Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 08:21:55 +0000
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The scandal of obligation]


Levinas’ Logic

Here is an abstract of the first two sections of the essay: commentary
and persecution & the enunciative clause.  I see it as a rehearsal for
the latter treatment in “The Differend”.  In some ways, however, it is
more detailed and complex in its rendering of the themes.  These first
two sections focus on the problematic attempt of Levinas to transcend
ontology by means of the Other and the ethical demand.  The section on
enunciative clauses in particular is one that I hope will generate some
group discussion since the argument is very technical and, to me at
least, not very clear.

Here follows the abstract and excerpts:

“The essay seeks to establish that “prescriptive statements are not
commensurate with denotative ones” (i.e. descriptives).  It examines the
“situation of Levinas’s thought  in the face of Hegelian persecution.”
 Central are the question of commentary and the confrontation with
Kant’s 2nd Critique.”

                                           Commentary and persecution

This (Levinas) is a discourse that sets a trap for commentary.  Stakes
are
not merely speculative, but political.  “Do before you understand” . 
The figures of commentary may also be thought of as stages of a
seduction whereby Levinasdiscourse sets a trap for commentary - both
attracting commentary and decieving it.  This relation of commentary to
Levinas’  discourse may be treated as a type of model of the relation of
commentary  to a prescriptive discourse.  (I have to confess I do not
think Lyotard is all that clear on the distinction to be made between
genres of discourse and phrase regimens.  Here prescriptives are called
a “discourse” which seems to be an development on Wittgenstein’s 
language games - yet they are dealt with as phrase regimens.  In The
Differend prescriptive are a phrase regimen - and not a discourse. 
There are quite fundamental differences between the two of these as most
of you are no doubt aware.  I would be interested to get other peoples
thoughts on this distinction as it develops in the course of Lyotard’s
work. )  Apart from that it is interesting to note the use of the word
“seduction”  What is seductive here is Levinas’ discourse.  Yet Levinas’
discourse is equivocal.  It is both specualtive and political.  In the
language of the differend we would say that Levinas’ “phrase” presents
two phrase universes.  The seduction is that of the specualtive genre
which seduces from afar the addressee - seducing the addressee to link
onto Levinas’ discourse in a specualtive mode.  

Stages of the seduction:

 Figure 1  Tries to remain faithful to the content of the prescription,
but nevertless treats it as a denotative.  In otherwords it breaks the
faith while thinking that it is remaining faithful.  The seduction here
is that the Commentary  thinks it can  faithfully represent Levinas’
discourse.     

Figure 2 Breaks the faith, and in a sense is more perceptive than the
the first.  Yet it is seduced nevertless in thinking that it obeys the
prescription by offering a commentary - and by reinforcing the
difference.  And further it thinks it can catch Levinas by means of a
paradoxical Commentary .  In effect what the commentary says is:  if I
disobey you by offering a commentary, then I will be obeying you; and
moreover, you will be bound to accept my commentary. 

Figure 3 Also operates by means of the same paradoxical commentary, but
adds to it the element of persecution.  If I disobey you by offering a
commentary that persecutes you, then I will be obeying you; and moreover
you will be bound to accept my commentary.   


“What seems to authorize the parody and the persecution is the principle
that justice consists in alterity. So the persecutor reasons thus: only
alterity is just, the unjust is always the other of the just, and so all
that is unjust is just.  If the one who suffers the injustice should
protest against this sophism, I will declare that he has only himself to
blame, which is none other that his own law.

Levinas somtimes tries a riposte against this persecuting commentary. 
When he does he keeps on the same ground of the commentary.  The riposte
is not irrefutable - and if there is a trap in Levinas’ discourse it is
consists first of all in tempting its reader to refute the riposte”

Let’s follow the trap.

Questions:  What are we to understand by ‘seduction’?  There are some
important references to seduction in the Differend.  Let us rehearse the
scenario.  A phrase comes along.  The phrase is equivocal.  The phrase
presents more than one phrase universe.  It presents a specualtive and a
prescriptive phrase universe.  How are we to link onto it?  And anway
how can it be decided which phrase universe it belongs to?  On Lyotard’s
argument Levinas’ discourse seduces the reader/commentator.  I assume
the reader/commentator is already linking onto Levinas’ phrase according
to the rules a commentary.  Perhaps the three stages of seduction
represent three types of rules governing the commentary?  

