November 11, 2011

Today I would like to open our discussion on Levinas with some remarks on our previous meeting.

In our previous seminar with Prof. Mamdani we discussed the question of how to deal with the cases of excessive violence and establish justice with respect to post apartheid transition in South Africa. Giving a reference to Levinas in his paper, Mamdani was critical about thinking human wrongs in terms of ethics where the responsibility for excessive violence is seen as belonging to individuals, who need to be punished in order to establish justice that is criminal justice. For Mamdani, however, we need to move away from ethics to politics and establish political justice as a practical necessity of living together.

Levinas, on the other hand, emphasize ethics as foundational to justice. Ethics for Levinas arises from my proximity to the Other, my encountering with his face which summons me, says “don’t kill me” puts a responsibility on me. My responsibility to the Other is an unconditional responsibility one that preserves the alterity of the Other and not attempting to suppress his difference. Moreover, I’m responsible to the Other without any mediation, only with my encounter with his face. My responsibility to the Other is prior to freedom, “I” am responsible before I have done anything which is a critique to liberal idea of self as responsible only of the consequences of his free actions. My responsibility to the Other is outside my will, it is an “obsession.”

The first question I would like to raise is to what extent this primordial condition is possible in our contemporary society where before I encounter with the Other I have knowledge about his Otherness, I’m surrounded by stereotypes about the Other.

Secondly, it might be interesting to think the ways in which Levinas and Hegel (master-slave dialectic) are telling us different stories about the primordial relation between the self and Other? In Hegel the relation with the Other is a dialectic, confrontational one, a struggle for recognition where self involve in a battle and destroy the otherness as to see itself in the other ? A negative relation to the Other. Whereas in Levinas, the relation between self and the Other is affirmative, not a struggle for recognition but a welcome of the otherness of the Other which demands “do not do violence” “do not kill me” and therefore make me suspect, the idea that I can kill the Other is more terrifying than my own death, and I’m guilty before I have done anything. A move from dialectic, negation to affirmative.

What are the implications of this shift from negative to positive perception of the relation with the Other on the ways in which we imagine global political futures?

Politics for Levinas on the other hand is problematic as a totalizing form of power that bases itself on the idea of unity of parts on a common ground such as the liberal idea that “all individuals are free.” The idea of totality and fusion of parts into a whole carries the danger of eliminating differences. An idea of Sameness such as “we are all human and therefore fundamentally same” is fragile one when one starts to think of some people or groups as not really the same and therefore can be destroyed. This potential for violence can be seen in both totalitarian and liberal political regimes, which base themselves on this idea of sameness.

But the question of politics and justice becomes important when a third party, enters and disturbs the ethical relation of two, which is not very clear for me. It seems like as third party when I enter into the ethical relation of the two then I’m responsible not only to each of them but also one’s responsibility for the other that made me ask “What am I to do?.” What am I to do when neighbors kill neighbors whom do we rescue and whom do we attack? Those questions give birth to politics and justice, to constitute a just order where claims of each party remain intelligible and equal before the law without suppressing their difference.

The question that I would like us to think is about this uneasy and sometimes paradoxical relation between ethics and politics. What kind of a political order can preserve the Otherness of the Other without eliminating it into Sameness? Do we here imagine a kind of multiculturalism, a form of pluralist politics? Is this focus on preserving the difference of the Other and thus the asymmetrical condition between me and the Other not concerned with creating an equal socio-economic order which we discussed with Mamdani’s unfinished discussion of social justice?

Another question that I would like to ask is how Levinas perceives the role of law (and what kind of a law universal, local, customary the question of proximity) in establishing justice? It seems like he’s critical about law as being general, anonymous but at the same time sees law as useful to create equal and reciprocal conditions, create a just order to preserve my ethical relation to the Other.

Moreover, if justice is based on proximity to the Other then it is not a response to the past, a memory, historical narrative of suffering but to the fact that my neighbor is here and I’m here, and through encountering with his face I become responsible for him. Living together, sharing together. How this idea of ethics as proximity to the Other produces a particular approach to history?

Peace instead of justice: not taking place in the unthreatening, calm space of the identical in the home of a bourgeois where he is with himself and not disturbed by alterity, but as a relation to alterity, fellowship with the other human where which is shaped by surplus of sociality and love.

—Ezgi Canpolat