality

does not reside in the ontological relations of being that reveals itself as war, but within the eschatology of messianic peace. The experience of the relation with infinity accomplishes experience in the fullest sense of the word. (TI 25). However, the absolute experience of this relation is an equivocal one. On the one hand, its possibility presupposes a separation or split that exists independently of infinity. Separation is both the experience of the break-up of totality and the transcendentally necessary condition of infinity. On the other hand, it is infinity that makes separation possible. The light of the face is necessary for separation. (TI 151) Infinity is the transcendental precondition of separation. Yet the relation with infinity is the absolute experience. This circular relation of the e xperience and the transcendental cannot be easily solved by simply distinguishing between several levels. Both terms exist independently from one another and call for one another. To accept a correlative dependence would mean the end of the relation. In thinking through this paradox, we turn again to Rosenzweigs thought. The complex construction of the Star lets us presume what is at stake and what is fruitful in this remarkable relation.

1. Rosenzweig: The Possibility of Absolute Experience

Starting from the threefold nothing, Rosenzweig constructs the Gestalt of God, world and man. They are mirrored in Greek mythology. The three constructions express the experience of the refutation of the nothing. At the same time, the true experience happens in relationality. Rosenzweigs philosophy of experience is not an empiricism in the sense of the word typical within philosophy of science. Experience expresses mans temporal relations with the exteriority

of the world, his fellow man and God. According to Rosenzweig, all experience of reality is ultimately founded in the revelatory experience of the voice that orders love. Rosenzweigs concept of experience must be discussed at two interconnected levels. 1. First of all, the experience of death is the condition of possibility for the revelatory relation as absolute empiricism. (NT 101) The experience of death shatters any idealistic monism. On Rosenzweigs view, death as a limit experience is the grain of sand which gunks up the well -oiled cogs of idealistic clockwork thought. From out of death, man, world and God appear as irreducible to one another. The irreducibility of individual death is the lever for the disruption of the noetic-ontological parallelism of idealism. Within idealism, the individual existence is integrated into a universal and logical order. By the disruption caused by the experience of death, God, the world and man can appear as autonomous entities. The tragic man, the plastic cosmos and the Olympian gods of Greek culture are the mythical expression of their substantiality. Besides, the relational terms are inwardly differentiated. The omnipotent divine existence or freedom can not be derived from the metaphysical essence of God; human freedom is independent of human essence or transience; and the worldly productivity is not an emanation of the universal logos. The concrete and unique existence cannot be derived from its own essence. Since rationality aims to understand essence, the mere existence of the three irreducible substances is a further refutation of idealistic monism. Their differentiation is a condition of possibility of their mutual relationality . Within a relational network, only a substance that is not understood monolithically can be moved by an exteriority.

2. Yet, in Rosenzweigs view, the experience of the substances in front of the abyss of death is not the deepest experiential actuality. The genuine, absolute experience is the experience of revelation that makes possible mans development toward the world and his fellow man. Rosenzweig uses the basic concepts of the Weltalter-philosophy of Schelling to describe the relation of revelation and creation as the moment of externalization of the substances. Schelling wants to think the finite in its relation to absolute thought, without positing the finite inside of the absolute. In Schelling, the unbearable proximity of the infinite essence and the infinite freedom in God is solved by the idea of contraction. This enables God to reveal Himself to man and opens up a space for creation. Rosenzweig works out the question by letting the inner tension of the divine omnipotent potencies (essence and freedom) flow out into an exteriorization that enables the human essence or Selbst to start moving and to open itself to alterity. This disclosure of the Selbst into Seele, is what Rosenzweig calls revelation. Man is not the origin of revelation. Yet he can open himself to the event of revelation because he is an inwardly differentiated essence. Human freedom, initially directed towards its own being, can be moved by an exteriority. From revelation on, time and language can be experienced as real. The revelatory experience converts man. His perishable essence turns into eternal love and his limited freedom becomes commitment to the world. Man, within the dialogue man, is summoned to give a response. This is the dimension of redemption. The relation with exteriority and the development through liberating action are the genuinely human experience, an absolute experience, of which man cannot possibly be the master. From his experiences during the First World War and with anti-Semitism, Rosenzweig gained the insight that idealistic thought is not the genuine truth of life. Experience teaches us that people can not be grasped within a system. It even teaches us that human actuality consists in the

