Radical Passivity LIBRARY OF ETHICS AND APPLIED PHILOSOPHY Volume 20 Editor in Chief Marcus Düwell, Utrecht University, Utrecht (The Netherlands), [email protected] Editorial Board Deryck Beyleveld, Durham University, Durham (UK), [email protected] David Copp, University of Florida (USA), [email protected]fl .edu Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research, New York (USA), [email protected] Martin van Hees, Groningen University (The Netherlands), [email protected] Thomas Hill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA), [email protected] Samuel Kerstein, University of Maryland, College Park (USA), [email protected] Will Kymlicka, Queens University, Ontario (Canada), [email protected] Philip van Parijs, Louvaine-la-Neuve (Belgium) en Harvard (USA), [email protected] Qui Renzong, [email protected] Peter Schaber, Ethikzentrum, University of Zürich (Switzerland), [email protected] Thomas Schmidt, Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany), [email protected] For other titles published in this series, go to http://www.springer.com/series/6230 Benda Hofmeyr Editor Radical Passivity Rethinking Ethical Agency in Levinas Editor Benda Hofmeyr Radboud University Nijmegen Department of Philosophical Anthropology Faculty of Philosophy 6500 HD Nijmegen The Netherlands and University of Pretoria Department of Philosophy Pretoria 0002 South Africa ISBN 978-1-4020-9346-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-9347-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008940144 © 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper springer.com Preface Levinas’s ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible – that which enables us to act in the interest of another, to put the well-being of another before our own. This line of questioning found its inception in and drew its inspiration from the mass atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. The Holocaust , like the Cambodian genocide, or those in Rwanda and Srebrenica, exemplifies what have come to be known as the ‘never again’ situations. After these events, we looked back each time, with varying degrees of incomprehension, horror, anger and shame, asking ourselves how we could possibly have let it all happen again. And yet, atrocity crimes are still rampant. After Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992–1995), came Kosovo (1999) and Darfur (2003). In our present-day world , hate crimes motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, and mass hate such as genocide and terror, are on the rise (think, for example, of Burma, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and North Korea). A critical revaluation of the conditions of possibility of ethical agency is therefore more necessary than ever. This volume is committed to the possibility of ‘never again’. It is dedicated to all the victims – living and dead – of what Levinas calls the ‘sober, Cain-like coldness’ at the root of all crime against humanity, as much as every singular crime against another human being . The scholars featured deserve a special word of thanks for their invaluable con- tribution and commitment to rethinking the conditions of the possibility of ‘never again’: Luc Anckaert, Bettina Bergo, Joachim Duyndam, Seán Hand, Al Lingis, Ad Peperzak, Anya Topolski and Peter Zeillinger. This collection of essays follows from a colloquium organized by myself and hosted by the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands on 24 November 2006. I would like to thank the Academie for its generous organizational and financial support of the event. It would not have been possible without the enthusiastic assist- ance of the following individuals: Koen Brams and Hanneke Grootenboer (for their unreserved support of the idea and its realization) and Anne Vangronsveld (for the coordination and organization of the colloquium). I would further like to thank Fritz Schmuhl at Springer for his wholehearted support and encouragement, David Levey at the University of South Africa for his expert language redaction, and Nina Botha at the University of Pretoria for her invaluable assistance in compiling the index. v vi Preface This volume includes critical approaches to radical passivity from a variety of perspectives (both critical and favourable) covering the entire scope of Levinas’s oeuvre, including both his philosophical as well his so-called spiritual works or Talmudic Readings . The contributing authors speak with widely diverse voices, which will hopefully appeal to a diversified and interdisciplinary readership. This collection will certainly be of interest to an expert academic audience in a wide variety of disciplines, including Philosophical Ethics (or Practical Philosophy), Philosophical Anthropology, Social and Political Philosophy, Religious Studies, Literary Studies, Applied Ethics, Theology, Judaic Studies, etcetera. It is also likely to appeal to people outside of academia interested in that which makes ethical agency possible. The host of featured authors (from Canada, America, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Austria and South Africa) and their varied per- spectives accord this work an assured international appeal. All the contributions have been subjected to extensive peer and editorial review. Benda Hofmeyr Pretoria, South Africa July 2008 Contents Preface ............................................................................................................... v Contributors ..................................................................................................... ix Editor’s Introduction: Passivity as Necessary Condition for Ethical Agency? .......................................................................................... 1 Part I Introducing Radical Passivity 1 Radical Passivity: Ethical Problem or Solution? ...................................... 15 Benda Hofmeyr 2 Radical Passivity in Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (Lectures of 1954) ...................................................................................... 31 Bettina Bergo Part II Radical Passivity and the Self 3 Sincerely Yours. Towards a Phenomenology of Me ................................ 55 Adriaan Peperzak 4 Sincerely Me. Enjoyment and the Truth of Hedonism ........................... 67 Joachim Duyndam Part III Radical Passivity as Basis for Effective Ethical Action? 5 The Fundamental Ethical Experience ...................................................... 81 Alphonso Lingis 6 Radical Passivity as the (Only) Basis for Effective Ethical Action. Reading the ‘Passage to the Third ’ in Otherwise than Being ............................................................................. 95 Peter Zeillinger vii viii Contents Part IV Radical Passivity and Levinas’s Talmudic Readings 7 Listening to the Language of the Other ................................................... 111 Anya Topolski 8 Ab-Originality: Radical Passivity through Talmudic Reading .............. 133 Seán Hand 9 L’Être Entre les Lettres. Creation and Passivity in ‘And God Created Woman’ .................................................................. 143 Luc Anckaert Index .................................................................................................................. 155 Contributors Luc Anckaert Luc Anckaert holds degrees in Moral Theology and Philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven. He teaches Jewish Philosophy at the K.U. Leuven and ethics at affiliated institutions. The Teyler’s Godgeleerdheid Genootschap of Haarlem was awarded to him in 1998. His publications are God , wereld en mens: Het ternaire denken van Franz Rosenzweig (Leuven: University Press, 1995); Franz Rosenzweig: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (Leuven: Peeters, 1990, 1995, with B. Caspers); Een kritiek van het oneindige. Rosenzweig en Levinas (Leuven: Peeters, 1999); A Critique of Infinity. Rosenzweig and Levinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2006); De rode huid van Adam. Verhalen over crisis en zin Altiora, 2008, with R. Burggraeve ). Bettina Bergo Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal, Bettina Bergo is the author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics (Duquesne, 2001) and co-editor of several collections, notably Levinas and Nietzsche : After the Death of a Certain God (forthcoming, Columbia); Trauma: Reflections on Experience and Its Other (forthcoming, SUNY); and Levinas’s Contribution to Contemporary Thought (Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal). She has translated three works of Levinas, M. Zarader’s The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage (Stanford); co-translated and edited Judéités: Questions à Jacques Derrida (Fordham), and Jean-Luc Nancy ’s La Déclosion (forthcoming, Fordham) and Didier Franck’s Nietzsche and the Shadow of God (forthcoming, Northwestern). She is the author of numerous essays and articles on Levinas, psychoanalysis , and contemporary French thought. Joachim Duyndam Joachim Duyndam is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Humanistics in The Netherlands. Information about his work and fields of interest , including a list of recent publications, is to be found at www. duyndam.net. Duyndam is editor-in-chief of The Levinas Online Bibliography (www.levinas.nl). Seán Hand Seán Hand is Professor of French and Head of the Department of French Studies, University of Warwick. ix