Customer Reviews

Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Philosophical Series)

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A very difficult and interesting work. Levinas' prose is complex and often seemingly contradictory. Why is this so? Levinas struggles with a language that very often glosses over the radical alterity of the other. Traditionally, western philosophy has relegated all beings to Being, the stuff from which all things, or beings, spring. Levinas wants to suggest that in doing so, western philosophy has ignored the complex and often difficult relationships that exist between individuals. Specifically, Levinas addresses the ontology of Martin Heidegger which reduces the other's importance by giving priority to Being, or Totality. The other, however, points beyond Being and towards infinity. The idea of the infinite is drawn from Descartes' third meditation in which he describes this fundamental idea that we all have. Levinas carries on this line of thought by emphasizing the other that shatters the supposed totality of Being and consequently creates an necessarily ethical relationship. Wonderfully, Levinas' work acts as an other that continually challenges the reader as do the relationships in everyday life.

This books demands the attention of us all, at every moment, and is a quiet masterpiece in recent continental thought. A work which Derrida has commented on, and built on so much in his earlier and later (affirmative) deconstrucion. This book is not simply a treatise on ethics, but one on metaphysics, logic, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, epistemology and indeed every thinkable area of ontological, onto-theological work that one can imagine. A treatise that makes us dramtically rethink everyone of these areas and so much more. Levinas will, in time, no doubt become regarded as one of the greats in the history of philosophy.

Yeah, this is hard to read. Yes, it is worth it. Levinas stands tall in a tradition that embraces the flux and rejects the totalizing tendencies of modernity. Totality and Infinity was a powerful influence on Derrida, can be seen as a parrallel to Heidegger's Essay Concerning the Question of Technology, and certainly repesents a powerful attempt at post-metaphysical ethics.
Levinas points out the egology, the self and family centered closedness that does violence on many scales. In a time when there seems to be unconditional heralding of freedom, Levinas points out the violence of freedom and encourages responsibility. Regardless of how effective one finds his arguments, I think the attitude and way of being Levinas is describing is one that would make life much fuller and less driven by inertia and ignorence.
Infinitely important (pun), highly recommended.

To previous reviewers:

~ Levinas is trying to uncover the source of the idea of infinity ~

No, infinity by definition is boundless and cannot be encompassed or reduced. Levinas is not asking the Cartesian question nor concerned with securing the `existence' of the external world. The concept of infinity is unique in that its content always exceeds or overflows its concept. Ethical relation operates in just this manner: the relation to the other is not negative (ala Idealism) but rather a relation to an excess. This excess is no Hinterwelt, but rather goodness.

~ Then he proceeds to "show" that the face to face relation with the Other is the source for our capacity to have theoretical and practical knowledge. ~

Indeed. Though the term `source' is very problematic. Levinas shows theoretical and practical `knowledge' - science and law/politics - are fundamentally social. In this way, the ethical relation opens and conditions this `knowledge,' while always exceeding it. What if science claimed to discover that women were `inferior' to men? We would no doubt question the `truth' of this discovery. Why? Because such a claim seems to exceed the bounds of what scientific activity can produce. This example shows how ethics exceeds theoretical knowledge. The same goes for the `practical.' Why do we think that segregation is wrong or unjust? Why is excluding the `other' from basic political participation, and the responsibility and rights it entails, a problem? Political theory and practice, which in its way is a kind of `scientific ethics,' can also lead to problematic situations. How are we able to judge or discern or resist claims that seek to justify unethical attitudes and practices? The face-to-face is Levinas's attempt to grapple with this perennial problem.