                                                  The enunciative clause

“If we can show that the absolutely other is so only (or is so in any
case) in relation to the assertion that maintains the statement of its
exteriority, then we can boast that we have ruined the essential project
of the work. Such is the temptation.”

Let ~p = The self does not proceed from the other
Let   q =  The other befalls the self

        1. If  p, then ~q
        2. If  ~p, then q
        3. If  ~p, then ~q

We see how Levinas struggles to escape the Hegelian persecution.  

(Note: This section is extremely dense.  If someone could help
explicate, it
would be appreciated.)

The enuciative phrase puts in place a pragmatics whereby the ‘I’ -
addressor of the phrase (and to some extent the quasi deictic - ‘We’ )
performs for itself the act of recognising the referent of the phrase. 
Thus, we have a statment, ‘the self does not proceed from the other’. 
Here what is described by the phrase is not simply a belief that an
addressor has whose truth value is to be tested according to a
propositional logic.  How does Levinas know that the self does not
proceed from the other?  Is it a traditional source? perhaps as a result
of his Talmudic readings?  Is it because it is stated in the Torah? 
Such a means of arriving at knowledge would seem to privilege a Jewish
tradition over others  - and leave knowledge in the lap of contingency. 
The enuciative clause, as Lyotard points out, is developed so as to
overcome the positivism associated with this form of knowledge. What is
presented by the enunciative clause is an addressor/self which is
sovereign over the empirical traditions.  Such an addressor’s beliefs
cannot be attributed to a natural causality or empirical conditions. 
That is, they do not hold to this or that belief simply because that is
what has been thought in the past; rather they hold to the belief
because they take or recognise the belief as being warranted.  And their
basis for this taking and holding, this recognising,  is a nonsensible
absolute spontaneity attributed to the enunciating subject - the ‘i’ of
the ‘I think’.    

In traditional socieities there is no place for a transcendental I. 
>From the standpoint of science, there is also no place for the I.   

For me, therefore, the issue which is raised here is: how is obligation
a possibility in modernity?  And, what amounts to the same issue: How is
it possible for the enunciative subject (individual and general)  to be
placed under an obligation?   Both these questions may be analysed in
terms of the pragmatic relation of the enunciating subject to a
prescriptive phrase. 

If obligation is an instance of enunciation then (on Lyotard's reading)
the executive force of a prescription does not exist; *there is* no
genuine exterority; there is not a prescriptive phrase.  





{In “The Differend”, Lyotard  refers to enunciation as the subject of
the uttering.  As I understand this passage, Hegel attempts to reduce
everything to the interiority of  the subject, albeit dialectically. 
Levinas, on the other hand, insists on exteriority, the transcendence of
the other, beyond being. 

When  the clauses listed above, are considered in their logical form,
despite the pragmatic intentions,  they appear to be trapped into their
enunciative clauses, and thus cannot escape the ontological reference
upon which Hegel insists.}

As Lyotard himself says; “Propositionally, the two statements are
contraries.
 But they have the same perlocutional form:  for the discourse of ethics
to hold together, the claim for the exteriority of the interior relation
is just as necessary as the claim for its interiority is for the
discourse of phenomenology.  In this respect the discursive forms are
not different.”

“In both cases they are ‘speculative’ statements in which the form of
the statements (in our example, the must) implies the instance of the
enunciation while hiding it.”

“Now if this is so, Levinas’  statements can be placed on a par with
Hegel’s only to the detriment of Levinas, because this would imply the
exteriority of the other, expressed by the statements p and q and their
relations (1), (2), and (3), even when the author of “Otherwise than
Being” declares them to be absolute, can obviously be so according to
the enunciative modality of the ‘constative -representative’ must, that
is, only relative to the enunciative
clause.  And, consequently, it is in the Hegelian discourse, which
explicitly needs the clause to be inserted in order to form statements,
(since substance must be a subject), that the Levinas discourse must
take its place, as a moment of it.”

“We will thus have shown that Levinas’ riposte against ontology is
refutable and the project of emancipating ethical discourse fails in
view of the enunciative clause.”

The argument is simple.  If the *must* is constituted by an enunciating
subject, then the relation to the other is also constituted by the
enunciating subject.  If the relation to the other is constituted by the
enunciating subject, then ethical discourse is a moment within a
specualtive discourse etc etc.  What is to come (see below) has the
concern of developing a commentary that does not subsume an ethics under
it.  

     
Still ahead:

Prescriptive against Denotatives
Levinas and Kant: The Kantian "Widersinnige"
Logical analysis of the Katian statement of moral law
Levinas against Kant