relations among the absolute terms of the All. Actuality is a network of relations, having man, God and world as its most important nodes. Human-being means to exist out of God and for your fellow man. Moreover, experience teaches us that man in his humanity is formed by something exterior. On the one hand, experienced reality is multiple, a complex of relations. Relationality cannot be completely reduced to a single, rational principle. On the other hand, reflection on experience demands consistency, a unifying ground. Rosenzweig thinks from out of this tension. He constructs a thought that has the three irreducible principles of God, world and man as its cornerstones. From these cornerstones, he preserves his thinking against monism and starts thinking the reality of experience. The tension outlined here is inherent in Rosenzweigs thought. The construction of man as an autonomous entity is a condition of possibility of the relation with God. In this sense, we can call it a transcendental philosophy. The origin of this construction lies outside of the construction itself. But the construction also falls outside of experience. It cannot itself be experienced and yet it is the source of experience as an act. The absolute experience takes place in the reversed existent itself. Rosenzweigs problem is whether the absolute experience can be thought philosophically. He elaborates this question by examining the conditions of possibility of experience on the one hand, and by describing the relations experienced on the other hand.

2. Rosenzweig and Levinas: One Fundamental Question, Two Different Approaches

Levinas addresses the question of how philosophizing is possible after the fragmentation of totality. The significance of Totality and Infinity is enriched by the problematic of The Star of Redemption. Both authors oppose any type of philosophical thought which they denounce as one-

dimensional or totalitarian. Fundamental reality consists in relations. In order to be able to think relations, the terms of the relations must be presumed to be independent or separate. Inside of separation, there is an inner Differenz that allows the openness to alterity. The conditions of possibility also comprise the experience of the fragmentation of one-dimensionality or totality. This experience is made possible by the relation with alterity. Experience and the transcendental stand in a paradoxical relationship to one another. Levinas readily adopts Rosenzweigs criticism of the idea of totality. The famous sentence in which he states this has already been quoted. However, in order to understand thoroughly the relation with Rosenzweig, the text following the reference to Rosenzweig in Totality and Infinity is very important. The next sentence reads like this: But the presentation and the development of the notions employed owe everything to the phenomenological method. (28) This phrase is more than lip service paid to the then current philosophy. Implicitly, it entails a strong departure from Rosenzweig. It is precisely from Husserls phenomenology that Levinas borrows the idea of the overflowing of objectifying thought by a forgotten experience, from which it [thinking] lives. (28) From the point of view of Totality and Infinity, it appears that Rosenzweigs thought is also a product of constitutive subjectivity and its noetic-noematic-structure. After first shattering the Hegelian system, Rosenzweig starts pro -jecting or constructing a thinking. Although Rosenzweig frequently stresses that the living philosopher is very important in his thinking, that the latter has a strongly personal character and that his book starts from the radical experience of death, he does not yet succeed in letting be (29) exteriority. In the end, the author Rosenzweig posits himself outside of the book he writes. Rosenzweig adopts, in the activity of writing, a synoptic viewpoint. He works out a new system, wherein transcendence becomes one of the most important themes. The Star of Redemption is an ob-ject, a noema. Rosenzweigs own speaking is situated outside of what is said.

Levinas takes a different path. His speaking and writing is the word which is spoken by the metaphysician inside of the asymmetrical metaphysical relation. Rosenzweig adopts the narrative standpoint of the external author, as in the case of the auctorial novel. Levinas, by contrast, is himself the protagonist of his thinking: he is both actor and author. This awareness of his own language and of his place within the asymmetrical relation means that Levinass book is rather the always renewed surge of infinity, an infinitizing language that breaks the common linguistic patterns open into a disclosure. This is why Levinas does not work out a system, why he says very little on the content of God. Instead, he introduces the reader into asymmetry. The genius of Levinas consists in elaboration of the metaphysical relation as desire. What other metaphor could better evoke both self-implication and asymmetry than the desire which goes unto the other and lives from the other without being able to constitute the other itself? Through his considerations on desire, he is able to overcome objectifying thought. To this purpose, he needs Husserlian phenomenology, which enables him to attend to the forgotten experience on which any thinking depends. With the introduction of phenomenology, Levinass thinking turns much more radical than Rosenzweigs.