~ Oh yeah, the Other is a man, because the feminine other is not Other enough for Levinas, and romantic love is bad. ~

The problem of the feminine in Levinas is a real issue. Yet only a reductive and amateurish reading would pose the problem in these blunt terms. "The Other is man" and not women, is false according to any close reading of Levinas's texts. It is true that Levinas implicitly treats gender with a patriarchal slant, yet it is also true that he complicates and problematizes the way gendered is valued. There is a running debate on this within feminist camps. The more thoughtful and rigorous feminists realize the complexity and nuanced structural problems within Levinas's thinking of the feminine. Even if we admit that there is an undeniable patriarchal aspect in Levinas's work, we must also admit that he subverts that same patriarchy from within his own work. Here we may possibly oppose Levinas to Levinas. (Check out Tine Chanter's essay in `Addressing Levinas'). Oh ya, `romantic love is bad'?? Go read `Phenomenology of Eros' more carefully.

~Essentially, what he does is fuse Husserl and Heidegger's theories, to an extent, and replaces the transcendental ego of Husserl with the face to face relation with the Other.~

This sounds like a bad regurgitation of certain of Levinas's critics. The more precise way to put it is this: Levinas plays Heidegger's anti-scientism against Husserl, and Husserl's anti-historicism and relativism against Heidegger. There is a certain sense where the other displaces Husserl's T-Ego, in terms of its structural function. Yet Levinas is not after absolute knowledge, and `replacing' the ego with alterity precisely disturbs and relativizes - in fact renders impossible - constitution.

~ Levinas is just intentionally writing obscurely, perhaps because he realizes how silly his whole enterprise is and how much modernism is contained within it (still trying to find the condition for experience itself, did someone say German Idealism?).~

This comment shows the extent of our reviewer's ignorance. 1st: Levinas's entire project is one the most rigorous and non-reductive challenges to the Idealist tradition from Fichte to Husserl. Levinas's project is precisely a critique of the modernist project to secure absolute foundations. He ever retained an allergy to G-Idealism and saw within its totalizing logic the seeds of Auschwitz. 2nd: The claim that Levinas intentionally wrote obscurely betrays intellectual laziness and a certain chauvinism. A simple survey of Levinas's contemporaries, French philosophy of the mid-20th century, shows that Levinas is writing within a specific intellectual culture and style. Continental philosophy in general tends to be more difficult for us Anglophones in that we are socialized into an instrumental and minimalist stylistic culture. One need only read Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, or Derrida to the see the extent in which Levinas is operating within a certain tradition and style of philosophy.

Finally, the following suggestion by the above reviewer can help us understand Levinas's basic point:

~ you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words: --- "totality" --- "infinity" --- "other"
Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.~

As you sit `contemplating' your definitions, imagine you are right on the cusp of a new idea that will refute Levinas and bring you philosophic immortality. All of a sudden, a frantic bang on your door jars you. You open the door and there stands your neighbor with blood running down his face. He explains that while he was sitting watching water flow over rocks (while contemplating Aristotle); a tree branch fell on his head. You immediately begin to help your neighbor: bandages, ice, call the ambulance, and so forth. By the time the ordeal is over, you have forgotten the specifics of you idea and must start all over.

The supplicating demand of the other interrupts all self activity, rendering our clarity and certainty and sedentary contemplation secondary and relative. No matter how grand and all encompassing our ideas become, there always remains an exterior: an other who bangs on the door needing help; whom we feel obliged to help even if the don't agree with our ideas, even if they are stupid, confused, and so forth. This knock on the door is not another `meaning,' idea, world, or theory, not another term to be defined or explained. The knock on the door is the face of the other that needs and demands whether or not our theory or definition justifies it.

Totality and Infinity is, no doubt, one of the Great Books.

