From: EricMurph-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 12:16:10 -0500 (EST)
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” 

Figure 1 of Commentary - discourse of good faith - welcome the other -
struggle against mere assimilation

Figure 2 of Commentary - discourse of ambivalence- paradoxical-Talmudist
versus pagan

Figure 3 of Commentary - discourse of persecution - I can do you justice only
by mistreating you

“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.

Let’s follow the trap.

                                                  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.)

{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 the 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 the 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.”

     
Still ahead:

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

I propose we take two sections of the essay at a time.  It would probably be
useful to consider the section on Obligation as well where this overlaps.