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Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence (Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Texts)

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"Otherwise Than Being" is one of the only metaphysical text that seriously revise and rehabilitate the notion of the subject after Heidegger's deconstruction and critique of it. Proposing a "de-nucleated" subject, a subject that is non-indifferent to the other, Emmanuel Levinas continues the intuitions he first draw in "Totality and Infinity". But rather than simply continue directly and without revision the acquisitions of "Totality and Infinity", Levinas integrates Derrida's critique (drawn in his important article on Levinas,"Violence and Metaphysics") of the still to ontological/phenomenological discourse of "Totality and Infinity". Therefore, in "Otherwise than Being", his second Masterpiece, Levinas is developing a completely new style, a radically new way-of-thinking. Being not committed anymore neither to phenomenology nor to ontology, Levinas offers us an exercise of post-heidegerrian metaphysics that doesn't fall under the critique of philosophy as onto-theo-logy. The pre-original dimension of psychism, the an-archic dimension of the Self, or subjectivity as "other-in-the-Self" are themes breaking the classical metaphysical discourse without abandoning the primacy of the subject, or of ethics. Finally, "Otherwise than Being" is the first important challenge to Nietzsche's parricide, the first (and maybe only) text that tries to re-hear the authentic signification of the word (or name?): God.

Much though I am fascinated with Levinas, I do find it nearly unreadable. His text is so dense, it requires (but definitely merits) slow reading.

Although it might be helpful to have read earlier Levinas, this book takes a bit of a departure from the philosophy he espoused in his younger days. I don't believe it is such a radical departure so much as a reorientation and increased sophistication, but that's a topic for another discussion!

I highly recommend this read if you are familiar with phenomenology, particulary Husserl and Heidegger, and Kant. I believe they are essential to understanding his arguments.

If you are willing to put in the time and mental effort to unpack this, it is a very rewarding book. For some additional explanation, a good companion is Beyond by Peperzak.

Otherwise Than Being (along with Existence and Existents), is basic to the understanding of Levinas' philosophical thought. Some of the fundamental problems with the ideas in Otherwise Than Being are resolved more fully in Levina's "mature work" (like Entre Nous), things such as overreliance on subjectivity and rejection of "onto-theology" without the development of an alternative metaphysics (his "trancendence," the essence of otherwise-than-being seems located more in psychology than in ontology in this book), and his contradictory unwillingness to identify or not identify "illeity" as an attribute of God or as the trace of God's "being." "Illeity" is one of those Levinasisms that was never fully defined by him in this work. Nevertheless, this is his foundational--a word Levinas rejected, by the way--work. His reliance on the "provisional" language of modern phenomenology makes it a difficult read, but Levinas clearly saw it as his best starting point.

Initially, I did not think it would be possible to read and understand this work; I had read excerpts from it numerous times over the last several years and found it impenetrable. However, after purchasing the book and carefully reading Lingis' Introduction, it was much easier than I had thought. All in all, it took three month's of close and careful reading to complete, spending about one or two hours per day, usually first thing in the morning. I don't think this is the hardest work I read -- I failed miserably and eventually gave up on Deleuze's Difference and Repetition after about 140 pages -- but certainly it was the most profound, and disturbing.

Unlike Totality and Infinity, which dealt in depth with a number of different but related ideas, Otherwise Than Being (OB) is really much narrower in its scope. It deals specifically with subjectivity. Levinas uses an idiosyncratic terminology throughout this work. The word 'essence' in this work does not denote essence in the Aristotelian or the Husserlian sense. For Levinas it means simply 'being'. Another possible point of confusion is the word 'anarchy' which in OB does not have any political connotation; it means simply an-archic, or untimely, beyond time. The word 'interest' (or French, interesse) in OB means an inwardness of essence, the depth of the subject's inwardness in essence, or belongingness to being.

There are some rather extraordinary claims in this work: Most importantly the claim that subjectivity itself is constituted by the exposure to the other in proximity. An even more extraordinary claim is that coherent rational discourse dissimulates transcendence, and "owe[s] its coherence to the State, which violently excludes subversive discourse" (p. 170). The work is extremely unsettling in this regard, for the anarchy of responsibility for the other is not to be confused with some project or intention willingly taken up by the subject. It is a hostage situation that is entirely passive, "an anachronous birth" in me, which I cannot except myself from. Over and over throughout the text this point is belabored: that this is not, not, not to be confused with self-sacrifice or being a do-gooder or asceticism. It is a phenomenological description of how subjectivity is constituted.

Whether one in the end accepts Levinas' claims in this work, or brushes it off as nonsense, one will have to face the question of whether the Otherwise than Being is true. For Levinas, there two (several) truths: there is the beyond essence, and there is essence, just as there are two times, the past that was never present, and the present. This work is profoundly disturbing because it is claimed that there is no escape from the Good beyond being; dismissing the book as nonsense does not exempt you from the anarchy of responsibility. You're screwed either way.

This title deals with the otherwise than. A true masterpiece of the pre-ontological and ontological discouse which not only binds self to Other (through an asymetric responsibility--see substition) but also uncovers and builds off the earlier work of Heidegaar.