Totality and Infinity is Levinas's first magnum opus, one of two. It is truly an amazing and magnificient piece of work. I had read later Levinas first and began reading this one initially as a sort of self-imposed mandatory prerequisite to read his second magnum opus Otherwise Than Being. Being used to later Levinas, it was an adjustment to read this earlier text. The language of both eras is highly dense and complex (and original), but the earlier language is more pedagogic and the structure more methodic.
At times, I didn't think I would finish the book. I knew I loved Levinas, but in this book the phenomological analyses are so thorough and extensive, that I wondered if it was the same author at times or when I'd find the definitive Levinasian mark of ethics, of the face. However, I am very happy that I did finish this book. Virtually the first half of the book is about Separation - an ambivalence in which a being masters and enjoys but is also dependent on the resources of the world. Interiority does not commence as a cogito or reason, but as enjoyment (of the world). Every being, in their enjoyment of this life, is separated from a totality that would fully account for all of them. The vertigo of existence, of the "il y a" ("there is"), is subsided in the prolongation of labor and in the dwelling. However, the interior economy is still not in a "face to face."
Only separated beings can enter into a face to face and share their resources with an Other.
Finally, the last sections (beginning from section 3) of the book begin to look a lot like later Levinas, and he goes into extensive and radical analyses of the ultimate, irreducible relation of the face to face and its highly ethical situation. He ruminates on goodness, justice, language, plurality, and peace. He speaks of the end of philosophy, of its inadequacy to do justice to the uniqueness of a face. He deliberately and deservingly after many rigorous pages of working out an original and unforeseen thought invokes how this is a departure from and in opposition to most of Western philosophy.
No one who reads and truly understands this book will remain unchanged. To read the first magnum opus of such an original mind, to join Levinas in his thought process by way of the apex of the first part of his career, is truly an unparalleled and beautiful experience, and one you will never forget nor cease to take with you.

I loved this book in my twenties and still love it. Its insights are timeless and can appeal to people of all ages and, in my view, different religions. Pope John Paul II often referred to Levinas's Philosophy of the Face. Levinas was able to elucidate quite clearly how a person's face can mirror the divine and immortality. His idea of the impossibility of death is equally poignant, that whereas one dies physically certainly, his or her spirit can never die, as simply put, people touch others' lives as they progress through this allegory we call life. Yes, Levinas is at times obscure, but taking time to read it and to meditate upon it, can give one a refreshing outlook when tackling some of life's demands anew. I also only recently learned that he was a Holocaust survivor. His work seems to illustrate the notion that wisdom can, indeed, come from suffering, if one by human choice refuses to cave in to evil circumstance.

There's no doubt that this is a difficult read. I would urge anyone tackling this great book that they skip Levinas' Introduction, saving it until the end. As is often the case with philosophy books, the Introduction was probably written last, and is more of a summary than an intro. Start with Section I and go from there.

I have read others state that this is a book about ethics. It is much more; it is a phenomenological description of the inner life in all its aspects. Morality is a consequence or an outcome of the inner life as it is portrayed here, but there is so much more to this book than being a mere work on ethics.

God is occasionally mentioned but as a distant and remote observer-judge. Levinas had a very intellectualized view of God which centers around the theme of Justice. Levinas' concept of justice implies some kind of inscrutable synoptic insight similar to what you find in late Royce, which observes and passes judgment upon all of external history from an insurmountable distance, rendering a final verdict upon human events, so that the human historiography of mankind never has the final word. Because interiority is an absolute break with totality, the self is naturally atheist, meaning that God cannot observe or judge the isolated subjectivity of the separated being. God has no part of my subjectivity, because that would imply that my subjectivity is part of a totality. For Levinas, my subjectivity, like all other subjectivities, is a singularity, isolated and separate.

Levinas attempts a critique of his predecessors Husserl and Heidegger throughout the book, but they are seldom referred to by name. It is also apparent the he is intimately familiar with Sartre's work, and I find TI more often directed as almost a response to Being and Nothingness than Being and Time. For example, while Sartre maintains that freedom is unconditioned and absolute in the human being, Levinas argues that freedom is only possible in a socio-political context, where there are institutions in place that enable freedom to emerge. As Levinas states, it is impossible to experience any sort of freedom when one is being starved to death in a concentration camp.

The most difficult part of the book and the part which has generated the most controversy is the final section toward the end where Levinas writes about the fecundity relation. If you take his words literally it is patently sexist language, which many critics have put down to the patriarchal tendencies of Levinas' Jewish faith. But Levinas states quite clearly that the biological father-son relation is only to be understood as the instance of a more general prototypical relation. The primary and fundamental example of the fecundity relation is the time-relation of the individual with himself or herself.

Fecundity is primarily "the relation with my future which is mine and not mine; a possibility of myself." Fecundity denotes "a duality of the Identical, my future, my adventure." The relation is one between parent and child. But here the child is "the other that I will be." The child is a stranger, "but he is also me." "He is me, a stranger to myself." The child is an "infinite being, an ever-recommencing being, produced in the guise of fecundity." In other words, I am the child of the younger man I once was. I am Other than that younger man, and yet, I am the Same. The old man I will become is the child I will bear, the Stranger, the Other, that I will become. He is my child because my thoughts, words, and actions in the present will bring him forth out of the womb of time. He is the Me that I shall become, yet he is also Other than me; the Stranger that I shall become. "Being is produced as a multiple and as split into Same and Other; this is its ultimate structure." The fecundity relation thus describes the fundamental and ultimate structure of Being. Of course, it may also denote other types of relations as well: as in the literal relationship between the father and son, and master and student. But the primary relationship denoted by fecundity is that time-relation between myself as Same and myself as Other.

This is not a book you can easily read and then put aside. It will stay with you for a long time, and you will certainly come back to it repeatedly, re-reading many sections over and over.

I only read parts of Totality and Infinity, but I found Levinas extremely hard and rewarding. His insights in the book are helpful to everyday life, and they've changed my world view altogether. read it, but preferably with someone else who is reading it, too, or have someone else who has read it help you.

I have to confess I didn't get very far with this one. If you have to read this for a course, I'm very sorry.

I'm not an academic, but I do I read a lot of philosophy. I'll put a lot of energy into a complex text, but I prefer to invest it with works that will enlighten, not confuse.

On the clarity-precision scale, I would push Levinas right past "dense" or "challenging" and put it somewhere between "turgid" and "impenetrable." (His apologists decry the inability of human language to convey Levinas' sophisticated thoughts. Maybe so, but perhaps the apology says more about his thoughts than it does about human language.)

In any case, it will take you a long time to genuinely read this book. If you're looking for truth (as opposed to a passing grade in a required course), you would be better served by spending 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own working definition of the following words:

--- "totality"
--- "infinity"
--- "other"

Then spend 3 hours contemplating and reasoning to your own understanding of how the three are interrelated.

Then get a decent translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics. (I like the McKeon translation, but there are certainly newer, hipper ones.) Then read Aristotle instead of Levinas. If you find the idea of reading a Dead White Guy repugnant, spend the time watching water move over rocks. Either choice will provide you more wisdom than you could get from a lifetime studying An Essay on Exteriority.

Here is a summary of the argument contained in this book:

Levinas is trying to uncover the source of the idea of infinity, which he decides cannot come from "totality" and must come from something that cannot be "totalized." He decides that it must come from the face to face relation with the Other, since neither the Other nor the face to face relation can be totalized. Then he proceeds to "show" that the face to face relation with the Other is the source for our capacity to have theoretical and practical knowledge. Oh yeah, the Other is a man, because the feminine other is not Other enough for Levinas, and romantic love is bad. Essentially, what he does is fuse Husserl and Heidegger's theories, to an extent, and replaces the transcendental ego of Husserl with the face to face relation with the Other.

Yeah, forgive me if I don't think this guy is as profound as the other reviewers. And Levinas is not having problems getting his point across because of the "ontological" nature of the language he is using (an explanation that came from Derrida, not Levinas nor the other reviewers). Levinas is just intentionally writing obscurely, perhaps because he realizes how silly his whole enterprise is and how much modernism is contained within it (still trying to find the condition for experience itself, did someone say German Idealism?).